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Quake Gameplay Potential...
Very interesting discussion in the GA thread, worthy of it's own discussion thread I think, for archive and research purposes.

There seem to be several viewpoints floating around, which I'll badly paraphrase...

Quake gameplay is the same as it always was (kill monsters find exit) and thus is boring and not really worth bothering with.

Quake gameplay is the same as it always was but that's it's appeal and it's still great fun.

Quake gameplay is the same as it always was and thus it needs to rely on mods and extra monsters and features to remain fresh and interesting.

Quake gameplay has evolved and improved enough (with or without those enhancements) to still remain worthwhile.

etc etc.

I don't think any of these perspectives can be shown to be right or wrong - mostly they seem to be the depth with which you look at gameplay and gaming in general. I.e. Quake gameplay might seem exactly the same as always when looked at on broad kill monster exit map terms, but looked at on narrower terms the refinement in monster placing, gameflow, surprises, balance etc etc that modern mappers have achieved could be seem as quite progressive.

I haven't argued much so far but as a big Quake fan I am interested in Quake gameplay, how it has progressed, and how far it can progress (with or without enhancements). Thus I think the ideas would be worth more exploration. More thoughts in a mo...
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Only The Most Underused 
monster in Quake mapping, other than the guardian from Dissolution of Eternity, both creatures get worse press than they deserve, and conversely the ogres are way overrated. 
Hm 
Ogres are overused because they're fairly multifunctional, apart from the aforementioned aiming dumbness.

I never really played the expansions much, I always preferred the community stuff. Think I'll give them a look now though for resources / ideas. 
I Was Just Trying 
to move the discussion along with a little heresy . . . 
You Mean Spawn/tarbabies? 
A monster that leaps quickly and spastically at you, but also explodes fatally when you kill it, is pretty clearly a bad idea. It's telling that Romero's main intent when he came up with them was "this'll really fuck with the keyboarders!"

I'd do one or the other, but not both in one monster. The kamikazes in Serious Sam lent some nice tension without being overly cruel, even if the sequences they were in were pretty stiff shooting galleries, and the fast headcrabs in HL2 were also good without also killing you when you finally nailed one with the shotgun.

I forsee a revival of the original plan for the vomitus - a slow but deadly exploding monster that vomits out the small fast spawns that don't explode.

(Isn't 'tarbaby' kind of a racial pejorative?) 
Well 
I've revived a version of the Vomitus that gobs zombie gibs and bursts into damaging gibs when it dies - kind of like a polyp, but has a bigger splat if gibbed with a rocket.

It was originally supposed to create spawns? Bloody hell.

I like exploding tarbabies / spawn - although granted, for keyboarders they're probably not much fun.

The name Tarbaby - kind of like Goomba's.

And I reckon this thread is the place for heresey. 
Also 
Anyone know where I can get the source for Scourge of Armagon?

Spike Mines. 
Ijed 
There's a hipqc on quake's, but you have to search
http://www.gamers.org/pub/idgames2/idstuff/quake/
meanwhile, here you are...
http://members.home.nl/gimli/HIPSPIKE.QC 
Hipqc.zip 
Facts: 
Cool:

Spawn (being well used these days)
Vomitus
Ogres
Spike Mines

Uncool:

DOE Guardians (crappy, ugly, badly themed anti-Quake bollox)

Jury's still out:

Z-Axis Ogres or whatever the fuck they're called. 
Thanks Madfox 
I've downloaded the source now, but the qc that you looks to be the gremlin or fiend - odd.

The guardian - thats the egyptian enemy? always thought they were crap, tbh. And a bit gay.

The Vomitus and Zombies are also z-aware, though I'm thinking to cap their max throw distance so they hit the ceiling less. 
Hipqc: Unknown Format Or Damaged . . . 
How do I open the Resource.7 files? 
Ijed 
Hipqc.zip is packed with winrar. 
Not Really 
(Isn't 'tarbaby' kind of a racial pejorative?)

It comes from folk lore:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Br'er_Rabbit

term refers to a type of trap which describes the hellspawn though they don't actually stick to you. The id guys were probably thinking of a bugs bunny version of this where the tarbaby was a lit piece of dynamite that the antogonist could not shake off once he grabbed it. Boom! 
 
It was winrar that reported the file as corrupt. 
Spawn... 
used to be the enemy everybody hated. But, they can be used (and as shambler says, have been used) well, and they are great for causing panic.

Also, spike mines are simple and cool. 
Z-aware Zombies 
Sweet mother of christ when will this madness stop?!?!

Actually I think they'd be a lot better balanced as z-aware than the Ogres would... 
Shambler 
stop being a pussy and admit you only don't like z-awareness because you suck :p 
Monster AI 
Has anyone worked on making the monsters hunt in packs, or any sort of group behavior? 
Ijed 
yes, my homepage got overloaded.

Try again, it's right now. 
Doe.qc 
Again 
Will Try 
when I'm soberer

Inertia, like I'm always banging the drum for - lazarus q2.

They had damage groups. When an enemy gets hit by another it gets angry at it, damage groups meant that one group could get angry at a singular other enemy. It was meant so that a player couldn't snipe a group with the railgun without the others waking up.

Thanks for the link Madfox, I'll check try and integrate it tommorow, on hangover sunday. 
Z-aware 
I think that making ogres z-aware shouldn't be the same thing as making them infallible, continuous dropshot lobbing monsters. Sometimes it looks a bit odd when they're actually firing down a flat long corridor and the regular shot would work fine, but they lob into the ceiling instead. What I would try is:

1. Have them check the intersection point of the regular shot trajectory with the ground level they are standing on (might have to go 1 unit below to deal with the edge case). If this is solid, then take a regular shot, and if it's non solid assume you need to lob. This is obviously a fairly crude decision process, but places it might break down like broken ground/uphill will only look as odd as it did before one way or the other.

2. Have the ogre decide the elevation in advance. Make a separate function that calculates elevation, and call it from say two attack frames before the grenade is fired(is that ogre_nail2 ?). Then store that elevation in an unused field on the ogre, and use the value when you fire. Of course, y-axis yaw should still be tracked accurately, that would be a penalty too far.

I'll admit I've not gone away to create and test an ogre like this, but I think it might help them feel less robotic in the way they aim. At the same time, it wouldn't revert back to the point of being safe from an ogre simply by putting a chasm between it and you. 
Well 
I should make them check for low-lying beams etc. since that's their foul-up atm. I've compensated by not placing Ogres in places where it's shown off, fairly crude, but it works.

Madfox, you posted DOE instead of SOA . . . no mines :(

I tried the older link and it gives me an error message in Dutch (?). 
Well 
alright, then I started searching on the game org.
Here's your part for DOE as well SOA qc.

http://www.gamers.org/pub/idgames2/more_idstuff/

I couldn't find your spike mine either, might be encapsulated in one of the other files. 
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