You could make a function for a volume similar to water that can be placed above the floor.

Give it selectable styles so that you can pick what kind of footstep sound you want.

"marsh", "metal", "stone", "wood", "carpet", "gravel / bones" 

Might be more trouble than it's worth for the mapper. I think something like q3's surfaceparms would be better, but even then, probably more trouble than it's worth.

Don't get me wrong, I'd like different sound sets for different surfaces, I just don't see it happening. 

Randomizing the sounds is a good idea, as right now the pattern is way too easy to recognize and remember. Patterns even, as it also concerns monsters.

I don't think I have a problem with the sounds themselves. Nothing beats vanilla Doom 3 in this regard. By far the worst set of footstep sounds I've encountered. 

I was wondering whether or not it is possible to unlock the locked teleport map doors by finishing them one by one? That way making sure player will never ruin their progression by ruining or removing save files or something like that, and also giving easy access to earlier maps if player wishes to play them again. 

is something that Seven does in his SMC without the need for extra brushwork. Might be worth looking into it.

+1 randomization 

Uses DP which has a traceline function that returns the string texture name of the surface hit. This is how it deetermines the type of footstep sound. Unless other engines support this then it would only be a DP feature. 

QSS+FTE+DP all support the getsurface* builtins, and should all be able to use SMC's existing code.
So yeah, other engines can support that.

That said, hard-coding some huge list of texture names is going to suck quite a bit. Lets hope those texture names all contain 'METAL'/etc substrings where appropriate...
surfaceparms would be better, but q1bsp kinda sucks for that. 

What Spike said. That and manually adding footstep volumes into a map is tedious and not worth it (well maybe). 

Excluding monsters, one of the few things I don't much like about Arcane Dimensions is the footsteps. To me it often sounds more like tap-dancing or a fast shuffle than someone deliberately taking steps. Maybe I should turn "always run" off. 

Ya no that's the way it's meant to be played (except for ITS mod). 

Turns off footstep sounds 

I was messing around with switching between the .fgd and .def files for AD in TrenchBroom2 today, and I found myself wishing that I could have the functionality of both in just the one. Is that possible?

Both formats have benefits, the FGD has really cool base function for repeating chunks of entity keys and the DEF format has the perfect idea for dumping huge amounts of detail text on entities without GUI restrictions. Both AD editor files has model keys and I believe TB2 can work with both formats.

I personally use the DEF editor file, so it will have the most information on all keys because that is where they are tested and updated. I do convert all entities to the FGD file, but it certainly lacks the extra details because the format really does not support it. There is just no ideal solution to this tbh. if you have ideas or suggestions on how to improve the situation then pester the editor coders for help. If enough people ask for changes, its more likely they will be adopted. 

I think the player footstep sounds could use a little TLC
I think something like q3's surfaceparms would be better
I'd like different sound sets for different surfaces.

I personally love the idea of footsteps in Quake, to hear a Shambler stomping around close by and I don't know exactly where it is. To hear zombies scrapping their legs along the ground and the misleading sound of tiny feet/claws as I am surprised when a fiend leaps out at me!

Playing Quake WITHOUT foot steps is just weird to me, the silent movement of monsters is like they are floating all the time.

The idea of using surface inspection to find out the surface name and then guessing what surface type it is, well its not a good idea. There is no standard to texture names (even id had issues) so its just guess work. The real solution is surface flags for brushwork, but that is not going to happen, too many things would need to change (editor, compiler and engine)

I totally agree that the current AD footstep sounds are not very good, they are from RMQ and really should be replaced with something else. Now if only someone would create a cool collection of footstep sounds that could be used in AD! :P 

Why couldn't you make a floor brush as a func_wall or func_detail and have a _footstep "bleh.wav" value.

Would that not be a progs only solution? 

Why couldn't you make a floor brush as a func_wall or func_detail and have a _footstep "bleh.wav" value

Sorry man, no one in their right mind is going to place footstep brushes over every possible floor/wall surface!?! Its nuts! Footstep material sounds is an engine feature, you are trying to solve this issue with a sledgehammer! 

I was thinking about a work around because you said:

"The real solution is surface flags for brushwork, but that is not going to happen, too many things would need to change (editor, compiler and engine)" 

So, the only practical solutions is a better sound set + randomization. I'd like to take a stab at compiling some sets for people to try. Can the sounds be from other games? stock libraries? Maybe I'll just record some :D 

FTE+DP have a sound playback rate argument that can be used to randomize the sound a little. Should make a single sound a little more palettable, but it won't affect QS/QSS sadly. 

Can the sounds be from other games? stock libraries? Maybe I'll just record some
I would prefer to replace the assets with something legal. I know it sounds crazy as there is already lots of illegal content in AD, but I just don't want to go to the effort of replacing something illegal with something else the same!

+ randomization
I originally had the sounds randomized but you might realize that Quake clients don't really do random stuff very well. I found QS would often select feet sounds several times in a row and that sounded worse to me. At least with cycling 5 sounds it is not extremely obvious. 

This is quakec right? You could keep track of which sound was played last and exclude it from the random selection the next time around. 

Or generate a cycle 20-30 elements long by hand that sounds random to the ear and has no consecutive pairs of the same sound. 

I would prefer to replace the assets with something legal.

Roger that.

you might realize that Quake clients don't really do random stuff very well

I wasn't aware, that's a shame :( IMO, the repeating sequence of sounds is much more of an issue than the character of the sounds themselves.

You could keep track of which sound was played last and exclude it from the random selection the next time around.

If someone decides to put the time into doing this, might has well have it exclude the last two played sounds. a 1,2,1 pattern is pretty obvious too... 

I'm pretty sure we all agree that monster footsteps is pretty cool. It's the player footsteps that some are annoyed by. 

I originally had the sounds randomized but you might realize that Quake clients don't really do random stuff very well. I found QS would often select feet sounds several times in a row and that sounded worse to me. At least with cycling 5 sounds it is not extremely obvious.

IMO the repeating cycle was by far the worst aspect of them. It just sounded like a sort of musical rhythm. Seconding metlslime's suggestion of extra QC logic to randomise but avoid playing the same twice in a row.