ZEQ2 Lite

[DeMons]

is a bad game.. zeqlite2 ... and f3 addon... bad animations, bad grhapics etc..beam..

 

[harSens]

There are more player states

Really? My outdated version of esf has 115 player state variables. That is excluding those required for animation, player related graphics, and counting class properties (e.g. max health, transformations capabilities) and melee state as only two state variables. Are you claiming zeq2 has even more?

 

[Ramunas]

Well, I'm not into discussion much, but due to respect to the original zeq2lite artists... to Baaja, actually the content of zeq2lite is VERY old. A lot of models were done by Blaize/SV back in the days. That's why the quality itself is very good and accurate to the real show.

Maybe community driven mods/packs/addons involve ripped models and so forth, but official SVN builds doesn't contain any stolen data.

 

[Eon]

Who is they? While ZEQ2 differs in that department, there's never been an organized central development team on ZEQ2-lite. It's always been entirely open-source and community-driven. Also, please provide a comprehensive listing of directions you feel gameplay is faulted and should be directed so that in-depth design discussion can take place.

I kind of wonder if any ever took place when making this game.

 

[hleV]

 

[sub]

Any constructive breakdown should be merited, but the problem with this kind of comparison is that you are treating ZEQ2-lite as an actual game. It is not.

Ah, so the problem is that people think that it is a game. I think I understand now. It's not a game, it's an experience.

My rudeness aside (sorry, couldn't resist), come on. I think it's a neat project, but let's not kid ourselves, it is a video game, and one that lacks direction. There are plenty of open source projects that not only serve as a source of learning, but also have great gameplay and design (for example: Open Transport Tycoon or 0 AD). If you readily admit that most of the systems are not to be considered usable as they are temporary and incomplete systems implemented in one weekend (your words), then is it really necessary for me to write up a comprehensive list of things that are wrong with the game? It seems to me that you know what areas are lacking.

 

[Eon]

i want off the ride make it stop

 

[Nebulisreconx]

This guy just broke down everyone's walls and installed windows for illuminating information to shine through. Zeth, thou art bossin indeed!

Personally I found Zeq2 lite to be quite fun and enjoyable, it certainly does take some getting used to and if you try and compare it to ESF in terms of control and playability, then I think you are going about the experience all wrong. It has ups and downs, and takes some tenacity to overcome it's lack of guidelines/and spammy playerbase) but if once you get through it it can be a surprisingly enjoyable experience if you let it.

 

[EndreVanan]

It's very interesting that you say this. A lot of people have complained the exact opposite that the core was TOO complex and involved. In what way does lockon not feel natural? Are you certain you are not simply making comparisons directly to another project where preferences of control/action ly? As for melee being limited to lock on, do you feel that your character should be able to blindly throw punches/kicks into the air with absolutely no one around or hope of hitting a target? Again, the foundation is not about pitch-perfect aiming as much as understanding the state that you and your opponent are in -- that is, comprehending what tactic to employ based on the scenario at play.

I'm talking about Zeq2-lite. The lockon is annoying due to the fact that there's no accuracy, no challenge with trying to hit your opponent. You either just snap towards their direction and lob a beam at them, or just charge straight to them. At that point, the targeted will probably just fly the other way, or teleport to a distance.
Personally, I find that if the melee was more freeform, "blindly throwing punches/kicks into the air" would still be pretty fun. That's basically what it boils down to in the source material, two meatheads exchanging punches and kicks with all the hope in the world that they can land the hit. You would have to rely on split-second thinking and accuracy if you wanted to catch someone on the right punch while going by.

 

[DaRkOwNs]

Whatever the reasons, assuming that a hard-lockon was logical simply because the characters themselves were experts was a bad assumption. It's unbalanced, not thought out (as I couldn't even just break line of sight), and...boring, tbh. You're taking away the simple skill of keeping your hand steady, which is a bad direction, in my opinion. And try as I might, I couldn't find any worth while counter-measure to being punched. Your evasion skills are pretty lackluster, slow, and VERY susceptible to sudden fps lag.

Swooping is what we in the ESF community call the high speed flying technique they use in Dragon ball. And while I'm sure there were plenty of things I could've done, the simple fact that he had 50 times my power AND unbreakable lock-on threw me off the game near instantaneously. Well, as instantaneously as a half hour can be.

It's the biggest reason I love ESF. You can go up against a character with 50 times your starting power, and (with some concentration) wreck his shit. If you're good enough. If you play the game you'll notice a very distinct lack of automatic steering.

And yes, I know it is brazen to assume Dragonball: Source has a good base. I apologize.

Joke aside, the history really doesn't matter as much as the result. The result being that ZEQ lite IS A VIDEO GAME, and a poorly written one. You can't just go on the defensive and tell us why it's not actually a video game. It would take some simple planning and fairly mild rewriting to make the game as good as, or even possibly better than any other dbz game. But no work really goes into it, so no result is seen.

 

[Eon]

This guy just broke down everyone's walls and installed windows for illuminating information to shine through. Zeth, thou art bossin indeed!

Yes coming into a general "hey check this game out" thread and then asking people who didn't like it to make comprehensive lists and keep the criticism constructive is "bossin' indeed" my friend.


Also just because the characters in the show "don't miss" isn't a good reason to not be able to whiff on a hit. If you stay completely true to the source material (DBZ) you'll end up developing the game into balance corners. But it's not a game, it's a ride, or whatever.

 

[DaRkOwNs]

Tbh, I swore that Nebuli dude was just being incredibly sarcastic.

 

[Eon]

I'm am are dumb

 

[Zeth]

Really? My outdated version of esf has 115 player state variables. That is excluding those required for animation, player related graphics, and counting class properties (e.g. max health, transformations capabilities) and melee state as only two state variables. Are you claiming zeq2 has even more?

Context, Harsens. My statement was relating to exposed gameplay-based, player-controlled/influenced states -- not a culminating count of internal bitflags used in the process. To be clear, having more is certainly not a desirable quality on either end. If you have over-saturated player state variables internally, it likely means that all of your action code is concretely designed and not using any form centralized abstraction. If you have an abundance provided to the player, it likely means that control, management, and stacking become convoluted and difficult to grasp.

Not sure why you lashed back, but my comment was a degrading point for ZEQ2-lite.

<aura comparison>

Let me see if I understand you right. You are saying that the common industry approach of using a "flame" particle system for simulating an aura is superior in design to one that uses a unique system of tags in order to place aura sprites that actually conform and meld to animation silhouettes in a mesh format where no skeleton even exists. This convex-hull aura system was created in 2004 have mind you.

Incidentally, it was created about the same time as ZEQ2-lite's custom particle system was made. I mention this only because I presume you make comparisons to ESF's latest incarnation particle aura -- something of which could easily be plugged in ZEQ2-lite through very basic .psys configuration swaps to achieve similar result.

All of that aside, a superior design suggestion was theorized by myself and another developer several years later in the form of a shader-controlled skeleton-boundry-based quad-ring that allowed for highly accurate portrayal of the DBZ aura. Since flexibility, extensible, and a low performance overhead were at the core of the design, dynamically adjusting attributes stemmed a multitude of practical uses as a complex view-independent sprite effect well beyond the scope of DBZ.

Ah, so the problem is that people think that it is a game. I think I understand now. It's not a game, it's an experience.

My rudeness aside (sorry, couldn't resist), come on. I think it's a neat project, but let's not kid ourselves, it is a video game, and one that lacks direction. There are plenty of open source projects that not only serve as a source of learning, but also have great gameplay and design (for example: Open Transport Tycoon or 0 AD). If you readily admit that most of the systems are not to be considered usable as they are temporary and incomplete systems implemented in one weekend (your words), then is it really necessary for me to write up a comprehensive list of things that are wrong with the game? It seems to me that you know what areas are lacking.

Patronizing aside, the problem with comparisons made is that many individuals here seem to innately assume that ZEQ2-lite magically fits into some all-encompassing existing standard of categorization without realizing internal goals at play. Stacked on top of that from many are shallow/superficial one-liners void of constructive substance.

Let me clarify. ZEQ2-lite at conception and release was not by any means a complete project. It was an abandoned Quake 3 iteration of ZEQ2 that hadn't been TOUCHED since 2006. MDave and I simply decided in the summer of 2009 to clean up a few things and throw it out there -- unfinished systems / models / code chunks and all to let people dabble with.

Unlike compared projects, there wasn't some central developer team working in parallel along with the whole "open sourced" nature. We had zero intention from day one of working on it beyond loosely guiding those with questions. It was either we simply left all of the assets and code completely untapped/unused/unexposed or we threw it out and let people tinker. Expectations were NEVER for anyone to even begin to play the arrangement in its current state. Even the blog posts specifically suggested AGAINST it.

The problem here is the scope of comparison. If someone dumps you boxes of random computer parts, you might glance through it, find what works (and doesn't), and see what you can make out of it. What you wouldn't do is instantly make a blunt comparison (on a whole) to your current work/gaming rig -- simply because that's not directly relative to what you're dealing with. With some work by the receiver, it could be a real computer, but until then it's just a collection of parts.

I'm talking about Zeq2-lite. The lockon is annoying due to the fact that there's no accuracy, no challenge with trying to hit your opponent.

As I explained, accuracy is only important in an environment where it's designated to be as such. Think less in terms of a shooter genre and more in terms of a fighter genre. If I shoot my Hadouken across the screen after executing the correct sequence, I'm thinking more along the lines of if you are going to block, jump, return your own cancel, teleport behind me, etc. I'm not even remotely considering whether my accuracy was good enough to ensure that it goes in the right cardinal direction. Fighter games in general usually lock combatants down facing one another at all times in this manner so they can focus more on the possible interactions and counter-strategies rather than player/mouse alignment. Given that the camera and rendering mode are in 3D third-person sense, forcing this at all times when you could potentially have 30+ opponents would obviously lead to a faulty design -- and thus is why there's a mixture of free roaming and target locking abilities.

The system is obviously a crude fix to larger interaction quandaries; however, more proper implementations have been theorized and planned by a number of individuals -- albeit with lack of willing implementation pursuance.

You either just snap towards their direction and lob a beam at them, or just charge straight to them. At that point, the targeted will probably just fly the other way, or teleport to a distance.

Personally, I find that if the melee was more freeform, "blindly throwing punches/kicks into the air" would still be pretty fun. That's basically what it boils down to in the source material, two meatheads exchanging punches and kicks with all the hope in the world that they can land the hit. You would have to rely on split-second thinking and accuracy if you wanted to catch someone on the right punch while going by.

I think you may be over-simplifying the options available. Closing the gap with a knockback hit or stun melee obviously grants you an opening, but there are ranged tactical capabilities such as using rapid energy attacks to temporarily immobilize the opponent and grant greater openings for larger attacks should they not counter adequately. Additionally, in later suggested iterations, attacks funneled with enough relative energy were intended to play on the PIP and immobilize a character into a "1300?! I can't block that" shock reaction situation in which simple side-step mobility options were replaced with handling the incoming attack in a more direct manner (as was the case in the series). This furthers the design decision to remove accuracy as a driving factor of play over having an understanding over your opponent, his attacks, and your options in any given situation. There are still degrees of reflex at play, but interaction tactics & strategy take part in a much higher influence than a traditional shooter.

Whatever the reasons, assuming that a hard-lockon was logical simply because the characters themselves were experts was a bad assumption. It's unbalanced, not thought out (as I couldn't even just break line of sight), and...boring, tbh. You're taking away the simple skill of keeping your hand steady, which is a bad direction, in my opinion.

Although I feel my previous comments to EndreVanan clarified the design mentality behind it, I will address your thoughts independently to extend an alternative line of reasoning.

You have to realize that we're talking about an environment where characters are moving in full 3D space (roll included if you enabled advanced flight) often at extremely high speeds over large expanses of terrains. Couple that with a low desirability to remain stationary and modes of movement where the player will become temporarily invisible (i.e : zanzoken) and you basically create a need for at LEAST temporary hard locks (which I assume ESF : Final does to play out melee sequences) or soft locking (snapping only within a radial area). In a large scale, melee oriented 3D-movement environment, if you have neither, you are simply going to have a slippery game feel where players fly by one another repeatedly. Even BFP used soft lock design via a sort of "magnet to opponent when in melee range" mechanic and its maps were relatively small by comparison.

Also, I do believe mouse movements were enabled while locked/charging/etc. on by someone in later revisions.

And try as I might, I couldn't find any worth while counter-measure to being punched. Your evasion skills are pretty lackluster, slow, and VERY susceptible to sudden fps lag.

As I mentioned before, the melee was LITERALLY written and animated in a weekend prior to public release to serve as a placeholder for more expansive concepts. That aside, counter options were hardly susceptible to network latency. The system was based on distinctive melee visual states each with respective transitional delays in place specifically so that evading, blocking, interrupting, and so forth could be done to a fair degree under even non-desirable latencies.

Out of curiosity (not being passively aggressive), did you read the gameplay manual or watch any of the play style videos by any chance?

Swooping is what we in the ESF community call the high speed flying technique they use in Dragon ball. And while I'm sure there were plenty of things I could've done, the simple fact that he had 50 times my power AND unbreakable lock-on threw me off the game near instantaneously. Well, as instantaneously as a half hour can be.

I'm not sure if there's a relative counterpart to "swooping" in ZEQ2-lite. I suppose "soaring" might be similar, but that's really for non-combat traveling over large portions of land. "Boosted" movements in which the aura is active might be what you are referring to though.

The power level system in play is built more for a matter of gradual growth in a DBZ scope/scale than an even-playing field by default. That is to say, Kid Buu shouldn't take a beating from Raditz -- nor should he ever be fighting him in the first place. There are server options for putting everyone at the same maximum power level value and was normally set on most official servers.

The progressive growth style of power levels was left in play primarily as an acknowledgement of series understanding and for those who created role-playing situations or emergent meta-modes like "fight the tyrant".

It's the biggest reason I love ESF. You can go up against a character with 50 times your starting power, and (with some concentration) wreck his shit. If you're good enough. If you play the game you'll notice a very distinct lack of automatic steering.

I can understand and agree on the merits of numerical advantages always having the need to be outweighed by player skill. While ZEQ2-lite's release states don't fully capitalize on those premises, this can easily become the case when you have a player with a refined understanding of power level manipulation (as Domitjen proved in shutout against a max power level player using starting power levels). It's really a matter of fully comprehending all of the elements at play and strategies available to you as a player.

Joke aside, the history really doesn't matter as much as the result. The result being that ZEQ lite IS A VIDEO GAME, and a poorly written one.

ZEQ2-lite. Pedantically speaking, it's not a game until it meets fundamental criteria to classify it as one. Poorly written? I realize that the Carmackian-code is certainly unsettling to many at first glance, but most of the underlying systems did have reasonable performance gains in mind over their obvious readability issues. That said, majority of the custom code written for ZEQ2-lite do follow proper standards-adherent modern design patterns (with a penchant for code aesthetics in several files).

You can't just go on the defensive and tell us why it's not actually a video game. It would take some simple planning and fairly mild rewriting to make the game as good as, or even possibly better than any other dbz game. But no work really goes into it, so no result is seen.

I apologize if I came off as defensive. I simply feel that particular elucidating facts of classification in the situation need to be recognized (as my response to Sub tipped). ZEQ2-lite is a platform both in a technical manner and a figurative one. It is a platform for mod/game expansion (via robust custom configs or source) and a platform for developer growth/exploration (of which it also has served to hoist several to their own projects). These points were nothing short of the original agenda when releasing it in 2009 -- primary intentions of which have been met and surpassed.

 

[DaFeLa]

p.s zeq2 lite is not meant to be played , its like a showcase on whats coming next

 

[hleV]

Let me see if I understand you right. You are saying that the common industry approach of using a "flame" particle system for simulating an aura is superior in design to one that uses a unique system of tags in order to place aura sprites that actually conform and meld to animation silhouettes in a mesh format where no skeleton even exists. This convex-hull aura system was created in 2004 have mind you.

Incidentally, it was created about the same time as ZEQ2-lite's custom particle system was made. I mention this only because I presume you make comparisons to ESF's latest incarnation particle aura -- something of which could easily be plugged in ZEQ2-lite through very basic .psys configuration swaps to achieve similar result.

All of that aside, a superior design suggestion was theorized by myself and another developer several years later in the form of a shader-controlled skeleton-boundry-based quad-ring that allowed for highly accurate portrayal of the DBZ aura. Since flexibility, extensible, and a low performance overhead were at the core of the design, dynamically adjusting attributes stemmed a multitude of practical uses as a complex view-independent sprite effect well beyond the scope of DBZ.

TL; DR.
I was just saying that the aura doesn't look like DB. Neither the manga nor the anime version. Surely you're not forced to base it on the show, but then at least make it look good, as now it looks like the character is surrounded by bubbles. I'm comparing it to the quality of the player models in ZEQ2 Lite, which is quite high.

 

[DaRkOwNs]

This mod, itself, has the "zanzoken" (we call it teleporting) skill. We don't need a lock-on to follow it, and we have a simple scouter-radar for the newbies of the game. There's a diamond above the heads of all players, small and practically invisible after you get used to looking at it. That serves the purpose of following absolutely fine and enables melee to be incredibly fast. The lock-on in final is simply a graphic. There's no real auto-aim, except for some very small energy attacks. You have to do the work on hitting your enemy yourself. It does give a steep learning curve, but it also makes it infinitely rewarding to get really good at ESF.

I did read the manual itself, though I didn't watch any videos. More than likely and had I been willing to take the time, I could have gotten pretty good at your "platform", but it just wasn't enjoyable or interesting enough. All I could find engaging about the game was the graphics.

So what classifies a game then? The fact that you can play it? That's usually what classifies them. It is a game, and if it wasn't, you wouldn't be arguing the battle system.

Half-life and half-life 2 are also platforms. they're also some of the greatest games in history, so I don't really know what you mean here. You ONLY built ZEQ lite up to be used in other peoples mods? Then why the battle/growth system at all?

 

[Zeth]

TL; DR.
I was just saying that the aura doesn't look like DB. Neither the manga nor the anime version. Surely you're not forced to base it on the show, but then at least make it look good, as now it looks like the character is surrounded by bubbles. I'm comparing it to the quality of the player models in ZEQ2 Lite, which is quite high.

And I was just saying (if you had actually read) that was intended to serve as a framework for early aura systems by starting the process. It was a unique, early stage approach of encapsulating the player designed to be fleshed out later. The principles of establishing strong foundation design are a hundred times more important than haphazardly slapping together cheap, non-extensible results. The characters/maps/effects/etc. all fall under this category and are by far sub-par to expectations.

I do not know who you are or what degree of technical expertise you possess on this subject, but please don't attempt to start a shallow argument if you do not (and are not willing to) discuss and elaborate the intricacies of all possible methodologies at play. I apologize if this seems harsh, but the fact that you are arguing with memes and not targeted, subject-specific breakdowns doesn't strongly reinforce your initial character impressions or knowledge-base.

This mod, itself, has the "zanzoken" (we call it teleporting) skill. We don't need a lock-on to follow it, and we have a simple scouter-radar for the newbies of the game. There's a diamond above the heads of all players, small and practically invisible after you get used to looking at it. That serves the purpose of following absolutely fine and enables melee to be incredibly fast. The lock-on in final is simply a graphic. There's no real auto-aim, except for some very small energy attacks. You have to do the work on hitting your enemy yourself. It does give a steep learning curve, but it also makes it infinitely rewarding to get really good at ESF.

The problem remains that it's still a poorly scoped comparison -- Street Fighter to Halo. Different genres. Different gameplay focuses for handling combat.

I did read the manual itself, though I didn't watch any videos. More than likely and had I been willing to take the time, I could have gotten pretty good at your "platform", but it just wasn't enjoyable or interesting enough. All I could find engaging about the game was the graphics.

See, this is a matter of treating the product as a game rather than an adjustable modification opportunity. If you had done the latter (as many did) and found flaws in something, you'd have realized how very easily fixed and extended any perceptually flawed aspects were. If you didn't like how attack damages scaled, costs behaved, camera modes were handled, etc. it was only a matter of jumping into some easy-to-edit configuration files to make a difference. If those didn't expose enough of what you wanted to change, the source was always clearly laid out and ready to go with plenty of consultants to assist you on your way. The problem from the start was that you wanted it to be a game, a fully functioning experience, out of the box without any work or creativity provided from yourself. ZEQ2-lite was never intended for this as it always insisted that shortcomings be resolved through personal modification.

So what classifies a game then? The fact that you can play it? That's usually what classifies them. It is a game, and if it wasn't, you wouldn't be arguing the battle system. Half-life and half-life 2 are also platforms. they're also some of the greatest games in history, so I don't really know what you mean here. You ONLY built ZEQ lite up to be used in other peoples mods? Then why the battle/growth system at all?

That is for another subject/conversation entirely. There are multitudes of threads on the ZEQ2-lite forum that have tomes of text explaining/debating the distinctions if you are interested.

 

[Grega]

You have to realize that we're talking about an environment where characters are moving in full 3D space (roll included if you enabled advanced flight) often at extremely high speeds over large expanses of terrains. Couple that with a low desirability to remain stationary and modes of movement where the player will become temporarily invisible (i.e : zanzoken) and you basically create a need for at LEAST temporary hard locks (which I assume ESF : Final does to play out melee sequences) or soft locking (snapping only within a radial area). In a large scale, melee oriented 3D-movement environment, if you have neither, you are simply going to have a slippery game feel where players fly by one another repeatedly. Even BFP used soft lock design via a sort of "magnet to opponent when in melee range" mechanic and its maps were relatively small by comparison.

Yea ESF has none of that. Even the beam lockon only makes the player "hitbox" bigger. meaning you have an easier time aiming, but you still need to aim yourself.

All our melee variations are also pretty much a blatant copy of simple melee.

Basically it works like this:
Simple melee - Simple melee
Combo melee - Simple melee with a delay for an animation to play and end hit direction control
Throw melee - Simple melee with no damage dealt with throw direction and delay for a "charge" distance/speed control.

And we use those 3 in a rock papper scissors format where there is no superior. Option to any of then unless we are talking about bonus attacks, but you have to work for those. So in the end there is no hard or soft lockon. There is aiming help in terms of "enlarging" your target for the beams, but thats as far as ESF goes.

@Others Think of ZEq2-lite like a garys mod for a DBZ experience. The idea of being statistically true to the show takes priority over gameplay in general. Meaning that a person with 1000 PL will never in their wildest dreams beat someone with 5000 PL. Basically its a DBZ sandbox experience. So for anyone not a fan of roleplay its totally useless.

 

[Zeonix]

@Others Think of ZEq2-lite like a garys mod for a DBZ experience. The idea of being statistically true to the show takes priority over gameplay in general. Meaning that a person with 1000 PL will never in their wildest dreams beat someone with 5000 PL. Basically its a DBZ sandbox experience. So for anyone not a fan of roleplay its totally useless.

And with this, we can stop talking about Zeq2 forever.