[MusicallyInspired]

deuxsonic, on 15 August 2016 - 10:58 PM, said:

Very nice. I've hunted down remixes for a lot of the music but I haven't heard it done so well on guitar. Do you have any others?

Not from Unreal. I did attempt to do an HQ cover of Dimension 2010 from Crusader: No Remorse by attempting to copy the samples as closely as I could. I got the song about half finished but I'm not too happy with it. The instruments, while I did my best to recreate them, aren't mixed very well and it sounds mostly like a big muddy mess. Can't even hear some of the instruments. Attempting to add guitars just compounded that problem further. Never finished it either. That was about as long ago.

[PikaCommando]

What a pain it must be for id to do the Outlands level with all the cliffs and terrains and shit. The level's pretty big so I'm surprised the engine could handle it. The only other level that's anything like it before is The Abyss from DN3D, but that ain't full 3D.




Unreal (expansion) also had canyon levels too, but I figure they were easier to make because UnrealED.

[deuxsonic]

PikaCommando, on 16 August 2016 - 05:53 AM, said:

What a pain it must be for id to do the Outlands level with all the cliffs and terrains and shit. The level's pretty big so I'm surprised the engine could handle it. The only other level that's anything like it before is The Abyss from DN3D, but that ain't full 3D.

Unreal (expansion) also had canyon levels too, but I figure they were easier to make because UnrealED.

The difference is that with Outlands, it's still designed as a series of corridors where you don't have much of the map visible at any given location. The open areas aren't any bigger than maybe the Power Plant right at the start or Cooling Facility or Outer Hangar. It's kind of weird that id's engines weren't designed with huge areas in mind until you get to when megatexture was being added, like Quake Wars. DOOM 3 was even more confined than say Quake 2.

[HulkNukem]

Quake IV's open areas were also just wider narrow corridors.
New Doom is where its at as far as balancing indoor and outdoor areas; some levels are entirely indoors, some are entirely outdoors, and some have you going in and out a lot. Real refreshing in that regard.
Also I don't know what it is about low poly geometry like in those Outlands/Unreal screenshots that looks so appealing to me.

[MusicallyInspired]

I don't really see the low geometry as the texture detail and lighting look so good in contrast. Quake doesn't have that.

[PikaCommando]

HulkNukem, on 16 August 2016 - 11:46 AM, said:

Quake IV's open areas were also just wider narrow corridors.
New Doom is where its at as far as balancing indoor and outdoor areas; some levels are entirely indoors, some are entirely outdoors, and some have you going in and out a lot. Real refreshing in that regard.
Also I don't know what it is about low poly geometry like in those Outlands/Unreal screenshots that looks so appealing to me.

Really? Certainly doesn't feel that way to me.




As for their appeal (to me at least), I guess it has something to do with tiling textures on large brushes. The more complex the brush, the better.

[deuxsonic]

Raven made a bunch of changes to id Tech 4 for Quake 4, so it's not quite the same engine. The same is true for the version made for Human Head's Prey, Quake Wars, and Wolfenstein. id Tech 4 evolved a lot over it's lifespan (by the end having a lot of early versions of id Tech 5 features like texture streaming and megatexture) even though few games would ultimately use the engine compared to Unreal Engine 3.

[leilei]

PikaCommando, on 16 August 2016 - 02:27 PM, said:

Really? Certainly doesn't feel that way to me.

Quake4's full of invisible walls. The times you're on a vehicle you have no real freedom anyway, and it can get pretty cramped as well and there's not even an opportunity to stunt

PikaCommando, on 16 August 2016 - 02:27 PM, said:

As for their appeal (to me at least), I guess it has something to do with tiling textures on large brushes. The more complex the brush, the better.

No, it has to do with having a surfacecache and the map split up into square leafs. Overflowing the surfacecache with too many large surfaces will cause the renderer to freak and drop surfaces, so limitations for software renderer were in mind for 100% of Quake2 (except the translucent glass for some reason). Also, the visibility calculation would take way too long if there's too many open areas that can see other open areas and create unacceptably bloated vis data.

Q3 doesn't have any concept of surfacecache or lightmap updates, plus vertex lighting is now possible to just not have lightmaps on terrain at all, so large vast maps aren't a problem there as evidenced in Team Arena.

and inb4 a dorky mention of "Team Arena Engine" THERE IS NO TEAM ARENA ENGINE it's just a q3map compiling tool tweak and a raised memory limit. "team arena engine" is just misleading press release bullshit.

[HulkNukem]

PikaCommando, on 16 August 2016 - 02:27 PM, said:

Really? Certainly doesn't feel that way to me.

Those sections absolutely were just giant corridors; a couple of them were actually straight on-rails sections. Part of it is that you enter the section from one door, and you exit through another door; there's no side paths, no optional entrances, no hidden areas, nothing. It doesn't help the draw distance is covered up with an obvious skybox.
Compare it with the outdoor sections of Half-Life 2, Postal 2, the King Kong game, Perfect Dark Zero, and Far Cry, all of which are singleplayer FPS games that released around the time of Quake 4's release or within a year before. Regardless of each individual game's quality, they all have more open outdoor areas than Quake 4 that allow you to 'stretch' and take in the scenery.
Serious Sam 2, which released around the same time, had a greater sense of scale than Quake 4, but also had a sort of 'funnel' so players almost always have to enter and exit giant areas the same way.

I enjoyed Quake 4, but I remember playing it at the time and being hyped by playing "Like Doom 3 but with allies and outdoor areas" and then laughing at those outdoor sections when I came across them.

[leilei]

More Quake Champions news involves the "dreaded" "Overwatch" "classes" being optional, so now they'll have to find some other scapegoat that somehow causes Quake to be ruined forever.

[HulkNukem]

The negative I can see is that will now segment the player base; you'll have the diehards that don't want abilities, and those that strongly prefer them, never playing together.
I hope the game has a huge community.

[deuxsonic]

I hope they make the game so it can't be stripped down to nothing like they do with Quake 3/Live apparently in order to cheat.

[Lunick]

https://twitter.com/...132111081971712

[deuxsonic]

They actually look like the first-person models for the weapons. Perhaps they based them on those meshes?

[MetHy]

What's Arcane Dimensions exactly? Worth picking up?

Also I've ordered the Saturn version of Quake. After playing DN3D and Exhumed Saturn so much I'm excited, I hope the exclusive levels are good.

[deuxsonic]

It's a community map pack with a hub of some extremely high quality Quake maps from some of the best Quake mappers out there with other new stuff sprinkled in that requires a limit-removing port. QuakeSpasm is ideal.

https://www.quaddict...v1_42final.html

[MetHy]

Does it work well with whatever's the steam version's running on? That's what I've been using to run all the maps and episodes I've downloaded.

[deuxsonic]

No, it won't work with vanilla Quake, the maps are beyond what the original game can handle. Installing QuakeSpasm into your Quake folder should be pretty easy.

http://quakespasm.so...et/download.htm

[Mr. Tibbs]

MetHy, on 21 August 2016 - 12:21 AM, said:

What's Arcane Dimensions exactly? Worth picking up?

Echoing what deuxsonic said. It's definitely worth checking out. Just grab QuakeSpasm. The only reason to hold off is because it's about to be updated with new maps and weapons, but I would give it a go regardless.

[deuxsonic]

QuakeSpasm just by itself is worth using to play anything Quake. The huge number of fixes and improvements and new features. For example, Quake for Steam doesn't come with the game's soundtrack on the game's CD, so they're actually not providing you with the whole game like if you had bought a hard copy. With QuakeSpasm, you can add the songs in Ogg Vorbis to a music folder inside ID1, the base folder for the main game, to have the game with music, no CD needed.

[MetHy]

Ok, I did put a sourceport on my Steam version, I just didn't remember. Nevermind me.

[Lunick]

http://www.celephais...ad.php?id=61347

Map Jam 7 released!

[Micky C]

PikaCommando, on 16 August 2016 - 02:27 PM, said:

Really? Certainly doesn't feel that way to me.

You realize that the edge of the map is an extremely short distance away from you in this picture right? The skybox is fairly obvious. There may or may not be places in the map which make it feel very large but this location isn't it

[KaijuTurtle]

Yahtzee Croshaw of The Escapist's Zero Punctuation released a review of the original Quake this past week http://www.escapistm...tm_campaign=all

[MetHy]

Lunick, on 21 August 2016 - 03:39 AM, said:

http://www.celephais...ad.php?id=61347

Map Jam 7 released!

I've played some of the other map jams and enjoyed them, but damn this one. I'm playing on normal, and the 2nd map I didn't get far (corridor after the first sewers) because of the insane lack of supplies. 3rd map I made it to near end, but when using the gold key, more enemies spawned and I had 25hp and 0 ammo for all weapons.

[Lunick]

I agree, I'm not enjoying this map jam as much as the others. Map 4 (Untitled) feels too dark and doesn't have a good balance of ammo and I'm not a general fan of the new enemies either.

[Striker]

deuxsonic, on 19 August 2016 - 05:01 PM, said:

I hope they make the game so it can't be stripped down to nothing like they do with Quake 3/Live apparently in order to cheat.

Agreed, that's the one thing I hate the most about Q3/Live. The same shit happens in Xonotic too.

[Altered Reality]

When Quake 3 had just become open source, someone had made an executable that exploited a combined installation of the demo and the point release patch, to play custom levels without the commercial version. I can't find it anymore, does anyone remember where it was?

[leilei]

Probably ioq3. Most of their early changes were about trying to use the point release files with the demo data.

Though there's already been checksum cracks to various versions (including the tests) prior to the source release to have unrestricted data use

[PikaCommando]

Apparently, John Carmack coded Quake with a widescreen monitor. If only he included widescreen support out of the box :/