even didnt load my cfg in that safegame (isnt much special in it anyway) 

Finally played this, wanted to wait until I had an open, stress-free evening at home. Probably my favourite map in years. More feedback in my forthcoming review. 

@Tronyn, thanks for the kind words, it sounds like you enjoyed the map. I hope you found the secret garden and got to play on the rooftops!

Well that concludes my year of Quake mapping!

It all started with a small Midnight Stalker doddle, followed by an obsession with bricks called Backsteingotik, a journey across time with the Ivory Tower and finally a stroll through the City of Zendar.

All links above have new screenshots, loads of map waffle on how the maps were made and finally a completed 2013 news update!

Thanks everyone for the comments and hours of demos, I hope you enjoyed my Quake SP maps as much as I have enjoyed creating them. 

for these amazing maps! 

I'll throw an army of shamblers and fiends at your ass, to chain you on your desk and force you to make more Quake1 maps.

Even in 2014, Quake1 and Quake3 are the **ONLY** worth games on a computer. All the rest simply suck ! 

In my article "The Lingering Legacy of id Software's Quake: A Glimpse into 13 Years of Darkness" I divided the history of the custom levels into the classic, intermediate, and modern Q1SP periods. Other commentators suggested dividing it into classic, Quoth, and Drake periods. Well, if we aren't getting any more Sock maps, and even if we were, I hope that your work ends up being influential enough that Q1SP post-2013 could be called the Sock period. 

thank you for so many awesome hours playing your maps!

Hope to see more in a near future, u are a really talent guy! 

Hope we'll see some more from you someday. 

https://www.quaddicted.com/tronyn-reviews/the_horde_of_zendar_by_sock 

Of course assuming these are relevant at all. Because no offense to Kinn, but Marcher was still considered the best Q1SP in 2013 because it was big and had hordes?? Tronyn please get your arrested development fixed. 

I don't understand: you think I was saying that Marcher would still win by current standards, based on hordes and size? Of course not. I released Wicked, and I don't think Wicked topped Marcher, even though it was larger and had more hordes. I was trying to praise Sock for showing all of us a different way to kick ass.

I meant everything I said in that review. But are you really going to challenge 20/20? Are you saying this map doesn't show a great new way for Q1SP, as rooted as it is in oldschool design? I don't understand the hostility. Can't I, quite honestly, express how joyful my experience of this map was. 

Though it was more about how awesome Sock was than a critical assessment of the level ;) 

@Tronyn, thanks for the review! :D I am very happy with this map, it has the strongest theme/story content and the gameplay/layout was the right balance of player choices and skill settings. 

Consider it an encore / post-script / bonus / something to your Q1 SP swansong of Zendar. I really want to see what you do with pure sci-fi and pure Q1 sci-fi enemies. 

everyone considers Sock to be the best mapper in the community, but I think unless he does a base map then this can never be proven (personally the greatest base map of all time is Stark Monstrosity IMO, I play it every few months)...

(I hope my reverse psychology plan works)... 

Yeah, I just cannot consider sock to be a good mapper until he declares base maps to be the worst kind of maps and makes a coagula map instead. 

Sock is a lame mapper : He didn't made any metal map. 

 

Go map. 

Awesome review, congrats Sock the review fits perfect!

20/20 is a proper ratting for suck a great map!

some people born to map and some doesn't :)

I'm pretty sure you born to level design :p 

Fun map, took me 18 minutes, found just two secrets (never really look for them) but it's not like I was running short on supplies at any point. Nice clean design like in all of your maps.

Here's a demo:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/e4h9wz 

@Mikko, thanks for the demo, it is always good fun watching Zendar demo's because everyone does something slightly different. Finally someone found the upper garden balcony first and took the route! :) I was beginning to think that everyone was afraid of taking one way routes in Quake maps!

I think the demo is short because it felt like normal skill was too easy for you, I think you should try hard skill, it will give you a better challenge. Secrets do play a big part in this map and they are worthwhile finding, but you did find the largest one, so no real loss with the others.

@Shambler, you don't need to see a tech/idbase map from me, there are tons of tech style maps in production this year! I am sure 2014 will be the year of rubicon2 homage. 

Since most of detailing is somewhere above, walls are huge chunks of single color. All that green on the level made me nauseous. Looks bad, was i suppose to look up all the time? Because there's nothing to look at below roofs. Encounter design on first two halls is bad - due to infighting and simple layout 50 monsters disappeared in moments, was a no-brainer for me. And how about that Fiend spawning from thin air behind the player to block him in the room? Some low level shit. The fight began horribly, and it ended horribly - the Fiend was killed by a zombie who was inside one of the "zombie closets". Poor thing couldn't even reach it. There's plenty of such lame monster spawning on the level, feels like the mapper didn't care at all about monster placement, it's much worse that he did previously. Here you've got useless monster turrets, long lines of monsters from one entrance, a huge amount of single ogres, the fights with whom are almost identical all the time. Plus, plenty of places where their grenades can't reach you, including stupid single steps. Most of the Vores were just wasted on lots of boring "pick-a-boo" moments, some killed with easily provoked infighting, because the layouts are as simple as they can get, and 90% of encounters are so flat and boring that i almost fell asleep. The rest 10% are encounters with monster one level above or below (wow such vertical wow), with almost no threat to the player. This two-level layout was present on the previous map from sock, i think it was called The Ivory Tower, very similar. In general, this map plays like a bad Doom slaughter map, almost as flat as a Doom map gameplay-wise, includes a lot of monsters spawning from thin air (what's the shorter name of this crap?, can't remember), and looks bland. I guess you could say that.. sock SUCKS! Ha ha ha ha ha, just kidding, but this map does suck. 

Oh, wait, i think that "that crap" is called "teleporting monsters". Or was it "instant spawning"? Dang.