Thanks for the comments, it's nice to know it's being disected by more people.

The wind noise is from Quake3, (demonwind3, I think) nut I've heard it in other games (Eternal Darkness, cutscene atop the pillar of flesh) and maybe others, so I think its some kind of stock videogame evil wind snfx.

The secrets there aren't actually alot of - if I'd placed them in, say, every other room, then there'd be some stupid number. Instead I just placed them where they seemed appropriate or special, there could have been alot more.

I remember something . . . someone said on the traps thread - it basicly boiled down to 'this environment is not your friend'. It's to create a hostile atmosphere as well as a asthetic backdrop, I like all my maps to feature a liquid. The slime in warpb is a little bit harder to get out of (or sometimes instant death) the lava in warpc is always instant death, apart from one secret - or unless you're really fucking fast. The void in d + e is instant death, making a progression. 

LOL.

What about standard water?? 

Hehe, nice shortcut! 

I forgot to add snowmelt to warpa . . . 

And as a progression of environmental hazards it starts weak and becomes more dangerous - what's the dictionary definition again? 

you start the pack in a puddle of water, isn�t that enough ?

@Mandel: nice demo / thanks 

No, you're right, it is progression.

Although, progression usually implies a positive step, i.e. progression towards something better. Which made me LOL.

Surely you could progress further....have some enviromental thing that's even worse than the void....like that occasionally reaches out and tries to drag the player into it or randomly fires shit at the player ;) 

Tried it in Lazarus Q2 - think Sarlac pit from starwars, but with tenticles that grab the player (func_gravities + medic cable fx, and another spinning gibber like in warpb) didn't work too well. Basicly if a tenticle got the player from a certain range they could struggle but not actually escape, so I made each tenticle killable by shooting its origin. Was a bit random and instant death if you didn't know about it.

Snowmelt would have been good in warpa though - originally the GL secret was going to be an underground cave system inside the cliff face, leading to the rune instead, before I just included it in the start map.

Ran out of patience / time. 

Although, progression usually implies a positive step, i.e. progression towards something better.

I think that's only the case when the goal to be achieved is considered as "something better." 

P.S. Would be cool to see someone doing warpe or the secret map, those are not that large.

Done. Took me several goes, including to get a success I was happy with. I've emailed the Dzip to Spirit, hopefully he will put it in the directory at Quaddicted. 

That's the secret map done, I mean. 

Is very difficult, usually takes around ten tries to survive it.

And then all I did was write a message :P 

Here it is:
http://shub-hub.quaddicted.com/files/demos_singleplayer/warp_wtf.dz 

It probably took me more than 10 tries. But less than 20.

That demo is Skill 2, 61/61 1/1 (doh), 2:12-ish.

I managed to refine my tactics thus:

1. Run out of the centre (duh).
2. Keep running around the edge, but stay close to the blocks initially - this keeps the Fiends milling in the centre more.
3. Passing each gap, dodge Fiends and fire a couple of rockets in.
4. Keep doing this for a while - the main aim is to ignore the Vores and let them start in-fighting, and keep the Droles on the upper levels (too many Droles and Fiends are a pain in the arse), but take down as many Fiends as possible - to avoid getting swamped with them.
5. When the Fiend numbers thin, start bringing Droles down.
6. Avoid the centre if possible, keep ignoring any remaining Vores, and kill stuff. 

444/666, died on some Fiend / laser / knight / dog / enforcer combination. It had been somewhat overdue, this was quite hard.

I'd had a few half-arsed attempts at the first room before, the rest was first attempt.

I've got a demo if wanted, about 2 hours, 17 meg zipped. Just say if you want me to send it or have a space to upload it.

Comments when I've finished it. 

speedrun anyone? 

Mandel did a run in 17 seconds :)

post #139 

anyone got some tips on speeding this thing up?
the snow level was fine, the rubicon/base level was fine. as soon as i entered the castle it ran almost to halt. like r_speeds of 1!
my command line looks like this...
nehwarp.exe -quoth -game warp -HEAPSIZE 90000 -winmem 1000 -width 800 -height 600 -conwidth 768 -gamma 0.4 -texgamma 1.2

i'd really love to continue, but its unplayable with these settings. 

Ooops, I meant 100% kills :D 

Try changing the heapsize option to lower case -heapsize 48000 and removing the winmem/texgamma options (not valid here).

Gamma is best adjusted in-game if possible, try that first before resorting to the gamma option. Most "modern" cards support hardware gamma I think. 

Yeah, I think the heapsize command isn't used when in capitals, so yours [kona] will be defaulting to 32 (engine default, original Quake being 16) which is pretty much unplayable.

If you still have problems go into the autoexec and remove the gl_exttex line (monster skins) and try upping the heapsize even further - 64000.

I'm not 100% those would work - turning off the external textures would only speed up loading, for example, but both can be worth a try.

inertia, maybe I'll give it another try, but I always end up killing myself trying to jump over a too-big pit or reach some semi-useless item with rocket push . . . I'll try today. 

I forgot about the autoexec, if there's a line gl_max_size 2048, try removing that line or lower the value by cutting in half (i.e. 1024, 512, 256). If your gfx card texture memory gets exceeded, you'll get really bad performance.

Similarly, if there's a line gl_texquality 2, try removing that as well. 

Those are both in there and can be reduced / removed to help performance.

There's also another bug :| in that I forgot to remove developer 1 from the list - if you get rid of that the number of returned bugs from console will drop by 90%, although the warnings at map load will remain. 

Nearly made it all the way through . . . got distracted near the end at the Drole ambush.

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

It shows all secrets (I think) and gets through around 90% of the map.

Bah.

It's in dzip (not 7zip) because my zippers are incomplete at the office - I was going to rar it, but thats not a Quake format :) 

Completely this early. Went fairly smoothly after last night's debacle. I managed to miss out one area by all the confusing bridge up and down switches. Albeit it meant I got stuck somewhere and had to get back by a rocket jump.

So yes. 637 / 666 monsters, 7 or 8 / 11 secrets. Several hours or days playing I forget.

This map....it is good but I didn't like the style as much. It's bleak, but also somewhat bland in places....back to more empty rooms again. WarpC had some striking styles / micro-designs that gave it a good look, but this doesn't gel together as well. There were some cool bits - the teleporter hub, the fleshy bits, the moving jigsaw floors, some of the pillar designs and cool floating details. Some good sounds too.

The void aspect was a constant niggle, it's definitely more present than the hazards in the other two maps, along with the bloody laser shooters. Obviously part of the "progression" :P. I found it grated on my nerves, it was entertaining in some places, and surprisingly I hardly fell in, but over a whole map it was more of a constant irritation. I did get the vibe of the enviroment being hostile to me, but I'd prefer that hostility in more interesting or dramatic ways than an omnipresent grey pit.

Gameplay was the usual stuff, again I picked up the vibe with the MegaHealths....you really have gone all out to make this as nasty as possible eh!! I found the health situation was okay, but I was constantly below-par on ammo. A bit more, shells in particular, would have helped. The gameplay was even tougher but still pretty well balanced through the most part. Quite a bit of it could be worked around with some cunning, which was good. The blend of tactics and hardcore twitch fighting was good in places, I got into that. There seemed to be a few "impossible first go" situations - I got through one of them (dropped floor + 5 Fiends + already low on health) first go somehow. Some of the other ambushes were cool though, a bit more hordey which worked in some places. The ending situation was quite easy as you could escape it.

One more thing: The layout is mind-boggling when you reconnect with the earlier bits later on.It's all very big!