are there any plans to revamp any of the existing maps?

a few spoilt the flow for me. neh1m7 was too bright & simplistic, neh2m1 was too small/cramped and too out-of-theme with its stock textures, then nehend seemed too plain considering its significance and how much time you spent in it. i'd also have preferred a softer introduction in forge city but that topic has doubtless been covered plenty of times before!

i love the cutscenes though. they add so much. can't wait to see more of them... i have seen the movie close to 10 times now and have spent many an hour daydreaming what it could be like as an actual movie with real actors etc.. it was, imho, the first thing to give quake a proper universe of its own with a story and setting, rather than being an abstract and disparate conglomeration of worlds & dimensions. thus i feel it *IS* quake in many ways, rather than being a mere addon to it.

but yeah, can't wait to see new levels, new cutscenes & toned-down AI :) 

Nuetral and NPC creatures alongside custom monster / NPC's - which was one of the features you were tackling in the update if memory serves.

Actually using such at the moment hasn't been done, we've yet to use the potential of our code completely yet since we get bogged down with details.

But something like morphing one of the PC's into an enemy or non-corporeal form and see all the behaviours going on, or just using cutscenes, is a possibility.

We stole a lot of your ideas :) 

my main issues with Nehahra were the inconsistent level design and the AI/new combat style. I guess I am kinda conservative with regard to Quake gameplay (it did take me until 2008 to start using skyboxes lol), I'm more open to new things now, in fact I think the game really needs it, but back in 2000 it seemed like too much too fast. On the other hand the overall storyline, and the features and content, were awesome. Definitely some wow moments in every category of Quake experience.

psst I have been bugging Glassman lately for his sources - I doubt it will come to anything but the possibility is apparently not 0% - I say this only because the subject's already been brought up. 

Let's spam his email, snail mail, and phone lines with threatening messages until he releases the hostages! 

rj: There have been a few changes in existing maps, but no revamping done of the architecture or lighting. Level design is certainly not my department. The only place in Nehahra where I feel personally responsible for how level design happened has to do with the simplistic style of the beginning maps. I suggested to Elek an architectural transition (simplistic to more complex) from the regular Quake maps to the newer maps. There was a philosophy behind it, but now in retrospect, errm, it may not have had the intended effect. Not that I don't like the maps, as I do!, but I don't think I would have made the same suggestions.

tronyn: I'm glad you're more into it now, naturally. And I thought the Glassman sources were history? Interesting. 

ijed: Steal away. That will pretty much go for all the new code and ideas in Nehahra Final too. 

the main issue in here is that the project still alive!!!

thanks GOD!

:)

my mapping is still alive!

slow but alive! 

What was your solution for the AI following the player?

I remember the F corridor description in the dev doc - the shambler ignoring the first branch because the player used the far one. But it didn't explain how exactly.

We've been thinking of the player leaving a trail of 'smell' behind them - dropping a finite number of entities basically, the oldest getting removed first. 

the monsters can follow that is, with some having a longer smell range than others. 

... mapped for neharah. Should try it one of these days. 

JPL if you make .qrk file sent me please! 

telnet 194.65.24.228:6969 

Email :) 

ijed: If I'm not mistaken, the monster records the vector location of its client enemy about every frame *if* the client is visible. If the client is not visible, it will try an alternate move routine to seek out that vector (the last place the monster saw the client)... before it defaults to the standard movetogoal hunting. 

That sounds cheaper, depending on how many players there are. 

I suggested to Elek an architectural transition (simplistic to more complex) from the regular Quake maps to the newer maps. There was a philosophy behind it, but now in retrospect, errm, it may not have had the intended effect.

i would actually have made that same suggestion. the first two maps were a pretty ideal introduction stylewise; perhaps 3 could have been a little more impressive to bridge the gulf a little more, but starting off small & basic before progressing upwards is always a good technique. it was only the tough gameplay i had issues with; it's always been my view that introduction maps should generally have relatively low-key easy gameplay, letting the player soak up the atmosphere and get a general feel for the game before laying the smack down later on 8) 

We've been thinking of the player leaving a trail of 'smell' behind them - dropping a finite number of entities basically, the oldest getting removed first.

That seems like a good system. It breaks when the player does something the monster can't (like drop off a ledge, or walk over a gap in the floor) but even then the monster will be no more broken than he currently is. Except it the player circles around, the current AI would start moving towards the player while this new AI would continue to try to get to this old breadcrumb... but then, if you limit the number of crumbs they will eventually de-spawn and the monster will start seeking either A. the player or B. the more recent breadcrumbs, which are closer to the player. 

Yeah. How many breadcrumbs and the frequency of drop (time or distance?) will have to be experimented with.

My coding's not so great though (too inefficient and takes me ages to write) so it'll take some time to get in - if it seems a good idea to the real coders on the team that is. 

Vertical movement -/+ 256 units could actually break the trail - removing previous entities left behind... 

Or mark it as leapable... 

another cool thing you could do with the breadcrumb idea is if you wanted to make more "realistic" monsters, the breadcrumb idea could be used to make a monster seek to the last place it saw its enemy, rather than magically seeing the current enemy position through walls. 

The Nehahra method Mindcrime mentioned above. Using multiple points for that'd probably be too much since the monster has already seen the position.

I was wondering about disabling a monster's AI if it can see its target but not attack it. It would then follow smell - hopefully leading it on whatever route the player took to get where they are.

So around the corner, up the stairs and then AbleToAttack = true so return to Quake AI. 

how much of all this will actually be noticeable to the player? Because if its not, does it really matter? 

But, imagine you've just ran away from a fiend, riding up a lift and going around two corners - but it finds you anyway.

Or how many times have you had a pack of knights underneith you, roaming back and forth and making angry noises? 

Call me old-fashioned, but I like that kind of predictability and dumbness of monsters. Works well with Quake's arcade-ish gameplay.