When a mapper goes out of their comfort zone to do something different it's not too much for players to do so as well.

These personal projects in q1 are bathed in personalized touches, if they weren't they'd never get made. Larger, commercialized efforts have all the personal touches removed and blanded away. 

sock, you wrote earlier that you interpret people "wagging" their mouse as them venting their frustration. I'm not sure if that's true. I think you are reading too much into this, I don't think that this map is overly frustrating. And a bit of frustration is not necessarily a bad thing, because it will give the player a feeling of accomplishment when they finish a map that was hard for them to master. It's certainly more interesting than an easy map where the player moves through a shooting gallery as if on rails. 

"Getting a little bit lost is good fun and adds to the atmosphere."

is what is missing from a lot of modern games and might be why players react the way they do in first run demos. They are just not used to it (anymore). 

I don't remember what the last Call of Duty game I bought was called, it was several years ago. I got so pissed off at the stupid brain-dead game play (go here, you are leaving the... etc) that I swore to never buy another game in that series, and I haven't. 

 

Exploring is a lost art with Q1SP maps and this was a breath of fresh air! Loved it.

If you need handholding get outside your box and take a chillpill, then go explore!

What I would really love, is if a mapper would make a really close quarters claustrophopic catacombe map..with zombies..yeah lots of zombies! 

I tried to not get lost, and got more lost than last time. I think I accidentally got on top of the first lift. Of course it still all made perfect sense with a bit of exploring. Really enjoyed it on second replay. Got 10/10 secrets and then died on the very last Shambler by running under a descending crusher. I ROCK. 

Some of my wandering was just sniffing for secrets, hopping up bits of stones. I liked the freeform aspect of the level, but by the time I found the gold door, (not just looking up at it from far below) I was on a quad-SNG rampage. If I had encountered the gold door earlier, the wandering would've been in pursuit of the gold key, rather than "Now where do I go?"

Also, sad times that you didn't check the demo, it was hand-hex-edited by LordHavoc to make it playback correctly. 

deleting pak1 should be default.
Bah, you will miss out on my super dooper models, did anyone check out the new backpack! :)

@FifthElephant, I was wondering if anyone would notice the special texture blends I created. I really miss being able to to do proper texture blending with Quake. I don't think I am too hard on myself, I always want to produce the best map I can and if something is wrong I need to know/accept what is wrong and correct it in the next release.

@Orl, awesome thanks I will check out your demo this weekend.

@negke, if players are stuck then it is a design problem, but I do believe players nowadays are not too struck on exploration.

@Kona, the map is certainly designed for several playthrough's, I don't think you can appreciate every route choice in one session.

@Shambler, I was wondering if anyone noticed the skill selection is the main map but in the past. There are a lot of subtle hints, floor/step changes, building design. I liked the idea because it nicely links to the story, what was the ivory tower before gold!
What did you think of the secrets this time around? You said the last map was not much fun finding secrets, how does this one compare?

@Spirit, I got the impression you did not like the map because of your rating on Quad. This map is certainly not for everyone.

@onetruepurple, my next map is going to be hub style like backstein but with the ability to play sections of it in reverse (via switches)

@ijed, this map is certainly an experiment, but I got some good feedback on what is wrong.

@SleepwalkR, very good point, I never thought of the frustration as way to increase accomplishment. Certainly is why Dark Souls is so good, the challenge.

@nitin, yeah modern games rarely do non-linear layouts because they can be so hit or miss with players. They are really a niche thing.

@ARRgh, glad you liked it! :)

@scar3crow, Don't worry I will check out your demo this weekend, I have downloaded it. :) 

Generally really enjoyed them, I can't rememberr them being that bad in previous maps but they're definitely good in this - good variety.

BTW there is a door in the second mine area i.e. past the SK door, that can't lead anywhere. It's the one I spent a lot of time looking at in my demo after getting the GK. It just backs on to a wall in another room and totally breaks the immersion and now I hate the map. 

Stick the pixels elsewhere and I might play with pak1 next time :P 

kept the models :) 

@Shambler, @nitin, Create a file called AUTOEXEC.CFG in the ID1 directory with the following line:

gl_texturemode GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR

This will *FORCE* quake to always start with non-pixel (blurry) textures. This overrides any QUAKE.RC file regardless if in pak files or not. You can then enjoy Quake how you want.

@Shambler, I am glad you liked the secrets, I wanted them to be more varied and yet follow a specific design with consistent visual clues. 

I love to find secrets in maps and I always hope that they have an useful reward. One idea I had with this map was to boost secret rewards by placing all powerful weapons (SNG,GL,RL,LG) in secrets so that the player got something meaningful for their effort.

I stumbled upon the final fight, which was a bit too easy I thought.
I think the problem with the skill levels is because I always balance maps based on the player not finding any secrets. With all the powerful weapons locked in secrets this caused the skill levels to be limited with no encounter crescendo.

In order to have harder monster combinations the player needs better weapons and I think next time I will go back to the original plan of secrets being early access instead of exclusive weapon locations. 

Not much ot say than to express my gratitude for this awesome map :)

There it goes my first demo with to much alcool :)

http://www.quaketastic.com/files/demos/ivory1%C2%BAdemo_drunk_hehe.rar 

It's hard to figure out what to put in secrets sometimes. I don't like putting good weapons or armor in them, in Quake that doesn't leave much. Some good weapon ammo here and there if it's otherwise limited, extra nails maybe, the good old invis thingy. Your alternate pathway is a good idea, but needs to be planned ahead of time. 

I had a blast. I'd like to play it again and record a demo for you. Might do that tonight. Keep up the good work, sock :) 

I quite like making 'bad' maps, to get a higher yield of feedback. Maybe 'flawed' is a better description, since calling your own thing bad isn't going to get many people playing it.

Commercial games are geared towards removing all flaws, while indie games focus on the flaws and make them into mechanics. 

Hey Sock,

here's a way to use Quake and your map(s) that I'm sure you wouldn't have expected (damn, I'm revealing what I'm doing in real life !) :

While watching my students doing their exam today, I was replaying your map on my 13" MacBookPro, in front of the classroom. The sound was OFF, of course, and nobody noticed that I was quietly playing Quake.

It was pretty fun to rerun accross the whole map and smashing the monsters. Sine the map is "non-linear", its lifetime is really large.

Also, the map rendering is really beautiful on the 13" screen. 

Forgot to say that I'll try playing the map using a large wall projector with speakers, in an empty classroom where I work.

The immersion should be amazing. 

Here's a demo:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/l339nfzitakaj8z/ijedvory.zip

I didn't get lost, got 5 secrets and had fun with it. I liked the monsters facing the wrong way thing, although I felt there could have been more ambushes as well.

Here's the textures I mentioned weeks ago (in screenshots thread) and forgot about:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/509m8lpcyiybiik/rmq_wads.zip

They're all based off the originals and expanded, might come in useful somewhere. 

Here is a collection of 20 demos from Daz, distrans, FifthElephant, Hrimfaxi, ijed, mandel, mfx, orl, onetruepurple, stevenaaus, Scampie, scar, shambler, skacky, SleepwalkR, spirit, spy, trinca and Vondur

Thanks everyone for the chance to see you all play my map. All of the demos I have included should work fine with MarkV (perfect for demo playback) engine, I did not included any RMQ/DS demos.

There are a great variety of play styles in the zip file (47.6Mb) and some interesting observations of what players do when presented with similar situations. As always I have learnt some new tricks and now have a better understanding of what Quake players expect from maps.

PS. I never plan to hide a button under a lift!?! That is so 1997! :P 

To check under a lift... 

next sock map, 100% chance of secret button under lift 

Awesome Sock will watch some of this demos :)

thanks

Looking forward for your next work