Got up to secret level so far. Good stuff.

Agree on the comment above about backpack pickup sound.

When picking up box of nailgun ammo, it says "You got nails", but with backpack it says "1 Spike" for example. Is there any difference?

And, to maintain consistency, when picking up health, it says "You were healed by 15" or whatever, would be nice to have same count info about picked up ammo from boxes, especially considering the Copper changes. 

An actual proper, coherent, "AAA" quake episode for the first time in god-knows-how-long and people are complaining about the backpack pickup sound? srsly?

Srsly though, I'm about halfway in and this is some awesome, true quakery. More thoughts later but so far this is some goooood sheeiiit.... 

Quite surprised at how new all of those maps actually are - a lot of the pack is the result of stuffing dm4jam + grendel + uwjam into a blender. The relatively short/id1 size of the maps made the whole pack a lot more digestible - I've played the entire thing* this morning.

Start: Nice idea, very nice visuals. Couldn't find what triggers the Quad Damage sequence. Favorite bit was the id episode gates, very competently crafted small vignettes.

Map 1: I've never been too keen on the nondescript dapak theme but this is a nice extrapolation of it, closer to classic ID in ethos. Rather impressed at how much gameplay could be derived from just one func_plat. The nailgun sequence was swell, proper E3M3 vibes in that one. That dithered metal texture is rather eww, though, looks like it was taken from AoP.

Map 2: This one was less dapak and more dm6rmx/baldm4 (though that faux metal texture still stung). Ironic that for all the words about the mod making water gameplay allegedly more fair, this map then hits with an underwater sequence that would rival even the biggest excesses of uwjam. The gold key room was A+ but bloody Quakeguy bodies as environmental storytelling is probably the oldest trope in existence.

Secret map: Forgot it was a q3dm2 remake at first, so the first area made me think it's the jam1 map revisited. An interesting interpretation of a boring source map.

Map 3: Damn, this one goes from 0 to 100 really fast. My usual strategy i.e. "run forward like a madman and deal with everything as half the monsters infight" was truly and well dampened in these tight damp halls. Felt like a mix between that one wizard terra map and Sepulcher. Kind of cute to make map 3 begin with a quick Zombie + GL section, since e1m3 did exactly the same. Thanks for not making me kill every single Zombie with the Voreballs, too. Another ersatz texture, this time replacing city2_3 - worked better than the dithered AoP metal.

Map 4: The tight warrens at the start (cool) eventually give way to a much more obvious take on campgrounds (meh). I felt like the ammo starvation was much stronger in this one than the others - previously I was in a mild state of unfulfillment, here I was straight up hungry for nails and rockets. Props for the crusher sequence, I think they (as well as spike shooters) need a lot more love in general, as evidenced by the poor reception to Romero's use of them in Sigil.

Map 5: First one in the episode that didn't work for me. I've never been a fan of "gradual" theme transitions in Quake, the original game has discrete end points in every map for a reason. The almost speedmap-like simplicity of the Runic section clashed strongly with the detailed organic cave section, and I wasn't a fan of the gameplay either - I understand the need for a breather after 4+ maps of tight combat, but this one felt more like placing a RL + lots of big hordes was an afterthought. Also, it somehow managed to overuse my favorite monster aka the Spawn!?

Map 6: The second one in the episode that didn't work for me. I enjoyed the small nod to Contract Revoked with the teleporters, but the electrode puzzle was annoying and unclear (why make the button visible again after each electrode lowers?), and I wasn't too keen on another lunsp1 type scenario.

*End: Played for 30 seconds before realising it's practically unrelated to the rest of the pack. Should have been a part of the mod rather than the episode probably.

Skill 2 demos, if you care 

Small niggles with the mod:

- Making the axe smoother is nice... but taking the 48fps uncanny valley motion from The Hobbit trilogy and applying the Scrags and Rotfish was fully unnecessary, I thought you were on team r_lerpmodels 0.

- There was a beautiful moment in map 2 (or 3) where a Z-Aware Ogre couldn't hit me, while it easily would have with the old code.

- I can now make voreballs crash into walls simply by strafing in front of a Vore in a small circle for a short while - not sure I would call this an improvement.

- Applying all those small bandaids to the core experience, while ignoring the biggest problem i.e. the extremely ineffective monster pathfinding, was the single biggest missed opportunity in this mod. 

Though it gave me extreme 2008 nostalgia (it's like the old Lunaran never left func!), spending an entire paragraph of your documentation to snidely snipe at Kell is just petty, and the content was patronising. 

Released just n time to celebrate 🎉 

Did you play one of the original Episodes with the mod? 

Just when you thought the old dogs were dead and gone... Absolute Awesomeness! Just in time for the Quake awards.... 

Stop complaining, before I stuff you into a blender. 

I don't know why I'm even entertaining your post with a reply, if you were unable to tell that my post was 70% praise and 30% criticism - but this forum is, and has historically always been, for feedback and constructive discussion.

If you want a vacuous hugbox you should join the Quake Mapping server on Discord. 

 

It's almost as grating as reading posts from a certain non-mapper. 

Careful who you're calling grating with that Donald-Trump-at-70 voice at 50. 

 

Not sure if I was "on" last night but at least the first two levels felt pretty easy to me. Died immediately on 3rd but that was the end of the day. I'm wondering if this is an intentional result of design or the gameplay changes?

Or maybe it's time for me to embrace Skill 2.

Opinions? 

Am I understanding correctly that armor type is now just derived by the amount of armor? So if I have 123 armor, that is yellow, and as I take damage and it ticks down to 100, it suddenly becomes green? And if I pick up another green armor, it adds to my pool for a total of 200, and then becomes red? 

- Applying all those small bandaids to the core experience, while ignoring the biggest problem i.e. the extremely ineffective monster pathfinding, was the single biggest missed opportunity in this mod.

Giving quake monsters good pathfinding sounds like a great idea...until you actually give them good pathfinding...and then you play it...and then you proceed to spend 10 X the amount of time again, coding a system that makes them just as bad at chasing the player as before but this time using "AI"

:p 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLaQ07ockeo 

Once you have >=100 armor, you can no longer pick up green armor. 

c0burn's Slipgate mod is shaping up nicely but perhaps Copper's "Oh I give up" system is a nice compromise (at least for infighting):

Infighting monsters who fail to successfully damage their target for 15 seconds will give up on the infight and revert to their previous enemy, so Ogres on plinths no longer accumulate permanent fan clubs milling around their feet. Monsters who do not have a ranged attack will give up after 10 seconds.

It would be nice to have something similar for monsters stuck on geo. 

Giving quake monsters good pathfinding sounds like a great idea...until you actually give them good pathfinding...and then you play it...and then you proceed to spend 10 X the amount of time again, coding a system that makes them just as bad at chasing the player as before but this time using "AI"

This was exactly my experience.

I went full a* node network, the works. When the map is as navigable for monsters as for players, monsters very effectively drain out of every room straight toward you and never stay remotely where you put them. This makes initial placement of monsters basically meaningless, in a game where your position relative to monsters can be very important.

So, I started adding exceptions and soft 'breaks' in the network to try to corral them into behaving the way I expected or desired ... at which point I realized how stupid I was being.

The lesson was that Quake's shuffly bump-around pathfinding is actually pretty important, as flawed as it seems.

In a mod like In The Shadows, though, where there's entirely new gameplay built around managing the danger of monsters being able to follow you really effectively, it's critical. In run-and-gun Quake, though, not so much. 

...is a tether that will keep the monsters in a certain radius. Limited and I am not sure what maps have used it. 

I get that for some people, monsters chasing you around might feel cool (for a bit), but again I will double down on my initial statement. I'm glad Lun shares the sentiment.

The lesson was that Quake's shuffly bump-around pathfinding is actually pretty important, as flawed as it seems.

This is one of quake's great laws imo. 

Is there any middle ground between "keep this monster in its general area" and "let this monster freely roam the map"? In the vast majority of cases, I would say probably not, so a on/off spawnflag would solve a lot problems.

The AI being insufficient was very noticeable at the end of map 5 when the two Shamblers very obediently failed to follow me when I retreated up the staircase. 

A brand-new monster type whose entire shtick is his ability to chase you perfectly around the map could be one way of slotting it into quake without breaking the rest of the game.

Con: but he may just draw attention to how dumb the other monsters are and make the player think "why don't all the monsters chase me?", at which point I'll just do a picard-style facepalm.