I agree with much of that apart from 3. I particularly like the description of the Quake themes.

I had an idea last night that if you're too far away from an Ogre, he'd start hitting grenades at you with the chainsaw. And if you're closer and keep dodging grenades, he'd throw the chainsaw at you (sometimes). 

Apart from my concerns posted in the Tech thread, if it's to be done, I'd love for it to be set in the Q1 universe, tying the rest of the series together into a neat story that finalizes the Quake world. Perhaps Quake forces call the Strogg to help them, a final grand invasion of earth is undertaken... first episode takes place on earth, then strogg homeworld, then arena eternals take all the players of the war and place then in the settings of q3 arena, battling through brings you back to the war, but in the quake netherworlds... the final battle against the new strogg makron, a robotic shubby walker badass... god, it could be grand and epic and awesome.

NAILGUN PLZ 

Should be the Q1 cresent moon thing, with a big glowing red V slashed in as the spike. 

While the concept is kinda cool, it doesn't really represent Quake, the 5 is too prominent... Perhaps if the lower arch of the 5 and the spike was prominent, and the top half of the 5 was some kind of bolted, darker metal that is seen but not as bright. 

is the episodic approach in Quake. Most FPS games are completely linear, i.e. you have to go through all the levels in the same order to complete the game - if you get stuck in a certain level, it totally halts progression, and in the worst case scenario, can actually cause the player to get bored and abandon the game entirely.

I think a future version of Quake 1, should take the episode thing a step further; find a secret in an episode, and it could unlock further levels accesible from the start. Perhaps even make episodes replayable from within the same game session, so you can then go back and find the secrets that unlocks the goodies in the start map. 

Perhaps Quake forces call the Strogg to help them

Oh dear god no. Crappy B-grade sci-fi cliches have no place in Quake's stylish Lovecraftian nightmare-world. 

The end of episode portions would benefit from cut scenes -- like how CZG described The Netherworld -- You grab the rune, and then the camera pulls back on how fucking enormous the actual world is -- and if you pay attention, secret areas and connections between levels would become more self evident. Anything to enhighten the allusive evil feel of the game would be welcome. 

Um, why not just imply the enormity of the world during actual gameplay? It would have more impact that way. Ok, it wouldn't be prerendered, but just think of some of the views in Painkiller for example - the Docks levels springs to mind. 

http://www.phait-accompli.com/crap/q5b.gif

Not perfect, but bleh, you get the idea. 

is to have the Quake Guy chew gum and quip.

After each significant kill, a chase cam pops up and Quake Guy smiles into the camera and says something like,

"I only have one body bag left. I guess you'll have to share."

or

"I came here to chew gum and take names, and I'm all out of gum. So, I guess you will have to share"

Remove the red face, Kinn or the ideas will get worse. 

try me. 

do we really want to see how low on the casual gamer scale we can go? There could be junior execs trolling obscure forums like this just looking for something, Anything!, to appease the masses. 

I'm going to post in this very idea-rich forum to try and head off what seems to be a gathering flamewar by calling HeadThump a retard. 

HeadThump was just kidding. Anyway, I think he's made a valid point by highlighting the obvious dumbing down that a commercially produced remake of Quake 1 would no doubt suffer from. 

this is quake ffs. how much more dumbed down can it get?

you enter map, pick up guns and kill things, then leave.

maybe there won't be guns, or monsters to kill,... or maybe we won't be able to leave the maps! O_o 

I know you are just venting due to recent events.

PS. I only wear the helmet 'cause me skull is mushy. 

So the impression I get from all this is we definitely want something we've already seen before with some cool shaders slapped on because totally new concepts scare us.

Am I the only one who appreciates how dissimilar Quake 1, 2 and 3 are? Yes, yes I am. 

By "dumbing down" I mean adding all sorts of immersion-killing mainstream action game shite like heavy metal soundtracks, "bullet time", and cutscenes. 

do you reckon it could be pulled off in the Doom3 engine without looking too plasticy? It does seem like the natural successor to the Q1 engine, as Q1 was heavily about shadows and lighting, after all. 

pardon, but Doom3 was (IMHO) crap. id (software) REALLY seems to have a problem with the idea of OUTDOOR AREAS. I have always thought the coolest thing ever would be The Ultimate Doom's Mount Erebus level rendered right - that is, with a detail level of Doom 3 or surpassing it, in a level that huge, all outdoors. That or one of Doom2's huger hell-infested city levels. Why can't they comprehend that it would simply be cooler to see hell on a Far Cry-type scale, and that the universe is alas, not a primarily indoor place. I think you could still do Quake-style atmosphere (like what CZG said about episode 3), provided you designed the structures to be enigmatic enough. To be a pretentious bastard, think about Piranesi's artwork. That on a grander scale is kind of how I interpret what CZG was saying. Finding your way through a nightmare world would be so much more entertaining if there was some skill or exploration involved in navigating it.

I was really dissapointed in Doom3. Is it just me, or do the original QUAKE ONE levels have better layouts? 

i fully agree with czg's uberpost btw 

I was talking about the whole light and shadows thing, not Doom3's gameplay (which I haven't played yet, btw). 

in his pre-recorded quakecon 2004 speech. Basically it's a problem with the specular light - even if you can vary the strength of it through specular maps all specular highlights are handled as if the material was some kind of dull plastic. 

cybear, indeed. The size of a specular highlight can be small and tight (on a glossy surface like a sheet of steel or glass, or a marble floor) or broad and fuzzy (on a rougher surface like plastic). Doom3 just uses one curve for all specular falloff to cheapen the math, and it happens to be a broad fuzzy one.

I think it was meant to be the most universal medium between different surfaces like flesh and metal, "close enough" to all of them that you could pass them off as anything with the right textures/application. The mancubus would look really wierd with little shiny bald-head light spots scrolling over him :)

A good texture map and specular map combo can easily override how the size of the specular makes the surface 'look'. I've found griminess helps in that regard a great deal, to disguise the breadth of the highlight and make the surface believably less polished. Fortunately, Quake has dirt in spades. 

what about all the brown in quake? i believe this to create a strong sense of continuous style in the vein of technogoth. but i'm wondering whether the same style and atmosphere can be acheieved without having to use that repetitive colour scheme. maybe a sort of dust/fog effect would be a modern incarnation of the style id's artists were trying to emulate.