Half of the stuff in those videos I didn't even consider doing... It almost felt like a speedrun at times! 

@necros, after seeing the video would you go back to the levels and try them differently? Does the video make you curious to try different things? or would you not bother until a new version came out? 

I think one aspect that is confusing with poison is the ambiguous color scheme. For visibility the green icon means the monster cannot see me, red means "bad, be careful now". for killing with poison the green means "wait" and red means "good, kill now". 

I'm in a little bit different position, I think. I've played your maps dozens of times now so I'm kind of bored of the gameplay at this point. If you had new maps, yeah, I'd probably try the move a little quicker and be more 'daring' in how I approached situations. 

Part of the problem of trying to pimp a Quake MOD is that very few people actually have the game anymore. I know a large portion of the original assets are in the shareware version.

I have been doing some tests and I am very close to replacing all of the assets from the bought version of Quake with my own assets. I have done some tests of my MOD + shareware assets + custom engine and it works!

In theory I can distribute my MOD with a modified engine + shareware pak file and more people can play it. Is this a good idea? Is it likely I will get ID lawyers beating my door down in the middle of the night?

@metlslime, Can I distribute your engine+readme file in a final zip for people to play my MOD? 

The shareware license does not allow that. Sorry. :( It sucks!

id Software does not care the slightest bit though. Also you could probably just have your users download the shareware by hand. A certain website is actually luring people into believing that Quake is free and they have a repacked shareware that is easy to install. So while morally wrong, I'd say go ahead.

Fitzquake you can take without even asking though, you would just need to be ready to provide the source code to the specific exe you shipped plus you must make clear that it is GPL. That's the power of free software to you. :) 

The same issue. We've got the name and legacy code left and for ease of testing right now we've removed any dependency on the Quake folder itself and run standalone.

For a game that's over ten years old I doubt they'll send hitmen after us, but as Spirit suggests 'it's nice to be nice' so we'll have to come up with some sort of solution.

A message saying 'buy Quake' probably isn't enough. Re-adding the dependency on the shareware version seems cack-handed though. 

I downloaded the shareware from the ID site and it won't even install under Win7!?! Which really is annoying. This is why I was going to take the shareware pak and ID readme docs and put them in a separate zip for people to install.

I know Quake one ( http://quakeone.com/freequake/en.html ) have made a shareware installer with all the assets and they seem to be getting away with it.

I certainly will not be charging any money for my MOD now or in the future so this is not about money but what is morally right or not rude to ID. I was thinking about contacting ID but I get the feeling I might be ignored because it is a sensitive copyright issue. 

They have a team of lawyers who have to justify their salaries.

A shareware installer... that sounds like the most reasonable solution. 

We're not making any money off modding either.

And while I doubt that id's legal team would actually sue a modder, I wouldn't put it beyond them to send out a cease and desist.

And if that happens you're basically playing chicken with a landslide. 

I can understand why people love JohnC so much, I emailed him and he replied! :) You can re-distribute the shareware content inside of your installer but it has to be ALL of the shareware content.

I don't mind doing that, at least then people can play my MOD. All shareware content + MOD + custom engine means I can get a lot more people interested in Quake goodness!

I also emailed JohnR a couple weeks ago, no reply, really good way to piss fans off, ignoring them! >:( 

Nice to be proven wrong :)

Thanks. 

wow, that is quite orthogonal to the original license. Can you share what you asked and his reply verbatim? Being able to base stuff on the shareware and distribute mods that do so standalone would be a small revolution.

I think bethesda owns quake now though, so jc can only give the moral ok, not the legal one. I would not worry about any sueing, worst thing would be DMCA or a cease & desist. Not the end of the world.

John Romero has no saying in this since he is not with id anymore. Maybe you depressed him ;) Usually he is fairly quick (quicker than me...) to respond to mails. maybe yours simply was overlooked. 

That's a fast reply!

I'll think twice before badmouthing id again. 

@Spirit, I am going to ask JohnC if he mind me quoting his mail first, I don't want to upset him by just quoting without asking.

I know most people think I am bonkers around here but I think my MOD is good enough to pimp on a news website. So I sent mails to websites (RockPaperShotgun, Destructoid, EatSleepGame) and some developers. I even sent a second mail from my gmail address just in case there was filtering problems with my hotmail address.

Got nothing back, I was really disappointed. :(

I emailed JohnR twice a couple of weeks ago. I asked him to check my MOD screenshot/video web page and let me know what he thought. He is always posting stuff on his website lamenting the days of Quake goodness. Sadly I got no reply, nothing, not even an automatic 'thank you'. Ignoring fans is the worst thing you can do.

@ijed, ID are really good with emails and responing to fans. Most companies just ignore fans because they are afraid of being misquoted or fear of legal problems. 

<gay>You are such a great guy, you know that? Pretty much everything you say shows so much consideration and respect and thought. Yet you are honest and open (see your awesome QF feedback at I3D). You rock!</gay>

When I wrote that request, I thought about the problem of making a private exchange public. Sadly many people don't.

This mod (or hopefully soon "game") definitely is of such high quality that a site like RPS might feature it. Having it installable without any hurdles would go a long way there I think. 

Try Twitter maybe?

I would assume he and the other guys receive(d) so many fan messages, most of them likely junk, that ignoring is a healthy reflex. 

@spirit, exactly, this is what I am trying to achieve. I want to get this MOD in to the hands of people who don't have Quake yet and if they enjoy playing ITS then hopefully they will buy the full game and try more community content.

@negke, how is twitter any different from any other form of electronic contact? I get the impression he is too busy to reply to me regardless of how I contact him. I was annoyed about it, but not anymore :) 

have you tested if it works under shareware? afaik, you can do this my removing the pak1.pak

you cannot run mods under the shareware engine (you get an error message: "You must have the reigstered version to use modified games") 

The fitz/MarkV engine checks that the pak0 has certain amount of files and a crc check. Plus it checks for the gfx/pop.lmp file which has to be in a certain format. This can be disabled and the engine exe re-compiled. Not all engines do this check, some have removed it.

As long as I am not using any registered assets then nothing is going wrong. The MOD will not run on the original engine so it has to have a custom engine. Compiling an unique version of Fitz for this MOD is possible because the engine has been released under GPL. 

How goes the mod? :)

Got another request;

Can you make the volume of the player sounds at half while invisible?

It'd be nice to have additional idle sounds for the other enemies as well, not just the knights. 

Can you make it so the weaponswitch doesn't activate when picking up poison bolts - they're extremely precious, but I always end up wasting one after picking some up because I don't notice the bolt colour change - even though it takes up a load of screen space.

Not colour blind, but that might be something to bear in mind as well. 

I got sidetracked with replacing lots of the original assets. I have new runes, medieval keys and all monster/player projectiles properly skinned and setup with better models. If anyone wants to use these, just let me know. I am working with necros to create a new monster so that I can reach the point where I only need the shareware version of the game.

The latest version of the mod does not auto-switch to poison bolts (only exception is the tutorial) because I saw lots of people wasting the bolts in demos. I should do something about the crossbow player model, it is indeed stupidly large and low texture quality.

A few people have said the mod is shallow and to a certain extent, yes it is. I think this comes from the gameplay not having enough variety. I am thinking about creating more stealth weapons and tricks for the player to use.

I got some lovely feedback over at mapcore about the problem that people don't realize the player is invisible and I am planning to change the alpha of weapons to show the player state. I wish I could enable the IT_INVISIBLE flag on the player but the engine code hides all the weapon for some reason and it is dumb not be able to see what weapon is selected.

I also got side tracked with creating a stealth version of E1M3 and then realized that would be a stupid idea, I should create my own stuff instead. 

Someone suggested that the idle sound of monsters be linked to the stealth eye so if the AI thinks something is wrong they make a different idle sound. The problem is trying to create good idle sounds that are similar in style to the originals and extend the AI in a logical way.

I certainly agree, I need to add more idle sounds for sure. The last version did add more for the shambler, but this monster is not used enough for players to really notice unfortunately. 

I was actually going to mention more stuff for the player, but didn't want to step on whatever you're already doing.

Ah, why not, you can always disregard it :)

Idea: A fire bomb weapon. Just as rare as the poison boots, but only useful defensively. Makes a fire explosion for small damage that distracts a hit monster from whatever it's doing (even chasing the player) and makes it panic for a short while until the flames extinguish.

The flames could last for a short while and ignited monsters could seek water, although both of those would create ai dependencies.

It could also work as a 'super distractor' making even patrolling monsters stop and look.

As to all the micro tasks, yes, there's always a lot. But it'll all be worth it.