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New stuff.
Bob - total shit, looks out of place, easy but very boring to fight. New Grunts / Enforcers - fine, skins a bit gay but fun to fight. Gaunts - nice, detailed model, good to have another flying creature, more fun than scrags. Polyp - better than old polyp, attack is less annoying. Does very little damage so it's okay you get hit a bit. I like they way they just float around and often don't see you (Ankh you are wrong). Good fun to fight really as the disappearing keeps things tense but not too tough or dangerous. New Deathknight 1 - fine, decent style and stuff. New Deathknight 2 - only seen him once, particle effect is neat, can't remember rest. Gug - pretty good, nice to have another tougher monster. Attack looks a bit crappy but good fun to play against. Earthquake rarely happens but seemed interesting. Model looks is okay, well done, and the head is good, but it looks a bit ape-like. I'd say it's close to being very good if it had been tweaked. Hammer - whatever. Triple nail - fine. Cross - only used it once and did little. (Nice models BTW). Plasma - not got it yet. Red777 - very fun map, nicely balanced gameplay, good combination of sometimes quiet and sometimes hectic. Very nice that you start in a relatively plain area and then see the cool areas later. Nice sky in AGquake. Layout nice and secrets excellent. Lots of variety and even trick-jumping to get secrets sooner. I got 12/14 - no silver key :(. Lots of great little details, especially looking up in all the secret areas and alcoves. Only complaint is teleporting into the final arena seemed out of place in the layout. Otherwise, r0x0r. Good name too.
Vongug.dem - best demo evar. 1337 falling in lava skills. First off, I'd like to compliment Kell and Necros on yet another cool release.
I'm curious though, any plans on releasing the QC source code? -i haven't mapped in quark for like 3 years or something
-i never really knew how to add custom entities then either -i only used the old 4.07 version of quark, never the new ones. This is the only map of Quoth that I've played but I really enjoyed its visuals and the copious secrets (found 12/14 on first play through, will go back and look for the other two.) I played on Hard and it was tough but doable except for the end battle. The Gug splash damage did me in before I could get off enough rounds, even with the help of the second MH and RA. I like the Gug; it looks like a Xorn from Dungeons and Dragons but the high splash damage in a cramped arena felt unfair. It was too easy to get cornered and the 'open' area was too small for fighting two at a time.
The Guants are interesting and a good alternate flying enemy. They are deadly in packs. Red777 had a layout that was a bit confusing but it is a great map and so multi-leveled and intricate. Very 3D and you had to look everywhere for attacks. Nice map, Kell. The supply balance felt good (but not generous) but I did find lots of secrets. I don't know how survivable the map is on hard without hidden goodies to help. My general impression of the enemies and extras of Quoth is that they are very professional in quality. If anything could be improved, I think the Gug skin could look more refined and menacing if it had that bloody and dirty look that the Quake ogres and shambler have. A bug that I noticed was that I saved a game before the Gug finale with the RL in my hands. If I changed weapons, the RL was gone for good. Weird and dissapointing. Quoth is a great package and I hope the user maps start rolling in. Only with respect to monsters. Alot of gameplay can be added via the simpler teleportation techniques.
I think you guys should put trees into your next version of Quoth. And func_breakables. I love everything about this package, by the way. Red 777 and Ne_marb are the shit. Ne_deadcity was pretty good too. Nice old skool theme. We need a Quoth icon! Wow, this is some top-notch custom content. I've just finished playing through all the maps and playing around with the new entities, so here's a heap of feedback on the new stuff. Monsters:
- Bobs felt kind of irritating at first, but once you get the hang of keeping a lock on them they seem really good fun to fight against. Probably encourage high-speed continual strafing / aiming more than any other Q1 monster, and therefore seem most fun to encounter in places when the player *can* constantly strafe around; the second half of ne_basetest used them really well, I thought. Skin blends well with idbase greens and the explosion when it dies is satisfyingly crunchy, though I was surprised the explosion doesn't hurt you at all; maybe a very small amount of splash damage (e.g. like the Polyp death) would have been fitting there. - Rocketeers add some nice variety to the base lineup, and the fact that they fire weak homing rockets instead of just rockets makes them decently interesting to fight against. The modified skin is nice, though the red colour does look a bit garish against the standard Quake base texture sets. I guess it's preferable that they look distinctly different from normal Grunts even at a distance, though... - Defenders seemed like the least exciting of the new monsters aesthetics-wise, but being a base Ogre they fill a nice gap in the standard monster lineup and seem pretty solid. Having them use the DBS as a sort-of-melee attack was a nice design idea. - Vorelings rock. They play a role that no other Q1 monster really does and play it very well. - Flying Polyps are in more or less the same boat as Bobs: they seem really irritating to fight against at first because they require you to do so much more moving and aiming than the standard Q1 beasties, but are quite fine when you get the hang of them. - Death Guards were probably my least favourite out of the new guys, mainly because they didn't seem that much different from standard Death Knights in how the player has to tackle them. They became more fun when I realised that you could just jump over their projectile attacks while running straight towards them, which gives the carnage some nice flow. - Death Lords, on the other hand, seemed generally more interesting: they've got decently hard to avoid attacks, but not so much health that killing them becomes a chore. Good job. - Nightgaunts have a shockingly nice model / skin and sound effects, and the fact that they don't try and get up close to molest you gives Nightgaunt combat a different enough feel from other combats. I thought they'd possibly have been better with less health than they've got though, because although killing them with any weapon without being hit is usually easy, it invariably takes a while if you don't want to waste your high-end ammo, and can get slightly dull when there's more than one of them. Still a top-notch monster, though. - Droles rock. They're sort of like Shamblers would be if Shamblers were always threatening and not unfair when placed in wide-open areas with no cover. Like Death Guards, it's also nice that you can jump over their projectile attack. - Gugs seem generally great too, and they're filling up a nice "sub-boss" role that no other single monster quite does at the moment. Not sure I like all the Gug-then-double-Gug action in the maps and test maps though, as double-Gug seems like it can end up as instant death quite easily if the player doesn't handle it very skilfully. Like the other harder-than-your-average-monster monsters in Quoth they seem much more agreeable when you've encountered them a few times and worked out how to deal with them best, though. The earthquake attack has a great OH SHIT factor, especially the first time it hits you. - Vermis I'm not so fond of. Model / animations / sounds are nice and professional, but actually fighting a Vermis seems kind of dull; in all the Vermis combats I've seen so far you just end up ducking back and forth behind cover / out of the way of the spore attack, systematically unloading your most powerful weapons into it until it drops - which makes it feel kind of like a normal enemy with a huge amount of health, rather than a boss in the true sense. If it had more variety - e.g. if its tactics / attacks changed halfway through the battle, like a boss in an old-school shoot-'em-up or something - it'd probably interest me more. Still looks the nuts, though. The new items:
- Warhammer I actually really like. I'm a fucking boring conservative player and I love beating Knights and Vorelings to death without wasting ammo. Mappers, put this in every map that has enemies in it, please. - Plasma Gun is very nicely implemented, though after playing through all the maps I've still not got a clear idea of how good it is compared to the LG. :/ Probably because it uses the kind of ammo you want to conserve the most... - Cross of Deflection and Trinity are generally nice too, and the only thing I could really fault them on is that, unless you've read the readme, it's almost totally unclear what they do. Still, considering that people are going to get used to seeing them and using them that shouldn't be a prob. Anyhow, while trying out the new content I also noticed a few bugs and some other things that look like they could potentially be bugs. I'm pretty sure these are all fully-recreatable and not just me ballsing up, so in case you don't know about some of this stuff already, have at the info: - A problem crops up if you trigger-spawn a monster_tarbaby; the game tries to load up the zombie's model and animation for the monster instead of its own. If there's a zombie in the map this will produce a fully functional bouncing, exploding zombie, but if not the game'll abort due to the model not being precached. - The "spawndelay" key (not the "delay spawn" spawnflag) doesn't seem to work for Droles. - The corpse_lynched1 and corpse_lynched2 entities appear to load up exactly the same skin (with marine combat gear on the body). - The trigger_command entity currently centreprints its "message" value when it fires its targets - like the trigger_multiple / _once / _secret entities would - as well as entering that text as a console command. - The tutorial lists a new "onlymonster" key for trigger_teleports, and the def files list a "monsteronly" key, but neither of those keys seem to be working. - The hipnotic trigger_damagethreshold entity is mentioned in the tutorial, but doesn't seem to be in the Quoth progs (engine gives a "no spawn function for..." message if you try to use one). On the other hand, the hipnotic play_sound entity does seem to be in the progs, but isn't mentioned in the tutorial (not that it's very different from play_sound_trigered...) - Not sure if this is actually a bug, but Rocketeers don't seem to make a noise when they spot the player. - The tutorial mentions that the info_effect_pulse and trap_lightning_triggered entities can be aimed with either the angle or mangle keys, but as far as I could tell a mangle value doesn't work for either of them. (Not sure if that's strictly a bug either.) - If you load up a saved game while carrying a Cross of Deflection or Trinity, the "screen glow" effect will be carried over and stay on permanently. - I noticed a couple of typos while working through the tutorial, too: the worldspawn key "lose_items" should really be "reset items", and "monster_grunt_rocket" should really be "monster_army_rocket". Not a big deal considering that you're supplying editor def files, though. Oh, and you didn't mention that a func_hordespawn can spawn items as well as monsters. :P Blatantly not what it was designed for, but I *think* it's the only way you can trigger-spawn an item in the current Quoth progs, so if that's the case it might be worth mentioning if you update that at any point. Gah, I hate reporting bugs, it makes you sound so damn picky. Overall this is excellent stuff and a really high-quality wodge of new content; keep up the good work. I.W. A big THANKS for all those bug reports!
sadly, most of them are entirely my fault due to insufficient testing. some of the things were rushed at the end (trigger_damagethreshold for example-- none of our maps used it, and it got added (or didn't as the case seems to be) right near the end). monster_tarzombie, again, this is my fault. the spawn code is a copy paste with small changes for each monster. i must have forgotten to change the model name in the tarbaby's spawning code, and since none of us used it, no one noticed. :\ sort of the same situation with spawndelay not working for droles, i must have forgot to add that line of code to them. for trigger_command, again, a rather large blunder on my part. i failed to recall that the message key will be used in the trigger code (which the trigger_command goes through). this problem is enough to make it useless atm, unless you're willing to put up with loads of crap on the screen. (you can still use info_commands + trigger_once, but trigger_command was supposed to replace that :S) the correct key is "monstersonly" (s on monster) no sight sound on rocketeers is another blatant blunder on my part. as for the screen glow effect... i'll have to look into this. the main problem is that this is a major hack. the quake engine's glows are normally handled via builtin (non configurable) effects. to get different colours, it was necessary to abuse the v_cshift console command. i thought i had added sufficient checks at different parts of the code to reset back to clear, but i must have missed one. *sigh* aren't i the smart one? go me... :S Excellent, thanks for the bug report. Not sure what form the solution will take; we could release a pak1 with only bigfixes, but I'm not sure that's ideal.
I shall confer with the above co-conspirator ¬_¬ We need a Quoth icon! Best. Feedback. Evar. Sounds like fun :)
I still haven't played quoth enough :/ ... in the rocket grunt's AI. When it is too close to the player, the monster don't shoot (maybe just trying to avoid to blow itself), so it just walks on you. Since it has a secondary missile attack, would be just the case of switching to it, or making it not standing too close.
Anyway, a great job, guys. Congrats. Looking forward for the next paks... more just an aspect of the monster.
it has no close range attacks, and kell and i felt that such a low level monster didn't deserve any fancy AI, and opted for having it powerless at melee range. Anyhow, when I was commenting on all the new content I forgot to comment on the, er, actual maps, so:
- red777 had nice levels of interconnectiveness and generally had the feel of a polished map in an established theme. Trying to work out how the layout fitted together was kind of like looking at one of those Escher images with all the stairs and doorways, it had that very "busy" look about it. Gameplay felt consistently solid, and more secrets than a small Q1 episode gave it some nice exploration value and lastability, too. As for things that could maybe have been better... I thought the central plaza area might have been more impressive if done on a larger scale, as in the form it's in it seems slightly cramped for a focal, outside hub area. And of course, big outside areas just look cool, though I'm not sure how much it was already pushing the r_speeds as it was (it did look nice and visually complex). - ne_marb built up a pretty fresh and unique theme with its nice texture / arcitecture / skybox choices. Managed to successfully remind you of classic Doom maps while the length and scale of the whole thing made it right at home alongside other modern Q1 maps. Generally showcased the new content well (this was the first Quoth map I played), and ammo and health always seemed well-balanced which made for some fun slaughtering. All the intricate, clanking machinery and the serene view from the top of the structure really reminded me of the Myst series, of all things, and added to the unique feel. Things that could possibly have been better...? Although each individual room was nice, the overall layout of the map seemed a bit on the simple side, with each offshoot-area being fairly linear until you reached the key / switch and headed back; would possibly have been cooler if each pair of offshoot areas (the two to the right and the two to the left) interconnected in some clever way, and / or if the central area was asymmetrical. - ne_deadcity was a bit of a surprise after marb (I loaded it up expecting more ridiculous-sized epic-ness), but it was a fun small-scale map with a nice layout that showed off Plasma Gun gameplay well. Forcing the player to run the hell away from all those Zombies until they could work out where the explosives were was a fun plan, and there was enough movement space for it to work. The ending seemed to prove that although double-Gug combat can be unfair, single-Gug combat is pretty easy when you've got an SNG or PG: not sure what the ideal Gug balance would be at the moment. BTW, Necros, one more bug: the spawndelay key doesn't seem to work on tarbabies at the moment either. Every other monster that can be trigger-spawned seems to work fine with it, though. This was a nostalgic experience. I've played tons of DooM wads and these maps, aside from the enemies, felt very DooMy. The layouts reminded me of how wad makers strived to make 3D looking levels with the restrictions imposed by DooM's inability to have a sector over a sector. Of coarse the 3 Quake maps didn't stick to this limit but the styling of the map and it's fairly 2D layout really captured the boxy and angular feel to most DooM maps where the most curvy thing were the curved stairways. Very nice lighting and progression, again, it felt very DooM-like in which each zone had it's own design and often progression was based on getting through a series of zones to open up new areas. These maps reminded me more of the better user wads then of the id maps since user wads were often much bigger then the ones that shipped with the game.
Okay, bug time. I confused myself after trapping myself in the area where you release the shaft locks. I took the elevator down and then hit the button at the bottom to raise the elevator to see if there was a secret. Elevator was DooM style, just a solid block. I moved on oblivious to the fact that the elevator button at the bottom was now blocked by the lift itself. After searching around for a way out, I ended up noclipping up the shaft. Near the end of NE_marb and in ne_marb2, I couldn't change weapons. I don't know why but I would see a flash of the RL but then it would dissapear (a similar problem was in Red777). Is something wrong? I had to cheat to kill the last two gugs since the shotty was futile. I loved DooM and these maps were a nostalgia trip. If it had Cacodemon's, Barons of Hell, Imps and the odd Lost Soul, it would have been DooM to me. The non-DooMy parts with mechanisms and spinning brushes and craggy sticky out things were great too. You used enough of Quake to make it feel fresh but kept the DooM disguise convincing. And nice skybox too. about the bugs, i've heard a couple of people mention something up with the rocket launcher and weapon switching... i never personally noticed anything, but i'll definatly look into it.
also, re: getting stuck by the lift, that was really funny ;) i never considered that possibility, but i should have. :P ...got me too, when I went back looking for the secrets. Underneath elevators is an auto-check when secrets aren't forthcoming. :P
Another elevator-related thing I noticed in that map, too: looking down the gaps at the sides of the really elaborate final elevator, I could see some teleporter fluid beneath it, but I didn't find a way to get back into that area (to go under the elevator) after the elevator raised. Was that a planned "way back up" that didn't need to be used in the end, or did I miss something there? that is for coop :)
because of the fact that the lift is a one way trip in SP, other players wouldn't be able to get up. underneath the lift, there's a teleporter which will bring other players up top. Should have thought of that, and in that case, I feel slightly silly: at first I thought that tele must have been the one secret area I was missing, and spent at least five minutes trying to find a way to get into it in single-player. DAMN YOU COOP MODE!
See Post 107
FYI, I play Quoth with FitzQuake. That may or may not be a factor in the weapon glitch. i just read through the quoth mapping tutorial and must admit that my initial doubts were unfounded. the new or modified progs are very useful indeed and maybe i'll use them for a map i have in mind...
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