Just an Idea: Trial of Runes

"Now, you have all four Runes..."

A lot of people fairly often ask themselves "What/How I would do that?" whenever in comes to games, mods, their story... Or anything else, really: from meal you just ate to how you put things on the table. Recently it has been like that for me more than ever in the context of video games. So I decided to begin this kind of series where I focus on one of those ideas. Attempting to somewhat finalize and contain them in order to get them out of my head with a pleasant sense of satisfaction.

Nowadays I dedicated a lot of my time to original Quake: dealing with ezQuake for the first time out of curiosity, returning to Arcane Dimensions with various degrees of success and thinking about where the series can go with a new instalment. Playing Hexen 2 for the first time is also contributing to it since I've chosen Paladin due to my need of more melee combat in a Quake engine game. Not to mention poking around Quake Champions with its lore and recent updates that might suggest that something is coming for the series' 25th Anniversary.

With all that, I had some ideas for an original Quake mod that would've served as a proof of concept for things that could've been done in a theoretical sequel of the first game (and its mission packs) in the series.

Remember: It's just an idea.

Story.

Trial of Runes would take place after the ending of Dissolution of Eternity, where Ranger killed The Dragon, destroyed Temporal Energy Converter and entered the charged time pod for safety or a simple survival. Latter would obviously be more appropriate as it wouldn't end this time, despite his wishes. A few notes from Champions will be taken, like Ranger's comment about finding Runes in Part 5 of his Lore Codex. Someone or something would like to test him and his newfound abilities (which our fellow marine doesn't understand) through Trial of Runes for unknown reasons: essentially embracing the experimental nature of this mod via its short narrative. Nothing too complex, really. Just a simple description like in manuals and intermission screen at the end. That's it.

Basics.

If that mod is to become a reality, how it should be made and for what exactly? As much as I would've loved to stay as vanilla as possible, I'm not sure something like this could be done for original DOS version or WinQuake to handle nor if would be worth all the effort to do so. Especially for someone without any prior experience in Quake modding. In this case, targeting Quakespasm-Spiked should be the easiest way.

Although some may argue about the actual difficulty of such process on itself since I've heard that it's not as hard as it might seem. I should also not forget about the existence of progs_dump and how this DevKit provides a lot of possibilities and designed for newcomers to use. Something I would've also liked to see are custom HUD and menus: something that is supposedly possible only with advanced source ports.

How long Trial of Runes would need to be? Just one episode. Beginning with a starting map with difficulty selection before starting a journey through 8 maps (including the secret level). First map would be focused exclusively on melee combat with next 4 maps being more of a typical Quake experience with familiar guns, but also introducing one Rune each time to properly teach you how they work. After that, the latter half of the episode would present more challenging experience, allowing you to go wild and have fun with your full arsenal. Something like this:

• TRSTART: Predestined Destination
• TRM1: Dreamer's Pass
• TRM2: Trial of Earth Magic
• TRM3: Trial of Black Magic
• TRM4: Trial of Hell Magic
• TRM5: Trial of Elder Magic
• TRM6: The Machine Center
• TRM8: ????
• TRM7: General's Armory
• TREND: Abandoned Roost

And last but not least, I think it would've been great to also have two maps each dedicated to Deathmatch and Capture the Flag if possible.

Firepower.

My two primal goals would've been to bring the vast majority of Quake and its Mission Packs weapons and making it stupidly easier to use in actual gameplay. That's most likely a very trivial problem or even made up one for some, but I think it wouldn't hurt to wrap it up a bit. For example, reduce the amount of weapon keybinds from 8-10 to 5 with option to switch between weapons similarly to Mission Packs:

1. Axe & Mjolnir.
2. Shotguns.
3. Nailguns.
4. Grenade & Rocket Launchers.
5. Laser Cannon & Thunderbolt.

I don't think its necessary to mess around with weapons' stats and functionality. Instead I think its more appropriate to utilize alt-fire options. To be more specific, turning Proximity Mine Launcher and Plasma Gun into alternative fire option for Grenade Launcher and Thunderbolt respectively with latter consuming more of default Cells instead of Plasma ones. 

Another big change would be changing Mjolnir's ammunition from 15 Cells to 15 Mana, letting that hammer gib corpses and moving his "magic attack" to alt-fire because it simply makes more sense. There were some more ideas for melee weapons specifically, but I'm honestly not sure if that's something worth really doing. Which is odd, considering that initially I thought it would've been cool to have more focus on melee combat, especially after mastering it in Hexen 2.

Mana, Runes and Power-ups.

Finally, time has come to talk about "the big thing". I already mentioned Mana previously, but its going to be an ammo for Runes as well. That should add a bit of "RPG" flavor to the gameplay: don't take over completely, but keeping it simple while adding something new. For that reason, Mana would probably need to be more scarce with maximum amount of 100: 150-200 just feels "a bit" too much.

There should be four Runes since they're from original Quake. Idea of their functionality comes from their power-up version for Dissolution of Eternity's Deathmatch, where they give you a certain buff and remain active as long as you're staying alive. While there effects are universial and affect player himself, I've heard suggestions to redirects Runes more towards weaponry and here's some ideas I had in my mind:

• Earth Magic — adopting Lava Nails from Dissolution of Eternity. When Rune is selected, you can fire those fancy heated nails by using your Mana. No tweaks other than that. Cost: 2-4 Mana per fire.

• Black Magic — hitting enemies with Axe heals you for 10 health, which is a half of its standard damage. Cost: 10 Mana per hit.

• Hell Magic — adopting its function from DoE's DM, but limiting it to Shotguns. Reduces their attack delay by 1/3 (333.33 for Shotgun and 466.67 for Super Shotgun). Cost: 3-6 Mana per fire.

• Elder Magic — transforms Mjolnir's primary attack into ranged magic strike à la Vorpel Sword's Tome of Power attack from Hexen 2. Damage increased by 20% with 30% chance to momentarily stun almost all enemy (It wouldn't make much sense if you can stun Shambler like that). Cost: 5 Mana per hit.

Switching Runes should be pretty easy and, again, akin to Hexen 2's inventory system: for example, have "Q" and "E" keys for it by default. There're no effects for Grenade/Rocket Launchers, Thunderbolt and Laser Cannon as I figured that those weapons are already pretty solid. 

Also thought about adding Spiked Sphere/Dire Orb to the mix before realizing that I couldn't come up with a way to make it fit just right into the gameplay: its either gonna end up being overpowered or completely useless. Not sure if there's actually a middle ground for it, honestly.

Lastly, I had another idea that should (in theory) balance the gameplay and emphasize something: Ranger is still just a marine. He didn't "ascended" like Doomguy becoming Doom Slayer in "nu-DOOM" canon, but somehow uses Runes: it literally "just works" for Ranger. For this reason, I think that picking up Power-ups should disable Runes/Mana usage until they run off. Biosuit, Wetsuit and Anti-Grave Belt (if used) should be an exception for this rule though... or maybe not.

Bad Guys.

That's more of an optional thing as you probably could get away with familiar faces from Quake and Mission Packs, but not all of them as that would just be too much. Original roster would've naturally remained mostly intact, although there're some enemies who I'm not sure would've been used that much, like Rotfish and Spawn.

Not a lot to choose from with Scourge of Armagon, so Gremlin and Centroid it is. Dissolution of Eternity, on the other hand, added many new faces: Statues, Phantom Swordsman and Wrath in particular. That would make a total of 19 monsters to choose from. In theory, if mod were actually in the developement, its possible some idea would've arised and be like "Oh, I can use Hephaestus here!"

But it doesn't have to stop right there. Either as new addition on top of Mission Packs' enemies or even straight up alternative option, a few new monsters would've been cool to come up with: since this entire post is just a scuffed plot of my stupid imagination, I might as well be even more dumb and talk about even more impossible stuff than this mod is.

Axe Ogre's Character Sheet. Taken from Fandom.

I think there's no need to reinvent the whell, so I started digging through Quake's cut content for inspiration since I remembered some enemies from there. After a few minutes of embarrassment and outside help, I rediscovered Axe Ogre... or, as I would've call him, Ogre Warlord. I envision him as a powerful melee foe who uses his shield in similar fashion to Centaur from Hexen: deflecting upcoming shots from all ranged weapons with the exception of Thunderbolt, powered Mjolnir and Grenade/Rocket Launchers, making him only resistant to them. He would also push away player via shield attack if he gets too close to Ogre Warlord in defense state, which in terms would force him to leave it and make use of his axe to strike.

Another "returning" enemy from Quake's past would've been the Serpent in a form of Dragon Whelps: a direct descendants of the Dragon from Dissolution of Eternity who wish to take vengeance on the one who killed their father. In terms of mechanics, Dragon Whelp would've been just a reskin of Fire Imp from Hexen 2 with similar attacks and behavior.

Let's not forget that Quake is not only about Lovecraft & fantasy, but there's enough sci-fi bits that compliments game's unique atmosphere. Even in its imaginary form, I think that project like this should pay proper respect to the original game. However, at first I didn't knew what kind of cybernetic enemy could've been added to the mix... until I decided to take an easy route yet again. Walker is a weaker version of Armagon with a rocket launcher fused into his remaining hand.