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Of course the monster AI would be better than Quake; that's kind of implied in the idea of doing a Quake remake with modern tech, so I think it's a given that the monsters would have more sophisticated behaviour and appear less predictable and robotic. That said, I think part of what makes Quake "Quakey" is it's simplicity of gameplay, so I don't think we want to concern ourselves too much with the minutiae of monster behaviour. After all, in those fleeting few seconds between alerting a monster, and reducing it to chunky gibbles, you wouldn't get much of an opportunity to observe the subtleties of a knight leadership hierarchy, or to contemplate the multi-faceted nature of an ogre's personality.
Painkiller sticks to *very* oldskool gameplay, but its levels are little more than static backdrops to the action, almost as if the design lead got a bunch of Maya-trained architects together and said "ok chaps - you model a bunch of interesting locations and then we'll build a game on top of that!" I think in Quake V, the environment should be just as much an enemy as the monsters within it - traps, platformy-stuff, ambushes, etc. This sort of stuff has already been done extremely well in the original, and custom levels. Makes the place seem more alive, and the player more unwelcome. So yeah, in conclusion, Quake with uber-l33t graphics, and some in-game scripted stuff - where do I sign up? ^__^ In Quake I always believed that Shub was the the Queen of that universe, using her mind control to direct all of the monsters lower than her on the totem pole. Hellknights do her bidding and direct the lesser Knights who direct, say, Rottweilers. Likewise, Enforcers lead Grunts who also control Rottweilers. While I believe Ogres would be somewhat "commandable", there would have to be a chance (like Shambler's suggestion) that they would take matter into their own hands. The other, more cosmic creatures (Shambler, Vore, Fiend, etc.) would behave more like the archdukes of Hell: their arrogance would make them least likely to take orders and, perhaps, equally unlikely to give them. The other monsters (Zombies, Spawn, Rotfish, etc.) would just do their own things no matter what. Right?
Anyway, a big part of Quake V would be a spectacular remake of the platform/pillar room in E4M4.
"ok chaps - you model a bunch of interesting locations and then we'll build a game on top of that!"
That's what my maps tend to become. :( I simply can't believe the PK devs made a deliberate decision to remove any possibility of flow from their game.
"Hey, I've got a great idea for our game - let's lock the player inside each room till everything is dead! There'll only be one possible way to finish a map!" There's lots of nice things about PK, but it still gets a solid "Pfft" from me. I like it, I had fun playing it, and I think a lot of the levels are cool, but yeah the gameflow and artificiality of it all are bollox, feels more like a series of connected arenas than an actual world you are exploring.
PK is perhaps a good example of how to make something vaguely Quakey (fantasy/gothic worlds, monsters, fast action, easy controls) actually quite UN-Quakey in the way it's executed, and something useful to learn from to avoid that. i think the player physics, fast movement, easy controls are almost exactly what Quake V could have. The gameworld is incredibly unconvincing though, and didn't make me feel for a second that I was looking through my monitor into an actual place.
I really disagree with the usage of a "here's the story" section tagged onto the beginning too. Sure, maybe it's an idea if you've already decided your game has no atmosphere or plot, but personally, Quake V would be all about the atmosphere. Oh and when we make Quake V, lets just use the ending sequence from Painkiller. Perfect. Hope you noticed the sarcasm; i'm sure i've complained about it before ;) I think you have a good discussion going here, and my thoughts for the moment -- put as succinctly as possible without too much elaboration as I'm notorious for (take this interjecting clause for instance) -- are as follows:
1. ENGINE If you want to approach it like a poly-whore, fine, but keep the Quake vibe. The greens and browns included. And if you're gonna have colored ambient lighting, for crissake, make it very subtle. 2. TECH VERSUS MEDIEVAL Keep the balance. The tech aspect of Quake was outsized by the medieval almost 10 to 1. 3. MONSTERS I'm with Shambler. Any monsters you add to the line-up... beeee careful. They have to fit. 4. WEAPONS The sprocket/stakegun thing would be cool. I always wanted one (probably why I made it). Chainsaw: definitely. As for the nailguns, I liked being able to choose 5. NAME & THEME To call it Quake 5 draws attention to Quake 2, 3, and 4. Think about it this rationally. Quake 2 should have been its own game, having nothing to do with the Quake name. I won't go into a does-Quake2-suck diatribe. I'll just say that it had so very little in common with Quake 1 that it should have stood on its own, as its own entity. Quake 2 had nothing to do with Quake 1 in the ways that matter. Quake 3 merely shoplifted a few things from Quake 1. Quake 4 is based Quake 2. If you do a sequel to Quake and involve anything from Quake 2, you will be dragged through the halls of Azathoth and fed to the fiends. In the very least, you'll burn in Hell, but not before I publicly call you lots of naughty names. My thoughts: You might be cute and call it Quake 1.5 :P Though that's perhaps too cute. Quake One of Two? Too technical. Quake: Chapter Two. maybe. Something along these lines. Quake: Source. Whatever it is it should strongly point to Quake 1... and inadvertently take a heaping, mushy shit on those that followed (by the mere implications of coming together to make a sequel to Quake 1 6. SHUB Why not go with Shub again? Who's to say you actually killed the bitch the first time? You know... you can only really Only this time make her more active. You could really make Shub terrifying if you set your mind to it. You just have to stop thinking about her sitting on that island in the lava and wriggling her tentacles all pretty like. Imagine her taking a more active role. As for episodes... I wouldn't remake the Quake levels. I think the idea of starting it at E5M* is a good one. It also reinforces, in a strong voice, that this is indeed.. the continuation. 7. WASN'T NEHAHRA THE SEQUEL? No. Nehahra was *a* sequel. Not *the* sequel. And because Id Software or Raven software are never going to make *the* proper sequel. Someone else should. Hence, this thread rocks. Whether it will amount to anything... heh... I'll make no predictions. Well, there was quake. Then there was quakeworld. Then there was all this other
Maybe now would be a time for a sequel for quake and quakeworld, now I see two ways the latter can go: quakeland or quake universum. (you know, like miss world and miss universum) Or maybe in the Commander Keen vein, quake galaxy. :) Ok, ok, qw wasn't singleplayer like you chaps are talking, but still, they had all these glorious visions of players traversing the world through slipgates (that connect to other servers) etc etc. More to it than just banging the same deathmatch maps over and over. Now the technology could allow them to do more stuff than back then. Like how about adding lots of levels with the game going on and on and around the world and you could meet others and do co-operative stuff, immersed to the game all the time. (Never go back to the os to browse servers or chat etc.) The levels could be made by community guys and there would be different servers where a controlling authority would test and approve or demand improvements to submitted levels. That would be the exact opposite of doom 3, which was a polished movie-like product, whereas the quakes have always been much more of a community process going on. Just throwing out some ideas, unconventional and hard to think how they would exactly work.. :/ Thanks for those thoughts, I expected a lot more ranting for some reason ;).
BTW, non-base outweighs base 6.5 : 1 against not 10 : 1. Agree that coloured lighting should be subtle. But it would be useful though. I still prefer the remake idea to a sequel. I discussed 'sequel' because that was where this thread seemed to keep leaning. A remake is okay... if and only if you had a team with each member dedicated to the task and would absolutely positively finish their work on it(at the threat of being publicly beheaded or demasculated).
:D Should this graduate into a reality and move beyond the discussion stage. I'd be happy to be involved. That is, I'd be happy to help where I can. That's not a thing I say lightly because I really have to *believe* in a project to devote time to it. I think it goes without saying that I would certainly believe in a project like this. Whether I'd be of any assistance beyond being a quasi-consultant will depend on the platform and what skills I'd have to offer based on that.
What if, after gibbing Shub in the original Quake, that the remaining pieces of her slowly became sentient. You could then have several smaller versions of her trying to reunite back into her original form. Each of these Shublings(TM) could have their own set of attacks and defenses and wouldn't require being killed by some cockamamie teleportation trick.
One of them could use telekinesis to keep the player at bay (a la trigger_push) while another spawned monsters. The possibilities are endless... how 'bout, she does not reunite in here original form, but becomes a 640 foot tall hideously beautiful Goddess named Lilith and the form that was Shub was just her uretha spitting out daemons.
The original sort of got away with a half-arsed "let's make a doom-ish game, but nick a load of names from the Cthulu Mythos" thing that kind of worked at the time (and is a totally cool thing to emphasise with custom levels, e.g. Kell's/necros' stuff), but in a modern version, I dunno - I think you'd have to choose to either do it properly, or create a totally original mythos. Maybe I'm fussing too much though.
I like both ideas, a remake or a sequel, i've not decided wich one i prefer and i'm thinking about it since this thread was born... argh!
WEAPONS
I like weapons that fit the architecture. I dont really love magical weapons, because break somewhat the inmersion. So... I love powerfull double shotgun. Do you know "The Army from darkness"? thats whas a Q1 film. Yes, you can mix a bit of nowdays technology with archane one and very strange wizardy/chultu one. Thats work. But sould be really rush, gray, brown, old, oxxx.. The weapons need to fit the theme. MONSTERS Sould also fit the theme. What Quake1 lack if big shambler versions of shambler. No giganteous, but 150% bigger. I also love the fiend. A shambler alike monster, faster than shambler, vicious but weaker can be fun. GIBS Whats about gibs? I think gibs sould create blood stains. We want smoke, we want dirty. Gibs its to me something really related to quake. Other games (like hl1) have very small gibs or not gibs at all. Gibbing and Fragging its Quake You probably don't know me, and might not value my input at all, but I feel obligated to stick my head out. I'm currently semi-active in the Quake modding community (yes the qc coders), have been with Quake during ups and downs, defended it when my friends explained how superior Half-Life is. Hope that counts for something.
As I started reading this thread, I instantly joked on IRC about how doomed and out of place this thread was. This because the qc community often sees func_/#tf as a bunch of stiffs, who are stuck in the past, only like Quake as it is and dare not change anything. Many posts in this thread already point to this. Now that I got you all upset and stuff, I must note that I'm glad it's being discussed. Proves that you aren't as stiff as I/we thought. I thought you all despised things like high-poly models, more colors and realtime lighting with stencil shadows. One thing that is for sure, is the fact that there is no way to make a perfect (or even close to) Quake remake. This because Quake is in its essence very, very vague, which leads to people making up their own interpretations, stories, explanations. So what ever you do, everyone else will hate atleast some of it, if not most of it. I'll be one of those haters for sure, since it will with 99% accuracy not be what I personally envisioned. This leads me to another point. I actually tried this once, remaking Quake. A fellow by the nick of Randy, or RandomMan as it is in its full glory, was making some textures and models to override the existing ones in Quake. I asked him why he wasn't with the re-texturing/re-modeling project bunch, and he said he despised them, as they had no sense for what is Quake and what isn't. As I agreed, we set out to, yes, remake the entirety of Quake with Doom3 level graphics, and other enhancements. After a while of work on this project brilliantly named RemaQe (thanks LordHavoc for the name idea), with Randy modeling and painting, me writing the design document and slightly coding, the project died out. It did so for the very reason I mentioned earlier, disagreements about what was Quake and what wasn't. Our visions didn't match (not just me and Randy, LordHavoc was there too). I now agree that I had some completely retarded ideas back then, and I'm sorry about those. The best thing that ever came out of that project, must be this screenshot: http://www.digitalfunk.org/crap/dp000104.jpg Even if the Shamblers hand is inside the wall, it's the best one. It shows Randy's new Shambler model, and some texture updates on the walls (those were updated more later). Yes, that's a Shambler in E1M1. No, we didn't intend that in the final product :). The shot also shows some of the changes we decided to make, which hopefully you guys will agree are of the right type. Such as the toes on shammys feet there, and the loose hide. Those were added based on old Lovecraft text bits, and various artist renditions of a Dimensional Shambler from the Lovecraft world, independent from Quake. Feel free to check out the rest of the /crap/ folder, there's some interesting WIP screenies and other stuff, not all Quake/RemaQe related. I'm not sure where I want to go with this post, besides noting my existence (hi mom), and bringing up the issues anyone who tries to attempt this will have. I'm not sure I can add a lot to what I think a Quake remake should be like, a lot of it has been already said, and I'm tired. I've got a lot of details in this document of mine, and in my head, and listing those would be longer than this post (thanks for reading this far by the way). This has slightly inspired me to go back to visit RemaQe storyline, compare what I thought was good back then, with now. Good luck to anyone who attempts it, and long live the brilliance that is Quake! PS: I must say I'm disappointed how no one mentioned DarkPlaces as the target engine to use for this remake. I know a lot of people dislike it for (in my opinion) silly reasons like bad particles, strange colors, and other stuff that doesn't pop in mind at the moment, all of which can be changed. Instead Doom3 was mentioned, which is bleeding silly. With Doom3 you get: limited support from engine dev's, limited amount of baddies on screen, can't release it standalone. Using DP you'd get the opposite of the above. There's also nothing more cool than to create an industry level remake of an old game, using the old game's engine. Significantly modified and enhanced I admit, but still :). I'm going to bed. Good night. I thought you all despised things like high-poly models, more colors and realtime lighting with stencil shadows.
You really mustn't read this board very closely then. We play other games. Newer ones. In fact, we have an "Other Games" thread about the other games we play that aren't Quake. But we keep playing/mapping for Quake because Quake has not ceased to be fun simply because more graphically detailed games have come out. I haven't read this board very closely, no... In fact I was linked to this thread. I think I will start reading around though.
/me moves the mouse-pointer towards the Register button I think the main problem most of us have is that almost all attempts to add technical improvements to Quake are accompanied by content that's mediocre at best. Normal mapping is cool, but we're not going to get excited about crappy normal maps. Most of these engine projects seem like tech demos rather than coherent mods.
I think we're also pretty jaded about the capabilities of the community -- there's talent here of course, but probably not enough for us to expect some grand new TC or mod to appear with enough artists, coders, and mappers behind it to be a quality package.
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