Time for me to bump things up. Despite my absenses from the Forums, my Doom-related projects are still on the work bench. Last school year was pretty hectic and, coupled with the other things I have going on, I had to take some time away from Z-QUAKE every now and then. I'm relieved to announce that over the past few days, I've been working on accurizing the items in the game (in terms of screen color upon acquiring, item-specific pick-up sounds, etc.).
Other changes finally include the two random axe attacks, accurized weapon speeds, plus six random pain sounds and five random death sounds for the player.
The resources are almost exactly where they need to be, so I may release a much-needed demo for the updated technical stuff. I'll be posting a new video soon (screenshots keep coming out too dark), as I've also made-over the introductory map and have plans for redoing some of the other levels. Z-QUAKE is far from being done, but I've never learned so much from one single Doom mod and I feel I owe it its eventual completion.
In the meantime, here's another little modification I've made to the character classes that I've been meaning to do for a while now. The names have been changed to Ranger (implying the standard Quake character we're all familiar with), Marine, and Bruiser. My old selection icons were kind of crappy; they were recolored Quake logos, each with a different amount of nails sticking through them. The image quality wasn't the greatest either and I've since gotten Slade 3 so I can deal with .png's more easily. Long story short, these are the new selection icons players will see in the menu prior to starting a new game (they're resized by 200-300% in GZDoom):
More updates will be on the way, including a fresh video showing the recent
in-game changes.
The only negative news I have regarding the project is that I'm considering scrapping the cooperative AI soldiers. Testing out various scenarios has revealed that I have to spend more time worrying about where they are (and their behavior at points is somewhat odd), which gets in the way of the story and takes away from the isolated feeling of the actual Quake. The hub-style gameplay is still a must for me, but having sidekicks might be too big a deviation from the source material.