took me about a half hour to beat it. i was all ready to use the trick that neg mentioned about resuming demos after death but i ended up not dying, so no problems there. :P

nothing really bad about this except one thing that really annoyed me: impulse 12 which calls the CycleWeaponReverseCommand() was broken. there have been a few mods here and there that break this and it's incredibly annoying. there's no reason to break CycleWeaponReverseCommand() as it's sole purpose is cycle weapons and doesn't do anything else.

oh, also, got lost about half way through shortly after the silver key door. there are steps on the right side when you enter that circular area and i didn't see them at all the first time through. to be honest, they are very difficult to see. should have been some lights or something to sort of show you where to go.

still, after that things smoothed out again.

some nice areas like the street and the cavern and the other large areas with the ruined buildings. some plain areas too though, but not that many. i liked the cave and the mdl rocks in there didn't bother me.

new monsters gave good fights. skeleton was probably the best of the normal monsters but the archer knights were ok too. the shooting animation for the archer knights looked a little iffy, but that's not too bad as they are usually sniping at you anyway.
last boss was cool, although i couldn't figure out how to avoid the lightning attack. i had tons of health and the red armor so it wasn't really a problem. it basically just gives you a time limit to kill it before the lightning wears you down. this could be an interesting gameplay mechanic, actually...... (or was that your intent all along?)

first run demo:
http://necros.quaddicted.com/temp/ne_sparcus09.zip

thanks :) 

Wasn't in Quake 1.01 (was only added around 1.05 iirc), so mods based on the 1.01 source don't have it. 

 

I had a good time playing this map. 33:14 on easy skill, 126/145 kills, 1/4 secrets. Demo here: http://mandelmassa.net/temp/sparcus09_3314_mandel.dz (1.5 MB, dz).

Quite unique environment and some good fights. Only a few times was I low on ammo, most of the time there was plenty to spare. I like it when it's not super impossible to finish a map. My greek isn't as good as one might expect, so I didn't understand any of those messages :) You should have created a custom font with the greek alphabet as well, hehe.

The new custom monsters weren't too annoying, and it was nice to see a custom boss! I was lucky enough to have some quad and cells left when I met him, so I didn't have any big problems with the destoning.

Overall the layout had me running around cluelessly a few times, but never to a point where it became annoying; the varying environments made it interesting. In the end I may just have to blame my terrible sense of direction for my getting lost.

I played in JoeQuake and it didn't bring any problems, other than a lack of custom skybox and fog. 

Yes, the demo tip of Ijed sure has it advances.
I didn't get so lucky, so I had to make the demo in two parts.

I do realize now that the staires in the castlepart were a little lost, I corrected this with a torch in the download, as well as some megahealth. It is a little weird to see three doors opening without one that is usefull for the gameflow. But I thought it couldn't be bad to attract the player to wander somehow around.

I really don't know where the cycleweaponcommand was or has gone, I've been crooking the QC a lot to get granito done, and there after was the crosbow knight with its arrow. Maybe I've screwed something up.

The messages in greek are the same as there are in English, I translated them. I hope I don't get angry with a greek Quakeplayer?

Thanks for the demo's, I will watch them soon! 

Crazy design gets me lost in intriguing ways, but everything was so fresh, i never got bored wandering around a little.
_Lovely_ skyboxes. Great stuff :) 

in case you can't figure out how to load this map, the bsp is called "sparcus09" 

I found the gold key and now I am lost. The bit in the canyon was nice. 

message is very short after gold key:
"door opened in lift hall". 

Not as 'on grid' as I thought, but there was a lot of good stuff in this map. In particular, I liked the skybox and wall texture behind you at the start -- are they from a painting? The interconnectivity of the canal/water area was cool and I liked the city street area, too.

The new monsters were...interesting. The shrinking fish heads were a bit strange and those poor skeletons appear to be suffering from hip dysplasia. The death animation in the crossbow knights also seemed a bit slow. Granito was cool, maybe minus the lightning attack -- I just wish I had a bit more room to negotiate with him ;)

Performance-wise, the map chugged in a couple of places. But, all-in-all, I had a darn good time :) 

I didn't hurt the fish, honest, one of the ogres must have beaten it while I was sleeping.
As far as bones concerned, he's so much turned up in modelling my objectivity has died.
Indeed, the crosbowknight has ten die frames and ten fall frames. It needed only three.

Mapping and modelling are two, and it happened after months of mapping I didn't know which model was in line. So when I was compiling qc it become some of a hussle.
I was planning adding the serpent and the deathknight, but then max_eddicts appeared.

Found some secrets? They are quiet helpfull surviving! 

i believe you are referring to the bug that is found in stock quake. ;)
quoth fixes that, but the original death anim has the fish head shrinking for no reason at all. 

wall texture behind you at the start -- are they from a painting?

They are from the DeathmatchMaker CD, which inspired me to make the stairs aside you in the level.
Yes, the first map was made with it.

http://members.home.nl/gimli/bukyou.jpg 

It looked like something out of American McGee's Alice to me.

Damn that's a narrow ledge 

broken archive, downloaded twice 

i believe you are referring to the bug that is found in stock quake. ;)

I've been playing this game how long and never noticed?!?!

Anyway, I meant to mention the urns were also a nice touch and that I managed to bypass triggering the Shalrath and company from teleporting into the big round room (just before Granito) for the second time by jumping in the water.

Cheers! 

@kona - there was an upload corrupted. It seems my webspace was temperary changed.

It works now.

@generic - I played it 2000 times but never been able to teleport in the big round room.
There isn't a teleporter destination.
Can you make a demo of it? 

Took me 29 minutes, found 1/4 secrets (the RA on the roof).

The biggest problem was that you were a bit cheap with weapons. It took me ages to get the Nailgun and I never found either the RL or the GL so I had to rely on the axe a few times, including during the boss fight (luckily it took only three or four hits to take him down after I had spent 120 shells, 100 nails and 22 cells on him).

Design was good (especially loved the street area although I could swear I have seen very similar constructions in Quake & Q3A maps before) although a bit sloppy at times (clipping errors, lack of trimming, teleports without frames, doom doors when the door texture shows a two-part door etc.). I played in FitzQuake080 and for some reason (or maybe because of the port/version) I never saw the skybox.

Anyways, still a good map, just a bit sloppy and I really would have wanted to get my hands on the RL early on. 

It was lots of fun and had some very cool parts.

Skybox was there with fitzquake085, some zfighting in a few places though.

Just as Mikko mentioned, it also took me ages to find the NG. I also ran past the GL area a few times before I finally got it (it's in a recess at the open city area with the bridge and lots of balustrades around the water, you get there pretty early).

It was way too hard for me at the default difficulty but I suck. 

@mikko - I must admit I played the map so many times I never doubed the weapons couldn't be found. Neg!ke pointed me out to make much clear to change all the closed doors in a uniform way, only doors that opened were in another texture. It also looked clear to me that at the end of the street there's a hole in the wall where you could see a monster. The crosbow knight would take your attention so you could see a door above. Sorry you missed the skybox.

@dfs_spirit - I hoped people would explore the map, not simply rush through it. I was assuming too easily the skeleton would come out and show you the entrance.

In the demothread is a secretsdemo attached.
Not when you havent played it before of course, only when you're curious.
Yes, gimme some demo's! 

I liked the variety of environments, and the ambiance of the planets in the skybox was cool. Granito's foot-lightning was funny, but he was tough! Overall it was cool, the oldschool experimental feel and whimsical design worked out well. :D
demo(s):
http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/demos/veni_ericw.7z
I suck and died a lot, so it's in 5 parts.
Thanks for the fun map! 

@ericw - glad you liked the level! I had to use the foot_lightning, as the monster turns very fast. It could have been possible to position it right under its fist, but than it would have looked odd when it ends up behind it. Thanks for the demo!

@necros - you have a tricky way to set up monsters against eachother. Mostly I take them one by one, but I'm a faintplayer. The greek commands were translations of the english ones. I was surprised you didn't notice the door in the roundup street. Now I see I had to give the "shoot" message, so you missed the GL. Also I think there is too much health, only the wayup castle you went to 24 health.

The other example of dark torches went beyond my hat, as the weaponcycle command. I never use these habbits. I was concerned you would treshpass the last runup to the castleround when you jumped in the water. This way you would loose all monster spawning in, but I couldn't avoid it, even when I opened the other door not the same time. It went alright well in the end. Fun to watch the demo. 

I think I've played this before somehow!!

Texture combinations gave me anal prolapse. Build quality is 10 years out of date. BUT.... layout is magnificent, theme is good, good ideas and designs. Progress is interesting and gameplay and monster load is good too. Skeletons are MEH but that's only to be expected. It just needed texture and build polish until it bled. 

http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/demos/gbvenidemos.zip

Place of two deaths, one sooner, one later.

I can't remember that trick where you can continue demos after dying, and tbh I cba to write it down somewhere because I don't often do demos... so you get live, raw and bloody deaths.

On skill 0.

To get this out of the way, your skill 0 is way too hard. It is like id hard. If the map supports skill settings, I don't want to see skill 2 - first time I looked into this I accidentally had skill 2 on and it wasn't pretty. So I went for skill 0 this time.

New monsters: Crossbows and skeleton bolts are what got me in the second demo. From a distance. The guys have perfect aim, too, and I hadn't noticed that they appeared in a previously cleared area. So they got me off guard, and pinned me from a distance while I was ogre-dancing. I couldn't do much but type GG after another skeleton popped out of the door next to me while I tried to locate and eliminate the snipers.

They dish out a lot of damage and you often don't notice them spawning or appearing somewhere, and from a long distance in Quake you don't even hear their firing sound. That's pretty unfair. Bolts and lasers coming out of nowhere.

Ammo and health: Not enough shells around the water/bridges area. Health not well distributed; it's enough, but placement could be better. There were a couple dead ends (like in the first demo where I died) that should have had a health pack for people who get cornered there.

The mega at the spawn pit was nice. Spawns in skill 0 are questionable though.

I collected a lot of rockets but couldn't do anything with them. I'd have preferred shells.

The silver key is hard to see; it blends in with the wall texture and that area is pretty evenly lit. Almost missed it.

Found the nailgun by accident; it was behind one of the doors that weren't locked or fake. How am I supposed to know that this one door among all the others in the area isn't locked and has a nailgun behind it?

You want to make sure that the player gets the vital weapons; the nailgun is one of them (only ever found the SSG and the nailgun). Don't require exploration to find vital items. It could almost have been a secret.

Gameplay and routing:

It wasn't always clear where to go next. You can enter areas from different points, and some of those will give you a huge advantage (like having a choke point for example when you enter the canal/bridges area through a doorway vs. from the water). The underwater areas were a bit uninteresting, and it wasn't easy to see where you could get out of water.

I get the impression that you built the environment first and put in monsters later. You should plan key ambushes and scripted things while you build the environment, though.

To be fair, there was a good amount of typical ambush situations and the gameplay was generally OK, mostly around doorways and when getting out of water. Quake is pretty forgiving there. It's not a bad map. Liked the vore combat. Fiends were also placed pretty competently. The skeletons got on my nerves. ;-)

Had to cut here because of 5000 character limit... 

Architecture, theme and ambience:

I liked the overall setting. The choice of texture theme was all right, but the big stone blocks don't really look citylike. Should have used brick walls or even plastered wall textures. The blocks made it look too medieval/castle style instead of city. Otherwise, the impression was pretty good.

I would have kept the Latin messages away from doors and instead have inscriptions on walls, that print the Latin words when you touch them. Messages on doors should be understandable for everybody.

Like others have said, the brushwork was pretty oldschool, but that wasn't necessarily bad.

I liked some of the details, like the big vases and the faces spitting water - much like Tomb Raider. But don't copy the same 4 vases all across the map. rather have some places that have only one, others have two, and others have 4. Combine things like that with other details. I'd like to have seen plants and gardens, if only a few.

The Venice levels from Tomb Raider 2 are the obvious comparison, actually. In both cases, you get something that resembles Venice, but eerily doesn't seem to *be* Venice. So much for the thing they have in common. Of course both versions of "not-Venice" have canals and ample amounts of water and lots of windows and bridges and every second Tomb Raider map ever produced has these Roman faces on the wall, some of which always vomit water :-)

What the TR version of not-Venice has over yours are plants, trees and gardens; quite some transparent and/or shootable windows; dogs (where are the dogs btw, they would have fit well); traps (some traps are always nice); boats (both decoration and vehicles); ladders, and other stuff like that.

One thing I was missing were interactive elements. Buttons, levers, floor plates, shootable buttons, breakables, etc. OK, there was a button at the beginning, but there could just have been more stuff to do besides combat. The waterways could have had switch-operated grates that you'd need to raise to proceed. Sluices. Raising and lowering the water level. There are mods like extras that contain QC which allows you to do this.

Anyway. There are many coulds and woulds, but it's a cool map for what it is. And it is a pretty straightforward, combat focused map (actually similar to Trinca's latest in that regard). What makes it nice is the setting, feeling of the environment, and the nonlinearity (although I thought maybe it was a bit too nonlinear in the first parts).

Too bad I haven't seen all of it. A really easy "easy" skill would have allowed me to finish it (that's why I picked "easy" to start with).

To sum it up:

There are more things you can do in Quake maps than just combat. Adding a few more buttons, traps, spike shooters and maybe even small puzzles would have made this map even better. There were some promising details that looked properly Roman, I especially liked the amphores and the water-vomiter with pool. Some trees or plants would have been cool. New monsters were a bit raw around the edges. Easy skill wasn't easy at all. Underwater areas weren't interesting enough. Underwater access to the canal area should have been blocked off. Progress could have involved more ladders, climbing (maybe over roofs), and jumping. Item placement wasn't ideal. Monster placement was OK.