kamikaze spawns, from behind? 

A Vore Queen!!! Wheres Kell.....
Necros? 

Also I think some faked multi-part monster could work amazing as either level decoration or boss fight.

i'd love to see a huge monster like this. ironically, there was a really cool boss in WoW called c'thun. it was huge and you only fought bits and pieces of it at a time and it could even swallow you temporarily so that you could damage it while you were in it's stomach. 

Some time ago I played an unreleased Q1SP episode by Kaiser. One of the WIP monsters was a huge blob that spat tarbabies at the player. When killed, it exploded into more tarbabies. It think they were toned down versions, though.

Or imagine a swarm of mini-tarbabies that don't do much damage when they explode individually - firecracker-style. But if they cornered you, boom. 

The mini-tarbaby thing is cool. Shame models can't be scaled...

I can imagine miniature ones combining by touching during their random bouncing to become the regular size, then, later, larger ones that are heavier (slower) but make a louder boom.

Or maybe has to be broken by damage into smaller ones, that then go boom.

Tarbaby boss?

-> Shoggoth 

That posting had some eerie QMD-feel to it. 

this http://quotes.fov120.com/?show=single&quote=631 

i like the idea of small bits being able to combine into a fullsized one. it would be cool to combine the two ideas into one.

fullsized tarbaby that breaks into maybe 3 or 4 pieces. if you don't kill the small ones, they recombine into a fullsized tarbaby again.

you could add something like lightning damage would disperse it by fully vaporizing it without any pieces or something.

if you wanted to go further, you could make it immune to shotgun and nail damage (would need to communicate this somehow like zombies) and only rockets can break it. (the small ones would be killable by normal means). 

Necros I was going to suggest something like lightning stunning it, during which time you could safely kill it without it exploding or something like that. Stop stealing my ideas you warlock >:( 

 

something like lightning stunning it, during which time you could safely kill it without it exploding or something
ohh i also like this! players who are good shots could just ignore this mechanic and blow them away quickly, but others could opt at stunning them so they can destroy them at their leisure.

T1000babies
TOTALLY what i was thinking of too. i love that scene near the end where those little globules are skittering across the floor into a heap that keeps growing ominously. 

Stunning Tbabies / daddies - wobble on the spot animation + sparks?

I don't think it'd work too well for the LG though, since that's a constant high damage weapon. Maybe if it were only whilst 'held' by the electricity and another coop player blasted it then.

Completely different game though.

In a boss context it could be a type of trap - activating a current that runs through metal plates placed in the level, the player having to lure it onto them. Maybe even make the biggest version immune to normal damage, rockets, nails and so on just bouncing off.

Making it a regular monster feature would mean making it spawnflag enabled, so all maps with tarbabies wouldn't automatically start creating minibosses. 

i think that was more along the lines of 'stop jumping around, you mother fucker', but that could just be me. ^_^; 

I was thinking that for the bigger versions - the bigger they get, the heavier they are, so can't go flubbering around the place.

I'm also thinking of Voreling style hanging spawn, maybe a wall version as well, Aliens style. 

Yeah. It could hang on the ceiling and when the player gets near, 'drips' down (upside-down jump animation) like some sort of demolition ball and explodes when he touches it. 

just to confuse the player - the pause before it starts leaping will be less predictable if they're stuck all over the place.

On the other hand, having them lie in wait and then drop on the player's head could be fun as well, nice living trap behaviour. 

of the slime monster from Duke3d that would attach to your face and you'd have to shoot them off (or kick them off? I don't remember if you could do that or not.) 

Micro-Goombas: http://www.mariowiki.com/Micro-Goomba

;) 

let's say a boss fight has two methods to defeat it. the gimmick way and the shoot it dead way. the gimmick way is not immediately obvious and must be discovered. (like telefragging shub)

so, for this example, let's imagine if it was possible to defeat shub by either shooting her or telefragging her.

easy skill: it is easy to telefrag shub but shooting her is more difficult. shooting her might be considered one skill level higher.
hard skill: it is easy to telefrag shub and shooting her is very difficult, bordering on impossible.

in both scenarios, the fight is designed to be defeated via the gimmick but the penalty for not using the gimmick is worse in harder difficulties.

should the penalty for not using the gimmick then always be death so as to not fool the player into thinking they don't need to use a gimmick? or is it better to offer this choice in lower difficulties?

or perhaps makes the gimmick the scaling value instead of the shooting option?

ie:

easy: telefragging shub is simple but shooting her is very difficult.
hard: telefragging shub is difficult, and shooting her is the same difficulty as it was on easy (very difficult)

..and my batteries are running out so i'll just post this. :P 

Scaling sounds right. Easy: telefragging Shub is 'simple', shooting her is more diffcult. Hard: telefragging her is hard, shooting her is much more difficult.

Of course it depends on other factors as well. Like the environment and if/how the boss fights back.

I tried the scaling model in my coag3 tower fights. The monsters are intended to be killed through special tricks/gimmicks, but shooting them is also possible (at the cost of a large amount of ammo). It wasn't done in a very sophisticated way, however, in terms of balancing - still they do take more damage on harder skills - and properly getting the player to realize how to gimmickill them to begin with. 

Personally I wouldn't split it. Just give the player the single path to victory with a boss fight. It must be assumed that a boss fight is going to test the player on what they already know, but with the difficulty cranked up.

In this respect, I'd say the original id1 bosses are somewhat broken since they both require a trick.

If you allow a trick then it must be very clear what it produces. Either it kills the boss dead (and is the only way to kill it) or does massive damage saving the player some time plugging away conventionally.

The worst case scenario of having a trick that kills it or being allowed to plug away for ages is that a player might do the second one for what seems like ages, then accidentally come across the trick and feel cheated for wasting all that time shooting at the thing.

Time is the most important resource of the player and they get pissed if they feel like its been stolen. Same could be said of intricate labyrinths without any guiding factor pointing to the exit, or a seemingly unfair save system. 

Quake is first and foremost a shooter, so the reason I play and enjoy it is for the combat. A little exploration can be interesting, but it is ultimately about shooting things.

I half raised this in a different thread iirc. I think Quake�s core mechanics are better than Doom. Firstly it is less random. A Shambler will always hit you for the same amount. A Revenant missile can be anything from a light glance to most of your health. Quake�s monsters are also far more mobile, which makes them more interesting to fight individually, and Quake�s melee monsters are far more dangerous (even the Knight is more dangerous than a Demon because he has more range and can attack whilst moving). So this whining comes with a caveat. Whatever extras I say Doom has that Quake doesn�t, I still prefer Quake�s fundamentals.

Anyway, I think Quake has an issue with variety when compared to Doom. I�ve played a lot of Doom and a lot of mega wads (wads with a full 32 levels, usually community efforts) and such, and it did lead me to a few conclusions when I came back to playing Quake.

Quake�s downside is that it can�t stretch to as many combat forms as Doom:
> Quake doesn�t have the tech to include huge monster counts, so even if you did add a BFG style super weapon, you still couldn�t make proper zerg style game-play.
> It also doesn�t have a substantial standard weapon upgrade like the Doom Super shotgun, which instantly upgrades your ability to take on tougher monsters and thus allows the general count and toughness to increase together.
> The berserk power up and chainsaw mean that low ammunition or even purely melee based levels can really work in Doom. Putting together a level like this in Quake you quickly realise that it was a real step back in that regard. The fact that the axe has no decent hit sound when you hack at monsters is very off putting on its own, and the basic Quake shotgun isn�t exactly meaty in audio either.
> The fact that the most played Doom extras are community episodes means that levels have to feel like they are progressing in complexity and size. I think a lot of Doom wads go overboard with this, leading to the last ten levels all being huge and pretty dull. But downloading Quake maps it feels like 90% just have to leave you with a basic shotgun and maybe a nailgun or something for half the map, often leaving anything more powerful until right at the end.

I�d like to add that I think Quoth is great as it adds some great monsters in the area Quake is lacking (ie a sort of mid to high range). Mainly the Death Guard and Drole. So despite my general dislike of weapon mods, that�s what I�d like to see added to Quake. Not gimmick weapons, that weapons that expand the forms of combat you can create.

I think if you were looking into adding more than just expanding combat, you'd be looking at adding Heretic or Hexen style features like Inventory items and such. You'd also probably want a Use key :p


TL:DR -> add a new set of weapons and work on engine modding to support larger monster counts and expand the variety of combat available. 

What do you consider gimmicky weapons? I love it when some game company comes up with a 'new' weapon that behaves in a way I never thought of, or that allows me to do things I can't do in most other shooters. Bulletstorm is a good example of this, the weapons are a big part of why I'm excited for that game. 

You bring up some good points. What I like better about DOOM is that the overall speed is higher. In Quake, it takes NINE shotgun hits to kill an ogre, and still 4 to kill an enforcer. That's outrageous.

Quake is also very snipey because of the shotgun. You can snipe a Vore dead by wanking corners with the shotgun, while in DOOM, you'd blast said shotgun into the monster's face and move on. I prefer the latter.

Quake's weapons suck. The shotgun is boring, but effective, which makes you run around with a boring weapon a lot of the time. Often, the double barrel shotgun is given right at the start to make things more exciting. That's a band aid which doesn't solve the underlying problem. The axe sucks. The shotgun sucks. The nailgun sucks. Deathmatch is about grabbing the rocket launcher first. Why even have all those weapons?

The individual monster designs are more interesting in DOOM IMO. I'm not saying they work better, but things like the Archvile and Revenant are just pretty crazy. Far-out stuff. The monster lineup is bigger in DOOM / DOOM II, which makes for more variety. Also, Quake has no imp. DOOM's imp is a perfect low-level all-round cannon-fodder monster design; little hitpoints, melee attack, hurls fireballs, can be used in hordes, fits everywhere in the game. It's a great monster, much like a cannon-fodder version of Quake's hellknight. And the combination "imp + shotgun" is superb. Imp + shotgun made DOOM, and it beats anything Quake has to offer.

Quake is missing a lower-tier all-purpose melee/distance monster. Why they didn't give the Grunt a melee attack is a mystery to me. Then again, grunts don't have the general usefulness of the imp. Imps fit everywhere, the same can't be said of grunts. Plus, grunts don't die in one shot.

The pinky is almost as good a monster design as the imp; it's still relatively low HP, ubiquitous, and when I first played DOOM, pinkies were even scary because of their attack. The Spectre variety is genius.

Lost Souls clearly leave the Scrag in the dust, although the scrag is a nice monster (one of my favourite Quake monsters). DOOM has two other fliers though: the Cacodemon and the Pain Elemental. I'd say DOOM's air force outclasses Quake's.

I agree that some individual Quake monsters might be more interesting to fight, though. The fiend is the prime example. Ogres, vores, and shamblers are also fun. Hellknights are similar to imps, but have a lot more HP which can be both good and bad. The knight tries to be a pinky.

Quake doesn�t have the tech to include huge monster counts

This is incorrect. You can have 100 knights or 20 fiends coming at the player pretty easily. Especially with halfway modern graphics hardware and current engines.

I mostly agree with the rest. 

�This is incorrect. You can have 100 knights or 20 fiends coming at the player pretty easily. Especially with halfway modern graphics hardware and current engines. �

Well, I generally use Fitzquake, and I�m using a machine that can just about handle UT3 or crysis with everything turned down, and it easily chokes when you�re over a few dozen enemies. I�ve tried out fights with 40 odd death guards, and that fight is on the limit of playable. And this was just in a box, no detailing at all. 100 Knights might work, but Knights and Fiends are only melee. As soon as you add something with projectiles it quickly becomes unplayable. In a fast action game dropping a few frames is often more than enough to make it pretty frustrating to play, especially if you�re trying to make it challenging too :) Certainly something like Warp Spasm is to me pretty much unplayable toward the end as it�s just too big with too many monsters.
And example of what I have in mind:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmQO_qQTpf8

The super shotgun in Quake certainly lacks oomph. But remember the Doom SSG is very slow firing, and still takes two shots for a Revenant, three for Arachnotrons, four for a Mancubus or Archvile. So the number of shots isn't too much of an issue to me as it delivers them quickly. I would rather have Doom's shotguns, but it would need an upgraded chaingun to go with it I feel, the chaingun is really boring to use after you get the SSG :E

�What do you consider gimmicky weapons?�

Well, examples would be proximity/trip mines (in both SP and MP), Spammy �excessive� mode stuff like cluster rockets or what have you, and the ever popular �Bouncing shots!� :)

At the end of the day I think there is a reason why not many more weapon types have really been added to shooters. The first very generations of shooters pretty much covered all the bases as far as functionality goes. You have to start thinking really hard to come up with something that would genuinely add much to gameplay, rather than just having some extra effect for the sake of having an extra effect. Proximity mines wouldn�t add much to Quake. A BFG style weapon probably would.
Imo :p