Kind of what I was suggesting. Active monsters don't intelligently follow a player - they just point to wherever they are and run in that direction, getting stuck in corners or wobbling back and forth on ledges.

Maybe didn't explain it well.

And yeah, FBX simplifies it a lot since the code is already there. 

Can this really be quake?

It's a long time since I've had quake running properly, and this was a good map to start on again :) I've been playing it in stages and have gotten lost a bit, but it's seriously awesome. Oh, and I haven't found a single secret yet :) 

I probably missed some points, but I didn't want to bog it down too much than I've already written. http://taw.duke4.net/2011/07/quake/the-altar-of-storms/ 

good read and i agree about the boss fight and the underused stuff.

the healing pools during the final boss actually do run out, but i think i set their health too high at 100hp each.
they are different from the pools in phase1 too, so if you used up all of the phase1 pools, you'd still get fresh pools in phase2, so it's a total of 600hp.

if i had been placing health packs, that would have been 24(!) large health kits. :P

probably should have at least linked the phase1 and phase2 pools and maybe lowered it to only 50hp each or something. 

Less would have definitely helped. Heck, maybe be cruel and turn them into lava when they run out, ha! 

A crusher in each pool. 

The fast zombies are genius. Really enjoyed them :) 

ye mwh fun to blast then with NG

was my favorit new monster! but like then all

the two packs in qexpo, this one from necros and the other tronyn and PM, made me lost many hours of fun :) not regretted at all 

This map is insane! I'm a little late to play it, but I couldn't believe the quality of this map, the end boss was especially awesome (and hard, played on nightmare)

Nice touch with the swinging physics gate, that was quite a surprise. And am I the only one who noticed the design being taken straight out of Oblivion :P 

nope. you're also not the only one to miss that in the readme. ;)
the layout is even based on miscarcand. i had just come off another oblivion binge when i started that map.
ironically, i'm playing it again now. :P

oblivion is like quake. you can just keep going back to it. just, quake doesn't crash as often. :P 

It'd be interesting to see what you'd come up with using the Daedric ruins style of architecture found in Morrowind. *nudge nudge* 

something similar to nesp10 ;)
the daedric style from morrowind is pretty problematic for quake though as it's very 'spikey' with lots of bits that stick out from the wall. this leads to huge amounts of vis leafs which can bump up vis times even if you just had small corridors so i never attempted a full scale version.
i do have a recreation of WoW's upper blackrock spire + blackwing lair that i want to get out before the end of the year but that one only uses the layout and doesn't actually look use the dungeon's style. (it's q1met instead of dwarven stone stuff) 

Molten Span, Lower Blackrock Spire and BlackRock depths have killer layouts/look fantastic. Seriously, I reckon you'd barely have to change the flow to have some great maps out of them... 

was an awesome map. i was really pissed they got rid of it. it was a pain to get a group together long enough to do it, but you could get a few solid hours out of it and really gave that epic dungeon feel.

i wanted to do that one instead actually, but the non-axial nature of the map and the wide opened areas wouldn't really work out well in quake. or rather, it would be a colossal amount of work to reproduce it properly.

ubrs and bwl are both very simple in terms of layout and are completely on axis making it simpler to build. 

BWL is pretty shit as a layout, since it's just room/corridor/room, but brs, especially lower is awesome. If you were going to do the whole thing that would be cool, but if you wanted to do something more managable, I'd do lbrs or brd :)

Come to think of it... you could probably make something awesome from Dire Maul... or Shadowfang keep. Or Blackfathom depths. I recall thinking each of those had awesome flow. :)

urgh if only the wow map viewer wasn't a hacked program :( 

yeah, dire maul west was pretty good. i have found memories of north though and tribute runs. ^_^

shadowfang and blackfathom are both quite offaxis and would be a pain to make though. scarlet monastery though would be cool. 

Yeah but if you think about the layout, going through the town below shadowfang, up the spire of rock, across the bridge, then the fact the map follows the battlements around the castle too. Pretty sweet :) 

Errr so yeah I finally got around to these. Tried them on my laptop but Fitz ran to slow and Spirit recommended me so gay-ass shit engine that made them buggy as fuck. Finally did a playthrough on my fixed machine with Fitz and woah this is cool.

So, great atmosphere, funky style, cool designs outside, well balanced gameplay and the modified stuff was okay. Shotgun was useful but could do with a Quakey model. Golems were fun to fight but could do with a Quakey model. Sorceresses were fairly gay. Speed zombies were cool, would be even cooler if they were still explosive only. Hidden spawn were fun.

Boss combat was mental, but in a good way. The effects on the snow bit were spectacular for Quake, real strong atmosphere with it gradually filling up with freezing fire spawn. Not too horrible to play as boss combats go... 

Shotgun was useful but could do with a Quakey model.

yeah, totally.
this was originally a tri-barrel with a kitbashed q1 SSG with a SG barrel glued on top. but damage was too low and the gun was changed to a quad barrel. but just glueing 2 SSGs together still looked like a regular SSG in first person so i had to use a totally different model. :\

Speed zombies were cool, would be even cooler if they were still explosive only

no way, they'd be insanely hard that way. the explosive kill thing was one of the first things to go once i upped the speed.

agree with the rest though. hexen2 models look great, but don't fit 100% with quake. i like the golem though. ;) 

I quite like the combat, and the 'terror' as you evade and destroy. Ever see 28 days later? Or play L4D? 

I tackled loads of zombies just with the "oh so easy to jump to" secret RL, until I realised they could be killed by any weapon ;) 

Played this a while ago, here are some thoughts.

The outdoor bit is really the highlight - great sense of place. Enjoyed running around there and just looking.

The indoor bit:

- Several of the corridor intersections looked mostly the same; that was a bit confusing.

- A lot of basically flat floors that could have used some more attention.

- Waterwheel had no function besides being there? I half expected it to have some meaning. If it did, I never found out.

Weapons and enemies:

- as has been pointed out, Hexen 2 enemies didn't blend in too well

- golem stomp attack was a bit annoying eventually, since it takes control away from the player too much - being thrown in the air constantly, similar criticism as towards the Doom 3 habit of messing with the player's view when hit by imps

- new weapons didn't really do much for me, Quake 2 looking shotgun seemed a little out of place

- got cornered by fast zombies once, in some staircase, left me zero chance to fight my way out of there, I kept thinking there should be a way to sort of knock them back or sth like that

- boss fight was creative and seemed beatable, although I didn't make it for some reason.

Didn't know this was a remake of a map from another game. Never played Oblivion. Anyway, good job with this level, it felt fresh. 

and died. Repeatedly. Could be the hour. Anyway, I recorded the entire embarrassing experience. If you want to see those, I'll upload them.

Ran the map on "a version" of RMQ, followed the directions, and it ran fine.

-I got stuck on some corners between faces in the terrain area.
-It was hard to tell what was activated by my button presses.
-gb mentioned the golem stomp attack. It may be WoW raids influencing my behavior here, but I already knew to jump into the air when a large guy empties lots of force into the ground. It was very appropriate. Seems deceptively weak at first until combined with faster monsters.
-New monsters were awesome.
-Architecture was glorious.
-I enjoyed the improved pathing AI very much.
-Never seemed to notice the quad damage until after everyone was dead.
-I "accidentally" woke the boss character during the initial visit to the start map, not knowing he was a boss. Not sure if this was meant to be possible.
-Rotating doors / gears / other things were fascinating to behold, but seemed out of place.
-Confused about the little grenades attached to the ceiling.

Anyway, the best thing to say about a map is... this is a map I plan to play -again.- 

sorry about all the deaths! i'd like to see your demo if it's all right.

-I got stuck on some corners between faces in the terrain area.
that is just an unfortunate part about quake. it's partially the engine's fault and partially the way qbsp creates the player collision hull during compile.
one of the things that is actually completely BETTER about darkplaces is that player collision on the world is fixed. i'd like to see other engines try to tackle that problem too.

-It was hard to tell what was activated by my button presses.
this is surprising as all the buttons activate doors right next to them. the only exception is the button that opens the secret room with the GL which is a ways back and intentional. otoh, all the doors that are opened by buttons are disguised as 'secret' walls so that might be why.

-gb mentioned the golem stomp attack. It may be WoW raids influencing my behavior here, but I already knew to jump into the air when a large guy empties lots of force into the ground. It was very appropriate. Seems deceptively weak at first until combined with faster monsters.
about half of the demos i watched had people figuring out to jump, so i was pretty happy with that. i like the sort of extra 'skill' of timing a jump. like shambler dancing.

-Never seemed to notice the quad damage until after everyone was dead.
yeah... i know what you mean. :P i guess i should have spent a little more time on powerup placement. good for speed runners though when you know where they are and can plan ahead, but not great for a first run.

-I "accidentally" woke the boss character during the initial visit to the start map, not knowing he was a boss. Not sure if this was meant to be possible.
totally intentional! :) i wanted the open world feel and i didn't want to cram boss combat into a locked room. if you lead the boss away from the altar, he just resets back to full health.

-Confused about the little grenades attached to the ceiling.
the ayleid ruins in oblivion often have a lot of traps in them.
usually things like swinging ball+chain attached to the ceiling, gas chambers, floors that give way to spiked pits and such. i wanted to capture that a little but ran out of brushes to really integrate a lot of them.
ball+chain i think is doable but i'd need to work on that damn dynamic rope code which is pretty nuts and i wasn't in the mood for that. :P 

over here:
http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/demos/ne_ruins_demo_raptore1.rar

For posterity the exact version of RMQ I used can be found here(Thanks, gb!):
http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/tools/windows/engines/rmqengine_20110126.zip

Re: Necros
Haven't read how to make quotes in func_ yet.

The button presses:
This may be one of those criticisms that was a singular experience and can be safely ignored. The demo should reveal more to you about my experience than I can think to say.

One thing I am curious to ask though, is this. On those doors of yours that have the three vertical stone segments that slowly fall to the floor, some of them have the activation button placed right on the door. I seem to remember that buttons can only go in one direction. So where is the button going?

You could give it the appearance of being a button, when it is actually a train that recedes into the door and then drops into the floor, or maybe have it recede all the way back to the far wall fast enough that it disappears before the door opens, but that's kind of a mess.

The quad damage:
The powerup is blue, and the map is blue... perhaps that is why it's being missed.