Crap, I wanted to view Ankh's demos but .. how does one unpack .DZ file on OSX? Anyone? 

get OSX version ;)

http://speeddemosarchive.com/dzip/download.html 

Bah, I guess that doesn't work under Leopard. Can't make it go in the Terminal. I grabbed the source code so maybe I'll try and work up a modern version sometime. 

Good fighting training. In the maps, you should make the highest points harder to defend. In the elder arena for example, it's rather effective to make use of higher ground, pick off monsters in the distance with the RL, and use SNG/shaft and GL to clear out immediate threats.

Maybe don't give all weapons at the start?

Randomize the ammo?

Drop bonuses if the player is good? Like go into quad mode when 5 monsters are killed very quickly (Qarnage?), or 3 gibbed in a row? This could be combined with a sound effect, Super Mario like. In fact, why not make it even more arcade like, and give extra lives. Less health, but 1 extra life per completed round.

The minions didn't seem terribly effective, but usable as cannon fodder.

I had to load QArena manually because Linux knows about upper/lower case. :-E

And I also vote for harder early waves. Many people won't spend enough time with this to ever see wave 30. 

It's very hard to stop playing this. After round 30, it gets really chaotic and "twitchy". In round 44, one of the 8 or so death knight minions got me.

The shaft in the base map was good, because it made me really go backpack hunting :-) endless fun.

It would perhaps be good to make the minions nonsolid. They kept blocking the access to the sng/armor. 

I'll definitely refine the minions for the next release. I'll make them not hurt each other, get out of your way, etc. They'll be better! 

I've posted general and editing information here:

http://www.wantonhubris.com/qonquer/Qonquer.html

If you're interested in making a Qonquer arena, that should be all you need! I included entity DEF files but if someone creates an FGD for Worldcraft or any other editor, let me know and I'll put it on the site for others to grab.

Happy reading! 

Is a great little mod, actually. 435 on metal, and the slaughter is calling to me.

I reckon a stats screen setup (as neg|ke suggested) would be the #1 request for version 2 - just the same as a standard SP end level screen, if possible. Maybe have it triggerable and reset the monster count to 0 as well.

Spawn can't be minions?

Thanks for the mod and documentation, Willem. 

that's an interesting idea. Since death is the only way the level ends, why not use the intermission screen as the post-death game summary screen? 

I'll definitely try to do that. I sort of half heartedly looked at it before I released 1.0.

I guess I'll just need to hook into player death and then figure out how to do that intermission text display. 

...and will cetainly get better with some of the suggestions from this thread implemented. I played Easy and nothing spawned in the Elder arena. Ran around for ages thinking I might have to pay some purgatory price for attempting the level at such a low skill :) but still nothing happened. Left after some of the texturing choices (IK metal trim facing stone steps?) got too much to take.

Really enjoyed the base and metal levels though, a great way to hone skills.

Thanks Willem 

- Player shouldn�t be able to hurt the minions, after several waves things get too hectic to avoid hitting them.
Whether they can hurt the player could be controlled variable.

- Minions with different abilities: Medics who can heal the player with low health (player has to get close to them), Bomber minions that seek out the player and explode (like the bomb in Quoth), Bodyguards/Axemen who stay close (could be annoying though).
Those special minions could spawn only once every few rounds or as reward for special actions etc.

- special skins for minions

- comparison/competition is nice, but how to avoid that players can just reload a save ? Resetting the timer after loading ? Being able to save is great though.

- Rewards for special frags/weaponcombos, i.e. if the player gibs 3x in a row, his maxhealth increases by 5 points. Or low gravity arenas where the player has to hit airrockets for certain rewards. Good accuracy could be rewarded with a faster ammo respawn (i.e. for one wave only).
These �specials� would also increase the replay value, i.e. if I die always at a certain wave (dead point), I could try to score more specials to increase my chances.

- Powerups like slow-mo/bullettime, magnetism (being able to pick up stuff from a distance). Or something like "the friendly axe", all monster hit turn to minions etc.

- definitely make the arenas expand more with increasing waves, I really like that idea 

I had a few suggestions similar to those.
But I want to play with proper mousewheeling. Any chance you could quickly release an update with just that one fix? I don't think we're playtesting ( and we are playtesting ) properly without it. 

distrans

Yeah, that's a bug. :P Next version will work on Easy in that arena.

Sielwolf

Minions will be better next version. They won't hurt you (or each other) and will get in your way a lot less. You can't hurt them though - they spray blood but your shots aren't doing any damage.

I'll think about the rest of your ideas too. I'm putting together a short list of stuff to put in the next version.

As for arenas that expand, that's totally doable. It's all level designer controlled so once I (or someone else) makes an arena that does that we'll have it. Heh. 

Finally!, this fits my need to "just frag some some monsters" perfectly, without having to annoyingly swap levels all the time eventually leading to having to start over again...

:).. big thanks! 

The name is gay. Q on queer. :(

The game seemed fine although the difficulty picked up a little slowly (skill 2) and the knights don't do very well in the stairs.

This could rock in QW though where control is better and my weapon scripts etc work. The scoring should work fine with COOP multiple players, right, just count the kills? Hmm... 

I almost have the new version ready. I want to see about the summary/score screen at the end before I released it though.

Well, and I tweaked the arenas somewhat and my r_speeds are too high now in the metal arena so I need to optimize there as well. Blargh... 

Good work, those are some good-looking maps.

The base one is my favorite, because the gameplay is very fluid and the backpack hunting really adds fun. I'm looking after every wave how many cells I managed to collect. To collect more backpacks, you have to take risks and go right into the hot zone. I like that. I also like the three spawnpoints in a row on the upper level, where you can do little runs from time to time to clean them.

The metal one is good, but the base minions felt a little underpowered. Shamblers come too early. I'd give a shaft so you could collect cells from your dead minions. Also a little short on nails it is.

Didn't play the elder arena much yet. Just noticed you can't get out of the lava. :-/

Sielwolf's minion skin idea is good. Perhaps just fullbrights or b/w. 

Basically what my predecessors said. My only real complaint is that it takes too long to get really frantic, if at all. I'm not a top notch player, but even at wave 15 on hard, I find it too easy. I want it to be almost unbeatable after at most 10 minutes of gameplay. I want frantic gameplay. I'd really like it if it progressed like a logarithmic function: Quickly at first, and when it gets hard and frantic, it needs to progress very slowly, so that it takes a while before all the monsters really overrun you. 

...pretty inspired. I played on normal skill and in the base map (training?). I thought what I did see was very well thought out. At no point was I confused as to what was meant to be going on. The level design was very good, very "classic quake". I couldnt find the way up to the nightmare entrance right at the start, but I never can find clever secrets.
Brushwork was nice, nothing organic, quite clinical but well put together and lit. Although I played at 1280 x 1024 I could see how the lighting and brushwork would accomodate software engines running low resolutions, which I gather is the style you are in to.

The gameplay was interesting, especially at first, with not knowing what was going to happen. I found that the presence of the lightning gun in the base level perhaps made it possible to progress so far that it seemed as if I was never going to die. And I didnt. I saved and quit after wave 42, because I have a lot of work to do today ;-P
It was fun at first but then became a little tedious, no more tedious though than any other arcade style shooter might after "level 42".
Maybe on reaching level 25 or 30 you should spawn in a vore or something. I know that it was the training level I played, and it's set in the base/tech themed universe, where vores can be few and far between, but if you can have a glowing hell knight I dont see why we cant have a vore. Something to actually make a good try for killing the player at these leter stages, that is.

Wave 42, not even loosing too much health??!

Make it harder!!!

Oh, also, I liked the sound effect at the end of each wave, that was cool.

And also, thanks Willem, this was fun, I will play again later, I havent even seen any other levels yet!! :D 

Thanks Ricky!

The difficulty is really up to the level designer. The mod will spawn whatever is specified in the arena. The base arena is kind of easy because it eases you into the game but you're right - maybe I'll throw in some harder monsters on super high levels there.

Try the other arenas. The tougher monsters are in those! 

Definitely one of the best Quake mod of late!

Some monsters make better minions than others although I like the contrasting nature of those in your maps, i.e. base vs. medieval and medieval vs. base. It seems Hellknights beat Enforcers who, in turn, are better than Scrags -- although, once you had a bunch of them, they were very effective at getting in the way. Funny how the Enforcers won't even shoot at the Zombies in the 2nd arena. There's definitely a little room for improvement with the minions.

I thought the gameplay was great! Sure it was a little slow to start but had me grinning at the ridiculousness of it all in no time. More, more, more! Please, of course :) 

Heh, minions won't deal with zombies. Ever. They don't like them. :) 

Good apart from the lava. 

Make it harder.

For hard and nightmare skill I would suggest to stop the health from ticking upwards and to make the armour spawn only 1-2 times in a wave.

For the metal map you could try to move the armour under the bridge and spawn a vore on the bridge from time to time. And you could remove two of the health packs.

I think that on hard skill the player should get into problems from the 10-15th wave.