I spent a lot of time just exploring the start map and the first map. The start map was such an awesome concept and it's crazy how well you managed to transform e1m1. I managed to work my way to the quad and the pathway to get there was genius. It felt like exploring an entirely new map as I worked my way backwards. I wish that the quad lasted longer and I'm curious if it's possible to clear out all the enemies before it expires. I only gave it one shot and I wasted some time while the powerup was active trying to see if I could find the SSG but it still looks like you really have to haul ass.

Like I said, I'm taking my time to go through the pack in order to really savor the experience but the start map and first map are already excellent. The combat in the first map was especially good. It was challenging without being unfair. I did get a little frustrated playing through saveless since the grunts shooting through the grates combined with the ogre grenades was a bit tricky during the trap sequence, but it was still fair and that's the kind of challenge that I expect on higher difficulties. I'm really glad that you released an entire episode to accompany this. 

In modern shooters there is generally a volume representing an "encounter zone" which enemies won't leave. This is an easy way for designers to keep all the enemies in a room/combat from following you into the next room/combat space. (also necessary because rooms are streaming in and out of memory pretty aggressively as you progress.) In MMOs there is often a tether distance from the spawnpoint. Something like that might be a sufficient bandaid to help reign in monsters with out too much hand-authoring of behaviors.

Or, "monster clip" brushes placed at connections between major areas, could serve the same purpose.

You still need extra behaviors to handle all the edge cases this creates, such as what to do if player is inaccessible. You probably don't want all 30 monsters clumped up at the doorway where you left the area -- maybe they need to give up and go into a wander/guard behavior or something. But the current behavior creates plenty of clumps just from trying to walk blindly towards you, just the clumps are smaller and take longer to appear.

So yeah, it's not a simple addition. Maybe there is a version of it that solves the worst of the current AI problems without changing the character of quake combat too much. 

rein, not reign. 

Also just to confirm that I haven't been getting lucky, ammo pickups no longer disrupt the player's melee attack animation, right? I didn't see this addressed specifically in the readme but it was always annoying how you could eat a shot to the face from the second grunt in e1m1 on skill 2 when you pick up the shells while trying to melee him to death.

On the subject of sounds, I don't have a problem with the backpack sound. I actually like all of the sound choices so far, especially the axe making noise when used on an enemy. If any sound strikes me as a bit odd though, hitting a secret door with the axe kind of sounds like smacking a beanbag. Not a problem for me, just notable if I'm going to be nitpicky about sounds. 

Is there any middle ground between "keep this monster in its general area" and "let this monster freely roam the map"?

There is, kind of: Quake doesn't hard-lock monsters into their start areas unless the level designer does it with doors/platforms/etc, but it does soft-lock them with their own derpiness. While they don't always find their way out, sometimes they do, and when is more or less random. Encountering a monster that's not where you left it is an emergent surprise, the kind of thing that feels better when it's serendipitous than when it's a calculated monster closet backspawn.

I'm beginning to feel that part of level design for games like Quake is relinquishing the need for total control and configurability down to the spawnflag, and accepting that while you place every monster with a purpose and to fill a role, each one is also kind of a wildcard. At the end of the day, the player is an even bigger wildcard, and they have more fun when you let them be that.

If they move to a more advantageous position and get some easy kills, let them have that reward, especially if you just put them through three torture arenas where advantageous positions were nearly impossible to maintain. 

I wish that the quad lasted longer and I'm curious if it's possible to clear out all the enemies before it expires.

Yes it is. You have to haul ass but yes. 

I took the backpack sounds straight from AD because I didn't remember anyone complaining about them then. :( 

I like the new "door locked" sound a lot. 

I just quickly took a look (listen, rather) in AD 1.70 final for backpack pickup sound. It sounds exactly like regular ammo pickup, just like it was in ID1. At least those backpacks that were dropped by monsters behave like that.

I loved UDOB. Thanks a lot for provided entertainment. Highlights for me included

- raising platforms for ability to breathe
- gibbing some zombies with voreballs
- fake exit ambush
- secrets behind 3 golden keys
- that area when a lot of spawns... spawned
- arenas in the next to last level, especially the one with square platforms sinking in lava

Found Ring of Shadows at "appropriate" time only in one level, it was funny to watch monsters being confused. Other times I ended up finding them later when stuff around was dead.

Visually everything looks great but that goes without saying.

Can't say I'm a fan of such Chton style (I think it was similar in Contract Revoked?). That's the only major thing I didn't like in UDOB. 

AD backpack is a secret item that gets equipped onto the player, the sound makes sense. Having the same sound play for enemy drops is a bit too noisey. 

This makes sense. In AD when you find those backpacks it's usually a secret so the louder, longer sound seems to fit. It's much more rare to hear this that in "Coppah".

Hearing it over and over feels "louder" to me overall than the standard AD experience. On my end, there are probably a few things going on that contribute.

IIUC all sounds in Quakespasm have a high pass filter applied that cuts the sound a bit in Windows. In Mark V, everything is a touch louder as it doesn't apply this. I use Mark V for straight gameplay session unless there are compatibility issues with a given map. 

T-minus fifteen minutes.

https://www.twitch.tv/ionous 

Quick FYI... this will be broken in Linux Quakespasm until PAK0.PAK is renamed to pak0.pak.

Not sure if there are any other such issues down the road, just got started. 

Well that's a fuckin' awesome startmap, very good first two maps, and initial signs of fuckin'-awesomeness on the third. Out of time for tonight but I'm really happy to get to chew on an episode of full maps from you two guys. 

But in relation to the AI conversation earlier I would like to see separate monster/player clip brushes at some point like in Quake 2. I think this would allow mappers to make seemingly smarter AI without any coding required. 

very impressed.
2nd map in particular. OTP's comments about underwater gameplay are off. It was close but I survived and there were adequate hints to approach the section differently than one is 'trained' to through normal quake play. Also a good demonstration of new megahealth parameters. Great use and re-use of water area, and loved how the arena combat section opened things up down there too. So beautifully constructed from a gameplay perspective and super enjoyable aesthetically also.
BTW that arena which opens the water pits was perfect - I barely got out of it with 8 health.
It reminded me of a proper DOOM ambush, or maybe the big ambushes from some of the MEXX maps.
Great job so far, looking forward to the rest when I have time. 

I just popped in to say I am enjoying the maps so far.
Not really sure what all the hubbub is in regards to the backpack noise, it sounds alright to me. 

http://www.quaketastic.com/files/demos/udob-5th.zip

Skill 2

I got my arse kicked. I did manage to finish end.bsp but I died so many times that I just save scummed it (and quake demos hate that).

The maps were really good but there were some slaughter combat moments that I wasn't expecting (like the campgrounds remake map, that got me a few times).

I like a lot of the changes to the mod. I hope many of the changes make their way into dumptrucks mod or vice versa (like flame sprites, breakables etc)...

I love that the RoS is now a viable power up when in combat rather than 'sneak past everyone before the timer runs out'.
The NG/SNG changes are great too, you've managed to make both guns worthwhile for different situations.

I think many of the changes together make the game a lot harder, z-awareness, turret enforcers, shambler dance nerf, armour degradation, reduced ammo drops...

The increased difficulty was a bit of a shellshock, I am definitely going to try out a few other maps with this to see how it plays. 

Agreed on all points above. Shambler’s are legitimately scary for me without perf 

The udob maps are sublime. Or maybe it was the mod? hard to tell?

I love how the mod makes a lot of rather significant changes, but still feels very vanilla. Most of the time you can't tell the difference. The armor change sounded too invasive but it works well. I hope every mod from now on is based on this.

Had never played with this "autosave" feature before but that is great too. Not having to think too much about saving really helps immersion, and makes the consequences of your actions feel more permanent. I didn't see how this system actually works documented anywhere?

Funny to play the q3dm6 inspired map and seeing the curvy ramp (to the railgun) and thinking.. huh, this really feels like q3dm6! Then turning around and seeing the rest of the level :) 

I saw my game save a bunch of times but every time I died I always went back to the beginning. 

In console 

oh nice, wish I had figured it out at the beginning 

I had a nice system rigged up where dying and pressing 'fire' would load the last autosave instead of restarting the level.

It worked great, until scampie sent me a long test demo and I couldn't watch any of it. the first time he died, the demo would playback the recorded 'stuffcmd("load auto")' and the demo would end and load my last autosave. :p

so, we had the info_player_start fire the autosave entity in every map, so that 'load auto' was always safe to type at the console, and had to leave it at that. Any more invasive autosave system than that would need some manner of engine cooperation, but what form that would take exactly I'm not sure. Ignoring stuffcmd in demos would break 'bf', and also all the fog stuff in Copper, Honey, and AD, so that's maybe a no-go. Technically we're abusing stuffcmd by doing this anyway.

Something a little more robust, but prone to breaking for other reasons, might have been for the autosave entity to stuffcmd an alias that was masked to 'load auto' in quake.rc. Then if people wanted, they could re-alias it to something that would do some of that hacky config-based scripting from the old days, where quickload was rebound to 'load auto' until the next time you hit f6, which would rebind it to 'load quick', so f9 always loaded the most recent save ... or something. Still doesn't let you just press 'fire' to restart at the last save, though. 

Also, thank you all for the feedback, be it praise or constructive criticism. I'm glad you're all playing it and (mostly) enjoying yourselves.