now this idea wont leave me
What about an open-world with some semi-random events combined with quake combat gameplay? Huge world to explore, very replayable, with NPCs and emergent gameplay.
I`v been thinking along the lines of 'stalker quake'. I even built a sort of a 'technology prototype'.

Bur Im pretty scared of the ammount of work it would take to make, and the tech difficulties I will run into. And Im not a coder at all... 

Ill map for a project like that!
Put me to work
AguirRe quake sounds like a perfect platform for such a project!
I wouldnt want to trade off too much detail for scale - I imagine small winding valleys and gulleys, a bit like the first level of SOE, or even the start of Carved in Flesh, only on a bigger scale?

Ooh! 

it uses q3 tech and nothing is defined 

....for president! 

You could extend that on a somewhat smaller scale by adding randomness to the regular game. Add a lot more traps and monster closets and such to your level but have them trigger randomly. That way the player would never quite know what to expect when playing through. 

Simply adding random events to a system won't lead to any meaningful emergent behaviour. For things to get interesting, you need to get your system into a state that is on the edge between order and chaos. There already are games that feature emergent behaviour. Sim City is an example.

Read more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence 

Oh sure, I wasn't saying that was a replacement for emergent behavior. Just that it was an interesting idea. 

that this concept is only valid if you can guarantee that the level is interesting enough that your audience is going to want to play it more than once. 

The imagination boggles! 

Im not going for any complex systems, 'living world' and 'fuzzy logic' - its just random numbers. ie the ogres wont simulate social life, hunt and wage a war on enforsers at the mood swings of their leader`s AI - there is just a probability of them wondering around and getting angry at anything in sight

but so far Im just dicking around with modelled terrain, hopefully getting it look as bad as rtcw/cod 

You guys are not so bad but I have read through many forum sites where everyone who post write in such a way that it would be safe to assume Daniel Dennett taught them all to roll over and play fetch. 

it will probably be very hard to make the behaviour not either

-totally random
-converge to certain places or set behaviours

but it could be cool to prototype it. It's probably very sensitive to tuning, and you'd have to be able to simulate with the game code separately.

Does q3 support heightmaps? And if you put fog can you load additional areas during runtime so huge maps are possible? 

cant answer yet

no streamloading, terrain is a mesh
big anough, like stalker maps 

definately can make nice terrain, but not streamload. but, well level connections aren't so bad, as long as there's a lot of them. 

(ijed) There's almost no reason to use the SNG when you have a DBS - maybe when the map design breaks down and you're sniping an Ogre from range. Same for NG / SNG, but with even less utility.

(rj) i'm working on rebalancing the weapons a tad for my episode.. the shotgun now has a tighter aim & does a little more damage. for the SNG i was considering making it scatter the nails a little, so the player has to choose between power & accuracy. the axe also does 2x the damage now & gibs zombies (thank you zer!)

Your fix will only end up exaggerating the problm that you are trying to fix. By making the SNG less reliable, and the shotgun more reliable, you give the player even less reason to use the SNG...

The SNG is a very tricky weapon to balance, and I think that part of the problem is the way that it is put into some maps. It often feels like it is arriving far earlier than I actually need it, and it only ends up making monsters a joke. The only time when it can be used without it being overkill is if you have several monsters that are attacking you, and would bring you down from a well protected 100h/150ya down to a very dead 0/0 before you can bring them down with other (weaker) weapons. And if the player is playing sensibly (by trying to stay alive and not rushing in head-first or trying to speedrun), then they should never be in that sort of position. It makes me wonder if the SNG is even worth putting into maps, or modifying to try to improve it. I don't think that there is any middle ground between it being "generally weaker than the SSG" and "overkill"... 

It makes me wonder if the SNG is even worth putting into maps

This statement worries me. Why?

The problem with basically all of the weapons below SNG is that they're all, well, quite shit. Before I continue, please understand that I'm talking about the "feel" and fun factor of the weapons more than their actual utility and effectiveness.

Axe: awesome in theory. Rubbish in practice given the absurdly weak damage and rather boring model. It's melee only, so I don't see why the damage wasn't higher (given the risk involved in using it).

Shotgun: In a word, pants. This is one of the shoddiest (heh heh) shotguns I've ever seen in any game. Crap model, weak sound, low damage, this one is so poor that it's essentially worthless (as a weapon to HAVE FUN with, again I'm not talking about actual usefulness).

SSG: This one is kind of fun simply because it is fairly effective (in single player, at least). However, compared to many (most) other video game SSG's, this one is pretty lame... it doesn't have any "oomph". It could use a beefier sound, and a bit more damage (even if that came at the cost of speed). Doom2 and Q2 shotguns were decent, what happened here?

Nailgun: The less said the better, really. Low rate of fire + weak damage + insubstantial/crap model = teh suck. At least the sound of the nails bouncing off the walls is cool... :)

SNG by comparison is the dog's bollocks! Awesome damage and ROF, sound is beefy and satisfying, and it has 4 barrels that spin around in a circle!?

Now obviously I understand that the weapons are meant to get progressively stronger as you obtain them, the problem is there's too big a jump between the "weak half" and the "strong half", and more to the point the lower ones feel gimped out because they're both less effective and less FUN to use (the feel just isn't there).

In conslusion... well... I actually don't have a point. I'm just complaining. 

In terms of feel and satisfaction, Quake's weapons were a step down from the awesomeness that was the Doom1/2 arsenal. Doom 2's DBS still holds its ground as one of the meatiest and most satisfying FPS weapons ever, although the DBS from the Doom 3 missionpack was a fairly decent tribute.

Quake 2 was a step in the right direction, as things got louder and beefier, but then Quake 3 dropped it right back down into soft plastic nerf gun territory. Pretty sad that the most significant feedback you got from the Quake 3 weapons was that little "beep" it did to tell you that you hit someone.

Doom 3 struck a largely underwhelming middle ground that probably veered mostly into toy gun territory, with a couple of exceptions. The shotgun felt chunky I guess, and the plasma gun felt like a plasma gun. Were there other guns? I dunno I didn't use them. 

I like those lower end weapons. I think the sounds and enemy reactions and deaths in Quake are good enough that there is enough of a payoff to use a ng or shotgun. Also, those weapons are pretty good at range and are essential when you don't have sng or rl.

By the way, I'm sure everybody here has a feel for how long to hold down fire before releasing it and watching the last nail finish off the ogre they were shooting by now. That's a pretty satisfying feeling too, and only available with the sng AND regular ng. 

Quake's low quality (in terms of khz) sound seems meatier somehow than the clear sound of modern games, and I think that helps the weapons feel better. Sure, the low end aren't as awesome as say a quad sng or rl, but I think they all shit on the feel of the q3 weapons and shouldn't be compared :)

Q2 SSG was niiice btw. Massively powerful close up and with a nice beefy firing sound. RL was pants though :( 

if the shotgun model and sound was a pistol cause that's what it really is gameplay wise and the double barrel was a regular shotgun.
Ok, then there's the ammo issue but anyway... 

i replaced my q1 SG/SSG sounds with the below modified quake 2 samples, if anyone's interested:

http://isoterra.co.uk/stuff/shotgf1b.wav
http://isoterra.co.uk/stuff/sshotf1b.wav 

Axe: shit. Next to useless. A joke.

Shotgun: Terrible (and annoying)
DBS: Good, one of the better weapons, but pales in comparison to the same thing in Doom and Q2
Nailgun: Good. I like the model, I like the slower speed of fire so you can actually see the projectiles. I enjoy spamming low level monsters with it.
SNG: Shit model, shit generally. I actually prefer the nailgun.
GL: Awesome
RL: Overpowered for SP, great for DM
LG: Good

Q2's arsenal was way better. I hated the hyperblaster, and the machine gun was gay, but other than that I thought it was well balanced. Q3's was even better I thought - sure they fucked up the GL HORRIBLY (it was still useful in Q2), but they did manage to balance the Q1 RL and the Q2 Railgun in one game. 

is that they didn't even bother giving it an impact sound when you hit flesh. Genius. 

the balanced weapon set is a GOOD thing.

I don't get what the problem with the sg is, though.sure it doesn't feel that 'right', but it's a nice weapon and very useful in places.

the q3 gl is, well, bouncy. a bit too random :( 

That Q2 had a good weapon set. The DBS and RG were good, the rest was pretty pathetic in just about every department - audio, video and gameplay.

My current project replaces the axe with an ogre chainsaw, as I mentioned a while ago, but changing the other weapons isn't somthing I want to do just yet.

The weapon set could have been better done (I reckon its more to do with the balance of damage done verses the monsters) but if they're used well by the mapper then they're still good.