Quake Champions

What a beautiful shot the second, can't wait to see the rest of the map

Some more screenshots.

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Awwww yiss. Day 1 purchases are a rarity for me these days.

Update: Wow, only 11.2 gigs? The last few ID/Beth games have thoroughly ravaged my hdd. Hope this doesn't mean I'm going to have to download the premium content as I go.

Initial impressions

• Fuckin' lag. I've set my location options to find servers in the EU and Russia, but either due to bugginess or a lack of servers, I always end up connecting to a US server and get ping spikes >500. Normally I'll be hovering at around 50-80, at which point it's a fun blast.
• Fuckin' UI. I don't know who designs the UI's at ID these days, but they're always an abominable cluster-fuck. It's great that I can click on a big red "Play" button to get right in to the action, but everything else of any value seems to be hidden ten clicks deep.
• No bots. As soon as the server problem gets fixed this won't bother me so much. I do like bots though.
• That tutorial level! WTF? Who thought it would be Quakey or even remotely fun and rewarding to kill giant coloured bubbles? And why did I have to connect to a server to play it!?
• I love the maps I've played so far.
• I love the movement physics, again when lag permits.
• I'm not entirely sold on all the guns. The railgun feels a little flakey at the moment and I don't really "get" the one that flings a volley of exploding darts. Why is there no grenade launcher? The rocket launcher needs to feel a bit more meaty too.
• Pink quad damage? Really? Did that come from the same person who brought us big fluffy tutorial bubbles?

I'm probably being a bit harsh because of point #1. All in all I think it's on the right track to render Quake Live redundant, as long as they release a solid level editor.

1. Collision is poorly implemented, many doors feel about 5 units too narrow - and they have used the actual polygons of the models in the environment for collision instead of creating a collision mesh through optimisation.
2. Graphics are clearly 512-1024 texture size, but that's understandable as this game is about speed not pretty graphics.
3. Matches always seem one-sided, you either pwn completely, with members on the other team rage-quitting - or members of your team rage-quit due to unbalanced teams and you spend the rest of the match being chased by 4 players all with stacked loadouts. You either stick it out / grin it and bear it, or you quit yourself to fight another day.
4. Spawns are either death-traps, surrounded by an over-powered opposition, or you spawn too far from the action and are left to humble-bumble, trying to find pickups before finding the opposition, who are typically camping the QD or RL.
5. RL is OP on every map, so everyone camps its spawn location.
6. The maps in very broad and general terms feel the wrong size, with an extraordinarily narrow path through each level, making the slightest deviation from that path a deathtrap, by either stopping you dead in your tracks, or slowing you down - none of the maps feel intuitive as of this date 25-08-17 - many kills for players who are just bumping into walls and doors and have no forward momentum, therefore get killed easily. This proves unsatisfying, as it is nigh impossible to be absolutely certain that kills are the result of hard work and effort in attack/guard/act/react or, just bad luck on the other player.
7. Tactics therefore seem irrelevant.

Overall, with about 250 hours so far on this game, I am not impressed - they have produced an unsatisfying mess of a game, with little replay beyond appealing to fans of the original, yet not taking the game forward and so, there is nothing here to please a fan, as they can play quake live and enjoy the game to a greater extent than this incarnation.

If they fix the collision detection via optimisation, improve the spawn locations and make the classes more interesting, they might have something - but as for now they do not, yet I feel as if they are not going to address the key issues of playing the game and have "done an Epic" by releasing something purely for fans of the original, and not thought on how to move the game forwards at all in the slightest: á la Unreal Tournament 4 Alpha.

C+ Must try harder.

I doubt they will ever produce a level editor as it looks as if it came straight outta Maya. This is a shame, but understandable, as if they were to do this (release an editor) the community (Mapcore!) would create levels which remove the inherent problems this game currently has in its level design...

Quote from Mitch Mitchell

17 hours ago, Mitch Mitchell said: I doubt they will ever produce a level editor

I dunno. I kinda assumed the move away from idTech was because everyone complains mega-textures are too hard for the community to make. That might be a bad assumption though, I have been known to make them on an almost daily basis.

To be honest, if they released some maya plugins and a bit of documentation I wouldn't mind learning to use Maya. It's obviously important for devs to support modding communities, but we also have a duty to ourselves to keep up with modern level design standards.

Quote from text_fish

3 hours ago, text_fish said: I dunno. I kinda assumed the move away from idTech was because everyone complains mega-textures are too hard for the community to make. That might be a bad assumption though, I have been known to make them on an almost daily basis.

To be honest, if they released some maya plugins and a bit of documentation I wouldn't mind learning to use Maya. It's obviously important for devs to support modding communities, but we also have a duty to ourselves to keep up with modern level design standards.

My honest opinion is they will not, and adding to your point, I wouldn't be interested in using Maya to level design with, as far as I am concerned; Maya is not a level design tool - it's an 3D environment art toolbox.

Radiant is a LDT, and Radiant is also not a 3D environment toolbox.

That said...bethesda do like community mods, except Doom MP had snap-map, which although novel, was very limiting for level design.

Quote from nikkoship

23 hours ago, nikkoship said: I get what you're saying, but I think this is kind of an outdated way of thinking. The line between environment art and level design is pretty blurry, especially in the community scene. Many community mappers wear both hats out of necessity. Mappers have never been exempt from making their maps look good, and times have changed. We simply can't keep up with the quality standards with basic bsp tools. That doesn't mean it's impossible for them to implement robust geo tools or a modular mesh kit, but the reality is that making a complete art-passed map in 2017 (even in brush based engines) might mean you'll have to use some form of modelling tool.

Strongly disagree, this can be scripted like this:

1. Create BSP level, playtest the hell out of it until it shines like the tower of the pharaohs.
2. Apply a script-aware texture/material to walls, floors, ceilings, windows, doors and differentiate between outside and inside.
3. Apply script to map/level
4. Script asks where the walls, floors, ceilings, windows and door meshes are - trims are assumptive.
5. Script auto-populates level with said meshes, keeping inside the 'dimensions' of the BSP Geometry.
6. Script has a 'seed' to RNG the usage of meshes for variety.
7. Profit.

So, all you need are the meshes and trims and let the script figure it out and kit-bash the stuff together for you. No need to model anything, and the environment artist stays in the basement where they belong If you really think about, it's just a big look-up table.

This is actually something I'm looking into right now with Unreal Engine 4...that engine is like Microsoft Excel, in that the money people will make from it is much larger than the cost of the application, the scope of Unreal Engine is immense, and soon will shall have VRay...

Quote from Mitch Mitchell

19 hours ago, Mitch Mitchell said:

1. Create BSP level, playtest the hell out of it until it shines like the tower of the pharaohs.
2. Apply a script-aware texture/material to walls, floors, ceilings, windows, doors and differentiate between outside and inside.
3. Apply script to map/level
4. Script asks where the walls, floors, ceilings, windows and door meshes are - trims are assumptive.
5. Script auto-populates level with said meshes, keeping inside the 'dimensions' of the BSP Geometry.
6. Script has a 'seed' to RNG the usage of meshes for variety.
7. Profit.

I'd rather they didn't release any kind of editor than put me through that soulless bastardisation of hobbyist level design.

Quote from text_fish

17 hours ago, text_fish said: I'd rather they didn't release any kind of editor than put me through that soulless bastardisation of hobbyist level design.

It's a time-saver. A massive time-saver. If you'll permit me: it's a time-saver so large and important that it would cut down the amazon rain forest with the right-click of the mouse.

It would not be something for final designs, it would be for final analysis.

Anyone still playing Quake Champions? I picked it back up recently when my friends got excited about the free release and it's really come a long way. It gives me terrible mapper-frustration though, so I might stop playing it until there's some sort of serious comment from the devs on custom content. I guess I'm a spoiled PC gamer, but a game without an editor just seems like half a product to me, and less worth investing my time in.

Quote from text_fish

1 hour ago, text_fish said: Anyone still playing Quake Champions? I picked it back up recently when my friends got excited about the free release and it's really come a long way. It gives me terrible mapper-frustration though, so I might stop playing it until there's some sort of serious comment from the devs on custom content. I guess I'm a spoiled PC gamer, but a game without an editor just seems like half a product to me, and less worth investing my time in.

Tried it during the first waves of beta invites and several months after that. The game took 5 minutes to start and connect/disconnect from servers every time a map changed. It ran smooth, but It was insane to wait every time so I stopped playing.

I'm with you on the level editor and modding in general. I absolutely dislike the lack of support from companies/developers when it comes to creating content for their games.

Mmh now it's free I might try it.

An editor would be nice, but considering this is not yet even v1.0 they probably waiting to see what kind of traction there is and if is worth releasing it. I think they have felt a bit unhappy about SnapMap, although haven't check in with Doom in ages (and won't reinstall anytime soon).