This is a hugely impressive pack. It has taken Quake into a whole new level of size and hardcore attrition gameplay.

Some of it I didn't like, a lot of it I did. I do think my attempts to get through the maps first go were actually the wrong thing to do - it was a pretty gruelling challenge. Playing a map in "episodic" stages was more fun and would have allowed me to appreciate the sheer scope more - this worked for WarpC, although I still maintain that's the best for objective factors.

However even though I found some of it gruelling, this pack has certainly been prominent in my mind in the last couple of weeks - it has got me quite addicted in fact. That in itself is a good feat for a map release!

Well done ijed, a hell of a way to make your mark. 

And the best way to play it is piecemeal, at first at least. For second runthroughs try the extra game mode options - I still haven't played it in coop modes myself; trying to get a group of four together, but not easy in Quake. 

...for those of whom it might be of interest, here's the high spec stereo version of the track I made to accompany 'warpe'.

http://shub-hub.quaddicted.com/files/misc/warpe-dis.mp3 

...worst English sentence ever. Sorry for butchering the language. 

high spec stereo version of the track I made

Hey! warpe soundtrack is way cool! Thanks for this!
Any other music files of yours accessible out there? 

Distrans - I called it starscream inside the pack's readme because of the email conversation . . .

Thanks for this stereo version - goes in the playlist :) 

...only the Travail soundtrack (in terms of ambient) so far. That should become very useful on Monday or Tuesday of next week.

There's other bits and bobs (some pop, rock and even country) but nothing I'd recommend. When the current Folk Noir project gets some stuff together, I'll point you at it.

ijed: I thought about it, but out of deference to tronyn I decided to go with warpe-dis :) 

So Travail is out next week? Nice.

Also, never heard of Tronyn's Starscream map - Ethereal Hell says it was part of the Coagula contest . . . have to play. 

Star Scream is a great name for a map. 

the Travail soundtrack

Yeaaah. I didn't miss this release some months ago, but I tried not to spoil my pleasure and kept it fresh for the - now soon to be released :P - Travail mission. (Once you've seen a good movie or played a great game, listen to its related soundtrack is such a compelling and addictive memory trigger!)
...Although my Travail soundtrack CD is burnt ready yet! 

my opinions..

start map. very nice, probably the most brutal nightmare entrance i've ever encountered! not that i went for it, once i'd found it i backtracked & went to the normal one instead =) solid design here though

warpa. wasn't too keen on this, mainly because of the snowy textures, imo quake doesn't handle them that well. the designs were pretty plain also, although i did like the end room. gameplay was so-so, got rather annoyed at the repetitive shambler ambushes. the exit was neat =)

warpb. wowow, fantastic! best new map i've played since marcher fortress. the scale & layout were both tops, with really neat architecture & great use of curves.. the end arena being the highlight. gameplay was also spot on, never once felt too crowded despite the huge monster count, and managed to stay varied with a few decent setpieces. the music & the fog really added to the atmosphere, too. ended up finishing in 76:14, somehow with only 397/427 kills, despite killing everything i came across. only found 2 secrets =(

warpc. also awesome, although not quite as consistent as the previous map.. it had some annoying parts, like the purification chamber (just seemed like lots of excessive running around) and the massive curved underground catacomb section towards the end (where you had to push three buttons & fight shitloads of droles.. got tiring), but plenty of good parts too, like the gk area, underground lava cave, final arena & library sections. overall i think the variety works in favour ; it felt more like an episode rather than just a big level the way warpb did. very epic.. finished in 92:48 with 5 secrets, 382/399 kills

warpd. considering the quality of the first two maps, this was a massive letdown =( i hated it. thought it looked really bland & far too 'right angled' with lots of samey looking sections & without much in the way of interesting/pretty architecture. the layout also seemed alot simpler & 2d, and the gameplay was FAR too repetitive; playing it felt more of a chore than an enjoyment, especially in the later stages. i think the main problem was it was just too damn big given the lack of variety, and went on for too long. in addition, the atmosphere from the two previous maps just seemed absent; maybe it was the bland lighting, change of mood in the soundtrack or the bright skybox.. but i really couldn't get into it. the gore sections didn't seem to integrate that well either, they just contributed to the randomness of the design. forgot to screenshot my exit stats after finishing but my time was around 82 mins, a good 10 mins or so less than warpc but it felt an eternity longer

warpe. better.. although some of the design work looked a bit messy and the lighting seemed to lack contrast on some of the more open sections. the vertical aspect was neat though; the gaunts were really effective as a result. the droles/vores/shamblers got a bit boring to fight though, since it was just standard ducking/shooting for most of the map, in a fairly linear fashion. the end battle i'm in two minds on... whilst it was well engineered, the only way i could beat it was by polishing off all the monsters before the quad ran out; which resulted in short crazy bursts of gameplay with lots of retry attempts.. when ultimately i'd have preferred a longer, more epic battle, with more chance of surviving on the first/second attempt


on the whole, i'd have to say kudos for coming out with something this size all by yourself, that must be one hell of a task. even if warpd was completely left out it would still be an epic episode, and i'd have probably rated it alot higher. still either way it's definitely inspired me & hopefully will serve as some sort of a milestone in q1, pushing the limits the way the the classics (mexx9, zer, insomnia etc) did. i look forward to your future projects, ijed! 

warpa and warpd are the weakest in the pack - and the last ones finsihed, they should have been more detailed.

Warpc is the map I like the least (horror) its built from scraps, more or less, even though all the scraps were built for warpc. It was assembled from multiple files, which is why its so disparate.

Warpb is easily my favourite map of the pack, even though its very sectional, which is belaboured by the scale of the environment.

warpe and s were pretty much fun stuff to build, even though the gameplay is fairly flat. I was stuck on the final battle of warpe because what I wanted to do wouldn't work since monsters cannot destroy scenery even by accident.

So I went guns blazing - maybe its a bit tedious to do the constant quickloads but its also a scraping through by the skin of your teeth feeling that gives a good sense of accomplishment.

Glad you liked.

I'm messing with a couple of maps at the moment, waiting for one to catch my attention enough for me to finish it. 

So, it took a while to finish the full pack, and I do not have more to say than others: what a pack ! These levels are really really big, and each needs hours to close it with 100%...
Nice job, I'm just curious to see the next one ;)
Keep it up ! 

 

I played it whole night, still stopped at warpd because I need to sleep sometimes =)

A great pack. Interesting gameplay, good design, large scale (which I liked the most). great job! But spawns were annoying. I kept walking with GL looking around the corners for spawns and tried to kill them before they begin to jump. Also I didn't like those ambushes of dogs/fiends behind you, but then got kinda used to them.
Good use of dogs. It seems like most of people forgot that these monsters exist in the quake universe. Good traps but you could have done a little more them in maps of such scale.

Well, it seems that mappers can simply use aguire's engine for their maps and forget about marksurfaces, clipnodes, edicts and other limits and make maps of giant scale with tons of monsters. Am I not right?

ps gonna finish this mod tonight 

The traps are a bit lame, I admit. There should have been more that involved the whole environment, with moving floors, walls etc. As complex as it gets is warpd with multiple laser shooters, but that's it.

I tried to keep the spawns natural, as if the enemies have entered the map from somewhere else and only just caught up to you, but that's not always as is in many parts.

AguirRe's engines are great. 

only run on Windows. I hacked my Proquake so I could at least run TPOF (static entitities) and warpa, but warpb/c still crash it. I don't know exactly which limits I'd have to raise and where to look in the code. I just raised max_static_entities in one of the header files. Seems to solve _that_ problem.

Anyway Ijed said from the start that it needed its own engines so that's OK. It's his good right.

warpa was very much like Doom 2. The shambler attack with the screenshake and breaking walls was cool. Good effects Ijed :-)

I hope that Baker's Proquake will have some limits raised because that will run on Unix at least, don't know about MacOS though. Mac Quakers are probably screwed from the start.

Running stuff in an emulator like Wine is obviously "suboptimal."

Don't take this as criticism Ijed, it's just general ranting. Your maps are cool. 

I realised from the start I'd be cutting down on those who would be able to play the maps, but decided to go ahead and really break the limits rather than just tip them.

Basicly for the big three you need all limits raised; marksurfaces, entities, static entities etc. Warpd runs a bit lighter, but not much. 

I hope that Baker's Proquake will have some limits raised

When I start playing around on my Linux machine to compile that engine project I will also see if I can create a Linux versions of aguirRe's engines.

That isn't going to be immediate, but I personally don't know of anything that should hold back a Linux build for aguirRe's engine. 

I'm able to do the required hacking I guess; I may try to screw around a bit more.

Baker, AguirRe's winquake failed to build last time I tried. You're doubtlessly more familiar with the code than I am, so if you can do that it would be so much appreciated.

I feel bad doing the lobbying, but I suspect there must be more people like me out there. :/ the silent ones. 

Your Proquake development is the best thing to hit Linux Netquake since I don't know when. Thank. you. 

I badly want aguirRe's engine for Linux! 

are there a few extra steps needed to build WinQuake in XP? With Windows 98/ME, you simply had to have Visual C++ and Masm installed, you then built the Masm2Gasm executable from the Quake source and things were fine, but it is not such an easy compilation in XP as I've recently discovered. 

this should be moved to another thread, but all my tools/engines are built in XP Home. There are no special problems, actually I'd expect it to be a lot more issues in Win9x. 

...the proximity mine launcher from SoA would've actually been a useful SP weapon in this pack. In fact these might be the only types of SP levels where the prox launcher is more than just a gimmick.