Typically when you face a boss in quake there's no reason not to just continually fire on them with your most powerful weapon. What ways are there to break up this pattern?

Selective monster/weapon interaction maybe? like shamblers taking 1/2 damage from asplosions. Your boss could be immune to lightning, or nails could ricochet off of him. Stuff like that encourages a certain weapon set/play behavior without absolutely requiring special behavior X (like chthon).

You can also reduce the player's stores of ammo by throwing cannon fodder at him for a while. If players tend to have too many grenades before a boss fight because you overused ogres early on, just make him wade through a sea of zombies, for example. A pair of shamblers will encourage the player to burn his nails/cells pretty quick too. 

I like having to lure bosses in to specific areas of the environment to reveal their weakness, as long as it's logical [and therefore obvious] enough. Somebody earlier mentioned making a level that involves discharging the LG in the water with a pentagram, so perhaps a boss that you can lure in to the water would be good? Obviously you'd have to script it so that the pent doesn't become available until the boss is in the water [perhaps it smashes some bars that made it previously inaccessible].

I quite enjoyed the big dragon at the end of the Rogue Mission Pack. Gravity Belt + Large Open Space + Fire Breathing Dragon = FUN. Shame about all the lava.

The best boss monster I've ever come across in any game would have to be the three tentacles in a giant silo half way through HL1, but that sort of thing requires complexity that would just seem out of place in Quake's dimension. 

well ever sence i have messed with the ai i came to a bug, but more like a feature where chantion moves around in his lava, his move ments are kinda creepy and somtimes he will move in your way if the path and get his hit box to stop you, then u r dead cos u cant get by him 

Quake would benefit from nicer AI
See Nehahra. Most people seem to dislike the new monster behavior because they want to play Quake like they're used to - predictable.

An unknown but potentially cool boss has just been discovered at Quaddicted: The Anaconda. Nothing too special in the end, but impressive wakeup animation.

Initially unkillable monsters roaming the levels or chasing the player should be used more often. As for bosses, some slight modifications to the standard ones might make for an interesting change already. Obstacle monsters like the HL silo tentacles or the Xen trees are nice, too. 

This afternoon I've been playing around with a new monster idea.

Monster Name: DreadGhast

When veteran deathknights have achieved all they can with the sword, they have been known to sever their own arms and legs in order to better hone their extra sensory powers. These 'DreadGhast' as they have become known by the few who have survived an encounter with one, have learned to levitate and are now capable of ten times the firepower they once were. Should you manage to bring one to the brink of death, then in one last vitriolic act he will erupt in a beautiful but deadly lightshow.

Attack1: The same fiery excretion as a DeathKnight, but more trails get fired in one shot. Can also fire whilst moving.
Attack2: Suicide bomb. DreadGhast only resorts to this when reduced to 1 HP. Body explodes, releasing a volley of above mentioned fiery trails in all directions.

Behavior: Floats around at slightly slower speeds than a scrag, but can take much more damage [three times that of a DeathKnight].

I've also used my very limited modeling knowledge to edit the DK model:

http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a155/text_fish/DreadGhast01.jpg

I'll work on a proper skin at some point too.

Any opinions on the general idea? 

Three times of a DK's health is a lot (750HP), I'd suggest giving him 450 (slightly more than the vore) or something. Also, getting an enemy down to 1HP doesn't happen very often, personally I'd rise that to 10% of his starting health (whatever you decide it to be).

Otherwise it's a fine idea. 

I thought I might be going a little bit wild with the HP. :P

Good idea about the 10%. Thanks for the feedback! 

I like Armagon a lot :) 

the model and idea are pretty cool, a floating torso seems pretty Quakey. Perhaps some particles moving around him. And part of his skin looking whiteish like the wizard. Lower part perhaps. 

give him a blood trail i guess, i think u can do that in qme 

 

I'd like more bosses in Quake as well. I'll be making one for my pack, but not yet.

I reckon they should have the puzzle solving element of the original 2 and not be killable conventionally, but there's no need for such a behavior to be irritating. 

but it could work in quake. People will often achieve snake/sandworm kind of things by having a bunch of segments that are all unconnected models but move in a line, with one following the next and a head at the end that drives the whole thing. 

but I just saw HT's new Scrag and simply had to comment.

Quake's hordes should defy explanation. The scrag is scary because it flies without the aid of [big butterfly] wings, and doesn't have any arms. It's like a ghost.


A few weeks back, I stripped the wings from the scrag/naga and now it has spiked fins on the sides. I salvaged those wings, and now they are fitted for a flying worm demon like you see in Zerst�rer, Might&Magic and Arx Fatalis.

However, in the past few weeks since my system has been healed, I have been playing the games and packs I've been forced to give up over the last several months, so QExpo may be calling things a little short.

Still would like to do the Minimal thing for it, though. A stand alone that has the bare minimal amount of media material -- sounds, models, maps, conchar, etc, to stand on its own.

A wild blue tangent, but many may not be aware of this -- there is a relatively easy way to produce your own sounds. Get the Audacity Audio editor and learn its basic functions. Produce a short abrupt, sound, either through vocalization or noise generation, and put it on one track. Find the sound you want to mimic and put it on another track. Stretch the first sound out to be relatively the same size as the first. There are tools in Audacity that allow you to 'shape' the sound, use them to shape the generated sound to match the acoustic pattern of the sound you are mimicking. You will likely need to use other processing tools to get an acceptable sound, but at this point you'll have a solid basis, and you can go ahead and erase the sound you are mimicking. You will likely also not get a perfect duplicate, but then again, that is not the aim.

You can find examples of sounds developed this way for a Quake3 style hand held Cuisinart on my Mortisville site, if you dig into the index file. 

I have disturbing yet fond memories of the fucking noise that thing made. 

Between bang and clang.

It was a bit crap in Xen and the desert where it was just tapping on the rocks / sand. 

That's an interesting sound hint. 

How about a mapping scenario which would require some progs jiggery-pokery - a "migration"!

You could have (for example) a ravine/gorge environment with a constant supply of monsters (say feinds for example) running into the map at one end through - for example - a cave exit which is too high up for the player to reach.
The feinds would then run through the entire length for the map, probably following a series of path_corner type entites to an exit at the other end. The exit could be at the other side of a deep trench, the monsters having to go through a monster_jump entity so that they could reach an exit which the player wouldn't be able to.

The players mission could be to carry out a mission for another exit, fighting humans or other non-migratory beings with the constant trickle of feinds running through the map. The emphasis being on running.

Or it could be a survival mission, with little weaponry and other monsters placed around the map.

Migratory monsters would only attack if attacked, returning to the path after their attacker is killed (in the instance of infighting)

Is their any way of doing this without new progs, Quoth or otherwise. It wouldn't be too difficult using the info_multispawn so long as THREE things I guess:

1 - the monster will move towards the first path_corner when spawned.

2 - the monster will spawn RUNNING

3 - the monster will not attack thre player on sight.

Please help me obtain fruition! I would love to put something like this in me episode... 

Fucking cool idea, Ricky! I love the idea of having a trickle of fiends creeping up behind you at all times. Keeps you moving and keeps you on edge constantly. That would be a neat element in any map, really. Monsters that walk a very long path and are continually spawning to fill up their ranks if any are killed. Would add a lot of randomness to the level.

I did a bunch of that sort of thing in 'White Room' although it might not have been too apparent. I have wandering code that makes monsters wander around instead of waiting for you to show up. Every monster was in motion when you encountered it in 'White Room'. I think that sort of thing is a lot more interesting than the norm. 

sitting around thinking about stuff... imagine this:

boss monster with unspecified normal projectile and melee attacks.
boring, but here's the interesting part. The attacks do a fair amount of damage but decent armour (green or yellow) is provided (that respawns) along with lots of megahealths (that also respawn).
the respawn time is short enough that getting health isn't really a problem.
the boss, unfortunately, has a self heal that can only be stopped by using explosives on it as well as a special attack.
the special attack is a stacking effect that gradually reduces the amount of health the player gets when they pick up a health pack.
So, let's say it does the special attack every 15 seconds (it is NOT avoidable).
each 'stack' of the effect reduces health gains by 5% (additive).

this means that after 5 minutes, the player would not receive ANY health when picking up health packs.

the challenge would be the race to blow the shit out of the guy while stopping it from healing with explosives before you stop being able to get health. 

special attack goes like this:

you start the fight, a mega health gives you 100HP.

after 1 attack, you only get 95% health so a MH gives you 95HP.
after 2 attacks, you only get 90%.
3 = 85%
4 = 80% and so on and so forth. 

another interesting idea would be to make use of the side effect of picking up many different mega healths.

in case you aren't aware of it, each time you pick up a different MH, the 'tick down' effect is added, so if you pick up 2 mega healths, your health ticks down twice as fast. if you pick up 10 MHs, you health will drop very quickly back to 100.

imagine a shambler like lightning attack but with a longer 'charge up' time.
the attack only hits once, but hits for between 150 damage.

NO armour is provided and should be stripped away preferably with a lot of trash fights with lots of health but not much room to avoid damage before entering the fight with the boss.

basically, another arena fight but with mega healths placed evenly around on fairly long respawn timers. (say 30 seconds).

the trick is that you want to make sure you are topped up with more than 150 health at all times so that you don't get instantly killed if you don't dodge the attack. the problem is the more MHs you pick up, the faster your health ticks down, so eventually you'll be picking them up faster than they respawn. the only thing is that if your HP drops below 100, the tick down effect is cleared, so if you do get hit and you are over 150 hp, the health 'degredation' is cleared and you can slow down the rate you pick up MHs. 

then there's this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsbcC8qd7Zw
i won't explain it right now, because i'm curious to see if anyone can figure out what's going on. o.o 

i welcome interesting boss fights. When designing them, you should be asking yourself what it means to the player -- what strategy is needed to win? Is it possible to figure out, and is it fun to actually do it? And does the boss really need to be that complicated to achieve that gameplay experience.

For example, your first boss takes 3 paragraphs to explain, and the resulting player strategy is just "blow the shit out of the guy, but save your rockets for use only when he's healing."

Okay, that sounds interesting but maybe a simpler boss design can provide the same strategy, and as a bonus will be easier for players to understand. For example, bosses in quake don't have visible health meters, so any healing effect won't be clear to players.

How about a group of like, 5-10 enemies, and if any of them are dead one of the other bosses will periodically attempt to ressurect any fallen comrades, and an explosion will interrupt the spell. Resurrection is visually very obvious (unlike healing) and the spell-casting effect could also be pretty obvious. The only thing that might be hard to guess is that explosions are necessary to stop the spell.

Now, you could communicate health if you had a series of like, 8-10 pain skins, each where the boss looks more damaged than the last. Then when he heals, there is a visible reversal of the damage. 

actually... i've been thinking of just making a sprite that looks like a health bar that hovers over a boss' head... o.o