You should think "what it adds to the game and gameplay?"
Damage is a way of punishing the player for doing wrong or failing at the game. What's wrong about jumping from a ladder or 250 high platform? Add to that the way your maps are build, typical quake scale with no consideration for the altered falling damage. Its damage=punishment for nothing.
You should increase the threshold hight where only the bigger hight gives significant damage. Where it would be quite clear: don't fall here, you'd break your legs. Obvious danger is good.

Guns not working in the water - again why? And backfiring is just dumb - random punishment.
Its not realistic (if you want realism you should disable chainsaw in the water if anything). This adds nothing to the game, only taking away from it, because now you have to avoid in-water combat in your maps, knowing that the guns would malfunction.
This could work if you wanted to use water as a barrier, like HL does, forcing the player away from it. But then why not just use slime, which explicitly tells the player to 'stay away'. Clear game rules are good.
But if you have lots of accessible water volumes that offer exploration allowing combat there would only benefit the game. I missed my dopefish slaying. Or just lighting the dark corners with some shots.

Haven't played all the other maps yet, will comment later. 

SOUNDS
I'm making a patch changing the monster and most weapon sounds back to the original. Bad sounds ruin otherwise good mod. Simply removing grunt\enforcer wavs made the first map more enjoyable its not even funny. 

What happened to the pretty particles of MH quake? I'd like to enable them in RMQ. Having an option to have better particles than just old quake pixels would benefit the looks.

And how do you handle external textures overbrighting and flullbright bits? Most engines do nothing resulting in half the lighting range (compared to overbright lightmaps)and overall darker looks. I noticed same effect in rmq maps, which were probably lit for in-bsp pcx textures and look rather dimly lit in many areas. Most evident in e3 maps with darker textures. And the buttons miss the fullbrights in m1 and e3m4 notably), which would help them to be more standout. Not sure if its particular texture or engine thing... 

I have my own reasons for liking fall damage and stuff like underwater jamming in games. I even (predictably) like reloading and weapon decay. If you have to know, for me it adds to the challenge because it requires me to look for ways to deal with those limitations, which I enjoy, but this is a question of taste and if you don't like it, that's OK.

The fact you don't like it doesn't automatically make it a bad idea though. BTW vanilla Quake has backfiring underwater, with the lightning gun, so it isn't like that's some alien concept. It's in the game since it was released.

However, as I said it is being nerfed right now. No need to keep attacking it. We have taken the advice on board.

BTW, your plan to make a patch comes off a little like saying "Here, I'll fix your game for you." That's not what I would say in anyone else's release thread, even if I wanted to say it. Let people make their games as they see fit. 

I watched all of your demos and found them very useful. Some responses for you.

I personally think that the entry area to e2m1rq needs a better hint to the player. Maybe a crack in the floor, some sparks, and a second pop-up message: "a couple of hits should do it". This only occurred to me as I was watching your demo.

Sometimes I wasn't certain if you'd got lost or were just exploring.

The engine doesn't have fancy particles yet. They're on the list of things to do (as well as CSQC, PK3 and a billion other things) and we just had to choose a cutoff point and get this thing released.

I personally think here that hard-coding fancy particle effects into an engine is very much the Wrong Thing; they should be more controllable by modders. That of course puts the onus on the modder to do the extra work, and if a modder doesn't want fancy particles then you won't get them at all. Maybe there is a happy middle ground that can please everybody, but my experience is that if you try that you normally end up pleasing nobody.

It's obvious that some decisions need to be toned down a little, yes. Remember that this is a demo and as such is a point-in-time snapshot of a work in progress, not the finished item. It's a later demo for sure, meaning that it gives a reasonable indication of what the finished item will be like, and nothing major can really be overturned at this stage, but everything can be tuned and adjusted.

Lightmaps. The range is essentially unlimited. Some of the areas where you commented on areas being "too yellow" would actually have looked green in engines that did 2x overbrighting, as the red channel would have been clamped off. Standard lighting can go up to 1020 without being clamped (each style goes up to 255, up to 4 styles on a face) whereas GLQuake and derivatives are limited to 255 here (and even if you add a 2x modulate you lose a bit of precision which this engine doesn't); dynamic lights are unbounded.

It would be quite straightforward to add some cvars for additional light scaling and ambience, but I'm going to make an alternative suggestion.

I think you're running your monitor very dark. I looked through all the areas where you had to shoot in order to see by the muzzleflash, and I could see everything quite clearly all of the time, even though my own monitor is also quite dark. 

Please play e2m1rq on nightmare, or skill 2. It's a lot more fun. I like to try and cater for a broad range of players, I don't always succeed, but I definitely prefer to play this on Nightmare. IT's not too much of a chore either. I can do it without dieing. 

To be able to load e2m1rq, I had to rename a bunch of files to match the case that the map expected. I think was all of them:

rmqwinter11/maps/e2m1rq_tileGib1.bsp
rmqwinter11/maps/e2m1rq_tileGib2.bsp
rmqwinter11/maps/e2m1rq_demonCrateGib1.bsp
rmqwinter11/maps/e2m1rq_demonCrateGib2.bsp
rmqwinter11/maps/e2m1rq_demonCrateGib3.bsp

I don't think this would have been an issue if they were in a .pak file fwiw.

More comments later, I hope... 

Doesn't support our filename length - this will be fixed for next time. 

Well... new drivers fix glitches with strobing surfaces, nice.

About game, good:
-level design
-bsp2 idea
-new models
-engine balance between classic atmosphere and bells&whistles

bad:
-new sounds
-annoying particles around player when firing blaster 

Cool. Still haven't gotten around to playing much...

(also sound works perfectly on linux this time around, makes a nice change) 

One of the features of RMQ is that you can play thorugh id1 maps with it, but increased fall damage and underwater jaming actually break some maps 

Also, is there an command to make the water non-transparent in RMQ? Thanks 

I am encountering rendering bugs with id1 maps in RMQ with transparent water. 

Yhe1, r_wateralpha 1 works fine. 

... somewhere. Guess that's not too helpful, sorry! 

there are r_lavaalpha r_slimealpha and r_telealpha.

Yes, we've noticed some water rendering bugs - we're on it.

In theory RMQ also supports Nehahra and Quoth maps - but the more complex ones using triggers we didn't make wrappers for probably won't work.

Enemies should swap out fine though - a Drole becoming a Shambler, an ogre2 becoming a rocket ogre (don't remember well). 

The water rendering issue we can't retro-fix in id1 since that'd mean just repacking those maps with the fix mwh mentions - I think that's on Quaddicted.

As to underwater combat, the idea wasn't to just break it, but make it more unique. For example making the melee weapons speed you up so that it doesn't matter that your ranged attacks are faulty.

Didn't work though, back to the drawing board. It was an experiment though, and some ideas came out of it - like making air_bubbles recharge your air supply.

My e3m4rq and e3m5rq have quite a bit of water in them, so underwater play will be getting more focus in the future, as we get to figure out what works best.

Please bear in mind - you're getting to see the insides of a development process here :) 

It's been said many times before but ultimately the 'Remake' element is what's caused so much trouble. If you were making a mod in it's own universe as it were, people wouldn't have expectations. But people expect Quake, and the more of Quake's own rules you break the more you'll annoy people. I wanted Doom 3 to be like Doom 2, but I didn't get that. If I'd not had those previous expectations perhaps I'd have liked Doom 3 more.

I started writing up something more detailed divided into three sections, Player enfeeblement, randomness and atmosphere, but really it's this fundamental question of are you making what you think Quake should have been, or something that builds and improves on the original.

If it is the former then there isn't much to argue about design wise because it's the vision of the team making it, and you can just stick up the sign saying well, I think Quake should have given you no working guns underwater etc. 

Here is a demo of e2m1rq

http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/demos/e2m1rq_ankh.7z

Some things I liked, some I didn't like but overall the impression is positive.
The map itself was very good.
I always liked the fact that original quake levels weren't that big. Playing them is always a blast. New maps with more than 200 enemies on normal skill overwhelm me and if the gameplay isn't super exciting it feels to be hard work. From the explanation by Ricky I should have played it on hard but I know form experience that rmq gameplay tends to be much more difficult than standard quake. I will give the other maps a try after some recovery ;) 

While I haven't been able to play the latest incarnation of Remake Quake yet (no OSX build, I have a feeling my old XP desktop may not be able to run the gfx ... has problems with DP) ...

I did watch the Youtube on PlanetQuake.

I personal enjoyed the miscellaneous game play challenges of the prior demos.

But the grunt sounds and possibly some of the player sounds to me are too ... loud or demanding of attention. Instead of letting the player get submersed into the environment I feel that the grunt sounds pull you out of that submersion.

Kind of like how I honestly despised the sounds in Q3. Especially Orb and the announcer voice. I once described it as a cacophony.

I don't know. Maybe the sounds could somehow be made more subtle and quiet with some sort of Audacity filter or manipulation or whatever people use for sound processing (I don't really know).

At least that's my perspective. The maps look beautiful and I look forward to playing them and I don't mind a few twists in game play to keep it fresh and I enjoyed playing the last one. 

This is how I love quake:
http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/demos/e3m2_e3m3.7z

Of course I know the maps by heart but I have also tried playing like this using rmq (previous demo) and I would usually die pretty quick.
Standard quake is forgiving, you are allowed too make some mistakes. 

It's been said many times before but ultimately the 'Remake' element is what's caused so much trouble. If you were making a mod in it's own universe as it were, people wouldn't have expectations. But people expect Quake, and the more of Quake's own rules you break the more you'll annoy people.

this.

it would be much better(imo) if the rmq continue the same direction as previous rmx maps ie modern/enhanced mapping style with an old fashion gameplay and some quoth qc here and there. e1m1rmx is good example. 

btw i have noticed some bug with e2m1 , the water in the starting area/cave just disappears to me. watching at different angles 

I agree with Spy's comment completely. New textures and monsters are okay as long as they open up new challenges and are in harmony with the original content (Quoth delivers perfectly in this regard) - however, all those extra sounds (which are mostly out of place) and completely modified game mechanics can ruin what would otherwise be a top-notch pack with high-quality maps and ingenius monster placement.

Being simple, raw and to-the-point has always been the key with Quake. Personally I wouldn't want it any other way. 

I know you guys have IQMs coming soon.

Any reason not to support Q3 mdl also which is a helluva lot easier on the engine that IQMs?

Or is there a good reason to not like Q3 mdl?