digs05 is an anomaly. to me, the fact that digs05 had quads just shows how weird they are to be present at all. 

digs05 is probably one of my favourite maps. Damn disappearing pents. 

It's hard to manage them imo, and possible that different people react to powerups in different ways. The limited duration element makes it such a bitch to plan around, a super weapon like a BFG is much easier to deal with I'd say :E

It's also hard to get a balance between cake walk and impossible when the player has the quad because even shamblers are just creamed by it. You have to throw a lot at the player and assume they will just mow it all down before it manages to gank them.

Having said that, using a quad with the respawning trick works well in an arena fight, you make the quad come back at the start of each wave. Or just make it come back after a few seconds so whilst the player is in that area they essentially have unlimited quad :p

Useless figures time: By my count, Quad + Pent + LG can murder about 40 or so Shamblers before the quad runs out, although my technique might not be perfect :E 

Useless figures time: By my count, Quad + Pent + LG can murder about 40 or so Shamblers before the quad runs out, although my technique might not be perfect :E

LG -> 300 dps, 2 seconds to kill a shambler.
quadded is 0.5 seconds a shambler.
30 seconds / 0.5 shamblers is 60 shamblers before the quad runs out.
if they were all in a line or something.

anyway, i was just wondering if it's only because of fear of 'too easy' gameplay or if it's that mappers fear players blasting through too quickly without seeing the map or appreciating the intricate monster ambush they set up.
i'm pretty sure i'm in the latter category. :x 

Well, I said by my count, but it was more that I just piled a load of shamblers into a room and tried it. You actually run out of ammo really quickly hehe :P 

Also following your thoughts, the ideal time to put one in is when the player is returning to a previous area, or perhaps even better, specifically backtracking.

You could imagine a player muttering to themselves that they have to backtrack, but then the relief of getting a quad and enjoying the thirty second dash as they mince everything on the way back:P 

Oh and cause it's currently fashionable to triple post, Tribute ale is really nice. Bottoms up. 

You could imagine a player muttering to themselves that they have to backtrack, but then the relief of getting a quad and enjoying the thirty second dash as they mince everything on the way back:P

Thought I'd quadpost it :D 

You could always fill a room full of baddies, give the player the ring to wander around unnoticed until they could find the quad.

I see the ring being offered less often in maps these days. 

Give the player the RL, 100 rockets, and a bunch of health and armor. Upon taking the ring, he is teleported to a multi-story maze full of Shamblers, which he must navigate upwards by rocket jumping before the ring wears off - otherwise the player is as good as dead.

Then you can reward him by giving him a Quad + LG. 

I love it! Someone should do that. 

it's the damn binary nature of the ring which makes it suck. otp's shambler maze scenario is interesting i guess, but only as a one time gimmick.

or well, maybe a fully stealth map where you have to go from ring to ring before the last one wears out and you get mobbed by millions of monsters or something. 

Works, but only with respawning ring points and weaponstrip. 

what are you talking about?

the point is that you'd have to make it to the next ring before the last one ran out. basically like an artificial timer. 

tbh if you put in enough enemies to make using a quad to kill all of it your only option you don't have to worry too much about weapon stripping. Your trouble would probably be making sure the player knew to not bother trying to fight at first :) 

ah ok, he was talking about generic's post.
at that point though, i'd lean more toward a true gimmick method of killing them instead of just a quad. it'd be more dramatic i'd think.

bah, it's just that damn ring. :( doesn't even protect you from voreballs. 

So, i want a sun effect, resemebling the sun. I use QuArK. Also it would be nice to have a sun without the textures getting white from the light, but still remaining colour like in real life. I need it for my outdoors map:D 

You need to name the skybox images YourNameOfChoicert
YourNameOfChoicelt
YourNameOfChoiceup
YourNameOfChoicedn
YourNameOfChoicebk
YourNameOfChoiceft

Put them in quake\id1\gfx\env

Put a key in your Worldspawn "sky" with the value "YourNameOfChoice"

:) 

I was replying to your concept - the rings would respawn, but only in specific places, maybe 29 seconds apart, and the level would be full of, say, Shamblers and the player weaponless.

To allow for exploration and to be less frustrating the rings would respawn, so the player could come back at any time, but would have to find the next ring location without being seen in order to progress.

Ideally getting seen would be a lose condition, unless the player managed to speedrun to the exit (or better yet, the weapon cache). 

Additional exploration before the weapons cache could be included by having no ammo in the cache, only in the level itself.

Would probably have to destroy all rings once the cache was raided as well. 

Shamblers and the player weaponless

Hence my idea of giving the player RL and full ammo - it'd be useless against the Shamblers anyway. 

Is from Ricky's remix map of e4m1 which had the biosuits respawning and all the water as slime. 

But it suggest to the player that they can go gung ho. Better to take away all their stuff and leave them crippled - like that level in MaxPayne 1 where you escape from the gangsters, or that Riddick game.

By the time they reach the cache they feel immensely overpowered from being in such a weak starting point.

Downside is the level will have to be relatively small so as not to get frustrating. 

Nobody would try to kill a horde of Shamblers with the RL in Quake, though.

Level size - a speedmap would work (there was a timelimit themed session once), or just as a section in a bigger map. 

Nobody would try to kill a horde of Shamblers with the RL in Quake, though.

i've often had thoughts like this when making maps, and invariably, there's always someone who does.
sometimes you get lucky and it's your testers. :S

in the case of such an atypical gimmick, i'd be in favour of the heavy-handed approach: take everything away (or provide nothing) so as to leave no question about what you're expected to do.

hl2 intro maps have you running away, ostensibly for your life.
sure, some, maybe even most, players would RP those maps and run away, but you know if they had enough guns and ammo they'd clear out a citadel's worth of metro-cops before deciding to go away.