I didn't like Q2 as much as Q1 and think there's alot of things they shouldn't have done.

I'm not talking about copying an entire game inside an engine that is older than it and trying to reproduce something I see as fundamentally flawed; but instead using only the loose design concept of 'cyborg enemies in a Quake environment'.

After that, most everything to be new; although a few nice things will be kept - athough heavily tweaked, both behaviour wise and visually.

Like the Railgun, or Medic enemy. 

Flamethrower, ignites enemies who then burn for a set amount of time, takign damage. They can estinguish by touching water. A burning entity that touches another ignites it, this can include the player. See Awakening Q2 weapon for reference.

i should warn you that damage over time effects are irritating most of the time, and even more so in a single player environment where you don't have any options (or other players to rely on to remove it) other than to find a static source to get rid of it.

it causes a shift in gameplay from kill stuff and avoid getting hit (fun) to run around and find a water source fast before i die (not so much fun). 

call it original TC
and please post documentation in html,
not some obscure 7z 

Malice (Quake TC) has a firethrower enemy. The designers opted to put fire extinguishers in the map, which I always found rather goofy. Anytime you saw a flamethrower guy, you could count on a fire extinguisher around the next corner, or - worse - you saw the fire extinguisher first, then - surprise! - a flamethrower guy.

Anyway you just ran up to the fire extinguisher and you would be "doused". They were non-portable.

What I mean is, it would be much cooler if there was a portable anti-fire medium. The problem is that a flamethrower shoots gasoline or something like that, which is very hard to extinguish when it sticks to your clothes, hair etc...

You could have a fireproof armor; an asbestos jacket or something. Like Quake's biosuit. It could even be on a timer. Or something like Quoth's cross powerup, which protects from burning.

Otherwise,

1) Why not keep some of the Q1 monsters? Ogre, dogs, (cyborg) fiend?

2) Boss monster: Perhaps just some hellish mechanism that you have to disable? Would make for something different.

3) The Q2 engine has some nice features, like the inventory. Of course you could hack in the inventory from Hexen2 if you wanted one. Rotating doors, trains or conveyor belts are also good features. Hipnotic and Quoth have rotating entities.

4) Do you have any idea how long it will take to even create the levels? The maps have to be good, otherwise nobody will play it. I'd go with just one episode of 7-9 maps. Remember that Quoth lets you do "hub style" maps like in Q2, so you could make three hubs, a secret level, a boss map and call it a TC.

Overall, since I like Quake2 the way it is, I'm scratching my head a little bit. I agree that its weapons are not very Quakey, and neither is the base theme. However, since you want to use mainly cyborg monsters, you'll have to go with a tech theme as you lined out.

But then you have Strogg Bases (TM) and Q2-like cyborgs, even reusing the Q2 gadgets like drills, factories etc, with a set of custom weapons. Is that worth doing?

What I would rather do is to have one episode (8 or 9 maps) with a theme that is NOT Strogg Base (TM), but instead a mix of swamp, red idbase (from Scourge of Armagon) and Q1-style industrial areas or sewers, and one or two space/void maps. Then I would have a mix of modified Strogg and upgraded Q1 monsters like dogs, reskinned enforcers, ogres and fiends. The fiend could even be cyborgized. You'll need about 12-14 enemies in all.

When I played "The Reckoning", I thought those swamp levels with the acidic mutants were a bit like Quake1. I was especially ROTFL when a gang of them managed to steal an airstrike marker - one of the funnier Q2 moments :-) So I would definitely include them, too. They would be semi-intelligent creatures that operate in groups or "raiding parties".

I would imagine a "Quakified" Q2 to look much like the first part of Reckoning, with swamps, caves, small lost bases, sewers and space ships / bases.

For weapons I would start with the Q1 set, cut out the axe, nailgun and lightning gun, and put in some existing mods like Quoth's plasma gun, proximity mines, multirockets or the like, and probably the Hipnotic laser gun with orange instead of red projectiles. I would strive to keep it simple (no secondary fire modes or whatever.) If you have a flamethrower (or flamethrower enemies), definitely have a _portable_ anti-fire item!

Monster ideas:

Much like what you said, plus Gekks (the Reckoning guys), three or four backported characteristic Q2 monsters, Hipnotic centroids, modified Armagon, reskinned grunts/enforcers/Quoth base enemy instead of Q2 soldiers, and a reskinned and possibly Cyborgized Fiend.

Keep in mind that you're working with the Q1 palette which is very different from Q2, so you can't very well backport the Strogg textures anyway. And backported monsters will have to be reskinned to blend in.

Overall I would look at Doom2, and how it added rather few, but cool new things to Doom. And I would use as many pre-existing snippets as possible (Quoth and Scourge of Armagon have good weapons, enemies, and gadgets like forcefields, rotating doors and "hubs".)

And I would probably go with hub-style layout, containing some void maps, and existing Q1 textures (the underused red IDbase, some metal/copper and custom swamp/sewer/industrial.)

:-) 

The story could be how Quake/Shub very quickly learned to use the humans' technology, and crudely used it to upgrade their horrific creatures. That would explain the cyborgs (Quake uses our own technology against us.) There were hints toward this in Quake (the grunts with probes wired to their pleasure centres, the ogres.)

The end could be an orbital platform, with a giant orbital laser, hijacked by Quake forces and used against Earth. You'd have to destroy that, while battling semi-boss monsters (thus avoiding the boss monster question.)

This would be in line with the Quake story, as well as typical Strogg behaviour (hellish mechanism used against Earth forces.)

It would be a true Quake sequel. 

Seems like a big sticking point is the flamethrower - I put this in because it'd be a cool thing to have, but it also opens up alot of ways to go wrong. eg. extinguishers, the irritation of burning damage etc. Also more basic things - (low level) monsters panicking when on fire? With anims? Running for water?

Awakening let you extinguish by collecting a health pack or touching a water brush. That'd do for me; I don't reckon the Strogg would be much on worker safety.

If a FT turned out to be a ballache I'd get rid.

As to enemies, we pretty much agree, golden_boy , I'd want to maintain all original creatures seperate but still supported in the mod. As to porting in stuff from the mission packs or elsewhere (megaenforcer?).

Again, it would be cool to have - but the filesize would be massive to include every cool base / cyborg enemy ever. The emphasis would be on making new stuff or retrofitting stuff from q2.

I wouldn't want to mechanise any of the old enemies at all. It's a big multiverse with slipgate travel available to the average slipgater, so I don't see why two distinct races / groupings couldn't occupy the same mod.

An interesting thing would be to make them enemies.

With maps I'd avoid YASB like the plague - as in the GDD I'd keep q2 base sections at most a quarter of a map, the rest in a swamp, asteroid station etc.

I'll update and reupload the GDD tommorow, time permitting. 

http://members.home.nl/gimli/gimli10.htm

...but I guess you knew already... 

Never seen this before - dl link?

Looks interesting, but I'm not sure such a rigid reinterpretation would work.

I'm also thinking to reshelve this project until a much later date - after finishing warp the last thing I want to do is dive into such a swirling vortex of a project.

Not yet, anyway.

Thought It'd be good to get some more opinions on this anyway. 

here you go...

http://members.home.nl/gimli/Orbetrayal.dz

thought you saw the Q10th Anniversary Quake Expo or not?
They're on my booth: QuakeOneForEver

Fortunately I made this map to try out the retexure project of Richard Neffen of Q2 textures to Quake1 I recompiled a wad file for.
You could use it in your project. 

If you want i have some Q2 enemies with code witch i can send(gunne,soldier,hover,drone,insane,jorg). 

The Quake Expo was pretty big - I missed this map, but I'll give it a look today.

As to the project it is on hold. If I return to it it'll not be for a few months. It's too big so soon after completing another big project.

Madfox - I've got your texture set from Q2, although what gave me the original idea was playing through YPOD and your bitch / Iron Maiden model in Quoth. 

If you do have some ready to go enemies then post a link - even if I don't get around to using them someone probably will, and I'd like to take a look anyway. 

That was pretty cool, liked the ship flyby outside.

Nice setup to the enemies as well - I was pretty stuck until I remembered the layout; good sneaking vibe to collect the weaps.

Was there a Thunderbolt in the level? 

there's only a grenadelauncher and the double shotgun. For me it was more trying to get an example of the textures and how they would compare in use of the coloured lights according to the original Q2 map.

Could have made more work of it, like skill level, new monsters (orb) and deathmatch, untill I remembered it wasn't my map and I probably had not the right to squees it up like this. (as I was warned! OMG)

For me I never liked the yellow glow in Quake2.
I was glad to get this original q1 feeling.
My idea was to create a gameplay around that Orb, which tried to impregnate along Q2 to Q1.


But as with more good ideas...
they come in all sizes but cease in one size fits all. 

A sci-fi Q2 mod would be nice ;> I dont think you should try to connect it thematically to Quake (Q1) in any way. Quake is fantasy , not sci-fi.

Quoth2 could provide quite a few entities: Edie, Sentinels, flame throwers and colourful ammo packs would all fit in. Malice's machine gun would be nice too - though it's not usable i guess. I'd love a re-skinned Q1 rocket launcher please, and no f888ing grenade launcher. Perhaps Ikka's plasma gun deserves a run in a big mod too.

Forget about recurring fire damage - it just detracts from every game that uses it. IIRC, RTCW has just a very short burn period, and that seemed fine.

Ching. 

This is dead.

It was a half-baked idea to try and get the func_ers to work on a big project. Luckily a base pack didn't happen.

Maybe one day. 

was there any chance the project involved converting the q2 weapon models into q1 format?

that's something i've always wanted to do 

But I never thought the Q2 weapon balence (not the models) was done very well. They all just felt a bit crappy, apart from the railgun.

If anything I would have liked the balence of the Awakening mod's weapons, probably their function as well.

But as I say, I have no time now, remake project and probably something in Nehahra afterwards.