Realism is quite subjective... What is realism in Quake game ? For Quake it is impossible to be as realistic as COD2 / SoF / HL2 / etc... I have to be honest, it is a fucking hard challenge, but I think the effort on the ambience is the way to go... and alos on the design layout... nice details touch could make the difference (tanks, forklift, trucks, etc...)... For the gameplay, I have som ideas to investigate...
At least I will try to do something as real as possible, with static stuff, trying to repsect the "Quakeness Harmony of the Universe" :P ... I'm also thinking to the purists... :D

And now: let me work ... I go back mapping :) 

Nothing wrong with experimenting and unusual themes. Just make sure the dimensions fit. In Quake, everything is pretty small or stout (models) so small or thin brushes look odd in relation. Realistic vehicles might work, but only if they're not like three times as large as the player. 

In Quake, nothing is scaled according to real world dimensions. The player typically starts on a 16-unit slipgate textured brush which is > 1/4 of his/her player height, yet he/she can walk up it with no problem -- that would be like taking 2 or 3 stairs at at a time in the real world!

Also, the native textures in Quake don't effectively show detail: a textured wall won't look as good as the skin on the player's double-barrelled shotgun at a very close proximity.

There "may" be a balance though that involves brushes based off of the player height and scaled-down or 24-bit textures, but it would be a difficult one to strike.

Good luck ;-) 

Another issue you might have to contend with is the lighting model, as it's one of the visual differences between half-life and quake, which might explain why "realistic" things suit one and not the other. Half Life does radiosity, which washes things out. That's kinda annoying from a style point of view, quake lets you do great gloomy places with the control you have over where light goes. But it also means that intricate geometry can get very hard shadows in quake. This makes the object look unnatural in it's environment.

An alternative is to make all your detailed things alias models rather than bsp models, but that's a lot of work. And it's not to say that detailed objects in quake can't be lit in such a way that they look convincing. It'll just require care. 

Thanks a lot for all the good points you mentionned there: I'll try as far as possible to take them into account. 

do I need ID licenses to drive them? 

I tried to make a new Quake1 monster. Pyrogirl.
I remodelled the Atlantis babe and added frames.
I was searching for a good flamethrower code to suit her, but sofar I didn't have luck. I watched the quoth code.

http://members.home.nl/gimli/pyro0.gif
http://members.home.nl/gimli/pyro1.gif
http://members.home.nl/gimli/pyro01.jpg

Now I'm trying with sprites like flame.spr and explod.spr But it still doesn't work out I planned. Also texturing is rather flat. 

nice tits :p 

In Quake!

Heheh, looks good though. But don't use sprites for the fire, they never look good when scaled up. A model could work well. 

nt 

That looks really cool. Reminds me of Malice!
Would go really well with Malice texture set.

I wonder what it (she) would look like with some bilinear filtering? Cant you program it to use the fireball model already in quake - the one on the hard difficulty bit on the Quake 'start' map? Would look better and save modeling. 

Careful with that style... 

So far I can make her use the lightning bold and throw a fireball. This in despite she has no weapon. The fireball falls in short distance on the ground though. Must have made a bad coding while using the shotgun loaded with the fireball.

As good as the flamethrower in Quoth I can't get it. Get blocked with a SPAWN_CRUCIFIED error. As far I as I can see it is done with sprites.

Texturing is still to flat for bilinear filtering, although it looks goood in fitzquake. 

I've always thought Quake's style didn't lend itself to babes, that that was more of a Duke-Nukem thing, but if you are gonna have one she might as well use multiple weapons.

Quake's "Femaleness" so far, to me anyway, seems to consist of Vores and Shub Niggurath - monstrous fertility, and all that.

Quake universe seems to me to work with the whole "obsessive asexual male, any biological fact is disgusting," Lovecraft angle. But this is all subjective, I must admit. There has got to be a way you can pervert this monster enough to make it appropriate to fit into the Quake canon (of Ogres, Shamblers, Fiends, etc). But remember: they took the BEST from Texas Chainsaw Massacre, not the worst. 

http://mortisville.quakedev.com/sol.jpg

screwing around with the DKT3 textures, I attempted to derive a shape from the arch window at the top. The gray scale image is a quick dodge and burn of the basic shape. The top portion got a bit screwed so I created a symmetrical window frame instead. Several steps later and you get the results at the bottom.

I need to make the metal frame more uniform (probably superimpose a vector of the same shape over it with
some blending), but its all gravy. 

now for the crate version of the same texture,

http://mortisville.quakedev.com/crate.jpg 

The pyrogirl I made is for a Hellboy mod. She doesn't fit in Quake because as you say, she differs to much with the other monsters.

I was curious to know if there are other attacks possible.
Something like the trogball in zerstorer.
Or spawning a monster in and out, like in HexenII. Sad Quake's engine won't permit these actions, but I'm sure there more ways.

Only bad thing is, it needs so much coding knowledge to devellop new attack shapes. 

I always liked the trog's ability to teleport at will, but only when in sight of the player. Kind of like the Quoth Polyp invisibility, but quicker. Unsettling and requireing some quick reactions, maybe that would be good for her. 

....yeah

http://www.suspenlute.com/fr3nrun1/check1a.jpg
http://www.suspenlute.com/fr3nrun1/check2.jpg

and this one just because I thought it looked cool

http://www.suspenlute.com/stuff/this%20is%20going%20to%20hurt.jpg 

look great Fern 

...because someone complained about the lack of contrast in lighting.

http://www.suspenlute.com/fr3nrun1/check3.jpg 

 

the light doesn't fall off with distance? Use a different formula? 

 

http://img292.imageshack.us/img292/6199/fernyz9.jpg