arkhamsoft.com

[Josef Nader]

I must say, the source material for this mod has set off an explosion of creativity in me. I have been struck with dozens of ideas, many untested and never-before-seen, that I'd like to test in the coming weeks. I'm posting this because:

1) I don't want to forget any of my ideas
2) I'd like a little feedback on which ones are good, so I can pursue those first.

So, without further ado, here goes:

1) Something I have dubbed "the Poltergeist." Small to medium physics props with a small env_explosion parented to them. The explosion would do no damage, but, upon the player triggering the event, would propel the prop forward with immense power, potentially doing damage, and certainly making the player jump. Imagine if we did this in, say, a warehouse or some similar area, with lots of likely props. The player would be accosted by an unknown assailant, unable to fight back (save for his TK and quick reflexes). The only real difficulty will be balance, because the prop is an insta-gib if thrown to hard, and it'll hardly budge if thrown to softly. It'll be cheap for both compile times and in the engine, as one physics prop being propelled by a single explosion will hardly cause any sort of hiccups. Probably my most accessible idea.

2) Banishing/Summoning Spell - Possible for a flashy finale. Whatever unnamed horror accosts the player, they discover a writing/recording of the banishing incantation, or a summoning incantation that will summon a creature to dispose of the beast. Think the ending of Portal, where everything starts evaporating upwards and the blinding white light engulfs the player. Upon reviewing the planned script, I think this fits in neatly. We could have Mother, all her minions, and the monolith all breaking apart, distorting, then evaporating upwards in one, massive, cataclysmic blast. It has been done thrice before in the Source Engine. Once at the end of HL2, once at the end of Episode 1, and once at the end of Portal. A suitable and fitting ending, I think, especially if we decide to kill B off. It would take some fancy Hammer Wizardry, but I think I could do it with some clever func_physboxes, entities, and excessive use of bloom.

Questions? Comments? Discussions? Demonic incantations damning my soul to an eternity of torment (Keep those to yourself D:<)?

[Josef Nader]

Experiment 1- Poltergeist

Astounding success! It works perfectly, almost too well. A little atmosphere and BAM, a good fright moment, if they weren't set up so mechanically, of course.

I haven't tested the damage scaling yet, but I'm guessing it ranges from mild to severe, depending on the force of the explosion.

It was fairly simple to pull off. Source has a neat little entity called an env_physexplosion perfect for this sort of thing. In can be set to only disturb a specific prop in a crowded room, and the variable magnitude means you can change it from knocking something off a shelf to hurling something through a wall. I set mine off with some nifty triggers, but I'm sure you could adapt it to anything, if you had your mind set to it.

.vmf and .bsp here

[allicorn]

[darthkiwi]

Sounds very intriguing. I especially like the "exploding into the ceiling" type idea - since this is Mythos, I guess Alli's "special sauce" would be chanting, blood running down the walls, everything flickering into black and white and then back into colour, hands clawing out of the ground and pleading with you, faces appearing on the walls and groaning in slow agony? That level of weirdness would be cool, but I'm not sure how you'd go about any fo them on the mapping front.
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