how come the test maps in AD are so pretty

I think because sock made them (maybe others contributed or made some too).

I played the test map with the breakable windows a while back and I was surprised with how nice it looked and how much it played like a full fledged map. I guess there's no such thing as half-assing for sock. If he's gonna make something, even a test map, then it's gonna be damn good. 

Test Maps
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* start_test - Round brick hub map with portals in all directions (SimonOC)
* ad_test1 - Breakables, new ambush surprises and monster reactions (SimonOC)
* ad_test2 - Egyptain blast from the past hanuted by Wraiths (SimonOC)
* ad_test3 - Hipnotic rotation; cogs, wheels and medieval fans! (MFX)
* ad_test4 - Small medieval courtyard with statues and Golems (SimonOC)
* ad_test5 - Large village square guarded by Minotaurs (SimonOC)
* ad_test6 - Tall medieval courtyard full of knights and ogres (SimonOC)
* ad_test7 - Multi level library full of teleporting skull wizards (SimonOC)
* ad_test8 - Giant runic room occupied by gaunts and droles (EricW)
* ad_test9 - Dark medieval chamber guarded by hammer ogres (EricW)
* ad_test10 - Plasma gun carnage in a giant brushwork box! (SimonOC)
* ad_test11 - Shooting range to test all projectile weapons (SimonOC)
* ad_test12 - Does not exist!!! or does it! ... 

Test3 is my favorite. Test7 made for some great coop once on vacation. 

I got curious, Cocerello, if you don't mind me asking: What degree are studying in the university? 

Technical Engineering in Industrial Product Design. The real name is a weird one chosen to sound more important but it is hard to translate so you'll have to deal with the previous name they used.

To summarize, we plan all the stages of creation of a new product line, be it a pen or a car, from planning the providers, to the production line, sales strategy and of course the product line's strategy and each unit's design. We don't replace the people in those departments but work as a nexus between them, and provide the guidelines to make the details together with their help.

Surprisingly most of it works of what i am studying should work for level or videogame design. Have to make a map based on that some time. 

So you guys would often be project managers or something? Was your first degree also in engineering?

I did my degree on road engineering four years ago. So far I haven't really thought about going back to full-time studying. Back then, studying kinda just felt like the necessary evil you have to do before getting to "do something actually useful" and getting to work. Not a very good attitude, I know.

My current job isn't very close to what I studied, but kinda touches on it. We're in charge of procuring maintenance contracts for street and park maintenance. What I mostly do is assist the other procurement personnel by providing them with data from the street and park database. I'm quite interested in databases and geospatial information. 

I'm an Industrial Engineer myself. I deal with similar things to what Cocerello mentioned though I more so do process improvements than design from scratch. Lots of robots :) Couldn't agree more about aspects of process flow being helpful for level design flow.

Also coding and robots. Some of our robots suck in that they have very little customization to the program which is one reason I like coding in so many options to entities. 

I'm thinking about not replying to anonymous posts any longer. Not the troll-y ones either, I mean the posts from ppl who are too lazy to make an account and login.

I like to know who I am helping and discussing things with. 

https://discord.gg/AH5Nrc

Sorry for the kick, should have just edited your post, didn't realise it was hard to reverse in discord. 

Process flow and design methodology would work well for level design, even though i fear it would need to be changed a bit if we want to allow the art part of a videogame to stay strong, but as far as i know no high budget title has used anything like that, or am I wrong?

So you guys would often be project managers or something?

Project designers more than managers, but yeah, many that come out of that faculty end up in project or company management. 

It is natural to fear engagement with a superior being. 

:qthink: 

I'm looking for something like func. Fans with some game designers/enthusiasts that are quite aware of the shortcomings of the game and engine mixed in. Germany-centric would be fine.

And who here would identify with the above? 

only doomworld 

 

So we were just shooting the shit in Discord, talking about how Quake was actually straight-up genuinely scary to some of us when playing it back in 1996.

Obviously it's not scary now - but is it possible for Quake to be scary again in 2018, to those same players, without any custom progs?

So let me suggest Scary Jam:

Create a genuinely scary quake experience, i.e. actually try to scare the player, using id1 progs only.

Worth doing?

Caveat - this was just an idea I had - I can't personally enter or even manage the Jam because I'm too busy with other shit right now, but I thought this was a compelling enough idea to just float. 

Quite a good idea and yeah it was pretty creepy back in the day. 

I didn't want to say Halloween Jam because that could place an undesirable time restraint on it (unless everyone literally started it now I guess lol)

But it's kinda around that time I guess :} 

Great idea! I am almost ready to release a "quality of life" progs that would be a good candidate for this king of Jam. I know more than one mapper who is trying to up the fear factor and do more horry-themed maps. 

Just wanted to say good theme. I also found that the game was sometimes scary when first playing, first because some of the enemies were dangerous enough that i feared facing them (I remember hiding from Shamblers in Azure Agony), and second because the strobe lighting and dark corners and twisty layouts meant that sometimes you would get surprised by an enemy's sudden appearance (a fiend that you didn't expect and didn't hear because the alert sound was lost in the chaos).

The last custom level I played that captured any of that was Hell in a Can, or maybe some of the levels from Zerstorer. Though, they were different than the original levels that were scary kind of by random chance, because these custom levels were actively trying to set up scary scenarios. 

Once again, it's all about episode 4, which features all the aspects of Quake that people fondly remember the game by when they reminisce but hated when they first played it.

Also: keyboard only! 

it'll be a real challenge to make Quake scary again. I think it gets so difficult once you've seen behind the curtain, to the point where you know how the enemies and environments work.

Even worse, for many of us, we know how the levels themselves are put together, or even the exact code the determines the AI behaviour.

So yeah, doing something unexpected that cuts through that wall of predictability will be a really interesting challenge. Might have to give it a go. ID1 progs is definitely the right way to go too, it's nice to have constraints. 

Also maybe limit it to "only id textures" as well? Could be really interesting to stick to the same art that id had to use. 

means no-one would be tempted to make spoooooky textures, which i think would be missing the point.