I've been working with Quake III as a game engone for about a month after owning the product and occsionally playing it over the last five years.
With the release of the GPL Q3 code I pretty much dropped all work on Torque and engaged on a crash course of learning so that I could finally do a game I've had in my head for years.
The environment itself is beautiful, fast as heck even on my PIII 700 Windows desitop and my PII233 Linux dedicated server. Tremulous/icculus and a mods from few other projects have given me the groundwork for what I hope will be a great online social environment RPG. In short, great bang that now costs no bucks.
Newer engines like Q4 are so much more realistic looking that in fact it hurts the suspension of disbelief. It's closer to real, but not enough to make you say -- hey that really looks like skin or metal. It;s more like -- that looks like a really, really good approxiamtion of skin then I've seen before, but it's not skin. And I always know i while in the game space.
Consider World of Warcraft, the standard I am creating against. The characters look about as blocky and "cartoony" as Q3 does which is fine because while it is role playing, the avatars in question is real enough to lose youself.
I've found very, very few attempts to tell a story though. It's mostly one cool arena after another to run around in to blow things up.
Which isn't surprising of course, because that's what the product as originally released was about. Call of Duty seems to be one of the best attempts to surround the mayhem with a "story".
With just a little effort and some cinematic thinking GPL Q3 could easily become an engine that supports RPG games with seamless transitions between rooms/levels/servers/cut scenes.
A Neverwinter style camera setup where you click the floor to move the character shouldn't be hugely hard to implement. Persistence of the game environment either to disk or to database wouldn't take a rocket scientist to master either.
For my project I expect to take 6 to 9 months to put all those things in place with the help of other programmers either as volunteers or contractors.
I think the run & gun phase of this engine has been taken about as far as it can go. Or at least that coming across one more cool looking level is like seeing sequel to a movie you've already seen 100 times. In that sense Doom 3 & Quake 4 are miles ahead of Q3. New stuff to see, but still a sequel.
If the goal is to extend the life of a solid engine and to take advantage of its GPL status, then what needs to come are news ways to think about employing QIII so that the power that already exists can be used to its maximum.
Things to Come
Quake III Arena already has RPG within itself:
An online multiplayer game played by humans through their computers, which pick a name, and become known by many different people all over the world by the name they pick. They gain friends and enemies. Join clans, and start clans and live through an online lifestyle saga through chatting amongst each other.
The only people that can figure out who they are, is the server admins that look at their IP#'s through the console.
Have many names, and have many different stories through each role that you play. Coming down to how good of an actor you are, as no one ever see's your face there is no end.
I say... leave RPG to games like Everquest. Yawn Yawn
In Q3A...be a female, be a male, be an it. Be a dangerous player, be a weak player. Be talkative, or never talk.
Control or be controlled. Be a game changer and modify, or copy what others have already done. Play the game, or have the game play you.
Change your name so much that no one ever knows you. Keep the same name and have people love or hate you for whatever you do.
An online multiplayer game played by humans through their computers, which pick a name, and become known by many different people all over the world by the name they pick. They gain friends and enemies. Join clans, and start clans and live through an online lifestyle saga through chatting amongst each other.
The only people that can figure out who they are, is the server admins that look at their IP#'s through the console.
Have many names, and have many different stories through each role that you play. Coming down to how good of an actor you are, as no one ever see's your face there is no end.
I say... leave RPG to games like Everquest. Yawn Yawn
In Q3A...be a female, be a male, be an it. Be a dangerous player, be a weak player. Be talkative, or never talk.
Control or be controlled. Be a game changer and modify, or copy what others have already done. Play the game, or have the game play you.
Change your name so much that no one ever knows you. Keep the same name and have people love or hate you for whatever you do.
That is stupid. This guy just made one of the best posts I've seen on this forum in a year's time.
I support your idea 100 percent, but what I suggest, and would love to see is a really simple mod that doesn't change much of the actual gameplay aside from adding abilities and limitations. I wouldn't much be interested in a game that changes the physics and gameplay dynamics. A run and gun fps rpg for me, thanks. If this sounds like something you might be interested in, I suggest you use this for reference:
http://vortex.planetquake.gamespy.com/about.shtml
One of the best q2 mods i've ever played.
I support your idea 100 percent, but what I suggest, and would love to see is a really simple mod that doesn't change much of the actual gameplay aside from adding abilities and limitations. I wouldn't much be interested in a game that changes the physics and gameplay dynamics. A run and gun fps rpg for me, thanks. If this sounds like something you might be interested in, I suggest you use this for reference:
http://vortex.planetquake.gamespy.com/about.shtml
One of the best q2 mods i've ever played.
[img]http://myspace-001.vo.llnwd.net/00555/10/05/555355001_l.gif[/img]