ZEQ2 Lite

As part of the biennial routine, donations are now being accepted specifically to cover ZEQ2-lite’s file/svn hosting, website/blog, and forums. More information can be found here. 

EDIT: Goal reached! 

Recap

ZEQ2-lite was released to the public 4 years ago today (September 1st, 2009). The project was a summer’s worth of work from Zeth and MDave to get the 2005 iteration of ZEQ2 into more working order. The reasons and goal for release were the following :

• Though dated from later incarnations of design plans, assets, and rendering techniques, much of what existed was still part of the history of ZEQ2. One of the big pushes was to ensure the work done by past generations of developers saw the light of day in some form.
• Since there was no longer an active development team (nor organized development plans beyond the first release), the project was to be presented as an open-source (both code/media), community-driven concept that could be expanded upon artistically and programmatically.

Given that gameplay was largely config-driven, entry-level and experienced individuals alike were greatly encouraged to tinker with the system within to achieve their own creations. Over the years, a large number of new character, maps, addon packs, and even volumes of code changes came about from contributors of varied backgrounds.

While the artistic and config side of things continues to be very bountiful even to this day, the lack of committed programming contributors and internal design management has left the project short of an actual finished game experience worthy of mention or extended play.

This is something we’d like to change.

Future

Currently, our proposal is a rekindling of the original ZEQ2 project using a more modernized game engine — namely Unity. The focus of this iteration of ZEQ2 is to mesh the 2007 ZEQ2 (Zios) gameplay & accuracy goals with much of the content & structure from the 2009 ZEQ2-lite release.

Alongside the continuation of the Dragon-Ball-Z-oriented ZEQ2 project will be a, as of yet unnamed, separate framework focused on creating a set of tools and utilities for building multiplayer fighting/arena based games in a simplified, yet robust, manner. This framework has many parallels to the initial Zios Config & Editor concepts albeit in a slightly less abstract fashion.

Bear in mind that this shift in development to either project is not set in stone and won’t be pursued if external interest isn’t great enough.

Design Note :The initial ZEQ2 project focused directly on creating an interactive simulation of an alternative fictional reality in terms of visuals, mechanical interaction, and overall physics rather than that of player experience and higher-level systems of “play” as a traditional game does. While this new Unity incarnation of ZEQ2 would preserve many of the advanced rendering techniques, desire for developer customization/flexibility through configs, and many of the mechanical insights/features, it will refrain from placing pure accuracy above all else and mostly serve a median between ZEQ2-lite and ZEQ2 (Zios). The avoidance of radical extremes in terms of accuracy are primarily to retain developer interest/appeal and create a playable experience as an actual game — rather than just an NPR-based technical research project.

Reasons

The rationale for re-establishing ZEQ2 under the Unity engine comes mostly out of desire for a more controlled programming environment (in comparison to existing Quake 3 code) and access to features that have been available in modern engines for many years.

Unlike ZEQ2-lite’s community-driven development, ZEQ2 is poised to re-focus itself with a well-formed team of active developers with assigned tasks, weekly meetings, and established design goals. This would mean a much greater commitment and much more refined workflows. While this will effect the open-source nature of the project temporarily until a solid foundation can be built, the exposure of internal systems, tools, and assets will inevitably become open as well.

Granted it would be entirely possible to utilize a team and continue coding progress within ZEQ2-lite, the poorly structured and dated (almost 15 years) Quake 3 code design creates a convoluted workspace of traceback mazes and cross engine/game source inter-dependencies — all but pushing away the most blindly devoted of programmers. Although these issues are possible to address, entire system guts/rewrites would be necessary. As this is this case, we feel it would be more natural and progressive to build these systems anew in a more capable engine.

Design Note : The Zios engine would ideally have been a more prefered framework; however, its current level of completion and lack of developers of its own prohibits this.

Recruitment

Should there be enough interest, the first steps of development involve building a barebones framework in Unity and porting existing ZEQ2-lite content. Although there are definite plans to improve and refine existing assets, this will not occur until a stable environment can be established.

The purpose of this post is to determine if development interest exists enough to a committed degree to get the ball rolling once more. Developers with experience in C#, plugin/mod design, systems design, network programming, database/web design & programming, Unity editor usage, or file/asset/version control management experience are highly encouraged to make contact.

Every developer is expected to commit a minimum of 7 hours of work-effort weekly, offer contact availability (preferably realtime) on a daily basis through IRC or mediums of our choosing, have a fairly capable grasping of the English language, and have a degree of proficiency in the department in question (no neophytes, please)

Please use IRC to establish contact with one of our channel operators to apply or inquire about additional goals and details.

Update 5/1/2015 : For those of you who do not follow forum discussions, the recruitment process did not result in any applicants and, as such, development did not begin.  Since this time, the IRC channel has become largely abandoned.  If you’d like to establish contact to contribute to the process, please use the following email : [email protected].

Changes:

[Addons]

• Added Rasengan’s Hyperbolic Time Chamber map.

Changes:

[Assorted]

• Started reworks on proper widescreen stretching support (unfinished still).
• Fixed several whitespace/tabulation issues.

[Skills]

• Removed outdated/non-functional types for forcefield, torch, skimmer, and rift skills.
• Removed several unused weapon flags.
• Removed CheckSafety method to determine player safety.
• WPT_ renamed to skillType for variable clarity.
• Removed user weapon damage types.
• Removed unused/unparsed weapon variables.

[UI]

• Temporarily removed redundent caching methods.
• Reduced internet filter types to one.

As part of the biennial routine, donations are now being accepted specifically to cover
ZEQ2-lite’s file/svn hosting, website/blog, and forums. More information can be found here.

Update : 04/10/12 : Donation goal reached! Thanks to everyone who contributed.

Until the site’s performance issues are sorted, the SVN, file downloads, and forum attachments have been temporarily disabled.  Please visit our IRC channel for information and files during this time.

Update : 03/23/12 10:08 : SVN and file downloads have been re-enabled.
Update : 03/23/12 13:58 : Forums disabled as part of unit testing routine.
Update : 03/24/12 12:14 : SVN and files re-disabled.  Migrating forums to new server.
Update : 03/24/12 22:09 : SVN re-enabled.  Forums now on alternative server (testing phase).  Files redirected to offsite mirrors.

Changes:

• No more player turning delay when moving.
• Use no animated camera origin or angles whatsoever if the animated camera has camera locked turned on for a specific animation.
• Prototype camera tweening, use cg_thirdPersonCamera 5 or 6 to test them.
• Losing the lockon when behind an obstacle or when enemy uses zanzoken, after losing the lockon, if visual contact is made in 3 seconds, the lockon is set again.
• Corrected bug that changed tiers automatically when holding F.
• Fixed weapon validation and synchronization.
• Removed special conditions for data sync when the lockon is active in the server.
• Double tap movement buttons for a quick zanzoken.
• Adjusting quick zanzoken distance and cost.
• Preventing quickZanzoken when boosting or holding the powerlevel button (F).
• Organized the controls and create server menu a bit.
• Added a few fixes and updates from the latest ioquake3 revision.
• AnimMap frame limit lifted from 8 to 2000.
• You can now tile an RoQ file.
• Removed remaining bot code snippets from the source code.
• Removed obsolete CVARs.
• Added the CVARs g_quickZanzokenCost and g_quickZanzokenDistance.

In this attachment you will find the masterserver patch. Put these files in your main folder (overwrite all files) in order to fix the server browser. This will also reset all your configurations. Master Server Fix

Changes:

• Adjusted code aesthetics of cg_view.c file.
• Fixed issue with player entities effecting local view states.
• Added barebones for several console command operations.
• Altered fs_homepath to use fs_basepath instead (no appdata configs!)
• Added upx utility as part of source tools.
• Upon transformation, if the current weapon is not selectable, changes to the highest selectable weapon.
• WeaponNext and WeaponPrev validated in the server.
• TierNext and TierPrev console commands implemented.
• Holding F + Next/Previous weapon changes tier
• Lockon working again. Weapon validation and weapon sync improved.

Changes:

• Creation of the console command “tier”.
• Validation of the weapon selected in the server (instead of being in the client).
• Transformations possible by holding F + 1/2/3/4/5/6.
• Move checkTier call to g_active.c (ClientThink_real function).
• Removal of EV_TIER_CHECK.
• Finished transformation by F + <NUMBER>.
• Re-added the -desertSkyFog- map stage.
• New cloud sprites.
• Removed the duplicate desert shadow map approach.
• Added vertex lighting, much better performance.
• Added 4 cloud ring’s around the entire mapDesert. (In the 3D skybox)
• Shadows are more hard.
• Changed smoke behavior to have it linger. This is meant to be an effect for low-end systems, and needs testing for frame-rate dropping.
• Changed cg_particlesQuality to cg_particlesType (Quality is now an alternative CVAR).
• Finished fixing other character wireframes from showing. All characters have fixed shaders now.
• Fixed Piccolo, VegetaSaiyan, and VegetaCell to remove the wireframs around each triangle.
• Fixed vegetaSaiyan galick gun attributes. 2 Vegetas now match.
• Fixed visual part of Vegeta’s galick gun. The flash consumes Vegeta completely now.
• Fixed head rolling in advanced flight with new camera.
•  Added 2 new camera systems (First person view, tier config animated camera md3’s).
• Fixed character angles when using attacks in mid air (spirit bomb charging animation while in mid air looks accurate for example).
• Fixed ‘Reflections’ option in general menu.
• Change to ground idle animation character angles, stays in a fixed angle until you move.
• F + W/S should only change tiers by one. Also, after the respawn, the full transformation scene must be played again.
• Disable left/right movement while walking.
• New improved first person view. BFP style.
• Changed cg_particlesQuality to cg_particlesType (Quality is now an alternative CVAR).
• Added console command “draw2D” for script drawing of 2D elements. See console for usage information.
• Updated the engine to be synced with the latest ioquake3 revision.
• Major additions to the engine are: modular rendering system and the IQM version 2 model format.
• Removed older unnecessary source files.
• Added StartFlight function for better handling of triggering flight.