I've heard that keys can break coop, something to do with them being lost when someone dies and the level being uncompleteable (that's a made up word!)... also if you make the key stay on pickup then you can't have multiples of the same key in a map. I haven't tested it but I have *heard* it can be problematic.

If you're making a SP map I don't think it should be too much work to make it coop (unless you have very small 1-man sized trap rooms etc), I can imagine having a slip-gate style start area where each "checkpoint" unlocks a progressional shortcut teleport back to near where you died. It'd be nice to have a cookie-cutter copy/paste prefab or template that mappers could drop into their map with relative ease to setup coop. Some maps, like DM5 Remix, are so small that it doesn't take much time to run back but other maps (like Stark Monstrosity) are huuuuugge if you die. 

Well, I think every id map has keys in it so it must be something you can account for. 

Keys works fine in coop. But there's a bug that keeps weapons from firing their targets which can break a map if they're supposed to trigger something that's critical for progression.

I do add DM settings to my maps, too - for fun, the sake of completeness and a nod to the oldschool, not because I think they make particuarly good DM levels or expect anyone to actually play them. Good for DMSP, though. I've also made a few tweaks for coop in places, although not very sophisticated. I kinda consider DM more important than coop... because coop usually works just like SP most of the time (out of the box, unless there's a showstopper). Quoth has specific coop flags which makes it easier to create gameplay that actually requires cooperation, while in ID1 it seems mostly reserved to the field of hacks. 

it's not a conscious decision on my part to ignore coop, but it's just not something i think about most of the time. 

FifthElephant: Yee, that's me. Trying to get some more people interested in Quake again. It's hard to get them to do more than press "like" or leave comments though. But seeing hundreds of views within seconds is very motivating and encouraging. 

I did intend to make my RMQ maps coop capable, because I think it's nice to have your map not break outright if someone does play coop, it's simply good practice that way.

Willem is right though that quake coop is a niche of a niche.

Now for total conversions that might get a slightly larger audience (as if those were ever made), I do think coop is worth it but then you have to put some time in to polish it and advertise it as a core feature (similar to what Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light did - people were suddenly playing coop and enjoying it because the game did it really well and the two main chars complemented each other while solving puzzles etc).

So, I'd definitely go to great lengths to put in coop if it was a core feature of a mod that, say, got an audience via moddb somehow, but for Quake speedmaps I'd probably not.

An engine that supported splitscreen coop the old fashioned way would be an incentive - FTE might be able to do that, actually. 

and another point: today's huge sprawling maps aren't very coop friendly, because there is just a lot of running around. Would almost need vehicles to quickly reach the other player. Unless you stay together at all times, in which case coop is a bit pointless. It's more fun if the other guy takes a detour to open a door for you or something. Map has to be designed for it. 

which is why I suggested a slipgate hub where checkpoints activated a teleport shortcut... or didn't you read my wall of text? ;)

Also I would love to see splitscreen quake! :D 

I'd agree it's good practice to include it, a nice bonus extra. Like having a custom start map.

Big maps can be coop friendly - I made all of warp work like that, although I think there's one bit in warpb where a player can be temporarily locked out. But probably more than 1, my memory is hazy.

A nice side-effect of making the maps coop friendly in warp was that it meant adding lots of short-cuts as the player progressed, which had benefits in SP as well.

DM in big maps is trickier. The best idea I heard for that was just to use a small segment of the map and wall off the rest.

Kind of wasteful, but depends on how cleverly you do it I suppose, and for how many players. 

The best idea I heard for that was just to use a small segment of the map and wall off the rest. 

I was just wondering if it's possible to make something in standard progs that behaves like a func_illusionary, but is non-static and can be killed during gameplay. Anyone know? Any hacks? 

 

i'm retarded.

killtarget makes that pointless 

I have a way, but I need to warn you that it is a hack. Negke often checks with me if a particular hack will continue to work in Quoth. The answer in this case is a definite no, and it won't be accommodated any time soon. This is because it relies on the assumption that monster corpses will remain after death, which is not true in lots of quake mods!

So add these fields:

"think" "demon1_die6"
"nextthink" "0.1"

It will then go non-solid after 0.1 seconds (so some items might come to rest on it before the transformation, if you aren't careful) 

Add these fields to a func_wall... 

A slightly more complicated but also more compatible way is to make the wall an info_notnull with its model and modelindex fields set to itself. 

That also gets around two of the side effects of the func_wall version: that you are forced to have the func_wall use function (which toggles the "skin" of the model), and that the texture might toggle a few times right at the start of the map while the hack kicks in. You can skip setting the model value directly as long as you make your info_notnull a brush-based entity (you do still need to set modelindex though). 

interesting hacks. I might give that a shot, but working in Worldcraft makes setting modelindex a pain in the arse since I'm using rmf for my map. 

http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/misc/tutorial_power_cubes_01.zip

I made an example map showing how you can make fake map items that the player can pick up and place at another point in the level. Picking them up and placing them can be done in any order as a moderately complicated trigger system is used to check if the player has at least one item and then places the item and reduces the count of items held.

However, I've just realised that you could do the exact same thing by having multiple keys the player must collect, but that doesn't allow for customiseable item models unless there is some awesome hack that allows that.

Meh, ah well. Use it if you like :) 

I'd love to see a map that you collect a bunch of bombs and then place them, then you trigger an event as you pass through the exit which sets off a kind of cinematic explosion scene...
I'm surprised more mappers haven't made more stuff like this to be honest, I'm sure it'd be possible to do with a bunch of func_doors and triggers etc. 

You could even use the spawning trigger hack to make placed bombs effectively shootable, so that you can blow certain parts of the level open. Of course, you could just use keys, but you can only carry one key of a particular colour at a time, and it looks like a key.

I definitely think using logic gates and other various hacks and tricks allows us to do a lot of interesting things that haven't really been done before.

czg's rocket/grenade locks are also fairly easy to implement in vanilla Quake I think. Should simply be a trigger_once with health > 0 inside a hollow tube with the brushes inside arranged to prevent the wrong kind of thing triggering it. I think the rocket locks also used trigger_push to keep grenades out.

Would be cool to see more maps using this stuff.

Of course, we can just make mods to do all this and more, but there is something sexy about shipping only a bsp. 

 

hey necros,

two people have posted a comment now on my video of q1spcompilinggui, saying that when they try to compile the map it says map not found.

I don't understand how they could get this error, since I show exactly how it's done in my video.

They also find it a hassle to take a screenshot and post it somewhere asking for help, so.

They said they're on win8.

Anyways, have you had anyone report similar issues? Do you have any thoughts or suggestions for them?

Here is the quote: "I downloaded several compilers, including hmap2 but none of them work. Every time I try compiling my testmap the console says it can't find/open my map. Or says that there is no map. I'm selecting the exact path to my .map and really don't know what to do..." 

that's very general information, unfortunately. direct them to this thread and they can post more info.

the fact quake isn't finding the map can mean either compiling being aborted from errors or compilers not being found.

one thing is that if they are typing the name of the map into the text box, then it will not use that filename (because it's bugged); you have to select it through the windows open dialog box with the [...] button (all other dialog boxes work properly when typing in directly). 

and I have been successfully using necros compiler since I downloaded it.