Sorry, you don't get it. Perhaps I haven't explained it clearly - well, I haven't tried to explain it clearly.

Conflict in E2 would be more to do with hints and background fluff and a certain biased in randomly generated behaviour than factions and stuff.

As for the suit stuff. No, you're just wrong about that. It doesn't need explaining in the same way that nothing in any game needs to be made more immersive and more convincing. Making some aspects (those that relate to you) make more sense will make the Quake domains, and your playing experiences of them even more twisted and visceral. Besides, as I said, this was not to have any effect on the gameplay. Nor was I envisaging a cheesey HL2 suit at all.

I think you are perhaps better off not reading these posts as you suggested in the first place. 

...I think you have got it into your head that convincing, detailed backgrounds, enviroments and features are incompatible with simple gameplay, brutal action, fantastic locations and visceral atmospheres.

They are not. You can have both and the former can enhance the latter. 

Firstly I realise my comments are open to a lot of mis-interpretation. I really have just ranted away and have not tried to clarify much at all. There's too much I'm thinking of to do that. But hopefully people can trust me that I have the best interests of Quake at heart (you might know I'm a bit of a fan of the experience), and that I don't want anything that would dilute Quake - but I see that it's Quakiness can be enhanced.

Secondly....oh there was a second point but I forgot it. 

makes a lot of good points. I especially agree with E3 - sounds fantastic. I personally would rather see new dimensions to be explored for the other episodes, however, I'm kind of tired of medieval and elder world and whatnot, and God knows Quake can support more varied dimensions. I'd post more but I gotta go to school right now. 

I should work in game industry as a idea generator 

I should work in game industry as an idea generator 

i hate preview button, it made me a doublepost (alsmost) 

i sort of agree with rpg in that explaining how kills and secrets and such is pretty pointless... no one really cares. i don't think many people stopped to think in the original quake of how the game 'knew' how many monsters they had killed.
heh, most likely they probably thought "cool, it's not a percentage like in doom anymore so i can see exactly how many monsters there were." :P

scores and secrets and such is sort of external to the gameplay experience, and thus don't need to be justified. 

But subtle, incomprehensible industry. Basically a cross between Bals and Kinns and CZGs ideas, a metal city with monolithic abstract designs, mechanisms that do things, stuff going on but none of it makes much sense. Living things are aliens here, intruders. The city has it's own purpose, some of it grinds away, some of it moves, some of it sits there.

just... sit tight. ;) 

maintaining Quake's ambiguity while increasing the detail. 

That is far and away the most intelligent and insightful thing that has been stated in this thread. 

But I don't see it as a problem - increasing the detail doesn't have to mean removing the ambiguity, it can just make the ambiguity larger in scope and more convincingly incomprehensible. I.e. you can provide more information (but not too much, there needs to be a balance) without providing any answers. 

i really don't remember this: Nehahra stakegun?

when did nehahra have a stakegun? 

the sprocket, which Mindcrime described like so:


Sprocket Launcher(Tsemochian Sprocket)
Crossbreed a spear, a rocket, and a grenade and you might end
up with a Tsemochian sprocket. This weapon takes some getting
used to, but after a while, you'll feel nekkid without it. :)  

Keep it simple - there should be only two sides in this game - the monsters, and you. I don't like the idea of warring factions, or other things that distract the monsters from their goal of killing you (although the usual infighting is ok). Similarly I don't like the idea of "arrogant" shamblers (like someone above mentioned), or indeed giving the more primal monsters much personality at all. Monsters can be unpredictable, but will never lower their aggression. Monsters should have one goal only - to kill you as quickly and as brutally as possible, and they should never lose that focus.

As for the design, well, I would say keep it Lovecraftian - after all, that *is* the basis for Quake's original monster design. (Kell and Necros have the right idea here ^_~).

I would personally ditch all the Base stuff, except maybe the start/e1m1. I can't see much point rehashing what is fundamentally Doom's concept - that of an overrun base full of possessed zombies/humans.

Neither do I feel Quake's monsters need to infiltrate the earthly realm - maybe you can start as being one of a team of pioneering explorers venturing through the first slipgate into this unknown dimension, but then not long into the expedition, something goes horribly wrong and you end up as the lone survivor, struggling to escape this incomprehensible netherworld. 

I shouldn't have used the word "factions" should I??

How about "an increased disposition towards internal conflict in certain episodes that would provide an atmosphere of unrest and unpredictability whilst maintaining that any monster has one thing it really wants to attack - you"??


OH, that was what I want to say earlier. A lot of this goes along with my "skewable random behaviour generator" monster AI I've been thinking of. Which is as follows:

Each type of monster has various AI stats that govern it's behaviour. These will have sensible and simple default levels which in most cases it will be fine to leave the monster at. However for some circumstances these values will be tweaked to increase the chance of certain behaviour types. This will not necessarily lead the monster to act "out of it's style" but will allow for other sorts of behaviour to creep in (this will also make the game even more replayable as well as being a fantastic modding tool).

For example, you have an Ogre and it would have the following stats (with default Quake 1 values):

Attempt to attack player - 100%
Attempt to get in CC range - 100%
Negotiate obstacles - 0% (I think)
If unable to reach player, throw grenades - 100%
If far from player and in limited area, move around a bit - 100%
Attack other monsters unprovoked - 0%
Attempt to avoid damaging other monsters - 0%
If attacked by other monster, attack monster until it's dead - 100%
etc etc.

But you could tweak those to give a certain amount of varying behaviour IF it was appropriate for the gameplay and situation. Say if you wanted some internal conflict, you could up the "Attack other monsters if unprovoked a bit". If you wanted the monster to be going about it's business, you could drop the "Always attack the player a bit". As far as E2 goes, I am just imagining a slight skewing of certain attacking other monster values, along with a bit of scene setting, i.e. stuff going on in the background that the player can see (in the same way that E3 might have something happening with arcane machinery and stuff).

Whether this randomising would actually work is....well....I don't know. But I think it would have potential of making SUBTLE changes that do LITTLE to alter the base gameplay except to mostly add some UNPREDICTABILITY and allow for enhanced THEMES in some settings.

Just an idea anyway. 

I have to say, these ideas come straight out of my ass errr brain, I am just making this stuff up as it inspires me - but it is about inspiration. Some of it might be inapplicable, some of it might be impossible, some of it might be bollox. I haven't thought it through enough, I'm just doing the brainstorming thang.

But I'm also bearing in mind what I wrote earlier - it's essential to keep what makes Quake Quake, but also it's not essential to keep aspects that DON'T define Quake - they can be changed/improved without de-Quaking it.

w3rd. 

these ideas of adding ai customizability sounds good, heck, some of that is already possible in quake, but it needs to be used very sparingly.
kinn said it perfectly: Monsters should have one goal only - to kill you as quickly and as brutally as possible, and they should never lose that focus.
i suppose having some scripted events where some knights get into a brawl or something which leads up to a fight against the player but any infighting that is not the result of retaliation should immediatly be dropped as soon as the player is seen.
ie: an hknight starts to fight a fiend or whatever because the fiend was in it's way or something like that. while they fight, both monsters should still be actively searching for the player as if they were standing still and if they see the player, both should become angry at him, and not at eachother anymore.
for normal infighting where one monster retaliates against another, the original quake behaviour of kicking it's ass until it's dead is good and should stay.

another problem with the degree of randomness is that monsters may end up clearing the way for you. there are some articles of interviews for stalker in which on one occasion, some random animal managed to kill a rival stalker you were supposed to kill. this is kind of neat and adds replay value, but from quake's point of view, is totally wrong. monsters should never make the way easier for you unless provoked actively. 

i'm not flaming or anything. i like some of the ideas you are talking about and perhaps some monsters could use a bit more 'attitude' than they do atm.
also, i like the idea of, in your example, being able to control how much it will move around or what the likely hood of firing grenades is. but i think the level of customizability should be minimal so that, in game, the effects *are* noticeable, but can't be changed so much so that the monster can behave completly differently. 

I agree with czg's comments, especially in terms of the enhanced AI. Some of the comments he wrote about that or what I would expect in a more upto date quake rather than what Shambler is suggesting. 

Some neat ideas, here. I think the base monsters should still be used, seeing as how the places the player visits are the nefarious Quake's interdimensional ports of call, with some leftover henchmen to keep an eye on things. Infighting could be cool in some cases, where one could have the watchmen get entangled with the natives, causing a diversion for the player who might otherwise get swamped by both forces. In any case, I think the whole "frontier" type setting would be really cool -- a base-themed technology infringing on ancient gothicness. Mebbe its a converted ruin being used as a waystation, or mebbe the base has been overrun with ogres and dread knights, leaving a good bit of tech around for the player to use... 

That's sorta what I'm meaning, adding a bit more PHLAVA without changing the monster behaviour to something out of character.

Maybe the idea for E2 is a bit OTT but I still tihnk it could have a good atmosphere. 

I quite like the idea of death knights being sergeants of the ordinary knights. So you'd often encounter squads of 1 dk and 4 or 5 knights, and while the knights were still alive the dk would hang back a bit and direct things and, yes, maybe even throw knights into the fray.

Extending further, you could have some kind of monster clan-system, so monsters would be more likely to attack monsters from another clan, slightly less their own.

Or maybe this would just be fluff that would distract from the process of creating heaps of gibs, I don't know. Certainly a lot of the ideas in this thread could be done really cheesily... 

Cheese yes, I think a lot of the ideas are open to cheesy abuse but as long as they remain in this community they will be safe.

My idea with the knights was to....give a more brutal vibe, like I'm imagining if some knights are not running towards the player quick enough, a DK roars in contempt and hurls one at the player before charging in to finish the business off himself. I want to enhance the vibe that these monsters are psychotic. But the effect on the gameplay wouldn't change it much, just make it more atmospheric.

Should be GENERATED behaviour not scripted of course.

Oh, more about my E2 ideas, I imagine a few scene-setting things. For example, in some parts you might come across a map that has more monsters than humanoid monsters, a pile of humanoid monster gibs lying around. Or elsewhere you might encounter a more organised "army" of knights - like in Kinn's map where they pour of the castle. Or at some point you might look out a window and see some fighting going on in the distance. So, like, you'd have the standard Quakey gameplay, which would be great, and that wouldn't be changed, but you'd have a few extra things to enhance themes and atmosphere, to make the Quake world seem more alive. 

I will steal all your good ideas and blantantly use them in my game
so please, try a little harder
and try to not get stuck in `96