Explains why we don't have certain features like beatdown for all weapons and why it cannot be with the current Aleph One limitations. Keep reading for more.
Issue #1: I cannot completely look up or down. This sucks because there is a guy right below me and if it were Halo I would be able to look down and pwnzn0r them.
Response: The physics file can be adjusted to allow for complete 90 degree up/down looking but it does not look "right". Marathon does not have a true 3d engine. It just gives the illusion of 3d by distorting imagery, and when you look completely up or down at something things look goofy. Hence we keep viewing angles similar to Marathon's (they are actually increased slightly for Halathon).
Issue #2: Why can't I do beatdown for other guns like the pistol, plasma rifle, etc.? Why do I have to switch to "Beatdown" before I use it?
Response: Marathon allows for an alt-fire trigger that would be (mostly) perfect for this kind of thing, but it unfortunately only allows for one weapon fire sequence. A sequence is a series of frames that play in succession in response to an action (an animation, basically). Marathon cleverly disguised this limitation with things like having a secondary trigger for grenades on the assault rifle, an overloading fusion pistol, dual-wielding pistols and shotguns, and an alien flamethrower that fires at different angles when fired. All of these things use the same firing animation, they just create different projectiles or projectiles in different locations when alt-fire is used. So while we could make other weapons have an alt-fire that behaved like beatdown, you would see the primary firing animation (ie, the gun firing) while it happens. That does not work good at all, so we included beatdown only for the assault rifle since it is the weapon you spawn with, and it can most easily take place of the "fists" that Marathon used.
Interestingly enough, the fists in Marathon and the assault rifle beatdown in Halathon behave the same way as beatdown for anything in Halo; if you run at someone and hit them with beatdown you do more damage to them than you would do standing still.
Issue #3: Where is the Sniper Rifle (or if you prefer, the Snaaaaaaper Raaaaafffle)? Why can't I zoom in with the pistol?
Response: There actually is a zoom feature that was added in Aleph One. Unfortunately the feature is not easily accessible with most key-configs and the zoom key cannot be reconfigured. Press the F7 key to activate weapon zoom. This "Sniper Mode" feature as it is called has a fixed zoom rate (looks about 5X) and currently works for all weapons. We could have added a Sniper Rifle (even though the zoom feature is not obvious to many), but another problem limits sniping. Press F8 to turn on your target reticle, then zoom in and look at a distant object on a large map. No matter how slightly and slowly you move the mouse or press the turn key, you cannot cover some angles. There was a discussion about viewing angle "precision" on the marathon-devel mailing list sometime ago, but it does not look like this will be changed, at least not for a long time.
Issue #4: I am a big fan of the power weapons (Needlers). How dare you exclude them from Halathon?
Response: The Needlers, or "power weapons" as leet people call them, cannot be accurately done in Halathon for a couple of reasons. Those reasons being, a projectile homing feature of Aleph One is currently broken, and there is no way to change the image of the needler weapon after it fires (ie, there is no way to remove a needle from the weapon graphic after every shot). Rather than bastardize them we opted to give the weapon slot to something we could do better.
Issue #5: Where is the jump button? How am I supposed to avoid rockets? And while we're at it, where the shizzles is the crouch button?
Response: Marathon has never had a jump or crouch feature. Jumping should be possible with some clever trickery and engine changes that do not yet exist, but crouching would surely require support for many new sequences that Marathon was just not intended for (although games that have come after Marathon and made extensive engine modifications have managed to do both). As for dodging rockets, that is possible with some good old-fashion dancing.
Issue #6: Why don't plasma weapons overheat?
Response: Again, this is something Marathon never supported and something that no Aleph One additions can do. If Aleph One had a Lua trigger like "weapon_fired" we could probably make overheating for plasma weapons work. At least, overheating would work without a special heat meter or an overheat animation because those would require other features to be added. In the meantime we've gone ahead and taken care of the other special features with plasma weapons (charged shot shield drain, plasma shots doing more damage to shields than to health) and made a few tweaks to slightly weaken plasma weapons in Halathon to compensate for their lack of overheating. The plasma pistol cannot be fired super-fast, and the plasma rifle fires slightly slower than the real thing.
Issue #7: I'm on a multicore G6 4Ghz Mac with 2 kabillion bytes of RAM and a Geforce Infinity+1. Why is the framerate only 30 FPS?
Response: From Loren Petrich, an A1 dev who added many graphics-related features in the past: "The game state has an update rate that is intended to be every 1/30 second". So rendering a scene more than once per update would just seem to waste processing power. In other words, it is the way the game was built.
If any readers find any errors, workarounds, or ways that we can incorporate these features given the current limitations we have to work with, feel free to post in the comments.
Posted by Naaaaak at February 8, 2005 08:35 AMi'm so glad you turned on comments. :)
agreed about the sniper rifle. concerning the needler, though, you could do it. you wouldn't be able to make the weapon graphic change, but - i think - mml allows you to change "guided" projectiles. regardless of whether or not you check the "guided" box in the physics model, the engine turns 'em off by default. just change that in mml..
seeing the needler would be uber-cool. but then, so would dual pistols/plasma guns and an energy sword. (i'll take that over the alien gun any day.)
being on a pc, i figure you guys'd want to hear my status. i downloaded your latest "os x only" copy of halathon, and got it running. the weapons/physics, sprites, and sounds all work as expected. the only problems are the lua script (i'll get to that) and the hud.
the stuff that's supposed to be black isn't. here's a screenshot.
-the plasma pistol's hud shows the pistol graphic.
-the shotgun shows 2 shells instead of one, like what it is when you have dual shotguns.
-the plasma rifle, flamethrower, rocket launcher, and fuel rod cannon don't show anything in the hud for ammo count.
lastly, the lua script. how do i get it to work? in the lua scripter's guide, james talks about level-specific embedded and netmap scripts. but you included an external text file. so, uh, how do i use it? (i looked through it. pretty sweet stuff.)
-paul
Posted by: tcm at February 8, 2005 09:07 AMcrap. i forgot that screenshot. here you go.
Posted by: tcm at February 8, 2005 09:14 AMah! no html??
http://students.cc.edu/peiche/images/screeny.gif
Posted by: tcm at February 8, 2005 09:14 AMRight now we know that player-created homing projectiles are broken. I've tried using the MML that is supposed to make it work (I got the script from the guy that implimented the feature in the first place) and nothing has worked yet.
I am currently aware about any and all missing or incorrect HUD elements, I just haven't gotten to them yet.
And as for the Lua. I've been trying in vein to get Lua to work in single player. Until I get it working the only way to use it is by selecting it upon gathering a multiplayer game.
Posted by: Tycho7 at February 8, 2005 12:08 PMI personally consider the fact that the Covenant Plasma Pistol and Plasma Rifle don't overheat are features, not bugs. ;)
Posted by: rampancy at February 9, 2005 05:24 PMThis cold be better. Lost of bugs as i see it.
Posted by: The Man at February 19, 2005 05:34 PMOoh, comments.
Actually, in M1 the rocket launcher (or "lazyboy") demonstrated a feature like what would be needed for the needler: After every shot, you could see a rocket from on the launcher had disappeared.
I can't remember exactly how it worked though, as it may've been something coded in specifically for the SPNKR in M1 only.
Posted by: Can-ned Food at March 8, 2005 11:43 PMIs there any way to get the plasma pistol to not overload explosively?
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Posted by: Buy Cheap Valtrex Online at July 7, 2011 09:45 AMHey, this is a real post, unlike all of the auto ones above.
I really enjoy your project, and I've remade several maps to go with the Halathon game. All of the weapons are epic, and just like the real Halo. Shame you couldn't finish the entire project.
It's great to see that something this ancient can still be fun. Even though the weapons are low-res, the actual game doesn't work on Intel computers (I changed some things around to make it work) and that the full campaign on YouTube was not fulfilled.
Oh well, this mod is really fun. If you read this, please make this mod even better, so that Aleph One can make a rise once again!
Thanks, man! :)
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