Qmaster: I redid the lighting of Necrokeep entirely, added some more detailing and effects in places, and did some small gameplay changes (plus, supported coop so no one gets stuck and forward spawnpoints exist).

It's nothing major that fundamentally changes the map in any radical ways, just a bunch of little things I wanted to do. 

it discourages me even more from continuing mapping, and new people from starting at all, so in this sense it's actually a pretty terrible mod You should be ashamed of yourselves!
There are plenty of good maps/mods around, "Honey" by CZG certainly has not discouraged anyone from mapping, in fact the opposite has happened with plenty of (tribute) maps using the style and gameplay.

Are the older maps updated or something?
Crucial, Mountain, Necrokeep and Swampy have been updated.

sounds like a typo in AD. older versions of fteqcc (but not other qccs) had a bug that caused them to not check properly
Yeah indeed a typo, fixed thanks.

Golem knights (not sure what they're called) play the classic squishy gib sound when gibbed rather than a stony debris sound
Fixed in next patch

Monsters repeat pain sounds on death, this is confusing!
Fixed in next patch

Various *stuff* broken in Fitz
Stop using Fitz with AD, its never going to be properly supported. Always use QS or MarkV.

I'll be replaying the original Zendar rather than the AD update
That is indeed a shame, because the new version has more routes, much better flow and lots of extra visual fixes.

Are there any serious consequences/side effects from overwriting files in my original AD folder with the 1.5 AD files
Yes, plenty of stuff has moved around, been replaced and works differently. Always create a new directory for 1.5, otherwise it will end in broken stuff and lots of frustrating at weird errors.

Fortunately the rating system prevents these idiots from harming the average rating too much
Troll downvoting will prevent this mod from ever being in the top 10 list, which is why AD 1.42 score has been ruined. Internet score voting systems always suck, there is always one spiteful person who will ruin for everyone else.

AD monsters, overall, are not Quakey in the same way
You make it sound like its a bad thing! :) AD is mostly fantasy due to lack of resources on my part. I did not want to spend large amounts of time creating new monster models, so I re-used from other sources. I assumed it would be fine as Drake and AoS both use the Heretic stuff. I don't think AD has turned out too bad with regards to Quake Aesthetics, I still think it can co-exist with vanilla content.

I've just noticed the current readme is pretty scary for newcomers.
It has a lot of good information for anyone to search through. I am sure anyone from the AD team can help if people post questions. The MOD comes with all source/test maps included, so there is plenty of examples for anyone who is curious! 

Why is everyone taking negke's comment so painfully literally? It was obviously just meant as a (humorously formulated) compliment to Sock and the rest of the AD team. There have been many comments in that vein here on func: "Wow, [insert mapper name], your map is good it makes me want to give up mapping right now". Clearly it's not meant literally. Sheesh.


(Unless you're all operating on a meta-level of irony that I've completely missed, in which I retract all of the above.) 

Troll downvoting will prevent this mod from ever being in the top 10 list, which is why AD 1.42 score has been ruined.
According to this page: https://www.quaddicted.com/help/maps#rating (scroll down to the bottom), troll downvoting shouldn't have too big of an impact on the overall rating. However, maybe you should take the issue to Spirit if he has a way to remove such downvotes.

I did not want to spend large amounts of time creating new monster models, so I re-used from other sources.
Where does the Hunter model come from? I love it! You should use the Hydra from Seven's SMC (I think it originally comes from Hexen, not sure though). I find it a much more interesting aquatic monster to fight than the rotfish and it would make for some very welcome variety in water areas. 

Where does the Hunter model come from?

Attributed to RRP in the readme, but I saw the model in Malice with a different skin. 

 

AD broken my func_ tags. I demand a refund.

Also the troll downvoters can fuck off whoever they are. 

Would be good. Need a decent water map though as an excuse to expand the bestiary. I have some ideas in mind but need the motivation for it 

Is Than completely retired from Quake mapping? I would love me some ad_plumbers... 

ad_plumbers would be awesome. Course, vermis support would be required so...THAN GET IN HERE

In all honesty I think AD, whatever its direction, is superb. Everything AD touches turns to "ooh look at that!" or "holy crap this is a Quake map!". Too awesome. Thank you for all the fun times AD team. 

Im trying to use the monster_knight "Stone Statue" spawnflag and exactskin as "0" to use the normal knight skin, but its not working. it changes it to any of the other skins, though. am i setting it up wrong? or is this perhaps an oversight? 

I bypassed it by adding an additional skin thats a repeat of skin0 in the meantime. 

Sock for the love of Shub can you fix the "blocking the player when they're hugging a surface that changes angle" bug?? This is actually a bit of an issue in AD cos there's so many maps with cool ledge-shuffling exploration, but going around angles and pillars can be a bit damn fussy with that bug.... Ta x 

Why is everyone taking negke's comment so painfully literally? It was obviously just meant as a (humorously formulated) compliment
Back when I made vanilla quake maps I sent them to negke for testing and he always came back with the same comment, that he is going to give up on mapping after playing my map! I am well aware of the comedy value of the comment, I just don't want new people to be discouraged by his comment because most humour around this forum is very dry and sarcastic! ;)

stop trolling :p ;) Nah, I tried to be clear that overall it's not a bad thing. I might personally prefer it to be different
Yeah I understand your view, though Quake has always been a weird mixture of different styles mashed together. I certainly agree Quoth is the best Cthulhu art style of any community mod for monsters, its just a great shame the gameplay is endless bullet sponges!

I find it a much more interesting aquatic monster to fight than the rotfish and it would make for some very welcome variety in water areas.
I had plenty of plans for water monsters in AD; the hydra from hexen2, more fish types, eels from Quake Expansion pack and 2 new models from madfox. After much testing I decided that water combat in Quake is terrible! Most players struggle with vertical combat and water is an 6 axis nightmare with everything moving really fast while the player is stuck in treacle! Then there is the technical problems of monsters not reacting to water with different movement speeds and engine code wanting to move all monsters to the same Z height as the player.

Im trying to use the monster_knight "Stone Statue" spawnflag and exactskin as "0" to use the normal knight skin, but its not working
Can't be done with AD assets, the QC does not recognize exactskin as 0. Also I don't recommend you use "stone statue" for normal knights, there is a lot of extra code designed for stone enemies linked to that spawnflag. It is really only designed for stone knights.

for the love of Shub can you fix the "blocking the player when they're hugging a surface that changes angle" bug
This is not a QC bug, this is because the players bounding box is square, does not rotate and the mapper has created a tiny (<16 units) ledge! This is a design issue, either the mapper wants a high level of movement difficulty or they do not consider it too annoying. 

I was recently pretty surprised to discover that the "picking up two or more megahealth packs in a row" bug is still present in AD. I think someone came up with a fix a long time ago? 

Okay so I just did my first test map for rotating objects using the AD .fgd! Wow, that was kind of a letdown for obvious reasons(no collision/fake collision).

Not a knock on AD as it's fantastic Mod made with existing tools and played in existing engines. Why haven't the main compilers and engines incorporated rotation with collision into their source?

I guess I mostly mean Quakespasm and Eric's tools. I know about DP already but hmap2 is not widely used so not a consideration really.

I spoke/argued with eric over the engine implementation of rotators in the QS engine for a long time. I wanted the same system as DP used because then it might become a good standard that everyone could use!

Unfortunately the QS team will not implement it because it is not a straight forward change and can affect backward compatibility. Maybe if more people in the community were vocal about this issue then things might change.

Maybe MarkV/Baker could implement the DP rotating system and then someone could make a map for it! That is the usual (crazy) way things have to be done in the Quake community! :P

So for the moment we are stuck with Hipnotic QC hack rotating stuff which is just terrible for 2016 style mapping. Rotating collision can easily handled by the engine and will allow for rotating machinery to properly interact with the player and projectiles. 

I had plenty of plans for water monsters in AD
So... are you saying that you put these plans to rest? That would be a shame, especially regarding the Hydra: this bugger can also attack you when you're out of the water, paralyzing you in the process. That could be used for some interestingly wicked situations.

Then there is the technical problems of monsters not reacting to water with different movement speeds
That's akin to saying "let's not use fiends because they can't navigate stairs and tight spaces properly"... Learning how to use a monster efficiently is the mapper's job. Yours as the project lead is to provide content and gameplay opportunities. Let the mappers deal with these problems. I surely am not the only player who needs tougher and more varied aquatic monsters. 

Could we add necros awesome swinging gate from altar of storms?

QC Hack:
Hrmm, yes having to manually add blocks to create the collision is a cheatyfaced hack by any standard and brings along the ever annoying and long standing issue of colliders not ever rotating hence 45 degrees being 1.44 or so larger than 0. 

 

Learning how to use a monster efficiently is the mapper's job. Yours as the project lead is to provide content and gameplay opportunities.

Wow 

Underwater content, yes, because while AD greatly expands the above-surface bestiary, it still doesn't have more than vanilla underwater. Plus, Sock just admitted having had plans for this. I'm only asking him to consider bringing these plans to fruition. 

He did consider it. Concluded it sucked donkey balls. As the project lead it's his prerogative to make that call. 

I'll see if I can do a true rotation implementation in Mark V in the next few days.

It will need tons of beta testing to assure compatibility. I once saw a Nehahra bug report for a different engine (Qrack) that appeared to involve true rotation and found that to be disturbing.

The main difference is someone interested in doing the QuakeC support (progs.dat game logic for anyone reading this who doesn't know what that is) ... since I almost exclusively only do engine code. Without QuakeC support in an mod that gets use, the engine modification by itself doesn't mean much ;-)

Testing in DarkPlaces would also need to happen to make sure everything works (essentially) the same. DarkPlaces physics code is not the same as the classic engines in some ways, making it unclear at times if a behavioral difference could happen.

/No promises since I haven't thought about it much lately, there could be a red flag I have forgotten, but aside from that possibility, seems very plausible. 

"water combat in Quake is terrible"

I was going to disagree and compare it to something like Descent but the movement speed in Descent is much higher and snappier.

I will still be interested in creating a water map at some point, I'm guessing the scuba gear powerup was included in the 1.5 update?