I’m taking on a QuakeC project for the hell of it. I decided to see how much I could spruce up the standard Quake gameplay by massaging the QuakeC. I’m going to see if I can improve the AI, fix some bugs, and add some functionality that will enhance the gameplay in all of the standard maps.
The goal of the project is that you shouldn’t even notice you’re playing a mod except that suddenly Quake feels cooler and more challenging/fun. My goal is to make it worth replaying every standard Quake map you might have on your hard drive. At the very least, it’ll be a nice basic code base to build on in the future!
Will post more updates as I get things working.
Tags: Quake
Reminds me of some times where I wanted to address some issues with Quake; namely that by e2m6 you’ve fought every monster but Spawn and Shub, and have seen every single weapon and powerup… My solution was to address the problems of population (on Easy the world is barren) by having it use the Hard difficulty population, and make the skills be adjustments in ai and behavior, for example, making the Enforcer’s fire a two-shot burst, one aimed at your current location, and one leading. Things like that.
I also came up with a few new attacks for many of the monsters, ways to insert the mission pack and Quoth monsters, and such. Of course, it was never coded =)
At one point I also wrote a design doc to create minibosses based upon world entities, for any level; Rich Whitehouse was going to do it for QExpo 08, but he was too busy with contract work.
All of these of course, had goals or hopes of using FrikbotX waypoints to navigate through the map, since Monster did waypoints for every id1 map, so he could have deathmatch on maps other than dm3, dm6 and aerowalk.
I’m looking forward to this quite a bit however… Definitely gonna keep an eye on it.
This sounds rather like dpmod, which already revives Quake singleplayer a bit with different monster behaviors and more difficult but more rewarding combat (you can put down a monster in one or two shots, but you’d better be willing to take the risks associated with rushing into a fight, you might get torn up).
It has one option that really has a profound impact on Quake – the “monsterwander” cvar, simply set it to 1 and replay the maps and you never know where you’ll encounter a monster, as they’re randomly wandering around on their own – I’ve met a shambler in an unexpected hallway on several occasions… Unfortunately it occasionally glitches the monster spawning (I haven’t figured out why – the qc tries pretty hard to detect monster spawn teleporters and disable wandering on them), which is the only reason it’s off by default, lots of fun though.
All this said, Dresk’s mod Kleshik comes closest to what you and scar3crow seem to be describing, it’s one of the few coop enhanced mods, and totally crazy – a bit too crazy for me to prefer it for casual play but I do enjoy it with friends
My own suggestion is these features to liven up Quake:
Wandering monsters (and I would suggest making them run around quickly at spawn so that even if you rush the level you won’t know what to expect).
Better monster navigation (waypoints?).
More varied monsters.
Monster attack enhancements (dpmod – all monsters shot lead their attacks, ogres aim correctly for height (even checking obstructions with a tracetoss), fiends run a tracetoss jump simulation to decide whether to jump so they’re not wildly jumping around, it’s frightening when they do jump because you KNOW they’ll hit you if you don’t evade them immediately).
I’m sure there are many more core features that would be good, but those are the ones that come to mind immediately for me.
Wow, I had no idea other people would actually be interested in this. Neat!
Yes, monster wandering is one of the first things I added because I had written that previously for a level I did (“White Room”). It currently follows a few simple rules:
- If a monster is set to ambush, it wanders within a small radius of it’s spawn location. I figure the level designer put the monster in that area for a reason.
- If a monster has a targetname, it won’t wander at all. I figure any monster like that is probably set up as a trap and needs to be where the designer placed it.
- Otherwise, they will wander around the level as far as time allows.
And I’ve noticed the same thing you mentioned, LV. A few times, I’ve been surprised at where I find monsters. It’s actually a lot more exciting to play the game when you don’t know exactly where every monster will be when you come around a corner.
On top of that, the levels seem way more ALIVE with the monsters all on the move. It really gives a whole different feel to the game.
I’ll post progress updates as I think of stuff and implement it. Some good ideas up there too, guys, thanks!