<quote>On monsters spawning monsters: how is this cliche when no quake monster has ever done this?</quote>

Gremlins? The vore queen idea does sound cool though.

For explosive death there should be a jetpack enforcer dude (loses control of jetpack or goes kamikaze on you). If you armed them with rapid fire lasers you could say they were used for aerial defence before bob drones were invented to replace them. 

Something from Byzantine: a monster that fires a projectile which sticks where it hits for a moment, then explodes.

Didn't Nehahra have a player weapon like this - don't know if it was used by monsters though. 

An idea I recently had is making a monster damagable, but impervious to pain - basically it wouldn't go into pain frames unless seriously damaged. It would make the player have to act quickly before he finds himself cornered by a group of those.

shamblers have that bit coded in them. they always play their pain sound, but don't do a pain animation unless the damage is over 50~60 and even then, only a percentage of the time.

good discussion so far, guys :) and yes, i'd like to see a monster that does resurrection.

i think the main problem though is it creates uncertainty about how much ammo is needed. resurrection would need to be kept in check-- only a certain number rezzed at a time (or even cap it to a static number). the death lord's shield adds enough uncertainty as it is (if the player is frugal and only attacks when the shield is down vs firing when shield is up). 

The resurrection health problem can be sort of balanced by giving every monster 1/2 or 3/4 of their previous max health every time they die. 

For the mid-monster, I suspect something like a hell knight in training would be enough. Halfway between a knight and a death knight - still opens you up like canned meat up close, but hasn't fully mastered the fire spell enough to produce the full spread. But, something Quake hasn't got: monsters that can fire on the move. Maybe that's their trick.

hm... monster_death_guard? :P well, i guess he could have had slightly less health, but your description is almost verbatim of when kell was describing them to me. :) they fire single projectiles and have a very slow (and avoidable) sword chop attack.


oh: i also think quake can use more bosses. ^_^
stuff that's more complex that just attacking or gimicks. monster spawning maybe, minions, attack protection/deflection, healing(limited amounts and interruptible), different phases (completely/mostly different ai for health levels), etc etc...
or maybe something like a boss that's actually more than one monster. two bosses that work in unison (shared ai) and that have different complementing abilities.
bosses that creates dynamic goals during combat that are more than just 'run for cover'.
i guess i'm pulling from experiences in WoW with bosses like eradar twins or kalecgos/sathrovarr.
maybe a boss that will teleport you into a different area to fight a different boss simultaneously or maybe a very slow attack that will take a large portion of health and in unavoidable but can be interrupted by explosives or something... 

The resurrection health problem can be sort of balanced by giving every monster 1/2 or 3/4 of their previous max health every time they die.

i like this! what you could do is only have it resurrect certain monsters and you could have different skins for the different levels of healthiness after each rez. like say a grunt who ends up looking almost like a zombie by the end. :P

i dunno if this would overload quake for skins and stuff. :P 

some monsters with shootemup like bullet patterns with fairly slow projectile speeds. A few simple ones used in different combination could result in some hectic action that encourages movement. The hell knight already has an attack like this and I think I remember someone using a q2 grunt with a plasma gun that also worked rather well. 

the cool thing i like about his attack is that sometimes you can just over a bolt. even though i'm not a fan of rail shooters, i do like that kind of thing in a few monsters. spread attacks that are slightly random like the hell knight i think can be a good thing.

i liked the stomp attack the guardian has in doom3. it's not random, the fire balls are even spaced, but they move slow and are avoidable fairly easily. they're the kind of thing that keeps you moving, but also thinking about where you're moving to. 

It would be interesting to see the Shambler's imperviousity code implemented in a lower class monster, though. Something that would serve as a more melee-oriented Death Knight replacement, I guess.

About resurrection: Omus' idea of halving the HP is fine though it may be kind of useless for stronger monsters (i.e. Shamblers or Gugs). An alternative would be bringing back dead monsters as Zombies, though that may be inappropiate in a few cases (Rotfish? Vores?) 

I've got an idea for a ghoul monster, but don't know if I'll be implementing it.

The idea is to rip off Lovecraft's ghouls and have a pack of them living in tunnels inaccessable to the player - spawnpoints, basically, but with a limited amount of ghouls.

If injured then the ghoul runs away, heading for the nearest tunnel entrance to escape, every ten seconds or so the game checks if there are any ghouls hiding in the tunnels and if so, spawns one from one of the points (that's not near the player). This may sound like an NPC creature, but they'd still attack the player, and maybe try to feast on zombies as well - but then run away almost immediately as the zombie fought back.

Also to have them recover health by eating corpses.

As for spawning, I was thinking of a necromancer type enemy - creating zombies out of dead grunts and / or enforcers. The ammo problem is solved by the replacement for the player axe, which can gib zombies.

Thanks for that list, Lun. 

A monster that blows up corpses. Cleans up the mess after large hordes! 

one other problem with resurrection, at least if we're talking an addition to quoth (or any mod with this feature).

corpse removal. :(

sure the ability to turn off corpse removal on some monsters is there, but it would be very telling if all of a sudden, the corpses of the monsters you're killing don't disappear. it would be an all too obvious sign that a rezzing monster was up ahead.
then you could just disable corpse removal globally? well yes, but corpse removal was to help huge maps with edicts. that means huge maps couldn't really have rezzer monsters. :S 

The idea is to rip off Lovecraft's ghouls and have a pack of them living in tunnels inaccessable to the player - spawnpoints, basically, but with a limited amount of ghouls.

Yeah, the ghoul is the aforementioned 'low -> mid' level cannon fodder monster we intend for Quoth.

I don't want to add specific gimmicks to it, but I have pondered the 'endless spawning of weak enemies' feature in relation to ghouls. I even have a location in a completed but unreleased map that is waiting for this to be tested. 

Monster that has low health (3 DBS shots) that alternates between a railgun, and a negation field (think Fortune from MGS2) that causes all shots to re-direct around the monster. It could not fire while using the negation field. The only weapon that could hurt it while it had the field up, would be the the lightning gun, since every other projectile is metal based.

Maybe another form of enforcer (field is technology based), or a higher-level vore (shield being magic based). 

..There aren't many large swimming monsters around, but making a water only monster with a lot of effort put into AI would not be very rewarding because it would probably be rarely used, so it would be better if it was amphibious. Inspiration to start off with: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_One
Video game take: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvjhKHyWufs 

so it would be better if it was amphibious

Again, necros and I had a swim -> walk monster planned. I did consider making a Deep One for a while, since it seemed the obvious choice for an amphibious monster in Quake. Too much other content to do though.

As for a large swim monster - that's more likely to happen. I don't expect it to be used often but it doesn't have to be - as long as there is a place for it. I think there is a place for a larger, more challenging swim monster in Q1SP. What say ye? 

kelp weeds that grab you. They take very little damage to destroy, but can add some tension to tight underwater tunnels. 

Yeah, the ghoul is the aforementioned 'low -> mid' level cannon fodder monster we intend for Quoth.

Ok, I'll leave that to you guys then.

I was thinking a map-specific ghoul limit though, so as not to break monster count.

I remember the first time I saw the plethiosaur thing in HL1 - fucking awesome.

Swimming monsters are underused because the assumption of id back then (I assume) is that keyboarders would have a hard time fighting and moving in three dimensions at the same time. Bad explanation, but you know what I mean. 

I immediately thought of the shark alien from half-life, that thing made you actually fear the water because it was faster than you, and having chunks taken out would completely disorient your view making it harder to escape. A monster like this in Quake would actually fit right in if used sparingly. It would obviously need a suitably dark design, maybe a giant relative of the rotfish with oversized head, eyes and jaws. 

I immediately thought of the shark alien from half-life, that thing made you actually fear the water because it was faster than you, and having chunks taken out would completely disorient your view making it harder to escape. A monster like this in Quake would actually fit right in if used sparingly. It would obviously need a suitably dark design, maybe a giant relative of the rotfish with oversized head, eyes and jaws. 

A monster that spawns with and/or can create killer satellite objects that orbit the monster. These orbiting satellites can shoot at nearby players or possibly incoming fire, much like Chmmr zapsats from Star Control 2. The bloodcube from Zerstorer does this for the player, but it is overpowered.

Also, monsters with a special, glittering screen so that anytime the player hurts it, an energy missile is automatically shot back at the player. 

to choose one option from the list then wall/ceiling climbing would definitely get my vote. In fact I'd like to see that applied to Vores, or perhaps a variant. VoreLords?

This might involve a bit too much of a shift in Quake's AI, but what about a 'commander' style monster that organized the troops? As long as the commander is alive and in the vicinity of a battle there would be no infighting and he could maybe even have some defensive powers, such as summoning a shield around one of his soldiers. 

Yeah, or a monster that has no attack, but orbits another and heals it as it takes damage.

For a big underwater creature a cthulhoid monstrosity would be good, but a fucker to animate. 

As long as the commander is alive and in the vicinity of a battle there would be no infighting and he could maybe even have some defensive powers, such as summoning a shield around one of his soldiers.

If you also got the minions to instantly turn on one another in a spasm of violent power bidding, replay value would be added by simply seeing how many you could leave alive for the event. 

Ok, I'll leave that to you guys then.

Well, don't feel I'm trying to claim dibs on monster designs here. I'm just letting folks know that there's a ton of stuff that's been in potentia for a long time.

I will never allow Quoth to be dictated by popular opinion, but since certain monsters seem to be the biggest controversies or objections to Quoth I might as well pitch concepts into the conversation where it seems people are already thinking about them.


Bad explanation, but you know what I mean.

Indeed. I think the frequency of water deep enough to fight in might also have been a factor - the effort required to make a larger swim monster might not be well spent if deep water occurred only rarely in the game.


a suitably dark design, maybe a giant relative of the rotfish with oversized head, eyes and jaws.

I was planning a rotten, zombiesque version of a deep sea angler fish.


fear the water because it was faster than you, and having chunks taken out would completely disorient your view making it harder to escape.

I think Half-Life's water fogging also contributed to the appearance of ichthyosaurs. The second room in which you encounter them - after the initial debut with the shark cage - was a machine room flooded to great depth, and murky. There's a kind of vertigo one experiences when looking down into apparently bottomless water, and this room nailed it.
Couple that with the slidey breaky catwalk and narrow choke points for escape from the water and you have real phobia-like aversion to even getting into combat in the first place.

However, the plan for the Quoth equivelant was not for a monster that swims faster than the player, but rather something slower but with some sort of spitting ranged attack and a fearsome melee bite.
Would players prefer an icthy like monster instead? Why?