Imagine a base on a planet. Shamblers, vores and fiends could be fauna in the surroundings. 

...but it's hard to make good looking flora in Quake. 

not "hard" per se, but totally off-limits in any way i'd say.

Get Quakespasm to render 10000k* of polys smoothly, and we talk again.

*thats 10 mega polys actually, so ten million at a time.

Where is Baker when we need him? 

i forgot my pw long ago. 

Mark V supports "fence" textures on models. Good for leafy stuff.

You could do a lot of cool vegetation stuff with that at fairly low polycounts. 

Latest Quakespasm supports gamepads on osx, should just work. there are some config options in the readme 

I agree it's impossible to expect "modern" foliage in quake, but I've often wondered what's stopped people from using the methods people actually used in the era around when it came out (and for quite a while after)?

I'm thinking something like this, which I could see as being achievable with mods that allow loading custom models. Has anyone tried this method? 

Yes, I intend to do it in my ex-jam7 entry. 

Sprites work fine in Quake1, like the light bowl.
It's perfectly round, so the turning of it won't matter.

With trees I tried once, but the turning of its flat side was rather anoying. It could work with round bushes or cactus though.
I remember having a hard time to get two sprites diagonally at the same point, or in clude it.

For now I'm happy with statics like tree, because it hasn't that detailled surface, while quake's objects are rather cubick. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmVOH1r7Els

This is what I had in mind when thinking of billboard trees, in case that wasn't clear. Sadly I don't have any pictures of trees to try out, just some of the grates that are included in Quoth by default.

MadFox, i'm not quite sure I understand what you mean by the "turning of its flat side", sorry. :s 

how sprites always face you, looks weird with trees. example.

I've done tests using the method you're talking about. It has its own problems that are annoyingly obvious with asymmetrical, organic shapes like trees. If you use the same sprite you'll get mirroring. There are a few ways around this, but they all take time because you have to draw a bunch of unique face. Fuck that noise. Also lighting these trees will be a nightmare chore.

Here's a test (vid might need time to process) using the method you described with two unique tree sprites. Not great, but at least there's no mirroring.

For quake, models are probably your best bet. 

It really is all about the visual standards you want your map to hold up to. Each approach has its flaws, but some are more severe than others (sprites turning to face the player gives me Doom flashbacks!).

I quite like the look of the tree you demonstrated using the mirror-less sprites, but obviously some people will prefer the model, floating leaves and all.

At least any of those three methods are better than trying to build one out of brushes... 

A model may be more consistent with the rest of quake's style. It wouldn't necessarily have to look anything like the example madfox posted. with things like speedtree you could have model done faster than you could say "chimarvamidium".

The solution I arrived at is sprite trees like in the example, except with redesigned trees that are much more slender and taller, which minimizes the weird effect madfox mentioned. 

Instead of really goofy hacks (sprite trees? seriously?) ---

Nicely prod Quakespasm nicely to consider adding Mark V alpha masked models modification. It's a very simple/easy engine mod, it's little more than a 2 liner (10 liner?). Kinn likes it. Necros thought it was awesome.

http://quakeone.com/proquake/interims/mark_v_alpha_models.jpg

Thread with sample mod: http://quakeone.com/forums/quake-help/quake-clients/11994-alpha-masked-models.html Open lavaball.mdl in QME and look at the model.

[Palette 255 is transparent color, model must have flag 0x4000 set in the .mdl QME 3.1. In the above thread, the DarkPlaces users chime in on how to also achieve the same effect in DarkPlaces. qbism's Super8 can already do it. So can fte and Mankrip's engine.]

I can only imagine what Sock or mfx or ijed would do with this modification. Or ahem --- Kinn. ;-) 

I'm scared to even "nicely prod quakespasm nicely" considering all the politics and drama that goes on around Quake engines. Maybe it's not as severe as it seems to me but I'd prefer not to get caught up in any "purists vs. fidelity" argument :s 

I'd prefer not to get caught up in any "purists vs. fidelity" argument

Masked textures on models is a pretty chill feature and is totes quakey. It could be more of a "let's see some content first, then I'll add it to the engine" thing though.... 

IIRC, even Hexen 2 had masked textures on models. I even remember it having partially translucent models. 

Yeah, Hexen 2 that's why Spike already had it FTE. ;-) 

However, I wouldn't expect to see flowering vegetation in quake, maybe in techbase a hydroponics lab.

The fading essence of the damned lingering among the gnarled forms of some abhorrent copse is probably not enough to sustain leaf growth. Needs electrolytes. 

I see palms working well in egyptian themed maps.
Lillypads, vines in swampy type maps.
Webs.
Bushes.
Bone-bushes
Bone lattice / fencing.
Opens up some interesting choices for animated ojects such as swaying vines. 

...Alk13 from 15 years ago and met up with some old friends (enemies). Really enjoyed it.

Might wallow in some more nostalgia later on.