Stygian Quake II mod

Stygian Quake II

When Update 1 for the Re-Release broke the Quake 2 EnPLUS mod, I pretty much stopped playing the game despite being partway through the Call of the Machine campaign. I didn't want to go back to how the game was before. Eventually Map-Center came out with so many map jams and Quake II PSX came out and I figured I had to try them, but I still longed for the days where my shotguns didn't feel anemic and my machineguns weren't wildly uncontrollable, among other things.

Unfortunately EnPLUS's author just fell off the map; over the last year I tried contacting him through Nexus several times just to see if I could get his mod's source code and try to update it for him, but had no luck. The source code for Quake II, however, is easily accessible, and the things I wanted to do didn't seem too complicated, so finally I went through the (just, unreasonably arduous, for a non-coder) process of figuring out how to compile my own mod. After a period of fiddling around and asking Paril and others in the Map-Center Discord for help explaining code I have absolutely no business meddling in, I actually managed to make all the changes I liked from EnPLUS and then some.

Changelist

If you want my reasoning for each change, check out the mod's description at Nexus Mods.
Click READ MORE to see the simple version --->

Weapons:

• Blaster:
  • Increased projectile speed from 1500 -> 2000 (33%)
  • Increased damage vs. corpses x2 (100%)
  • Increased damage vs. inanimate objects from 15 -> 20 (33%)
  • Alerts enemies at the end of each firing loop instead of the beginning
• Chainfist:
  • Increased damage from 7 -> 14 (100%) and reach from 24 -> 48 (100%)
  • Alerts enemies or consumes silencer charges at the midpoint of swings, rather than throughout: Silencer charge consumption per full attack animation loop reduced from 27 to 3 (900%)
• Shotgun:
  • Increased damage per-pellet from 4 -> 5 and knockback per-pellet from 8 -> 10 (25%)
  • Increased fire rate by 2 "frames," from 10 -> 8 (20%)
• Super Shotgun:
  • Reduced horizontal spread from 1000 -> 667 (-33%)
  • Increased fire rate by 1 "frame," from 10 -> 9 (10%)
• Machinegun:
  • Reduced vertical spread from 500 -> 375 and horizontal spread from 300 -> 225 (25%)
  • The first 10 bullets fired are more accurate
    • Accuracy reduces per-bullet fired from 0 spread with the first bullet fired to a maximum of 75% spread of the base game machinegun with the 11th bullet fired onward
    • Accuracy begins to recover 0.5 seconds after you stop firing, and fully recovers, at most, 1 second after you stop firing (less if you had not fired 10 bullets)
  • Silencer charge consumption reduced from 1 per shot -> 1 per every 2 shots (100%)
• ETF Rifle:
  • Restored shield-ignore effect
  • Increased projectile speed from 1150 -> 1725 (50%)
  • Silencer charge consumption reduced from 1 per shot -> 1 per every 2 shots (100%)
• Chaingun:
  • Shortened spinup time from 10 -> 5 frames (50%) and removed firing during spinup
  • Mechanically removed/reworked spindown
    • During the first half of spindown you can skip spinup and resume firing immediately
    • During the second half of spindown you can begin spinup as if from idle
    • Spinning up without firing (tapping "fire" once) proceeds directly to the second half of spindown
  • Reduced damage per bullet from 8 -> 7-8 (-6.25%)
  • The first 15 bullets fired are more accurate
    • Accuracy reduces per-bullet fired from 20% spread of the base game chaingun with the first bullet fired to a maximum of 100% spread with the 16th bullet fired onward
    • Accuracy begins to recover 1 second after you stop firing (the moment the barrels stop spinning), and fully recovers, at most, 1.5 seconds after you stop firing (less if you had not fired 15 bullets)
• Hand Grenades:
  • Enabled surprise attack damage
• Trap:
  • Currently unchanged
• Tesla Mine:
  • Now counts as energy damage
  • Increased mine health based on difficulty level: Easy = 75; Medium = 100; Hard = 125; Nightmare = 150 (Vanilla health was 50 on all skill levels) (50%-200%)
  • Tesla maximum lifetime increased from 30 seconds -> 60 seconds (100%)
• Grenade Launcher:
  • Increased projectile speed/distance from 600 -> 750 (25%)
  • Increased fire rate by 3 "frames," from 10 to 7 (30%)
• Prox Launcher:
  • Increased projectile speed/distance from 600 -> 750 (25%)
  • Prox ammo pickup quantity reduced from 5 -> 4 (-20%)
  • Max prox ammo carried reduced from 50 -> 40 (-20%)
  • Prox damage increased from 90 -> 120 (33%)
    • Undeployed prox damage increased from 60 -> 80 (33%)
  • Prox maximum lifetime increased from 45 seconds -> 90 seconds (100%)
• Rocket Launcher:
  • Increased projectile speed from 650 -> 975 (50.0%)
• Hyperblaster:
  • Increased projectile speed from 1000 -> 1500 (50%)
  • Silencer charge consumption reduced from 1 per shot -> 1 per every 2 shots (100%)
• Ion Ripper:
  • Increased projectile speed from 500 -> 600 (20.0%)
  • Alerts enemies 1 frame after firing (this doesn't do much)
• Plasma Beam:
  • Silencer charge consumption reduced from 1 per firing frame -> 1 per every 2 frames (100%)
• Railgun:
  • Currently unchanged
• Phalanx Cannon:
  • Increased projectile speed from 725 -> 1090 (50.0%)
• BFG10k:
  • Removed line-of-sight check between the player and potential targets for the larger secondary explosion
• Disruptor:
  • Reduced knockback from 3 per damage dealt to 1 per damage dealt (-66.7%)

Items:

• Ammo Pack:
  • Increases maximum ammo capacity for any ammo type that it did not increase in the base game
    • Prox (to 80)
    • Tesla (to 10)
    • Trap (to 10)
  • Refills ammunition for types not it did not refill in the base game (counts as one pickup of those types)
    • Prox
    • Tesla
    • Trap
• Bandolier:
  • Increases maximum ammo capacity for any ammo type that it did not increase in the base game
    • Grenades (to 75)
    • Rockets (to 75)
    • Prox (to 60)
    • Tesla (to 8)
    • Trap (to 8)
• Power Screen:
  • Now blocks 100% of damage from the front angle, at the cost of 50% of the damage blocked in cells, up from blocking 33% of damage taken at the cost of 100% damage blocked in cells
    • Note: This affects both players and enemies
• Quad Damage & Double Damage:
  • Now stack additively, rather than multiplicatively (max damage multiplier is 5x instead of 8x)

Enemies:

• Arachnid:
  • Reduced the damage of railguns from 50 -> 38 (-25%)
• Berserker:
  • Reduced jump attack velocity and max target distance from 1.95f -> 1.55f (-20%)
  • Reduced jump attack min target distance from 150.f -> 125.f (-16.7%)
  • Reduced jump attack damage radius from 165 -> 83 (-50%) and knockback inflicted from 300.f -> 150.f (-50%)
• Carrier:
  • Changed voice attenuation (volume decrease over distance) from NONE to NORM
• Guards:
  • Increased health of blaster guards from 20 -> 30 (50%) and shotgun guards from 30 -> 35 (16.7%)
• Hornet:
  • Changed voice attenuation (volume decrease over distance) from NONE to NORM
• Icarus & Daedalus:
  • Increased damage dealt per shot from 1 -> 1-2 (50%)
• Makron:
  • Changed voice attenuation (volume decrease over distance) from NONE to NORM, except for taunt and death sounds
• Stalker:
  • Reduced max health from 250 -> 200 (-20%)
• Supertank:
  • Doubled max number of grenades per volley from 2 -> 4 (100%)

Other:

• Music:
  • Completing the final objective in a mission no longer turns off game music. It randomly selects from among 16 of the PC version's non-ambient tracks to play, instead
    • Note: This can potentially be the same track that was already playing prior to completion
• Physics:
  • Reduced rate of fall damage accumulation from 0.0001f -> 0.000085f (-15%)

It's possible I forgot to list everything I changed, but thanks to my (unusual for me) fairly organized modding practices this time, what's listed is at least like 95% of it.

For changes only between versions of Stygian Quake II, see the changelogs (also included with the main files).

Future

At the moment, Stygian Quake II is all-or-nothing. I'd like to eventually make every change listed above optional, via in-game commands or an external .cfg the same way EnPLUS did. However, I am not a coder and it was all I could do to get this game working the way I personally wanted - more or less - and I imagine I'll have to pester Paril or whoever will still listen to me to help me expose variables or whatever.

Regardless, if it doesn't get flagged like the PSX mod's did, the source code for this mod will be available for anyone else who wants to start a mod from where I leave off, undo certain changes, fix my ghastly novice code, or just make fun of it, whatever. I have left a lot of comments throughout my edits in the code, hopefully some of it's helpful even if it's just in a puzzling out "why did he think that was the right way to do it" sort of way.

Rather than "vanilla" Quake II Re-Release, this mod is based on the Quake II PSX source code, and therefore inherits all of its additions as well as its improvements to the game as a whole.

Requirements

• Quake II Re-Release - This mod is not compatible with the original version of Quake II; it requires the 2023 Re-Release.
• Quake II PSX | Nexus Mods mirror - Because Stygian Quake II is based on the source code of Quake II PSX, you will need to use the pak0.pak from that mod for full functionality. The Arachnid enemy that appears in Call of the Machine will likely cause issues without it, if nothing else.

Installation

• Make a backup of the game_x64.dll found in \Quake 2\rerelease\baseq2\ and replace it with the one from this mod.
• Add the .pak file from Quake II PSX to one of your game folders - for myself I renamed it to pak1.pak and put it in \Users\USERNAME\Saved Games\Nightdive Studios\Quake II\baseq2\, though it might also work if you put it in your \Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Quake 2\rerelease\baseq2\ folder.