Thread:Deathstalker666/@comment-1496755-20180827202615/@comment-3547390-20191011130951

Time is definitely moving slower and slower here, every day becomes a drag as it feels like it takes ages to get to playing Quake again. It feels quite lengthy between sessions, every day between it one more that brings me closer to death, whether people around me like it or not. Every day is one more I spend hours searching... it takes forever to even finish one album, it feels dreadfully long to wait that hour. So yes, time moves very slowly for me, to the point that I feel like the world's motions are far more rapid than my own. I just want to stop... what is the point of anything if it just going to be an endurance session again? What is the point when the only escape I have is regulated time which can be easily interrupted and ruined? Everyone usually says it is occupation based, that once you get career you suddenly find yourself without enough time. Problem is, I don't get that happening. Instead, it takes ages just getting from the start of the day to lunch.

Well, if you are busy upgrading parts, be sure to get an i9 chip with as many cores as you can. You can't exactly game on anything lower, so I don't expect you to have less than a 9900KS, but it is an important part to fix if you want to even hope of connecting. Note that you will need a more powerful CPU to actually move however; they should be releasing more powerful Intel chips that might allow this capability in a year or so.

Oh yes, though I should mention that most are multiplayer based. The number of levels where you can shoot a monster in them is far smaller; that is sort of a special thing to find. It is a very real possibility to run out of maps, this is sort of the reason I do so many delaying things like replaying campaigns or not really assist much in the combat. It might be a bit better now with the more punishing mechanics. I remember when Seth checked out the server when I was working on Aftershock, levels would be flown through in 2-3 minutes, which becomes a problem when you play for multiple hours and have a limited number. After all, that was including Q2, which I remember you not being much a fan of ever touching again.

I want to say the realistic number of levels we have to mess with is closer to 30-40. About the size of the vanilla game, except that custom levels usually don't get to that scale, meaning many can be quicker to fly through. So, yeah, a big part of the concern is almost always running out of content.

What do we have outside of these levels? Well, Aftershock is its own separate entity and needs to be touched separately, but I can easily add the mod to that one as well. Other than that, we have the ability to play as monsters. Other than that, we have some basic mechanic mods to perhaps mess around with, but from experience it almost gets tiring how repetitive they get. I am not kidding about the number of pipe bomb or proximity mine modifications out there. Plus you got homing rockets, shrapnel grenades, and grappling hooks. Then you got stuff like Skarmod, which just is a bunch of stuff we have seen to death in another mod, which takes a lot of time to go through and yet is all the same stuff. Yeah, a lot you end up seeing over and over, it is really nice to see some different concept in a mod at this point.

That is the biggest issue and has been a big issue since the beginning. Quake content is so quick to fly through, combined with me only getting so much time to even expand with new content, that it just is easy to fly through it all and get bored. Even when I do get the ability to expand, it likely is going to be more Deathmatch levels or another pipebomb mod, meaning weeks of progress can look like I did nothing for those interested in the Single Player side. It is why Seth really stopped bothering; we ran out of levels and he started egging me for more, whereupon it happened too slow. I really don't want a repeat of that.

Quake really has the curse of having the shortest average level for a FPS. It should be a bit better, since I have worked to balance out coop to make it not feel like something that just makes the original game a joke, but it still is quite possible to fly through things. In a way, it is a great benefit, especially after the slog era of Doom levels which felt like they never wanted to end and were made up of a lot of slow wandering through mazes. We can hope levels get a bit bigger as we go along; a big issue in 1996 was compiling these levels. I recently found a level that was 1.5MB, which became a big deal because of just how many hours that would take to compile, nevertheless download online. As that level mostly focused on detailing brushes, it takes about your average time, which means even that won't slow us up much. Not many levels are exactly challenging; it is why I had to combine puzzle levels in the "harder" episode to at least hope to fill it out somewhat.

Granted, lately I have been tackling more levels. Most of what I have been doing for the last year has been going through a large number of mods; we are most of the way through the list I have, so I have been turning a lot more towards trying to get through the level list for this collection. I think I mentioned when I started that it would take a while to get through the collection I am currently on; it has passed a year, and playing so short of a time is definitely not helping. Who knows how long Q2 would have taken had I been constrained like this.

Of course, there is an upside to going so slow. Most things are terrible, so running out of levels would mean hitting pretty much endless terrible content. I don't exactly feel thrilled about the idea of trying modern Quake levels with their focus on HQ textures. Modern source ports look terrible with their smoothness; reminds me a lot of why Doomsday isn't that good (outside of it still being Doom). The animations and meshes were just too... smooth and clunky, the particles and general mechanics just take you out of the game.

Total conversions sound interesting to check out (they aren't really a thing in 1996, but will be going forward), but I also dread the idea of constantly swapping out mods since they would be totally incompatible with each other. It would be sort of like playing a different game, except said games won't have anything outside of a couple levels. They also don't sound that good for the server outside of the gimmick of mixing things up, since they likely won't support the mods, nor could they be loaded without exiting the game and swapping over.

So yeah... I mostly like things how they are while not really being a fan of the future (as usual with modded games, the first year really is my preferred time to work with, not just from a chronological but also due to the faithfulness to the original game). We just need more of that; ideally with more Single Player. The late 90s was all about the Multiplayer craze, so levels with monsters play second fiddle most of the time.

One thing working in our favor is how little we play the server, yet pretty much everything we have touched is things I tackled prior to my WOT nightmare. You would be surprised at how few new maps would appear between sessions of even that length of time.

Heh, if we do Fleshville again I can climb the staircase and exit the level for you. All opponents can be killed up to that point anyway. Some levels do definitely have some interesting platforming, though I think said mechanics are highly uncommon.

I am really lucky with my job, since I was told upfront by my boss that I could freely do whatever I wished as long as a project didn't need to be done. He is the one who suggested a certain pair of noise-cancelling headphones, plus is used to my music being so loud that it leaks through my headphones. It helps a lot where I am; I don't really have a proper office since we ran out of spacing and the boss wanted certain people on a certain side of the building, so I have a makeshift "office" that is essentially a cubicle with a rolled out rug in the middle of the service department area. The primary issue with that is noise, either from techs, phone calls, or project managers. I think it is the noisiest place in the building, which definitely conflicts with me. So having music can help quite a bit.

Admittedly, there are plenty of times I don't feel like listening to music, but essentially need to in order to not break down. It has been tearing me down, but I should be getting an office shortly since we are expanding the building. Just a matter of holding out a bit longer.

In other news, found a Quake fansite that involves an Ultima guild. Not sure how that makes any sense at all. Everyone and their grandmother made a Quake website. That makes things all the more messy, even if that means you get a chance of finding one that works.