Kleshik - a co-op mod by Dresk

2008-10-30

Kleshik is an unfortunately little known co-op mod by Dresk for DarkPlaces exclusively. Some may scoff at the exclusivity as a pitfall of platforming and niche filling, but it truly takes advantage of many of DarkPlace's features to create a more visceral experience, with a great sense of feedback, and substantial weight and impact in the world of Quake. Kleshik does a good job of allowing the player to hold back if they really wish to, but without a sense of ease, and does a better job of getting the blood pumping, and all the more primed for fear. It approaches that odd combination of horror and intense action; where most games and mods go for suspense, inaction and quiet, Kleshik besieges you with events and atmosphere. Where most horror elements are visions of the tomb, Kleshik is an image of chaotic Hell, given voice.

One theoretically simple but great thing Kleshik does is the integration of Hipnotic and Rogue support, meaning from the onset of playing, you can hop into id1, or either of the mission packs and get the Kleshik experience. It also includes support for a host of common quakec modifications used by maps. Yes this also means that some of the weapons and monsters show up, such as gremlins, centroids, wraiths, mummies, phantom swords, multi-grenade ogres, the mjolnir, proximity grenade launcher, and the laser rifle.

Of course one is not limited to the weapons seen in the expansions, Kleshik also gives you a chance to hold the Enforcer's blaster, and a Flechette Cannon which is very similar to Unreal's Flak Cannon, but a bit more of a trajectory punch to it. Aside from that, Dresk went through the effort to code alt-fires for many of the weapons, such as a sniper function to the shotgun, cluster rockets for the rocket launcher and so on. But being a co-op mod, whats the point of all these new toys if you can't play with someone else? Kleshik at this point introduces the Shared Weapons Pool. If you find a shiny new rocket launcher, everyone else playing with you is given it as well, and has it in their inventory upon respawn (though respawn does not restore ammo counts, so if you die via discharge, its up to you to recover those spent cells). Not only does Kleshik allow for weapon sharing, it also is courteous, including the personal teleporter to quickly catch back up with your buddies, so you don't spend half the game time running back to where you last died, in hopes you don't die again and repeat the process. In short, Kleshik helps streamline your imminent demise at the hands of its unholy brethren! This isn't to say that its such a morbid time saver, it also saves the locations of keys and locked doors as you find them, and can quickly return you to those places. To further the individuality of the co-op experience, there is also Quake2 Plug-in Player Model support, complete with distinct sounds, and Quake2 player models get the added benefit of being able to crouch in Kleshik, which affords a 30% faster fire rate.

Theres a reason you need so much assistance however, for not only are your foes more numerous, they are more varied, they are changed, and some are the dreaded elite. Where you once found a grunt, you may find a group of Enforcers, and on one you might notice a rotating pentagram. This would be the elite, and there is no mistaking them as they make a mark on your vision, usually via a red emblem of some sort appearing across your vision - more on those later. Elites have significantly higher health, more punishing attacks, and they deflect rockets and grenades. They are walking trouble, and sometimes even worse after death.

A great deal of the player's experience is even more direct than simply monster interaction. These come from what Dresk calls 'HUD stingers', where certain rather random stimuli produce on screen effects, coupled with sound. This can be from the world suddenly shrouding itself in red fog, to your view compressing in a sudden shriek, only to be just as abruptly restored to normalcy. You may be working up the nerve to charge forth into the next fray, only to see a fountain of gibs vomit forth from your chest, covering the environment in blood stains, and then suddenly evaporate, but with blood stains intact. Kleshik assaults the body with beast, but the mind with the self. Part of this assault can be found in the audible. The world of Kleshik is far more vocal than the world of Quake, with items spawning ambient tones of numerous qualities, and suggesting of far fouler beasts beyond the walls than what you dare face within them. Kleshik is noisy, and it uses this to your torment, but as a player, also delight. As of such environmental disarray was not enough, Dresk has seen fit to include day/night cycles, though a tad artificially by affecting all lights, so as the level progresses, things get darker and darker, until pitched into sheer blackness. At this point, you will be thankful for your flashlight and flares - which can alert monsters if you're not careful with them.

The root feedback in first person shooters however can be found in what happens when you fire a gun, and Dresk knows not to disappoint on that. Weapons boom more, emitting definite clouds of smoke on impact, with bright sparks, and blood from their targets, which also suffer from significant kickback, giving weight to your power, but also helping to keep the hordes from quite overpowering you. Lasers sizzle, nails tink, and shells rattle upon the ground. Kleshik even one ups Blood a bit, by having not only kickable heads, but kickable gibs in general, and with gibbable corpses and DarkPlaces decal system, a room can quickly become quite the mess - as so becomes the slaughtering grounds which are any map that crosses Kleshik's path.

Many of these things are quite physical, and for those interested in such, it will logically interest you to know that Kleshik uses both QuakeMatt's Gyro Physics, and stick physic techniques. You can observe Gyro at work in backpacks floating in water, and explosions knocking objects around, while the stick physics lends itself to client side behavior for the shell casings. On top of the client handling such things, he also optimized the weapon firing for example, condensing it to a single temporary entity which contains the origin, client edict num who fired, a compressed normal for direction, the weapon in question and the firing mode. When you've got this much packed into a single mod, optimizations become very important.

I've done far from significantly cover the extent of Kleshik, and thus could not properly review it due to the density and population of its features. All I can say is I have had an utter blast playing it, and though it has numerous bugs (some of which have arisen from changes in DarkPlaces since Kleshik's creation), it is quite a ride. There is a whole lot more to it which I find to be just great, such as the monster footstep sounds and extensive end of level stats, but to be frank, I am exhausted, and will have to trust in you to give it a try!

I could be a bit more critical of some of its features such as the HUD stingers, but I simply lack the space for it here. Suffice to say, you should give the mod a try (it works just fine in single player, just make sure that you have coop enabled, which it does automatically if you start a game and use the changelevel function). It is unorthodox, using so many new sounds, so many engine features, so many new assets in general, and also comes packaged with various model replacements, but it is an experience to behold.

Note that the actual download is for a batch file with a command line svn client, which will download the latest version of the mod, and include a batch to check the svn for updates, so as to save on bandwidth. Its quite slick that way.

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Kleshik SVN downloader (uses 7zip)

Kleshik - a co-op mod by Dresk

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