EpiQuake mod

EpiQuake is a new sound mod for Quake 1 which has replaced around 90% of Trent Reznors sound design work with new original recordings bringing quake up to date by giving the sound an overall modern vibe with some epic flare.  HUGE sounding / stereo panned weapons, deadly new enemy sounds, toned down yet dark ambient sounds, and epic platform / door sounds with a huge sense of low end have all been included.  The entire project was completed over the course of two weeks by veteran game and film sound designer / composer Rich Douglas.  EpiQuake works best with Dark Places (you just place the pk3 files in your darkplaces/id1 folder), but with some crafty manual copying, you can get these sounds to work in almost ANY version of the game.  Install instructions will be detailed when the mod is released!    

To my knowledge there have been very few (if any at all) attempts to bring the sound design heard in Quake up to today's game industry audio standard.  There have been attempts to upsample the existing audio.... but never a Quake sound project of this scale.  While close to 90% of the sounds have been replaced... they are all still in the same vein as Reznors original sounds but in some cases darker, more cinematic, and most importantly... full HD quality at 44.1 16 bit!  In fact, many of the sounds stem from the original ideas and then expand on them while keeping them consistent with the quake world.  Make no mistake, this is not one of the many humorous Quake sound mods out there... this is deadly serious and will take your Quake experience to the next level.  The idea wasn't to do something better than Trent Reznor.. just to bring the games overall sound design up to date so it fits better with the killer upgraded visual paks and DarkPlaces.  In fact, all of the video footage here was recorded utilizing rygels high res texture pak and the amazing Dark Places engine.  This sound / music pak is the perfect companion for these visual tweaks! 

What has been replaced exactly?
Bear in mind that the sounds done for this mod are 100% original, and in some cases stem from newly recorded foley and/or vocal work.  Rather than just take sounds directly from sound libraries and slap them in the mod, all of these sounds were designed / edited carefully from many sound sources.

Weapons - ALL of the player weapon sounds are new.  In fact, many of them stem from original recordings.

Ambience - ALL ambient sounds have been replaced with original sound design work

Monsters / Enemies - All of the Enemy sounds aside from the Bosses, Fish, Blob, and Shambler have been replaced.  So outside of the exceptions listed above, enemy attacks, sight, pain, death, and idles are all new.  In fact, most of the sounds were done from scratch and enemies like the Enforcer and Wizard have had new vocal work recorded on top of their sound overhaul.  As an homage to the original sounds, I kept the Enforcers "Stop!" "You There!", etc etc vocal work the same, just re-recorded it and processed it slightly differently.  In fact, the Enforcer is now more of a cyborg in sound... when you kill him and he slumps over dead computerized female voice now emits from his suit saying "Check For Pulse...".  The Chainsaw creepiness of the Ogre has been overhauled and amped up and the Demon... well, the Demon sounds downright huge and nasty now.  Just wait until you hear it jump and/or land next to you.  Thats just a quick example of some of the small but cool details added to the sound design for EpiQuake.

Platforms, Doors, and Buttons - ALL of these have been replaced with new sound design work.  While many of them are true to the originals, the sci fi / medieval factor was cranked way up through vicious sounding cranks to ethereal beeps to signify a platform has stopped.

Player Sounds - Basically EVERYTHING except for the player death sound, which I've always been kinda partial to.  The new in / out of water, lava, slime sounds are all stereo panned with reverb added for a sense of space.  The pain sounds now have a certain brutal crunch / blood splat vibe to them.

Items - MOST of the item sounds have been replaced.  New armor sound, new quad damage suite, and new (more realistic) hazard suit sounds.

Miscellaneous - Various other sounds were replaced and designed from scratch including all of the GUI / Menu sounds on the front end side of things, all of the teleportation sounds, the "talk" beep, trigger sounds, and the key pickup sounds.

Another notable addition... the sense of space.  All of the original sounds were very dry and didn't reflect the world they are heard in.  As of now, Quake 1 does not have a way to add reverb in engine to sounds... so many of the sounds have had a bit of reverb burned into the masters to give them a sense of space.  The end result is a very engulfing audio experience.. one which has never been heard in Quake before! 

For the purpose of this project, close to 20 minutes of new music was put together and included as a seperate PAK.  While Reznors sound design minimalist style score was effective (and very cool) something more cinematic, tense, and thematic changes the intensity of the game without losing the original dark vibe of the original score.  The music was composed originally for the project by Rich Douglas who has composed music heard in games accross many platforms.  Recent games Rich has composed music for include Evochron Mercenary, Stan Lee's Verticus (iOS), and most recently he is working on all of the music and sound design for the Shadowgate remake headed to tablets and PC. This new score changes the game and the overall tone slightly... which is why it has been included as a separate PAK file for the Reznor purists.

The mod is COMPLETE with the final touches currently being added.  The PAK files will be available for download very soon.  And samples of the new score as well as gameplay videos will be uploaded before release.  This isn't your fathers Quake... it's EpiQuake.