it's suzy

@trashbang

there she is

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— hitscanner apologist ⚡
— tired trans woman ⚧️☣
— not always grumpy, she just looks like that 💀
— level/environment designer 🔨
— Current work: Skin Deep (at Blendo Games) 🐈

📍 Adelaide, Australia

Private page (for friends): @garbagegrenade

it's suzy @trashbang5/10/2023, 8:53 AM

I generally feel like Quake's monster roster is fairly well-rounded (provided you're not picky about using them in an 'appropriate' level theme), but I really feel like it's always lacked Doom's "oh shit, I need to deal with this now" factor that you get from a well-placed Arch-vile or Pain Elemental.

Getting players to engage aggressively with encounters and not just endlessly backpedal away into safe territory is one of the big level design challenges of these games, and it does sort of sting to not have that tool at your disposal. Maybe this is why my maps tend to be so ambush-heavy.

#Quake

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in reply to @trashbang's post:

scampie!!@Scampie5/10/2023, 1:34 PM

Ogres are the best Quake enemy for this reason imo. Missed grenades remain a threat depending on the environment so you can't always 'just' safely run away. I don't think there needs to be -more grenade enemies-, or something like that, but you're absolutely right that there's a need for enemies that entice you forward into combat. Ironically, Shamblers sort of do that, since the best way to avoid being fried by lightning when 1v1 is to run at them and dance.

One trick I've used for getting players to aggressively fight is to place ammo in view behind enemies so if the player starts getting low they have to push forward to replenish... so along those lines I do sort of also wish there was a low/mid tier ranged enemy that dropped a handful of nails. (also agree with @wuunds post: always wish there was a monster_dog, without the awkward bounding box... Quoth/AD Vorelings I guess best fit that role?)

I pushed for the 'railgun Wraith' enemy in Arcane Dimensions to try and get something feeling like an Archvile into Quake, but think it ended up a bit muddled in practice and it was so threatening that you just had to hide from it. Think it maybe should've locked its firing angle a few milliseconds before actually firing so you could fight it a bit more aggressively?

The tough thing with a true Archvile-like is that I don't think resurrector enemies work well in Quake due to ammo capacity issues. It already can feel like you're constantly reloading the player with nails after each fight as is. The AD Summoner enemies (Skull Wizard -> Lost Soul, Vore -> Voreling, Wraith -> Spider, Minotaur -> Imp) were generally ok... I think the Skull Wizard was the best of that bunch really because it summoned such aggressive but weak enemies that could be shotgunned... a Pain Elemental in the same sort of vein likely would work well.

@AndrewYoder5/10/2023, 6:23 PM

Recently was jumping between Doom 2 megawads (some Ancient Aliens, some Plutonia) and very much felt the absence of archviles and chaingunners on returning to Quake. But also Cyberdemons, arachnotrons, and revenants too. Quake could use a few more high tier monsters to open up the possibility space.

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