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. 

have never really got the "slot 1" weapon right IMO.

Enough said about Quake's axe. In Q2 we had that stupid peashooter, but I'd have prefered a blunt melee weapon - a broken-off length of concrete rebar for example - to bludgeon things to death with up close.

Doom 3 dropped the ball even further with the utterly pointless "fists" - why the hell not just give the player a wrench? Half the zombies are carrying one. Shooting slow zombies with a pistol was shit, I'd have much prefered to have just wandered up to them and bashed their skulls in with a bit of rusty metal. Ok, we eventually got the chainsaw, but at that point in the game I had so much shotgun ammo that I never had a reason to use it. 

Oh come on, the Q2 Chaingun was freaking great, hand grenades were cool, rocket launcher was different but well balanced, the Q2 GL was good...

Kinn:
Yeah the only good melee weapon in their games is the Doom chainsaw. I don't understand why they always make the melee weapon such crap, it wouldn't unbalance the game to have a powerful melee weapon. 

has a nice slot 1 weapon imho. it needs skill and can be effective in certain situations. 

"Doom 3 dropped the ball even further with the utterly pointless "fists" - why the hell not just give the player a wrench? Half the zombies are carrying one. Shooting slow zombies with a pistol was shit, I'd have much prefered to have just wandered up to them and bashed their skulls in with a bit of rusty metal. Ok, we eventually got the chainsaw, but at that point in the game I had so much shotgun ammo that I never had a reason to use it."

Because it was Doom. :) You had fists in Doom1 and Doom2 so it follows... 

Chaingun - too much flash, not enough bang, when compared to doom 1/2. The windup meant it could have done more damage or had a higher rate of fire, but it was normalised for some pussy reason.

Grenades - pretty good, but why are they still selectable when I have the GL? More importantly, why does my current weapon and item change to grenades when picking up new ones (from 0)?

Rocket Launcher just sounded and looked weak. Gameplay was alright.

I know these might sound like petty nit-picks but when its an FPS the first thing they should nail is the weapon loadout. The best weapon of the lot was definately the RG, a great evolution of the straight line weapon from Q1.

If you compare the standard q2 weapons with say, the Awakening set then there's no comparison. "What the hell were they thinking!?" was what a friend of mine said when we set up an Awakening LAN - talking about the original weapon loadout. 

I just don't see it. I hated Q2's clean/boring theme, even Q4 was more grisly/conventional id, but I really enjoyed the DM. Sure, Q3 topped it, but even now I am surprised by how enjoyable Q2DM is.

One thing which always strikes me as shitty is that they never really got monsters into Q3. Fighting monsters in Q3 would have been great. 

The guys who made the only SP mod for Quake3 - The Dark Conjunction.

It wasn't too bad, lots of bugs in the monsters and strange behaviours, but it was basically three of them in a cupboard for six months. I remeber the explanations of how they made the npc's work. They had to sit them on top of invisible trains so they could move (!) with pathfinding having to be made from scratch as well since it's based on item placement in the original.

Apparantly the end boss had a bug in the final build where if you didn't dodge it couldn't hit you, so they had to wake the programmer up after no sleep for a few days.

It's a pretty stylish tc, but the monsters are irritating.

Also, SidRial (other q3 tc) doesn't count because it only had traps.

They're the same guys working on this http://www.aceteam.cl/zenoclash/ but with a bigger team. 

While I respect the shitload of work they must have put both into that TC and to their current project, after checking out that site I have to say..

Holy Flinstones!