Funny you expect the game to hold your hand these days. "Retro" level design with some free exploration and several routes is so much better than waiting on the AI squadmates to unlock another door and get another objective in an absolutely linear tightly scripted map. Proof: DE:HR.

For the texture mish-mash, E2M1 actually uses a fairly true to the original Q2 set remake, but obviously some textures are by different authors or not properly repainted placeholders. I would ease up on using aggressive grid and grates patterns everywhere too. The rest seems fine.

Randomised stuff ironically could make it easier on hard skill, when you can get random big weapons, MHs or armors.
Btw scaled hp and attack with higher skill is used almost everywhere, ie in HL2 (such a disaster of a game ain't it). 

Modified pal only makes the internal textures look noticeably brighter and stand out. Check e3m1rq near the start below the lift and straight to the locked door - one of the wall panels texture is an internal low res.
If you have idgamma leftovers its either gfx/palette.lmp or a small .pak with it in /id1.

I didn't notice any overbights with new textures, so I guess its just the way maps are lit and the textures being dark, like I said. 

have you tried playing with the contrast slider? if you up it along with the brightness it can improve the 'overbright' look without making the darks too washed out. similar effect as a modified palette i guess, but it affects everything rather than just the lo res textures 

And brightness are both at 50% atm, will try your suggestion later. 

I've watched demos where the player was randomly shooting as he was wandering along. Took me a long time to realise that he was doing it to light up areas he couldn't see in. They looked perfectly visible to me and I must assume that they looked perfectly visible to the mapper too (otherwise they would have been lit differently).

Now, I did have an old PC in work (until about 2 weeks ago) where the desktop and other OS stuff, as well as other programs, looked no different, but Quake was incredibly dark and dingy looking, and I had to crank gamma to about 0.8/0.75 (lower numbers being brighter). 

We need a reference map with lots of lighting levels and stuff. 

The randomisation is completely controlled by the mapper.

Ankh:

The Quad starts with ten or twenty seconds, and gains 5 seconds for each kill you make. This still needs its times tweaking.

Fall damage too complicated??

Going to change the Zombies...

How often a monster goes into pain is unmodified from id1. I'm not sure if there's a damage threshold for Ogres that remained as is - that would cause problems since the shotgun and Ogre health has changed a lot. Will look into it.

Glad you liked the mod, and thanks for the feedback. 

I don't know much about the Quake lighting model, but maybe the factor that the new textures seem darker is related to the size of the texels during the lighting process. They are larger on the low res textures so maybe they collect more light? 

Why don't you give me all your lighting related settings as a cfg file and I'll make some screenshots for you - that way you can compare. 

The lighting process doesn't actually read texture data at all, and texel size isn't relevant here.

What I'd like to see however is a comparison made using the ID1 start map. I'm suggesting that because otherwise there are too many variables in the equation - new maps, new textures, new lighting, etc. The ID1 start map is a known constant and takes all of those variables out. We're left with engine and replacement textures as factors that must be considered, and nothing else to distort the analysis.

There are 4 things that must be compared to make the comparison complete and scientifically valid:

- ID1 start map, native textures, RMQ engine
- ID1 start map, external textures, RMQ engine
- ID1 start map, native textures, other engine
- ID1 start map, external textures, other engine

That's the only way you're going to get anything out that's not tainted by subjective opinion.

I haven't done a direct comparison yet, but I believe that a histogram of standard external textures (Rygel's or QRP) with native ID1 textures will show that the externals are darker overall. They do look that way to my eyes anyway.

On overbrights.

Seems to be some confusion here about what overbright lighting is and what overbright lighting does, which may be leading to the statement that the engine doesn't do overbrights.

It's quite clear that the engine does do overbrights - you can check some of the well-known trouble spots to confirm.

Overbright lighting doesn't make things brighter; what it does is increase the dynamic range of lighting. Any light in the standard range won't and shouldn't appear any different, any light above the standard range will be clamped without overbright lighting but won't be clamped (or - at worst - will be clamped at a higher level, although that doesn't apply to RMQ) with overbright lighting.

There are a few different ways of obtaining overbright lighting, with the standard being to shift down by an extra bit when calculating the lightmap then double the result after you multiply texture by lightmap. Q2 and Q3A double the texture and leave the source lighting fairly dark (they weren't written to target the required GL extension). DirectQ encodes a scaling factor into the alpha channel of the lightmap texture which is then decoded in the pixel shader. RMQ blends multiple lightstyles entirely on the GPU so it gets this as a natural result.

They're all just mathematical operations on numbers though, and the operation is the same whether the texture is external or not. In that case, if a different result is achieved, then the inputs must be different.

There is actually a second source of lightmap clamping going on too, and that's in the light tool. We have a solution worked out to address that, but nothing coded yet. 

In Ricky's map, I have seen enemies being rendered at the wrong position for a single frame. It was always in an area where I hadn't been before and the enemies in question were there for a single frame, then vanished and it didn't happen again. I have actually caught this in the demo posted above, in that case it's a dog. I just saw it again though and this time it was enforcers or grunts. 

Ok now that I can see the original E2M1 at the end of the map it feels a lot better. :) Maybe the problem is my expectations of what a remake is? I assumed a remake is taking the original game and updating it visually, this mod is doing a lot more than this, in places it feels like a TC.

I think the layout got better at the end than the beginning and certainly got harder as I went on (good thing) especially liking the turrets (would have been nice to bring them out of the ground and then activate them)

Once I realize what you are doing with the MOD it feels a lot better and I can accept the changes and see it as a different version of Q1.

You (the team) certainly have my respect for taking on such a challenge as a remake of Q1 because everyone has their expectations of what that is going to be. Probably the hardest thing to get right is meeting everyone's idea what is important to Q1 and not.

mh, I switched graphic cards and the fps slow downs did not happen anymore. Everything was much better and I started to enjoy the map more.

I tried E3M1RQ and that was crazy dark for me and I died a lot! :P 

The name is something that's been complained about a lot. A remake for me is re-making something... to what level that's done depends on who's doing it.

A visual only remake seems the uh, quickest option. We chose everything, which is why it's taking so long :)

We get a lot of flak, but a lot of positive stuff as well.

The episode 3 maps are mine - it seems my working conditions (light) have badly influenced how bright the levels are. We're working on things behind the scenes to fix this up.

Not least lighting levels properly :P 

might be useful to make a console command that will display the player's current light level every frame like r_speeds.
this would actually make it scientific instead of just subjective: 'the area around this important door is only light level 30-40 which is too dark' as opposed to 'i can't see the door'.
i pretty much gave up on trying to light maps with any specificity because everyone's monitors are different. i just fall back on the brightness slider when people mention it. :( 

even zombie gibs are not exactly dead. So what can be done with zombie gibs to make them reflect that fact?

If a zombie misses, the thrown piece of flesh could chase the player. 

Enough zombie Gibs near each other could reform into a zombie, like the T-1000 

Zombie hands could chock the player, like in Blood 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAOKEIJ74R0&feature=player_embedded 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnlzqS1DzU8 

 

I had a slightly sick idea for zombies that go through a lifecycle, like insects or caterpillars into butterflies. Blow one up and it reforms into something else. It would definitely add replayability to areas of the map you've been in before, but I suspect it would only be effective if the player gets to see it reform (which would probably require a cutscene furst time). It might also piss off people aiming to get 100% kills.

@Necros - that's a pretty good idea; mind if I steal it? ;) 

the gibs from zombies could just bounce around like tarbabies, leaving behind blood tracers. maybe they cold die out naturally after a while. 

I sort of think when you've gibbed a zombie it should cease to be a threat. The gibs could stay there making squishy noises and the head could continue to groan for atmosphere.

Alternatively if you go with the idea of all the gibs reforming in to something they could turn in to one of those blob things.

Or other monsters could pick up zombie gibs as health packs! 

Make the player able to carry a zombie head and give him an achievement if he gets it to the helicopter.

More serious suggestion: Let the player collect gibs for some reward (per level and per game), be it just a number or something "real". I liked the coins in ne_ruins. It would be a tacked-on game feature the player can choose to participate in or not with not big impact on the game world (unless you present it as such). 

Already eats gibs and heads btw - once they've got enough stock they cack out a zombie.

Spirit - that reminds me of a pack I did in Quake2, which had the player placing 3 commander heads on a tomb in the hub for a reward...