Or, at least, some cool cut scenes like the good ol' Zerstorer or Malice. I miss that cheesy, clunky but utterly charming style of animation. :) 

I can dream can't I?? 

I'm a filthy linux user. Is the argument for external libs not an argument for ease of upgradability?

If my SDL libs are statically linked into the executable, and I want to upgrade to a newer version of SDL, I need to recompile my whole game.

Also on my wishlist for this year is for Baker to incorporate my IRC mod into QS master... Oh wait... Realistic, that's not going to happen with my coding skills XD 

If my SDL libs are statically linked into the executable, and I want to upgrade to a newer version of SDL, I need to recompile my whole game.

I think that's the promise, yes. The reality is that never happens in real life settings. 

It could be interesting to have area-specific waypoints to help monsters battle around their intended place without hunting the player through the whole map. When you leave the area, they'd stay back waiting for you. The concept of territorialist monsters is cool indeed.

AD has this functionality, although I have not tested it. It's a "tethering" system. Don't have the entity info handle but Simon mentioned it was used in ad_tfuma I believe. It sounded pretty handy. 

That depends on whether this tethering system works as waypoints (chained paths) to also help the monster navigate the area. Vanilla Quake already had waypoint-style paths for patrolling, so that may be the case. 

I've always wanted to do a Quake mod that was basically Left 4 Dead, in that there was a director written in QuakeC that just spawned monsters as needed. I don't know that it would be all that hard ... sort of like Qonquer, but with more intelligence. 

My concern with that kind of mod is that you really lose a lot of what makes Quake work - that being hand crafted encounter design. Having the computer spawn enemies for you to fight means that you can't design combat scenarios that are tailored to the environment the player's fighting in, which takes away a lot of the variety of gameplay.

Quake really isn't a horde combat game. 

You could mix it. Hand crafted encounters with director filled areas between set pieces ... 

I think it's weird now because AD is the defacto version of Quake we play ... but that means you can't run any other mods alongside it. Hmm.... 

I think it's weird now because AD is the defacto version of Quake we play'

No, it's just a mod like any other. 

Quoth is still my Quake mod of choice. AD has tried too hard to harmonise (for lack of a better term) Quake's thematic in a fantasy direction, and in doing so has lost what I always really loved about Quake, which is the thematic dissonance. Easy example: I like seeing sci-fi health boxes in a medieval castle.

I have played some AD and it's very well made, but to me it will never be Quake, because unlike Quoth it changed Quake rather than simply adding to it.

Anyway, back on topic, Warren I have also dreamed of a Quake/L4D mashup for a long time. I envisage the director choosing between some pre-crafted encounters (and scaling them) in response to the players actions. You would also need to add a few new enemies, such as fast grunts with melee weapons and mini-bosses that have to be attacked from multple directions, etc. 

Was never meant as a replacement or even an upgrade. AD is it’s own thing, there will still be new maps for quoth and other mods.
AD is definitely the most polished mod though, I’m proud to have been a part of the team 

Rubicon 2 style AD episode is my wet dream 

That would be rather lovely. :) 

I'm glad we have both to choose from. I tend to learn toward AD but I do enjoy Quoth. I have only made one map for each and I have to say the entity state system for AD and the DelaySpawn spawn flags for Quoth gives mappers so many more options with encounters that you could really simulate the LFD gameplay Warren is talking about. 

I'm glad we have both to choose from. I tend to learn toward AD but I do enjoy Quoth. I have only made one map for each and I have to say the entity state system for AD and the DelaySpawn spawn flags for Quoth gives mappers so many more options with encounters that you could really simulate the LFD gameplay Warren is talking about. 

I'd really like to see this happen as well. Ever since The Forgotten Sepulcher I'm always trying to play the latest releases (and older) with these effects. Would be nice to just have a toggle option in menu instead of moving files to the AD folder and risk breaking stuff lol

Hopefully if this DOES become a thing they include all the cool effects (armor, items etc) borrowed from the AD mod.

Noticed there's not many Quakespasm videos (let alone spike) on YouTube so I recorded some coop gameplay yesterday with a friend playing QS spiked https://youtu.be/hxcbEliwpxQ 

ID1 for life.

I'd like to see more rule 34 ranger art.

Seriously though, just more maps is fine, and 2017 was already great for that. 

Posted by Baker [65.60.237.219] on 2018/03/02 11:27:11
Mark V added a ground-breaking mouse driven menu http://celephais.net/board/view_thread.php?id=61375&start=1835

Whether or not daft people notice today, it is going to have a major long term impact. I want to mention this first because user-interface matters. People don't like a shitty user-interface and frankly that is what Quake has offered and it sucks bollocks (did I get the UK slang right?)

Quake is not only a model community -- it is more than that. We dream. We fight. We try to give our visions, our hopes and aspirations.

We have heroes (sock, SleepWalker, Spirit) and anti-heroes (onetruepurple not to single him out -- I may well belong in such a group) and they all make valuable contributions.

But at the same time, Quake has a number of stodgy cruft-users and Steam me-too! newbies who don't know their arse from a hole in the ground.

So here is the question:

Is what Quake offers today completely satisfactory to you? Or do you demand more?

But I'm not going to kid around. Let's go full "balls out" here because if you man up, there is just no other way to do this ...

Real question: Am I alone in wanting Quake to be more than it is today?

To hell with it, let's see where this conversion goes!!! 

Not Sure If You're Talking About Engine Stuff Or Whatever.
#1 posted by Shambler [88.111.222.13] on 2018/03/02 12:04:02 spam
But mostly I am very satisfied with what Quake offers me today.

The combination of the enhancements offered by current engines and mods like AD, along with generally really nice, appropriate usage of those features by mappers, executed in a wide variety of maps that still give a good Quakey experience.....I think is great. There's not much I think should be added, except more of the same, and the continuation of a very gradual introduction of minor graphical / design enhancements.

There's a few things I would personally like to see, I'm happy for AD to become a main standard for Quake+++, as long as people remember it's a choice, and vanilla or other mods like Rubicon, Quoth etc are still great to map for. I'd like to see some of the older / less used mod stuff added to AD, specifically Floyds, re-textured Zer Mega Enforcers and Nemesats, the BloodCube, also the Nehahra railgun, all of which I think offer really cool gameplay. Graphically, better fluids would be the next step I think, maybe some subtle surface movement, better textures, even a slight reflectiveness - again the key is subtlety.

Set-up-wise I was going to suggest easier use of the -game malarkey rather than editing shortcuts, but then I realised that works fine changing dir in engine in Quakespasm, so that's fine.

In short, I don't want much more - apart from MOAR MAPS :) 

#2 posted by onetruepurple [178.235.146.159] on 2018/03/02 12:36:25 spam
Not 100% sure if this thread is strictly for user experience ideas, or holistically about Quake, but I have a certain Strong Opinion™ that I was meant to post in the "Quake in 2018" thread but it's probably too late to revive that...

The AI in Quake, and pathfinding specifically, is shit.

I mean, we all know it, but it needs to change from "it's shit, but it's ok" to "it's shit, and it's not ok". It's not completely satisfactory (as per the thread title) that even in 2018, Quake gameplay can be lamely cheesed.

Here's an example from Bal's (otherwise 100% excellent) 1024³ map: it's not immediately visible on that shot but the wall can simply be walked around. In a proper scenario, the Fiends would just find their way around the wall and rip me to shreds, but the Fiends wouldn't, since they just follow the one straight line the QC is telling them to follow at all costs.

This will be an unpopular opinion, but as Quake is slowly re-gaining popularity, we as mappers and modders MUST up our game on this end. I find it slightly embarrassing to recommend all the amazing new maps to newcomers and have them encounter idiotic, prehistoric AI.

It's especially embarrassing since such systems already exist as .qc!!

1. sock implemented an extremely robust pathing system in the In the Shadows mod that was then discontinued in Arcane Dimensions.

2. c0burn has another system, based on FBX waypoints (I think?): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iooijPc7dbY&

3. Numerous older solutions from the inside3d times.

Ten, and even five years ago posts like these would be met with total bollocks like "who cares about smart monsters, I just shoot them :)", maybe it's about time everybody realised that smarter enemies make for a better QUAKE experience. 

 

Mark V added a ground-breaking mouse driven menu [...].
Whether or not daft people notice today, it is going to have a major long term impact. I want to mention this first because user-interface matters.

Wrong. There were mouse-driven GUIs for Quake engines before, and most of them never inspired other engines to follow suit. Even Makaqu has a mouse-driven GUI with a minimalistic approach, which uses the mouse wheel and buttons instead of a pointer and is therefore faster in most situations when we get used to it.

Another usability improvement implemented in Makaqu to make menu navigation faster is that the same command used to open a menu can also be used to close it. Press F8 to open the keys menu, and press F8 again to close it. No more pressing Esc multiple times to get back to the game. Has this ever been implemented in another engine? No.

When it comes to trends in engine coding, user interface doesn't matter. Technology matters. Engine coders enjoys to implement challenging technology, and this is why we've got multiple engines with CSQC and MenuQC support, which requires users to learn programming in order to modify the menus.
Meanwhile, the Makaqu engine has menus that are completely customizable through just 2 (menu_keys_clear, menu_keys_addcmd) or 3 (menu_clearmaps, menu_addepisode, menu_addmap) console commands, which any braindead user could do in a simple autoexec.cfg file. For over ten years, this never inspired anyone else to follow a similar approach to Quake UI customization.

Usability generally favors minimalism, but it's hard to not get ambitious when doing engine coding. Unambitious approaches doesn't sell.

Anyway, I've never implemented a maplist command and some of the other usability improvements that other engines have. I've stopped implementing usability improvements after noticing that most people don't care about them.

When usability is good, people don't notice it. And there's no demand for what goes unnoticed. This is why Quake engine usability tends to follow a reactive design-by-committee approach, fixing issues while ignoring improvements.

Real question: Am I alone in wanting Quake to be more than it is today?

You're not alone, but it's difficult to come up with a consensus about what "more" means. Most of what the community at large agrees upon seems to have been done already. Further efforts rarely achieve consensus and are most often considered to detract from what the authentic experience should be. Which is why I don't even try to promote Retroquad as a Quake engine anymore, and instead am developing it towards indie game development. Or maybe I'm just drowning in my own negativity, who knows.