Well a couple of drawings so far...

Biff: That looks awesome! Like a land-scrag or something.....

Is the submission date 20th June? 

"#224 posted by Zwiffle [66.170.5.18] on 2009/06/11 20:16:55
Well I'll just post this as tentative right now:

When: Due by Saturday, June 20th, 2009
What: "Original Quake Monster" art - come up with a monster that you feel fits in the Quake universe!
Who: I suppose right now send them to me, but I'll have to find some place to upload them, unless anyone wants to volunteer to host magnificent, original Quake art.
Where: Wherever you can.
How: Pens, pencils, paper, 3d models, clay models, 2d digital art, whatever." 

I'm going out of town on Friday night and won't be back until some time Sunday, so I'm changing deadline to some day on Sunday, if anyone else besides Biff and myself want to participate. Whenever I get home and scan my shit is what I consider the cut off, unless you just send me a thing telling me to wait. 

nice and quick and sloppy, but i think you'll get the idea on what it is :D http://metchsteekle.deviantart.com/art/NeitherFly-126432952

i know its crap, that's what i was aiming for >:} 

1. Voreling -- visually perfect for quake, also adds variety (Quake lacks any really small creatures) and most mappers actually use them well. I only wish a single shot from the SSG would kill them, but i realize this would make them almost too easy and not enough of a bother. But the way they look and sound, i do expect that to kill them. Memorable and unique.

2. Drole -- not my favorite skin, but combat is unique and fun, good panic inducers, without being unfair.

3. Eddie -- a good solid fight without being cheap, good sounds, good model. Fits into the miniboss category like a shambler, but moves and attacks differently enough to be unique. A bit on the techy side, which might not feel right in the more lovecraftian settings, but feels good in the medieval / steampunk / base / industrial maps.

4. Rocketeer -- Slow homing rockets work well. Effective long-range, which is rare. Good balance of damage potential and health. The "recolored enforcer" syndrome is still going on with the bright red uniform, but at least the gun is remodelled and I like custom details like the crazy goggles.

5. Defender? Yeah, i guess he goes at #5. A solid threat in close quarters, AI is suprising enough that you can't easily predict his attack.

There are a few monsters i don't feel i've fought enough to judge yet, such as the hell knight variants. The flying lightning guys can be annoying, but i like the sound effect, plus they do fit into a needed category (somewhat tough flying monsters.) Haven't gotten enough of a feel for their combat yet. 

i agree that the voreling feels like it should be much weaker. his effective health is even higher because his small size and erratic movement usually means you miss a few times (and a DBS from range will be 50% or less damage because of the spread).

i really dislike the drole these days. i wish i could remake his death animation to something that's just *normal*. he was the first model i animated and i made the death animation way too elaborate. honestly, he should just fall over quickly.
i also find him way too strong. he's too fast and his run + melee attack is downright annoying. the original intent of that was to stop 'shambler dancing', but it also makes it retarded when you're just trying to back away. instead of run + melee, he should have had a standing melee attack and just break out of melee animation and go to run if the player moves away. it basically means you can never use these guys unless you have a room bigger than 512-768 or a long hallway to back down.

Edie was the last monster i animated and i'm very pleased with him. i also learned many lessons after the gug and drole, and i find edie to be a fun monster to fight. 10 edies is nowhere near as annoying as 5 droles.

one thing i wish we had done was something akin to the doom/doom2 baron a hell.
the baron of hell is essentially a turret. it moves extremely slowly and the player can pretty much run circles around it, easily dodging it's attacks. the death lord kind of fits this profile, but it has too many unique gameplay mechanics to really be a true turret monster.
turret monsters are great because they can be used in packs of other monsters. high health + low risk means the player can ignore them until last but it also means they have to keep moving even if they are facing only melee monsters.
Edie can fit in this category, but unfortunately, non-base monster set has nothing to compare. Droles are too fast, gugs are too powerful (and must be a primary target) and shambler lightning can't be dodged and vores tend to piss off other monsters easily because you can train their voreballs into whoever you want.

also, on the subject of gugs: why i never put more thought into the ramifications of endless gug-quakes (and attenuationless quake sound) is beyond me. they are essentially useless unless you can guarantee it is dead before the player moves on.

defenders ai is ok, but i foolishly decided they should have SSG blasts as good as the player. i've been nearly one-shotted by these assholes without armor on. nothing fills me with as much fear as hearing their shotgun cocking right next to me. suddenly the new top priority is gtfo and this is completely *wrong* for such a low-level monster. i don't jump out of the water when i hear rotfish.

just some stuff i've learnt after using these monsters for a few maps now. 

The Giant Fiends with Shields in Carved in Flesh, are they used in any other maps? 

At least you're willing to admit that you've made mistakes... 

I actually meant #2 to be the Flying Polyp, not the Drole. Got the names confused. Anyway, the rapid strafing and invisibility are a good combo, and the gameplay when he is invisible is fun either way -- 1. try to extrapolate his position from last sighting, or 2. just spray bullets and look for blood. 

one thing i wish about Eddie it's his ability to drop backpak[w/spikes] after death 

I liked The original Polyp's better - their invisibility tactic is easy enough to learn, the Quoth1 version just works as an armour stripper (like Pyro) which seems a bit . . . ineffective.

The Voreling would have been much better with lower health - imagine a pack of Vorelings as opposed to dogs in a netherworld map.

I wouldn't change the Drole to be honest, although his death is a bit elaborate it usually happens after he's chased you across half the map, like you mention, so it works as a reward. Coupled with the Drole Rage trigger he works well as a high teir rocket enemy. The map has to be designed around their use, which is refreshing.

As opposed to drop 30 knights, 5 death knights, a few vores and its done.

Edie is a sloid addition, although I always thought he could have done with a special of some kind. Not necessarily an attack, but something solidify his character as a mean fucking cyborg Ogre.

Turret monster - I guess this was supposed to be the Vore, but her accuracy breaks this mechanic. We're modifying to put her back in (what I think was) her original role. Basically less likely to hit but with an array of secondary abilities like rocket deflection and summoning multiple vore balls if the player moves out of sight, to launch all when they show themselves.

Rocketeers have a major flaw in that their shots can't be heard. I screwed up in warp and had them at such a distance where their rockets would just arrive without warning. No idea what the fix could be, since there's no moving sounds in Quake and making their fire sound a global would be weird.

Defenders are pretty good, although like the Edie an unexpected ability would have been nice - boot to the face with low damage but high knockback, for example.

Quoth3 - Ghouls? 

I'm complaining and making more spelling mistakes than usual.

Poker night recovery. 

defenders ai is ok, but i foolishly decided they should have SSG blasts as good as the player. i've been nearly one-shotted by these assholes without armor on. nothing fills me with as much fear as hearing their shotgun cocking right next to me. suddenly the new top priority is gtfo and this is completely *wrong* for such a low-level monster. i don't jump out of the water when i hear rotfish.

This. It's always pissed me off how a recolored Enforcer was able to do more damage to me than a Fiend. Combined with the rate of fire they spell out "completely unfair" 9 out of 10 times. Fix in Quoth3 please. 

Rocketeers have a major flaw in that their shots can't be heard. I screwed up in warp and had them at such a distance where their rockets would just arrive without warning. No idea what the fix could be, since there's no moving sounds in Quake and making their fire sound a global would be weird.

This is something that I have thought about, as Kell raised the same concern. The most clever technical solution I could think of would be to have two channels playing a rocket flying sound in parallel. The sound they play would fade in and then fade out, so the dynamics are like so:

<>

The sound would then be repeated on each channel by sending a new sound command once the last one runs out:

<><><><><><>

Then the trick would be to play the two channels 180 degrees out of phase with each other.

chan1:<><><><><><><>
chan2:><><><><><><><

The result is supposed to be an average level of sound the whole way along, but because the new sounds keep getting triggered, they move spatially.

In reality, there are practical problems which make it probably unworkable. Because timing in quake has to snap to the frame times, you are always going to have some degree of delay in triggering the sounds(even ignoring lag in networked play). So there is reason to make the sounds as long as possible, to lessen the impact of the random timing.

The problem is that the longer you make the sounds, the less frequently you play them, and so the less frequently the position of the sound updates. Which was essentially the whole point of the exercise - it's a bit like Heisenberg uncertainty! Perhaps 3 channels seperated by 120 degrees phase would allow for enough of a compromise - I'd have to check that would produce constant expected volume...

Anyway, I wouldn't post all this if I didn't have an alternate suggestion to float. Rather than trying to create a moving rocket trail sound on an engine ill equipped for it, what would people say to adding a 'radar ping' sound to the rocket? It would still eminate from the rocket, but as a very short sound you could get away with just playing it from a new position each time. It could probably be made to speed up as the rocket approached(or more likely the longer the rocket lived, even if it has flown past or isn't going for you). Does that sound too arcadey for Quake? 

Of both the radar sound and a global (no attenuation) sound.

They'd both be rocket woosh, but the global would be very low volume and the radar fading into it.

Don't how well that'd work though, probably need lots of trial and error. 

i had already tried to do the rocket whoosh sound in that manner (in fact, bob uses this method for his rotor sound) but the rockets move so fast that i ended up having to have the sound triggered every 0.1 seconds on 5 channels.

the radar ping is a pretty good idea though. i'd only have it play if the rocketeer is attacking a player though. 

Nearly all of the 'problems' you highlighted above are actually things I LOVE about the Quoth monsters. It takes me back to my early Quake days when I hadn't yet learned all the monsters off-by-heart so they were still challenging.

Leave 'fairness' to multi-player quake. Single-player is you vs the computer, and that should always challenge expectations rather than ticking boxes. 

I must say that I got to like most of the quoth monsters. they are a great enhancement to the standard ones.
My quoth favourites list looks much different than metlslime's:

1. Defender - because he is so dangerous but yet possible to kill within short time. I think them equal to fiends which I equally like.

2. Polyp - I didn't like them at first but once you get used to them they are fun. Don't give you much damage yet can be dangerous if push you into some hazard. Fun to predict their movement and kill with any weapon.

3. Eddie - give me some good weapons and I will have him done with pleasure :)

3.5 Rocketeer and pyro - the same amount of fun delivery as standard enforcers. Can be spicy when used in groups.

4. voreling, drole, blue plasma blaster - both take too long to kill and have annoying attack for me

5. gug, flying electro-cutter, vermis - take decidedly too much time to kill. Gug and vermis usually kill me on first encounter.

I don't have any feeling towards the whole knight family. But I have a question. Why do their swords reach further than expected? 

Why do their swords reach further than expected?
same thing as the drole, poor attempt on my part to discourage shambler dancing. 

I just wrote a whole long rant. and there was an error. 52? maybe? I'm drunk

Basically I love all the monsters. especially Bob. And gugs. though I lament their quakiness due to how much more variety they would have otherwise.

by the way, Necros you are a fucking beast all of a sudden! you're all over func and mapping and shit.
you've totally become the big man on messageboard. 

i just have a lot of free time atm, is all. 

to turn into a quoth discussion?

Descent has that radar ping sound (but on the player side) for homing missiles. It doesn't even hint at the position, I think, just the distance-the nearer the missile, the shorter the beep interval. 

i don't know, i just posted here rather than start a new thread, since the topic is "monsters" it seemed fitting. 

I'm rather conventional so I have a giant apathy against other monsters then the given Quake classics.
I almost gave up playing Quoth because I find them much too hard.

I know it's not fair because they only add a new touch to the brilliant game.
Although I really enjoy making monsters, and my boundless passion for it encounters no end.

Here's an example of Granito, trying to break its blockyness.
Still struggling to get its texture perfeckt disguisable, which is rather a tricky job with all different engines.

http://members.home.nl/gimli/granito.gif 

looks boss.