But silly pixar stole you away from me.

Ssh, people will think I work there.

And there's always the interweb. Is Fitzquake based on netquake or quakeworld? 

I should actually be able to connect to internet quake servers at work now. I'd be WELL AND TRULY up for some Quake 1 or 2 coop pretty soon. I just need to get them installed at work.

You up for it?

Anyone else? 

aye 

glquake, meaning netquake. 

I love you, Than! Of couse I would love you run around with you nekkid in a coop game! 

I just apparently need the right client. 

Would be nice with a good way to view the ammo/health/armor counts of the other players with a hud, so you don't have to keep asking the other guys how much health/armor/ammo they have. 

playing Q2 coop with my friend. he was a server, so that's why he was saving all of his weapons and ammo, while I had nothing but blaster (Q2), and I still enjoyed the game (with almost nothing of weapons/ammo).

The fun of coop mode is to play with your friend, while none of ammo/weapon affects you while you're playing. At least that was the way it was for me. (posting drunk anyway) 

currently, the code that governs how monsters behave in realtion to being shot by multiple players is to simply get angry at the newest player to shoot at it.

i think this area could use a lot of work.

i've been experimenting with more powerful monsters of late, and i've found that they become not only easier, but trivial in coop, since as long as two people shoot at a monster, it will continually switch between the two and never get any shots off.

i've alleviated this by implementing a sort of timer, which will only allow the monster to switch enemies after a certain amount of time (about 8 to 11 seconds).

while this works, i think maybe a bit more sophistication could be cool...

if each monster built up a threat table based on how much damage it was taking from each player, and decided to on that basis who to attack, it might make play more interesting.
ie: if one player is wailing on a shambler with the SNG and another is trying to keep it distracted with the SG, ignore the SG player and try to get rid of the SNG player.

i dunno if this moves away from the spirit of quake though, which is supposed to be simple and straightforward, and i don't even know if this would be balanced... hoping for some opinions on that.

also, i think chthon's ai needs to be reworked to make him more effective in coop, but that's another story. :P 

also, who woke the monster up in the first place might get a bonus to it's threat level or something like that...

or maybe even what weapons the player is carrying. although, that could be mitigated by simply switching to a weak weapon like the SG and then after the monster is awake, swtich to a more powerful weapon... *shrug* 

that's similar to the type of AI one sees in MMORPGs, where players use the monster's "aggro" state as part of their tactics. 

One would expect large monsters not to necessarily focus on any one player. A hell knight might try to get between two players and swing his sword to hit both, or a vore would toss a ball at any player on it's 'enemy list' that was visible. The way it stands now, or even with a timer, two players could be standing in clear view of a shambler, but as long as the third player who's the shambler's current enemy is hiding nobody will be in immediate danger.

A monster in coop should queue up enemies, and maybe rank them on who's done him the most damage so far, and just attack whoever's convenient. 

but as long as the third player who's the shambler's current enemy is hiding nobody will be in immediate danger.

ITT lunaran makes sense [56k lol]

Let's try 'but as long as the shambler has a third, hiding enemy, nobody will be in immediate danger.' 

You would probably want to factor in distance for melee monsters. There's no sense having a whathcamajiggy cross half the map to attack the other player when he's going to take critical damage before he gets there. 

indeed. too much WoW i guess. :P
i like lunaran's idea better, but instead of having an enemy at all and queueing up attacks, to simply always be searching for a player, even if it's already angry and fighting.

heck, even throw in something like WoW's Secondary Targetting System where a monster will randomly target another player for a few seconds before switching back to it's primary target.

and yeah, Pushplay:
threat assessment would give bigger bonuses to players close to melee monsters, so a fiend would be more likely to attack someone in jump range than someone who is far away.

also: maybe when more powerful monsters die, it would make any other weaker monsters go after the one who killed it.
just a random thought. 

Have you seen this demo:

http://speeddemosarchive.com/quake/coop/mad/nightmare/4p/sha_1022.dz

(four players with axes vs some enormous number of shamblers)

Takes the 'but as long as the shambler has a third, hiding enemy, nobody will be in immediate danger' idea to ridiculous extremes :) 

The map can be found here:
http://speeddemosarchive.com/quake/mkt.pl?level:shafted

I watched part of it, but it would probably be more enjoyable with a 4-way split screen and 200% gameplay speed.

I was surprised that pushcoag had speedruns. The coop runs are pretty cool. 

Player Respawning:
Perhaps players could revive each other? But it would be a time consuming process, meaning that when one player dies the other will have to finish the firefight before jumping to player #1's aid. Or if there are more than two, then one player can revive whilst the other(s) cover him. There could perhaps be some sort of penalty for the person who died [such as starting with 50 health], so that staying alive still 'matters'. In the case of players who die in lava where their teammates cannot revive them, they would be respawned at the beginning of the level with the same penalties.

Monster Respawning:
I think monster respawning is a very cool idea, but it shouldn't be universal. That is to say, the level designer could set a 'respawn' flag on any monsters they want to be respawnable.

New monsters/The 'anger' problem:
What if there were a modified grunt, carrying two shotties that he can fire at seperate targets? Or a shambler that can fire a bolt of lightning from both hands/claws/paws at the same time and at different targets, allowing both players to be properly involved in the fight? That would allow for some kickass boss monsters too.

Pickups & sharing:
I like the idea of players being able to drop certain items for one another. Perhaps a simple graphical inventory navigated by the numpad, listing all the items could be used rather than a console command or key bind, to make it simpler.

Ending a level:
Perhaps in the interest of players sticking together, all living players would need to 'exit' the current level before a new one begins. Any player who exits becomes a spectator until every living player has completed the level.

A specially designed campaign:
I would love to see a specially designed Coop Quake Episode with levels geared towards teamplay and a story that revolves around a squad of soldiers, rather than the lone ranger in regular Quake.

On the issue of 'seriousness':
I don't think building a more advanced version of Q1 coop would stop it from being a "fun relaxing romp", so much as facilitate that fun and relaxation by providing a more polished experience. As it stands at the moment, there's little need for cooperative play in coop, so the temptation is often for the best player to run ahead and do everything first. If it's tweaked so that every player depends on one another nomatter what their skill, then -everybody- can have fun, and that's the point of coop isn't it? 

(that is all) 

Coop idea: currently, when you die, any other player can pick up your bag and get all your goodies.

sometimes when i'm playing i'll accidentally pick up my teammate's pack, which means he'll not have any ammo.

consider: Packs not only carry all the ammo you had before you died, but also all the weapons.
other players would be able to pick up ONLY the ammo in your pack, but the weapons would remain in it. only you would be able to pick up your own pack for weapons (and ammo if no one else took it already)

this means:
1. you don't need to go back all over the map searching for weapons (or if a map closes off certain areas with, say, the SNG, you could still get it back from your bag
2. other players can still use your supplies if they are running low on ammo during a fight.

obviously, if you died in lava/void, then your pack wouldn't be retrievable, but that would be true regardless.

opinions? 

The best thing for a coop mode is TO ACTUALLY HAVE IT FUCKING IMPLEMENTED IN A GAME INSTEAD OF THESE UBER-LINEAR TRAIN-TRACKED INTERACTIVE FUCKING MOVIES THAT GIVE YOU A GRAND TOTAL OF ONE - YES, ONE - GAMEPLAY OPTION, I.E. TO PLAY EXACTLY ON THE SAME FUCKING PATH EACH TIME.

etc. 

I guess Shambler just would like to see dedicated coop map instead of playing SP map in coop... and it's not a reason to shout ;P 

I'd like to see games that have a coop option as well as normal SP gameplay. 

Fairly regularly, as in, a few times a week, people in #darkplaces #qc and #qexpo will often go play on the netQuake server coop.runequake.com:26003

It is a coop netQuake mod which has weaponstay, player respawn and item respawn on, and it alters the enemies to be tougher but also fire different weapon types. However it also adds runes, which I know many would scoff at, but having someone with the medic rune and someone with the engineer rune keeping near the big gunners goes a long long way... Also, players can level up, which increases how much ammo and armor they respawn with. Some of the runes are risky to use as they can kill your teammates, but the game does a global bprint as a warning for such.

A players level is remembered by the game until they leave the server. It also has a map pack, filled with many custom sp maps, most of which were made by regulars here... and a hub map where people view a screenshot of the map and are given its name, filename, and name of the author.

It isnt orthodox Quake, but it is usually quite fun - I enjoyed roaming antedeluvian and adamantine cruelty with 4 other players.

no this post isnt a solution to coop design problems, its just pimping some fun coop =) 

svencoop for hl