Quake II RTX and other classics

[arc@css]

Nightdive studios have done a good job with the remaster, IMO, better than the Doom 64 re-release anyway.

Nice upgrade for those that already have it.

They've done an especially nice job with the audio - though maybe that's my new headphones.

 

[Rroff]

I really need to polish up the horde mode in my Quake 2 RTX mod and release it separately - it is actually quite addictive, at least I find it so, but I've been too busy with other stuff to find the time to make some maps which would leverage it best.

Also shame they didn't remake the original game - I've been messing with stuff other than Quake 2 themed using Quake 2 RTX just to get my head into the possibilities and despite being a 30 year old engine underneath and all the limitations of that you can still pull off some pretty crazy things - despite in some cases features for rendering those effects don't even exist in the engine :s

Very very work in progress with lots of stuff which needs fixing and loads of stuff missing but I've been toying with a bit of a what if Deus Ex (Liberty Island) was done with path tracing using Quake 2 RTX:

Spoiler

2 things which are very hard to work around is the lack of any proper terrain feature for blending between surfaces short of literally hand painting the entire terrain as like a 4+GB image :s and the inability to go in and hand paint weathering, grime, etc. to break up surfaces.

 

[The_Arbiter]

There was the remaster of the original Quake, unless i misunderstood you @Rroff

Gmanlives has done a review of the Quake 2 remake, and it looks great. The path finding being redone is a great QoL improvement.

 

[Rroff]

There was the remaster of the original Quake, unless i misunderstood you @Rroff

Gmanlives has done a review of the Quake 2 remake, and it looks great. The path finding being redone is a great QoL improvement.

Was meaning remake the original Q2 single player.

The pathfinding in the stock game is pretty bad, though understandable for the era - I don't envy whoever redid it as it is pretty much unfixable without tearing the whole thing out and redoing a bunch of code that connects to it as well - I did tweak some of it in my mod but it was still pretty glitchy.

 

[Rroff]

Just noticed on the remastered intro captions they get several things wrong - pretty sure the original is "low freq. EMP" not "little freaky EMP".

While their AI tweaks are more polished than mine and path finding better (in fact mine don't even have path finding - just player trail + simple position analysis) I prefer my AI - my Strogg will **** you up:

They'll also attempt to flank you and fall back as well as strafing.

 

[Rroff]

As I mentioned lots of glitches with it (for example I have to keep reactivating the monsters to make certain things work and haven't got around to suppressing the sound they make on first sighting an enemy from idle) but I much prefer my take on the AI:

A little out of character from the original AI but most of it is based on ideas which were like 10-20% implemented by the original coders and never completed and I've got them up to about 70% working.

Also not my best playing as I was having trouble with Vulkan capture and don't have my external capture setup here so it was making things a bit choppy to play.

EDIT: Also a glitch where they'll constantly try and walk into a wall unless you aggro them again which isn't easily sorted without recoding the entire AI in coop mode due to the way in coop mode they decide which player to attack.

 

[kar]

Re pathfinding what's happened is due to the push to get the game out the door ID ripped out the WIP AI/Pathfinding and essentially lobotomised the monsters. The original AI / pathfinding code still existed and Nightdive were able to resurrect, modernize and complete it such that the game feels quite different now.

I got startled on base2, had ran past a gunner dropped down to where the Super Shotty is and got swarmed by the monsters down there and as I was trying to blast my way through the gunner suddenly appeared feeding my face with grenades.

Was quite fun being genuinely shocked by a game I first played 25 something years ago!

 

[Rroff]

Re pathfinding what's happened is due to the push to get the game out the door ID ripped out the WIP AI/Pathfinding and essentially lobotomised the monsters. The original AI / pathfinding code still existed and Nightdive were able to resurrect, modernize and complete it such that the game feels quite different now.

I got startled on base2, had ran past a gunner dropped down to where the Super Shotty is and got swarmed by the monsters down there and as I was trying to blast my way through the gunner suddenly appeared feeding my face with grenades.

Was quite fun being genuinely shocked by a game I first played 25 something years ago!

Sadly the game never really lives up to the first 3 base (and secret) levels the rest of the way through. But still cements itself as one of my favourite games of all times though some of that is due to the modding potential.

I played through the first few levels of the remaster but didn't really find the advances in AI added that much as the monsters mostly die before that comes into play - a lot of the time they still just stand around and are slow reacting to you so you only die if getting swarmed.

 

[Rroff]

Not my video but this was kind of hilarious:

 

[arc@css]

Just a heads-up for those that enjoyed the Quake II experience on the Playstation:

Quake II PSX Full (1.2) file

The full release of Quake II PSX, including all patches. All levels, including DM levels. If you are bandwidth-limited or just want a quicker download, update using the patch releases instead.

www.moddb.com

I've played it briefly and it's very good!