died, cuz rushing
Will post it, and completed demo later, along with comments.

Even better than I'd expected so far! 

Played it on easy, finished it without problems, 95/95, 6/9. The classic Quake textures are great, in the last years everybody used new textures and the maps didn't look "quakey". But this one looks very nice, it has that Quake base feel. I must try to finish my base map now... 

Worst release timing ever.
Nice map for a base map.
Terrible doors. 

Highlights for me:

***SPOILERS***

- The first medieval enemies spilling over into the base after the slipgate overload
- Base Commander Fribbles lol
- How you handled the connection to the proper Quake realm at the end.

PS - this is really impressive for a month's work! 

 

Stuff I didn't mention to avoid spoilers >:( 

you released it! :)

The first couple of rooms felt small but I think that is because of CZG's release! Played on skill 1 and ran out of ammo a couple of times which was frustrating and progress through rooms felt odd with all the crate jumping. I liked the on screen messages, but they were very quick and I missed a few.

I think the gameplay pacing should of been more varied with different styles, it felt too linear, open door ... fight, open door ... fight. You said in a message there was an intruder alert but I never saw anything burst through a door looking for me. I kept opening doors and everything was just watching the door. I saw no patrols or chance to sneak up on anything, the place did not feel like it was an emergency. The pipe room with the vorn was frustrating and I did not enjoy the ending with lets throw everything at the player in a tight box. I am not sure what feedback you got for this map from your beta testers but it seems people here like this type of ending.

The visuals and construction of the base were awesome, I loved the attention to details. The bulkheads, the trims, the machines, the control panel text, wires connecting buttons and some very cool secrets.

It is indeed amazing work for 1 month, congrats on the release! :) Damn you Scampie, now I want to make a Q1 map! 

rats, i will have to wait till next weekend to play this. :S 

Heh, actually it's great. Thank you for this fine trimwork - may it serve as an example for other mappers.

Good layout and detail. Though you really could have fixed the textures on the upper sky bits (beige non-detail tex vs unaligned wall tex) for the holistic thing.
I don't like cop1_5 - it's a blurry version of cop1_4 and looks weird next to normal textures.

Gameplay on Hard was fun, if not a bit predictable in some areas (but it's okay). Also, OMG hacks!
A few zombies for relief gibbing would have worked well, too. I wouldn't have minded an occasional shambler or vore earlier on, either. No SNG and GL seem to work here, but I can imagine it might get tedious for some players after a while.

Nice secrets... meaning easy enough that I managed to find seven (plus the useless one afterwards). The pent should have been something else, in my view. GG for the signature/easter egg intermission.

What I find most impressive is how seemingly fast you made the map. Seemed like a matter of days, or maybe two weeks, not months or aeons like other people (including me) would take for a map of this size.

Demo 

Thank you all for comments :)

Shambler: Yeah they end could've likely done with more work, but I did also want it to feel very much like Shub's pit.

spirit: someone had to release a map after czg! Sorry my doors suck, I just grabbed the than texture and ran with it.

sock: I'm sorry it sounds like I frustrated you. I added and added to ammo, and then cut and cut ammo... guess I still could've used some extra in spots.

I shot for a 'lots of enemies' style of gameplay rather than 'each enemy is an encounter' type, like czg did. But I still think you're right, and my next map I will make some serious thoughts into 'presentation of combat' rather than simply 'there is combat'.

Get to work on your q1sp! :D

negke: I should've had you beta test and find every misaligned texture!.. From your demo you mentioned the inners of doors using a 32 unit trim texture... the gold key door actually has that... and I completely forgot to go do that for all the other doors. You had mentioned the hallway seemed 'copy pastey'... well that's because it is, I much prefer to spend my serious time on large rooms, and just make modular hallways so I can more on to the next cool large room.

You're right about the Pent, it once was where the MH was... but then I felt the MH gave you too much health toward the end of the map if you found it... likely should've just made it Red Armor and left it at that. And now that you say it, I do now kind of wish I had moved the RL to the silver/gold key room, and added more Vore/Shamblers earlier. Hindsight you know? 

http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/demos/scampsp1_drew.zip

so yeah - 1st one is an attempt to finish the map before going to school - didn`t work out.
Second play through is quite a bit more leisurely.

Agree about the speed/quality ratio - very impressive. Made me want to map as well! Maybe I'll whip up a speed/turtle map...

Uh, anyways...
Thought the feel of this was great - it did feel a bit room-corridor-room at times, but this to me is not inherently a bad thing. In fact I really liked the way it worked. Agree with what others said re having some big dudes earlier on/having some more sneaky strategic stuff earlier -- though of course I don't have any suggestions for what that would entail.
Agree re pent - but as you'll see it didn't really matter for me anyway.
Don't agree about gameplay mechanics issues really - I feel like you do a great job orchestrating arena combat, personally. But I'm into that shit.
So... sequel this time next month? 

Finished! Really nice work, I enjoyed the theme a lot and the idea behind the spilled magic juice was awesome (although I wish it was used more).

When I stepped on the magic spill and was teleported into that little arena and was told my presence was noted ... I got chills. That was AWESOME.

I ran out of ammo and had to cheat (god) to finish but whatever ... was still good fun! 

Drew: Your use of the pent was fucking legendary :) 

Can't believe I missed that megahealth.
I really like the tiny nook based secrets everywhere. gonna do more of that in my own shit, I think. 

the explosive secret is 100% safe. the explosion happens far enough away that you can axe it open and not take damage. 

no explosion noises when I play? 

IDK why, it's literally OgreGrenadeExplode... so it should play the explosion sound of Ogre Grenades.


Works in Fitz/QuakeSpasm 

actually it's good timing to release right after czg's map, because everyone is gonna have the quake bug for a few days after playing czg's stuff so they're more likely to load scampie's map up as well. i haven't played either yet, will do soon. 

I thoroughly enjoyed this from start to finish - excellent work Scampie. I played on hard and got all kills, but missed a few secrets along the way. I didn't go back to find them (though I appreciated the fact that you provided the means to do so) because I wanted an excuse to play through again later.

For me, the balance and pacing was spot on. I had enough ammo and health to get by, but not enough to be wasteful. I died twice, the first time early on because I actually did run out of ammo (but played more sensibly in the next run), the second time I got smashed at the end because I made too many mistakes.

I thought the monster placement and layout of the combat arenas was particularly good. Enemies were used intelligently, and there was always enough room to manoeuvre, but not quite enough open space and cover to be completely comfortable. I liked the fast pace, personally - I like action in action games - but there was enough down time here and there to prevent it from feeling too "full on".

Level flow was also really good, it was always clear where to go and while the route was fairly linear, It didn't feel too forced or "railroaded". Atmosphere and architecture was great (or should I say crate), lots of little details and nice touches everywhere. On the one hand it feels like classic idbase because of the texture use, but the brushwork also gives it a more modern feel.

It's rare for me to enjoy a map as much as I did this one, so be proud Scampie - great level design - thanks! 

You've pulled. 

Thank you for the kind words Major Fribbles... You're base commander because of the float point rotation fix QBSP you provided. 

I took a look at the source to see if there's potential for optimization, but it would be tricky. Getting the model count down would be no problem at all. Reducing edicts by 60 is a different matter, though. There are spots where a trigger_relay or two could be saved, but it's not enough to lower the count significantly. I'm not even sure if cutting back on some ambient sounds would do the trick, for instance in areas where they are placed in a wasteful way, like the exit arena.

Not that many people here would care either way - it's just that this map feels like it could have been a normal level. 

a quick look at the source:

75 info_teleport_destination
75 trigger_teleport
53 trigger_relay

That be where the edicts are going

Would you be willing to use a custom progs for scamp 2? I could throw you some QC that removes the need to use any of these entities (apart from on player teleports)... 

the original intent was to be 'no mod, can play in standard quake'.. but I slowly got over the limits, and was going to make an attempt to get below, but thinking about how much I'd have to sacrifice, I decided not to bother, which them made me question why I didn't use custom progs in the first place.

So yes Kinn, I would be willing 

No need for Kinnmod then since Quoth has corresponding functionality and more.