Well, the engine is free and the source code is available ... have at it! :) 

You guys understand that "we want next-gen levels of detail" and "we still want to make everything out of gigantic brushes" are fundamentally incompatible, right? 

Next-gen levels of lighting, model detail, texture detail, etc. are incompatible with brushes? 

They are somewhat incompatible, if you have super-hi-res textures on more simplistic brushwork it often doesn't look so great, it creates a weird a weird contrast that is not easy to get around.
If you want complexe shapes, you're better off modeling instead of using brushes, and their goes your production times.

It's probably doable, but you need strong art-direction to know exactly how to get it right I think. 

Kind of. Unless you want large, flat, normal mapped walls and call it "next gen". 

It does kind of depend on the environment you're making. I can easily picture a RMHoney in UE4, for example.

Willem, you can always stick a couple meshes on those large flat walls ;) 

Just use lots of parallax mapping!...

If you wanna do really neat complex things like you see in highly detailed things, 3d modelling tools are the tools for the job. All those chamfered edges and greebles and pipes... it's just easier not messing with brushes. Takes time though. 

Takes time though.

but you can also leverage the tools that come with those modelling packages which saves time too. 

I don't want next-gen levels of detail.

Just thought it'd be nice to make a quakey game with a quakey level of detail in a cool-arse modern engine like UE4, because then it's manageable art-wise for a lone bloke in his bedroom (i.e. me), and you can still goon around with all the other UE4 features that don't take up all your time.

Really, does anyone here really want to spend all their time masturbating over a super-detailed made-in-zbrush wall-panel texture when they could be slapping vast, but low-poly, quake-esque levels together? 

I once spent 6 months trying to make a load of Doom3 stuff that was visually at least as rich as the stock Doom3 stuff.

Fuck that for a game of soldiers. 

"Really, does anyone here really want to spend all their time masturbating over a super-detailed made-in-zbrush wall-panel texture when they could be slapping vast, but low-poly, quake-esque levels together?"

Well, yeah ... that's what I do these days. At work and for fun. So ... whatever, man! You're not my real Dad. 

I think what sock did with Quake for Darkplaces with his tweaks is about the level of detail I would go for (with some shiny features) if I was to do a retro style FPS game. Having access to features like particle effects and not having to worry about certain limits would be lovely.

Pic for reference -

http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/sp/its62l.jpg

http://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/21/20892/thumb_620x2000/its71l.jpg


http://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/21/20892/thumb_620x2000/its70l.jpg 

that's the sort of stuff 

well, i'd rather use awesome modelling tools to create even vaster quakey areas. :)

TB2 is getting there, but I still prefer making stuff in 3dsMax. Even if the damn scripting language blows up every other version. Friggen autodesk. 

I think to really start going faster in Quake editing we'll need to borrow some ideas from current gen games.

Instancing of brush groups would go a LONG way to aiding productivity. Want to change what that pillar looks like? Change one and they all update. Boom, you're moving on to something else in 1 minute instead of 2 hours of replacing all the pillars in the level... 

Quake 1 editing certainly needs lots of forward planning in that regard. Which is why the blocking out method is recommended. I usually make my prefabs inbetween blocking and detailing so that I'm happy with those types of things before I have to redo every single detail in the map.
There's definitely some really great features that I would love, one of them is making a standard prefab and then being able to stretch it out (like a railing) and the engine just makes it extend out properly without any skewing or deformation. I would love the hell out of that. 

well, i'd rather use awesome modelling tools to create even vaster quakey areas. :)

TB2 is getting there, but I still prefer making stuff in 3dsMax. Even if the damn scripting language blows up every other version. Friggen autodesk.

For me it's always been modelling tool for anything rocky or terrain-like, but I've never found a modelling workflow for low-poly architectural stuff that comes close to matching the speed and accuracy of (quake editor of choice). Maybe I just suck at modelling. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBgxdZ7x5go 

"How does Quake look in 2013?"

Like shit, apparently. 

Yeah that updated look does not lend itself well to quakes low poly everything. 

Jesus, my eyes ... that's horrific. 

I thought this discussion was too 2001 and passe for you, cocksniffer. 

I think modular can also be done with brushes. It just tends to look less interesting than unique spaces, unless perhaps someone did it really well.

I remember that Vondur map that was all arches, that seemed very modular but it also had the downsides of modular.

Community repo of brush modules? 

THAT could be very interesting. If Trenchbroom or whichever app could hook into a central repository of Quake brush prefabs ... properly textured so you can just drop them in without worrying about it. Slipgates, arches, windows, etc.

All the generic crap you rebuild all the time.

There WAS a website way-back-when that did something like that. Had prefabs you could download. Slipgate Central? Can't remember... 

this one?

https://www.quaddicted.com/webarchive/prefab.planetquake.gamespy.com/index.shtml