That black background issue must be a Windows only problem I think, because all the Linux builds in those same nightly's run AD 1.5 just fine. 

Thanks for your input, xaGe. I got the issue fixed by deleting conchars.lmp as per Sock's instructions. I'd still like to know why this happens only with 1.5 and not with 1.42.

@Fifth Yeah, the scuba gear is featured in Swampy. 

Just swimming alone in Quake is slow and boring, nevermind doing underwater combat. 

swimming alone in Quake is slow and boring
Well, you can't expect underwater movement to be as fast as land movement. As for boring, I respectfully disagree. The limited air supply and search for surface or pockets of air can bring some tension if the map is well constructed. And restricted speed can be another tension-inducing factor in combat situations, further enhanced by hydras and their paralyzing attacks. 

water and swimming can be interesting
i always liked grizzly groto. is very 'other dimension/whatever', with impossible fluid mechanics of underwater areas that should be flooded.

and the map of than 'apsp2' is very good too. 

The mechanic of being able to move water brushes in AD would go a long way I think. I am ignorant on how feasible that would be but I can imagine using the flood/drain gimmick to make interesting scenarios! 

It would be nice to see more water/under water content in maps at some point. If only to add a few monsters. Say repurpose a few more along the lines of the Hexen II squid? A shark would cool, but then someone would actually have to model one.

Underwater sunken, lost, or ruined city type maps would be neat to see I would think. Swim, fight, find rooms still with air under water, etc etc... 

They're allegedly so bad that:

1. necros refused to put them in Quoth.
2. sock opted to do make a fake trigger_touchsound for Zendar that looks and sounds like water. 

Sounds nasty indeed.

I was looking at the trigger_touchsound but couldn't find an example of it. I'll be taking a look at the zendar garden fight section! 

if playername=Mugwump;
then replace monster_fish with monster_tarbaby & monster_shalrath;
force r_wateralpha 1


Surely?? 

Speaking of tarbabies, is there a way to make them move slower underwater? I'm guessing it would involve some QC editing. This isn't an AD-specific question but I'm posting it here since it pertains to the current discussion. 

Not quite what you are asking for but spawns in AD have a flag to make them jump a whole lot less. They become much less spastic with it set. 

Thanks Bloughs but it's about underwater speed, not jumping, and I'm also asking for vanilla. That said, what's this AD flag? 

This is one thing the Quake community is missing: the kind of trolls e.g. on doomworld/idgames who give out zero-star ratings and angry reviews while admitting they didn't even finish the first map of a release. You see at least three of those commenting on every major WAD. Quaddicted had some good times with hkBattousai a while back, but we need more! 

It's also missing the troll release culture, but I guess with Quaddicted not being notable for trying to host every malicious turd for "archival purposes" it'd be pretty hard for something like this to emerge.

A precedent is required. 

You don't know Spirit very well then. If someone kicked his fucking dog, he'd archive the boot and then complain it wasn't packaged in a .zip file. 

 

It isn't the rating that determines if a release is good or not.

It is the number of times it received a rating and the number of comments it received ;-)

Which map do you want to play?
1) Map with 1 rating of 5 and no comments?
2) Map with 78 ratings and 4.11 average and 35 comments? 

Water Combat: Sock is not entitled to add more water enemies. Due to the speed and time restrictions vanilla Quake opted to have weak enemies that take little time to dispatch. Nehahra had an interesting gimmick of swimming ogres but this was very wierd and required lots of open surface to breath since the ogres took a while to dispatch. However, I wouldn't mind something that behaved like the icthyosaurus in Half-Life what with its lurking, strike and retreat. Heck even having something like that attack a brakable walkway lunging out of the water at you would be cool.

Rotation Collision: I'll suggest this here, to prevent breaking backwards compatibility perhaps the engine change should check for a specific spawnflag before applying any engine-side collision, else default to older hipnotic method. As Baker mentioned, a mod's QC would have to support this.

Moving Liquids: Best example I've seen of this was the extras-r4 mod. The func_water works well amd supports water alpha, don't see why it couldn't be included.

AD's rating...oh hey maybe I should go rate.... 

Maybe you should look at it this way: Not everybody is a fanboy of sock. Some people do not like to play against Hexen2 monsters in Quake and some people do not like to play for hours in the same Quake map and get lost. Some people like the Quake weapons as they are.

Some people like Dopa and the lost levels releases more than AD. Maybe just because of this. Because it is how Quake originally was.

I didnt rate AD yet, but I will also not give it a 5. Maybe a 3 or 4. Does this make me a bad person now? A hater?

The internet is bigger than this forum. So it happens that people are not sock fanboys or do not like Quake mods in general. If you only want 5 ratings, you should write it in Quaddicteds map description: If you do not want to rate it 5, please do not rate it at all. Or tell Spirit to ignore all other ratings.

Please think about it for a second before starting another shitstorm. AD is not a 5 for everybody. Just like Trump is not a president for everybody :)

Now play on. With mod or without. Quake is great! 

@Baker, I dunno, the second one might be a hidden gem, why not both?

@bg: Giving AD a 3 or 4 because you prefer levels that are smaller or cut from a more "old school" cloth is fine, as is not liking the new enemies. Personally, my personal favorite 2016 Q1SP release isn't even AD 1.5. But giving it 1/5, even taking into account differences in perspective on what makes enjoyable map design and gameplay, is a huge stretch to me. I'd be interested in hearing a serious argument.

You're not a troll. The kind of people I'm talking about are people who would literally hand out 0/1 star ratings for whole episodes or campaigns without having finished one or two levels. Why make the pretense of judging if you're not in a position to judge--that sort of thing. And I'm not even exaggerating, people do that. doomworld/idgames, man. 

bg: We are talking about people rating 0 because of even weaker reasons than you are saying you'd give the mod a 3 for. Don't use your example of reasonable dislikes of the mod to excuse actual jerks and shitheads, you just make them think they are more welcomed. 

Some people like the Quake weapons as they are.

Quake is great!

Who are you and what have you done to the real gb? 

it's a little weird the resistance for cells in minotaurs.
Their long-range attack looks like it's plasma-based, so the cell resistance makes sense. 

#270 - Your suggestion that people who rated this 5 are "sock fanboys" makes it look like you have some underlying beef...care to elaborate?

;)