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. 

Not that need to tell you that. 

That's 'bolts', not 'boots'.

Although that would be awesome, I'm sure. 

I never disregard feedback, infact I want more! It always leads to more ideas and that is exactly what I want this mod to have.

You are not the first to mention having a one shot weapon (like one shot per level) My only concern is that it could make things easier.

Someone at 3Dinside suggested flash bombs. The player is cornered and needs to escape, drop a flash bomb to the ground and instantly the amulet is enabled and the player has a couple of seconds to get out of range of any nearby enemies.

I would love to implement floor traps, the player can lay them in the path of patrolling AI and they have various functions like disorientate, injury and poison. 

oh man traps would be the ultimate badassery and really plays up the planning. you could draw monsters in or use them as failsafes... i love it!

but it should take time to set and the player should be visible or something to add to tension. :) 

hm, to append:

i'd like a trap that disables a monster for a period of time, but otherwise does not activate them to help with 0% kill runs. 

It shouldn't make you visible though, if you're trying to set it in a patrolling monster's path that'd be annoying.

It should take a few seconds to prime though. And be dangerous to the player when set. 

I had the idea of sprite rune on the floor with particle effects showing how they are working. The player has to spend a couple of seconds putting them on the ground with the chance to be discovered if the AI are close. Eventually the trap expires and is no longer a threat.

Maybe it could be made harder that any AI standing around has to be turned first before the trap is put on the ground otherwise the player is discovered. 

I have been playing the later episodes of Quake recently and one thing that always makes me smile is the level traps. I remember when I played DukeNukem many years ago I just loved the laser trip mines and would spend ages setting up traps with them for AI. 

Crude mechanics feels like it fits the player identity better though. The amulet they're just borrowing, most of the work is still done with crossbow and axe...

Magical stuff could open up much more complex dynamics, like swapping your position and orientation with a targeted monster, or slowing the passage of time... 

Making this MOD has always been about a labour of love for me but regardless of how much I enjoy doing this, the reality is it cannot be sustained as a full time exercise.

My original idea for this project was to produce a high quality demo to spearhead a Kickstarter campaign to pay for my time to make more content. I am sure most people are going WTF this is a MOD, you can't sell this stuff!

MODs have traditionally been about free stuff, but I thought that people would love to see new content professional done for Quake and the idea of the Kickstarter campaign would be about paying for my time, not selling finished content. The plan was to let backers influence content like for example adding extra routes and secrets to the developing maps. The final release was going to be free, it was the process of creation that was going to benefit.

I spent a very long time creating new content, especially a lot of work was done with the AI because the original AI are "dumb as bricks", but I seriously underestimated how small the Quake community is, it is more like an extended family than a large fanbase.

I decided to give the idea one last shot with a MODdb page which I pimped non-stop for a month but that just highlighted how few people have the game or willing to buy it. Probably the lowest point was emailing lots of internet news/magazine sites and getting absolutely no interest. I thought it was a quake thing (game over 15 years old and not looking like the latest GFX candy) but this is not the case, they do report quake news but not this MOD.

Sadly financial pressures insist I move on to other projects and this means that this MOD is finished, the released demo is the final release.

I do plan to release the source materials for this project but I need to sort through it first. I hope everyone who downloaded the MOD had some fun with it and maybe people will like stealth games a little more in the future! 

what sort of amounts are we talking about? 

Dev tools / documentation / source code available?

I can definitely see people wanting to experiment with what you've built. 

I'm sorry to see you decide to stop working on the mod Simon. I understand the pull between 'work for love' and 'work for profit', especially with Quake stuff.

My suggestion to you is to just put the mod on hold, find something for financial stability... and then come back and poke away at it again as a hobby project on the side.

Like you said, the Quake community is more of an extended family at this point rather than a large thriving community... but this extended family understands that everything it gets are works of love and are rarely the first priority of the designers. I think everyone is ridiculously impressed by just the demo you've released, it's far and away beyond anything seen in the community in terms of polish and skill... if it's several more years until more comes, it'll still be loved and appreciated.