Re-Strogging the Strogg (56k warning)

[HONkUS]

Ive played Doom and Quake all my life. I thought Quake 2 was the greatest game ever when it came out and when I heard Quake 4 was coming out I was really excited.

Until I learned Raven would do most of the development and saw some screenshots.

In my opinion Raven has a tendency for making their games look "cartoony" I cant really explain it more then that but a good comparison is to compare the sounds, look and feel of Quake 2 to Quake 4. Quake 2's good guys are huge looking bad asses and the strogg are grotesque and angry looking cyber zombies. Fast forward to quake 4 and the good guys are clean shaven scrawny looking "marines" and the strogg look way too clean compared to Quake 2. With that said I attended quakecon this year and it made me realize if anyones going to de-wussify quake 4 its gotta be me. I decided I was going to re-do the textures and sounds for the basic strogg marine to see just how good I could do. Im done with the textures. here is the head texture before and after. Raven's is on the right and my version is on the left. Before I continue I wanted to get some opinions on my progress. So please tell me what you think!

[Zertz]

Raven's one does look somewhat boring, but, no offense that's still some great work there, I think you added a bit too much. Yours looks like the Strogg is dying or something, that might be the point, but it looks weird IMO.

Do you have a job that involve texturing like this or is it just a hobby?

[HONkUS]

its what im going to school for so hopefully sometime soon ill be doing it for a living lol

Also just to further my wussification theory here is a side by side screenshot of comparable baddies from quake 2 and quake 4 am I the only one that thinks the Q2 baddy could kick the Q4 baddies ass?

[Zertz]

The old one does indeed look alot tougher, but the Quake 4 one is certainly alot more... hmm... scary.

I've not played any Quake (beside Arena) before the 4th one, but aren't Stroggs some kind of "modded" dead humans?

[HONkUS]

yeah their like the borg from star trek only alot angrier, grungier

[Zertz]

yeah their like the borg from star trek only alot angrier, grungier

I probably watched less than 30 minutes of Star Trek in my life so that doesn't help me much

Back on topic, I think a game needs to include many different looking creatures, otherwise it gets boring to always kill and get killed by the same things over and over. Your texture has potential for some situations (maybe some place that's on fire or something) while Raven's texture would be well suited for other things. Having many different textures is important IMO because, let's take Halo, those... uh... blue little dudes, you know they're weaker than their orange counterpart. And you also know the tall invisible orange guy with a sword is stronger... So yeah, same model with different textures is always nice to have.

[HONkUS]

yeah I agree im just re-doing these guys for now. What im doing is called a texture map, it gets wrapped around a 3d model to create the look of a character. To follow your halo example im just doing one of the little short guys and not the big blue guys. This same particular texture wont be applied to any other enemy except for the basic strogg marine. depending on time i might redo the other enemies as well. Here is that same texture along with a texture map for this enemies body wrapped around the model as it would look in game.



All i changed was the texture and "slime factor" of the skin to make it look less pristine and more neglected and decomposing. Also I forgot to load the eye texture map so thats why on mine his eyes are flat white instead of the default orange eyes the other one shows.

Its a small change but lots of small changes can add up to a larger change in overall atmosphere

[HONkUS]

I decided to do one more before I quit for the day. This one is the beserker, I used the same slime and necrosis effects i used on the other strogg for him as well as taking all the light colored metal and rusting it up a bit. Also not seen in these shots I added some dried gore to his melee weapons. As always criticism is welcomed and encouraged!

[Zertz]

Ahh!

They do look much better once they're wrapped around a body! I like how his shoulders and mechanical stuff is darker, that looks really nice as well. Raven's one almost looks fancy with those golden pants.

Your berserker looks great too, the belt/neck on the Raven one looks rather boring while yours with added "rust" adds something, minor change that makes the whole thing seem much more "natural". You scaled it up too so he looks tougher, but his body model is weird, huge chest and tiny legs/arms.

[HONkUS]

I didn't edit any of the models just the overlaying texture. Re-doing a texture can be done in like an hour but re-doing a model takes a little more time and materials (3DS MAX, Maya) that I dont have lol.

[Zertz]

Yeah I understand, if you had the software, are you qualified to do it though?

[HONkUS]

This is my only completed model, its for the Half-Life engine so the polycounts are extremley low by todays standards plus I used default animations


So to answer your question yeah I probably could edit the models but id need to do some research on how to export them to the appropriate format.

[Zertz]

When I first looked at the model I was like... what the hell is that... lol

The concept looks relatively simple, like draw lines and add textures. I'm guessing it's alot more than that though

Also, what does a game engine do?

[HONkUS]

Well a game engine is what ties together all the art in a game and makes it into that game rather than just a catalogue of sounds, textures and models.

As for Modelling well its a little more complex then drawing lines and applying textures here is a tutorial for a low poly game suitable model.
http://www.3dlinks.com/oldsite/tutorial ... al=lpindex
further more after that you need to follow this article on the Id DevNet to get it into Quake 4
http://www.iddevnet.com/quake4/ArtRefer ... tingModels

[Zertz]

First link doesn't work.

Second one is really interesting, going to read up on this stuff.