well while we're pie in the sky I think the end product of this conversation is the idea of E3 as a series of interlinked yet moving components, one giant episode-sized map which is also a (very dangerous) puzzle, floating in the sky or void. Some elder god's abandoned rubix cube. 

Lament Configuration.

Why not pie in the sky ;)

Got to sift through shit to find the diamonds. 

sadly, it would be a nightmare to do something like that in quake... for one, the lighting would be pretty bad since large moving brush models wouldn't be casting any shadows. T_T 

Six years ago, no less. That's... hilarious. Especially since I haven't pushed a single damn brush in six months. But hell, I'm home for the holidays with nothing else to do, so they're haunting me again.

Y'all should take all these great ideas that might actually come to fruition to a thread where they won't get discarded. Although I guess the whole point of this thread was that someone might be inspired by another's unfinished ideas.

Here's an idea I've had to set aside: for a long time I wanted to build a hanging city nestled into a gigantic tree, playing off of the concept of the Yggdrasil (the mythical Norse tree that connects different realms: the analogs of hell, earth, and heaven). A more mundane example would be one of the first dungeons of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, which is inside a large tree.

Something like this illustrates my imagination pretty well:
http://www.wizards.com/mtg/images/daily/arcana/255_forest1_okcp1gylfr.jpg

As you can no doubt imagine, neither my technical skill nor the ability of the Quake engine are up to the task. Now, I haven't given it up entirely, but suffice to say that I would need a better computer and more modern engine to bring it to fruition. 

That episode ide I casually discarded in the opening post as impossible?

...

Yeah, still working on that. 

both posts are great! - awesome idea in the first one and awesome fact in the second one! 

I got this idea for the Remix Pack last year - thought a remix of end.bsp would be a quick thing, but my motivation dropped even before I got started. No idea if I'll ever actually create this map. Maybe this can be of some use to the RMQ team.

The basic idea of Shub resting in some dark caverns remains, though additionally there're multiple interconnected side caves at different levels. The main texture is that dark grey rock interspersed with bits of the brighter rock texture the original map uses exclusively. Shub in the middle of the non-linear, atrium-like layout. She doesn't sit in a lava pool, though. The bottom of her pit is a Shub-textured organic structure and there're tentacle things digging (or growing) through the rock, as if she was a tree root.
In each of the caves there're bits of some ancient arcane machinery that doesn't look like any familiar technology but still seems oddly functional. The player has to activate all parts in a certain order or quick succession to be able to defeat Shub. Needless to say monsters teleport in whenever he does - standard Quake bestiary, Shamblers, Vores, Fiends, Spawns. Possibly additional one-time buttons are required to open up some of the caves or improve the connectivity required to quickly get from one machine part to the other. When all parts are activated, a teleporter appears and/or a glowing Shubball lowers into her for a short time and the player can telefrag her.
Shub herself doesn't just sit there idly. Apart from the monsters roaming the caverns and teleporting in, there're three Shubballs flying around her and through the caverns. They stop at key positions and shoot spikes and lightning, perhaps even Ogre grenades, in all directions (or sometimes directly at the player?). At first they were supposed to be shootable, at least in certain spots, so the player could take them out, but I think they're better off acting as environmental hazards.
When her death sequence runs and she gibs, some of the tentacles/roots on the floor and walls explode in a cinematic way and show the flesh beneath, some bits fall down. The bottom slowly fills with blood until it reaches the player's feet. Finally, the walls of the caverns crack open and one can see the teleporter texture behind them, as if Shub's dimension is being torn apart after her demise.

With additional QC one could spice things up even more. The Shubbal defense system could be done more smoothly, for example. And the machine could be made in a way that it 'reprograms' one of the Shubballs to act as the telefrag beacon (clever timing required as in the original map - activate all machine parts in the right moment as a Shubball passes through some kind of device, its skin changes). 

that's a good idea 

re: the shub pit - you mean kind of like this?

http://www.3delement.com/login/public/shots/haunted4.jpg

This is from a map that later became the basis for Arcanum1 (I'm sure you recognize haunted1.jpg). That shub pit thing made it into a later arcanum map, with significant modifications. The idea of merging animated flesh monsters like shub (or the Quoth one) with fleshy architecture is awesome. If you ever get a chance go for it.
(rest of shots)

http://www.3delement.com/login/public/shots/haunted3.jpg
http://www.3delement.com/login/public/shots/haunted2.jpg
http://www.3delement.com/login/public/shots/haunted1.jpg

actually these shots demonstrate that I'm pretty good at recycling stuff it just takes me forever. 

We've discussed what Shub will become and there will be a pretty significant change coming up.

I like the machinery and cave system ideas, although Shub herself will become something alot bigger and unkillable - instead the player's goal is to disconnect Shub's link from our dimension.

Shub's children are going to become a new boss class monster and they'll be about the same size as the current Shub, but ambulatory.

Shub:
http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h87/osiris32/Shub-Niggurath.jpg

Dark Young of Shub Niggurath:
http://members.shaw.ca/csstrowbridge/Tulzscha/DarkYoung.jpg

Having the teletrain become some sort of servitor or guardian entities is interesting. The telefrag is pretty much out, so it'd be nice to keep them in but with a modified role.

Also thinking to have Shub directly attack the player with some tenticles. There will be others anchored into the brushwork, twitching and so on, so having a few that directly attack the player will be good.

But. All that might change. Suffice to say all of the bosses are going to be high resolution gameplay. New Chthon is in the works now - but since he's close to being finished I won't be talking about any real details. 

Tronyn: Yes, similar to that (but not deep of course). One thing I've been fantasizing about for years is the combination of themes from two of my speedmaps: a black&white castle with (colored) Zerst�rer flesh and blood. And some weird-ass elements, e.g. brick fountains, player transformation into one of those Shrak maggots, HOM chambers... A dark Alice setting.

ijed: Ah, nice. By the way, you know you have to create bosses for the other three episodes as well, do you? ;) 

the combination theme you just outlined makes it sound even more awesome/fucked up. Willem's white room black&white textures with the blood still red really made things seem weird.

May I suggest the castle have marble checkerboard floors, and incorporate doom-like (or even doom-transplanted) gargoyles and blood fountains.

I agree: bosses for all episodes! 

 

the wizards manse will now have a wizard in it (and not a big scrag) and ep3 will have th dark young.

but yeah - ive said before there are holes in the original game - only 1 real boss plus a static model teleport puzzle . ..

ow. sorry for the typing, i think i've broken my left thumb in a piggy back race 

My only disappointment with quake is the lack of episode 2,3,4 bosses. Chthon set up an expectation of actual episode bosses that was never met. 

yeah, i remember being really underwhelmed by the endings of the other episodes.

also, it'd be cool to have a map inside a big scrag. 

That's weird, I never really thought about it before. Makes sense though. Seems weird to not have bosses... 

13 years down the road I had almost forgotten, but hell, yes!!! No bosses in the episodes beyond shareware was a real downer(one of the few...)and even big jelly mama Shub... I was expecting the fight of my life and ended up exploding the fat lady from the guts.. Yeech!!! Still gives me the goosebumps! 

LET'S TALK ABOUT POTENTIAL BOSSES IN THE MONSTER THREAD!! GOGOGO 

You can tell that it was a matter of scheduling ... the game needed to ship and there was no more time to do new monsters. That Quake shipped at all is something of a minor miracle! 

http://www.quakeexpo.com/images/quakepreview.gif

Remember this? Yeah... The whole of "Quake" that we have was a matter of picking up the pieces left over after a far more ambitious idea was discarded. In retrospect, far too ambitious for the technology of the time (smooth-scrolling 256 color VGA, ZOMG!) Kinda funny to think about how such a last minute mishmash game has held up for so long. 

I was discarded because I was outdated!!!

http://members.home.nl/gimli/OldOgre.jpg 

I LOVE those old screen shots! Do you have a complete collection of them? 

http://nostalgia.poweredbylasers.com/categories.php?global_page=originals is pretty cool. 

Something like your machinery idea might still make it into another boss fight.

I still have a proper void map to deliver.