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 

Just to let you guys know that CustomGamer has made an Ivory mod review, on YouTube :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzFGXBaMgwo&feature=c4-overview&list=UU530Lsq01Ep1QWGSQ9Z_AEw 

Just watched a few of those demos in the .zip you compiled. Really glad I did because after 4 playthroughs I still hadn't found the LG, but sleepwalkr did.

The more I play the map the more genius I think it is, there are so many different ways to encounter enemies it's crazy. What I really love though is the amount of work you have put into the beams and struts of the ceilings. 

Did you explain that door in the SK mine area?? It is bugging me... 

@Fifth, I got the impression from the demo's that most people got 5 secrets on their first playthrough which is a good average. I think finding secrets is an awesome game mechanic and I always aim for everyone to find some, but not all of them straight away. I thought this map had a good balance between easy and hard secrets and a better variety.

@Shambler, originally "that door" was connected to the lift behind the wall that went up to the secret upper floor. I found in testing that it was too easy to discover and decided to create a long route instead and put the button below for activation. I left the door there because it was cool wall detail and it seemed a shame to delete because it was not obvious it was just facade. 

There are several key areas in the map where I tried to focus the players attention in a certain direction so that they notice something important. This involved making sure the player was facing the right way and looking at the right details.

* Down in the first (lower) mines is a broken floor section that shows the gold key door with the gold key in the right window. This is specially setup for the player to be standing at the bottom, facing forward and looking upwards to notice the floors above. This caused all sort of problems for the GK area because the GK door had to be in a certain location and I had to rebuild that area 3 times to make it fit.

* The broken bridge behind the blood pentagram door was designed to be viewed from below. The idea was to hint to the player that there is something interesting far above and worth exploring for. The second door was originally designed to be linked to the final arena but it was unrealistic to connect because of LOS issues.

* The GL secret was designed to get the player to look up and notice the broken floor above with a button to push. The pile of stones in the corner was designed for the player to climb and look up and notice the floor above. Unfortunately the visual language of Quake is totally broken because most players (from the demos) shot at the button. red = shoot only, anything else = touch. 

 

Idea I tested on a small map once, Vores and a shitload of zombies... gibfest! 

 

should be a crate