Maps are awesome.. not too linear and worth a second play straight away. Quite enjoyed the first boss level, and the long spider cave is fantastic - a ponderous and attractive segue - and a prelude to the next spider level. Up to E2M6 with tyrquake 0.56 and no problems so far. The graphics are just amazing. 

I never got the soundtrack going but the levels were nice and atmospheric nonetheless. Like many of the other comments here, the second episode was by far my favorite. And as far as bad guys go, I liked the new base boys and the uberscrag but Azoth looked a little too cartoony - his/her special effects were nice though :-)

The gameplay was spot on throughout even though I never figured out how to get to the last boards without cheating ;-)

I loved the architecture and all those texture combos, BTW.

Great work guys!!! 

hehe forget to saw replay travail again :p and found a secret.. on last level with the crew pics :)

neg|ke you are sexyyyyyyyyyyy
:p
distrans keep away from drugs
:)
scragbait take carefull with guns!
:p
Asaki got latin blood :p
:p
aguire is nordic nothing to say look like one!

Preach look like a english guy :p is for sure!!! 

Still playing through, just into the second episode. Yep, playing slowly.

And its good, I reckon it is better than the first, but for a single reason. The change in playstyle doesn't bother me so much; I'd say the firt 3/4 of episode one is more HL1 and the later maps more quakey - but this isn't a bad thing.

The problem with the earlier maps (I think) is that they're not as sectional as later on. It's nice to complete a large interconnected map (the dam was very satisfying) but it's also confusing; alot of the time some seemingly cryptic message pointed the way forward and the size of the maps meant a wrong turn resulted in a good five minutes of wandering before returning and trying another route.

'The door lies underwater' is a good example, after collecting the SK. It's not too helpful when most of the huge level has water.

But it was nice to explore, just sometimes it became tiresome.

This is going to start sounding like a plain chant whinge, but the enemy mix also began to grate - there was alot of reliance on the vore and Shambler, and in the later levels of episode one it became a bit tedious. I say this because pot shotting a Shambler (or Vore) who can't attack you because of the distance sometimes made the gameplay inconsistent. An increase in the Vore's max attack range + the RL would have helped. I would also have liked to see Quoth Droles replacing Shamblers in some of these areas, but that's a different mod.

Artisticly the levels shone. Getting into the Zerstorer style sections was cool and pure Quakiness. I liked the dream catcher thing in the boss prelude as well. The base / castle parts were well done as well - it did feel like an ancient place that had been taken over by a more technologically advanced culture; good work.

The superscrag was a bit of a typical boss combat - it would have been improved by the support scrags spawning from outside the edge of the arena and flying in rather than inside and just sitting there until the rocketsplash from hitting the boss killed them. Granted this would have made it more difficult, but with all that space it could have been done.

The opening levels of Ep2 were good, Somewhat basic in parts but very well done - the small improvements all over helped alot here, the HK especially.

I found the spider section a bit underwhelming to be honest. I under stand there's a second one so I'll withold judgement. The spiders are excellent enemies - thier jump reminds me of a hacehugger and the poison is really well done.

But the section is very lineal, I'dve preferred the switches scattered off in some otherwise pointless detours so that the player is more likely to reach a locked door than an open one. Thinking Shelob's Lair there with winding tunnels etc.

I'm up to the library after that, which works very well - the HK modifications work especially well there.

Hope all that doesn't sound too negative, it's just because the rest is so good. This is one of the best packs for a long while.

More comments to come. 

Preach look like a english guy :p is for sure!!!

Guilty as charged... 

..that us english guys had a *look* that could be recognised. learn something new every day i guess!

and i didn't find the hall.. but i extracted the textures & noticed the pictures in there. scragbait, i'm hoping you didn't take my episode 1 crtique too harshly; you look like someone i wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of... 

The Angles have a genetic component that makes us good at mapping.

And the Portuguese just make thier maps too difficult. </cough> 

I sure am nordic, but the guy on the pic is Klaus Kinski, a famous German actor of yore. His pic is taken from an early cult movie from which I borrowed my nick; a seriously disturbed spanish knight in armor ... 

hehe :p i will replay again to make a 100% on all secrets :)

second and third round are with my kid! he loves Quake more then me...hehehe

and guys hard skill is simply perfect... was realy realy beta tester! is perfect! 

hee, been meaning to see that one :) 

Qtfin2 is the best quake boss i've seen. Good work guys, amazing mod. Found the credits hall beneath the qtfin3 exit, though can't say the same about most of the secrets %/. TyrQuake played out the whole thing (skill 1). 

Soundtrack is seriously good. I don't know how it goes alongside the game, but IMHO it's easily better than half the ambient electronic stuff that makes it to commercial CDs.

> 'Quake' and 'DooM' are registered by Id so don't pretend you can use them
> without limitation (Activision aside).

??

--

Laugh. Trinca thinks aguirRe looks like a crazy Klaus Kinski, and distrans' a dealer. You tell 'em. 

how can i change the crappy textures of travail? 

... play something else! 

Still playing through; started again. Different machine. But still with limited playtime, so just completed ep1 again.

A few more thoughts, but nothing really to add. I do like the SuperScrag, could have seen some of her sisters, although that'd demote episode boss status.

And the Vore / Shambler combo in The Ugly Place still irritates . . . I'd have gone for a Thunderbolt near the start and a Vore / Ogre combination; though you can treat that as ijed generic map idea number 0.001.

The artistry and complexity continues to impress, very alot of nice brushwork here, over a huge scale. Even if it does sometimes get in the way.

I've got a few more thoughts but I'll try finishing the pack first.

Thanks for the Travailing, of which I still have another episode to play through. 

you can open any bsp (as if it were a texture wad) with a program called texmex.. others probably do it too but that's the one i use, it's free to download. you can then replace any textures you desire, providing the replacements are the same name & size

though i didn't think they were that bad, personally. just wasn't keen on the contrast between old-skool & nu-skool, which is quite prevailent throughout the pack (and was a bit of a problem with nehahra too if i remember rightly) 

This is a very nice mission pack. Travail actually is the first "user made" mission pack i played so much (usually i just play single maps). I managed to go to the third "end" level (qtfin3 or something like that).

However, at this i have a problem. I'm in the room with the zombies, where a tomb-like box opens with zombies inside and with other zombies around appearing once you get the golden key. The problem is that the bars in the entrance to this room close and they don't open when i kill all the zombies. I tried shooting around, walking on walls and even noclipping to see if i missed something, but still i wasn't able to find a solution.

Is there something i didn't notice?

Note that i'm using the Dark Places engine. Although the documentation states that FitzQuake is the best engine to play Travail with, that wouldn't be an option for me since FitzQuake doesn't seem to be available for Linux. However beyond odd monster/item placement in 5-6 cases (they were in middle air or half inside a wall) i didn't saw anything strange. 

... can only assume there's still a zombie somewhere to kill: one that may not have spawned properly and has 'fallen out or through' so to speak.

If you want to test this get to where the problem exists then (OK, here's the Travail coder's Easter Egg) type 'impulse 47' at the console. If the bars move then my assumption above is correct.

Speaking of Easter Eggs, how are people going with secrets etc. Is there need of a listing yet? 

Yes please do: I found some of them (during beta test), but far to find out all of them...

And I forget to say that I still didn't play the pack in its final version (shame on me), as I'm currently fullvising the first map (on three) of my current project... but don't worry, you'll get good news soon ;) 

So that was it, it seems. After typing impulse 47 at the console, an ogre appeared (only one) and after killing it, the bars opened. Then i went and killed Azoth and finished the game. 

...seems Baker is planning something that means it's not a good idea for me to start publishing listings yet, sorry.

I'm playing through 5 Rivers tonight, so go and play the final version of Travail already! 

Don't worry: I have time to play final version of Travail now ;) I''l give feedback for sure... 

Hello everybody,
just finished Travail right to the end yesterday, and I thought I�d post a coupla ramblings straight ahead about the whole thing...
Let me start off by saying all you guys made an awesome effort, large, ambitious and innovative in lots of manners, so, for starters, a toast to you all!

On to the comments, the first thing I have to point out is the way I played through this, that has been quite strange and with lots of time beetween gaming sessions... I�m sure that detracted a lot from the overall feeling. To make things worse, I was not able to get the soundtrack to work at all and I made a mistake that had me play twice the 1st episode to end the journey.
In fact, after having gone through ep01 on normal, back to Y va tan, I stumbled inside the Hard gateway and started off from the 2nd episode without realizing that I had lost the runes from the 1st. My fault, of course, but I think it would have been nice to lock the difficulty settings, once one had chosen, until the end of the full journey...
Anyway, the second pass through made me find all the secrets for all the levels in ep 01, so that�s good... The only one that escaped me is the only one secret in qte1m4 - el lugar feo, if anyone has a tip for this, drop me a mail...

Episode one is a good intro to the whole project, very oldschoolish in feeling, with cramped architecture and generally not so good looking natural spaces. The areas in the open are, IMHO, very evocative, but bring forward some limitations of quake mapping (terrain realism being one) that personally I don� like much... Another thing that I found overused is falls, be it waterfalls or bloodfalls, they look sooo fake in Q...
Gameplay wise the episode has a feeling of exploration of learning how to deal with these strange, ancient races that I definitely loved. Would have loved a new weapon, tho... (Maybe even the riot controller! It rocks sooo bad!!!)
Loved the boss, too, nice idea to have a Scrag Mother... Very nice....

Episode 2 is da s**t!!!
Everything is awzam! Architecture is tops, gameplay is tops, secrets, well... I had that idea for ages floating in my mind! You did it! So great!
The only thing, maybe, is that I never realized I battled a Boss... Did I miss something? Can some of you send me a mail with the sequence of all levels to be played? Mind you... I did not find all secrets, but I think I got the really important ones ;))), just wanted to know the right level sequence, because after a while I was a bit lost and overly surprised to find myself back in Y va tan without having encountered an end of episode Boss.
I would have loved to see more of the new Juggers around... Wait... Were they the bosses? Please, someone rescue me, I�m so confused.

The final...
Well, this is ups and downs...
A slight return of cramped architecture... A very hateable series of climbs and falls in qtfin2 that, personally, did not add anything to the feeling of the level but annoyance, and then Azoth.
Uhmmm.... Azoth.
Azoth... well... It�s got a super nice feature... I love the way he protects himself with the wing... That�s nice, but IMHO the build and texturing, and even animation needed definitely to be worked on.
As it is, it looks stiff, a little funny, maybe, not scary at all... I expected something really scary and bad... But Azoth did not really cut it for me. Sorry guys, I don�t mean to hurt anyone�s feelings or sound presumptuous, just expressing my fellings about the pack....
I felt the same about Nehahra... The end boss really did not make it for me.

While we�re at it, a little OT, anyone would ever consider use of Zerstorer as an ingame boss? I loved so much its looks and animation in the final cutscene of the pack....

Well, well... back to the Travail...
I loved the level names, a matter often overlooked in general Q discussion, the spanish names(or portuguese? Or... well, I�m not sure...) add a really dark and evil feeling...

All in all, the pack is gorgeous and, as usual, all comments are meant to be constructive criticism. I thank you from the deep, dark pits of my old heart for having spent LOTS of your time to bring us good hours of fragging fun, and I look forward to a complete list of secrets and a walkthrough.

And, obviously, your next release...

(Can't believe I wrote this much! The things you do when you don't feel like working! Sorry for the verbosity, guys, I'll keep it shorter next time) 

I finished this a while back, but didn't comment at the time cause there's plenty to say, fortunatly, most of it has been said already, which saves me the trouble!

So just wanted to congratulate you all on such great work, thanks for the great episode! =) 

...thanks again for the feedback, believe me none of it is rejected out of hand. The_Silent, the idea with "bosses" in e2 was to have (except for Chthon the undying) a many headed (so to speak) boss. Inspired somewhat by a deliberate miscomprehension of the notion "my name is legion". Hence, the horde of archenids at the end of qte2m1 and gaggle of Juggers at the end of qte2m4.

So, the guys at the local cybercafe set us up last night and we played through e1 and the finale in three player coop. My first time ever playing Quake with (or against) anyone else. Certainly opened my eyes to building with an eye to coop. Two things stood out...when anyone found out why we were having so many laughs and encouraging each other so much they immediately wanted to join the game even though it's Quake ONE!!! (is coop so lacking from modern games?), the second was the look on the owners face when Azoth went through the final sequence, after which the team and everyone watching broke into a cheer :) Awesome!

Now, we ran FitzQuake on all the machines with a heapsize of 128000 in the comline. Whenever we tried to enter e2 the machine acting as server (yes we rotated it) crashed out with the following error:

SZ_GetSpace: 8044 is > full buffer size

E1 and the fins were error free.

Is it a client related thing? Should we swap to JoeQuakeGL for e2? Spirit, what engine did you run e2 in? Cheers...