that's the sort of thing players just have to discover on their own. Isn't that part of the fun of meeting new baddies? 

I read the readme and use those techniques by habit now, but it's unrealistic to expect all players to be mappers.

Will say that consistently sidestepping the Gaunts lightning is made almost impossible because of its duration - you need a big open space to do it. 

Lun:

Well, that's a bit more negative that I meant it. But maybe we could talk about how to use quoth monsters effectively *as well*?

necros:

I've noticed that dodging rockeeter rockets isn't that hard. Hadn't noticed so much that dodging gaunt lightning was easy, I guess shamblers train you to not to try to dodge that sort of thing. Also, they don't seem to do that much damage, so I think I don't find taking the punishment while I'm killing them that bad. 

maybe it was a mistake to do the gaunt attack with lightning. i had a feeling about the shambler vs gaunt lightning attacks.

if you stand still, the gaunt's lightning actually does more damage than the shambler's (45 vs 30) but the damage is calculated dynamically based on how far it hit you from the player's origin, so if the lightning grazes you on the foot, it'll do about 1-5 damage. as long as you are dodging in at least some limited fashion the damage is reduced drastically.

i guess the problem is that this isn't communicated to the player. the tools to avoid/mitigate damage are there, but a typical player isn't aware of them. :( 

i had a feeling about the shambler vs gaunt lightning attacks.
that is to say, i had a feeling it would be brought up in this discussion. 

You need to teach these things to the player in a nice literal fashion. We've all been playing with Ogres and such for so long we've got them all figured out, but the new things take time, and Quoth by nature left that largely up to whoever built maps using those monsters first, the kelltestNs notwithstanding. I know the quoth monsters I've faced so far have all been in groups or mixed up with other monsters so there's no real chance to figure out the behavior for serious. 

we all learned how to fight the Quake monsters on small maps of 40 to 60 odd monsters each where you faced small groups of monsters. Most Quoth maps have been oriented towards horde combat making the adjustment a bit more difficult. Quake maps today are mere training grounds in comparison though there have been some really well balanced maps, Kell's first Quoth map (one with Red in the title, I think), for instance. 

The shamblers, along with other lightning zappers in other mods, train me to hide from anything blasting lightning at the player. Only when I read the Quoth docs later that I learned nightgaunt lightning was avoidable.

For what it is worth, the nightgaunt lightning gave me the idea to do something similar to the blue dragon in SoE: Indian Summer. The dragon begins aiming behind a moving player, then the lightning in the following frames catch up to the player to zap him and cause some damage, though the moving player only takes 10 or 20 damage instead of the full 40. This was a way to balance the dragons' attacks between players and other monsters. In the older Dragons mods, even though the red and green dragons could cause far more damage than the blue dragon, it was *always* the lightning from the blue dragon that damages and kills my player, and this would not do if I ever wanted to place a Draco bot in any map I would build. 

you can't allow the player to easily plug it from a distance while only having to dodge a few projectiles.

Fast Homing projectiles.

Kell:

No, no, no. Maybe i wasn't precise enough:

hide and try to get in your back.

-> hide != invisible, very fast, teleportation.

hide as in: hides behind pillars or in corners so you walk by, or in a larger room circles around you and comes from the back. Retreats if it doesn't cause dmg from the place it is in.


fly sideways while shooting at you in bursts.
-> i meant bursts like a shotgun, but not insta-hit (still a fast proj), so dodging is interesting. not (perceived?) insta hit steam whatever projectiles that just hit you no matter what :)

I think circleing around the player is ai behaviour that's not used enough. All melee enemies seem to just run up to you ;/ 

Does/did anyone actually like (as in prefer to the original behaviour) the crosshair evading (strafing) monsters in Nehahra? 

i spent a lot of time with godmode on playing nehahra.

bot behaviour is one type of thing and SP gameplay is another.
for one thing, bots behave way to erratically to accurately predict difficulty and ammo usage.
there are other points, but they all revolve around the 'randomness' of bot behaviour. there are reasons that a SP game has rules and bots break all those rules. 

REMOVING z-aware Ogres :) 

cheat-aware Ogres 

Love Madfox's booth. Stick 'em all in a unified progs, so we can map with them :P

The Doom-Quake monsters look funky. A Quake map with a spider mastermind would be cool, would make an excellent boss...

Also the Skeleton is the best monster... 

Kell mentioned a few posts back that the scourge has a dodge ability, and asked if I could explain that, so here we go. The ability of the scourge to sidestep projectiles has existed since the original hipnotic mod. The scourge spawns a trigger roughly the same size as itself, and every frame positions it 300 units in front. Any time a projectile (not the hitscan weapons) touches this trigger, a message is sent back to the scourge to trigger one of it's sidestep animations. The 300 units distance seems to be designed so that the scourge doesn't bother trying to dodge when the player is so close it won't avoid the shot.

The problem with the hipnotic implementation is that there is no cooldown on this ability. If you attack the scourge with a continuous stream of nails down the long corridor in hip1m1, you'll notice that it entirely stops attacking you and just shuffles from left to right(you may need to lure it down one end with godmode first). Each nail makes it randomise the direction it strafes as well, so it ends up moving right back into the path of most of the nails.

The fix is to enforce a gap between dodges longer than the dodge animation itself. If you shoot a rocket down a long enough corridor at a scourge in quoth, hopefully you'll be able to spot it strafing out of the way. It is a more useful ability when the scourge is in a more open space with room to manoeuvre. I guess that can be today's Quoth monster placement tip! 

Just changing the colour of the Gaunt lightning would have helped let the player know it's a completely different attack to the Shamblers and not copy-pasted. Problem is that all Quake players learn early on that they cannot dodge Shambler lightning, so the similarity defeats the smarter Gaunt lightning's purpose.

Megaman, that's what I was thinking with that Ghoul description before, but similar to the Nehahra Jagger in that they'd do their own thing (eating corpses) if no player was around.

I didn't mind the Nehahra AI. It was pretty much like fighting bots at times, but the levels were designed with these features in mind when they were used.

Shambler, I'll put in a NoOgreGrenade mode. It'll remove collision between the player and Ogre grenades. 

Are there any other changes that anyone's always wanted?

Mine was always Ogres that aim at me (see above).

Another might be fish that work - I'm working on it.

Are there any other common failings with the original monsters that you wish were fixed? 

The monster could just crouch entirely into a ball and hide his soft spots and just be shielded from all directions at the penalty of not moving. This could be triggered by firing at it so he doesn't just randomly huddle while running towards you.

Not effective-sounding alone, but in a group it could be fun to have to alternate between potshots at these guys to 'keep their heads down' and whatever else you're shooting. 

should have melee attacks [simple rifle-butting or something]. The main advantage of this would be to make their infighting more drawn out and amusing. Which is very important.

Oh and vores should have an idle anim. 

Should take no splash damage from their own voreballs.

And they should bite the player when he gets too close. 

Enforcer lazers which bounce of walls, like the energy balls in Portal or the purple thing out of UT? That would be cool!

Also please can we make feinds swim? They jump into water dead easily, then you cant see them, but if they floated, or even had the ability to jump out of the water back onto dry land then that would be cool. Imagine watching a feind swim across water, then jump out at you!!

Ijed - Please can you add blood splats? :P

Also voreballs could be shootable, so you can explode them before they hit you.

Dogs that howl occasionally...

A grunt with an axe AND a shotgun.... 

Close combat ideas generally good, but having grunts change between an axe and shotgun is pretty complicated. I've already got a few modified attacks on that score, although enforcers don't have a close attack yet.

Howling dogs - yes.

Blood will kill the entity limit.

Vores immune to their own explosions is good, and maybe some sort of force push close combat attack . . .

Swimming enemies is good.

I've got plans for the voreballs, making them shootable might just allow players to spam the vores to death. Maybe only on easy skill or something. 

Spawns hanging on walls and ceilings.

Rather than making voreballs destructible, let the player to slow them down with the LG.

Shamblers getting killed (read: spectacularly gibbed) when trying to do their lighting attack underwater, or submerged. 

1. Don't fuck with Quake monsters. If you want different monster behaviour, change the monster somehow so it's clear it's not a Quake monster. Quake monsters are good already. Additions can be good but make it clear they're additions. Want an aiming Ogre?? Give him or his weapon a targetter. Want a swimming Fiend?? Give it a few subtle fins. Want a close combat voreball-resisant Vore?? Give her some chitin armour and bigger claws. Give all of them subtle re-skins.

2. If you need to re-skin something, i.e. to make it clear it's a different monster, don't make them shit. It should be obvious but evidently it doesn't get heeded enough - we have good maps, good textures, good modifications, so re-skinning should be good too. And don't fuck with Quake monster skins, they're good already.

3. Same applies to new models although thankfully these days most of them are actually good.

4. It's Quake. QUAKE. If your addition doesn't scream Quake from every pore, then you're making it for the wrong game. Enhance the Quakiness of Quake, don't fuck it over.

5. Just because you CAN make something new and different doesn't mean you SHOULD. Just because you can change something doesn't mean it's a good idea. IF it's going to be something better, really good, really enhance the game, then go ahead. If not, then remember there's always the alternative to not do it.

Got that?? 

Shambler. But there are additions and then there are enhancements. The voreball resistant vore should be an addition, but I think swimming enemies would actually work best as a surprise enhancement. Quake's water aspects always seemed like a bit of an afterthought so I'd say enhancements like that would be bringing the game up to speed rather than altering it considerably.