I will try the "no quoth monsters" mode for sure ;)
I have also played red777 again to prepare myself for the maps of this pack. 

That's alot - it takes me just under an hour, but I know it like the back of my hand.

The spawning creatures I tried not to make cheap, they sometimes spawn just around the corner, but there's a few times when I'll bring in a couple of Fiends from behind in order to force the player into the next area, generally so they can have grenades / lightning / whatever thrown at them.

The GK corridor was originally a Gug at the end, but his fire pattern meant that he basicly couldn't hit the player.

The bounce secret is overly difficult because there's a Trinity not too far away, giving the potential for instagib nails (x7 damage) but only if you're very quick indeed. I probably should have made it a bit simpler so you'd actually get a chance to kill stuff with that.

The Quoth creatures aren't so silent, instead thier sounds are a bit less distinguishable, especially with the music built into the levels - though they're all excellent, my favourite being the Gaunt. (Gauntdrop!)

Also Shambler, you're on normal skill - on hard there's four Shamblers. 

one of the many things I have liked so far is that the spawning creatures dont feel cheap but more as if they've always been there, lukring around and have finally found you.

I think I'm on the last map now, but I wuld pu this in my top 10, great work ijed. 

I don't recall having changed std Quoth sound behaviour. There's a new sound (or sounds) for the grunt, but I think he's mostly used in warpa. 

I just got a new widescreen monitor running it at -width 1400 -height 1050 -bpp 32 and there's no problem, but when I went for higher rez it just tells me its not supported.

Thats in the Nehahra engine variant. 

If anyone thinks that the external monster skins are too dark (probably because you're used to the idgamma effect) or is otherwise interested, I can describe a pretty simple way to change that using the free XnView. 

That sounds like a std 4:3 resolution, not 16:9 which is AFAIK the widescreen proportions. If you use -height 788 instead, you'll see the "fat guy" effect metl mentioned. 

In order:

I found the spawning monsters fine.

I have no idea where the Trinity is. What is the authorised way to get the Bounce secret? I used plasma off the edge of the beam, although it looked as if it should be a simple slope jump ^_*

Errrr. Creature noises. I meant the Quake ones now seem to be silent or a lot quieter when they come from the distanct of indeed spawn.

There were 4 Shamblers, I miscounted before. I know what damn skill I'm on.

I have a question for you:

Almost every player will appear in that corridor having run out of armour (collected the YA ages ago and run it out particularly around the GK area), and almost certainly run out of nails / plasma on the multiple Enforcer / multiple Fiend sections just before. How exactly do you expect them to defeat 4 Shamblers with no armour, maybe 50 spare health and 50 spare nails, effectively just with the double shotty?? The number of times you will get hit with lightning make it physically impossible, so I'd be interested to know.

BTW, this section, and the ending (which I god-moded through, I believe the ending is possible [unlike the Shambler situation in the player condition described] - however due to the combination of fiend, slime, and the ludicrous amount of damage the lighting does, it boils down purely to random chance as to how much you get hit / what the monsters do, rather than player control [again, most powerful ammo will have been used on Gugs], I'm not giving it the XXX number of goes required for that chance to crop up....I did enough of that speedrunning years ago), were the only pointlessly hard bits. The rest was difficult, but entirely feasible (see my first post on it) and pretty balanced. 

The plasma jump is the way to do it.

The trinity is a secret ;)

Didn't modify sounds from Quake / Quoth.

Ok.

The idea of the corridor sections is that the player can backtrack if they're low on whatever, which is why all the stuff opens up to allow more movement - eg. the first open area links to the GK platform after you take the long way round, as well as a few teleporters opening up.

Granted its not perfect and the levels are big just to go wanderign for a box of ammo, but the pace is set up for a midpoint finale battle. Th Shamblers aren't too hard to take down with DBS - in warpa the player has to take down two, in warpb its four, but only as the end of a large setpiece / sectional battle where they've most likely picked up cells / grenades (admittidly useless vs. Shamblers) from the Enforcers / Defenders beforehand.

As well as this there's plenty of room to retreat - I experimented with closing the player in the corridor or even just the room behind locking up to counter this, but its wasn't necessary (until the end at least) - the battle is tough enough.

Also, I'd hope that the player realises the difficulty of each combat is increasing as the doors open (dogs / enforcers / fiends / shamblers) and use thier ammo accordingly - spamming Enforcers with plasma is fairly wasteful, especially since it'll usually gib them and lose you the ammo pcikup afterwards.

I took this into account for difficulty - there's more plasma ammo on normal and even more on easy. On hard there used to be alot less - backpacks only, near enough.

The final battle is a final battle. The exit opens after you kill the Fiends, so if you're quick enough and don't mind not getting 100% kills you can escape leaving the three Gaunts behind - but thats the cowards way out.

Hard is hard for experienced players, for normal players its more like an extra level of difficulty up (NM is practically the same, just faster attacks AFAIK). This was the reason to include the -/+ Quoth coop options in the start map.

I always tested in NM, then downgraded difficulty to allow for my knowledge of structure, then further for playtesting comments, then further for each difficulty level. 

I didn't try skill 2 so I don't know if there is maybe more ammo and armour but on skill 1 all the fights are pretty manageable because the supplies are sufficient. Just finished the map on skill 1 again in 40 minutes. The bounce secret has to be reached with the help of slope jumping I think. 

...As stated before, I had the opportunity of betatesting the maps, and played through again just a couple of days ago(as usual, no time to write comments)and, while pretty tough, I found that the thing that really saves your precious ring from being violently raped is to never, ever gib any enforcer and pick up all the cells you can, also keep an eye on armour and health supplies and go for them only if you really need them.

I survived the shamblers going back and collecting ammo and armour I had left behind (still a tough call, anyway).

Played on hard and had an average hour of play time to beat the longest maps.

I'll go back to the maps on NM during the weekend.

Secrets are a real bitch, though, Ijed, how about preparing a walkthrough of all secrets for those lazy dumb slobs like me, you may post it as a txt or pdf so only those interested can download it.


I think lots of people would appreciate, what do you say?


Great stuff. What next? 

Nah, a 100% demopack would be much better :) 

...You just like to see people sweat!!!

; P 

100% NM - its definately not the fastest it can be done (I'm no speedrunner) and I reckon demos like this for the big three would drive the makers insane.

http://shub-hub.quaddicted.com/files/demos_singleplayer/warpa_ijed.dz

Only watch if you want to know all the secrets and loopholes. 

As well as this there's plenty of room to retreat - I experimented with closing the player in the corridor or even just the room behind locking up to counter this, but its wasn't necessary (until the end at least) - the battle is tough enough.

Not true - on skill 2 the corridor is locked behind the player when the 4 Shamblers appear.

If it stayed open obviously it would be an entirely different matter.

Thus the question remains.

(Also, obviously, if you reload from anywhere around the Gold Key itself, you're going to manage supplies for the second attempt, that goes without saying. I'm interested in how it's possible on the first attempt, with the supplies the player is likely to have) 

(until the end at least)

I was talking about the earlier battles, which are fairly standard - you open each door and tougher monsters come out each time. When you open the final door the difficulty spikes because you're locked in and its four Shamblers (with zombie chucking gibs through the bars behind).

It's a test of how well the player has managed thier resources in the earlier door battles.

It can make the problem of forcing the player to backtrack when there's nothing to ambush them (assuming they've cleared previous areas).

Or else just running out of ammo and trying to sword Shamblers. But if you're completely fucked by that time and have drained the level of ammo you can still instigate infighting between the Enforcers and Defenders (not too difficult) and have enough plasma to waste the Shamblers. 

this thing sounds insane, can't wait to try it! 

This is the wtfness i mentioned "after the gold key" meaning after gold door. I cheated some ammo on that, all i had was a quicksave from 1 min ago and a save from 1 hour ago.
Otherwise final fight was easy enough having taken out the gaunts with the quad and a few nails
Good job ijed, its been a while since ive enjoyed a q1sp so much. (kells bell tower map :P) 

I haven't played this (yet) and thus not tried the engine in question but as someone who primarily uses a laptop with 16:10 screen I have to chime in and say that it's rather important to support custom aspects these days because I'd hate to have to play with everything squashed or a re-scaled blurry image.

When it comes to the maps I'll probably try them when I have some time but the reports of the scale/play time per map frightens me a little bit when maps like moonlight and marcher are close to what I can cope with in terms of q1 sp maps in one chunk. 

I found that everything not just the skins to be darker than usual. maybe there was a palette change?

I just upped the gamma 0.2 points and it looked fine. 

100% secrets and 520/522 kills, 48 minutes.

http://shub-hub.quaddicted.com/files/demos_singleplayer/warpb_sw4848.rar

There are a lot of comments about the maps being too large or too difficult; IMO the size is a matter of taste; I for one like to get lost in a huge map and explore, the immersion is much higher than in smaller maps.

And I think Ijed did an outstanding job balancing the gameplay, if you want to finish on the harder skills you have to find the secrets/plan the use of powerups etc., as it should be, and it increases the replayability. 

. 

So there is no solution.

I would hate to think what happens if you quicksave before the Shambler door in the almost certain position of having burnt up ammo on previous encounters.

The balance otherwise is fine, as I said. 

hm :( 

...Not that I have anything relevant to say, except that I love the 100th post position!

And Ijed, nice work, man Helpful demo!

Sielwolf, thanks, right now I'm at work, nut tonight I'm dowloading and have a look at your demo to sort out the secrets (I found 75%).

So, in the end I hda something to say...

On to the 200th...