Sounds like you were mapping for the wrong reasons, and it was a good decision to stop. 

how do you know that inertia? 

Pretend I am anonymous. 

While I can't map with the laptop when on the road, Blender works fine, so I've been doing some more of the next best thing, modeling:

There is a monster from one of the Quake2 mission packs whose design, animation and attacks I have taken a shine too. I forget which of the packs it is from, but I found it repackaged in a mod called XXX.

I'm more fussy about copyrighted material now than I was a few years ago when using Daikatana textures didn't phase me, so instead of just repackaging it in a mod, I decided to ripoff the original with a variation of the design from scratch of my own.

http://mortisville.quakedev.com/snapper1.jpg

The model on the left is the original, the one on the right is the one I made this afternoon. Note the use of edge loops in my baby.

Here are a few more angles:

http://mortisville.quakedev.com/snapper2.jpg

http://mortisville.quakedev.com/snapper4.jpg

http://mortisville.quakedev.com/snapper5.jpg

and a final dramatic render:

http://mortisville.quakedev.com/snapper1_1.jpg

Thank you for your time, you may now go back to discussing our screwed up sapien species and the validity of mental states on a subjective or scientific level (woah, not judging here, you are all beautiful and unique in my eyes, except for you, inertia). 

it's the stalker from the ground zero pack. I noticed you took all the edges/spikes away which made the original quite fierce looking, the head looks kinda stump now.
But maybe you're going for some cute n cuddly monster :) 

I'm going for a more organic Quake feel instead of the biomechanical Quake 2.

The overall plan this badboy is to have a one level total conversion ready for the QExpo. I'm working on the animation right now. Modeling and skinning I feel
confident about, but I suck at animation. 

Except that I can't tell what the hell it's supposed to look like right now. I might have more luck once it has a skin... 

after I do a rough conversion, I'll be able to get an accurate current polycount, and then I'll know how much detail I can add on to the model, esp. in the undefined head area. 

Is ok, but the best Quake monsters have spiky claws - Fiends, Shamblers and the Vore's legs.

What attacks are you thinking? I remember they spat poison, swiped with their claws and had some sort of climb along the ceiling ability - but that might have been a mod. 

claw attacks, side to side sweeps and paralyzes (slowing the player down temporarily) are the ideas I'm working with. I have no idea how I would do ceiling crawling, might look into it though, there should be some useful code to show how it can be done in Nehara given what the Vore could do in it. 

wasn't written in qc, though, so good luck with that... 

to understand; Pascal is just a stricter procedural language than derivative languages based on C. I could never get that code base to compile with the tools that came in the SDK, though. 

that sucks the life out of you?

Also is it going to be mecha or fauna or both? 

the stalker is a spider like enemy, it can indeed run on the ceiling. The behaviour is much like the spiders in Travail (dodging grenades right when player fires grr) 

looks kinda flatter and boxier than the original, despite it containing a lot more polys, maybe that was the intended look I dunno. 

Flatter? Take a good look at those haunches -

http://mortisville.quakedev.com/snapper2.jpg

-- and tell me you wouldn't want to put a squeeze
on that backside. 

Snapper (not the final name) is progressing at a pretty fair
clip. I even have an in game version of him up and running. The code for this version isn't mine so I'm not going to link the Q1 ready model.

However, if anyone is modding for Quake, need a monster, and know there way around Blender, feel free to use the blend file:

http://mortisville.quakedev.com/snapper1_8.blend

here's a pic of the skeleton rig:

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

The heels need to be narrowed for some definition, and so does the back. Also, there are some pincers around the mouth I am not happy that I'll need to rework. They look chintzy compared to the rest of the model. You'll see in the upcoming shots. 

I wanted to see how well the creature looks in Quake at an early stage, so I made a rudimentary set of animations congruent with the animations set up for this simple QC creature (only 30 frames):

http://www.gamers.org/pub/idgames2/quakec/monsters/spider21.zip

I was also pleased to find upon converting snapper that he was a mere 2044 faces in size which is withing the bounds of the format for Quake. He runs smoothly when I tested in toChris and Dark Places.

some in game shots (the skin is rudimentary as well, it is the fiends face auto splotched over one hundred times and then made seamless), here's a nice sequence:

http://mortisville.quakedev.com/quake09s.jpg

http://mortisville.quakedev.com/quake10s.jpg

http://mortisville.quakedev.com/quake11s.jpg

Snapper fights with an Ogre:

http://mortisville.quakedev.com/quake01s.jpg

http://mortisville.quakedev.com/quake02s.jpg

Poor snapper lying dead on beside an an Ogre:

http://mortisville.quakedev.com/quake07s.jpg

Snapper searching for the Ogre who shot his paw:

http://mortisville.quakedev.com/quake18s.jpg

http://mortisville.quakedev.com/quake22s.jpg

http://mortisville.quakedev.com/quake23s.jpg

http://mortisville.quakedev.com/quake24s.jpg

http://mortisville.quakedev.com/quake25s.jpg 

needs perhaps more Lovecraft/weirdness, the head appears too small imo. 

with the dark skin, but his face is long like the general in the last Star Wars trilogy. It'll help with the weirdness factor when I do a real skin job for it. 

now, I know what it needs, those claws should be asymmetrical where the clamps fold in at different lengths and one claw is much larger than the other for a proper Lovecraftian vibe. Thanks again Sielwolf! 

Working on a UT3 map, some crappy shots because I'm just now getting to the decoration part of it :)

http://img210.imageshack.us/img210/3289/attachmentpd2.jpg

http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/4219/attachmentza4.jpg 

Always good to see UT3 stuff in progress! 

If you have UT3, my primary mapping influences were CTF-Strident and DM-Biohazard. I helped on almost every map, of course, but those 2 were the ones that I designed and primarily meshed/lit. 

Who did Diesel, Arsenal and brownish/gothic'ish 2-4 player DM map (the name of which escapes me)?