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- SHADOWING HATE -
by Violation Entertainment
www.violationentertainment.com
last update: 2008/07/23
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Shadowing Hate
00 - Index of documentation
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part content
00 - Index of documentation
01 - Summary of the Game
02 - Insight to it all
03 - Schematic of the Plot
04 - Story of the Game
05 - Cop Killer
06 - Know Your Enemy
07 - Weapons and Devices
08 - Character Profiles
09 - Versions of Vallick
10 - Missions List
11 - Objectives of Chapters
12 - Screenplay
13 - Conversations Script
14 - Literature
15 - Log Files
16 - Special Abilities
17 - High Detail
18 - Technical Aspects
19 - Multiplayer
20 - Map Design
21 - Player Customisations
22 - Deeper Insight
23 - Bullet Holes
24 - The Vision
25 - Misc.Xtra\Unsorted
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Shadowing Hate
01 - Summary of the Game.
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Shadowing Hate is a futuristic total conversion game project from Violation Entertainment using the Doom 3 engine, focusing on bringing an entirely new gaming experience to Doom 3/Quake 4 players, straying from demons and zombies, it will no longer be visually recognisable as Quake 4. It will have a variety of different environments and features using a different approach to detail. The project will also have a high-detail release, containing the original high-resolution textures and models.
"Something strange is happening deep within DREtech Industries."
"A sinister conspiracy is on the verge of execution."
"An unseen enemy grows stronger with each passing moment."
"And only the very elite can stop them."
"Step into the boots of a lethal cybernetically enhanced operative."
"The one man who can possibly overcome Shadowing Hate."
It is dark times nearing the mid-21st century. The world has betrayed you like countless others. You are alone and have faced death several times before, only this time you know it's an ultimate truth, you are seen as an enemy and captured by UC forces. After many months in detention you are clinically observed and quietly handed over to the secretive AECE division at their request, with your only alternative option being that you are forcibly enlisted in their HALops program as their new key operative. Cybernetically modified with biomechanical and computerised implants, you now serve under the control of the AECE who have the power to end your life at the touch of a key, but whose intentions you agree with. You step into the boots of this elite operative, under the control of a secretive military division, sent on a mission to uncover, steal from and devastate the most advanced enemy robotics and weapons development and production sites on the planet, stepping into a bigger malignant political enigma under which all suffer. Your adversaries are strong and deep, yet your ultimate enemy may be yourself.
The project will include a mix of stealth and tactics built upon the quality action gameplay of the original game, pushing limits further to allow for populated areas spanning many different open-area environments. The project will also of course make use of teamplay multiplayer, allied NPC singleplayer co-op and some vehicles including controllable bots. The player will make use of extended skills and "augmentation" abilities to enhance your capabilities in maps that cater to these abilities, but at a cost of physical detriment and disturbing psychological breakdowns.
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Shadowing Hate
02 - Insight to it all.
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Adin Vallick is the primary operative in the HALops program run by the AECE, a secret military division specialising in advanced cybernetics. His second mission is the extraction of one of the lead scientists working for DREtech robotic engineering, Dr. Myuran Lethene. She is located in the highly enforced inner core of the DREtech headquarters and cannot leave due to her security contract. She has uncovered evidence of DREtech's hidden agenda to illegally mass manufacture robotic warfare units and the true aim of her groundbreaking research, a project titled Shadow Of Fear, one of three sinister conspiracies involving armies of battle units. Dr. Lethene fears her knowledge will see her dead within the next five hours.
The beginning of this mission goes terribly wrong. Ironically, the transmission Vallick receives from his mission coordinator is intercepted by a criminal organisation called Yto, who have been loosely tracking him for the last few months, seeking ultimate revenge on the man, and in turn the organisation, that have almost completely destroyed their key operations. They close in on his location, an apartment skyscraper deep in the metropolis, reckless and ready for a gunfight. This event turns a simple infiltration into a full-blown action mission which, due to the Yto incident, now involves the city police force. The AECE have no way of protecting Adin in this situation and the police will want him dead.
Shadowing Hate is a "true" total conversion, it doesn't use or rely on content from the original game base or any other multimedia that does not belong to our team. We make use of some elements as temporary stand-ins but this are almost always limited to generic special effects. The elements that we make use of include of course the entire engine build, code and scripts, function examples and animations. Any other actual media being used with the project can't be considered an official release. The first release can only take place when a particular playable section of the game (excluding menu system and their graphics, usually) can be experienced using 100% original project media, which includes all textures and their subsequent counterparts for shaders, all models and map structure, all special effects media, all sound effects and all UI graphics, unless these are made hidden. So far, the only releases have had no functional elements, they are only multimedia rendering tests. Shadowing Hate is a total conversion in a different sense, that we differ in approaches to design and construction, and choices on how the technology should be used and to what further extent.
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Shadowing Hate
03 - Schematic of the Plot
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Quintec Sectorial
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- Arrogant, unreasonable, dominance-hungry, dishonourable.
Project: Shadows
Assets: Control over leading robotics engineering corporations, DREtech, Cyanic and Parallax.
Plan: To fully execute the Shadows conspiracy and obtain global control, by force.
AECE - Alliance of Elite Cybernetics Engineering
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- Government-controlled, highly secretive, effective, honourable.
Project: HALops
Assets: Artificially enhanced and perfectly trained elite operatives.
Plan: To secretly uphold the highest power of justice where common law or military force would otherwise fail, specialising in one-man (or small groups of) human operatives using this revolutionary technology.
QS and AECE are both very similar in their creation and function. They are both highly secretive conspiracies whose mastermind core is as powerfully political as it is financial. The AECE is one of a few official military operations of such secrecy, while QS operates in more of an illegal manner, focusing on gradually corrupting private industry, solidified by their political influence. Their objectives are opposite, however. QS has strong idealistic beliefs of a socialistic global government while the AECE in part helps enforce and is operated by the present, more overcapitalistic government.
The future society in the SH universe... Wealth gaps grow wide, the lower classes seldom abled to make their way up and the poor increasing almost as rapidly as the population itself. Business and industry has grown to accommodate the greed of technological novelty. Governments have become unstable from the increasing need of international military power, perpetually accelerating as the wars themselves, in constant need of new technology, which diverts even more economies. Globalisation has become a cancer, eating itself from the inside out, becoming redundant to itself while leaving the messy tangles of overwhelming globalised politics, the same tangles making it possible for QS and AECE to exist.
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DREtech vs. AECE
AECE vs. Yto vs. MetroPD
AECE vs. MetroPD vs. Thugs
AECE vs. DREtech vs. MetroPD (DREtech = Cyanic)
AECE vs. Cyanic (Cyanic = Shadows)
AECE vs. Q-Sec (Q-Sec = Parallax)
AECE vs. Parallax vs. Q-Sec
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Shadow of Fear - DREtech -
Shadow of Doom - Cyanic -
Shadow of Pain - Parallax -
Shadow of ???? - Q-Sec -
Shadow of Hate - AECE -
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Vallick vs. Yto
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Yto is very interested in gaining access to AECE's databases and Vallick's neural implants, as believed by Yto, hold the key to some of this information, which has turned Yto's attention towards Vallick. If they can kill him, they can get their hands on the technology for the implants. They know little about AECE other than it's something they desperately, if not idiotically, want to take control of.
Yto & Xodi
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Yto and Xodi are major criminal presences in the metropolis, Xodi moreso a widespread infestation thriving on drug trafficking and the like, split into gangs, while Yto remain more organised and low profile, targeting Xodi and other key groups, Yto save their resources to fry the bigger fish. The two groups have been at war for a long time now and the city officials seem to want to keep a balance in their sustained existence, never completely wiping out these groups although never giving them too much control. For whatever reason, the government and subsequently the law enforcement want to domesticate these organised criminal bodies, perhaps as a decoy for corporate illegalities.
Xodi
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Criminal organisations like Xodi and Yto are much the same as government ones like AECE and Q-Sec and seek exactly the same positions of power and wealth, control and ability, and balance is always shifted in the same way, by force. As political solidarity starts to vanish in the metropolis, the criminal power in numbers grows and the police force delve to severe measures while the corporate industries ripen nicely for sinister corruption. What we have is tension and tangents of all different sides of power and all relatively at war with one another on some level, and the only ones with any real cooperative alliance is Q-Sec and its corporate underlings. The rest are constantly active and easily exhausted in resource, even international political powers. It's basically a civil war that has been carefully constructed like a mouse trap to snap and strike the collective enemy at their most vulnerable areas, right under their noses. The key also lies in the constant connections between Xodi and down the chain of Q-Sec's conspiracy, it was always part of the plan to somehow indirectly involve mass unruly criminal organisations and with a cultish brotherhood presence like Xodi, it makes it all the more effective. This comes in the form of cheap labour, corporations like DREtech opt to pick nasty thugs off the streets as mass arms and drones to do the dirty work, rather than have them handed to by officials. They work cheap and since most likely not have proper CID, they can be expended easily and safely. The lower classes subconsciously want the same thing as Q-Sec, and Xodi-types see it as a prime opportunity to take more control. In a way, Xodi has always been a Q-Sec project, to be a member of the Xodi tribe is to have power in numbers and allegiance, with tales of the most vicious tribe "ascending", bought out and sent to, what is in their eyes, a much better life. No one knows for sure but they would eventually end up working closer to Q-Sec.
The MetroPD attitude
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The entire metropolitan police force is governed by a general attitude and set of ideas about facing criminal rage with rage of justice, about retaliating against crime with much the same anger and bitterness, instilling dread and fear into crime that crime instills into civilisation. Throughout training they are submitted to a brutal bootcamp atmosphere and taught not just to resolve crime but to use their hate and anger against it and make a vicious example out of each situation, taught to put emotion into the urban warfare they will later encounter. This attitude is evident even in the new designs of uniform, weapons and vehicles, they are no longer mindful of capturing the reassurance of the general public but rather the menacing intimidation of major criminal bodies. To create fear is to gain more control, to compliment the possibility of confrontation with imaginings of horror and brutality is an effective move toward preventing swelling criminal activity initially and thus reducing wasted police resources.
The Third Parties
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Throughout the story there are typically more than one group of enemies you will need to encounter, and many times when they will be fighting amongst themselves. The schematic will show the relationships between these groups and their objectives. With certain missions, it will be easy to get caught in the mix, in other missions, an alternative battle will serve as a distraction and the only possible approach to these missions is stealth.
The Parallax Kidnappings
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Like much else of Parallax conduct, its kidnappings are truly strange and remarkably effective. For a considerable amount of time, Parallax has been kidnapping the worlds leading robotics and weapons scientists and engineers, along with a whole other range of the world's leading specialists, and taking them to one of the few giant subterranean Parallax facilities in Siberia for years of work. If they refuse to work, then they clearly understand that they will be exterminated, however if they cooperate then they can have almost any of the world's luxuries, Parallax will spoil them beyond their wildest desires, each captive with their own moderately sized quarters which can be customised and supplied with anything the captive wants, Parallax will spare no expense to keep their "employees" happy. They are made promises of eventual freedom and within a number of years can see their loved ones again, who are "being taken care of" by Parallax branches back home. Being that many of these people are single males in their mid-20s who have spent almost all of their life studying and knowing each night they can have a different beautiful woman in their bed waiting for them is enough to justify working underground on robotic warfare units.
The Plot:-
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The AECE operatives of the HALops project are the primary tools of the AECE, although relying greatly on maintaining organic human judgment with their operatives in the field, they still must obey orders from the highest ranks of the AECE officials and the members of "The Board", even if it means their objectives would be to eliminate another AECE agent, one of their own.
The first part of the story is quite linear in that the first enemy leads to the second which leads to the third, through the increasing levels of secrecy, DREtech has a mess of information about their own Fear project and mentions of Cyanic, where as Cyanic have only vague leads to Parallax and Q-Sec, and the first few Parallax missions will have have very vague objectives because the AECE still don't know enough about Parallax.
During his Parallax missions, Adin Vallick learns the truth about Q-Sec and its infestation on homeland politics and military, and even their acknowledgement of AECE. He will be faced against numbers of his own peers, although not all will engage in combat with Adin, most will in fear of being terminated by the HALops controls as Q-Sec squads try a hostile takeover of AECE HQ toward the end of the game. Vallick must rescue AECE HQ and restore order, there upon having enough evidence to root out the bad elements of AECE and indeed the national government, which he will do so by force, by the assassination of the Q-Sec fundamentalists.
So the story is basically about Adin Vallick and other AECE operatives uncovering the Q-Sec plot by working their way through the various Shadows projects. The twists come in the form of the story being broken up into various little subsections focusing on the relationship between all of these groups and how that affects AECE's mission to put a stop to the plot for global insurrection through means of mass robotic terrorism.
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Shadowing Hate
04 - Story of the Game.
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After a string of successful low-priority missions, Vallick is granted rest time and provided with residency in a major apartment complex deep in the metropolis. At this time the AECE are approached with a major operation assignment to investigate a certain robotics research and development corporation under suspicion of the illegal manufacturing of warfare units, being supplied to an unknown source. Vallick is sent in to investigate and retrieve one particular scientist from DREtech, the corporation in question, who is willing to divulge the AECE of the corporations detailed activities. After her rescue, the scientist, Dr. Myuran Lethene, helps AECE to uncover more about the mysterious operations, stumbling upon a series of different research programs, together known as the Shadows project, run by other specific corporations/military groups, mainly Cyanic and XeneX, each with their own specific areas of development. Vallick then continues to put a stop to these other opposing forces and uncover a massive conspiracy that will inevitably turn him against his own agency.
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OVERVIEW OF MISSION ONE
Shadowing Hate initially takes place in a high-tech future metropolis. You play a special agent, working for a secret government agency, that has just been assigned a mission to infiltrate and extract a scientist from a technology research and development facility deep in the city. She has requested extraction after she accidentally stumbled upon confidential research documents containing information linking the corporation to secret illegal military weapons development for "unfriendly forces", mainly robotic battle units, the manufacturing of which is strictly forbidden. She fears that the multimillion-dollar company will go to such lengths as to even exterminate her if she is discovered to have acquired such knowledge and that time is against her. Since she cannot leave the facility for another 52 days due to its strict security measures with its employees, you're assigned to retrieve her from the facility and obtain any further information about the conduct of the corporation in question. The production plant for these robotic units is definitely not on-site although any relative documentation definitely will be, and this scientist in distress will be able to retrieve that information for further analysis prior to extraction. You will begin deep in the city, traveling through the streets toward the target location. Since the organisation you're under contract with is top secret and does not operate exactly through official legal channels, you will be considered a threat by law enforcers if you are detected with your weaponry. The deep urban setting is also very dangerous due to high crime rate, so you will inevitably run into trouble with other civilians. Protect yourself against hostile civilians if necessary but, under no circumstance harm innocent citizens. Once at the target location, your main threat will be the small army of troops that the corporation in question has under its command, comprising of dozens of stationary on-alert guards as well as special teams of elite troops. There is also believed to be offsite standby forces as this is just one in a chain of similar facilities. Expect heavy resistance once you're detected in the facility and be aware that if the reports are true, then the corporation could provide far more dangerous opposition such as robotic units. It is also unknown if any ties between this and other corporations exist, or even military forces, so the level of resistance you will be faced with is unpredictable as is the scale of the entire operation.
Once Dr. Lethene and the acquired documents are fully examined, the AECE discovers that certain types of war units are undeniably being manufactured illegally in a few specific DREtech production factories. Before they can be destroyed, however, Vallick and another HALops operative will be sent in to acquire more information about the 'SOF' project and there uncover mention of separate 'SOH' and 'SOP' projects.
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Shadowing Hate
05 - Cop Killer.
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Even though you play a good guy, you will initially find yourself at odds with would-be neutral forces. Civilians. Employees. The police. You will find yourself in situations where you must expend innocent lives in order to maintain your own. The agency you work for is doing all it possibly can to ensure your safety and prevent lives from being lost, but complete immunity is impossible and your existence is far more vital. The first level confronts you with a kill-or-be-killed scenario, where there is no escape without it costing the police force a few officers. There is no other option. Once this happens you become a wanted man throughout the rest of the chapter, the metropolis, and almost every law enforcer you see, both official and freelance, will automatically become your foe, however once in the open city you have more chance to use a stealth approach rather than a combat approach. Being marked a target by the common law is a factor from the beginning.
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Shadowing Hate
06 - Know your enemy.
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Yto elite
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Previously the AECE has had some bitter dealings with this forgiven organization, the elite of their bulky forces will greet you at your apartment complex and try to shoot you down. A challenging gunfight right from the get-go. Their weaponry of choice is small-to-medium automatics, high-powered shotguns and grenades.
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Metro PD
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You are seen as an outlaw, the police throughout the first chapter will be your enemy. Although usually lightly armed, their weapons of choice are among the most sophisticated. Officers carry very powerful semi-automatic pistols and the combat specialists will also carry small but powerful automatic assault rifles. The police are an abundant enemy and use their airborne squad vehicles for surprise attacks.
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MetroPD officer - lightly armed patroller.
MetroPD shocktroop - moderately armed special weapons and tactics.
MetroPD offensive - heavily armed assault team.
MetroPD patrol-craft - 2-seater airborne vehicle with perp-hold and 2 retractable rapid-gauge cannons underneath
MetroPD division-craft - large transport vehicle with 1 rapid-gauge cannon and homing missile launcher
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Xodi thugs
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These are some characters you'll meet on the streets, members of the massive metropolitan crime syndicate known collectively as Xodi, although split into subsequent gangs. Not usually very well armed but enough of a threat and typically group together. Due to your considerably tidy attire and traveling solitaire you will most definitely attract attention from Xodi "tribes" as you navigate your way through the city.
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DREtech Security
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As if the installation securities weren't enough, these trained armed guards are scattered all throughout the DREtech headquarters. Their weapons are DREtech patented heavy-duty assault rifles, complete with electronic sensors. These are especially nasty-looking suited-up armoured warriors who are, in a sense, DREtech designed also.
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DREtech battle unit
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The first encounter with a robotic unit happens to be a pretty big unit. JED505 is a slow and awkward yet deadly machine equip with soft-impact explosive missiles and twin rapid-fire cannons. Moreso than you, Dr.Lethene is an extremely vulnerable target to this mechanic opponent.
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DREtech fighter-bomber
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An all-purpose airborne craft capable of various styles of attack. Although DREtech only have a handful of these they will put them to use to attack their headquarters with air-to-ground missiles to prevent Dr.Lethene from escape. You won't be able to destroy these in the game and their attack is unpreventable.
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Cyanic Guard
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Their own private army, much like MetroPD, ranging in rank and ability. They guard all of Cyanic's land and aquatic territory and are especially trained protectors, making up for their lack of land-based offensive robotic units. Cyanic have, for a long time, focused on effective and efficient non-lethal weaponry, QSec used Cyanic mainly for large-scale infiltration and hostage-taking, and this is also evident in the training conduct of their human soldiers and their artillery.
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Parallax Gauntlet
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Small but deadly close-combat droids, usually attack in numbers. 6 legged spider-like appearance mounting a razor-sharp circular saw just behind two long sword-like blades, it can launch itself at you, stab into you and electrocute you while slicing through you with its spinning blade.
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Parallax Sentry
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Small airborne units typically used for medium-range surveillance although they do carry electrical shock devices which can stun you when they activate their attack mode. Almost completely silent and invisible due to their dark non-reflective chassis and lack of any lights.
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Parallax Sliderdrone
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These nasty robots roll on two hoop-like wheels and carry light-assault shoulder cannons, but the real danger is from their two giant curved blades that can reach out almost two meters to chop and slice their victims with incredible speed and precision. The hoops can swivel for high speed maneuvering in tight and difficult battle environments.
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Parallax Bulkbot
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Fat little tanks that slowly patrol high-security areas armed with short-range rockets. Difficult to destroy without using explosives. They also act as a repair bot for other Parallax units. Their state-of-the-art sensoring modifications make them incredibly vigilant although are essentially deaf and can be avoided with quiet stealth.
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Parallax Spectre
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The unit itself is just bodyfit armour for a human soldier, it has the ability to facilitate a temporary cloak function to make the wearer mostly invisible, only visually detectable by a subtle refraction of light, although this can only last for a few seconds at a time it's enough to give the soldiers a severe advantage for close-range combat. They carry only light-gauge inbuilt assault cannons but are also armed with typical Parallax-style electrified blades on each arm.
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Shadowing Hate
07 - Weapons and Devices.
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Pistols
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- Cobb 165 (pistol) - A considerably high-power weapon for its size which in turn means some loose accuracy. It's functionally an old-style weapon with a modern look and feel, housing almost no non-essential computerised components. It's a rare pistol with an unusually high calibre for its design making it a humble yet devastating good choice for a close-quarters gunfight.
High-power
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Automatics
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- Kiv C9 Eset (automatic) - The allrounded and perfect balanced pride and joy of DREtech's automatics range, it has a very comfortable blend of firerate and accuracy while not missing out on all of the computerised functions in the design to make every moderately-sized slug count. It uses a super-compressed electromagnetic rail chamber to fire at amazing speeds that had previously not been achieved in a gun of this size, although this makes it a noisier and therefore far less discrete weapon. Though already quite a bulky gun it is surprisingly light-weight with an award winning external design and finish.
- Werel KP37 (automatic) - This is more of a smaller calibre and wider firerate weapon that is used for controlled long-range attacks with superb accuracy, although does classify as more a simple automatic than a rifle. It has a large clip that uses postfire-mechanic slugs, which is very unusual for a long-range weapon although its only computerised functions are focused within the automatic targeting system, making it a very smart effective long-range rifle while efficient with its ammunition for an automatic.
Explosives
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Energy Weapons
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- Xenex Quadwave (energy) - a horrifying weapon that initially looks like some awkward bulky plastic child's toy, it silently fires various waves of invisible high-energy particles, at first causing the target victim convulsions and vomiting of blood, within seconds essentially cooking internal organs and causing instantaneous brain hemorrhaging. It also has the ability to fry some overexposed electrical components within enemy robotics.
- Phenzic Moleculization Weapon
This high-powered weapon emits intense pattern-sequence microwaves at short-range. It is essentially silent and invisible when fired, barely audible only by a very subtle buzzing sound. On-screen display will show you when it's being fired and it's affect, but this is a strange weapon to use because of its small size, no apparent response from the weapon and honestly looks more like a child's toy, however, the victim will immediately experience disorientation and fatigue, followed by intense vomiting and quickly splitting internal molecules, after about 3 or so seconds will begin to bleed internally and have severe organ damage, discharging blood and eventually mutilating and cooking them from the inside-out. It can have a similar effect on robotic enemies, causing the internal sensitive equipment to short-circuit. The larger the target, the more time it takes to damage it.
Infiltration Devices
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- TechPick (device) - this is a standard lockpicking device that uses a range of micromechanical extrusions combined with advanced codebreaking algorithms to pick almost any key-lock securities within just seconds. Being the latest official AECE release techpick it has incredible compatibility and is sure to pick almost all modern micromechanical locks out there.
(What are "postfire mechanics?"... This typically refers to the mechanical anticartridge slugs used by rail-chamber weapons that will somehow expand or change shape after being fired, they can very quickly take forms to heavily increase both their aerodynamics and damage on impact."
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Shadowing Hate
08 - Character Profiles.
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- Adin Vallick
The pinnacle agent of the AECE's HALops project, the most elite of operatives under command of the AECE.
- Myuran Lethene
Chief robotics professor and co-head of DREtech's current 'SOF' program. She is retrieved by Agent Vallick and is responsible for bringing the AECE most of what it is to learn about the Shadows conspiracy.
- Orlen Sivard
Charismatic. Multi-billion dollar international banker. Current senior head and co-founder of Quintec Sectorial. Believes the world is in desperate need of forced mass population control through a global political movement and a cleansing scheme he titled Shadowing.
- Phorin Tiele
AECE Board Executive (Cyanic AECE insider) Phorin Tiele acts as unofficial secondary command in the AECE although usually almost never has any chance to take full command and issue orders due to the persistent presence of Wilton Brandt, although he does often act as spokesman or interpreter in his place as Brandt minimises his electronic communications, especially during active missions.
- AECE
This is a secret government division that run the HALops program and command elite groups of specialist operatives. It is unknown, even to the chief officials of the division, where the top orders originate from. In itself it is a comparatively tiny operation, almost microscopic as it is of importance. Most of the systems and projects are of the highest government classifications.
- HALops
A top secret project run by the AECE involving a network of highly trained specialist operatives who have cybernetic implants or enhancements. This is the primary operation and the core of the AECE.
- DREtech
A privately owned multimillion-dollar corporation. Its main function is the development of state-of-the-art robotics and weaponry. DREtech HQ is located in the inner industrial region of the metropolis. They signify the first of the three Shadow conspiracies however despite their large arsenal and the length of involvement, DREtech play more of a secondary role to the entire operation.
- Cyanic
A secretive military development group, whose origin is unknown, who specialise in larger marine-based and airborne units, although it is understood that most of Cyanic's projects are still underdeveloped. The majority of the units are still of prototype status. Cyanic is the most tightly bound to Q-Sec, so secretive that its very base of operations is a giant oceanic stealth machine known as the Aqualabs.
- Cyanic Aqualabs
A massive sector of Cyanic is its marine development division, a secret submersible ocean facility known as the 'aqualabs'. It is also known to be heavily armed within and equipped with a lot of active robotic battle units. Since Cyanic consider it to be safely hidden, currently somewhere in the east-south-eastern Pacific, there won't be much resistance on surface standby should you successfully infiltrate the area undetected, yet sources indicate airborne 'NRF' units to be constantly patrolling the occupied area. It's speculated that Cyanic are conducting major underwater experimental testing of a new unit.
- Parallax XeneX
The deadliest of projects, XeneX is believed to be part of the para-Soviet 'Parallax' military syndicate, concentrating on a wide range of different cybernetic and biomechanical battle units. XeneX is rumoured to have forcibly obtained the planets top computer, robotics, weaponry and biological engineers and developers. It is also believed that Parallax have been in operation for quite some time, possibly half a century. Their origin is Artic-Russia and subterranean-Siberia. Parallax, like DREtech, is not as closely bound to Q-Sec as Cyanic and therefore does not so directly operate under their influence, and this instability of power is worrying because XeneX is among the most advanced of efficient mass-scale technological warfare, not only with their unique battle units but they also have achieved ventures into space technology.
- Quintec Sectorial (Q-Sec or QS) (apostasy)
A small group of multibillionaire masterminds intent on achieving their goal of global dominance through a project they call Shadows. They have infested themselves within positions of strong political influence, bending over areas such as science and the military enough to secretly execute the Shadows project successfully.
Through all possible means their plot is to attack key military, security and communications resources using massive-scale advanced robotics warfare systems. The Shadows project has been active for decades and has accelerated production, stockpiling weaponry for the attack, possible due only to the efficiency of the plan and ultimate secrecy. The project contains three main corporations, DREtech, Cyanic and Parallax. Each of these operations has distinct characteristics in their fraudulence, research and development, but all are illegally mass-producing robotic and cybernetic warfare units.
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- Cast of Characters
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Wilton Brandt - AECE Director
Phorin Tiele - AECE Assistant Director
Lance Rictor - AECE Mission Coordinator
Danalya Nevelik - Chief AECE Technician
Rick Harris - HALops Weapons Specialist
Adin Vallick - Primary HALops Operative
Jaren Rilq - Primary HALops Operative
Mey Cien - Secondary HALops Operative
Prece Ellent - Secondary HALops Operative
Darek Verdi - HALops Tech Assistant
Myuran Lethene - DREtech Robotics Development
Waylen Sontas - DREtech Robotics Engineering
Calvin Ellis - QS3 - DREtech Director
Helen Dion - QS4 - Cyanic Director
Ziet Trodiv - QS5 - Parallax Director
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Shadowing Hate
09 - Versions of Vallick.
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- Mental Institution Patient
only for a tiny amount of cutscene where he is displayed in a small observation cell in some hospital facility. Not very tidy, not in very good health.
- Detention Prison Inmate
another very quick shot in a cutscene that shows him bound up in a uniform inside the hospital while some official directors and research consultants talk to him.
- Biotank bodysuit (AECE labs)
very dull featureless bodysuit worn while inside a biotank, shown in a cutscene as he's being suspended in isolation after a cybernetic neural upgrade.
- Half-dressed Just-Woken-Up
intro to the first mission, hasn't had enough sleep, only wearing black shorts, socks and his wristcomp. This is probably the most important to do correctly, even though shot in strange lighting conditions, this is the first time the player will have an important slow comprehendible look at the character they are about to assume and play.
- Casually Clothed Original
this is the way you look when you first start playing. Long dark-blue trench coat and sunglasses, the most JC.
- Casually Clothed Exterior
same as above except the loss of the trench-coat in exchange for two hanging sleeves behind each leg and a flat backpack-like sleeve on his back, also his pants front pockets are thicker with places to hide things.
- AECE relaxed business
casual original without the trench coat and body armour, only a tight black shirt. You only appear this way when you're inside the AECE headquarters.
- Combat-Suit
this is when Vallick wants to get badass and fully utilise all of his abilities, devices and weapons, appearing in such a way the words really can't describe. As always, dark blue and silver trim. He uses a slightly less modified version in the Cyanic missions than in the Parallax ones, but visually not much different, if at all.
- Assassin
No trench coat but still the baggy pants and armour with a black backpack. His sunglasses are replaced with a special visor specifically for sniper assassinations.
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Shadowing Hate
10 - Missions list.
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Mission 1- Metro / DREtech
Level 01: Apartment Complex
Level 02: Inner Metropolis
Level 03: Subway System
Level 04: Downtown Industrial
Level 05: DREtech Inc.
Mission 2- DREtech production - The Shadow of Fear
Mission 3- Cyanic Aqualabs - The Shadow of ????
Mission 4- AECE siege / QS assassinations
Mission 5- XeneX/Parallax - The Shadow of Pain
Mission 6- End
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Mission Description - 01 01
The first map takes place in a 100-storey apartment skyscraper, with roughly 20 stories accessible including the roof, ground level and sub-basements, which includes the underground parking lot, where the level will end. There is one large elevator in the center of the building and a stairwell to the north, however, the stairwell cannot access all floors.
You begin, unarmed and unprotected, in your apartment in the south-west, on the 83rd floor, exit and pass the large elevator, which just happens to be malfunctioning on that floor at that time. You will need to go around the east apartment patch on that floor to reach the stairwell at the north. The elevator on any other floor will function correctly, however there is an enemy agent stationed idle in there, waiting for you. If you go there directly she will surely shoot you down so you have no option but to not use the elevator until you are sufficiently armed.
The next objective requires you to find an accessible apartment on the 79th floor, to acquire a pistol and armour. From there you can start taking out those enemy agents, one in the elevator, one on the roof, one you will find snooping around inside of your apartment, one on the 71st floor, and the last one will attack you on the ground floor, once all other agents have been eliminated. There are a few police officers in the building, also, and will be attracted to the gunfire or if they see you armed. It is possible to escape without killing any but requires a heavy stealth approach, you may be rewarded somehow later if you can do this.
Once you reach the ground floor and kill the last enemy agent, the building management officers will trigger their alarms. You can now proceed to the parking lot where you will need to battle metro police squad to escape the building, complete the level and move on to the next.
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Shadowing Hate
11 - Objectives for Chapters.
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Mission 1 - Level 01: Apartment Complex
a) Eliminate enemy operatives
b) Ensure zero civilian fatalities
c) Exit the building
- You receive your objective details from your mission coordinator while on rest period in an apartment complex in the city, your current residency. You begin this mission in your apartment in the complex with the only objective being that you are to descend the building to the exit and proceed into the city streets. Sounds simple enough, but coincidently, a small band of assassins belonging to another agency, Yto, have entered the building to dispose of your agencies best asset - you. The reason for this being that your last mission against this very agency was successful and incredibly disruptive for their business, this attempt at taking your life is a payback, so your mission objectives are extended to include that you make it out of the building alive and terminate the opposing operatives, as they may become a threat to the mission you are initiating.
(You'll need to collect some equipment from another tenant, covertly working for the AECE. When you reach the bottom of the building, a small MetroPD squad will arrive and you'll need to gun them down to exit the building.)
Mission 1 - Level 02: Inner Metropolis
a) Rendezvous with mission co-ordinator
b) Ensure zero civilian fatalities
c) Locate and enter the subway system
- Once you're out of the building you must meet up with your mission coordinator where you will be given further information and equipment. The city streets are hostile enough, but you'll face even greater difficulty with law enforcement, especially due to events at the apartment complex. You're advised to keep clear of any officers, patrols or surveillance droids as you will surely be detected armed. If you do run into trouble, it's not the end of the mission, although you will automatically fail if you terminate an innocent or too many officers of law, as this will count as a civilian fatality. Your only other concern is to navigate the streets to the subway entrance.
Mission 1 - Level 03: Subway System
a) Navigate subway system to inner industrial zone
b) Ensure zero civilian fatalities
- The risk is far too great for you to be provided direct transport to DREtech HQ, and the city streets on the surface of that particular area of the city are far too hazardous, even for you. The subway system is your best option although it is certainly not without its dangers, and the city police will still be looking for you.
Mission 1 - Level 04: Downtown Industrial
a) Avoid MetroPD surveillance crafts
b) Eliminate MetroPD sniper troops
c) Prepare explosives at local cellpatch
d) Enter the park
- Due to your unfortunate run-in with officers in the subway, the MetroPD are now concentrating on the inner industrial zones. Surveillance crafts and detection equipment will be present near, what the AECE believe to be, DREtech's energy plant cellpatch, which will need to be disabled later. If you're detected in the industrial zone you'll be met with police special forces and sniper troops. If you are spotted you will be required to make a detour into the nearby park area.
Mission 1 - Level 05: DREtech Inc.
a) Obtain security clearance and enter DREtech HQ
b) Locate Dr. Lethene and download documents
c) Destroy cellpatch
d) Exit DREtech HQ
e) Dr. Lethene must survive
- From the west side of the park you will find DREtech HQ and thanks to some equipment and stealth tactics, the police will still be looking for you in the park. Most of the outer security of the building will be weak and once you steal someone's security clearance you should have less trouble penetrating the innermost research areas, where you will find Dr. Lethene. She should have already acquired the DREtech SOF documents when you find her. Once the power is out, forces will be the only thing to stop you from exiting the building where an AECE craft will hopefully be able to safely retrieve both you and the scientist.
(During descent of the building, DREtech will panic and order your detected floor location attacked with air-to-ground missiles that will effectively devastate two floors on the northern side of the building. Once at the bottom, without power for their security systems, their last hope of attack is their remaining on-site troops and one prototype robotic unit, which will need to be destroyed.)
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Shadowing Hate
12 - Screenplay.
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Storyboard Text:-
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<<00.01.01>>
opening credits
<<01.01.01>>
introduction sequence (pre-menu) - "Medley of Fear"
(this is a short sequence of miscellaneous scenes to introduce the game)
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.- Fade in. DREtech HQ inner laboratories. Interior. Ambient, eerie music. Camera slowly zooms out from the right eye of Dr. Lethene. The computer display can be seen in her eye. Zoom out to reveal her entire face. Beautiful, but a look of fear, total confusion and disbelief. Her face lit with a pale blue from the monitor. Camera continues to zoom pass the actual computer display. Fade out. (+00:17.0)
.- Fade in. A man in a small cell, on the floor, in front of a mirror, lights and cameras, large tiles and small metal beams at the roof.
.- Fade in. Music builds. The metropolis. Exterior. A Yto courier craft (van-like) enters the scrolling screen. Maneuvers, rolling slightly, close to the camera as skyscrapers zip pass in the background. (+00:03.0)
.- Cut. Looking to the approaching Yto craft head-on as it flies right into the camera.
.- Cut. From same position. Looking at the craft from behind, flying away and towards the apartment complex in the distance. Camera follows the craft for a few seconds. Fade out.
.- Fade in. DREtech offsite plant, location unknown. Interior. Manufacturing plant, main storage floor. Camera low, near floor, looking across the area to a large sliding door. Camera slowly approaches the door as it slides upward. A large robotic battle unit. Walks out, looking left and right.
.- Cut. Looking down from above the door to the battle unit placing itself in a row of other identical units. Two researchers in labcoats walk in front of it, making observations. Fade out.
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Section counts Timing Concepts
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Shadowing Hate
13 - Conversations script.
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Last update: 22/08/02
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-----------------------------------
<- Mission 01 01 - cutscene01 ->
Off-duty cop: Hold it...
Adin Vallick: What is it...?
Off-duty cop: You look familiar... what's with your outfit?
Adin Vallick: I didn't know there were new laws for dress code. Aren't you off-duty?
Off-duty cop: Hm. You should be careful. You look like you want trouble.
Adin Vallick: I'm not armed.
Off-duty cop: Oh I know that, but you will attract attention, probably the wrong kind. It's
not a movie set out there. Don't expect the police to rescue you from problems
that YOU create for yourself.
-----------------------------------
<- Mission 01 01 - cutscene02 ->
Adin Vallick: It's Vallick.
Darek: Here he is...
Adin Vallick: Darek. Thanks for babysitting for me.
Darek: No problem. I haven't even breathed on them. Tell you what, I can't wait to get
out of this building.
Adin Vallick: I feel like I've only just got here and already things are heating up again.
Darek: Well you are the man... and here're your babies.
Phorinlink: Darek! Has Adin contacted you yet?
Darek: He's here right now.
Phorinlink: Adin, we've discovered from automatic network backtracing that some of our
transmissions have been intercepted by Yto and they are most likely aware of
your location. From these time signatures, if they're not onto you now, they
soon will be. Be armed and ready.
Adin Vallick: We'll lose rendezvous here if I start a gunfight.
Phorinlink: You'll have to risk that. Darek, you'll stay put for a couple of days.
Darek: Got it.
Adin Vallick: Maybe I can sneak out.
Phorinlink: Hopefully, but remember that Yto are desperate now. They will have their best
operatives after you and once you're targeted, they won't give up. It will
be a kill-or-be-killed situation. They've been waiting for this.
Darek: How could Yto have intercepted our multi-encrypted transmissions?
Phorinlink: Hard to believe, I know. Possibly a leak in the lower chains. We're still
trying to flush the system. We'll have things fixed soon but no time for
juggling theories now. Get going, time is against you. I'll contact you once
you're out of the closed signaling zone. Darek, shut down this channel now.
Darek: Wow. Damn. Sorry I can't back you up out there, man.
Adin Vallick: I may need it, too. I ran into a cop just out in the hallway.
Darek: What?? Oh shit!
Adin Vallick: I know...
Darek: The AECE sure are getting slack these days. How could this have slipped? I
thought we had the building's security infested. If the building goes into
lockdown before you get out, there won't be much I can do for you, this place
will be crawling with cops, inside and out.
Adin Vallick: I've got to move or that will become the inevitable. Thanks Darek.
Darek: Good luck, agent.
-----------------------------------
<- Mission 01 01 - cutscene03 ->
Ni Yin Yto: Vallick... hello...
-----------------------------------
------
In-game dialogues
------
These are base sounds for each character, 5 variations for 5 different states of
alertness - idle, alert, sight, attack and death. There may be more variations
and levels of alertness, or possibly even less, but for now that's the format.
Voice actors should feel free to improvise, cover what's listed here but you're
more than welcome to create your own dialogue if you can think of something
better and include that with the originals, if we end up being able to add many
variations (it seems quite possible in the scripts from what I've seen) and as
you can see considerable profanity is not a problem. Among the death sounds
will be various cries of pain and yells of defeat, please make them plentiful.
-----------------
Idle - you may have been standing around for hours with nothing to do. You're
bored, perhaps overtired, overworked and a little irritated.
Alerted - finally something happens, but last time it was a false alarm and
you don't want to talk too loud and attract attention.
On-sight - this is it, show-time, the moment you've been waiting for. Got to
get your head together and focus. No time to relax or be careless.
Attacking - you're in mid-gunfight or looking for your target, this is serious
and you mean business. Angry and nasty, you need to intimidate!
Dying - immense pain, miserable defeat, you can't stand it, you're making the
last sound in your life and you want the fucking world to hear it!
-----------------
MetroPD generic samples:-
-:(idle):-
"All clear in this sector."
"Nothing to report."
"Huh. Nevermind."
"Hm, clear this line!"
"Damn interference."
-:(alerted):-
"Got a civilian here acting suspicious."
"Something's up. Stand by."
"What the hell..."
"You want trouble?"
"Come out and show yourself!"
-:(on-sight):-
"Hold it!"
"Stop right there!"
"Hey!"
"Got a perp here!"
"I've got this one."
-:(attacking):-
"You're going down!"
"You're fucked now."
"Fucking stand down!"
"Bring it on bitch."
"You're fucking dead!"
-:(dying):-
"Argh fucker!"
"Mother-fucker!"
"Fuckin' slut!"
"I'm down! Need backup!"
"Fuck shot me!"
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-----------------------------------
- (some random quotesJ
"I'm sick from this violence. I don't even feel alive anymore, maybe I should just let myself die and be off this planet. I need to let my emotions be killed anyway." "You need to try harder to hide this weakness otherwise it will be used against you. Think of it this way, if there is no suffering there then is nothing to measure happiness by. Sometimes we need war for peace to make sense."
"Peace is just a way of giving up on the fight against evil. Peace can only be bought with blood and even then it's just temporary. Evil like this can only ever be fought against on its own terms."
"The only God is the God within."
"Parallax just want to dominate everyone. At least Q-Sec have some fair beliefs for the future of global humanity, they just see their only option being to enforce that freedom, where as Parallax will enforce it anyway."
"The Q-Sec doctrines outline most of the corruption and mismanagement of our modern political infrastructure. In the right hands these documents can be used for good, to mend our sick methods, but Q-Sec have been too deeply influenced by the maniacs at Parallax to see it this way. They lack the patience to take the honourable path, to fight these impurities calmly, one by one, politically."
"Each day somewhere in the world there are people making choices and taking action that will in some way change human history forever."
"The AECE don't care about you. You are their pet on the end of a leash. They will sit back and watch you die on a screen like some simulant while they're busy mutilating someone else to take your place. You are forced into your life like so many others are forced into theirs, just like those Parallax scientists or piece of shit Xodi freaks... or a bot, you're nothing more than another bot."
"...and I can guarantee you, you will have never seen so much of your own blood."
"Computer data is just human decisions made electronic."
"I want to be up top with those knockers, how much to get up top with the knockers?"
"You have bad, angry blood in you, making you sick. It needs to be set free, it yearns to breathe the open air and be rid of you."
"Sorry! You are not a winner this time, but, well, why don't you lose some weight already, fat pig, you want to be a disgusting slob forever?"
"The meaning of life is life, and not even God can play God."
"Leg length to body length = men equal, women 1.4 legs to 1.0 body."
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Shadowing Hate
14 - Literature
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- "The death of Jaren Rilq."
"Tell us who you are working for..."
Jaren finally stops struggling, realising none of his implants can do any good at this point. He had already focused on all details of the room for analysis back at headquarters. He is alone. All unrealistic heroic thoughts leave his mind as his operative capture protocol rolls through, the term "self destruction" yelling angrily in his ears, his own voice echoing in his mind. The tight microwoven-polysynthetic plastic binds that have tied him strongly to the diagonally slanted medical tray wouldn't loosen even in months of his struggles, and even if they would, the four heavily armed Parallax troops would see him shot dead in moments. All hope was lost for him and the detention representative calmly circling him knew this as he continues his poetic attempts at swaying his loyalty.
"You will die, of course you know this. Why not spare us all the pain and tell us who you work for?"
Jaren's eyes averted, not focused on anything but the idea of his final fate at hand. "You can help us, agent. You can be compliant and be assured no harm will come to you. Or, you can resist, for only a few moments longer, and we will cut you open like the lab-rat that you are, we will spare you no pain..."
A final last exhale from the now helpless captive as his face becomes less of anger and more of sadness and acceptance. He was about to die. A few moments pass, just like the representative had expressed. Time is very important. "Hm?..."
Nothing. There was to be no compromise, no turn of allegiance, after all, Agent Rilq was not stupid, Parallax would greedily wring him of information like a wet sponge and still butcher him like an animal. The Representative was short of patience, he had other matters to attend to and higher ranks to answer to.
"Very well... I try my best... Good bye, agent." he signals the two nurses behind Jaren to approach as he turns to leave the room. Jaren turns his head to look up into the completely featureless white ceiling of the room. It was about to happen, he knew so well. The nurses begin dragging a small-wheeled tray with a machine upon it, attached to a string of wires and cables and some metallic cap device to be placed on his head, but this was not to happen. The finger was already on the button.
*click!* The top of Jaren's head instantly and violently breaks apart from the small cerebral explosion, shooting blood from the top of the head as well as upward bursts from each of his eyeballs. In a fraction of a second his cybernetic implants, neural processor, databank and optics are completely destroyed. The nurses approaching from behind receive the bulk of the agent's bloody brains and fragmented skull. The entire back of the small cell is painted in splatters of blood leaving a dead agent with half a head on the tray. The explosive had done the most damage internally, it was part of the structure of the implants and had fragmented all electronics and computerised components beyond repair, it would take years for anyone to get even a glimpse into the technology.
"Fuck!" the Representative spins around in horror. This was no small-scale operation nor was this agent of low value in any sense, any agency willing to do this to one of their own were obviously of great importance. "Incident orange, lockdown request in sector G-minus... some kind of self-destruct mechanism in his brain..."
"I'm sorry Prece... It was his time..." AECE director Brandt slowly turns from the operations console to see tears running down her face, her liquidy eyes quivering with hatred, they had been crying for some time now. The scene of Jaren's optical feed on the monitor flashing red before a lifeless static on the console monitor screen, a scene of certain death within this room. She roars and she spins around angrily, hitting the table's fragile marble centerpiece in fury, followed by deep breathing. Director Brandt looks down to his hand, his finger, the one that had just ended her best friend's life. He was not about to discipline Prece for such an outburst as he would any other operative, he knew how much Jaren meant to her.
"That idiot..." she barely manages to say, still angry, her anger now focused on Jaren, "...that stupid fucking idiot..." she adds in the most bitter of disappoint.
"He was unlucky." Brandt tries to rationalise the catastrophe. Prece quickly glares over her shoulder at him. "He was careless!...." she then pauses, slowing her breathing and sound much more calm now, still trying desperately to gather her logic and thoughts. ".....so he deserved to die." she finishes as she calmly leaves the main operatives command room. That's all there was to it. Brandt suddenly realises Vallick in the darkened corner of the room behind him, his aging mind had forgotten that he was also there.
"I guess this makes Parallax my next assignment..." Adin quietly assumes.
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Lethene kills Weylen:-
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Weylen stands at the coffee machine anxiously as Myuran silently approaches him from behind and touches his shoulder.
"Wha..." Weylen jolts, "Myuran, you scared me!" he quietly says at a volume that could be disguised by the humming of the laboratory equipment from the guard at his post inside the core.
"I found something in the database..." she quickly explains at the same volume as Weylen turns, confused, "...what does S.O.F. mean to you?"
"I saw that once, John called it Sofie, something to do with upgrading the bot interface, I don't know... I thought it was some prototype concept from another division..." Weylen quickly replies as he turns back to his coffee in the machine.
"Bullshit, it's being done from our division and it's not UI, it's weaponry!"
"Are you crazy? Watch what you're saying!" Weylen stops momentarily as the guard turns slightly, thinking he'd heard the word "weapon" yet comes to think nothing of it.
"You should have seen the schematics I found, our CP9s geared up to fucking eat a JED for breakfast!"
"Those claims will get you fired!... or shot!"
"It's called Shadow of Fear, does that sound right to you? I poked around in John's documents, we're being used. How the fuck do you explain what's been going on here lately, talk of people being shot downstairs, our releases are constantly postponed, my leave time has been extended to hell and suddenly I've got guns in my face when I take one step out of line, something serious is going on here."
"I know but you'd better act like it's nothing, that's what I'm doing because I want to stay alive! DREtech is getting real jumpy lately. Mitchell, Ulrich and Saeger all supposedly on leave time yet their families never heard from them again!" Weylen ever so quietly whispers to Myuran at close range.
"How the hell do you know!"
"Custom encrypted messaging from Sahlah, he's been keeping tabs since dismissal, I think he knew what was going on but played it smart and safe, and that's exactly what I'm trying to do."
"You've got to tell Sahlah what's going on, we've got to get those schematics to him."
"Insane! You'll get us all killed! Next one is me, most expendable left! Leave me alone, get back to work!" Weylen whispers angrily at her with gestures of shouting, almost spilling his coffee, just before sitting back to his terminal with intentions of getting straight back into, what he knew was, dishonourable work. Myuran simply lowers her head and slowly walks from him to her own terminal as his eyes follow her briefly with deep worry. She knew that Weylen was the only one left on the team that she could trust and who had any honesty, but true enough that he would be the next to go and she would be made to tidy his loose ends.
Director Ellis was watching the whole time since spotting the name Sahlah on a curiously encrypted outgoing transmission backlog from Weylen's private usage tracks from his terminal, authorisation that Weylen wasn't even aware Ellis had, even though he did usually clear that section of log immediately after each transmission. The encryption was an expensive time consuming process designed to blend in with low frequency static interference from the local transmission streams of the building. Weylen just wasn't careful enough this time, however.
"Weylen..." is heard over the security speakers in the core. Instantly he knew Ellis wanted to discuss something unusually sudden, very out of routine even for these last few days, and he freezes with coffee cup in hand. "...please come to my office, immediately." He suddenly remembers the log, he didn't have time to clear it. As he eventually gets up to leave, Myuran looks at him walk past as though he was being dragged to his public execution, almost bursting into tears as she realises that if he loses his life at this time, it would be almost entirely her fault.
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Lethene's call
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Since the AECE can't process matters directly from the public it feeds from other government institutions, one of which is known as the ISC, the Industrial Sentry Commission, whose duty it is to handle the misconducts of privately owned industries, e.g. DREtech. When Dr.Lethene contacts the ISC, her only real option, which Q-Sec still have little to no control of or influence over, she happens to get in touch with just the right person who discretely passes the information on to the AECE, who then contact Lethene within DREtech. This communication will surely be traced by DREtech director and Q-Sec member Calvin Ellis but the AECE are so certain of the success of the extraction mission that they're willing to compromise her cover in order for her to get as much information about DREtech's plans as possible before extraction, so it's a time-sensitive mission for both Myuran Lethene and Adin Vallick.
"...Industrial Sentry Commission, Julie speaking, how may I help you?"
"This is Doctor Myuran Lethene, chief robotics developer for DREtech Industries... I want to place a report on DREtech in regards to the illegal manufacturing of robotic weaponry, this is very urgent!"
"...I can barely hear you... Can I have your name again please..."
"Doctor Myuran Lethene."
"Okay Doctor Lethene, I'm transferring your call, please hold..."
"This is William Dwight speaking, I'm head executive of this ISC division, where are you calling from please?"
"DREtech Headquarters in Graystrom Park West, 299 Hexley Terrace."
"Okay Doctor, why is this urgent?"
"Because they're gonna kill me WHEN they find out I've called you. You need to do something, all of my research is going into this secret project they call S.O.F, military-grade bots, heavy weaponry and in massive numbers, I have no idea what for."
"...These are very serious claims, Doctor, do you realise the seriousness of these claims?"
"Of course I fucking do, you think I'm fucking crazy?"
"Okay okay, calm down... I'll file a report right away, can I have your CID please."
"ML-290213-1T9C!"
"...Okay, Myuran, you can be reached through this current connection?"
"Yes!"
"Okay, I'll try to get back to you ASAP, please sit tight and stay calm. As of now we're keeping an eye on DREtech."
"Keeping an eye on the exterior you mean, I'm in the fucking core!"
"The core?"
"Headquarters has an inner core, you'll never see or hear it from the outside and all communications are rerouted through multiple offsite networks."
"...I see..."
"Please hurry, I don't have much time left."
"Okay, someone will contact you shortly."
"Can you believe that, sir?"
"Her CID checks out and DREtech HQ is right where she said it would be. We have no reason not to believe it, DREtech have been through a lot of questionable changes lately, I think we should treat this with the utmost urgency."
"I'll fill in the official report straight away sir."
"No Dwight, let me handle this... This is too delicate for us... Actually, I want you to clean all records from the past 2 minutes here, this is very delicate indeed."
"Ah... yes sir, Mr.Vense."
"Wilton Brandt, my old friend, we have a situation... DREtech... a young scientist needs to be extracted straight away, I think this is a perfect opportunity for us to exercise our HALops. Let's move into phase one immediately."
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Shadowing Hate
"Jaren's Update"
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Prece sits, crouched forward in the small spectator booth on soft red cushion chairs that after a while had made her legs feel as though floating in gentle numbness. Her hands cover the sides of her face suspended and perhaps ready to shield her wet tear-flooded eyes from what she was forcing herself to see. Those tears and her closeness making her perfectly clear reflection more prominent to herself on the otherwise almost invisible glass between her and the surgery. Her semieuphoric consciousness causing her to constantly lose focus between the surgery and her own reflection.
"You don't need to see this, you can leave anytime." Brandt quietly says to her, but she doesn't move at all, only a slow swallow. Keeping his eye mostly on the vital statistics graphics in the displays above the window, he slowly eases back into his chair behind her and out of the illumination from the cylindrical operating room fluorescence. This light glows in eyes behind him, sharply, Adin sits away, quietly observing, as he does every time a new recruit is being, what they call, updated.
The gray blanket that rested on her shoulders slides down her back as she starts touching the side of her forehead and downward to her cheekbone, tracing a line down the side of her skull. Brandt moves forward to cover her again and she turns around to the two men behind her.
"Do you remember?" she asks Adin. He gives her an empty look but doesn't reply. She takes a moment to snap out of it, an answer doesn't matter. She turns back to the window and now with both hands, slowly starts to feel around sections of her head.
"Prece, you're not going to fall apart..." Brandt says lifting the blanket back over her. She grabs it over her shoulders and sits tight, with him on the edge of his seat behind her. "...at least not physically."
"Everything will be okay." Adin calmly tries to assure her from the third row near the door. He sees a brief reaction smile from her in the reflection as she finally wipes the tears from her eyes.
Inside the surgery chamber is Jaren, his body suspended in a large capsule filled with special foam edges to hold his body perfectly steady and tight throughout the procedure. His head protrudes from the vaguely shaped capsule, the back of his neck and upward mostly held by a rubber mould. An array of circular lights surround him up to the ceiling which houses the primary robotic surgical device, a collection of proportioned robotic arms split into four sections, of surgical lasers and others for placing the cybernetics and biomechanical devices. At the moment only two of them are being used.
From the sides of the chamber at his head height are two mechanical arrays, more robotic arms with wiry prongs at the end with rubber strands that can be bent to any curvature. A number of these extend out at different angles to hold the frontal parts of his dissected skull forward in perfect steadiness. The edges of the internal cross-sections rest revealed covered in a paper thin layer of glass-like material that has a consistent blue glow, emitting from the metallic hollow tube supporting the layers from above. Through these layers, the internal organs can be perfectly preserved and viewed, and only microscopic areas can be operated on within very short periods of time. Two of the main robotic arms, which are made up of angled sections allowing them to rotate, swivel and extend to almost any degree, extend downward into the open subject, equip with sets of three or so laser devices used for the rapid linear incisions necessary, and each of these small subsequent laser devices consist of interchangeable pulse and focus types allowing the beams to vary in signature and depth. Already targeting a small section through the blue semitransparent layer, the concentrated beams of light flicker intensely of green and red hues, so incredibly tiny, less than the width of a hair, yet so incredibly bright, enough to, even though ever so subtle, cast light onto those in the front row of the spectator booth.
"Isn't it as though nature has intentionally reserved these biological vacancies for our evolutionary technology..." Brandt quietly shares his philosophical wonderment, moreso directed at Adin than Prece, as he looks down onto the flickering lasers with his eyes widened. Prece somehow couldn't understand what he just said. She felt sick. She could see the noise in her vision again, so thick, now partnered with an airy rushing sound. The words became just random scattered syllables in her ears, unable to form meaning for her. Disconnected from reality for just a moment, she felt as though her head had come apart in the air, floating, burning, exposed. She had been staring at the displaced sections of Jaren's head for too long. She curls up in her seat and gasps, cupping her forehead into her hands. Brandt does nothing, perhaps we was responsible for her reacting this way. He didn't want her spectating this time, especially not for Jaren's updates. He spares his attempt to comfort her and looks over his shoulder to Adin who is already looking back at him, they both wonder what may become of Prece and her new abilities.
Adin thinks back to his first time in this dim and cramped little room, staring in at the to-be Agent Yurif with his eyeball reverse suspended from the socket and remembering how he felt knowing that just a few months before then, he was in that same little chamber with sections of his head apart like that. The only difference would be that Adin had later witnessed Yurif not handle his update well and was eventually terminated. Watching Yurif's update, he was not the collective, almost emotionless shadow in the back row like this time, but a quivering and sweating mess in the front row, as Prece. Even at that time, he could understand perfectly why Yurif acted the way he did, and what Prece must be going through. The older, now obsolete generation of the hardware was far more difficult to get used to and the convalesce period was almost too psychologically nightmarish to comprehend. Prece was already a few weeks with her major updates with the new hardware and at least able to be back at headquarters, while Adin at that same state was still in closed quarters, probably at that very moment screaming at the door of his cell. He suddenly remembered, violently clutching at his head and screaming psychotically to "get them out!". He had related that very room as being the cause for his states of delusion, it wouldn't have mattered where the AECE put him, Adin couldn't handle being in one place for more than a few moments, it was an perpetual obsessive state of paranoia. At that time, if he could only get through that door and out of that insanely, almost infinitely safe padded-cell, then everything would be okay, the nightmare would stop, and at the very least could find something to kill himself with, to viciously cut and gouge himself open and rip out the demons within in a bloody final battle with himself, and then finally be at peace. What drove him insane was that the room was so extremely harmless, yet what was in his mind was so ferociously horrific. That was a few years ago now. He didn't want to remember.
Pretty soon the operation was at completion status, the final circuitry on the neural datalink was configured and all connections were tapped in and ready to be activated. The two frontal quarter cross-sectioned parts of Jaren's head, with the help of digital mathematics guided automation, slowly begin to orientate back into their original position with perfect geometric precision. The surrounding layers meeting meticulously at almost the exact same occupancy. A relief for everyone watching on, just the sight of Jaren's head finally pieced back together as though a puzzle has been solved and he has returned to himself once again. The tiny end section of the robotic arms still pushing ever so gently, a sudden flash of blue, very concentrated and very intense, emitting a lightning quick flash, which AECE scientists would later come to discover is not very good for your vision, accompanied by the sound of an abrupt piercing electrical snap. The blue layers are gone and the wiry supports along with the main surgical devices retract away at the same time as two sides of an additional suspension capsule close in and surround his entire head. Jaren would remain like this for another day or so.
"And that's the show, folks..." a nasal voice announces over the spectator intercom, the voice of chief surgery technician who had been working in an adjacent booth across the chamber. Prece breathes calmly, still staring through the window although with a posture more relaxed, while Brandt smiles up at the intercom and graphics above the window, and the stats couldn't be better.
"He's going to be okay." he smiles to her and places his hand on her shoulder, "...and you're okay... okay?" Brandts informality and friendliness to such a level catches her attention and helps to calm her and gather her thoughts. It's the overwhelming psychological stress on newly updated recruits that can sometimes cause the fresh implants to not be accepted by the biology, or so at least currently theorised, so his warmth and support was more than just that.
"I'll be okay. I just feel sick. I'm not tired, my stomach is okay, it's my head..." Prece exhaustedly rambles, trying to explain what she's going through.
"You should rest." Brandt calms her as Adin stands and activates the booth door to slowly open, allowing light to pour in. She seemed a little sad, but after that experience, all in all, she had done pretty well. She was a very emotional young woman as it was, and her affection toward Jaren was so strong that it was very apparent to everyone involved in HALops, and after seeing his update surgery, she was to become a much stronger individual and more effective agent. It was Adin Vallick who had left the spectator booth more disturbed than upon entering it, her reactions stirred up some memories for him that left him contemplating his past experiences and thereby digging up even deeper memories of his ordeals, disturbing and haunting memories that span back further than just his time under the AECE. He has before been painted with the blood of his enemies and with true hell in his soul. Should he hate or thank the AECE for his faded past, or is it their intention to leave him forever uncertain and docile. It always ends on the same note for Vallick, though. It doesn't matter anyway.
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Vallick: Why can't you just shut down his systems and launch a rescue
mission? Put all operatives to work.
Brandt: And give Parallax spare backups of the hardware to play with? Risk the entire organisation?
Kerner: Shutting down his implants would slowly kill him anyway, the bio-compound encasing the components is charged with emitted frequencies from key modules inside and can't be remotely reactivated, surrounding cells will treat it as dead tissue and in a few months he'll have brain tumours the size of tennis balls in his frontal lobe.
Brandt: You know the procedure, Vallick. Expiration of the operative. The technology must be obliterated.
Vallick: Expired. You make it sound like fruit that has gone rotten.
Kerner: At least he's dying in the field of duty and not expiring from his body rejecting the implants, that's the real shame.
Brandt: It's a shame because we are losing two operatives here. Prece should never have been involved in the first place. I will need to tell her.
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Phorin: Welcome back, Adin.
Vallick: Where's Brandt.
Phorin:
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Lethene: Where the fuck is Weylen you bastard.
Ellis: Dead, Myuran. He's dead. His threat finally outweighed his necessity to us, and the stupid geek got his brains shot out, okay?
Lethene: ...Are you going to blow my brains out too? Is that it? You're fucked up, you think he's stupid, he was necessary, to me, I can't finish these projects without him.
Ellis: Don't bullshit me, you have a few bugs to iron out.
Lethene: High-priority buglist preventing a stable release, a release that requires multiple coders of the same skillset, and now you only have just one "stupid geek". Me.
Ellis: Heheheh, Myuran. Just finish the fucking thing already. Let me tell you something. There's a 505 just outside the lobby, right now. Right under the exterior conference room. And, let me check here, hm, 2792 units fresh through the assembly lines, all shiny and new... You know why I'm telling you this... I want to make you a part of this. You're too cute to have executed simply because of what you know, I want to give you the opportunity for your knowledge to be a good thing.
Lethene: You call arming a bunch of underdeveloped bots with explosive projectiles a "good thing"? You asshole. Your "shadows" project, whatever the fuck it is, a load of shit, I wouldn't be surprised if these things end up shooting at themselves when a bird flies in front of them, or even an insect. I keep telling you, we don't have the right testing environments, these are high-priority bugs.
Ellis: And you're going to get busy ironing them out for me, woman.
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"So many respected political and military leaders involved in conspiracies decades old... it all seems so far-fetched to me, I can hardly believe it."
"That's what makes it work, it's such an unbelievable concept for the general population, so they simply dismiss it, millions in denial simply because it seems so outrageous. A good conspiracy works better when it is conceived as just that, a conspiracy, an urban legend, more likely the crazy ideas of an individual, but in fact these people really are only individuals, corrupted by wealth and power, and most importantly are good at keeping secrets and spinning nice words together. So, the truth is more obvious than most people allow themselves to believe. Proving it is the hard part. That's why we have you."
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"Ever felt so angry that you feel superhuman strength and focus, and can destroy anything? It's my job to deal with that every day."
"Never allow yourself to wallow in your own uncertainty."
"Sometimes the truth is like a wild animal, and only the strongest and most cunning of hunters can capture and contain it, never without a struggle."
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"If agents are suffering hallucinations, can't you just put them on some suppressant medication or something?"
"It's not a physical reaction, it's raw neural interference, submolecular cerebral reactions, it's on a whole other level, therefore we can't treat it with traditional medicines, at least not with anything we administer into the bloodstream. If anything, that would make things worse. We can only fix it by tweaking the hardware and hoping for the best."
"Isn't there _anything_ you can give them to help?"
"In the field? No way. So they hallucinate, it's not a chemical imbalance so it's normally temporary. The last thing we want to do is send them out there all dopey and semiconscious on inappropriate medication, and have them experience potentially worse problems. All we can do is train them to deal with it and prepare them best we can."
"Then these systems can become obsolete at any moment now. Sooner or later we'll be having to deal with sustained EMP attacks."
"Heh, well, the trick would be to go nuclear, the independent core electroenergy systems are the only initial concern to electromagnetic pulse, overriding or even at least backing up those preliminary systems would be ideal enough protection, within reason, against sustained and mobile EMP, if that's even possible. We just can't implement such a system reliably without years of concentrated research. Put simply, we need a miniature nuclear reactor power station in each spinal column, a power station capable of rapid fluctuations albeit just as capable of a complete meltdown as its larger predecessors. What's worse than inconveniently hallucinating for a few moments? Having your entire spine slowly incinerating inside of you."
----------------------
"The problem with EMP is that it can't be a sustained attack in any form of mobile handheld weapon or device,
with the exception of a disposable grenade or mine, a once-only short-burst reaction, and an expensive one at that. Or a heavily powered automatic cannon such as for antiaircraft, not really designed to be aimed at footsoldiers. Any kind of effective "EMP rifle" is out of the question for now, for two reasons. First, the energy radius has no choice but to include the weapon and its user, rendering the weapon itself useless and any electronic systems and power sources of its user, power sources which would also be required to use the weapon. Secondly, any concentrated beam attacks would be extremely difficult to focus manually, without computerised tracking equipment, and the required energy demands are ridiculous, and dangerous. Such a weapon, for it to be effective, has more chance of killing the user than the target. Mainly, it needs to be sustained, even if it's weak and dissipated, it requires complete and continuous rapid energy fluctuations, resetting, rebooting and resynchronisations of all electronic and computerised systems, a split second after crashing them all, and that would all determine the fire rate, you see. And even then, it's more like throwing buckets of water at someone with your eyes closed."
"We're not talking about railguns or deactivating bots here, we're talking about harnessing and concentrating subatomic quantum energies, it's not even in the same realms of science. They won't just forget that regular lead bullets can still kill these operatives. They'll be saving the EMP weapons for bots."
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Shadowing Hate
15 - Log files.
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patient: Adin Vallick (.i01944327)
- hwsedeer: (31_03_17) - dp.327av
Adin claims that "the government" is controlling his mind. He says he hears a man's voice telling him to use weapons to kill people and if he does not comply "the government" will somehow "destroy his brain and kill him". He claims to have no recollection of his childhood or early adulthood, which he constantly describes as "a living ghost". He claims vague memories of being a soldier in a war and some of his descriptions are quite convincing. He has talked about hating technology, particularly the automated surveillance devices we incorporate in our institution. These seem to cause him to fall into psychotic episodes and he responds well to having these removed from his cell and quarters, although this has only been temporarily experimental and regulations forbid this as a long-term treatment. Only the most debilitating medication we have seem to help at all but I'm not convinced this is the right approach for this patient. As his assigned counselor and assessment officer, I find Adin to be incredibly intelligent and, in the correct environment, a calm and responsive patient. I'm still waiting for the axial tomography results from the techlab sector with unexplained delay.
- Howard Weston Sedeer
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Shadowing Hate
16 - Special abilities.
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MIA8B4 "Motor Impulse Amplifiers"
- these are local limb implants that correlate to the neural feed for stronger reflexes that enable an agent to move and jump faster and quieter, as well as stronger melee attacks and weapon accuracy.
SIR2O7 "Sensory Input Regulators"
- this range of mostly optical implants allows an operatives different levels of visual enhancements: Level 1 - Night vision, Level 2 - Heat/electro-sensitive vision, Level 3 - advanced X-Ray vision.
TSM4G1 "Tremulor Stem Minimizers"
- this package is for revolutionary polydermal and internal resistance to various forms of attack, minimalising physical harm to an operative with both kinetic projectiles and environmental hazards.
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Shadowing Hate
17 - High detail release.
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The high-detail release of Shadowing Hate is designed as being barely functional, barely playable with the system I'm using at the moment using the engine lowest quality settings possible. A lot of the models will be subdivided to round off a lot of sharp geometry. Just about every texture will be the original double-scale, including the normal maps, they won't be resampled down so every texture will be very sharp. There will be extra effects like additional shader layers, particle counts and environment effects. The maps will be retouched so all of the little details that weren't possible to use in the first playable release could be used. Greater numbers of objects will be interactive features and more neutral characters will also be present in the new maps. The gameplay and objectives won't be changed at all and not much of the lighting will be changed either. The hardest part about doing this is getting the whole lot organised and uploaded. The goal has been to do something visually ahead of its time and hopefully something still being played years from now.
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Shadowing Hate
18 - Technical aspects.
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Current tech
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Shadowing Hate will expect more computer power from players over Doom3 and Quake IV, because it delivers higher resolution textures as standard, the environments are more open-area and the use of lighting and special effects is also increased.
- some of SH's features:-
Texture resolution x2+
Detail mapping on most textures
Detail mapping on most characters and other objects
Environment mapping on many textures
Increased map geometry
Increased character geometry
High-detail character models for close-up cinematics
Soft-edge decal-layer for normalmapped decals and texture seams
The detail mapping is a layer of super hi-res grayscale filtered texture, very small with many tiles. It's almost invisible at a certain distance, but when viewing a surface in-game up close the detail mapping will pick up where perhaps the normalmaps no longer do much but become a blur of colour, the detail mapping helps to keep all textures sharp and crisp, even at close range, while still letting the fully normalmapped textures do their job. The detail maps can also be quickly scripted to be used as extra heightmaps, which means instead of just being a flat filtered texture, it will act as a complementary normalmap, although doing this will have a massive impact on performance, the option is there for future computer power to use.
Although all of this sounds very extreme, Shadowing Hate will be very customisable. There will be 2 versions of every map from the project, one will be a bare-minimum playable release, which will be optimised by removing small non-impact mapobjects, decals and lights, and the other will be the true high-detail release of the same map, containing all of the small detail originally intended for the project while still functioning the same. There will also be 2 versions of script packs including material shaders and special effects scripts, one set will use full detail while the other will have optimised exclusions of detail mapping, environment mapping and other multiple-layer shader effects from the high detail version. And finally, the entire graphics set will be split up between the high-resolution 2x scaled textures and graphics, to the bare-minimum normal-scaled (Doom3 standard) texture set.
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Tech plans:-
- (4) Custom fade-out distance occlusion for mapobjects and decals.
-Preferably as both a material shader parse and map entity value and key, objects will be called to stop rendering at a distance just after becoming transparent from a generic shader effect.
- (4) Ledge-grab player control
-Certain "ledges" in the maps will have brushes that will have a common shader (much like a ladder texture) that the player will be able to climb up from, this will be executed with a viewpoint animation and prevent the player from using weapons and tools because climbing conceptually needs both hands. Mappers control where a player can climb, but this will be a sluggish move for the player and make them vulnerable to attack.
- (4) Wall-jump
-Any player can jump again from any vertical surface with a shift in the opposing direction from the wall, provided the jump command is executed at precisely the same time as the impact with that surface and at the correct speed, the player must also be facing the wall.
- (2) Extra geometric character model detail (2000 poly standard LOD) with extended extra high (3000+) and extra low (-500) LOD stages.
-All of the character model geometry will be more detailed than that of original Quake 4 standards, it will also have 2 extra stages of LOD for minimal and maximum detail on models.
- (3) Additional head model library with actual random placement.
-For each type of character there is a very large selection of head models/skins available that will randomly be placed on the character bodies, except for main characters.
- (3) Extended shared and specific random sound library for more varied event audio.
-Like animations, the collection will be extended and shared between many types of characters, and will act completely randomly. The majority of these will be common male character sounds.
- (3) Optional in-game viewpoint 'static-layer' for pixelation smoothing.
-As silly as it might sound, the static-layer produces an incredibly subtle "video fuzz" effect from the viewpoint with the intention of smoothing off pixelation and giving a video quality appearance.
- (4) Quick-click inventory menu with automatic pause for fast selection of weapons and items.
-A bound key will pause the game, produce the mouse pointer and a UI section with available weapons and items that can be selected and will be activated when the bound key is released. This display will also show full detail weapon model in rotation. This will also be available from the pause menu itself.
- (4) Player action dependant weapon accuracy and relative viewpoint model sway.
-Weapon accuracy is progressive and is temporarily disrupted by player movements such as running and jumping, it is also disrupted by being attacked and even as a response from viewpoint adjustments. The viewpoint weapon model will correspond with the crosshair, as always, as a result of disrupted accuracy.
- (5) Double keytap 'leap' functions for added player evasion tactics.
-When a certain direction key is tapped twice in 'sprint' mode, the player will quickly leap in that given direction and will not take damaging while leaping, although this will completely drain the player's stamina level.
- (4) Redesigned viewpoint player random death event with layered blood effects and secondary third-person zoom-out event.
-Both the player model itself and the viewpoint will have multiple death sequences, the first half of which is in the viewpoint, which will animate and hold a UI layer of a quick pulsating red blood effect, and the second half of a death sequence is in a 3rd person view of the player dying, before fading to black.
- (4) Head model 'fling' physics.
-When a head is shot, the head model will quickly 'fling' on its axis in the direction of the bullet, making headshots more distinctive.
- (5) Multiplayer cooperative modes on single-player missions including mode-specific map entities.
-Most likely impossible, which is a real shame. An option to play the single-player missions as a server for clients to join via LAN/Internet. Maps will contain extra ammo and recollectable weapons, and the single-player missions will be designed with multiple players in mind.
- (5) Alternate aiming style option - mouse-controlled crosshair mode.
-A bound key will toggle an alternative aiming mode where the crosshair will now be controlled by the mouse and move independent of the viewpoint. The viewpoint weapon model will adjust on its axis to follow the mouse-controlled crosshair. Preferably, the viewpoint will change when the crosshair begins to meet the side of the screen.
- (3) Extended varied weapon selection, possibly up to 50 different unique weapons, devices and collectable event-specific items.
-More and varied weapons/items to use, possibly 5x that of original Quake 4.
- (4) Cloak (notarget) item specific effects.
-The TC will make use of the 'notarget' engine command, which makes AI unable to detect the player, for a collectable cloaking item.
- (3) Off-hand grapple hook item.
-This will act as a collectable disposable item like cloak/jetpack, etc, which can be used as a second-function while still able to shoot.
- (3) Flight 'jetpack' item.
-A collectable device that acts much like 'flight' from Q3, although you will progressively lose altitude if not 'firing' the jetpack.
- (4) Gauntlet-like weapon with 'pull' effect that pulls enemies closer.
-A weapon that will pull AI/objects closer for the attack, this is not an off-hand device.
- (4) Off-hand repel item to repel enemies away during close combat.
-Push AI/objects away, although it cause no damage (unless AI is pushed into hazardous areas) but this is an off-hand device.
- (3) Carryable dynamic objects
-Based on the "g_dragEntity" command, the player can (minus the developer info) pick up specially tagged scenery objects in a map at a very close range and carry and move them to anywhere else in the map. The player will automatically drop the object if attacked or otherwise hurt.
- (3) In-game radar HUD section collectable device.
-An item must be collected to activate the HUD radar.
- (5) In-game x-ray collectable device.
-Probably impossible. This makes use of the 'showtris' engine command, although it only reveals a short distance (maybe some kind of mode-specific fog effect, enough to look through thin walls) and triangles are not visible, only whole plain surfaces. Any entities will be much brighter than map geometry.
- (5) In-game geometry control map function for drivable vehicles.
-A certain map geometry entity function will make the geometry controllable, assuming itself as the player, and will move in different ways depending on what type of entity it will be.
- (4) In-game map-triggerable UI layers for optimised environmental effects for rain, snow, heat, etc.
-Certain map triggers will be associated with UI-layer shader effects.
The numbers before each item represent given assumption of difficultly for that particular coding task. (1) is an item that is definitely possible and can be achieved by non-coding artists. (3) is possible but will require some detailed coding work. (5) is of incredible difficulty and may not even be possible.
Terms:-
LOD - Level of detail, when geometry will become less detailed, the further away it is.
Viewpoint - The location of your view, from where you are looking from.
Entities - Specific game objects that have a purpose or can be interacted with.
HUD - Heads-up display, graphics on-screen in-game to show health, ammo, etc.
UI - User Interface, graphics on-screen for options menus, messages, etc. (term also generally used to explain any image/shader that is placed on or across the viewpoint)
Shaders - Images (skins, textures, graphics) with special properties, the scripts of these.
Crosshair - On-screen aiming graphic.
V-Wep - The weapon model seen from the viewpoint.
G-Wep - The weapon model seen from 3rd-person view, or a weapon item to be collected.
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- Weapon swap/Inventory
This is a bind that upon holding down or toggling the bound key will stop gameplay ("g_stoptime")(and possibly combined with "timescale 0.01") and bring up a GUI that will enable you to swap weapons by clicking on icons of the weapon and highlighting it, then when the GUI is closed and you return to the game you will instantly switch to that weapon. This would be a subsection of hopefully a much larger inventory system that will enable you to stop the game to swap weapons and also select other miscellaneous mission items, activate/deactivate your abilities or a custom set of your abilities, also to check your mission objectives and perhaps some notes, conversations history and other snapshots. All of this would still be available in multiplayer too, but for obvious reasons it will not use "g_stoptime"/"timescale".
- Grab/throw physics
This works like the "g_dragentity" cvar, enabling the player to focus on scripted moveable objects in the game and move them around. This needs restrictions on how far away an object can be before the player would be allowed to pick the item up, to pretty much right in front of the player, at the moment it has no distance restrictions at all. The object's mass should determine how much the player speed ("pm_speed") should be affected and lowered. At the moment it is possible to toss objects by flicking the mouse and adjusting viewpoint very quickly and releasing the mouse button just at the right moment, but it would be good to have a bind to automatically throw objects in the angle of the player orientation without needing to flick the object away with that hack. And finally, this system needs to have the printed info removed from the screen, it also needs to be disregarded as a cheat and enabled in multiplayer. Preferably, this system would also act to put the player in a holstered/unarmed state, where some neutral NPCs won't regard the player as a threat, but then that deals with needing to give the NPCs different states of alertness which they don't have anyway.
- Stealth brush
This is a brush type, working much like either clip texture or trigger brush, that when the player comes into contact with it, it will serve a function, in this case it will temporarily trigger something along the lines of the "notarget" cvar. Since "notarget" doesn't do much in multiplayer anyway, unless you're playing against bots, it should be safe enough to actually use "notarget" and disregard it as a cheat. The brushes will be placed in dark areas or in small areas of cover to help conceal the player from enemies, bringing decent stealth gameplay possibilities into the levels.
- Energy
Like health, energy is an amount/counter displayed on-screen that can be increased with items and possibly GUIs (like the Med GUIs in Doom3) and it is decreased by the use of your abilities/upgrades and possibly EMP attacks from enemies or environmental hazards. When your energy level hits zero you won't die but none of your abilities/upgrades will function. Energy levels should decrease according to the type of abilities you're using, and the rate of decrease should multiply with each ability/upgrade combo you're using at the time. For example, one ability/upgrade will drain your energy within 25 seconds, but all of them at once will drain it within 5 seconds.
- Abilities/Upgrades
Each of these are very different so it's difficult to cover it in one go, so I'll start with the cvar ones I've already figured out. Abilities are activated either by a bound key or from using your inventory GUI/weapon swap. For speed ability, the cvar "pm_speed" is increased from 160 to 320 and back again. While it's set to 320, the energy level must be set to automatically decrease, let's say by 5 points per second, and when your energy is at zero, "pm_speed" will become no greater than 160. Jump ability uses the cvar "pm_jumpheight" and switches it from 56 to 180 and would probably decrease by the same rate, although with this the player can switch it on and off quick enough to get the jump height without losing any energy so it's more ideal to decrease the energy level per jump, if possible. The other abilities like this use "timescale 0.2" for slow-time ability, "notarget" for invisibility, "god" for a temporary invincibility (which would really eat up your energy!), and "g_showenemies" could be used to somehow have an enemy-tracking ability. So energy justifies a limited allowance on cheating and exploiting other development functions which are the abilities.
- Integrations
urlhttp://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=9746&start=0/url
This mod has a few things I'd like to get into Shadowing Hate, mainly the night-vision as an ability. I'll get around to asking BloodRayne directly if we can at least look at how he did it and get some ideas, but he seems like a nice guy so I'm sure he won't mind us using some of his code. Having flares in there would also be great especially that it's combined with the flashlight and uses ammo which is a very good idea.
These are some engine enhancements that pretty much work along side the project at the moment anyway, but it would be better to integrate them into the project so there's no conflicting code and people won't have to download them separately:-
urlhttp://quake4.filefront.com/file/Parallax_Mapping_Engine_20;49663/url
urlhttp://quake4.filefront.com/file/Brilliant_Highlights;55673/url
urlhttp://quake4.filefront.com/file/Ambient_Light_Mod;55439/url
urlhttp://quake4.filefront.com/file/GTX_Q4;56309/url
urlhttp://doom3.filefront.com/file/Maximum_Graphic;50595/url
Mainly including Parallax mapping and bloom shader to Shadowing Hate would be wonderful to have, at least as an option.
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AI alertness states:-
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00> Allied
01> Idle, patrolling, interacting with other AI
02> Disturbed, searching
03> Attacking
The AI needs different levels of alertness. The first (00) is the normal NPC state, and (01) and (03) are the normal enemy states, already both in Quake 4. We need to create a dynamic behaviour between these states, in which an enemy can go from state (01) to (03) and back again. (02) is the most difficult, it's initiated when an enemy first sees or hears the player, which doesn't happen in Quake 4. This state is active for let's say about 3 seconds, in which time the player can move out of view or stop making noise. If the player is successful, the enemy should return to its normal state (01), but if the player remains in view or attacks the enemy, the enemy will go into state (03) of attack, for as long as the player is in the view of the enemy, after which it returns to state (01) via state (02).
The real trick is to let the enemy "forget" the player, and after a while of being in state (03) without finding the player (the enemy must only know where the player is if they see them), the enemy will then be in state (02) and search randomly for the player for a few more moments, then return to state (01).
Lastly, there needs to be some scripting to allow enemies to become allies, and allies to become enemies, through some global value. An NPC in state (00) can, through the actions of the player, turn to state (01) to (03) and back again. This may be triggered by objectives being completed/failed, or conversation choices, or overall storyline alliances.
So basically, we would take all 3 of the AI states already in Quake 4 (allied NPC\enemy idle\enemy attack), and give them to each AI (ally or enemy) equally, with each AI able to behave in all states. It would also need a couple of extra states, in between being idle and attack, there needs to be an uncertain/searching state that is temporary, an on-edge state. At the moment, Quake 4 AI (once active) will always automatically know where the player is and find them, so we need to force the AI to "forget" the player location somehow, in order for these alertness states to be realistic. The Thief games are the prime example of such alertness states. FarCry is another example.
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SH Jumping:-
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The jump system will be more advanced than most FPS games. Firstly, it will feature a jump height result determined by the duration of the command. For example, if the RMB (default jump bind) is quickly tapped, the player will perform a low hop, where as if the RMB is held down the player will jump the highest and for the longest duration possible. Furthermore, the player will have the ability of double-jumping and wall-jumping. The double-jump allows the player to gain a little extra height in mid-air by simply pressing the RMB again, however this requires skillful timing and once the player starts to descend from the initial jump, a double-jump will not be possible, likewise if the player attempts to double-jump too soon it will not be effective. The wall-jumping works like double-jump, except the player must be in contact with a wall or other collision object, and the resulting wall-jump will be much more effective than a mere double-jump, propelling the player away from the wall. In an alley-way, for example, wall-jumping could be used to scale the height of the area by wall-jumping back and forth from wall to wall provided they have enough stamina, if the player has enough skill and timing, but like double-jump a wall-jump will not be possible if the player is already descending, or at least it won't be possible to gain any height by wall-jumping during descent. Both double-jumping and wall-jumping will deplete more stamina than regular jumping and requires an initial minimum stamina amount, having zero stamina will disable the ability to perform these types of jumps. Certain alternate routes or secret areas will only be accessible by performing double-jumps or wall-jumps to reach certain areas of a map, where otherwise normal jumping will not allow.
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Experience and Skills:-
--------
Experience is simply a universal value based on the "experience" a player has throughout the game, and given to the player during certain events during missions. It can be triggered and paid out at any time during any event involving any items or scenery. It does not need to directly relate to any type of ability or skill.
Skills are upgraded using experience points earned during missions, but can only be upgraded once enough skill points are earned for a specific skill, to enable the experience points to be spent on that skill and have it made effective.
Skills include the following maximums and efficiencies:-
- Health (gauge increase)
- Energy (gauge increase)
- Armour (gauge increase)
- Stamina (gauge increase)
- Ammo (extra clips)
- Stock (weapons and items)
- Movement (running and jumping)
- Hacking/Lockpicking/Weapons (speed)
Each of these categories must be increased using skillset points before they can be populated and made effective with experience points. Often you will get a plentiful supply of experience points but unable to spend them because skillset points are much harder to come by.
Here's an example scenario of how skillset and experience is used in conjunction:-
The player performs double-jumps down a hallway toward a room that requires hacking the security and lockpicking the door before killing the guards inside with headshots and collecting their ammo. All of these actions reward the player with experience points, let's say enough for a skillset upgrade. The player then finds a valuable item in the room that relates to a skillset, let's say it's a nice pair of new boots. Once collected, it automatically adds to the maximum value a skill can be set, this would be a movement skill for running and jumping that has increased from 0/0 to 0/10. The player can now spend experience points on that skill and upgrade it from 0/10 to 10/10. Later there may be another skill-related event or item that will allow the skill to upgrade from 10/10 to 10/20 and experience points can then be spent to upgrade to 20/20 and so on until the skillset is fully upgraded toward the end of the game, but like abilities it will be made impossible for all skillsets to be maximised, this forces the player to choose what skills they want to be most effective with.
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Ability upgrade kits:-
--------
The ability system is not as complex as the skillset system. Once an ability has been activated (usually while at HQ) the player can upgrade these abilities with special upgrade kits collected throughout the game. Like experience points, kits can be spent to upgrade any ability, however these are very rare and can only be spent to upgrade to the ability's next level, 1 for 1. Unlike skillsets, the levels an ability can be upgraded to do not need to be expanded by collecting points or performing any actions. There may seem to be some conflicts between abilities and skills, such as run speed and jump height, however these do not relate or affect each other. Having full movement skill will not combine with the movement ability to give even greater speeds and heights. Also, the skills are always subtle upgrades that have very little effect compared to the abilities which are very noticeable yet temporary enhancements to the player. Like skillsets, there are not enough upgrade kits in the game to upgrade every single ability to all maximums, so again it forces the player to determine what kind of operative they wish to be and with what kind of abilities they will use to complete the missions.
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Shadowing Hate
19 - Multiplayer
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The multiplayer aspects of Shadowing Hate will initially be a different face on the original Doom3 multiplayer setup. Deathmatch will offer a variety of different maps and characters while team-deathmatch will be focused on the police force versus the thugs/operatives and the maps will have suitable objectives for this scenario. Later there maybe be some other options but since this conversion is strictly a media-heavy job it's difficult to plan any distinct features, however, our team will be working closely with some other mod teams and resources should be plentiful. Should there be unlimited possibilities, we'd like to use any resources to create unique map-specific objectives and possibly to create player classes within the teams, hopefully multiple teams and maps to accommodate the different teams and what they would, according to the story, fight for and hope to achieve. Hopefully there will be numerous different people willing to create custom maps especially for this total conversion.
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Shadowing Hate
20 - Map design.
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Maps should have a similarity between them. I've stuck with trying minimalize actual static brushwork and filling in detail with mapobjects and decals, stuff like that. This is because we want to strive for large outdoor areas and there is a great chance we'll hopefully be able to optimise things like models and decals, and they're much easier to work with if we need to tidy up the maps. The singleplayer maps I've planned so far are going to be particularly difficult to execute. 100-storey skyscraper to begin with. There's really only one way to do this so I insist on personally handling that.
Multiplayer maps can be very different, there isn't really even a need to stick to any of the themes. Think small team objective-based maps and you can pretty much do anything you want. I originally wanted to make it a cops and robbers kind of theme. It's really difficult to know what we will be capable of doing with multiplayer stuff, so perhaps we should start with small deathmatch maps, that way anything we do now we can be confident we will be using it later, so we don't waste time. I'd probably start with a small map with the objective to rob a bank/prevent the bank from being robbed. It has nothing to do with the storyline but the all of media should fit pretty well. The police are a big part of this, so it's wise to base things around them. It would be absolutely lovely to know we have the freedom to do very complex objectives in our multiplayer maps, but at the moment I think it's better to concentrate on simple deathmatch, and there isn't much point trying to do singleplayer maps just yet because there's still a lot of modeling and texturing to do.
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Shadowing Hate
21 - Player Customisations
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Each model will consist of a head model and a body model that can form any customised pair, any head can be fitted onto any body model with no real restriction. This is taken a step further in Shadowing Hate with any head/face texture being able to be applied to any head model and any body texture being able to be applied to any body model.
This is possible due to the careful preplanning of UV coordinates to be almost exactly the same for each model, which makes customisation of characters extremely flexible, although not every combination can possibly be fitting (e.g. a bearded woman) the possibility is still there for players, with these four aspects and a very large texture collection, to create very unique characters.
The UV mapping was created differently from most professional techniques used, purposely designed to not be angularly precise. Stretching/warping was used to our advantage, basing the layout over a special grid texture that ensures the most important areas have a right-angle normal orientation while stretching and warping is used to bend the texture around certain curves giving a natural yet clean look to all of the textures, if done correctly. Generally there is further tweaking done to each texture set for its designated model, however these changes are not so drastic that the UV mapping and texture is not compatible with all others.
The head textures match better with different head models because each head model is fundamentally a different shape and the presence of warping doesn't reduce the quality of the final media, in fact in some cases it can bend otherwise pixelated areas of texture and also achieve certain tricks. The body models are moreso catered to its original texture and vise versa, so there are many more opportunities for nonsense mixes of model and texture, but generally, at least at a distance, all possibilities will have character.
Naturally there will be strange warping and inaccurate representation of the media with some combinations, that's to be expected, but the point is that it's up to the player what pleases their eye and that we'll do everything we can to focus on this compatibility of player model customisation.
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Shadowing Hate
22 - Deeper Insight
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.....
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Shadowing Hate
23 - Bullet Holes
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Why cannot AECE provide direct transport to DREtech HQ, yet are able to retrieve Vallick from an obviously more dangerous situation, when even DREtech aircraft are active enough to attack the building? How could an AECE craft possibly be detected by opposing forces? Why only at the end of the mission is it safe? (answer= because at that time the AECE have a doubly critical but anticipated situation on their hands and the timing is right for the MetroPD to become involved in the DREtech incident, leaving a double-headed confusion and time for quick escape. DREtech have these fighters to attack their own building yet they somehow miss Vallick and Lethene escaping? Luck or stupidity, or the AECE craft was quite able to outrun those underdeveloped DREtech fighters.)
If gun-control in this metropolis is so extreme why would the surface to the industrial zone be so dangerous to Vallick? (answer= because when something is banned it will always have a homemade approach or "black market" replacement. Criminals on the streets need their devices of authority, too. The city undergrowth is vastly different to the pricey apartment complexes and government offices he is used to.
Why does Agent Vallick not just simply disarm himself and proceed to DREtech HQ, via the subway, in a disguise after leaving the apartment complex? (answer= Sure, he could take a stealth approach, and we'll try to make it possible to do that in the game, but this is a man on a mission, no time to lose. The police are far more trouble and are more difficult to fool.)
Why would DREtech HQ be so easy to infiltrate when it's nearly impossible for employees to leave? (answer= DREtech is still a public building but it has varying layers of security. There is the quasi-friendly exterior of the chubby little building and its solid, high-security core, complete with its own squadron of assault troops. Lethene is worried because her "leave time" keeps being extended in the core, in other words, she cannot escape.)
Why would DREtech only have 1 prototype attack unit on standby? (answer= the DREtech HQ building is pretty big but not nearly big enough to store dozens of these things. They decided to have one at the front of the building in a big solid pillar that, from the outside looks like you can access it from the floor above it on the inside, but inside there's nothing. Doors come down, which look like part of the architecture, to reveal a hidden room only just big enough for the robot to be stored. From here it can reasonably quickly walk around either side of the building, and Vallick and Lethene escape from the front doors. After being attacked, this building also, like many, has a lockdown mode preventing damage from the outside but also the escape of anyone or anything from inside, however Lethene can still have access enough to escape, only from the main lobby where they directly encounter the robot.)
Yto. A company dealing with illegal matters wants to keep a low profile. Don't you think sending in a whole squad of killers just to dispose of Vallick would draw too much attention from the law enforcers? (answer= Yes and no. No because Yto are at their most bitter and final straw after what the AECE left of their long-spanning operations, particularly Vallick. Yes because the AECE also need to keep a low profile, Vallick will have no chance but to also deal with the law and Yto know this, and this is precisely what happens. Yto are at a relatively suicidal stage in their existence.)
Why would AECE even be interested in the Shadows project? (answer= they were closely communicated with by Dr.Lethene originally. Maybe a friend of a friend? Could happen, it's all in the metropolis. The AECE have made many proud achievements yet only having dealings with Yto as of yet. The officials are getting bored, they want to finally use their team for something more worthy and challenging. With what Lethene tells them, they feel this Shadows project is their calling.)
Why does not the military just take over the entire operation? Why is this an AECE assignment? (answer= the AECE regard this future state of the shallow ends of mass national military too cumbersome and political to handle such a delicate operation. Vallick is the elite agent, the best hope of approaching this, to cause confusion and buy time. The Shadows project is still in development, but it's evolved enough to start a war that could otherwise be avoided, a chance best with the AECE. They do have some deep roots.)
What do all of these silly acronyms stand for anyway? (answer=
- AECE - Alliance of Elite Cybernetics Engineering
- HALops - Human Artificial Lethal Operatives
- DREtech - Development and Research Evolutions (DRE-technologies)
- Q-Sec(QS) - Quintec Sectorial
- SOF - Shadow of Fear
- SOH - Shadow of Hate
- SOP - Shadow of Pain
- MetroPD - Metropolitan Police Department
- JED505 - This is just a pet name, Jed, followed by its design type and number.
- Yto - Not an acronym. It's a family name, the youngest single daughter of the bloodline is Ni Yin Yto, their most deadly, whom you need to kill during the very first level or she will kill you.)
What is the entire purpose of the Shadows project, why are these units being massively produced, who are they being supplied to and what is their intention? (answer= originally I wanted to create a piece of the story about a war in another country, and there still remains that aspect in the pretext, but it's far too ambitious a concept for the actual game, so almost all of these stocks of robots are not in-place and ready for battle where Vallick finds them. You'll fight a lot in the game, but the Shadows project is so much bigger than that. You won't be fighting all of them at once, mostly you'll need to blow them to absolute bits in a variety of ways.)
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Shadowing Hate
24 - The Vision
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It's difficult to describe the intentions of the visual styles and atmosphere of Shadowing Hate, because it's been designed to be subtle in many ways. The environments should be constructed to still seem familiar beneath the lights and shiny metals, there should still seem to be old buildings and urban decay, old styles and fashions, reminiscence and memorabilia of earlier days, more simple and functional designs rather than fancy-futuristic extravagance "just because it can". Things should be made to look old and used and dirty, despite being perhaps more commonly metals and plastics rather than bricks and carpets, although there will still be plenty of that around. There should also be a strong concept of a future age that isn't quite ironed-out just yet, so yes we have small robotic cleaning machines that do a great job, but they aren't 100% reliable, you will sometimes see one on the fritz that's trying to continually headbutt a potplant over for a whole day or so. Public lights that are flickering and need changing or other objects that have been vandalized or decimated somehow. There are other areas that we need to think about what has happened there in terms of violence and combat, some areas would have seen gunfights and explosives so we need to portray that in the environments with detail and approach designs with functionality in mind over unusual concepts. Things can still be done very differently and retain both functionality and familiarity. As for people, there will always be strange and new fashions, appearances and social behaviors, but nothing too outrageous for Shadowing Hate. Again it has a focus on function over fashion, and many of the hairstyles and clothing will be proven styles that have had a longevity in our history, and we will avoid commonplace use of our modern real-world styles in the game. Toward the end of Shadowing Hate, there will be plenty of room to throw in some very unusual concepts with design, so the aim is to take the audience from environments that are futuristic yet real-world familiar, and eventually lead them into cleaner and more unusual high-tech futuristic environments where we can finally begin to consider styles over functionality. The entire storyline is also more about function, it deals with ideas that could easily become more epic and outrageous, but they don't. It focuses on its concepts in a smaller and more personal scale, yet also on a crucial level, and this is what will help it to retain its originality, long term. It doesn't try to be the mightiest epic tale out there, it's concentrated more on a functional story about a small yet incredibly significant piece of the puzzle that is Shadowing Hate. So it's a story of contrasts yet done with modesty and focus.
The nasty elements
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Shadowing Hate isn't as calm and friendly as it may seem at this point, we haven't been able or ready to fully express just how violent and stressful this experience will be. For example, the very first mission will see you up against a small gang of trained killers, so from the moment you get your weapons and little more information about your major objectives of the first chapter, you will be engaged in gunfights. Not only with these killers, but with the city police force, who are also quite nasty and vicious enemies for you. The first mission, despite all of this, is comparatively relaxed to the rest of the first chapter and indeed the rest of the game experience.
We will be making extra efforts to make sure that we stay at a certain level of realism on all levels, with sound effects and voice acting, animation and special effects. As gamers, we understand the importance of a satisfying experience, we understand the benefits of creating stressful and violent situations layered over clear and determined objectives, with the satisfaction of the resolve, your own surivival through the destruction of others in desperate situations. We also understand the importance of the player feeling a sense of their own mortality, we want the player to fear engaging in combat with others and perhaps not given a choice to avoid doing so. We understand the importance of creating atmosphere and situations to toy with the players emotions and the choices they will make in the game. The enemies in Shadowing Hate will not be difficult to kill, but then it's the same for the player. You have your 100% health, but it's subjective to the amount of damage you can take and it can be made to disappear very quickly, giving the player a true sense of mortality.
Basically, it's in the name, Hate, it's a story about lies and hatred waiting to be uncovered and unleashed, and we as the developers will be constantly balancing to find the medium between causing the player to feel fear and anger and giving them the tools and abilities to overcome it, intensifying the satisfaction.
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The Music
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Hopefully we'll be able to script global music changes based on certain activities rather than just map triggers as is currently used. We would have different variations depending on enemy activity, NPC interactivity and player events like death or mission success, and these would be automatically interchangeable during the gameplay.
*_ambient = The ambient track that plays throughout the mission, this track is long but not intense or distracting, normally somewhat calm with music that helps concentration. Depending on the atmosphere of the level and type of objectives, for example, a mission that would involve a lot of stealth should reflect calm and quiet atmosphere.
*_action = This track would kick in when the player engages in combat, or when an enemy sights the player. It needs to begin with a bang or crash, an abrupt interruption over the ambient score and to alarm the player. This track would be more intense and distracting than the ambient track, and will fade back to the ambient track when the combat is done with.
*_conv = The track that plays when the player is engaged in conversation sequences with another character, using computers/GUIs and perhaps when in the HUD menus. It's a much slower and more relaxed variation on the theme.
*_death = During the player's death sequence, the track changes again, like the action variation it would need to begin with an abrupt sound and slowly fade out into something more dull, to represent life slipping away from the character.
These variations need some similarities to blend together more effectively, preferably many of the same instruments used and a relative tempo (x0.5, x1, x1.5) since the tracks may change at any time we need to make sure to help the music have more balanced changes. A few things about music - one is no uncharacteristic techno music. The music needs to have little to no repetitions and a percussive individualism that has variation and personality. For example, when composing a lot of music, I tend to use moreso rock/march drum beats instead of the typical repetitive techno beats, because this helps give the music more a sense of determination and motivational purpose, rather than the annoying constant pressures of typical techno. People would probably instantly imagine this kind of project having techno music, but I want to take a very different approach and do more theatrical scores with some strange industrial sounds and march beats, and mostly stay clear of heavy metal and techno. I would like the music to represent the seriousness of the storyline rather than the novelties of the gameplay.
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Shadowing Hate
25 - Misc.Xtra/Unsorted
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The AECE is split up into several departments, apart from HALops. There is the Board Of Officials, where all of the main decisions are made. The directors, making up roughly half of the officials and always present at headquarters. The mission coordinators and assistants that deal with realtime support for operatives in the field. The computer lab team including specialist data analysts, encryption experts and network hackers. Offsite reconnaissance and support teams, an elite team of spies conducting low-profile low-risk missions. Then there's the medical lab, the largest group that handle all matters dealing with the HALops systems, including the continuous research into advancing the systems, located both at headquarters and offsite. Finally, the AECE have certain powers to arrange a decent sized standby military force if necessary, although this contingency is for dire emergencies only.
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NEW NANO-NEEDLES TOO
SHARP FOR GRANNIES
Reports of bloodshed and mayhem pour in today
from the Shaky Vines Retirement Villa in
Graystrom West while the residents were using
the new nanotechnologically crafted sewing
needles from DREtech Industries. The needles
are a compressed heavy titanium component
encased in an ultra-thin equalised
micropetrified liquid diamond coating.
One of the needles reportedly pierced right
through the finger of 83 year-old Gladice Woodlow and dropped down to pierce through her
fluffy pink slipper and left big toe after which she instantly bled to death. Whereabouts
of the menacing needle are unknown although it is believed to have pierced directly
through the floor and continued down through the basement and is possibly currently in the
underground plumbing system.
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Unknown to him, Adin Vallick was once a Parallax recruit, to be the key operative in their UltraSpectre operation. The parallels are amazing, Parallax would have focused on their advanced, yet far more unstable and crude cybernetics program, upgrading him both internally and externally. The current Spectre program involves hideous malformations of human patients, replacing their skin with synthetic materials capable of semitransparency through axialchromatic correspondent nanites in the fabrics, allowing them to cloak. The downside is that this is temporary and restrictive, and most of these Parallax Spectres are disastrous failures and end up being terminated. Vallick would have been different, and would have led Parallax in the right direction technically, even if it killed him. The AECE at the time was in a similar situation, their HALops program was returning mixed results and all they needed was a prime specimen of a human to iron out the flaws. So how did the AECE find Vallick and rescue him from Parallax? Something to do with Yto? Yto aware of both Parallax and AECE somehow? There needs to be some history here. Yto have obviously extensive knowledge of AECE through their dealings, perhaps Yto intend to form an alliance with Parallax somehow.
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phase0- memory wipe
phase1- analysis, preliminary training
phase2- muscular implants
phase3- cardiovascular implants
phase4- optical and cranial implants
phase5- neural implants
phase6- upgrades
Electromagnetic attacks are not very useful against the HALops agents, because EMP weapons can typically only be used in the form of mines and grenades and because the cybernetic implants rely so greatly on the biological systems of the operative, these forms of attack are usually nothing to be concerned about. Although a close range EMP attack will affect all systems, this is always temporary, never lasting more than a few seconds. Effects include muscular dysfunction, flatline of heartrate and complete sensory loss, blindness and loss of hearing, causing the host to pass-out or faint and collapse. The cardiovascular systems will boot straight back up, in all tests we've had a perfect 0% long-term failure of systems. The neural systems may take a little longer and in rare cases the software may develop minor glitches and memory leaks. Nothing we can't fix but notably very distracting for agents, possibly even optically obstructive, but this is extremely rare in our tests. As in the agent's tactics database, the best strategy for recovery is to remain crouched or huddled near the ground and bear the emitted pulse, not to panic or try to run away. Mission coordinators and realtime technicians can usually force most systems back online remotely, full recovery will normally not take any more than ten seconds, even with high range and frequency attacks. My concern is that eventually the biocompound encasing the technology will degrade and allow for more exposure, and any developed mobile continuous pulse weapon will cause major problems. We should concentrate on developing the compound further, or thinking about some other form of EMP protection for our agents.
- Seta Mepantik
Optical
Neural
Cardio
Muscular
Only a small number of subjects are compatible with the cardiovascular and muscular implants, requiring near immaculate physical health, build and motor function, subjects must also be of a certain age, typically younger than 25, but these technologies are very safe and easy to implement, maintain and even replace. The optical and neural implants are far less dependant on athletic ability, increasing the subject compatibility but is a far more dangerous surgery and high risk of most subjects bodies rejecting the technology. The neural implants especially are vulnerable to extended periods of electromagnetic exposure and psychological anomalies, requiring subjects to have strong mental will, such as being able to deal with disorders and hallucinations. Only subjects that meet all requirements to become an advanced operative can fully utilise the complete set of cybernetic and biomechanic systems and allow certain computer subsystems to integrate for new abilities or extensions of existing ones. An example of this is the self-replication of fibres in the biotech strains of the muscle implants allow for almost invincible and infinite maintenance of quality of the technology, made only possible by the correlation of the muscular implants and the power of the main neural processor via the core energy cells.
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In a way the worst torture is how they would let you surround yourself with what you love, what has meaning to you, and after a couple of weeks even the most stubborn would give in and start placing orders, it's their sleazy attempt to make you happy and win them favour, perhaps even have you like them, but you end up hating what you get, every item becomes symbolic of your imprisonment and the filthy work they have you doing, every item mocks and taunts you, no matter what it is, you begin to believe it's their creation, they made it just to break your psychology. It works for some. For others, I can now understand why I hear them going nuts and destroying what they've ordered. Maybe I'll be doing the same within a couple of days.
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Slowly, one by one, the Xodi elders are being assassinated, and tribal leadership falls into the hands of their corrupt successors. Xodi blames Yto, Yto blame the AECE, and the AECE intend to find out who really is to blame.
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Jileyl is a Xodi tribesman who has somehow become aware of the Parallax recruitments, and seeks Adin Vallick's help to get him recruited, perhaps thinking Vallick is somehow involved. This is an early yet vague link to Parallax from AECE, via Xodi.
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"POST-FIRE MECHANICS"
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A new invention that has revolutionised modern pistols and assault rifles, post-fire mechanics is a term used for the reshaping and expansion of a round after it has been fired from the weapon, minimising magazine occupation while maximising impact damage substantially, extremely effective against organic targets at close range. These types of slugs can be used with standard explosive-trigger casings but are typically used in electromagnetically accelerated chamber weapons, or "railgun" weapons. This makes it an incredibly expensive yet ultimately efficient alternative to standard rifle projectiles.
The slug is stored as a solid minimised round in the magazine, allowing for far greater counts in relatively small magazines, thus most weapons capable of carrying over 100 rounds in standard handle-sized magazines and up to 300 or even more in the extended magazine sizes. There are even a small number of these weapons that use ammo belts allowing for sustained discharge with unprecedented rates of fire.
(slug contained in magazine, as fired):-
<======o
After the slug has been accelerated and discharged from the barrel, computer sensors in both each slug and the actual nose of the barrel triggers the expansion process instantly. This is a calculated and precision timed process as premature expansion can alter the trajectory significantly. Expansion, or maximisation, usually takes place in three steps, from the enclosed minimized internal storage phase, to the initial post-fire phase, to the fully maximised impact phase.
(initial post-fire maximisation phase):-
/==/
\==\
Within a range of about 1ft, the slug will have expanded to its full extent, typically protruding sharp metallic frills designed to extend aerodynamicy and dynamically increase the calibre of the round. The maximisation process is done in circular or spiral patterns around the length of the projectile, which increases its spin factor which, in turn, combined with its increased aerodynamic properties, further maximizes the speed of the shot and its ballistic attributes.
(final impact maximisation phase):-
//-//===
_/==/
\==\
\\-\\===
Maximisation shapes and designs can vary, there are a number of different popular designs although none having any major benefit over any other standard design. Post-fire mechanic rounds can be composed of various types of metals and cheap light-weight heat-resistant polysynthetic compounds, sometimes using heavily compressed materials such as microhexwoven alloys, although this is rare due to the expense of production. It makes more an ideal choice for stealthy operatives because there is no shell to eject, no traces left behind, as is naturally relatively quiet. They have a zero percent ricochet factor upon impact as the lower-grade materials tend to shatter the projectile, at such high speeds the materials fragment into an almost fine dust in an attempt to safen this already dangerous technology. The higher-grade materials will penetrate almost any surface, often referred to as "armour-shredding rounds", although still not an effective weapon against most mechanical opponents. It's usually easy to tell if post-fire mechanics are being used due to its hallmark ear-popping "click" sound when fired and high-pitch "whizzing" or "whistling" sound during its trajectory path. The post-fire mechanic rounds also become unusually illuminated as it heats up at high speed and rapid rotation, which makes it easily recognisable in dark combat scenarios.
The next generation is explosive-impact post-fire mechanic rounds, a controversially dangerous upgrade on this already devastating technology, although most research has yielded undesirable results due to the instability and sensitivity of each slug, especially when confined in such a compact space, it turns a magazine into a potential frag grenade with a highly concentrated damage radius, although if this technology is ever stable enough for practical and reliable use, it would prove very useful against any opponent, even heavily armoured robotic units.
So far, it's only major downside is its range limitation, each round suffers severe deceleration within a 500m range after exhausting its initial aerodynamic motion, making it almost impossible for use in long range weapons like sniper rifles. An alternative method sometimes used is to delay the maximisation process which relies on preprogramming within the activation code of each slug, although this compromises accuracy in very unpredictable ways and is generally an unreliable and therefore very inefficient method, offering no benefit over traditional long-range rifle munitions already used.
----------------------------
PUDDLES:-
-Trigger (trigger brush to target FX for sound, particles and scripted materials.)
-Spec (a separate brush above the ground level for specularity around and slightly off the edges.)
-Decal (inverted decal texture to match the surrounding texture at ground level.)
-Water (multi-effect single-surface animating water shader.)
-Detail (semitransparent detail-texture-only, gives illusion of surface somehow under mirror(cement under water.)
-Mirror (no-frills real-time reflection common/mirror, reflects from ground-up, none can be two-sided.)
--------------------
With extreme laws against robotics weaponry, including computerised weapon devices and especially cybernetics, the AECE break all of these laws fundamentally just by even existing. Ironically, many members of the AECE board of management are political identities protesting against the open-development of robotics for use in aggressive warfare, enabling them not only to find loopholes to retain secrecy, but to create new ones to ensure that they are the only official national agency focusing specifically on developing and monopolising this technology. Their hypocrisy and secrecy is the very thing that makes them efficient and effective, they get away with having complete control over developing the technology because they also largely control the prevention of other organisations and agencies doing the same. Although it's been a long-term plan and they have evolved to such high points, Shadowing Hate takes place during a time when the AECE is falling apart and becoming uncovered from many different directions, and for a long time there have been rumours of these government super-agents with computers in their brains. As hard as it is for people to come to terms with, certain parties take the rumours very seriously, particularly Yto and Q-Sec, having entire operations dedicated to AECE, discovering who they are, what they do and ultimately how they can take control of it.
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Average scraper is 2560x x 2560y x 10240z Radiant units
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Shadowing Hate FAQ
updated: 060608
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Q: Will I need Quake IV to play it?
A: Yes, you will need a retail copy of Quake IV 1.3 installed
Q: Do I need to pay to play Shadowing Hate?
A: No no no, it's completely free and even if we could sell it, we wouldn't
Q: Will I need more computer power to play it?
A: Yes and no. You will need a _lot_ more power to play at maximum quality, but
any PC that can handle Q4 at high quality will handle the low-detail release
on low quality. As more is developed, we will release more specific info
Q: Will the high-detail release kill my PC?
A: It shouldn't, the engine already has safe-guards against overloading your
system, so it may run at only 1FPS, but it shouldn't cause you any harm
Q: Is this that "Deus Ex" mod?
A: No, it has never been about or related to the "Deus Ex" games, although they
are wonderful games and a big influence on us and similar in ways, so it has
been nicknamed "that Deus Ex mod", but it is actually completely original
Q: Why did you guys switch over to Quake IV anyway?
A: The engine has some further enhancements over Doom3 that we really need,
especially when it comes to AI behaviour, vehicles and large outdoor areas
Q: The Quake IV community is pretty much dead, why not pick another game?
A: Because our project will be so much different to the visual themes of Quake IV,
the project is standing on its own two feet and not desperately relying on an
already built up community, for better or for worse
Q: Will there be any multiplayer modes?
A: Yes, we are focused on multiplayer objective-based teamplay, as well as some
other exciting new multiplayer features we won't be mentioning just yet
Q: Will there be any HDR/post-processing?
A: Not true HDR for now, but we are working with other developers to extend
the capabilities of the rendering engine with exciting new effects not found
in vanilla Quake 4
Q: Will I be able to make my own maps/content for this project?
A: Yes, we will strongly support any external community development for this
project and gladly host any of your files
Q: You've swapped engines a few times, are you sure you'll stick with Q4?
A: For the singleplayer missions, definitely, although we may have a strictly
multiplayer-only release for "Enemy Territory: Quake Wars", more on that later
Q: Is there a mature content rating for Shadowing Hate?
A: There will be a lot of graphic violence and very bad language in this project,
so the 15+ Quake IV rating still stands, for a mature audience only
Q: I want to learn more about the story, can you tell me?
A: No, but if you join the forum and are part of development process, you can
download the official documents and read through everything for yourself
Q: The project is so big to download and I'm on dialup, will you post it to me?
A: Yes, you can place an order for us to post it to you, free of charge, although
we will go through the list in order, when we can, and can't make any promises
Q: I have some dev skills and would like to help out, can I join the team?
A: We are always looking for new members and contributors so please visit the
forum and post about yourself and your work in the recruitment topics
Q: When will this project _ever_ be finished??
A: "When it's done", we're working hard almost every day, but this is a massive
project for such a small humble team like us. Please be patient. A lot of
very important aspects are already done, so I can safely say "sometime '07"
Q: Will will there be any pronograhpic content in the mod?
A: No, fuck off, you greasy little weasel!
--------------
I was asked to give an interview on urlwww.QuakePlanet.ru/url, a Russian Quake 4 site, about Shadowing Hate, so I thought I would post it here too as more public info about the project, as the interview may most likely end up shortened and translated to Russian on the website.
------------------
Hello again.
"I'm owner of largest Russian Quake 4 fansite (www.QuakePlanet.ru). We are all waiting your total conversion Shadowing Hate for Quake 4. Can you give us some more detailed information about your project (maybe interview)? (including screenshots and arts)."
- Sorry to say that a singleplayer release is still a long time from happening. We plan to have a multiplayer test released by early next year, but the singleplayer missions could take a very long time yet, because our team is still really too small for projects this big. Everything can be found on the website, including screenshots and information, as well as some videos of our models:- (http://www.violationentertainment.com/g_sh.html) any other questions are welcome and can be asked at our team forum here:- (http://www.violationentertainment.com/forum/) and you can also find more information and screenshots there.
"Following some question: About what your TC (shadowing hate)? (universe, setting, storyline)"
- It has been heavily inspired from games like the "Deus Ex" titles and "Perfect Dark 64", and the storylines are similar too. Global domination and technological warfare, and the prevention of. In Shadowing Hate, it is by use of large armies of robotics and so many times in Shadowing Hate your enemies will be robotic units, but also human enemies such as the city police force, who regard the player as a criminal. It will _not_ include aliens, demons, zombies, ghosts or anything supernatural like that. The setting begins in a large futuristic city environment but we plan to release the mod in chapters, so later chapters will include other settings such as forests and subterranean Arctic, possibly even an ocean setting including underwater Pacific. Before that, we must finish the first metropolis chapter and multiplayer tests.
"Could you tell more about game universe? Where and in what year will occur actions?"
- The year will be roughly only 30 years from now, so many of the settings will be familiar. Much technology is still underdeveloped, robotics is still not perfected and cybernetics is still new and dangerous, and the player will encounter many general problems in this futuristic world and with their own identity and psychology, because our lead character, the player, has cybernetic and biomechanical implants, they have many faults and this will often be made to affect the player. The story also involves the breakdown of global economics, massive surges in population and the effects of small-scale nuclear war and global warming, and the political motives to resolve these problems, both good and bad, passive and aggressive, by some very desperate people. The player is a small but very important part of these larger political issues.
"What genre there will be a game? (arcade FPS, stealth action, horror, shoot'em up..)"
- We will focus on intense action, but we are also planning a balance of stealth gameplay. Very little horror, but it will be a very violent experience as we evolve many special effects including the "frag" event. We hope to create a multi-genre game experience that is an intense action FPS with stealthy intellectual RPG aspects.
"It will be really 123 maps in game? What will be duration? More than twenty hours?"
- No sorry, the 123 maps listed on the information page refers to _all_ maps, including test maps. So far, no maps are completed, and only a few are playable. We are concentrating on getting the media finished first, and proper map development is almost the very last thing to be developed in a serious project like this. We hope to give players a long and enjoyable playing experience to match other games, so hopefully 20 hours of play will be possible if our team can expand enough.
"What features will be in game? Weapon? Enemies? Friendly NPCs? What can you tell about vehicles?"
- We want to have a LOT of weapons, so the player can decide which are their favourites to keep. We plan to have RPG-like inventory system, so the player will not be able to carry all weapons at one time, but hopefully we will have up to 50 different weapons, from handheld non-lethal weapons, to pistols, shotguns, automatics, assault and sniper rifles, up to rocket/grenade launchers and high-power energy weapons, as well as other items/upgrades/abilities. We also plan to have neutral NPCs in the form of civilians in the streets, business employees and defecting members of enemy groups, and enemies that belong to different factions that are at war with each other, and hopefully we will have the player be able to choose their own faction too, which will result in specific enemies attacking you or fighting with you, and will possibly affect the actual storyline. We don't have plans for controllable vehicles, but we plan to have robotic units that can be controlled via a GUI on a computer console, so if the robot is destroyed, the player will remain alive. This would usually require the player to "hack" into an enemy computer terminal, but so far that is just an idea.
"What abilities will be at the player except shooting and movement? Game will be how much complex (for hardcore or casual gamers)?"
- Again like Deus Ex, we plan to have upgradeable player abilities such as faster run speeds, higher jumps, more stealth ability, protective abilities, invisibility and the ability to slow down time (slow-motion), all of which will drain a bio-electrical energy gauge that needs a supply of energy cells that can be collected during the game. The abilities will expand based on skill points rewarded to the player throughout the game, until the player has the ultimate abilities of a future special agent and ready for the much harder levels in the game. Some of the enemies will also have these abilities. All of this makes a complex shooter using many different keys and menus. But to be honest, we lack the programmers to be sure about these plans, but we do already have some abilities working. As we hopefully get more team members, we will hopefully get more of these functions working. So far we have made many changes to the "feel" of the game, so it no longer feels like you are playing Quake 4, we have changed as much as possible to make it feel original. We also have many many other ideas in our documents about changing gameplay, but these are only ideas, not all can be possible.
"Why did you chose Quake 4 as a base game, i.e. Doom 3 engine?"
- Originally I started the project with "Return To Castle Wolfenstein", and then shifted to Doom3 as planned, but found that Quake 4 has more potential for our project and already has some features not found in Doom3 such as well-developed allied NPCs, better multiplayer support and most importantly some features to allow for large open environments (distance vis-portals and object-fading), and shifting from Doom3 to Quake 4 involved almost NO work at all. Again, we may shift the project to another engine, perhaps to "Return To Castle Wolfenstein 2" and we already have plans to make a Shadowing Hate version multiplayer mod for "ET Quake Wars". I can say for sure that if RtCW2 is released sometime 2007 and if it's compatible and easy to shift everything from Quake 4, we will definitely do that, mainly because of the contrast between WWII and the Shadowing Hate world, and innovation Gray Matter always bring to their games, I think people will appreciate that more. Being a true total conversion, we don't need to rely on the themes of other games, only the technology (e.g. normalmaps, editor, file formats) and a contrast of theme from a mod is exciting. Hopefully we would gain better overall engine rendering features, such as possibly HDR/bloom, motion blur, and other next-gen effects, if they are included. For now, we will stick with Quake 4 and have a multiplayer test sometime early 2007.
"Why did you decide to make Shadowing Hate?"
- I find the ideas and themes very interesting and I enjoy working on these themes. I have spent a long time thinking about this type of game and it is my dream to develop a first-person shooter, and I guess this is the type of game I would enjoy playing, as only a player. I prefer to make some futuristic designs and try to be original and creative, and bring something new to people.
"Your previous project and experience?"
- I started very young, making little 2D games for Commodore64 when I was under 10 years old. I started modding with Doom II, then again with Quake II and I have made maps and models for Quake 3 Arena, as well as a full 2D Windows "breakout" game which I developed alone, all of those can be found on my old website - (http://www.planetquake.com/violatione/) After that I began work on Shadowing Hate and Chaos Circuits together. Other members on the team have also had previous experience, and we don't accept new members that don't have previous work to see. Personally, I also have experience in amateur film-making and directing, as well as composing music and writing fiction, which I think all contributes to computer game development.
"Thanks. Best regards, Dima. PS: sorry for bad English."
------------------
"Big thanks! Three last questions that I forget to ask:
1. Most of single player TC for Quake 4 (QuakeRemix, Missing in Action, ect.) is dead, in fact. How many chances that you finish you work on Shadowing Hate?"
- Unless I die in the next few months you can expect to have a small deathmatch "test" release of Shadowing Hate, after some character models have been finished. That will mainly feature how far we want to push the Quake IV engine and if people think the performance hit is worth what they see, mainly to get feedback. The singleplayer missions will take a long time and if we can't find enough new members then the project will die or at least take a VERY LONG time to finish.
"2. Maybe you can give us 2-3 exclusive screenshots that we will be able to post in your interview?
- The "proper" screenshots are on the website already, but here are some smaller shots of some new scenery media we have that will feature in office settings:-
http://www.violationentertainment.com/temp/SHofficenoobsingame060906.jpg
http://www.violationentertainment.com/temp/SHmoreofficejunk060929.jpg
http://www.violationentertainment.com/temp/SHaquariumingame061022.jpg
http://www.violationentertainment.com/temp/SHnewbarrelingame061112.jpg
"3. And, when it's done?"
- As usual the answer is "when it's done" and that can happen much quicker if anyone interested in joining the team will visit the forum - http://www.violationentertainment.com/forum/
And thanks!
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Bumpmapped tree-volumes technique (rant)
----------------
I've been getting back to doing some work on tree models but as we all know it's difficult because trees are volumes and you need to have a lot of surfaces intersecting to do a good low-poly tree, and the more low-poly, the more trees you can have in one spot, which is also what we want. The problem is that rendering a flat surface in the likes of Doom3 is going to be precisely lit and never match the light of intersecting surfaces on different angles. So we tend to see trees in Doom3 baring very harsh seams along intersections, or without a lot of volume to minimise intersections, or dull flat lighting using strong ambient light, or using single-pass blends and avoiding alphatest altogether. I've tried them all, none are ideal.
I was looking at some real trees and realised they're like volumes of individually faceted leaves on all angles, always appearing bright and dark mixed together, and I thought this can't really be done with a normalmap, the problem is using normals that only project from the limits of its parent surface, so in a "traditional" normalmap bake no matter how many different angles you put your leaves on, it's still basically lit relative to its flat parent surface and any surface intersecting will appear to be lit very different and therefore creating harsh ugly noticeable seams.
Then I remembered some normalmaps I borked a while back that somehow captured light incorrectly, I got some yellow in the normalmap which caught light from the opposite direction, and looking at the tree I realised this could really work well within a single normalmap of a leaves material for a tree model, by truly having each individual leaf on an entirely different angle to the point where it would capture light from a light source behind the geometry itself, which sounds impossible but it really can happen. Ideally you never want to see yellow in your normalmaps but for normalmapped alphatest materials trying to create volumes, this could be the answer. It would mean no matter where strong light is coming from, there would be a balance of light and colour, at least some of the leaves on the surface will be catching it and give the illusion that the surface isn't just a flat twosided material but truly more like a volume, and it would equalise the lighting on all surfaces, leaf by individual leaf as like the true nature of a tree, instead of flattening the light on the entire surface affecting every leaf. Cynically you might say it's making such a horrible mess of the normalmap it doesn't know what the hell it's doing, but you can have low-poly trees capable of great light interactions this way without noticeable seams or any other gimmicks to hide them.
Here we have a quick test to demonstrate inverted normalmaps. I got this normalmap by actually properly baking it using a negative projection depth, it is a proper bake, so it is a true negative and not just inverted colours of the normalmap image, even though that produces _exactly_ the same result and that's how I will be mostly doing it later. The blue circle catches light from the proper direction, but the green circle is inverted and catching light from the opposite direction of the actual light source, as if the light is in a mirrored position relative to the surface but only for those specific texels. There is only one light in that scene and you can clearly see it's on the other side of the geometry. Apart from that, it's still dynamically lit as the light source is moved around like a regular normalmap would behave, and still relative to the light source in other ways. It's still a valid normalmap and using valid normalmap colours, just producing a result flipped around to the opposite side. Never really purposely used, but still valid as in it doesn't cause any performance issues or cause Doom3 to crash or anything like that. To benefit it would also seem the green circle isn't actually catching an equal amount of light there even though it's on the exact same quad as the blue, see how the blue bleeds at specular but the green doesn't, even though it's using one material and one set of textures. Why on Earth would you want to do that though? Well now to actually applying this to some leaves material for a tree model.
render of hi-poly leaves actual normalmaps
actual normalmap with flipped normals a bush?
By having the normals of individual leaves in all directions and not only within the limits of it parent surface you can start to create some true volumes that at least minimise harsh seams along intersecting geometry and under different lighting conditions. To create these reverse normals from the opposite side you need give the normalmap negative/inverted colours, then rotated 180° or flipped/mirrored, and you get your inverted normalmap that will catch light/cast shadows from the opposite direction. This is a million times easier than actually baking negative projections separately which I don't know if that's even possible using Doom3 renderbump. In theory it sounds like it's doing the job of the "twosided" keyword in a material but that doesn't solve lighting issues, it makes a material appear from both sides of the surface but still lights it from one.
The way I've done it in my leaves material is to split the hi-res leaves model into 2 parts, with the second less-populated part later to become inverted, which also will appear to rest behind (underneath) the main "traditional" layer. You want to have minimal number of inverted leaves but enough to separate the proper normalmap from itself and make the leaves appear to spread out and still have a balance of all variety of angles, even though the texture is quite occupied there's still plenty of transparency. Balance here is the key, keeping in mind how all of these leafy angles attribute to the normalmap work as a whole. I then create separate normalmaps from each layer, but I rotate the second (underneath) layer 180° before baking the normalmap, then I invert the colours and rotate back 180°. This ensures the angles are correct when inverting the colours because inverting a normalmap also assumes it's flipped and mirrored, which we don't want. Then I combine the two normalmaps, I used an alpha in the "traditional" layer and just filled the inverted normalmap back into it, to create one single, very colourful normalmap. You want to keep the traditional normalmap component layered over the inverted normalmap component, as well as combine it with some leaves on different angles for both the traditional front and the inverted back, so you're not just dealing with leaves that are either front or back, but mixed together using all angles. Because you're trying to create as much of a volume as you can, you can afford to have leaves on sideways angles in your material.
new technique in-game old flat normalmap in-game
Here you see a quick and dirty final comparison between the inverted-combination normalmap and a "traditional" "flat" normalmap. It doesn't solve intersections entirely of course, but you can see, especially from a distance, how the main seams and the general lighting conditions of each intersecting surface is drastically minimised using inverted normalmaps in harmony with proper normalmaps. It especially pays off if you want to have strong dynamic lights. Using the traditional method it makes the actual model structure so apparent, but using this new technique it allows the materials to behave more like a volume and disguise the model structure while still allowing for plenty of light interaction, contrast and detail, not to mention actually having bumpmapped trees with specularity.
So, leaf by leaf you can tell which direction the main light is coming from, but as a whole flat surface it becomes difficult to tell because there's so many different angles on there, in front and behind, but then ultimately as an entire tree object, from a distance, I find you get the best of both aspects, it seems the entire material works as a whole to at least give the impression of a volume. As an entire tree, it enables the material to catch light mostly from the proper direction by the normalmap, but also all light from all directions as to avoid letting the geometry dictate what light and how much.
One major downside to this is that I don't like your chances of using photosource images to quickly work with, you're really going to need to get your hands dirty with some high-definition modelling to do this. It requires a careful balance of angles in the normalmap that you can't possibly do by converting images directly into normalmaps.
To finish, I want to mention some extra little techniques for spicing up alphatest, especially trees. They come at a price but they are pretty nice. One is that alphatest isn't texture-filtered nor can it be antialiased, so you notice as you move further away from it, it becomes these harsh and sharp floating lumps of nonsense pixels because it can't filter into anything easy on the eyes, only ons and offs. You can use a "fuzz" material which is basically white with a dark coloured silhouette outline (gl_zero , gl_one_minus_src_color) around every sharp alphatest edge in your material, as just a little light/fog-friendly helper to give your tree back that soft fuzzy feeling, especially when viewing at extra-close or extra-far distances. I can't see this as a problem because it's a single pass texture that doesn't use normalmapping and can't be mapped onto by lightshaders and such, so I wouldn't assume this as being a massive performance killer as an extra. Visually it's up to you how you think it looks and helps.
Next you probably all already know about vertex-painting/vertex-blending, well basically you blend your material with a different material via vertex-painting, or to be more efficient you can half-blend your material with basic single-pass fullblack, and give the foliage a little more overall depth using the vertices instead of trying to manage it all in one big normalmap. Again, I don't assume this as major performance draining extra, so why wouldn't you use vertex blending like that. Again with the material itself, you could go ahead and give it some subtle very low-res cubemap reflections, with all the chaos in the normalmap the cubemap reflections will spread out evenly and may give your tree a subtle dewy or wet appearance. This can be a performance drain but personally if it's done right a subtle reflection can have beautiful results, moreso in Quake IV where cubemap reflections don't glow-in-the-dark. Cubemapping does warp/flow with the normalmapping within the alphatest of course which is why it's considered for use. Also material-wise you can give it a subtle swaying movement using the "deform turbulent" keyword, although this doesn't work well with alphatest and you'll only get the alpha swaying/wobbling, you may still like to have that feature, although if you can this would be far better done as an animating scenery object. Lastly concerning materials, you may like to blend in some "detail mapping" to give the foliage more grittiness and perception of a higher-detail texture. Again, that's a personal choice but personally I'll probably find myself doing it as usual. It's debatable whether or not it's something that has a place with normalmaps in Doom3, but it's easy to turn off, and I like it, so I use it.
Next is casting proper shadow for your whole tree, and not just the trunk and branches, because as you know alphas can't cast shadows, only whole geometry. This involves a few techniques. First take a screenshot of your tree (and only your tree against a black background) from the exact position and angle of the light that is going to cast the shadow, but viewing it aligned with the middle vertical range of the tree and exactly horizontal, preferably orthographic. Get it fullbright from all angles so it's all white, and take a high-res screenshot. You can then create an alpha of how the whole tree looks from that angle, preferably only 2-colour (1-bit) fullblack and fullwhite image with no antialiasing. Next you want to use that image as a displacement, and displace a heavily subdivided plane so the tree shape sticks out, then you can easily delete the lower (background) parts of the plane so you now should have just a flat model of the silhouette of your tree shape, to some triangulated degree. Find your nearest optimisation tools and get to work at it until you've used enough judgement to get what will make a good shadow caster but without going insane with the polycount, taking into consideration what parts will be casting shadow onto what in-game, and with the help of the common/shadow material, align your shadow-caster to face the light source and this will be an invisible nonsolid but shadowing-caster for your tree, complete with the foliage shadow, while the actual tree model materials will cast no shadows at all. There are probably better/easier ways to get this done, but that's how I do it.
I was also thinking, with this technique it may just be possible to use some alphatest autosprites well enough now. That means intersections will be increased, but your tree/weed/bush will have better coverage/filling from ALL angles, so it will always look "full" from all angles with proper use of autosprites. Sometimes a cleverly-placed autosprite can fill in some gaps that would take more than a quad otherwise, plus I think if used appropriately it can make an interesting effect when you combine autosprites with static geometry, but it's up to the individual taste. You may find for creating a bush/hedge that clumps of autosprites may work better than a static mesh, but that's up to you. Definitely something I will experiment more with now.
Okay, I'm ready to shut up. I'll post back here when I actually put my money where my mouth is and create some proper big trees properly using these techniques and hopefully get a whole bunch of them together and looking and performing decently.
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Reveska Klennis stared blankly into her routinely itinerated locker, in stark disbelief at the arrogant attitudes of the entire department. She couldn't understand why they could be so careless, they should all know better than this. She could feel the icy cold heavy weight of authority and responsibility upon her, but she remained soberly loyal to her own better judgments. She had to say something.
"Captain Jiemon." she turns and addresses her superior behind her.
"Reveska?"
To etiquette she rapidly expresses her concern, "I wondered if perhaps we could issue more caution to the squad on this call, it's mid-residential and I think the civilian casualty factor..."
"You trying to bark orders up at me from the doghouse Klennis?" Jiemon cuts her off with scolding aggression, frowning down at her very attempt to even suggest at his authority.
"We've got piece of shit junkie fucks holed up down there and we are going to completely destroy those rats this time, no screw-ups! This is a perfect opportunity and I don't want to hear crap about 'issuing caution' on my squad, these fucking scum go down - tonight!" he bursts out in emotional disapproval as she sinks silently into the ground, having learnt her first lesson of questioning authority within the department. He turns slowly to address the other half of the squad still in the prep-hall and overhearing, the rest of which not daring enough to question commands already issued.
"I will not tolerate second judgments and their consequences, you are to act in explicit accordance to orders and directly obey, NO second-guessing. I issued a 'Force-Code 5' on this call for a reason and I want everyone in line and on task...", quickly spinning back to Reveska, "...and that includes you!" he points down at her angrily. She lowers her head and tries desperately to pour sincerity into her affirmation.
"Yes, sir."
"Gear up double-time!!!" he shouts as he marches out of the prep-hall while the other officers look back in frustration to a disheartened Reveska as the whining troublemaker she had just been made out to be. She frowns back at them, still determined to express her disgust and dread.
"What the fuck Klennis, you got family down in Wrenwood or something?" Jillian Srotter says from across the hall with an uncertain smirk, the only other female on the squad.
"No..." Reveska replies as she grabs her pistol from her locker holster, checking the magazine count and safety control, "...but _someone_ does..."
----------------
- MetroPD - Squad Command Hierarchy -
123 (name:-)
- > Scouting Officer 1 (Tate, Auvin)
- > Scouting Officer 2 (x)
> Commanding Captain (Jiemon, Nigel)
- > Support Officer 1 (Klennis, Reveska)
- > Support Officer 2 (Eaver, Warren)
- > Arms Specialist 1 (Zhaden, Nel)
- > Arms Specialist 2 (x)
- > Arms Specialist 3 (x)
- > Officer 1 (x)
- > Officer 2 (x)
- > Officer 3 (x)
- > Officer 4 (Srotter, Jillian)
- > Officer 5 (x)
- > Officer 6 (x)
- > Officer 7 (x)
- > Officer 8 (x)
----------------
"I'm not happy about assigning you a support now, Klennis. Things gonna get you real hot." Captain Jiemon announces to Reveska, geared up in his uniform and mask, seated inside a speeding class-C MetroPD transport vehicle, or "Bulldog". His vocal synthesis module making him sound especially disciplinarily aggressive toward her, making her momentarily a little petrified of him, as was the indirect intention of the technology.
"I will act to protocol, sir." she replies nervously with her heart racing, swaying about as the vehicle speeds southward through the metropolis. She grips her pistol tight as her visor initiates automatic diagnosis checks by the accompanying tech officer. Without control, she closes her eyes as her visor rapidly flips through the preprogrammed and configured vision modes that would be used on this call. If Jiemon had known this, she would be instantly dismissed as an officer and probably court-marshalled. She manages to open her eyes just in time for a glimpse at the Captain's heat signatures via the thermal vision mode last in queue, appearing slightly hotter than the others. Angry. At her.
"Clear." the entire squad confirm back at once, all except Reveska a short moment in lag.
"...Clear." she states as Jiemon strongly concentrates his stare directly across at her. She stares back up from across the isle, seeing herself doubled in the blue reflection of his visor, herself geared up and masked just like Jiemon, just like every other MetroPD unit, full of anger and to be feared, something she felt so deep now that she did not want to be, no matter to what effect or cause.
"...You will act to ME, Officer. You're on my clock and you do NOT want to fuck up." he further grunts across at her. She so wanted to just throw the gun down and walk away from the whole occupation now, back home, back to her past. She knew being a cop would be tough, demanding, and consuming, but not carelessly brutal, not like this. She was perfectly justified to assume by instinct that her situation would soon turn her into a murderer, but to what horrible depth, she did not want to need to think about.
======edit
"Fuck... the entire operation is FUCKED, because of some worthless junkie fuck "casualties". Future criminals anyway... You're GONE, Klennis, you are fucking gone..."
As far as most of the squad would be concerned, it would be a quick med-check for her and the situation settled within the department's court system, very fresh, while emotions are still strong. Not everyone agreed with what happened, and but a few of them are left without a draining remorse, of how it went so wrong, but it would be absolutely no one stepping forward on behalf of Officer Klennis, on behalf of a young life cut so short. And for what? Protocols and pride.
"I had taken position far end of the squad with Captain Jiemon and Officer Tate, when I heard the residents, I heard the baby and the woman, after the man had been shot." Reveska nervously testifies her case with increasing distress. "I saw the woman through the window, falling over, falling down to the man. That's when I heard Officer Zhaden authorising the code 5 procedure from the other end of the apartment, he _couldn't_ see the woman... or the... baby... I..." Reveska's throat starts to seize up from a revolting reminiscence of her consequent recollection. Her eyes squeezing shut hard to prevent the tears, the weakness, a way of escape. "I said 'code 4!'..."
Captain Jiemon retains a calm and concentrative exterior sitting through the procedure, determined with vague expressions. Reveska pulls herself together with her upper nose clasped momentarily between her fingers and thumb. "I suggested downgrade to force-code 4... to Captain Jiemon." she continues most uneasily. "I told him, code 4! He just looked at me. I YELLED at him 'there's a baby there!', and... I looked..." she cries. The small courtroom remained completely silent although difficult to say to what actual degree of sincerity, as she was still on the clock of the trial. "...There was no more crying. There was no more baby..." she adds in bitter lament, focusing on Jiemon who is gazing into empty space in front of him, refusing or unable to connect the glance back at her, which bends her lament into a true anger, her eyes filled with a destruction, rarely if ever, with such her hatred and vengeance. As the department wanted, she would go on record as more emotional and loose, rather than precisely specific about the events. "I told him, from the damn start..."
"...Alright Officer Klennis, due-time in the proceedings, we have an establishment on your case. Thank you." announces one the department's favourite legal defense executives from the side of the subject stand of the courtroom as he signals end of questioning, very much due to unsightly quiverings of a woman, a woman truly lost for words, words trapped in a nightmare, a nightmare that only she could possibly see from this room.
"Officer Jiemon will take the stand..." announces a civil judge with less than adequate enthusiasm.
Jiemon polishes forth his smoothest, most charming of personality facets, "Officer Klennis had been in a... worrying, emotional state all day. She was cautioned by me on an unwarranted suggestion of issue over my command and over the protocol already assigned by the department itself, forcing me to ensure a reissue. At the target location in question, she continued to assume beyond her authority, causing the entire squad to become... edgy, and disrupting important tactical information being transmitted within the squad. Transmissions were interrupted and that's when the _2_ other civilians were... made... unfortunate casualties."
"It is eventuate that the first casualty in question be occluded from admissions." a department legislation official adds from within the defense panel. Everyone seeming to remain appropriately calm and professional, everyone except for Reveska Klennis from the investigation square in the courtroom. She knew it was vital to remain the same, but the very best she could possibly achieve was an expression of exhausted annoyance and disconnection. It was a very painful front for her to uphold.
"I believe... it was Officer Klennis and her insubordination, her... _attitude_... responsible for the failure of the operation and this... horrible tragedy..." Jiemon finishes with such spurious overdramatisation and subgrade prerehearsal. At this moment, understandably, Reveska collapses within her hollowed shell, cracking. The last thing she heard was "worthless junkie fuck casualty." The last thing she saw was that baby's arm.
"This... is... fucking... BULLSHIT!!!" she screams as she gets to her feet. In a wink everyone had suddenly become alive, some even enchantingly excited by it. This kind of scene hadn't broken in some time, and with justifying dead criminal infants beyond the responsibility of department behaviour, and quickly forgotten, Ex-Officer Klennis was about to be severely thrown in the department meat grinder.
"FUCK!!!" she furiously jolts in uncontrollable rage, by now moreso a rage to keep her standing, keep her from collapsing into a useless heap on the floor of the courtroom, at least to not let them see, to not give them the opportunity, the pleasure, the warm gluttonous bathing of a lie successfully covered up, no waves made and only the smallest of assets disposed of. Her. Things could not have just gone better for MetroPD.
"Officer Klennis has been dismissed in contempt!" the civil judge exclaims loudly.
"FUCK YOU ALL!!!" she roars out with hell angrily exploding in her voice. Security Officers approach quickly to remove her. She would let them grab her tight and leave bruises, dragged away, silently frozen with death in her eyes, for Jiemon, for all of them. As she is quickly removed from the courtroom, under everyone's eye, she suffocates in a pure disgust, so strangling her very soul it becomes a numbing temporary non-existence, to not exist in such a world. And she would not be heard from again by anyone even remotely important for some time. For some time she would, mostly, only hear herself. "Now I understand... now I understand..."
--------------
Welcome to our virtual training simulation, Agent. It may seem strange and overdone, but be assured it has been specifically designed to optimise your resistence to optical distractions, which you will find a useful skill out in the field. These initial exercises require you to focus on retaining your balance and orientation. You'll be facing many strange and sudden challenges, but don't worry, it's all simulated, nothing in here can hurt you.
That white circle is a navigation marker. Later you'll have similar references programmed through your neural implants, so we'll never get you lost out there and you can always stay on target, but remember it's only a reference, just some help from back here at headquarters, so you still need to look both ways before crossing the road!
When you're ready, move onto the first marker and we'll navigate from there.
Notice you don't need to stand directly over the marker for us to register your location, within a few metres will do. We can't always place markers in convenient or practical locations, so don't go leaping into dumpsters because we manage to get a navigation marker there by accident, always use your own judgement. These markers may not always be so visible, especially in the big city, so keep your eyes peeled for them.
--------------
--------
Shadowing Hate FAQ
updated: 060608
--------
Q: Will I need Quake IV to play it?
A: Yes, you will need a retail copy of Quake IV 1.3 installed
Q: Do I need to pay to play Shadowing Hate?
A: No no no, it's completely free and even if we could sell it, we wouldn't
Q: Will I need more computer power to play it?
A: Yes and no. You will need a _lot_ more power to play at maximum quality, but
any PC that can handle Q4 at high quality will handle the low-detail release
on low quality. As more is developed, we will release more specific info
Q: Will the high-detail release kill my PC?
A: It shouldn't, the engine already has safe-gaurds against overloading your
system, so it may run at only 1FPS, but it shouldn't cause you any harm
Q: Is this that "Deus Ex" mod?
A: No, it has never been about or related to the "Deus Ex" games, although they
are wonderful games and a big influence on us and similar in ways, so it has
been nicknamed "that Deus Ex mod", but it is actually completely original
Q: Why did you guys switch over to Quake IV anyway?
A: The engine has some further enhancements over Doom3 that we really need,
especially when it comes to AI behaviour, vehicles and large outdoor areas
Q: The Quake IV community is pretty much dead, why not pick another game?
A: Because our project will be so much different to the visual themes of Quake IV,
the project is standing on its own two feet and not desperately relying on an
already built up community, for better or for worse
Q: Will there be any multiplayer modes?
A: Yes, we are focused on multiplayer objective-based teamplay, as well as some
other exciting new multiplayer features we won't be mentioning just yet
Q: Will there be any HDR/post-processing?
A: Not true HDR for now, but we are working with other developers to extend
the capabilities of the rendering engine with exciting new effects not found
in vanilla Quake 4
Q: Will I be able to make my own maps/content for this project?
A: Yes, we will strongly support any external community development for this
project and gladly host any of your files
Q: You've swapped engines a few times, are you sure you'll stick with Q4?
A: For the singleplayer missions, definitely, although we may have a strictly
multiplayer-only release for "Enemy Territory: Quake Wars", more on that later
Q: Is there a mature content rating for Shadowing Hate?
A: There will be a lot of graphic violence and very bad language in this project,
so the 15+ Quake IV rating still stands, for a mature audience only
Q: I want to learn more about the story, can you tell me?
A: No, but if you join the forum and are part of development process, you can
download the official documents and read through everything for yourself
Q: The project is so big to download and I'm on dialup, will you post it to me?
A: Yes, you can place an order for us to post it to you, free of charge, although
we will go through the list in order, when we can, and can't make any promises
Q: I have some dev skills and would like to help out, can I join the team?
A: We are always looking for new members and contributors so please visit the
forum and post about yourself and your work in the recruitment topics
Q: When will this project _ever_ be finished??
A: "When it's done", we're working hard almost every day, but this is a massive
project for such a small humble team like us. Please be patient. A lot of
very important aspects are already done, so I can safely say "sometime '07"
Q: Will will there be any pronograhpic content in the mod?
A: No, fuck off, you greasy little weasel!
--------------
=======
---------
Shadowing Hate
mapper's guide
update: 070121
---------
=======
This guide will assume that the Quake IV base is setup on your hard drive as "C:\Games\Quake IV\q4base\". Although it may be different on your hard drive, that's fine, just consider it however it applies to your own setup. The game folder can be placed anywhere, but the base folder must be setup as instructed, for various reasons. The "game folder" would be "C:\Games\Quake IV\" and a base folder would be "C:\Games\Quake IV\q4base\" or "C:\Games\Quake IV\sh\", as the game folder can house many different bases, the main q4base and other mod bases, which Quake IV will automatically detect and read from as playable mods. "..\textures\" would refer to that folder within the current base, usually in relation to as it's used within the editor.
Setting up the editor:-
---------
First you need to have your SH base setup as a separate folder inside the Quake IV game folder. This should always be a folder called "sh" (lower-case recommended) in which all the mod content will go, including the folders "def", "effects", "env", "gfx", "light", "maps", "materials", "models", "sound", "textures", "ui", "video" and their subfolders, and a few other non-essential folders too. Make sure your Shadowing Hate base folder is setup this way, with, for example, the maps folder located in "C:\Games\Quake IV\sh\maps\" and NOT "C:\Games\Quake IV\sh\sh\maps\" because this will cause major problems. There should also be some important files within the root of the base folder too, and we'll need to edit one of those right now.
Open the file "sh.qe4" with Notepad or any other text editor and change the path information so it suits your own hard drive setup. If your Quake IV installation is in "F:\My Games\Q4\" then change all "C:\Games\Quake IV\" to "F:\My Games\Q4\" and everything else should be left alone. Keep your custom sh.qe4 handy as it may get overwritten once you update the base folder from the "dev" files online.
Next you will need to create a shortcut or batch file to launch the editor so it will use the SH mod base to edit with, however it will still use Quake IV content "underneath" the Shadowing Hate content. This is how the command line should look, as executed from the game folder:-
"C:\Games\Quake IV\Quake4.exe" +set fs_game sh +wait +wait +wait +editor
There are some other commands you may want to insert before the +fs_game command, which are:-
If all is done correctly the editor should launch (you'll see the ViolaE title instead of Quake IV) and you'll be ready to make SH maps with and you should be able to navigate to "C:\Games\Quake IV\sh\maps\" to load some SH maps up (reference the "SH_maplist.txt" document for descriptions about each map in order of interest, because there are a lot of little test maps), with all textures and models in place. If you see any null/void shaders or missing models (this can be seen as black with white boxes as a fullbright texture, or fullbright boxes for missing models) then contact me about it or post in the team forum so we can troubleshoot the cause of the problem.
One last tip, if you experience jerky/low-FPS/stuttering/unusual editor problems, then go into your graphics card settings and turn off v-sync (vertical synchronisation) completely, and if problems still persist then turn off anti-aliasing, texture/anisotropic filters, z-depth settings and anything else that isn't necessary, and also make sure to close the Quake IV game window if that opens up when you open the editor, having Quake IV open at the same time as the editor will cause performance issues. Check both OpenGL and Direct3D settings for your card.
Using the SH content:-
--------
It may seem confusing at first, because all of the Shadowing Hate content is mixed in with the Quake IV content, but you'll soon get used to navigating, because of the naming conventions we've used, almost everything belonging to Shadowing Hate will begin the folders and files with "sh_*", so all the textures are located in "C:\Games\Quake IV\sh\textures\sh_*", so look in the textures folder and you'll see "sh_decals", "sh_detail", "sh_sfx" not to mention the main project texture folder called simply "sh". This is the same for just about everything, DEFs, FX, lights and sound.
Models are a little more confusing to use, because the SH stuff really is scattered in with the vanilla Quake IV content, so only static mapobjects are within "sh_*" folders and other models will be found within the original Quake IV folder structures because they need to be there for functionality purposes. My advice is to browse the entire "C:\Games\Quake IV\sh\models\" folder in Explorer and check out exactly where the SH content is without it hiding in the Quake IV content, or check through the "SH_baseindex.txt" document. Although this naming convention doesn't currently apply to maps because the map folder for a mod base is always unique, for final-version release maps they will need to begin with "SH*" using that naming convention.
Using temporary content:-
-----------
You are allowed to use vanilla Quake IV content, and other 3rd-party content, for SH mapping as temporary stand-in media if you really need to, but please make it easy for us by keeping tabs on what you use, keep a list of all content that is not our Shadowing Hate content. You can't publicly release shots of anything that contains obvious stand-in media that does not belong to Violation Entertainment as this will degrade Shadowing Hate's "true total conversion" status, which is something we want to avoid. Also, please keep the number of unique stand-ins down, avoid using many different textures on many different surfaces and try to reuse the temporary media. The team will then later create some original media based on what you've used and designed to replace and fit in with the way you've used it while mapping. This can include all forms of textures such as decals and special effects media that has not yet been created for Shadowing Hate.
The same can go for some mapobjects but I ask that you try to reuse temporary stand-ins as much as possible and also tag the model with the "TEMPY" autosprite, located in "C:\Games\Quake IV\sh\textures\shcommon\" folder, so it will be easily identifiable in-game and in the editor. You can use multiple objects to represent the feature you wish to be in your map as long as it requires only one whole object to replace it. Please try to remain reasonable with what you expect from other artists, try to avoid mixing up external content that will force us to create massive amounts of complex scenery later, and if so at least post your ideas in the forum first so it can be discussed. Becoming greedy with these type of features will also go against the design methods of SH mapping that I'll discuss soon.
The project's texel depth:-
-------------
The main thing that consistently needs to be taken care of is the texture scaling, or "texel depth". Shadowing Hate uses different scaling from Doom3 and Quake IV, the texture usage is much greater. To fix this when applying a texture, select the surface and press "S" and enter the number 2 in both "scale horizontally" and "scale vertically" in the surface inspector, making sure to press enter after placing the numbers in the fields and check the 3D camera view in realtime to see how the texture scales down, and to see exactly what I'm talking about here. The texture will scale itself down on that surface that is equal to 16 texels per 1 3D unit, that is a brush surface by the "Grid1" setting in Radiant containing 4x4 texels. If you are using GtkRadiant, it works a little different, but has the same result. Press "S" for surface inspector, and in the "horizontal stretch" and "vertical stretch" fields, enter 0.25, and it will have the same result as 2 in DOOMedit/QuakeEdit, which I will sometimes refer to as "Doom3 Radiant"/"Quake IV Radiant". Careful to stick to this exact scaling from its default scale, if you are unsure about a scale, click the "natural" button in the surface inspector and redo the scaling from that default to make sure. If you're careful not to play with the "scale" or "fit" values the textures are safe to rotate and scroll to your needs.
Mappers need not worry about detail mapping or cubemap reflections (environment mapping), but this texture scale combined with the detail mapping and generous use of cubemap reflections defined in the material scripts is what (in my opinion) makes Shadowing Hate a next-gen experience compared to previous Doom3-engine titles. Sometimes even further down-scaling of textures may happen, but only a luxury in small restrictive areas and close-range cinematic cutscenes, never in large open areas.
Likewise, and more often, no scaling or even up-scaling (talking about fat blurry Quake 2 texels here) may apply, mainly in very distant objects the player will never see at close-range, in this case the texel-to-pixel ratio (surface texel to screen pixel (not using zoom) doesn't vary much anyway. For example, the skyscraper textures are scaled (in QuakeEdit) to 0.25 respectively, because the actual skyscraper objects are just that damn huge and far away, and the textures are a tiny 256x256 comparatively. Also, certain surfaces won't require such high scaling, such as some thin trimming or very purposely bland surfaces the player won't have easy access to view, and you'll find there are already textures available specifically for these purposes.
Semitransparent decals are usually an exception and are "fitted" (hit the "fit" button instead of scaling) to surfaces of a certain size, because most semitransparent decals do not represent a particular surface but merely add to the definition of the shading of a surface and not really counted in terms of "texel depth" as a technical characteristic. I was going to make texel scales a material property instead, so mappers need only apply textures as normal for them to show up with a finer texel depth in-game, but the main reason I decided not to is because this will not be represented properly in the editor-view, only in real-time render view, and it's very important to see the editor-view (no lights or shaders) display the map as close as possible to the real-time (lights and shaders) view because editing in real-time is not always easy or even possible, and unless you have a powerful beastly PC then this is especially true with Shadowing Hate. Instead, for the low-res texture packs that will be provided later, a material property will be added to upscale the texel depth. After all maps are done, mappers don't need to worry about retexturing every single map, because the material scripts and texture packs will automatically take care of it all and maps don't even need to be re-edited at all. A much better solution long-term.
Mapping design methods:-
----------
Shadowing Hate mapping will be taking a step back, to the days of structural brushes and detail brushes, which is something that was scrapped after the Quake 3 Arena engine and its heavily precompiled BSP format, and no longer used in the Doom3 engine. Basically, in those old days, maps were made of these 2 types of brushes, structural brushes used to create the "hull" of the map and dictate where and how "vis" works, and detail mapping that the vis areas (known as leaves (of the BSP "tree") would contain, and a detail brush wasn't something that would or even could interfere with how vis would end up working in a map. Any half-decent map needed an almost perfect balance between structural-brush and detail-brush usage. It might sound very confusing to some of you newer mappers, and it's going to get even more confusing, but I'll try to explain it in a more simple way and methods that really should be part of the mapping process no matter for what project.
Because Shadowing Hate is already set to be so high-detailed, not even taking into account the high-detail release, it is _VITAL_ for each map to be easily optimised between low and high versions without interfering with the map's playability and functionality. The low-detail versions should always play and function almost exactly like the high-detail versions, so it's important for a few key aspects to remain the same. Vis function is of course one of them, that either version should never sacrifice properly functioning vis or jeopardise the function of such things as area portals or distant-culling portal grids. For this reason, it's important to always keep these aspects as simple as possible, always keeping the low-detail versions in mind when planning and executing your map design, whether it's for singleplayer or multiplayer. It might sound standard enough to you but with ambitious designs it would be very easy to lose control and end up with a map that would barely fall into the "low-detail release" category, no matter how much optimisations you go through, and even if you can get it optimised down to those standards it might end up pretty ugly, where as you could save that undesirable situation by keeping the overall structural design of the map as simple as possible. Not extreme, but always keep in mind the standards of the original Doom3 engine games. Shadowing Hate pours extra detail and will demand extra system performance from other areas.
Worth noting now is the project's distinct use of the "grids of distance-culling portals" (you will find these textures in "../textures/editor/visportal_distance*") for large open-area outdoor environments. Because the engine has no effective automatic realtime LOD for models, large open areas can't easily be optimised and therefore are typically (as you'd see in vanilla Quake IV) devoid of any consistent amount of detail. However, Raven have introduced distance-culling portals in the form of a portal texture that can be applied anywhere and work much like the hint brushes that try to force vis portals where the mapper decides to place them. This is brilliant if used creatively and something not technically available in Doom3. It basically forces an area to be culled at a certain distance, regardless of the player's view or positioning, unlike normal vis calculations, areaportals or hint brushes. The trick to using this is to split large open areas structurally into a grid pattern and use the distance-culling portals along this grid, however it also requires the use of heavy overall fog to compliment what is being seen as this happens, otherwise the player would see these gridded areas starting to be culled-off right before their eyes, which is not ideal visually and probably why Quake IV didn't really use them in such a way, for large outdoor areas, instead sacrificing the consistent use of minor details and opting for very low-poly terrain and trying to focus detail into the skyportals. Shadowing Hate will use this grid system and heavy fog to hide the culling behind the maximum depth of the fog, before it turns completely opaque, because almost ALL maps in this project will use fog, even for close-quarters map areas, they will use very subtle fog, not for culling but for atmosphere quality, so the use of fog, no matter how subtle, will be a consistent feature in Shadowing Hate, even in the low-detail release map versions. The good news is that outdoors areas can be tweaked regarding the distance of the culling, the distance of the fog's opacity, and all the little details in between and its consequent performance. It's also a nice feature of these distance-culling portals to smoothly blend in and out, instead of harshly "clicking-on" and suddenly appearing, even though the fog achieves much the same effect, there are certain elements that draw (or "sort") over/on top of the fog, and would become disturbingly noticeable if the distance-culling portals did not work this particular way. Luckily this isn't the case, and while these certain effects still sort over the fog, they will, at point of entry, still fade-in nicely along with everything else. It's nice because in real-life fog things like lights are visible long before anything else. Rather than try to explain this any further, please see some of the example maps that successfully utilise this technique to create relatively endless open-area environments while maintaining optimised rendering counts. If you plan to have large open-areas in your map, it's very important to master this technique and learn how to use it correctly.
Back to actual mapping, the next layer of details you'll need to worry about are large solids, typically large brush structures and scenery mapobjects that just cannot be removed from the high-detail release to create the low-detail version. The trick with these features is to create a very simplistic fundamental base and build more details on top of that base, details that can later be easily deleted or replaced with more optimised geometry for the low-detail release. As for most mapobjects, they would be reasonably easy to replace with a downgraded version, almost all mapobject models come in multiple versions with differing polycounts, usually it's a case of high-detail release maps using the smoothed subdivided versions, denoted with suffixed x2 x3 + in the asset filename. There may also be cases of some larger complex mapobjects/structures being optimised down and suffixed with "_lo" in the filename, we'll figure those out on a case-by-case basis. On this level, it's important to consider the general bounds of the area of your map, or the "clipping" that will be used, a map might end up looking and performing very differently when comparing the high and low versions, but the gameplay should aim to be exactly identical between the versions, so on that note it's a subjective and difficult but essential aspect of mapping for this project.
Somewhere between big structures and tiny nonsolid details are the smaller solid objects and physics objects, this is a difficult aspect to consider because physics objects (moveables) will play a massive part in Shadowing Hate's gameplay, with a key feature being the player being able to "grab" these objects to manipulate and reposition certain objects for different purposes, to create cover in a combat situation, as tools to interfere with certain interactive elements such as possibly blocking a doorway or using the object to solve certain physics-related "puzzles", or for use to gain access to certain areas such as crate-stacking to jump upon for reaching heights otherwise impossible. While I would personally love to have many more moveables present in this project's maps compared to other games, it poses a problem between the high and low detail versions. I must stress that it is _compulsory_ for maps to not play out any differently depending on what version the user is playing, we cannot have something possible (such as finding enough crates to crate-stack the player to access an area) in the high-detail map release that is not possible in the low-detail release, or (however unlikely) vice-versa. For this reason, it's almost impossible to have massive amounts of solid physics objects (moveables with clips that can be interacted with and affect gameplay by clipping with the player or "monsters") in the high-detail release, even though the high-detail release maps would be considered modern system killers, because it would become necessary to also have such in the low-detail versions too. It is always important to constantly consider this when mapping, because as a mapper you need to weight the options between what object should be a moveable and what should be static, for example, a light-weight bin (big enough to require clipping it and making it solid) that would be permanently glued to the ground, even when shot at with a rocket, which is something in a computer game that is frustrating for the player but not always possible to solve. While it's possible to lower the polycount and texel usage of the model that is being used as a physics moveable, the physics object itself poses some performance issues. So, it means limiting the number of interactive physics objects that can have effects on the actual gameplay, even in the high-detail release. The good news is that nonsolid physics objects don't apply to this restriction, even though they may technically have some small effect on the gameplay in some circumstances (for example, one bullet may not find its target as it collides with a styrophome cup that happens to be flying past in front of the player, meaning that if the user were playing the low-detail release then that one extra bullet would have reached its target and the enemy will have died one shot sooner) it doesn't warrant the exclusion of such a tiny details not being added to the high detail release. It is mainly for objects that the player will be able to directly make use of to change gameplay, and the line is drawn at small objects that have no impact on the player's movement and ability, or the function of any other objects, and is typically globally nonsolid. For these types of physics objects in the high-detail release, you can go ahead and put in as many as you'd like, go nuts, even just one less than it takes for the engine to crash and give you some fatal error about maximum number of physics objects allowed, that's just fine, that's the whole point of the high-detail release, actually.
Finally we come to the last little details, the ones that mappers can really go crazy with for the high-detail release - decals, effects and other non-solids - the gritty little details that can really visually bring a map alive. Because these are all either nonsolid or will hide behind extra clip brush ("../textures/common/clip*") or ("../textures/common/*_clip"), easily optimised/removed and (in most cases) no affect on the actual gameplay whatsoever, they can be used freely and abundantly, within reason, to really push the detail levels of your map and make most modern systems squeal and sweat, oooh yes, you may even be able to call it "realistic" because of the amount of tiny little details you'll be able to use that just aren't possible to use in even the most modern games, really the whole point of the entire Shadowing Hate project, a (high-detail release) project created for posterity, well ahead of its time. I don't think this needs much explaining but I will give a quick example. In the low-detail release of your map, you may have a decal of a manhole-cap (or sewer lid, whatever you'd like to call it, I'm sure you know what I mean here) and in the low-detail release it would be merely that 1 brush, that 1 surface containing the decal material, and that's all. However, in the high-detail release, there are many number of things you will be able to add to and around this decal to bring out the visual richness of the feature. We have the "fuzz" decal that compliments certain decals by surrounding the harsh infinitely-sharp edges of the alphatest semitransparency shader effect with a soft alpha-blended gradient layered over it, to give the illusion of the bumpmapped alphatest decal blending softly into whatever texture is underneath, something that is otherwise impossible using this engine, it doesn't natively support soft alpha blends of materials with a normalmap/bumpmap stage in the shader. You may also want to add yet another decal on top to make the opaque manhole-cap decal seem dirty, because as you probably know textures in this project are mostly clean and need to be dirtied using decals. You may also add even more decals and possibly some tiny nonsolid static mapobjects (for example the "rubble" mapobject "../models/mapobjects/shoffice/floorcrumbs*") around the feature. There are also some generic "line fuzz" decals available which can be used to help soften the harsh transition between one texture and another where the transition point may not (and usually never) meet with the same colours, which will _never_ be used in the low-detail release for being too much of a luxury, but perhaps typically always used in the high-detail release, no matter how subtle. Likewise, just about any kind of texture can be used like a decal, to create some extra trim along edges and corners that would never be used in the low-detail release. This is a much better alternative to imbedding trim as a structural part of some wall, although there are time you will want to do that too, but just not on a small scale. Also along the same lines are what I call "shading decals", because the nature of the lighting in the engine can sometimes be, let's say, "literal", it's nice to be able to have some extra control over lighting and shadowing, and for this I use these shading decals to help darken some corners softly. It's a hack, but it sure is a nice looking hack and is reminiscent of the old precompiled lightmap passes of the earlier Quakes. You basically use these decals to darken corners and edges that you might imagine would be naturally darkened if it were to use those old lightmaps instead of the harsh literal perpixel lighting of the Doom3 engine. All of these types of nonsolids are great examples of how you may treat just about every feature in your map in comparison between the high-detail and low-detail release versions to significantly boost the visual quality of your map while not interfering with the gameplay. It is also relatively easy to optimise these features back down for the low-detail release, as opposed to completely reconstructing large areas of a map or having to remodel some scenery mapobjects to very ugly low-poly alternative versions.
Another final example is the number of lights and particles that can be used in the high-detail release compared to the low-detail release, you may have some trim-light texture that calls for multiple ambient lights to help simulate a continuous row of light, because only numerous lights can create this effect and having only a few lights simply because of performance issues, it become obvious. Of course, lighting itself can cause great performance drops in this engine, especially used in this manner, so for low-detail release maps it's very important to use lighting wisely and sparingly, however in the high-detail release it will be possible to (within reason) overlap ambient lights to create a smooth illuminated surface, such as trim lighting. It may even be possible to double or triple main shadow-casting lights to create the illusion of softer shadows, although this would typically be used only in close-range cinematic cutscenes and never in large open "outdoor" areas. Similar to lights, it will also be possible to use more particle systems generously in the high-detail maps, although this does pose some problems with gameplay that need to be considered, for example, you want to avoid having so many particles in a high-detail release feature that would create an opaque wall of particles, where as that same feature would be easier to see through in the low-detail release simply because of the lower count of particles, this is considered as having a direct impact on gameplay itself and should be avoided, but it is possible to use more particles in the high-detail release to create richer and more luxurious special effects where needed.
Conclusion and other tips:-
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There is much more that could be included in this document, but it becomes so subjective and relies so much on each individual map and the map's individual areas and circumstances that it will need to be considered and approached when that time comes, probably after the map area or even entire map has been done and is playable and able to be tested and have its performance measured and examined. There is also a lot about the high-detail release that concerns scripts and modeling, and is not a mapper's responsibility so I haven't bothered to talk about those aspects at all. To learn more about this project's "design methods", I will make available some test maps that demonstrate what I've outlined in this document, or you can just load any of the developed maps that have already been created (like the first few deathmatch maps) to have first-hand scrutiny of the design methods for Shadowing Hate, which every mapper should come to terms with because it's important for these methods to be consistent throughout the entire gaming experience. So to conclude, typically you want to create the low-detail release version in the early development stages, but on top of that create your high-detail version (because that's fun!) and then later cut back on all the luxuries to create the final low-detail release version, so having said that, the example maps that can be seen so far are more true to the high-detail release versions.
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Cybernetics and Nanotechnology
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Nanotechnology is a very vague term relating to different areas of technology involving and operating on a nanometrical scale, one millionth of a centimetre. It broadly refers to everything from early nanometrical material production to true nanotechnology specifying the use of functional technology within the nanometrical scale. The next few decades will see this important shift from early micromechanics and nanosynthesis to functional true nanomechanic technology.
Nanosynthesis (2011)
- Largely referred to in post-nanomechanics days as Nanosynthesis is the application of precision technology on a nanometrical scale to enhance and create advanced materials. This type of technology having the broadest impact and allowing production of materials lighter and stronger than ever before possible. Most notable applications include uses in robotics and aeronautics.
Nanomechanics (2017)
- A broad and heavily-funded advanced use of nanosynthesis technology to create micromechanics using minimalistic nanometrical components known as Nanomechanics. The first notable application necessary in medicine with reactive microchemistry and remotely-operated microscopic equipment, enhancing electronics and sensory apparatus seeing the rise of advanced robotics and early biomechanical cybernetic technologies. The same level of technology that slowly introduces "expanding bullets" and total evolution in robotic sensory components through the 2020s.
Nanites (2033)
- Independent technology on a nanometrical scale using a single tangent-pliable nanoscopic device that works via an omnipresent computation system. Precision magnetism of these nanites is independently functional but controlled and powered by interrelating with vast amounts of the same nanite to create networked "intelligent materials". Cydev's "XKIII" the first proven model to officially define the functional applications of nanites and define true nanotechnology. The 2030s being the new technological revolution, at the expense of a growing population.
"XK III" nanite system (2033)
- XK is the result of Cydev Institute's theory that a nanite population can collectively network itself across a larger scale to behave as a whole while allowing independent nanometrical device ("nanite") functionality. The first model directly evolving into the 2029 Chameleon technology, successfully communicating with a layer of protected nanites to change luminance and colour dependent on its linear projection. The information transmitted to the layer of nanites as a whole yet responding independently to a range of 100 metres, evolving from a "programmable paint" to eventually giving special military units advanced camouflage cloaking technology.
Each nanite consists of three principle areas. The outer crust is a protective layer of hard metals combined with the communications hardware at each 45' angle. The mantle layer is an energised magnetism component that does the hard work and makes up for almost half the nanite matter. And the core does the thinking and powers the omnipresent system. Early models were up to 327 nanometres in radius but steadily decreasing in mass as the technology evolves.
By the third iteration a few years later Cydev had created the very first proper definition of true nanotechnology with its "intelligent liquid", networked magnetically for dynamic consistency and transformation, allowing for an evolution to advanced cybernetics and microbiomechanics, which became synonymous with the unification of all areas of nanotechnology. It was also the first time a successful nanite production was defined, but of course clearly not nanorobotics. As nanite models become slightly smaller and more effective over the next few years, the still inethical technology of cybernetics remains quiet and distant although already allowing humans to seamlessly replace and integrate the technology with their biological components, strictly for medical purposes. At this point Cydev is aquired by the government as need for military and law enforcement power increase.
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The Shadows Protocol.
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The Shadows Protocol refers to the primary co
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There are many benefits to being able to see beyond something's frivolous exterior.
Religion is merely the politics that hopelessly tries to govern spirituality.
Ultimately law is just manipulatable information like any other.
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Shadowing Hate is deeply representative of a lost child and his search for a parental figure, particularly that of a caring and understanding father. Adin Vallick had been severely abused by his biological parents, having it made clear to him that he was only conceived to be merely a drug courier and an excuse for welfare income. During these early years his physical ability maximised as it was necessary in order to survive being hunted by those multiple times his size and strength out in the crime-infested urban wastelands while helping to traffic narcotics and money, as well as some part-time thieving.
Reaching his mid teens he took his last beating and ultimately murdered his father by a slow decapitation, torturing his mother with his father's severed head, as he was tortured by her abuse and neglect. Being heavily intoxicated by hallucinogenics during this event, she suffered extreme psychological breakdown and was institutionallised for the rest of her life. He left the city that night and the case was never taken too seriously by detectives, nor was the event going to haunt the young man for very long either, he actually felt a sense of freedom and justified the crime as a necessary survival tactic.
Toward his late teens he decided to join the military and gained a much needed sense of self-discipline, however the gruelling commands and constant degradation took its toll on his psychological state, causing him random flashbacks to his abusive childhood, as hard as he tried to contain himself, he could not be forcibly tamed in this way. Although those few years in the military had done much for his tactical combat and firearms skills, it became clear that a military atmosphere would not be suitable, and such the very cause of his insubordination that would throw him into the clutches of the AECE. Luckily, Wilton Brandt saw that leading the organisation as a loving and open father figure, rather than part of a hidden dominating and dictating command core, would help ease the flow of the project and allow each new recruit healthier integration as a new operative. This would prove to be exactly the approach necessary for not only Vallick's successful preliminary updates but seeing him the AECE's most elite and loyal agent, and one of Brandt's closest personal friends. He quickly became the primary example of a HALops operative and, despite still repeated psychological issues, represents the perfect agent with perfect integration of cybernetic updates.
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