Rick did kind of go apeshit in response to socks comments which, while ovely prescriptive, were certainly not aimed at him. 

I get that step do look a bit bulky at 16 units but it shouldn't be something to start a flame war over. 

THATS THE NAME OF A HORSE I USED TO OWN 'MAM 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGhp3Nfhs8g 

That us 16 unit purists start a new messageboard which more adequately reflects our values. 

 

16 Unit Stairs Only! 

+like 

for the next mapjam or speedmap.

All the brushes should have at least one dimension (heigth, width, depth) of 16 units. 

sixteen unit stairs with textured fronts that subtly convey the feel of 8 unit stairs without the extra polys/work to build them.

Anyone with me? No..?

:( 

how about making a ramp with a stair texture on it? With a parallax shader it might work. 

Ramp loses the detail of the player view shifting up each step... guess you could hack in a camera animation that fakes stepping.

On that note, I actually noticed while testing my Jam2 map that Quake does a funky thing where it shifts your camera up/down a staircase when you are on them if you are in a default view (don't mouselook at all). I hadn't realized it did that but that seems really smart when you consider that most players were expected to play Quake with keyboard only. 

 

one two three 

Then just make a box room, and apply the shader... 

four 

that's not ...

why do i even try with you people 

I often would put clip brushes over 16 unit stairs to turn them into ramps so as to stop the bobbin'. They still looked like stairs but the player would glide up them. 

We did that all through Unreal Tournament as well ... players would rather slide up staircases. It's less jarring to the camera. 

I think in Quake, the player will slide down when standing on those fake ramps, no? 

He will. But who stands still in Quake? :P 

This is why I don't clip stairs in Quake. I do clip stairs in other engines though. 

Quake also has ramp jumps, which shouldn't happen on stairs.

I think the small bit of camera bob, done with some smoothness so it's not too obscene, helps with immersion. People are used to stairs in real life, and stepping up a step is accompanied by your head being lifted up at that moment as well, not a smooth gradient upwards that a character's bounding box would do as it slides up a ramp. 

if this view-tilting is not smooth enough, it's obscene? strong word choice I would have gone with "annoying." 

Standing still happens in Quake. Fighting often happens on or around stairs, and since they physically behave differently players will expect their movement to be one thing or another, cued by the geometry that they see. Sometimes the best safe place to peg an ogre or taunt a fiend might be standing on some stairs, and sliding out of position in that case when you don't expect to would be annoying.

Also, everyone avoids ever jumping around on stairs because stepfinding doesn't happen while you aren't FL_ONGROUND so stairs become momentum-killing walls, so ramp-clipped stairs is a confusing signal that way, too.

easy solution: actual ramps!


Quake3 had nicely fixed camera movement and physics going both up and down stairs (so you don't run off the top of the top stair and go DOOF DOOF DOOF all the way down), but messing with Quake player physics in .qc or the engine is probably unreasonable.