I don't have any plans to carry on creating the rest of episode one.

Okay I will be the one sitting in the corner crying...;( Would have been great to see what you could do with E1M5 and E1M6 styles. 

Let's hope that "The Black Forge" will be Sock doing Runic... 

is the update likely to be released this weekend? Just asking since I will probably have some free time to play and dont want to start this version if another is coming. 

@Shambler, E1M5 is another one of my favourites, I loved what Kell did with that map, I still wander around his version for inspiration. It would be cool if it got expanded and had the stealth treatment because it has so many layout loops. I quickly ran through E1M6 to remind me what it was about and it is a trapfest! Sadly the AI on this map is just plain dumb, they get stuck on floors, corners, ledges and often spawned into areas they cannot escape from or reach the player.

@onetruepurple, the black forge is going to be a lava infested cave network drenched in runic metal! :)

@nitin, I have not been very well the last couple of days and not had much of a chance to do anything with the MOD. I would love it if you could wait till next week when I plan another version. Probably between xmas and new year. 

will wait. 

@ijed, I finally got around to seeing your castle demo's and I thought they were good fun to watch. I was shouting at the screen, run, run from that shambler! It was cool the amount of times you got away from mobs and tried something different. Thanks for the demo's, they also highlighted a couple of AI bugs I had missed. 

I actually thought about offering a map... but I've got enough on my plate :) 

I had two comments (different forum/sources) roughly talking about the same thing and wonder what anyone thinks about it.

Comment 1
Gameplay is good, if not a little bit simplistic.
Comment 2
Is the stealth based on light/darkness at all or is it just proximity and the monster's field of view? Looks rather rudimentary.

I get the impression from the comments that the initial gameplay is simple but not in a good way. Is this because these people did not understand there is more to the weapons? Does gameplay depth need to be fully shown? One of the things TF2 did was show extra weapon depth with funny video's about each class, certainly very little in-game.

I saw an article on Dishonored (stealth game) and they said:
something about Dishonored got to me -- the simple but intuitive stealth mechanics, the incredibly atmospheric machinist-mariner universe. The heart, a haunting narrator.

Now they refer to the game mechanics as simply but in a good way, is this a presentation thing? or do people just look at quake as something too old school and simple (in a bad way). It is amazing what baggage a game title can have, even if it is MOD. 

Not sure how they can call it simple. More likely they just weren't paying attention. There are a lot of startegies and variation of gameplay during any given stealth run.

The unpredictability of the ai patrols and decisions are a large part of it but also how you choose to tackle situations provides many options.

You can kill when necessary, you can kill all or none, you can even charge past and hope to hide afetward.

All of these things is what I would expect from a stealth game. What else is there? 

Found a possible reason some people miss the amulet on their first play through of s1m1.
http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/demos/amulet.zip

command line: fitzquake085.exe -heapsize 60000 -window -game shadows

Reproduction steps: originally occurred when trying to "speedrun" levels with the amulet - I got killed by a dog and when I respawned, the amulet chamber did not open. This demo was just recorded by using the command "map s1m1". It seems to happen inconsistently after doing any of the following things:
a) Dying and restarting
b) Loading with the "map" command
c) Loading with the "changelevel" command
d) Reloading with the "restart" command

Once it starts happening you seem to get a long run of games where the bug occurs - could it be a tracking cvar getting stuck in a strange state? 

What I should have done is included a savegame in with the demo, because that gives you much more information for debugging - you can enter the game interactively and query entity values. I've saved a game when the bug occured and put it on pastebin:

http://pastebin.ca/raw/2297083

Save the above as amulet.sav and you can take a look. 

I noticed that, too. Without knowing the technical details/background, I thought it was simply a matter of delayed spawning of the trigger. For it seemed that the alcove opened properly if one waits on the start spot for a second or two, instead of dashing forward as soon as the maps is loaded.

"Simplistic gameplay" - but this is refering to the normal SP mode, I presume? I'm totally with necros here. 

@Preach, sorry for the hassle, I changed how it works. I now trigger stuff directly off the spawn points and I changed stealth alcove function to have a trigger on spawn so the alcove always fades when the players starts. It was too confusing the other way and the new way always ensures people have the amulet.

I originally put in a delay because I thought people would pause, pick skills, look around, but this quake and everyone wants to run at a million miles per hour! Plus I suppose if you have played the map already then speed does comes into play. I can certainly understand the quick start because I have spent a long time recording 'nokill' demo's from the start.

Preach, I would be especially interested if you find any AI weirdness, I saw a ton in your demos which were very cool. The most time consuming thing at the moment is trying to find AI problems because most combat in the MOD is defined what the player is doing.

@necros, negke, I am not sure if people are looking at the mod as purely quake and think it has got to be basic, (run+shoot) or they have not played stealth before or simply did not find any secondary modes for the weapons.

I suppose I have never really considered what 'old school' gaming really means and I know everyone moans about modern games but when presented the other way (less instruction, more exploration) people don't really like anymore either. 

And here's my atypical gripe: Commentary by non devs tend to be very superficial. They know they don't like it but are bad at articulating for what reason. The second comment seems confused - would basing it on light make it more complex, for this player?

The first comment is also pretty difficult to act upon.
'Do you like it?'
'no, it's blue'.

Showing the player (who hasn't played either at all, or more than 5 minutes) could be a good solution.

How about including demos in the mod? Just the simple ones that play automatically at startup.

You could even record kascam demos, which use a secondary camera which both follows the player in third person and goes to static views. Looks pretty exciting, I think some Quake done quick demos were recorded in this way. 

That's a pretty cool idea, ijed. I like it because it uses a format that was already present in the original game (demos when starting up) and also acts like a tutorial, the same way those early left 4 dead promo vids showed basic gameplay elements like the beeping grenades attracting zombies, not disturbing the witch, etc...

otoh, with quake, there was 4 episodes of content, so showing off 3 maps out of the whole thing in demos wasn't a big deal. doing that here, it's a much larger percentage of content being exposed at start up...

Maybe just 2 demos, 30 seconds each, of s1m1 showing stealth/nonstealth? 

Or even shorter demos. A good stealth backstab, impressive killstreak, or successful avoidance of a group of enemies. Or something like cutscenes in demo form, with a few key lines from the story. Hmmm, zerdem... 

Demo's are certainly a cool idea and something I have wondered what to do with for sometime, how long a demo should it be? should it be something simple? from the beginning of the map? maybe a small nokill stealth run? maybe the training area?

Someone else mentioned about kill streaks on stealth runs, what about a multiplier effect that if you kill 3 enemies within a certain timeframe you can backstab more powerful monsters? could create a similar visual effect to getting a quad so the player knows about it. Would certainly be interesting to track this as another stealth stat. 

For myself, I do not like being rushed. Ever. Neither in stealth or normal play. I think something like this would bug me a lot, because I would feel pressured to get the multiplier, even though it is optional.

I think I would enjoy something more along the lines of a multiplier based on how many kills you get before loosing stealth. I don't know how often people loose stealth, but I tend to loose it quite a few times during play. I think this mechanic would put pressure on the player in a more congruent way for stealth mode. 

nt 

Smacks of a scoring system - maybe replace the level end tally with the impulse �stealth breakdown� output, and adding a backstab combo as Necros suggests.

For demos, how about showing progressive stuff - backstabbing, backstabbing a big monster, causing infighting.

Maybe start each demo with it�s important bit, but also make them progressively longer, suggesting at more complex things, just after they cut out and change to the next one...

I saw videos of the mod on youtube before playing it, which caught my interest and heightened the features, so this would really just be internalising that to the mod itself. 

they could even be tiny maps specifically designed for a demo. 

but if it is only 2 maps to date, I agree that demos showing off the mod features/skills should be on demo specific small maps, maybe 30 sec demos. 

I've gone through the intro, and met the fiend in m1... but stealth is too frustrating for me. And it'd be nice to use something else than the shitty standard axe model.

This mod is so cool though :) 

Here's a run of s1m1 with

No alerts
No kills
No poison

http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/demos/s1m1-boss-rank.zip

I think that should qualify for "Boss" rank, for "Big Boss" you'd probably need all the secrets as well.

I also remembered a reply to something ages ago, where sock expressed sorrow that I was using poison bolts to distract, and wondering if I hadn't realised they were precious. I did know they were valuable, but at the time I was confused about how the inventory worked. I didn't know that poison bolts created a separate weapon slot, I thought you had to use them when you got them.

That might be a bit hard to communicate though. Part of the problem is the weird key binding for the weapons when using the number keys (I don't scroll for weapons). The axe and the regular bolts are on a non-standard single slot toggle, while the poison bolts are off on 2. Is there a reason they don't get slots 1-3?

It would also be nice to have some indicator on the HUD about which weapon you have or are using, although there are limits to what you can change, while still preserving the HUD for standard quake gameplay. Maybe there's enough scope if you use the rogue HUD, which came with all those fire nails icons for alternate ammo types? 

Would be a million times more awesome if it were something like a stiletto (backstabber's knife). It's a pain in the ass to animate convincingly but I HAVE seen it done.