Thread:Deathstalker666/@comment-1496755-20180827202615/@comment-3547390-20191002004916

I appreciate you saying such, I definitely try to get things working and am surprised how much has been pulled off. I would love to fix the main remaining issues, but alas they are just things without any good solutions at the moment. Then again, I think even "real" modders run into that issue, almost every mod or map comes with "known bugs". I mean, look at the number of bugs in Quake itself, nevertheless many modifications with their own weird issues. But yes, my mod is designed at the core to be very challenging, almost brutally so for a single player. The whole intention is cooperative, so it has to be something hard enough that veterans who have been playing for more than a decade and know the levels inside and out will still have a hard time with. Aka pretty much the opposite of most mods I find, which nerf gameplay. Not sure how weird it will be, since I do wish to retain the Quake ambience; I could include a bunch of flashy weapons but it would just mess with the balance at the end of the day, especially until we can find a way to make possibly more intelligent AI or swarms of opponents.

Actually, I should mention that some of the newest stuff like the spectator mode and skin support ONLY work right on a server. I accidentally started playing on E1M2 to mess around, only to find that dying did not kill me, but would result in infinite respawns. So I essentially broke Single Player to get Coop working like I did. Note that respawning also causes the skin thing to reload for some reason, which means that if you had the ability to respawn a bunch you could entirely break whatever skin you were on. For whatever reason, this does NOT occur when telefragging each other. Aka another issue that unintentionally got broke in Single Player. So, yeah, this isn't exactly a mod to load up a normal game with as much as one to host on a server... unless I ironed out the weird kinks on that side, which of course means more work while being pretty much pointless since you could always just run a server with no other players.

That probably is the next big step for the mod, though I am unsure how possible it will be. I mean, bots are a thing, so I imagine you could use deathmatch spawn points. But I envision a randomizer for Coop that would be open source so it could be combined with all these mods, meaning I could add extra opponents like the Psionic Slug and you could get them appearing in levels. I have thought about a sort of Deathmatch survival mode, where you fight to stay alive for a limited time, but the one thing is that it kills the point of traveling through the level and also would feel more repetitive in its own way. The best sort of randomized stuff has a goal at the core of it, an exit to reach, so it would likely be better to retain level architecture and just add some sort of random opponent thing. Granted, from experience, randomizers have a tendency to break a lot and cause a lot of crashes (even a Deathmatch only one I found ended up being too unstable to even mess with after further testing). Well, maybe eventually I will find a good solution, since I did for what I thought would be impossible. For now we at least have a proper coop experience with plenty of difficulty.

But yeah, the next big ambition I would have would be to add a sort of randomizer that could properly replace whatever with a list of entities. This could be either something that replaces a Monster with a Monster, or something even more random, but the idea would be then to take advantage of custom resources. We could have guns that pretty much are established with a world model and are their own separate entities, but just need a spawn location, and basically add it to the random generators. Needless to say, it would be the best of all worlds, since at that point we could focus on a surplus of content. Due to each level essentially resetting, balance no longer is much of an issue between levels, so getting some weapon that uses Cells isn't really breaking things. After all, it would otherwise not be used, and would also only exist for that one level.

Does such a thing exist for Quake? The most I have heard of is Oblige, but that sounds more like a closed-source level generator that would have to be run prior to playing on a server. We actually have a couple randomizer mods already, but they are just Deathmatch based, they essentially just generate new stuff when something is picked up, replacing the old spawn. As things don't really respawn like that in Coop, those randomizers don't really help us (especially since randomizers tend to be unstable and crash things, which means I would definitely need to figure out how to iron out the bad spawns). This randomness could be possibly just replacing the vanilla locations with potentially anything within a certain pool; I imagine total randomness would lead to a lot more crashes.

If I did a randomizer, I would focus primarily on things with custom meshes. Putting in things like the Inner Circle Trinket could be interesting, but the problem is that it looks like other things in the map, which especially with a randomizer could be a problem. I would want everything to communicate what it is, meaning it must have custom meshes. That of course can make things harder, since many custom meshes can break in GLQuake, but it also can be a sort of quality gate to prevent trying to put in everything. Of course, currently that just means the PAIN stuff, which in turn is closed source... which means trying to recreate it. Ah well, a bridge we shall see if we shall try crossing if we come to it, sort of like the can of worms recently opened.

Running on non-software mode can definitely change some things, such as meshes. There is something involving vertices there, animations rely entirely on a vertex being in a specific location, which means it freaks out if everything is not aligned exactly. Not sure why it is stricter in GLQuake, but that is why meshes will have their vertices going wild in some cases while working fine in others. It is a very frustrating limitation that in turn means I pretty much would never want to mess with meshes, skins are about as far as I go for customizing stuff there. Of course, I still don't understand why CROSFR01 doesn't work in GLQuake... source ports can be weird indeed. And then we have the Aftershock levels having the same name but different size of vanilla textures (this means Aftershock variants don't play well with vanilla servers), which makes it incompatible with the vanilla game; it needs to be loaded separate.

Well, as stated, it isn't something that needs to exist short term. But if such a thing were to be added, I think we could make Quake endlessly replayable, especially as I can already add some open source stuff (plus try my hand at imitating some of the more closed source stuff if I can figure out how custom entities work). So yeah, the biggest game changer to the server would be something like this. Actually, it would make Quake pretty much worth playing nonstop, even the same maps... I think we actually have enough maps for the cycle as it is if such a randomizer existed. Currently, my biggest gripe with Quake and most games in general is predictability; you know exactly where each enemy is and what each secret holds, so changing that would not just be a game changer for the server... it would be the biggest motivator for playing Quake almost nonstop. Now, as stated, this is all speculation... but who knows? All I know is waves on a Deathmatch map is not really the answer, the true answer is something that randomizes entities without physically needing to modify the levels. So while Deathmatch spawns would be a thing, I much rather something that treats everything as sort of a randomized pool.

Another great thing would be something to convert Doom stuff to Quake. You know, without being terrible, since the current converter is just too pointless to use... especially since level exits themselves aren't ported. The long term stuff will be the levels with actual exits, especially if such a randomizer gets added, since then you have a clear goal, but have no idea what you will face. Doom content is very plentiful and would be beneficial to port. Admittedly, I doubt such a thing can ever work well, but it surprised me to find one that worked at all and did a decent job at architecture at the very least.

You know, you are right. Many a person thinks of Doom as pretty much just 1000+ enemies in a map which you slaughter. This actually is pretty much why Quake was hated so much by those same people, forgetting that Doom 1 was often slow paced and methodical. In fact, the main thing that tends to bug me with Doom is that there are too many puzzle based aspects such as teleporter mazes or barrel puzzles, sort of the opposite of just mindless slaughter. The slaughter maps tended to be the better part of Doom, since there was less frustration involved, though of course they are not the ideal since there is less exploration involved.

Also, it makes sense about the Civvie thing and how it appeals to the masses. This is sort of why people don't care much for my videos, they are more slow paced and methodical, played in a low resolution without the fanciness of the modern age. Plus I am focusing on levels people don't even bother touching instead of Arcane Dimensions, Episode 5, and the expansions. Even those that have bothered touching it usually don't put in as much effort, you have stuff like the Quake Grave, but the problem there is that the guy often plays on Normal and won't find everything... you don't get every detail looked into. I mean, we even have pages for KYSENTY2 and KYSENTY3 now (KYSENTY1 I think is basically KYSENTY2, but just Deathmatch only, though the map itself still eludes me at this point), of which I went through and found every minute detail I could by playing them back to back and analyzing every room.

Sounds quite crazy indeed, I am glad everything has calmed down over there. A bit of a positive is that my father has tried convincing his girlfriend's son to play Quake, meaning I could get some use for some Deathmatch levels as well as a potential testing dummy who doesn't even know the game for the brutal coop. Of course, the negative side of that is that he seems to not play unless it is pushed on him constantly, which I just don't like to do. Plus I have to "hustle" him so that he doesn't just quit due to me being much better due to years of experience; this in turn means pretending to not know what Quake is. What all this means is that I get someone who doesn't really touch Quake, but their mere presence makes it so I can't exactly record since I have to pretend ignorance. Needless to say, more of a headache than anything. At least he is gone on weekends most of the time, but this is the main reason Saturday was pretty much a dead day.

Oh yes, there is indeed plenty to mess with next time. I wish QuakeWorld was a possibility, since that supposedly has a more reliable connection, but the whole Deathmatch only thing limits it. If I could find a way to port monsters over and get the Single Player game to work just like in Quake, it would definitely be a nice advancement as well. But yes, for the time being, just use Hamachi and then type in the "ping" command if you get greeted with the console (seems to be a Windows 10 thing as it happened on the laptop but not on my father's desktop; the lag was also ridiculously bad on the laptop while being very smooth on the desktop). I have had weird issues with my IP being the wrong one in the past, but it seems things are working right at the moment.

September of 2018 was definitely quite the different game, even if a lot of the things were already in there like Shrek. For reference, This was the changelog back then. We last played on July 5, which led to fixing the OP Sniper Rifle and the crazy nature of the Rocket Jumps we were doing on Battle at Home. Stuff added since then includes the Rotfish fix, a massive Armor nerf, kickback being added to most Weapons instead of just the Grenade Launcher (and removed from the Rocket Launcher due to the OP nature as mentioned), MultiSkin being changed so that you can actually change your skin instead of having it hardcoded, Spectator mode upon the first real death of the player, and resources restarting at the start of each level instead of carrying over. Needless to say, the last few are the big ones, but the Armor nerf definitely will make things far more brutal, especially when combined with the earlier Quad Damage nerf and the fact that enemies can pick up Pentagrams. Just through a couple things, the game turned quite evil.

I should mention that many a mod made in 1996 is actually just a bunch of stuff compiled together and slightly edited; pretty much what I am doing. So by 1996 standards, I have made a mod. Newest little change is that I added a special little obituary for backpacks, by default it was all tied to the Radioactive Container so I had to modify various pieces of code to make it a separate entity.

EDIT: Just had an epiphany. The plan to include a custom campaign is definitely a good one, but I dismissed a certain modification in the past that would essentially allow you to set a level order through the code. I felt this was unnecessary since I could just modify the level files themselves, but what I just realized is that the client would likely need to download the files EVERY time I changed them. Say I make House of Desolution go to Office Hell, but then end up changing the balance later on due to finding another level, that would pretty much result in you needing to replace all level files to fix said balance. What this code should do is prevent that; if you have noticed the code portion of a mod only needs to exist on a server (resources such as meshes and sounds need to be on the client, but not the mod itself, which means I can easily fix up the mod file without you needing to download anything new). So hopefully I can get this going later today, changing a level exit to see if I can get it to go where I want, and prevent the unnecessary nuisance of redownloading levels.

Speaking of custom campaign stuff, I should mention that it will be four episodes. I also won't be including the Dark Hour levels since they pretty much already have their own campaign, but will include the Aftershock Toolbox among the other levels since they are more isolated in nature. The plan is to have a progressive set of four episodes, each with their own theme, which may admittedly result in a bit of a weird balance in terms of the number of levels. Not sure if that is an issue or not, since it seems custom expansions often have inconsistent Episodes as well.

All is currently a work in progress. It shall all come from the enter the dragon start, which will be modified to support 4 Episodes instead of difficulties. Episode 1 will be The Hollow World and basically will consist of levels that are extremely quick to complete or feel almost mindless. Episode 2 will be The Ruins of Elder Dimensions, it will be your "normal" episode with a bunch of relatively polished levels. Episode 3 is currently called Agony and Sorrow, basically an episode that starts out with some confusing puzzles before focusing entirely on being extremely painful. Episode 4, The Miserable Monotony, is pretty much the Aftershock Toolbox episode... it is miserable and tiring to even try to work your way through it. They aren't consistent in size, but all are moderately sized by doing things in this order, at least 6 levels per Episode.

So, support has been added (I have set up the Introduction map by killing the skill triggers and instead setting variables for the next level name, which means it can be controlled without needing an exact name as long as it is specified in the mod), but the exact list will wait until we actually do the server. This way I don't need to compile it each time I add an additional level. It is very easy to do, just need a line stating the current level and what the next level will be.

I also spent some time removing some code messages. They were useful for debugging and making sure things worked, but they were annoying for the end user, so you won't need to worry about a lot of messages spamming what is going on in regards to skins.