Resident Evil: Behind the Mask [+Hazardous Battle]

[Getta robo]

Arwen 37 added to the list of weapons as a definitive entry, finally. It took me a while to get this done for different reasons, one of them being the fact that the Arwen is really three weapons combined in one, depending on what rounds it loads. Magnums, rifles, and assault shotguns to go.

Wow, great news to hear! Have you decided how it is going to function? Meaning, will be feasible to load it with three different ammunition for example?

[Scream]

I'll be going with "always disabled". Yeah, I'm old school!

[Saavas]

Great to hear that You got some more weapons working ! I wonder - do You use weapon damage data from original RE games or do You just make it up ? And the same question about enemy HP? Also, will there be only 3 standard types of grenadegun rounds, or will You maybe add some more, like Anti-BOW rounds from CV ?

[Gemini]

Gemini, are you going to add the option to keep it always on screen? Personally, I'd like to keep it that way.

Given all the contrasting feedback I got on this, I decided it's best if the HUD works in three different ways and players can choose one of the following modes: always enabled, always disabled, smart. I'll add these to the in-game option screen with a brief description of what each does.

Meanwhile:

Arwen 37 added to the list of weapons as a definitive entry, finally. It took me a while to get this done for different reasons, one of them being the fact that the Arwen is really three weapons combined in one, depending on what rounds it loads. Magnums, rifles, and assault shotguns to go.

[Necron]

Gemini, are you going to add the option to keep it always on screen? Personally, I'd like to keep it that way.

[Gemini]

The rough draft is heavily based on that design from Hard Edge, I said that on Twitter when I posted two pictures there. Now I have a more refined one thanks to the usual design suggestions by Sonic:

Again, inspired by other designs (Dino Crisis 2 and Wipeout), which are a bit more suitable for the purpose. With these updates I think it's settled down, however it still needs some more work in order to hide the HUD when it's not necessary (it should be temporarily visible when you get hit and while you're firing, permanently when you're poisoned or using Kenneth's special). When it becomes not necessary it will quickly slide to the left until you trigger something that requires its presence.

[biohazard_star]

The HUD reminds me a lot of the one from TRAG/Hard Edge.

[Gemini]

Does this mean your almost done with the coding for your engine?

It's progressing at a nice pace, but it's far from being complete. On a related note of progress, I added something specific for the battle mode:

The HUD design is a preliminary one and it still lacks some details (i.e. Kenneth's regeneration stuff and something else I can't remember right now). It should provide at least a decent overview of things to come.

@poterenero: please stop asking every time for a random enemy followed by random huge screenshots, it's annoying as hell. There's no need to name every single entry in the series; if it's not there it won't be added because the rooster is already full of a ton enemies good enough for the scope of a single game. You're more than welcome to propose other stuff that would actually enrich the gameplay.

[Ultimacloud123]

Black Power translation. Could you put Nemesis into Hazardous Battle?

Looking good Gemini. Can't wait for your next update. Does this mean your almost done with the coding for your engine?

[blackpower]

Gemelli : You can enter hazardous nemesis in battle?

[Gemini]

Half-kidding about the implementation part though. Not sure how else it would work though.

I implicitly ignored the part where he smokes a joint (we all always thought about it at least once), but the idea works for me and will make Kenneth stand out in his own manner. As for the actual implementation, I think I'll give him some kind of special item that has be to filled with herbs and that you can use at any time with the special ability button (L2, a button that I can't remember being ever used in RE1-2-3). Imagine this a bit like energy tanks from the Megaman series.

Anyways, moar progress:

Now that Jill and Rebecca are implemented, I decided to take the RE2 route and give them different animations for a little more charm. Rebecca gets "kawaii desu Ada-san" animations while Jill has Claire's more serious motions. I fixed normals as well, which were not properly processed during the "up is y=-1.0" conversion because I'm lazy and I keep on forgetting vital pieces of code.

[Scream]

That's actually an extremely intriguing idea. Should make him a decent alternative to Rebecca's auto-heal/mix abilities.

Yeah I think regen would be interesting as a gameplay element (more so than an extra herb). Half-kidding about the implementation part though. Not sure how else it would work though.

[Gemini]

As you may have noticed from Twitter, I started working on a few enemies lately, not just T-002. Enter the promotional chans:


And here a few screens of them in game (there are a couple more on Twitter):


I'm still not done adding the naked ones, but it's not too much work once their UV map is touched up a bit for optimization. Green and white zombie types are extremely high-poly compared to other zombies in RE2-3 (about 500 polygons each), but fortunately the engine seems to be fast enough to keep them going along with player meshes draining another ~750 polygons from the GTE processing power. Naked zombies have much lower specs (372 polygons) which means I should be able to get 5-6 of them at the same time in a room; they're going to be a real threat for zones where respawn is enabled and you'll get attacked a lot (à la Dino Crisis 2). Just in case you're wondering, they still extend behavior from RE2-types like their BTM relatives, and unlike other imported enemies they don't float because.

[EDIT] More chans:

Tests seem to address white and green types can appear in formations of 5 without lag, naked types haven't been tested yet with precise timing. 7 seem to be able to fit in memory with no corruption or visible lag, but only further testing will answer this specific question more precisely.

Actually I had an idea about that. How about killing some certain enemies, such as mini bosses or enemies that are key to the plot to an extend, after destroying them being part of the background/foreground? Pretty much like it was done in the first game with Kenneth and Richard.
And as I wrote on the official facebook page, I hope you guys will include a super tyrant like the one in the Saturn version, made by the amazing skin techniques of yours!

Leaving some enemies inside rooms would require way too much of a room state preserved and changing the room itself to hold a corpse is not exactly the fastest thing to do. As for the Super Tyrant, the Saturn gold one isn't exactly super from what I can remember. I'll simply have a different one made of gold with chrome effect and increased resistance (also metallic sound effects when you hit it).

Lol @ Kenneth's chemical haze. Maybe he can smoke it and it acts like a FF game's regen? That would be pretty interesting actually in boss battles and such, no need to go in the menu all the time.

That's actually an extremely intriguing idea. Should make him a decent alternative to Rebecca's auto-heal/mix abilities.

[Getta robo]

1.5 does something like that, but the idea was later discarded for a simple reason: it replaces corpses with extremely dull rotting corpse models (doesn't look too good). It could sorta work in a regular game that doesn't involve going back to rooms that get repopulated, and yet that would drastically kill any possibilities of spicing up the gameplay a bit.

Actually I had an idea about that. How about killing some certain enemies, such as mini bosses or enemies that are key to the plot to an extend, after destroying them being part of the background/foreground? Pretty much like it was done in the first game with Kenneth and Richard.
And as I wrote on the official facebook page, I hope you guys will include a super tyrant like the one in the Saturn version, made by the amazing skin techniques of yours!

[Scream]

Meanwhile I got my ass over with brainstorms of the remaining specialties for BRAVO Team:

• Enrico - Tactical Dodge: he can shake free of enemies much more efficiently that the other characters
• Forest - Sniper Eyes: works kinda like Chris' ability to make critical shots and he can also spot more hidden items
• Richard - Radio Sweepers: he can select a room where a STARS member will permanently remain to keep it free from monsters (doesn't work for boss rooms)
• Kenneth - Chemical Haze: he can combine two green herbs and get the corresponding combination of three herbs, or green+blue=g+r+b

I also renamed some of the previous abilities like Chris' CQC, which is now called "Miracle Hands", and Wesker's Super-Human became "Virus Overdrive".

Lol @ Kenneth's chemical haze. Maybe he can smoke it and it acts like a FF game's regen? That would be pretty interesting actually in boss battles and such, no need to go in the menu all the time.