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Stygian Emperor

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About this mod

Rebalances most weapons and some enemies to my personal taste, in the vein of Quake 2 EnPLUS.
Modularity hopefully forthcoming. Source code and artwork included. Based on Quake II PSX.

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1.2.1 Changelog (with commentary) here

Stygian Quake II (feel free to skip to the changelist below)
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
I'll try to make this comprehensive, and provide overindulgent commentary as I go. How embarrasing...
A version without commentary is available in the readme found in the Docs tab and in the download file.

Weapons
Spoiler:  
Show
Blaster:
  • Increased projectile speed from 1500 -> 2000 (33%). Because the other early weapons are pretty garbage at long range even against perfectly still targets, yet I didn't want it to actually be a "good" choice in most fights since it doesn't use ammo. Pretty sure 2000 is the default upper limit on velocity in Quake II, though that limit too can be changed.
  • Increased damage vs. corpses x2 (100%). Unless and until you get the chainfist, the blaster is what I tend to use to clean rooms after fights, and by vanilla it takes like 8 shots or something to destroy a Tank's corpse with it. Pyow. Pyow. Pyow. Pyow. Pyow. Pyow. Pyow. Pyow.
  • Increased damage vs. inanimate objects from 15 -> 20 (33%). So you can one-shot your own prox mines if you laid them in a bad place.
  • Alerts enemies at the end of each firing loop instead of the start. This enables it to get surprise attack damage without a silencer, especially if the enemy is close.
Chainfist:
  • Increased damage from 7 -> 14 (100%) and reach from 24 -> 48 (100%). This weapon is so cool, but it's just ultimately an even worse alternative to the blaster despite being something you find pretty far into the game. In deathmatch it normally deals 15 damage, which seems a lot better, but the reach is almost as bad as the vanilla super shotgun's and you'll often find yourself hitting air when you're already way too close for comfort, so I doubled it. Feels good now. Why did I only increase its damage to 14 instead of 15? Who can say? Who can say...?
  • 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%). Sure, it's a noisy weapon even when you're not swinging it - I can forgive the Strogg being able to hear it before I hit them - but only right before I hit them, thus stealing my surprise attack damage bonus? No, I wish to be a chainfist rogue once in a while and get backstab damage if I manage to get that close to someone without a silencer handy. Speaking of which this also reduces the cost of swings while using a silencer, since it only counts as playing a "noise" for the purposes of enemy alertness once per swing instead of every frame while you're attacking. ...Hold on, a chainsaw silencer?
Shotgun:
  • Increased damage per-pellet from 4 -> 5 and knockback per-pellet from 8 -> 10 (25%). The shotgun fires 12 pellets, so the total damage went from 48 -> 60 if all of them connect. This makes it a non-useless weapon instead of a useless one when you're fighting anything tougher than a gunner. I made the same change in Quake 1's Combat+ mod and it was a lifesaver. Boy did Id decide they hated shotguns for a while there.
  • Increased fire rate by 2 "frames," from 10 -> 8 (20%). Makes it feel a little more nimble - it is one of your smaller weapons, after all - and helps further increase DPS to slightly more "competitive" levels.
Super Shotgun:
  • Reduced horizontal spread from 1000 -> 667 (33%). The super shotgun fires 20 pellets at 6 damage each, and in the vanilla game, at just the widest spread you ever saw - which was cool if you were shooting at like 5 Guards in a line or physically touching any other enemy - but not great at any range. This change makes it feel a little like if the super shotgun from Quake 1 actually did enough damage, too.
  • Increased fire rate by 1 "frame," from 10 -> 9 (10%). The SSG actually fired at the same rate as the SG, but I always thought it was slower until I looked at the files - apparently it only feels unbearably ponderous. This boost is nice when you don't have solid cover to duck behind between shots.
Machinegun:
  • Reduced vertical spread from 500 -> 375 and horizontal spread from 300 -> 225 (25%). The machinegun is very cute but it felt like it needed something over the chaingun other than controllable ammo expenditure once you're fighting bigger enemies. This makes it not great, but okay, at long range, and generally able to land more of that ammo you're being so careful with.
  • The first 10 bullets fired are more accurate. Remember how the machinegun used to kick upwards in an awkward early-gaming-history sort-of recoil system, but only for the first 10 shots? The code for that doesn't quite work in the rerelease, because the game runs at 40 hz now instead of 10 hz; basically it can do four times as much stuff in the same amount of time, and various systems in the code exist to keep the game feeling the way it used to despite that improvement -
    • 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. - However, the machinegun's original recoil was apparently not popular enough to recreate; as mentioned in the code's comments: "[Paril-KEX] disabled as this is a bit hard to do with high tickrate, but it also just sucks in general." -
    • 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). - and I don't blame him. The new system feels a lot better, for sure. But I managed to repurpose the old code; the machinegun counts each bullet it fires, and instead of increasing recoil to higher heights, it increases spread.
  • Silencer charge consumption reduced from 1 per shot -> 1 per every 2 shots (100%). The silencer obviously isn't meant for high fire-rate/low damage-per-hit weapons, but I wanted to balance it a tiny bit more in their favor.
 ETF Rifle:
  • Restored shield-ignore effect. In Ground Zero this was its only real benefit over something like the hyperblaster (other than something abstract and lame like "ammo-type exclusivity") - it bypassed Strogg shields to damage health directly. The Re-Release gave half the effect to energy weapons like the hyperblaster, which is cool I guess, except they removed it from the ETF rifle and gave it, as far as I can tell, nothing in return. Technically it ignores armor, but you know which non-deathmatch enemies wear armor? I didn't until I read about this: Turrets. Just turrets. Well now my ETF rifle ignores both. My headcannon is that the "explosive-tipped flechettes" are now "electromagnetic-tipped flechettes."
  • Increased projectile speed from 1150 -> 1725 (50%). Also did this so it stays useful next to the hyperblaster.
  • Silencer charge consumption reduced from 1 per shot -> 1 per every 2 shots (100%). See entry for machinegun.
Chaingun:
  • Shortened spinup time from 10 -> 5 frames (50%) and removed firing during spinup. I don't even want to talk about how hard this thing's vanilla firing code is to comprehend. But Gatling-style machineguns are my favorite guns, and I grew to absolutely loathe using this one even though the Quake II chaingun is the first one I ever used.
  • Mechanically removed/reworked spindown. Anyway, this mod makes it feel a bit more like good, boring miniguns from games like UT2004, Fallout, and Doom 4. I wish I was lying when I said it took me an entire day just to get this thing working how I wanted. Update (1.1): Add another half a day to that - and it's still not perfect, but it's pretty good.
    • During the first half of spindown you can skip spinup and resume firing immediately. There's so many little nuances you wouldn't even think about -
    • During the second half of spindown you can begin spinup as if from idle. - like how it's able to fire 2 remaining bullets if you don't have enough for it to shoot the 3-per-frame that it wants. -
    • Spinning up without firing (tapping "fire" once) proceeds directly to the second half of spindown. - that tiny detail alone caused hours of my suffering.
  • Reduced damage per bullet from 8 -> 7-8 (-6.25%). I don't know if Quake II plays nice with fractions of hitpoints, so to get "7.5" damage I made it pick between 7 and 8 at random per shot. Since it takes less time from pulling the trigger before you're doing full DPS, and you're going to waste a lot less ammo after your target is dead, this nerf I felt was necessary to what basically amounted to the poor man's BFG. Interestingly, the chaingun always did 6 damage per bullet in deathmatch.
  • The first 15 bullets fired are more accurate. There's nothing about the repurposed recoil code I used that requires the machinegun specifically, and because it was cool I kind of wanted to implement some version of dynamic accuracy across all the non-perfect-accuracy weapons -
    • 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. - However, there's only one other weapon that's both hitscan and automatic, and adapting the code to other types was going to take more time than I wanted to put in, especially for guns that aren't particularly inaccurate like the hyperblaster and ETF rifle -
    • 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). - I thought the machinegun could use the boost, since more or less the only reason to use it over the improved chaingun in 1.1 was its accuracy. And while I technically buffed the chaingun in a similar way here, you can see how it'd be barely noticeable in-game by comparison.
  • Silencer charge consumption reduced from 1 per every bullet fired (up to 3 per frame) -> 1 per every 3 bullets fired (1 per frame) (200%). The chaingun now only eats silencer charges as fast as the machinegun used to.
Hand Grenades:
  • Enabled surprise attack damage. Apparently grenades never dealt surprise bonus damage until the Quake II PSX mod came along. It (and therefore this mod too) enables grenades (and prox) to deal it, but only the grenades that come out of a grenade launcher, I guess because hand grenades throws are "silent?" Regardless I would never in my right mind choose to throw a grenade if I had the launcher, especially now with the PSX buff - I know launching grenades around corners already accounts for like 90% of my surprise attacks in every playthrough.
Trap:
  • Currently unchanged. I always forget this thing exists.
Tesla Mine:
  • Now counts as energy damage. Come on; it's literally arcing electricity. As a bonus, this also enables damage markers around your crosshair while the tesla mine deals damage, so you know when he's doing a good job even out of sight and far away.
  • Increased mine health based on difficulty level: Easy = 75; Medium = 100; Hard = 125; Nightmare = 150 (50%-200%). Vanilla health was 50 on all skill levels, and basically couldn't deal damage to most enemies before they smashed it on Hard or Nightmare. Deathmatch health is 20, which is unchanged - I don't play deathmatch.
  • Mine maximum lifetime increased from 30 seconds -> 60 seconds (100%). Teslas having a limited lifespan makes more sense for balance purposes once you increase their max health by like 3-ish times like I did, but I felt like 30 seconds was just annoyingly short.
Grenade Launcher:
  • Increased projectile speed from 600 -> 750 (25%). This translates directly to increased range. I also reduced the initial angle of the grenade as it leaves the barrel by the same percent so you can still aim the way you're used to and hit closer things without needing to adjust - basically the grenades just fly a little straighter.
  • Increased fire rate by 3 "frames," from 10 -> 7 (30%). This matches the unchanged fire rate of the rocket launcher, allowing the grenade launcher to deal slightly more DPS than it if you can hit reliably. This was also one of the harder things to figure out, because Quake II's fire rates are directly linked to its gun animations which are more or less indecipherable on first viewing. As of 1.1 I've managed to remove almost all of the visual weirdness this caused.
Prox Launcher:
  • Increased projectile speed from 600 -> 750 (25%). See grenade launcher entry.
  • Prox ammo pickup quantity reduced from 5 -> 4 (-20%). I like the prox launcher, even if its model is just a lazy recolor of the grenade launcher -
  • Max prox ammo carried reduced from 50 -> 40 (-20%). - but I wanted it to be more "bang for your buck," basically. I wanted to force myself to spend less time creating minefields -
  • Prox damage increased from 90 -> 120 (33%). - without actually nerfing the gun. And I felt like it doing less damage than the grenade launcher was kind of weird, given that you have to wait for each projectile to deploy before it does full damage -
    • Undeployed prox damage increased from 60 -> 80 (33%). - and they will basically never hit an enemy directly for full damage like a grenade does, anyway.
  • Prox maximum lifetime increased from 45 seconds -> 90 seconds (100%). I feel like prox only self-destruct after such a short time because deathmatch would understandably suck otherwise. I doubled their quantity of life for my own quality of life.
Rocket Launcher:
  • Increased projectile speed from 650 -> 975 (50.0%). Quake II rockets go too slow.
Hyperblaster:
  • Increased projectile speed from 1000 -> 1500 (50%). Technically the same change as I made to the standard blaster; mostly I just don't really like how much better the plasma beam always seemed than the hyperblaster.
  • Silencer charge consumption reduced from 1 per shot -> 1 per every 2 shots (100%). See entry for machinegun.
Ion Ripper:
  • Increased projectile speed from 500 -> 600 (20.0%). Honestly this could probably stand to still go a little faster - I just like round numbers. I'm glad for a while there we as a global society decided every game should have a gun that shoots ricocheting sawblades and specifically name them "rippers;" it's canon. In the future the sawblades are just made of ions.
  • Alerts enemies 1 frame after firing. This doesn't do much; I want you to not lose your surprise bonus damage between the gun firing and the projectile hitting the enemy - assuming they're not facing you - but I still don't know how to make things delay by time rather than just by frames, and the ion ripper only has two firing frames.
Plasma Beam:
  • Silencer charge consumption reduced from 1 per per firing frame -> 1 per every 2 frames (100%). See entry for machinegun. I don't know, there's just something "unchallenging" about this gun that makes it feel like cheating, despite it's technically-inefficient cell consumption. At least the Quake 1 thunderbolt had the decency to abruptly end its beam after a few meters, even if it did do a million damage. Maybe if I could make it force your mouse sensitivity down to make it like you were struggling to move the beam around?
Railgun:
  • Currently unchanged. And I don't really intend to change it; when Nightdive split the difference on its damage change in patch 1 to 125, they hit the mark. I would, however, love to be able to change its beam particles to orange to match the gun, but apparently that's hard-coded into the engine for some ungodly reason? Until some sourceport like KMQuake2 comes out again I'll just have to settle for changing the gun to glow blue, instead (not included in this mod).
Phalanx Cannon:
  • Increased projectile speed from 725 -> 1090 (50.0%). Quake II rockets go too slow. Even the particle cannon ones. Kind of disappointed this particle cannon doesn't turn Strogg into screaming skeletons like the F.E.A.R. one does, the Necron ones do, and presumably the Command & Conquer: Generals one does, but then the Strogg don't have much in the way of skeletons anymore, I suppose. At least it already dealt energy damage like it should.
BFG10k:
  • Removed line-of-sight check between the player and potential targets for the larger secondary explosion. ...As much as this makes it even more OP. Did you know that LoS check was a thing? Decino on YouTube has a whole video explaining it. It became all I thought about when I used it; kinda ruined it for me. Always thought it was just if an enemy was damaged by the lasers they got hit with the explosion. No way I can figure out how to program it to do that, though.
Disruptor:
  • Reduced knockback from 3 per damage dealt to 1 per damage dealt (-66.7%). I dunno, I just hated how it felt. The comments in its code specifically note that it was going to deal even more knockback. Might be cool if it fired black hole singularities that sucked in enemies like the Quake IV version, I guess. I really don't feel like trying to repurpose the Trap's singularity effect code right now though.
Items
Spoiler:  
Show
Ammo Pack:
  • Increases maximum ammo capacity for any ammo type that it did not increase in the base game. I'm certain it wasn't due to the comments around it in the code, but this almost just felt like an oversight rather than on purpose for balance or anything. "Fixing" it also lets me mitigate the max ammo nerf I made to the prox. Note that the ammo pack always gives you the highest possible ammo capacities regardless of if you found the bandolier first, in both this mod and 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). As a bonus, this also enables you to acquire a few Traps and Teslas outside their respective mission packs, which is probably why they weren't included before. No idea about prox.
    • Prox
    • Tesla
    • Trap

Bandolier:
  • Increases maximum ammo capacity for any ammo type that it did not increase in the base game. "Ammo pack" comes before "bandolier" in this list for alphabetical reasons; in-game you pick up the bandolier first so that's why it has lower numbers. I thought it was odd that it doesn't normally increase grenade or rocket capacity given that the ammo pack increases them as much as it does anything else. Also, I did not add new refills for any other ammo types; normally the bandolier only refills some bullets and shells and I didn't care enough to change that, given its rarity.
    • 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. Power shields, by comparison, block 66% of damage taken from any direction, including from hazardous liquids, at the cost of 50% of the damage blocked in cells. So I figured this was only fair.
    • Note: This affects both players and enemies. In the base game and the two original mission packs, only brains and daedalus use power screens, and by my calculations, based on their max health and cells, this only improves their total survivability by around 20%, assuming all your damage hits them from the front. Use the modded ETF rifle and you won't even notice 

Quad Damage & Double Damage:
  • Quad damage and double damage now stack additively, rather than multiplicatively. In other words, the max damage multiplier is now 5x instead of 8x, when they're both used at the same time. Apparently they couldn't be used simultaneously prior to the re-release, which seemed reasonable; Quake II already has enough problems with bosses being trivialized by powerups. I figured if I never wanted to combine them at all, though, I would simply choose not to.
Enemies
Spoiler:  
Show
Arachnid:
  • Reduced the damage of his railguns from 50 -> 38 (-25%). These guys are pretty cool, and Quake II PSX made them straight up terrifying. Their damage is just obscene though; gladiators shooting one railgun are bad enough - if an arachnid misses you often enough with his two, he'll get pissed off and just decide to nail you three times with suddenly-perfect accuracy, which is basically insta-death, especially with the kinds of maps people are putting out these days with two or three of them in a room with no cover. Note: I didn't change his melee damage, which is also 50.
Berserker:
  • Reduced something to do with his jump attack velocity and/or distance from 1.95f -> 1.55f (-20%). Look, I'm not gonna lie to you, I don't really know what I changed - the line just said "float fwd_speed = length * 1.95f;" under the "berserk_jump_takeoff" part, and after messing with a bunch of other similarly-vaguely-jump-related-sounding lines of code, this was the change that made me the happiest: He no longer basically teleports across entire rooms to you; you can tell he's coming now, and he jumps what feels like half as far, at most. I actually like that Paril gave berserkers a jump attack, I just hate the instantaneous super-long jump attack he gave them.
  • Reduced the minimum distance he will use his jump against you from 150.f -> 125.f (-16.7%). No, I have no idea what the "f" is doing there in those numbers, and frankly I don't want to know. Anyway I figured if he can't jump as far or as fast anymore he should probably be able to begin his jump within a closer distance, if only a little.
  • Reduced the damage radius of his jump from 165 -> 83 (-50%) and the knockback it inflicts from 300.f -> 150.f (-50%). You know what enemy has a jump attack that I love? The Quake 1 fiend. Fiends are reliable jumpers. They don't keep you in suspense; they're always trying to jump on you - like clockwork - and when they do it, they have the decency to fly at a moderate speed in a predictable trajectory allowing you to do your bull-fighter thing and let them fly way past you! If you're in a good spot you can trick them into sailing off cliffs and shit! But they're still like the most terrifying enemy in Quake, a game with just the worst sort of eldritch horrors they could conjure back in 1996! They're awesome! Why can't berserkers be more like fiends?
Carrier:
  • Changed voice attenuation from "NONE" to "NORM." Attenuation, at least in this case, is how much volume decreases over distance. For whatever reason several bosses in the game had their attenuation set to "NONE" so it would sound almost as if the player was the one making their pain grunts and shit; especially confusing if you use the cyborg playermodel/voice like I do and already sound like a Strogg. The comments around this bit of code specifically say "American [McGee] wanted these at no attenuation," my guess is that they wanted to make absolutely sure the player heard what loud and impressive voices the bosses had. It sounds totally fine set to "NORM."
Guards:
  • Increased health of blaster guards from 20 -> 30 (50%) and shotgun guards from 30 -> 35 (16.7%). For reference, machinegun guards have 40 health, so these aren't exactly very game-changing. I mostly wanted the weakest enemies to gib less frequently with the buff I gave to the shotgun.
Hornet:
  • Changed voice attenuation from "NONE" to "NORM." See carrier entry.
Icarus & Daedalus:
  • Increased damage dealt per shot from 1 -> 1-2 (50%). Xansaibot7's argument was compelling; Icarus and Daedalus attacks basically just tickle you despite the fact that they're ostensibly meant to be scarier than the little flyers. Was worried doubling their damage outright would be too much, so I made it pick between 1 and 2 damage at random per shot. It remains to be seen if this increase was too conservative.
Makron:
  • Changed voice attenuation from "NONE" to "NORM," except for taunt and death sounds. See carrier entry. I figured you'd still want to hear his taunts and death very clearly though.
Stalker:
  • Reduced health from 250 -> 200 (-20%).175 is the max health the parasite has, so I think 200 is fitting given a stalker's similar size and bodyplan. Stalkers also share their ability to recover lost health, which I had no idea until recently is apparently what they're doing when they play dead. "Oh maybe if you didn't know anything about the game you shouldn't assume you know better than the devs and be changing it haphazardly," I hear you say. Well, "shut up, I've been writing absolute nonsense all night and the sun's about to come up and I'm very tired but I want to upload this mod before I go to bed," I hear me say. 250 health was way too tanky for something so small and wily and numerous. Love these guys though.
Supertank:
  • Doubled the number of grenades he fires per full-volley attack from 2 -> 4 (100%). This is my favorite enemy in the game, and possibly in any game, at least from a visual design perspective. I've drawn pictures of cyborgs on tank treads all my life due to this guy. Here's my magnum dopus. Unfortunately he's not terribly hard to fight, so when I learned Nightdive restored his cut grenade launcher attack I thought it was the perfect way to give him the gunner-like bouncing explosive death-spam he needed to hurt you around the corners you can so easily escape him behind. But he only fires two measly grenades in a burst; it's nothing like a gunner's ability to really pin you down. I managed to double the number of grenades he shoots at once and it works pretty well to make him a bit scarier.
Other
Spoiler:  
Show
Music:
  • Completing the final objective in a mission no longer turns off game music. It now randomly selects from among 16 of the PC version's non-ambient tracks to play. I haaate the weird silence you get at the end of each mission, when what I most want to do now is explore for secrets, which generally takes me longer than actually beating the level. I never understood why it does that, and it's not a glitch or anything - the code tells the game to play (CS_CDTRACK, "0") which doesn't mean a non-existant "track00," but literally to stop playing music.
    • Note: This can potentially be the same track that was already playing prior to completion. It's faster to list the songs not included than the ones that are; of the base game and mission packs 1 + 2: track10 - Climb, track11 - Showdown, track20 - Pressure Point [Huh? Again?], track21 - Ground Zero. (The music files start with "track02" for some reason poorly explained by the wiki.)

Physics:
  • Reduced rate of fall damage accumulation from 0.0001f -> 0.000085f (-15%). Or at least I'm pretty sure that's what that number does. Basically, from my (admittedly brief) testing, distances 15% higher should be safe to fall, and falls that deal damage should deal 15% less. There are a lot of places in Quake II where reducing fall damage by a pretty tiny amount would have kept my poor guy from groaning in pain when I took the fast way down, so I decided that needed to happen. Note: PSX levels use 0.000078f for this number by default; since it's already lower this was left unchanged.
It's possible I forgot to list all the things 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 changelog above the mod description.

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 | ModDB 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.