Vanilla Quake *has* fall damage, so turning it off entirely would sort of go against the player's expectation. 

You know what I mean 

Well things like models and graphics and sound are not really what was getting at me, more elements of the game's 'feel' which is more about mechanical decisions about how the game plays (things like player capabilities, monster behaviour and abilities etc).

But this is an agree to disagree situation about what you think adds or detracts from a given experience, and since you confirm that the project is supposed to be it's own beast there isn't much to be gained on discussing that, so myself I'll leave it. Will still follow the project though :) 

For the record: I don't hate the idea of a laughing hellknight, I just hate that it sounds like a French pirate's Hohoho. It doesn't sound mean enough, and the unsheathing sounds more of a saber than a heavy sword.
This is something that also troubles me with the other sounds. The Ogre, for example, should sound meaner too, deeper voice. It's not a bad idea to have them talk in such a moronic way, but the sound has to back up their posture. Right now, it reminds more of goblins or something. Likewise, the grunts sound too skinny, if you know what I mean. I always imagine them as (according to the manual) braindead killing machines whose implants only allow for mindless grunting and other primal sounds.
The enforcers are ok, though they could be a tad more muffled considering their heavy masks.

Something for guiding the player: in E2M1RQ, where you have to drain the water, I didn't immediately realize how to exit the pit, because I didn't spot the ladder. It seemed like draining the water would make the elevator lower. This could be solved by placing a light, colored or better slightly flickering, next to the ladder to make it easier to see - right now it's fairly dark.
In E3M3RQ, where you have to push four buttons to open the exit gate, I had problems finding the fourth one beyond the slime pit, and only discovered the leap of face bit by chance. There should be something on the other side that catches the players attention, makes him realize there's something interesting or important there. Maybe also a subtle ominous sound near the edge to encourage him to jump. Because as it is, players, especially less-skilled ones, don't readily jump into a slimepit with no visible way out (after all, they learn that slime is a hazard that has to be avoided). 

Simple solution to appease more classic players would be, and I'm sure I've suggested that already, to release the complete game in several paks. One with all the essential stuff, one with all non-essential sounds (high-res replacements), one with all QRP textures; and a detailed description in the readme. This way players who wish to keep it classic can rename or remove the extra stuff and play the game without this potential source of conflict. 

Is the Linux engine borked or am I stupid?

Mod_LoadBrushModel: maps/e2m1rq.bsp has wrong version number (1112756274 should be 29)

37c955a4cfe94f02541b1e0aafb624cf RMQEngine-Linux32

a912586e7c357c0ffb380d3f91b3d240 rmqwinter11/maps/e2m1rq.bsp 

Hmmm. BSP version number 1112756274. That's a new one! I'm no genius, but I would say that either:

A - something has become corrupted
B - there is an engine bug

If it's corrupted, you could try and download it again I guess. :(

Negke - thanks :) 

Negke: Thanks for pointing out the problems there.

Release in pick-and-choose parts: While worth discussing, unfortunately what appears to be different ingredients are highly interconnected.

Some examples:

- Monsters require the progs.dat to function correctly; however the progs automatically comes with all the gameplay changes. The progs also in turn requires other ingredients to be present, for example it precaches sounds when a map is loaded...

- Maps also require the progs in the same way unless "ported to Quoth" or something.

- Monsters use completely new sounds that vanilla Quake or Quoth do not contain. Footsteps; taunt sounds; drowning or burning sounds; spell effect sounds; talking sounds.

- NPCs and so on require completely new sounds in the same way.

- Maps require tons of new ambient sounds in the same way. Custom mapping entities might require new sounds and of course the progs.

- RMQ will have a story, and at least 4 different player characters. All of those require sounds.

- Maps require tons of new textures, not all of which have fully realized low-res counterparts. Technically, a low-res texture in RMQ is only a placeholder - it could be just a picture of Goofy or whatever, since it is never seen in game, and I can't be arsed to make great low-res textures if they are never actually seen. That would require development time and resources that we don't *have*.

In short, it gets very difficult very quickly to separate something that could be packaged as individual parts.

Spirit: The Linux build included in the installer is old; I'm sorry, please try this one:

http://icculus.org/remakequake/rmqe_linux32.zip

I hope that works for you. 

"- RMQ will have a story, and at least 4 different player characters. All of those require sounds."

"That would require development time and resources that we don't *have*."

I think I see somewhere you could recover some time. Seriously, I can't remember the last time I thought, "Man, Quake really needs a better story". That's because I have never thought that. 

The story (stories) actually slowly developed out of some mixed gameplay ideas that we accumulated;

- wanting both male and female player models, and an enforcer player character, and wanting identities for them;

- having 4 bosses, some of them pretty mystical, plus Shub-Niggurath;

- key events in episodes that I don't want to reveal yet;

- having new monsters and slowly developing something like "cults" or "factions" among the monster lineup (a bit like Quoth's "Death Brigade" but deeper), and wanting an identity for them;

- having more of Lovecraft's pantheon in the game;

- needing to tie it all together.

It wasn't really that we one day decided "OMG! We need a story!" but that we wanted to do a number of things that would be nice to tie together as parts of the same... story. It grew organically, instead of being decreed while sitting on the shitter. This is again due to how the team and the development works. 

... decreed while sitting on the shitter.

Hi Willem. 

You do realise you don't need cutscenes or any more "high quality" voice acting to tell a story, right? 

 

Hi. Good? Everyone doesn't need to say hi, let's stay on topic. :) 

Quake is like the blind men and the elephant - if you ask 10 different people you'll get 10 different answers.

The intention is not to try please everybody, because if you do that you'll just end up pleasing nobody. A consequence of that intention that should hopefully be obvious is that not everybody will be pleased.

It's also important to remember that RMQ is very clearly envisioned as being more than just maps and gameplay. RMQ is a toolkit, a bunch of odds and ends that people can take from and reuse as they themselves see fit. The maps and gameplay presented in the demos just happen to be what one particular group of people have done with that toolkit, but they are in no way, shape or form prescriptive.

An irony that is not lost on me is that Quoth makes several radical (and sometimes breaking) changes to Quake style, atmosphere and gameplay, but yet is accepted. Discuss. 

k I'm curious now what radical or breaking things Quoth did?

The key problem with Quoth is that it's not open to the community, which is a huge shame :( 

I take it back
It plays very well. And I have enjoyed it.
Standard maps with rmq.

http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/demos/e3m2_e3m3_rmq.7z 

perhaps illogically and preemptively, I'm going to defend any changes you guys made. You'd have to go really far for me to be pissed off, ie far enough for me not to see why you might have made said changes in addition to violating whatever admittedly subject, personal and fragmentary ideas I might have about what Quake "should" be - that's not MY beowulf, that's not MY king arthur!

you guys are the creators, you can do what you want. I don't understand people who think otherwise; it reminds me of nasty family infighting over my grandfather's farm. Yes everyone is attached to it but the person currently working on it can do what he wants.

That said, I like how open you guys are to technical, rather than ideological, feedback. 

you know what I mean

I guess we all feel like we're shareholders in a way, but that feeling is emotional not rational. 

http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/screen_shots/rmq0008.jpg
http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/screen_shots/rmq0000_01.jpg 

k I'm curious now what radical or breaking things Quoth did?

Me, too.

The key problem with Quoth is that it's not open to the community, which is a huge shame :(

QuakeC is not rocket science. Quoth is no exception; very little in mods like Quoth is genuinely new. Make of that what you will. 

I have enough trouble finding the time to make maps, I ain't gonna spend more time making an entire mod to go with them, especially since I only want to implement some minor stuff :p 

Then why not ask Kell if you can use Quoth as the base for your mod? That's what ijed did for warpspasm and it worked. 

I mean, this is just an intel sandybridge GPU in a laptop and it's all very smooth, no slowdown at all at 1920x1080.

As to the maps, it's nice so far, but I haven't really discovered why e2m1rq is named after e2m1 yet :-) It's also a bit dark and confusing in places, although I haven't got lost really. It reminds me more of Slave to a Machine than e2m1 so far, I guess that's not necessarily a bad thing. Not sure what the cutscenes are for. 

Hi Willem! ;)