OccludeOlga, on 04 January 2020 - 11:00 PM, said:
Everyone contributed interactive features. Allen was probably the most consistently creative, making test maps, and also did a ton of toying with vehicles. His vehicle test maps would be worth releasing just on their own.
Did Duke's hummer ever get some love during that time? We only ever saw a sneak of it in the early days on the Quake 1 stuff.
OccludeOlga, on 04 January 2020 - 11:00 PM, said:
That said, I was the main driver behind the generic world item interactivity scripting just because I loved doing it. So all the mundane stuff like putting DVDs in and seeing the video, etc. Basically anytime some new art was made I thought about how I could make it interactive and just did it.
The original "chair physics" was a total hack because we didn't have an actual physics engine implemented. For a while (I think I've posted this before)... everything landed upright. I bothered Brandon Reinhardt to teach me enough about UnrealScript so that I could set things up where every dnDecoration could specify the rotations that were "good" to land on visually. That way a chair wouldn't land upside down, but could land on its side and back. It was cheesy... and after hand setting values for hundreds of decorations to get them looking good it wasn't long before we implemented a real physics engine making the feature utterly irrelevant. However it was the opening that led to me doing much the same thing I did at Ritual on Sin... of pushing the interactivity as far as possible.
That's the kinda shit I miss from those days. Seeing the creative and interesting ways developers would make things happen. It became too much of a plugin-to-do-a-thing affair after awhile. The quirkiness left game design. Now it's almost like "Yeah, we got a physics engine. It's the same one 20 other games have."
OccludeOlga, on 04 January 2020 - 11:00 PM, said:
No, it was never anything special. The Flamethrower however, was more of a broad use tool. It had normal flamethrower mode, but also could toss out the Flamewall from Rise of the Triad. And most enjoyable especially for setting traps in Dukematch... place a cloud of gas that did damage over time to anyone walking into it but more importantly... if any spark went off inside of it would do explosive damage to anyone inside while it ignited. Sparks could be anything from a bullet hitting a metal surface, to firing your gun inside, to turning on something electrical that was inside the cloud.
It was hilarious to fart out a gas cloud and have the person chasing you try to shoot only to catch themselves on fire.
The freezer is tricky. In Duke 3D it had some additional utility, like being able to bounce the shots on mirrors and stuff.
What it really would have needed was a good special attack feature. Like the Doom 2016 Plasma Rifle's shock wave. Something big that would send out a blast of cold air, but have a cool "up" function before it could be used again. I may be misremembering but I swear one of the off shoot games had an upgrade for the freezer where frozen enemies would automatically shatter. I think it was Land of the babes that did that...
OccludeOlga, on 04 January 2020 - 11:00 PM, said:
BTW that picture is still how I see you in my mind when I think about you. No matter what new ones you use.
One of the funny quirks of internet persona's. I bet he doesn't even have a pink dress.
OccludeOlga, on 05 January 2020 - 01:16 AM, said:
I hadn't really though about it until now. All of the OG level designers were always very woke to the fact that Epstein didn't kill himself.
What about the water turning the fricken frogs gay?
OccludeOlga, on 05 January 2020 - 01:16 AM, said:
Funny story, John Anderson was an architect and had designed a staircase without knowing what it was for. He later described how he saw his staircase by surprise in a photo for some military installation. He also did the bulk of the Area 51 work through the years and implemented the Alien Abduction minigame which went head to head with the Slick Willy Dance Dance Revolution minigame for most insane level designer trigger scripting. Keith, Cole, Allen, Anderson... all of the 2001 LDs lived in reality so those topics naturally wound up in the game. It just hadn't occurred to me until you mention it how unusual that crew was.
The art direction and design of 2001 was... Is, frankly, so strong. Good lighting/texturing and a strong sense of place that I don't think I felt was ever matched until I played Half-Life 2. Even then, the stylistic tone and feel of DNF 01 still feels unique to me.
OccludeOlga, on 05 January 2020 - 01:16 AM, said:
To be fair, this was also the era of Deus Ex. The industry was naturally populated back then by people who were "curious" and "open minded".
Big X-Files fans?