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Townscaper is in Early Access:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1291340 Build quaint island towns with curvy streets. Build small hamlets, soaring cathedrals, canal networks, or sky cities on stilts. Block by block. No goal. No real gameplay. Just plenty of building and plenty of beauty. That's it. Townscaper is an experimental passion project. More of a toy than a game. Pick colors from the palette, plop down colored blocks of house on the irregular grid, and watch Townscaper's underlying algorithm automatically turn those blocks into cute little houses, arches, stairways, bridges and lush backyards, depending on their configuration. I'm almost sure this is not the case, but: did the id light tool have its own equivalents of what we now call delay and wait?
I seem to recall they were implemented comparatively late in the game (possibly by Tronyn?). I checked the one light that seemed a bit contrary to this claim, but that one is a spotlight. I think they are not in the id tools but were added within the first year.
Maybe iklite had them? Or arghlite? Idle thought from watching the Shadow Warrior 3 trailers: I want a game where your character is elderly Steve Buscemi breaking the fourth wall by addressing his fellow kids and every other NPC just being embarrassed by his bullshit.
I was playing Dissolution of Eternity again after many years, and I noticed that one of the "new" enemies, the so-called Hell Spawn ( https://quake.fandom.com/wiki/Hell_Spawn ) seems to be missing from the game, more or less. I thought it was a cool concept to have an enemy which can clone itself like an amoeba, and that's part of what got me interested in playing DOE again. But so far, I haven't encountered any Spawn with "eyes" in their skins, and the green ones I've encountered almost never create a clone, except occasionally when I damage them. Most of the time, they just behave like normal blue Spawn. Yet oddly enough, the Guardians have no trouble at all spawning clones of themselves during combat.
My guess is that the game was supposed to randomly spawn either a green one with eyes, or a green one without eyes... but instead, it's only spawning the latter or a blue one. Does anyone know why this is? Could it be an issue with the port I'm using, QuakeSpasm 0.93.2? Last time I played DOE, I was using Darkplaces, but I don't remember if the enemy worked properly in that port or not (if it ever did.) I switched to QuakeSpasm so I could play more mods. Looks like it's tied to skill 2 (?) and randomized if they are not specifically placed in the level via a spawnflag. I am pretty terrible with the math here so not sure how often this would be.
You can view the code here. Thanks for helping clear that up. I guess there wasn't any bug after all, I was just too unlucky (or lucky, depending on your perspective) to notice the "mitosis" ability. That being said, having it only happen when going into its pain state may not have been the best coding choice, due to the fact all Spawns explode on death, thus killing the new Spawn of the Spawn. Plus, it looks like the "tbaby_mitosis" function itself is also randomized and won't always create a new Spawn when called.
Bit of a tangent, but the map Telefragged features a Spawn variant that splits into smaller versions of itself.
https://www.quaddicted.com/reviews/rrp.html romero published a list on his
base1 tim willits base2 tim willits base3 tim willits train paul jaquays bunk1 american mcgee ware1 american mcgee ware2 american mcgee jail1 tim willits jail2 tim willits jail3 tim willits jail4 christian antkow (xian) jail5 tim willits security tim willits mintro tim willits mine1 tim willits mine2 tim willits mine3 tim willits mine4 tim willits fact1 american mcgee fact2 american mcgee fact3 american mcgee power1 tim willits power2 tim willits waste1 tim willits waste2 tim willits waste3 tim willits cool1 tim willits hangar1 tim willits hangar2 tim willits strike christian antkow (xian) command christian antkow (xian) space christian antkow (xian) lab brandon james city1 paul jaquays city2 paul jaquays city3 paul jaquays boss1 brandon james boss2 tim willits I've wondered about this for the longest time and have never been able to find the info. Thanks, mh!
According to Petersen, Willits had his eye on id's upper echelon of management from the moment he became a full-time hire. After Romero was fired, Willits had coveted McGee's status as John Carmack's golden boy. According to this developer, Willits set his sights on eliminating McGee. Their feud reached a boiling point when McGee ran into trouble designing levels for Quake 2.
"American could tell something [was not right]," Petersen said. "So he went to Carmack and said, 'What should I do?' John Carmack said, 'Okay, to make your levels look better, go and talk to Tim.' And Tim Willits could make absolutely spectacular-looking levels. They were great levels. He said, 'Talk to Tim. Look to him to show you how to make your levels look really nice.'" Willits deployed misdirection to further attenuate McGee's status with management. When McGee submitted new and revised levels for appraisal, Carmack lost his temper and accused him of doing A when he had expressly wanted B. "American was horrified," Petersen said. "He said, 'Yes, I did just what he said.' Basically, what had happened was Tim Willits had literally told American the opposite of what he should do, to get him in trouble with John Carmack. And Carmack couldn't believe it. Who could be that dirty? He absolutely refused to believe that Willits had done it, but he had. That was Tim Willits literally tanking American McGee." Altho that's from the "Rocket Jump" book which presents an uncritical collection of self-serving retro-gossip from the id guys who, god love 'em, were largely a bunch of infighting egomaniacs. I'm a little sad to see it get picked up as ammunition for current Quake-community beefs.
I think history has been kinder to the McGee maps - any time I do a replay I always find myself enjoying the McGee and Jacquays maps most, whereas the Willits ones tend more and more to bland and formulaic. They do look very nice though.
The start of the warehouse unit isn't great. It's just a collection of linked rooms with buttons to open doors and a handful of enemies in each. Very uninspired. But I'd say it hugely improves after you get a little into the first map, and the second and third maps are probably as good as Quake 2 gets.
The weaker maps for me are the Torture Chambers map (get stuff in Cell Block A, then Cell Block B, then wander around badly lost in samey-looking corridors for far too long), the symmetrical Hangar map, the two Pumping Stations cause the Power/Waste unit to drag on, and there's something else in the middle of the Jail unit that's quite nondescript. I think some people find the Mines drags on a bit too long as well, and that's probably fair criticism.
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