1. i wanted to mention this but i forgot, but it seems people always go into over-drive with normal mapping and specular levels. you have to remember that they are just part of the texture, not center stage.

2. quite possible. there's some stretching fairly visible even with the normal low res skins. also, the meshes don't work for the new textures as they were designed primarily to convey a shape not to fill out a normal map.

3. they seem to be taking screen shots in stock id maps with that coloured lighting pack someone did. the coloured lighting pack is complete crap because most of the lights are way over saturated colour, and other times it's like a disco in there.

4. and stock maps have a lot of texture mis-alignments which show up more in high res textures (the scrag screenshots is a good example of most of this) 

http://quakeone.com/reforged/dknight.html
http://quakeone.com/reforged/Bestiary/ogrea.jpg
http://quakeone.com/reforged/Armory/snail03.jpg 

ogre looks the best of the bunch so far. he doesn't seem covered in saran wrap!

also, hate those stupid 'lava' weapons from rogue pack. :P 

...are like jelly dicks. Funny to look at, but would you want one? 

Too much contrast and lack of dynamic range in texture detail (maxed out everywhere). 

I'm suspecting the quake models are way too low poly to work with the harsh shadowing? 

Maybe someone could try implementing parallax mapping or something even better to see if it helps with the harsh lighting. But wait, the volume shadows would still use those huge polys, right? Maybe disabling self shadowing is the way to go. 

High-Poly project on the go? 

Re the screenshot above: it looks as though I need to be wearing 3D glasses to appreciate it fully :-) 

Honestly I think the monsters so far look really good. The HellKnight, yes, is probably a little too shiny to really be covered in dried blood and gore, but still looks really good. The Scrag looks great, but I imagined the spikes coming out of the sides to be more bone-like. That pic of the ogre is awesome :D 

and having hiqh quality textures under an open license sounds great. Agree that NMs seem a bit over-the-top in some of the shots, that plastic look ain't great. Still room for improvement.

But I think it makes no sense to more or less blame these guys who for Quake's lighting, low-poly models or misaligned textures. (Use them to make new maps with great lighting and proper texture alignment instead!)

Hope they keep up the good work and read some of the suggestions in here. 

everything is covered in gold. surely the makers can see this? if it's like chrome armor or something, then it doesn't look too bad. but the ogres face is not so good.

if they can less the goo look, this could be a pretty fkn cool project 

...The ogre face discussion is an old story... They made it far too human, not the way it was originally depicted. This somehow lessens the fright factor...

No good.

The soldiers look like completely awkward and, why is that enforcer shooting rockets?

Scrag is nice, but the bony spikes have been omitted.

These are not retexturings, more redesigning(of the skins)... 

I pretty much agree with what has been said. The work is good quality... but subtlety and tact are necessary when doing these reskin things. The basic skins and textures have been serving me fine, and will continue to, so a replacement had better be damned fine to fix what's not broke.

And it's just a nitpick, but the reinvisioned scrag bothers me. On the original skin, you see a wormlike creature that has consumed a human wizard from the inside out, leaving only the ribcage. Given the Lovecraft quote about "instructing the very worm that gnaws," I think it's pretty clear that was the intention. The reskin has little to no hint of this disturbing subtlety. Actually, it has pectoral muscles instead of a ribcage, which doesn't seem right.

Also, poor (hungover?) hell knight. I guess he's supposed to have just been drinking blood, but the bump map is cranked so high that the dribbling looks like vomit. Just sayin'.

And will their fiends have eyes or not? story at 11. 

the worm that gnaws quotation is from the Necronomicon exerpt in "The Festival," one of Lovecraft's most atmospheric stories. Your take on the scrag based on this idea is genius. I never thought of it that way, but then there has to some explanation for the name monster_wizard. 

"The nethermost caverns', wrote the mad Arab, 'are not for the fathoming of eyes that can see; for their marvels are strange and terrific. Cursed the ground where dead thoughts live new and oddly bodied, and evil the mind that is held by no head. Wisely did Ibn Schacabao say, that happy is the tomb where no wizard hath lain, and happy the town at night whose wizards are all ashes. For it is of old rumour that the soul of the devil-bought hastes not from his charnel clay, but fats and instructs the very worm that gnaws; til out of corruption horrid life springs, and the dull scavengers of earth wax crafty to vex it and swell monstrous to plague it. Great holes secretly are digged where earth's pores ought to suffice, and things have learnt to walk that ought to crawl."
-H. P. Lovecraft, 'The Festival'

I interpreted it as if the wizard has managed to return after death, in a much reduced form. Kind of like badly mixed materia. 

oh man I just love Lovecraft's disgust with organic processes. I think part of this passage is his idea that it's just disgusting to imagine that organic processes of eating and shitting and chewing and decaying etc, could somehow produce consciousness. Surely the "things that have learnt to walk that ought to crawl" are humans. At least an ape or dog (rememmber "Pickman's Model" in which he uses both of these animals as images of bestial disgust, and the fact that Lovecraft as a cat lover must surely have hated dogs) or worm for that matter, isn't aware of how rank its existential situation is. Yet, in my view, it'd be even more ridiculous if a mind existed actually apart from any physical variables; "Evil the mind that is held by no head." 

Like the story Cool Air. 

I think "the worm that gnaws" is probably the standard worms that decompose buried people, but taking a mundane concept and re-imagining it as a fantastical concept is where i think a lot of fantasy/horror originates. The "giant worm that is digesting a human torso" idea is pretty great, i never thought of that but it fits the original creature design well, so i approve this implausible interpretation. 

yeah, that's some pretty grotesque imagery... which is of course perfect for quake. ^_^ 

Although, most quake guides and monster bestiaries seem to agree that there is something vestigally human in the scrag. I'm looking at the Quake Wiki and quaddicted's bestiary right now, and the wiki says: "a Scrag is a kind of floating creature resembling a white snake combined with a human torso that spits small green globs of acid at you"

I also found this picture, which is otherwise kinda painful to look at due to overblown darkplacieness, but the redone skin really brings out the ribcage: http://img241.imageshack.us/img241/3999/dp000042sd6.jpg

To me, the evidence is clear, except that it's weird, disturbing, and unexplained. As far as why such a horrid floating creature is inhabiting a human ribcage, I think that's for each of our twisted minds to decide. One final answer would defeat the mystery.

Oh and necros, I really liked your ideas for chestbursting vorelings. As if the little buggers don't give me enough of a startle already. 

Every enemy in Quake and the Mission Packs. Animated. Not just animated .. animated with background transparency.

http://quakeone.com/reforged/bestiary.html

re: Scrag discussion ... thanks for that. I'll never view the scrag the same again. And makes some concept drawings/fan-art all wrong ...

http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/2783/quakescragbynatan77.jpg 

How/why would it develop shoulders/pecs like that without arms? 

there seems to be a fine line between making it look human enough, but yet no.

i don't know if this has anything to do with the uncanny valley or not, but a monster design seems to be able to go from scary/disturbing/strange to ridiculous/comic/mundane really fast. :S 

http://quakeone.com/reforged/enfocer.html