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fuck this thread!
ARGH! madfox go awaey to screenshots/beta thread!!! damn you to hell bastard!!!! ...and then you tell me to go to mapping help
don't you see how much you crosstalk eachother? reason why this board is not as beautifull as it could. and Vondur, you may call me that after playing the level It may help the betatesters if you wrote out a questionaire for those who play the levels.
Say, 1) Overall impression? Fun, tedious, or just okay? 2) If you answered tedious, could you specify the areas or encounters that annoyed you? 3) if you found it to be 'just okay' what would you recommend to spice it up? 4) Were the textures correctly used? What did you think about the textures aesthetically speaking? Did they match up well? Did they contribute to the level in terms of mood and did they help make the brush work look convincing? 5) On a technical level did you find any misaligned textures? Or poorly scaled textures? 6) Were the entities set up competently? Any lip over hang in the platforms or doors that should not be there? Monsters facing in the correct directions to notice the player, or are they doing interesting things, like walk patterns? 7) How was the layout? Too simplistic? Overly complicated and fustrating? Or done competently enough to help sustain your interest in the level? This sort of list could be helpfull in pointing out things you may have over looked. You did so excellently I could hardly make a better try. I will be glad if people would react in terms of that seven Notes you just wrote.
If not my intention for making these levels would lie in that way of that treatment. As a matter of fact their just the tryings of how far I could go with the Editor, and not so the perfekt shape they could behave. I am not relativating the great maps one could make, only the almost adventitious way they arise. When I let people betatest them it is more a question if they could follow the path I tried in one of the irrealistic imaginations. And if they answer it will surely be the things they felt most striking. there are a lot of things in them that are just results of crunching with that magic polyhedron. Often there are things that I even can't change,or the compiler would give an error. But in fact every rection is usefull! good points:
-it rocks, it has everything Quake has to offer,loved the tense combat;also the environment is great with the water sections,the platform part, the jumping puzzles,the secrets and and...no boredom here -theres much exploration, and i love that kind of map not so good points:) -there is far too less ammo, especially for the Sg,i dont mind having only the weaker weapons,but atleast enough shells pls ! (played on nightmare) -right at the start and later on there is a mix of base/med enemies, thats always weird, use more fiends then instead :] -the texturing is a bit bland sometimes, but the gameplay is there so personally its ok with me :) Great map Madfox, looking forward to the next one ! Thanks for your answer, I never play Nightmare mode. At least not yet.
May be the reason you run out ammunition. But if I put more ammu in it, there would be to much for the normal Skill settings. If there was a way to put in ammunition, specially for Nightmare, I would do so. The only thing that bothers me in this map, is the fact the respawn of the Shambler on top of the Castle does'n't make it hostile, because the distance is too long. I try to put it closer, but it doesn't work. I never concerned the types of monsters, I just place them. I wonder what you would think of The Orb. It is in the original pak file, still to come. Maybe the textures are flat, I don't know. I just intended to keep the old Thred ones. The ones I see today are so sophisticated, they make me feel Quake2 or further. And my tendings belong to the Antiques. Thanks for your reply, it makes it worthwhile! The only way for me to take out the
shambler was to take the Penta,jump into the water and put all my nails into him,then run around to get more and kill the rest; the lack of ammo made it very tense,was very fun :) Maybe it would be cool to place base enemies only in the basement,it could look as if the humans backtracked themself Its always strange to be attacked by a knight and a grunt at once lol Thanks again ! there is a way a have items only show up in specific skills levels. you use the spawnflags for that, but most editors have checkboxes for that.
The harnesh awakes the Shambler, and so the Squad near the lift makes its turn for the lack of ammunition.
I aint got the spawnflags for Nightmare, although Quake made my worst nightmares come through...even my checkboxes provide only easy, normal and hard. that's becuase there are no spawnflags for Nightmare, that setting only effects monster reactions and such.
Shall I send you maps from my Nightmare
or shall I box my skill settings cheques so no betatesters anymore for post #177
then I will submit a new map! surprised SielWolf, how you managed to download bonus.bsp after I already had changed the file! revieuwed the gameplay and skill settings, and scaled the level up to 3/2.
Maybe someone can look if it was worthwhile... http://members.home.nl/gimli/trail.rar time I play through this map and the basic problem remains; the confusing gameflow. Apart from the beginning, there is no sense of progression, no explanation why you kill monsters, push buttons or open doors (and I don't mean a plot).
There are only a few distinctive areas that you can recognize and see how they relate to each other, everything else is basically a maze of rooms and corridors that are just all too similar. I didn't find the nailgun until the very end, so I had to resort to just SG and GL, which is sufficient but very boring. I couldn't find the gold key without noclip and after that, I couldn't even find my way back to the gold key door, even though I'd passed it before. I can see that you've improved several aspects of the visuals, but the gameflow absolutely kills this map. It's very important to understand that the player does not know the map layout inside and out or what all triggers do beforehand. I had no plan, making this map. It just arise while mapping. I understand your concern for the confusing gameplay. But as I didn't had any tricks to explore the level, you might find it dull to play it.
I can start explaining why you kill monsters, but then I wouldn't have started afterall. True it are just a maze of rooms, but I made it for my fun, not for scoring in the ID-standard collection. I don't know what means SG and GL, but for so far I play Quake standard, without any engines than Telejanos. FitzQuake blew away my selfmade monsters. So I don't get it when you couldn't see the gold key, or found an open door closed. I am willing to change things (skill or gameplay), if you could tell me how. i think what he's saying is the map needs a fairly major rebuild. either that of can it and start fresh, this time with a clear layout in mind.
'I am willing to change things (skill or gameplay), if you could tell me how.'
Study the maps that you find to be the most replayable. Get Quark or a decompiler and get a good look at the layout. Ignore the eyecandy stimuli for a moment and look for the areas in the map you find most engaging. Usually these are places the mapper purposely creates a tense situation for the player to resolve. Figure out how this was accomplished by studying the entities that are grouped together to achieve these effects. A good example and an easy map to decompile is E1M6 in the second large room there is a good deal of entity intereaction. the floor lowers into a ramp beneath you and doors open up slightly above you where Ogres start popping grenades on top forcing you down to where you are in the middle of the Smasher trap. Create simple maps that recreate these situations and then once you know how to do them get creative and make your own variations and original situations. Dont be afraid to include Hipnotic, Rouge or any other Progs.dat with your map even if you don't plan to vary the weapons. monsters or sounds in your map. These Mission Pack progs give you a better variety of entities to tool around with, the mover base ones can greatly ewxpand what you can do in map. Do address the problem AquiRe rightly points out of it lacking a plan. Create hierarchies in your design. This involves weapon placement shotgun --> nailgun --> doublebarrel --> perforator --> grenadelauncher --> rocket launcher --> thunderbolt. You don't have to keep to this order obviously, but when you do vary it up, have a purpose in mind dependent on what you want the player to accomplish. Make a hierarchy of monster encounters. I like to start off with a tense situation to get the player moving, but after that I like to raise the difficulty of combat gradually from each series of encounters. In Quake the usual most logical place for the climatic battles in volves the keys or getting to the gate. After all, those are what the monsters are suppose to be guarding. Be aware of the physical language of the environment. There are several 'signs' put in the texture set. If you mean for the player to fallow a certain path, then use the arrow sign. Also key marking signs for silver and gold help designate those doors or relevant areas. Okay, I think that is enough for now. BTW I submitted my first release of fullscale Quake Single player map a few days ago on fileplanet so you should be able to evaluate the usefullness of my opinions soon enough! That is lot of advice. Thanks for that.
As this is map 19 in range, I have become a little odd. I tried this map for days on skill settings, and I really get "blinded" by my own meanings. As for you, playing it fresh, I understand what you concerns are. I will try to have a look again, but working on 27 maps, and make them intercourse, has blown my attitude into a strange direction. I first thought, I could extend the maps on this board to see how they could be given more tension. Now I notice my mappings have overtaken the idea, to get into a real Quake mission, and I believe this is rather a high card. Because they are still "the diary of a mapper", with all its rights and wrongs. Thanking the "heaven of sparetime". Maybe I should put up the bunch on my homepage, so you can considder what this greenhorn has put himself into. But then also the magic of the unexplored gets lost. he has, but I have gone over the limit.
Here I am with a mission pack of 27 levels. They are not all as good as I wanted, but I begin to feel the delay of two years of intensive working is taking its toll. I tried to put it on my Homepage, but 22.8Mb is just to big. So I'll send it to Underworldfan. There could be done a lot, but don't forget it was just a good joke to make this thing. And if I keep changing things with your good advice (nodoubt!) I'll probably be working for another two years. And I would like to keep a good feeling for it! this is just idle words here, and i don't mean for you to do anything by them, but i think it's safest to start small with first maps. imagine if you had spent 2 years on maybe 4 maps. you would have 4 maps with the detail of all 27 distilled down. i remember my first release was hard for me because i was still learning mapping and i wanted to do so much more. it was originally twice the size but had to be cut down... so maybe your next project should be smaller so you have time to concentrate on the details...
just idle words...
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