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Fribbles: Neglecting the texture mismatch issue, which is fundimentally an easily avoided level design bug by this point, I feel those issues aren't seriously detracting, especially since to my eyes, after years of playing GLQuake, that's how it looks.
you can't seriously be arguing that there hasn't been anything original. what has been? You're always a Quake Marine, fighting hordes of evil, and getting to the goal. The 'storyline' of your experiance throughout any Quake level has always been the same, even if the written prologue is changed. Level Design is fundimentally about creating a new experience for the player, yet Quake design has been limited to 'kill monsters, leave'. the overall quake mapping scene has run out of any creative relevance, and we are basically making new maps with tired old gameplay. And, if we really want to do something innovative in either the graphics, or gameplay departments, or both, we should be using a more recent game as a platform for that. I have a habit of overstatement, but basically, yes. I relieze most guys mapping here are just hobbyists, but is taking the time to learn new tech really that difficult? My opinion is that the process of learning new ways to apply the skills of level design is very rewarding and as fun an endevour as creating levels. I agree with the love of Quake being the enjoyment of it's pure mechanics and simple nostalgia. In fact, I believe our opinions are much aligned, despite our difference in tone. I think more could be done to make better levels beyond simply making prettier things. Argument for the necessity of innovation or else 'video games are dead' is as silly as saying pop up books are better than flat page print ones because the former break the 2D plane. So you don't think it's worthwhile to pursue and champion new ideas? If flat paper print only ever had stories starring a single hero, doing the same adventure, would you still read? The medium isn't the issue here, my boredom of FPS games only steams from their singular experiance they've ever offered me. Still, you can have ten mappers reinterpret e1m1 and I guarantee you they will all be different. 10 different filesizes and enviromental looks, and the exact same gameplay. I'm spending my time working on the actual craft and not working on learning new tools, tech, or gameplay.
I'd like to say, I'm not hoping to put down anyone's enjoyment of their craft and hobby. I'm just saying I want more. Also, pop-up books are way better regular books. Bitching on a Quake forum to Quake fans who are making Quake levels with Quake gameplay, is a bit like going out to an Italian restaurant and getting pissy because they're not doing your favourite Thai peanut curry with coconut rice.
People at my office take the piss, saying I can see a whole new brown spectrum that's invisible to none Quakers.
Also, QuakeC is the mutt's nuts. Bitching on a Quake forum to Quake fans who are making Quake levels with Quake gameplay, is a bit like going out to an Italian restaurant and getting pissy because they're not doing your favourite Thai peanut curry with coconut rice.
It's more like going to an Italian Resturant and all there is is Spegetti, knowing there's more to Italian than that. But then again Quake mapping doesn't really allow for that much variation in gameplay (without QC). There are only few things one can do to break up the core formula of the game - killing monsters, reaching the exit. Quake wasn't made for more. People still play and map for it because of this simplicity (though I agree it does get boring after a while), so suggesting to switch to other games seems odd in this respect.
There is more potential for variety than some people might think. It just needs people to explore it.
I find it more depressing when I see "quake maps" in modern games.
Of course I'd like to see more creative stuff being done, it seems like there are still traces left in people from the formulaic years where many important lessons where learned but most of the wild creativity from the ancient times was lost. I'm aware that you can go nuts with QC and turn Quake into Mary Poppins' Magical Barnyard Funtime if you wanted. I suspect that the majority of people who are into Quake, and are still actively making content for it twelve(?) years down the line, are more often than not doing it out of a love of the original style and simplicity of the game (and the many custom levels that followed in this vein), and want to continue in that style.
Notice how in the early days, we saw a lot of crazy stuff and TCs - Quess, Quake Rally, wierd experimental levels etc. etc. Now I know you're not talking about doing full on TCs, but my point is that whilst Quake maps have got bigger, and pushed more and more the technical limits of what you can run in the engine, the gameplay in many ways has remained "conservative", more so than the experimental days of yore. I think this has less to do with a lack of imagination and inability to create new game concepts, and more to do with the deliberate decision to celebrate Quake for what it is primarily in terms of tone and simplicity of gameplay. People arrive in the game by first playing maps, then they play mods - Zerstorer, OUM, Nehahra, SOE.
Some of my best Quake moments were things that broke from the formulae through using QuakeC, I was always just too lazy to learn and therefore attempt to emulate those greats. But if everybody wants to keep doing the same old shit then why is Quoth so popular? Nobody wants to make the same crap, a little bit better. Might sound odd since I'm working on a remake of ep3, but there you go. How many puzzle levels, trap levels, horde levels have we seen? Maybe that's another case of a million shades of brown. in the early days Quake was the only medium for a huge variety of people to do A-Z. Now the games industry allows basically any weird quirk to be its own game. As a consequence people who are working with Quake now generally just want to do Quake.
"Kill monster, leave" I've played some great new FPS games (Far Cry, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic). Explain how these are different. I like to think that maps where you see the whole layout (like Scragbait's Estate, Masque, and Marcher) provide the player with an aesthetic pleasure of completion that is significantly different from fighting monsters room after disconnected room. I actually agree with plenty of your criticisms, but you have to accept Q1SP for what it is, which is an incredibly limited medium. Games in general are also incredibly limited. Books, for example, are a lot less limited. I mean with Quake monsters, Quake weapons (not Quake engine limits though).
There is a lot of potential if people will explore it. Think what ijed did with Warpspasm, ignore the Quoth monsters for a mo and think about the size, the scale, the sheer relentlessness of it all. That was a new direction. There may be many more. Even some relatively normal maps show interesting ideas - look at Headthump's Zer map at the end - fighting monsters in lava with the clock ticking against you. That could be explored further... what gameplay modifications do other fps games have? They basically just offer different enemy/map/weapon models.
even something like descent doesn't really exapnd on the doom gameplay much - it just has two more DOF. And if you're hinting at 'do stuff there, fix this, get me person x here'-missions: those are all mostly trigger based ideas (that could - from a gameplay pov - easily be done in quake, too); also, they aren't really core game mechanics to me. the stealth games might count as 'expand gameplay', but again, this is not MUCH more than clever triggers + compiler right, quake lacks everything that's halfway dynamic, but that's just an engine thing, not gameplay.
there are hundreds of ideas involving both game play and design have explored but have not released in any full maps. I'm posting these here instead of the new thread because most of these don't concern game play but design instead.
The Lava puzzle at the end of ZerTM_ht was a simplified version of an idea I once showed AquiRe involving a maze with a lava floor where you had to find sigils of protection and buttons that would raise a walkway around the maze. It is in one of the Mortisville maps, but too frustrating in its current implementation. Other ideas -- One I demonstrated a while back, the idea of using a min light of 250 in the worldspawn entity and then using the light entities as deductive and additive brushes: http://mortisville.quakedev.com/quake12.jpg You do get a better since of control with the lighting with this method than standard lighting. Another way of doing this would be to once again set min light to around 250 and paint on the lighting for each texture in its position in the level. Reuse of textures becomes severely limited, of course, and it is very time consuming. Also, much more fun than the last method, is to separate out each room or area in a map, create five to ten thousand brushes worth of detail adding material textures without defining details, then go around the individually built maps and take screen shots that are the bases of the textures that you eventually use for the actual level. If you are careful with the lighting, this method can look extremely good. Similar to this, I like to model in programs like Wings3d and Blender and take ray cast based shots of the models and use those as the basis of textures, like this one: http://mortisville.quakedev.com/lamp3_5.jpg ...all hell breaks loose!
I dont know what to say. Spirit - Your idea for 'testing engines' - you should look at my new map when it comes out later this week. r_speeds are quite high in places, but the map is within all standard limits and runs in software Quake. What we would need is an AguirRe style Kascam demo where somebody crazy (like AguirRe) runs around on god-mode, trying to create packet overflows. Lunaran - Delighted to hear from you again. My comprehension of the technical workings of the Quake pallette is far inferior of yours. I ALMOST know what you mean. Infact I do know what you mean. Surely though, on a 32-bit rendering, a light with a color; (RGB 255 255 220) would not cause much of a detrimental effect, very little "muting". I admit that one must be carefull - especially when using light colours like (255 0 0). I like the idea of using different subtle shades of yellow and blue to represent different types of electric light and sunlight, but without making them TOO yellow or TOO blue. Only slightly coloured lights. I dunno. I've had fun playing, that's all I can say! Where the fuck is Electro? Bouncing around the country, back in Brisbane now. That Mibbit is great, may have to poke around with it at lunchtime, the Telstra guy is coming to connect the phone line in a couple of weeks, then I can start organising getting internet connected. Yay! celephais.net/board/view_thread.php?id=6035
It's not where its says it is, and because theres no link to a specific file, I cant search the filename... It must be quite a good map, from reading the thread... HELP PLEASE !
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