That was "sorry saps who will end up playing the damned thing eventually" . . . . 

I've been happy playing FitzQuake. I haven't tried Darkplaces. 

CZG has released a new map and MindCrime has emmerged from the shadows all within the same day.

As for the question, this is my two cents - if you are going for the Old School classic Quake look and feel, FitzQuake is the way to go. If you are making a more modern looking game that at the very least keeps up with the high standards Nehahra has imposed upon us, Dark Places is the way to go.

The proper comparison for Dark Places is not FitzQuake which is a good Quake Build and the only real choice for playing classic levels on, no the proper comparison is the Doom 3 engine. The Doom Engine can handle up to 6 real time lighting sources within a given sector, DP handles 30. Also DP can handle 64k entities per map, and sizes larger than what is expected for Half-Life 2.
It is doubtful that the mappers you recruit will need all of that, but from my own experience with my own DP mod in development the maps I'm making average about 4 times the size of a Quake map equivalant, and I am not even trying to do anything but make modest, Quake oriented maps. It is just I don't have to really think about the constraints that normally come in to play. Though this has been detrimental to my normal methods of mapping (hence the three week delay on my turtle map).

Will Obscurus be as machinima oriented as Nehahra? 

Uhhh, in a word: NO :)

Whatever cinematics (if there are) will be brief and to the point ... 

Fitzquake
;) 

dont bother with cinematics.

mindcrime, i dont know if you in/out the loop regarding the recent quake 1 maps, but i should at least make you aware of my website, which has been up for about 14 months now.

http://www.planetquake.com/underworld/index.html

its great to hear obscurus is still in development, my personal opinion is nehahra is the best ever quake custom episode[s].

i look forward to obscurus reaching the same high quality, although i know its still going to be a long road to the actual release at this point. :) 

Fitzquake, no one wants colored lights and ugly effects when playing q1 except for q3 players. 

FitzQuake is the key, although, hey scampie, I do want colored lights and some ugly effects (except watching your nick ;>) when playing q1 :)

Anyway, fitzquake is my fav atm. 

get a vote for its original taste 

I am not interested in having any additional engine effects

I think by saying that (and asking here ;)) you already know the answer to your question.

Personally I like both and I think some of the character of Nehahra came from the engine. Obviously though its the maps, monsters, sounds etc that really define such a project.

I can't remember if fitzquake has the 255 bmodel & 600 entity limits removed (or is that tyrquake?); if not it wuld be nice if at least those could be modified away :) 

I've appreciated all the postings so far and hope more people put their 2 cents in.

There is one other thing to consider here. Nehahra was a Partial Conversion. Obscurus looks to be a Total Conversion. Basically, it's own game and very close to being that. There's a lot of aspects of the quake 'atmosphere' and feel I would like to adopt, but ... it's not entirely necessary, being a new game, to preserve 100% of the Quake-iness. So while the occasional colored dynamic light might not look overly good when fighting in classic quake maps ... Obscurus might be okay. Then again, it might not. I'm not advocating the use of any one engine or any particular effect ...

I'm just pointing out that you have more creative room with a TC ... (most TCs will take this legroom and use it to fuck things up, but let's hope the community has a little faith in me :> )

So far it looks like there are more votes for fitzquake :) Only 10 posts so far though.

Keep 'em comin' 

...what the frenchie said 

I got nasty flashing lava on Fitz. Either allow almost anything or use something with higher quality or higher quality mode. Or test like hell. 

I do believe FitzQuake supports colored lighting in maps through .lit files.

As spentron said, if you're not going to use any special engine effects, why not support every engine? Then you'd get the software Quakers as well.

But then if you're looking for an engine to help add a special flare (and not lense flares, I hope) then DarkPlaces is probably the engine for you. But I should say that I use FitzQuake for playing Quake, as it is really a great no-frills high-thrills engine. 

but i don't unilaterally say no to colored lighting. it's cool sometimes. but that's the farthest i'd go...
oh well, you could also bump the edict limit too. :D 

To clarify...

What I MEANT was that I'm not interesting in any new engine with features which are newer or snazzier than what is currently standard ... meaning, I don't need an engine with more features than Nehahra.exe or whatever ...

I still love skyboxes and fog and all that jazz ... :) 

I'm not INTERESTED

I may not be interesting either, that's a matter of interpretation.

Yaaaa, I'm bawwr-i-i-i-ng guyy, sit around n scrape dead skin off my feet all day while I'm drink-u-u-u-n Peej Soda and wearin a s-o-o-o-mbrer-o-o ... I'm on a Mexicaan, whoa oh, rad-e-e-e-O ... 

As a mapper, Nehahra is pretty close to my perfectly ideal engine in terms of features/effects added. i.e., tons of new entity functionality, but only minimal and tasteful graphical enhancements (If it had .lit, I'd be set for life. high quality textures I don't care for, they ruin the thematic consistency of quake. all those lovely shades of brown, yum)

So, I sorta vote for Neh/DP, but if you can make Fitzquake kick as much ass as Neh did, then go for it. 

there is already a Mac port of the Nehahra engine, so going that route nets you more potential players (and yes there are a few mac users that lurk these boards) 

fitzquake! 

I liked the skyboxes and fog too. Colored lighting's dangerous, but it can work when done peoperly.

I used to like darkplaces but now it runs too slow on my system and with the lack of documentation, it's a bitch to turn a lot of the features off.

As for fitzquake, it's not really a new engine as such so use it if you're going for the classic quake feel. I love the software emulated gl lighting, but personally wish it had model interpolation as I'm too used to the smooth animation to go back to the standard jerky stuff. 

Well, there is also another side to this. Chances are ... if it's built to run on Fitzquake, it will also run on other engines as there are not a lot of Fitzquake-specific things that other engines don't have that would cause a crash. Err, if you know what I mean.

I could just as easily get the same progs.dat to run all three engines ... those who like certain effects such as (just for an example) dynamic colored light (i.e. the gaunt boomerangs) can play it in Nehahra and see it, while it simply won't be there in fitz. Same with subtle use of transparent effects and other stuff. I can have the code check to see what engine is running quite easily too.

There's something to think about. Make it compatible to all three, hence pleasing the largest amount of people :D 

Im against fitzquake - it doesnt have animation interpolation and all monsters movements look jerky and fragmented.

I suggest you decide what features u want/need and just use an engine that accomodates.

AFAIK only nehara exe suports mod music (s3m, xm) and good ambient tracks enhance the atmosphere of a game. 

I like the idea of not requiring any specific engine, and instead just using the enhancements that are standard across engines. 

DarkPlaces, bitch. It's just better*.

* when it works