Why couldn't you make a floor brush as a func_wall or func_detail and have a _footstep "bleh.wav" value

Sorry man, no one in their right mind is going to place footstep brushes over every possible floor/wall surface!?! Its nuts! Footstep material sounds is an engine feature, you are trying to solve this issue with a sledgehammer! 

I was thinking about a work around because you said:

"The real solution is surface flags for brushwork, but that is not going to happen, too many things would need to change (editor, compiler and engine)" 

So, the only practical solutions is a better sound set + randomization. I'd like to take a stab at compiling some sets for people to try. Can the sounds be from other games? stock libraries? Maybe I'll just record some :D 

FTE+DP have a sound playback rate argument that can be used to randomize the sound a little. Should make a single sound a little more palettable, but it won't affect QS/QSS sadly. 

Can the sounds be from other games? stock libraries? Maybe I'll just record some
I would prefer to replace the assets with something legal. I know it sounds crazy as there is already lots of illegal content in AD, but I just don't want to go to the effort of replacing something illegal with something else the same!

+ randomization
I originally had the sounds randomized but you might realize that Quake clients don't really do random stuff very well. I found QS would often select feet sounds several times in a row and that sounded worse to me. At least with cycling 5 sounds it is not extremely obvious. 

This is quakec right? You could keep track of which sound was played last and exclude it from the random selection the next time around. 

Or generate a cycle 20-30 elements long by hand that sounds random to the ear and has no consecutive pairs of the same sound. 

I would prefer to replace the assets with something legal.

Roger that.

you might realize that Quake clients don't really do random stuff very well

I wasn't aware, that's a shame :( IMO, the repeating sequence of sounds is much more of an issue than the character of the sounds themselves.

You could keep track of which sound was played last and exclude it from the random selection the next time around.

If someone decides to put the time into doing this, might has well have it exclude the last two played sounds. a 1,2,1 pattern is pretty obvious too... 

I'm pretty sure we all agree that monster footsteps is pretty cool. It's the player footsteps that some are annoyed by. 

I originally had the sounds randomized but you might realize that Quake clients don't really do random stuff very well. I found QS would often select feet sounds several times in a row and that sounded worse to me. At least with cycling 5 sounds it is not extremely obvious.

IMO the repeating cycle was by far the worst aspect of them. It just sounded like a sort of musical rhythm. Seconding metlslime's suggestion of extra QC logic to randomise but avoid playing the same twice in a row. 

 

"I'm pretty sure we all agree that monster footsteps is pretty cool. It's the player footsteps that some are annoyed by. "

Yes, that's what I meant. It's not so bad I want to turn them off, it just sounds odd. Not really in sync with what I feel like I'm doing. More of a pitter-patter sound instead of step-step-step. Hard to explain, I know. 

I'm pretty sure we all agree that monster footsteps is pretty cool. It's the player footsteps that some are annoyed by
Ok, that makes sense because the players footsteps are constant. Something worth randomizing with a table function. 

Speaking of, is there a way to adjust the player's footsteps volume? I find them slightly too prominent in the overall mix. 

A cvar could be added to set the volume from 0 to 1. 

that would require the ability to actually create cvars...

DP+FTE+QSS all have set+seta console commands to define cvars in your default.cfg.
combine with autocvars for decent fallbacks (in vanilla QS) (also helps performance if you're abusing them like crazy). 

Finally found time to make some footsteps. Sourced from a sound library I own, so all legal. It's a hard surface with a bit of grit underneath. Since this is just a draft there is no compression or eq or any other polish. They're not even sampled at the correct rate. Just trying to get an idea.

These are very dry (no verb) which, IMO, helps a lot. It's strange being in an open area and hearing such reverberous (is that a word?) footsteps.

If people like this direction and actually want me to take an honest stab at quality footsteps, I will. If not, I have plenty of other things with which to occupy my time :) 

Those sound pretty good man! 

+2 No Step Repeat
Added random sound selection for player feet sounds and lowered the overall volume.

A Step In The Right Direction
I like them and as you said without any echo they are very dry. I think the less reverb will work well for the lighter sounds, but the heavy stuff will certainly need some echo. 

Those sound pretty good man!

Thanks! It's in the ballpark but still not quite there IMO. A sound that will work well with disparate surfaces will never be wholly appropriate for any particular surface. I gotta keep that in mind.

Added random sound selection for player feet sounds and lowered the overall volume.

Awesome, that was 90% of the issue. I'll continue once the new update drops since the volume has changed. The sounds I uploaded compensate for the current volume. 

Quake Arcane Dimensions (Any%) in 19:28 by Cubeface21 - Shots Fired: Locked and Loaded
The speedrun is of all top floor levels :D 

Am I being a bad citizen if I change the health values on all my monsters to increase them slightly? i.e. 50 health on a monster_army, 85 on monster_army_grenade? The most drastic change I made was actually 100 for rocket grunts, seeing as that actually makes them stronger than grenade grunts...

I found it dissapointing that a regular grunt could be downed in one SG shot, which was the inspiration for tweaking these enemies. But that set me down the path of tweaking all these other monsters, and I worry that people won't like the results...

To judge for yourselves, I invite you to play my retrojam map, since I made similar changes to the monsters in that. 

Generally not a good idea. Players learn and expect to deal with monsters consistently, and play levels to face them in new situations. Just bumping up monster's health arbitrarily can make the player feel cheated.

It's better to use more monsters, combinations of monsters, or just tougher monsters... rather than increasing health on weaker ones. If your goal is to make the player shoot twice, 2 grunts or a grunt and a dog are more interesting to fight than a single grunt with twice the health anyway.

Also, Quake's pain system is kind of 'meh', having more health just means you see how lame pain is. Grunts have 30hp... but giving them 300hp doesn't make them ten times harder, you just use more ammo on them while you keep knocking them onto the ground. 

I was having this conversation earlier tonight with gotshun.

My premise was, when a monster encounters US, we have varied health! Why shouldn't monsters have varied health as well.

I told him that if I mapped and had a nightmare skill in 2016, you better believe monster would not be so "routine".

I also felt monsters should do more damage.

We were just chitchatting up Quake idea's and design, that's all. 

Yeah, it's unfair to the monsters!