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New Q1SP: Conference Of The Shamblers
Large and rather vertical knave city/fortress with Quoth monsters and several secrets. Hard should provide a good challenge. Hopefully balance is correct.

Download:
http://quaketastic.com/files/single_player/maps/sksp2b.zip

Screenshots:
http://i.imgur.com/2ypTcr1.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/b2xHCbJ.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/UxByJyJ.jpg

Requires Quoth and an engine with increased limits. The level has been tested with FitzQuake 0.85 and Mark V. The source map is also included in the archive.
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Apparently I Played The First Version... 
...because the OP link (or the file it links to) hasn't been updated. This needs to be fixed asap! Therefore my feedback is somewhat outdated, but I'm still going to proceed.

The level is huge and it looks very good, proper Knave style. Lighting a bit is flat in places, too many nonstandard light styles I assume, but I didn't mind too much.

Played on hard skill and got through fine, enough ammo and health. Unfortunately I must say, while I didn't hate it, I didn't enjoy the gameplay much, either. It was very grindy in exactly the way I don't like anymore (as mentioned in some other thread a couple of days ago). For the most part, you fight all varieties of knights with weak weapons which ends up being very tedious. The SNG and the RL (even the GL) are given very late - at least the ones in the open, no idea if there any early on in secrets. If anything, I would have prefered some proper weaponry to deal with all those bullet sponges, possibly some artifacts, too. Not much variation in terms of monster veriety overall. Zombies, polyps, maybe more spawns - this would have made it more interesting already. I also found that several setups were symmetrical. Symmetry in architecture is one thing, but then at least modify the enemy encounters so the player doesn't have to play the same fights twice in a row.

Several areas felt a bit unnecessarily backtracky for no reason. Usually there were a few new monsters along the way, but perhaps the areas could have looped into one another more smoothly. The consequence of this and the grind gameplay is that the map felt like it dragged on.

The arena the Vermis fight takes place is doesn't work for this enemy. It's possible to just stay up where you trigger it or on the upper stairs and take it down without being at risk of getting hit. Could have been solved by forcing the player down somehow, or only trigger the Vermis once he's on the lower floor, and locking the upper part during the fight.

I found only three secrets - and they say mine are too well hidden...

Demo


The newer version probably addresses many of these things. Should have been fixed (properly tested) to begin with, I guess. Oh well. The way I experienced it, though, the map felt like something that would have fit in nicely with 2005 releases. 
RingOfQuaddamage 
Quaketastic File Updated 
I've taken the liberty of updating the file on Quaketastic with the newer version (2.0). It is now the same as on Quaddicted. 
Vermis 
I say the problem with the vermis is mostly (90%) within the vermis' AI, most maps with it got a safespot 
Updated Quakespasm 
There's actually a newer version located at the the following URL. I saw this posted on the Quakespasm discussion here on Celephais.

http://quakespasm.sourceforge.net/devel/ 
Thanks For A Great Map 
@skacky: this is really your 1st map? i would take my hat off if i had one :-). played both versions on hard and the second is definitely better. i found only two secrets on the first run but 11 on the second one. they are well hidden but if you pay attention to your surroundings...
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i'm maybe wrong but you replaced one invisibility ring with quad. i like it. ring is useless most of the time anyway.
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one final quastion to anybody who has experience with mapping. two really big maps were released recently - horde of zendar and this one. i know that quake doesn't like complicated open spaces with lots of details. i have quite good rig to run skacky's map with darkplaces in 1920*1200 with everything maxed except for realtime world and the framerate is almost always 60 /with v-sync on/. horde of zendar is a different story. average fps is like 20 with often drops to 5-7 which makes the level unplayable in dp. i can lower resolution but to no avail. i know that sock's map uses bps2 format, but dp supports it, doesn't it?
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i'm not a mapper.. i mean i know the basics..but what makes the sock's map so demanding? 
Z_Realloc Error 
I started the game via Quake Injector. I was playing it normally. Then I quick saved the game by pressing F6. After a while, I pressed F9 to quick load that save point. Quake engine gave this error:

Z_Realloc: failed on allocation of 36864 bytes

Quake Engine: QuakeSpasm 0.85.9
Command line options: None 
 
i know that sock's map uses bps2 format

No, it does not.

Have you tried running Zendar with dynamic lights disabled? 
Jakub 
I run quake on a pretty crappy system (even use onboard gfx since i burned my gfx card. but had no trouble running zendar, i do nerve settings a lot i geuss its that or in the parameters in the command line

this is the line i use (dotn ask me what it all does i just builded that command line over the years :)

c:\games\quake\fitzquake_mark_5.exe -hipnotic -game quoth -window -dinput -m_smooth -zone 2048 -heapsize 192000 -mem 256 +set s_khz 44 -bpp 32 -gamma 0.3 +max_edicts 2048

(and that quad replaced by a ring but a different quad just before got removed) 
 
Jakub: it's my second released map for Quake (my first map is a speedmap I'm going to release properly), but I've been designing levels for almost a decade now. Not too certain what makes sock's map demanding on your rig, I can play it without any framerate drops with Fitz 0.85.

hkBattousai: now this is really weird. I'm using QS 0.85.9 too and I don't have this issue. The only things I have in my command line are -hipnotic -game quoth -gl_texturemode gl_nearest_mipmap_linear. 
 
ok.. my mistake.. i was sure i've read somewhere that zendar uses bsp2 version. thanks for clarification. but the question remains. in can run on my pc even the monster warpspasm maps or marcher forters etc... w/out problems. it's some mysterious problem with zendar... no. that's not just zendar. all sock's maps run significantly slower than all other maps. it's just that with zendar i reach new depth of fps drops. dp settings is always the same.
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i dissabled everything i could in dp option and zendar still runs like dead snail. i can even totally disable lighting by setting r_fullbright 1 and still no change. there are no monsters in sight and fps is 15-20. map runs ok in quakespasm/fitz. guess zendar doesn't like darplaces. 
 
r_novis? 
 
r_novis 0. that was the fist one i tried.:-) 
Sounds Like DP Is Guilty For Something... 
 
Big Post, Board Deleted It (timeout??) 
FU FNCUT!!!!!

TL, won't rewrite.

Cool map, great quality, good secrets, fair gameplay, needed a bit more challenge / fresh combat.

Demo http://www.quaketastic.com/files/demos/shamsksp2.zip 
 
Hay i really enjoyed this map. i played it on a low skill setting cose im not that good of a player. the only thing i could say i wish i saw that was not in the map would have been a Eddie monster your castle just seems the kind of place he would hang out! outstanding job! 
Z_Realloc Error 
I was able to play it after adding the command line option:

-zone 2048

I didn't bother trying for 512 or 1024. It just worked fine for 2048kb zone size. 
 
Sweet 
played this recently, was saving it for when I had time to enjoy it properly. 65 comments, that's it? Deserves way more feedback in my view, overall a great map (more details in forthcoming review). 
Overdue Review 
Is Quaddicted Down Again 
 
works fine here, what is the symptom you see? 
 
This is a masterpiece. It looks amazing (love the lighting and details such as the view through windows), have nice, balanced combat, brilliant secrets, excellent usage of Quoth-resources and a cool ending. A work of art. 
Nice Map 
Just played it for the first time. I always loved knave maps nad this one is really nice in terms of visuals. The gameplay is good enough. Found 6 secrets, probably will play it again to find some more.

We need more knave maps! 
 
another great map i've yet to play 
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