Aww, too hard? Try skill 1 then. Also, exploration is always rewarded, especially at the beginning. ;) 

name comes from that new water brand in oz? 

...timing problem, apparently the news item was cleared here before the upload was cleared at shub...apologies.

Metl: Sci-Fi, it seemed to suit better than 'base'.

I spent a long time implementing skill levels in this thing, don't waste your time by ignoring them. This level will force people to rethink the way they play the game, some will reject the level on this ground others will rejoice in it. I expect significant polarisation. 

As I already mentioned during beta testing: I love this level. You really captured the Doom3 ambiance, and definitively, the player have to think twice before progressing: it is highly strategic, and running through the level is not really a good idea...

BTW: moderator should add this small warning in the news description (distrans, do you remember that ?): "Warning: this map is very hard, whatever skill you choose. So weak player should not play this map and go back in their mom's petticoats, otherwize they will cry a lot... :P"

So, what can I say more ? Yes it is hard. Yes it is (my converted) Doom3 texture set (Thanks for that: I was not expecting such good level with my humble "production"). Yes the easy/normal/hard skill are set in a complete different way compared to what has been done before. Yes the map is challenging. Yes the map is impressively good regarding architecture, texturing and lightning.. And what ? Aren't you bored to play endlessly the same map styles (gameplay, monsters, etc..). Don't you want changes ?

We have to cross a threshold now guys, and move forward to something different (and fuck the purists :P ) !!

PS: distrans, you rock !! Thank you so much to let me beta test this awesome map :D

PS2: I want to see more map like this !! 

veeery interesting demo speeds.

congrats on an interesting map distrans.

I suck and have slow hardware, which kills you quickly in this type of map. I also thought the map was very crampy, at least in parts. I tried skill 0, but the enforcer barrage was just not my cup of tea right now.

I would have liked a chance to skip the intro, I saw it very often :-/ (the intro by itself was cool though.)

I'm also thoroughly sick of base maps and monsters with shotguns, guided missiles and weird strafing patterns by now (unless there is enough room.) It wears off. IMO Quoth monsters are best used as spice only. The flashlight battery bar is also pretty intrusive (all quoth problems, not map problems.)

I liked the little story or shall we say, atmosphere elements.

all in all, not my cup of tea. 

Yes, change, good. But crampedness and raising the difficulty level IMO can't be it. 

First of all I am starting to like this map a lot. It's very frustrating to begin with because you die. OK, we're over that a bit now. Some of the challenges seem down-right unfair. At first.

However, after a few more plays I am learning where all of the stashes are, and knowing what is going to happen before it happens is fun, because you know you are going to have a challenge - combat in that sense is very good! i.e shambler battle - grab the shells and kill the shamber. Man to, er, shambler! Good fight!

This is the sort of map which makes you learn to play better!

The thing is I suppose that had the gameplay been in a less well thought out and pretty map, the player wouldn't give it two goes. However I have been compelled to keep going back for more because the map is soooo immersive - quite a thrill really! Gameplay IS balanced - there is infact loads of health, armour, ammo etc IF YOU LOOK FOR IT!

And yes it is in places cramped, but thats half of the thrill I suppose - chlaustrophobia!

I too take my hat off to you Distrans - very nice original Quake map! Inspirational stuff really - loads of nice details everywhere! Varied gamplay. Tough. Magnetic. Brilliant! :-)

Just took a while to get my head round it I suppose... 

as we were talking accessibility elsewhere, this map (like some others) would turn casual gamer types off of Quake forever. So we should probably trade this under the counter ;-) 

So you tried to do doom3 in quake ok, I understand it. And I wish I could say you did a good job but...

The stolen textures look really shitty shrunk x4 and badly converted to q1 pal - which simply doesnt have enough grey tones. Its both a disrespect to the quality art of doom3 and its creators. And it brings down your hard work on building the environment. Which is a very close recreation of doom3 levels - I even recognized many pieces.

The cramped design in d3 was because the player speed is 2x slower.
why bring it to q1 where it doesnt work? Same with light - d3 is dark cause of the technology and boo-horror setting. This map is only playable with gamma .6 - making it all look washed out grey, but hey at least I see whats there. (I played with normal gamma at first but got pummeled at the very start and retried with increased gamma - thats what u see in the demo)

Gameplay is pretty much a surprise rape most of the time. Being teleport-ambushed, surrounded and outgunned (with the lack of even an SSG!) plus often being cramped or lacking any cover. The shambler trap is just nonsense - and its present even on ez skill.
I was fighting off 2 flying droids with a shotgun and 1% health. Thats fucking hardcore! And I played on skill 1 pretty cautiously -_- Its less fun than doom3, ponder that(and d3 was much easier and more fair even on hard skill btw.)
Your gameplay approaches the state of an unpredictable trap where you suddenly find yourself hurt and only have half-second to step away or die. And its up to luck whether this step leads you into another trap. Thats how it felt to me on.
I reckon it feels better if you save-load all the time thus knowing where the nasty ambushes are, still some setups are jokes (in the meaning of 'lets screw the player haha!')

All in all its like some of the bad things from d3 exported to q1.
But there are also good ones - sounds and the neat mech bridges and the recreation of the looks (minus bad textures).

Maybe you should map for doom3 or q4 if you like this style so much

oh and dont feel bad - your map must be art if it provekes emotions, even if bad ones :) 

Be warned - 'HARD' is a thoroughly Quoth2 experience.

That is as damning a criticism as one could hope for, one scarcely needs to add more.

Except, the problem rarely lies with difficulty, but with poorly implemented combats (e.g. little room to move / no room to dodge / situations that aren't survivable first go / situations that force a lot of health off the player with no possibility of avoiding it / etc etc). It's quite obvious in most maps the difference between "Very hard combats that are playable using skill / reactions" and "Skill-irrelevant health-sinks / luck-dependent-situations".

The design and atmosphere were very good and faithful to Doom3. 

I didn't the map is too dark btw. It's just fine for me - the fog brightens the distance a little. At least in Fitzquake. 

someone throw this back into the inner depths of mount doom and hope it never comes back.

everything spds said + i was fighting the two flying things on the bridge with an axe until i died (they almost never come down into axe range).

there's no tactics at all in the fights, because they're all ambush rapes. bla.

make a proper map. 

how the CZG did you make quake this slow. <30fps for me most of the time, where standard quake runs with 150+. 

Your talent will only be recognize after your death, like for all geniuses....

As I already said: fuck purists !!

BTW: The map is passing well on FitzQuake 0.80, with more than 30 fps, if you have a proper PC setting, and nothing else running ;) 

thanks for the forwarning guys. skill 0 here i come! 

 

11:42, 61/72

fun map, wasn't a massive challenge on skill 0 (heh, no shit) but there were enough moderately tough moments to keep me entertained.

call me old fashioned but i think hard should mean hard (yes, that does mean unbalanced & unfair) so that beating it presents a proper achievement. for those wanting balanced yet challenging gameplay, skill 1 is there for a reason! (although by the sounds of it skill 1 was pretty hard in this map too :p )

i didn't really like the appearance of this map. the rooms were nicely crafted with a good eye for detail but i really don't like those textures ported to quake; they look kinda plastic and not gritty enough. also i'm completely at a loss how people are saying it was too dark; i thought it was too bright if anything! must be my gamma settings.. but other maps look fine enough.. *shrugs*

the sounds were excellent. i noticed spectrasonics atmosphere in there too ;) 

..i noticed no subnormal framerates, and i'd hardly call my pc cutting edge (opteron 2.1, 768 ram, geforce 6600). this was using aglquake though 

excellent detail level, very atmospherical (especially with the fog), perfect brush work. too bad I was experiencing some heavy slowdowns during gameplay (probly when D3 ambient was playing?). thanks for allowing not to pickup the flashlight. very nice and enjoyable map. 

For me it was a great map. The architecture and details were excellent. It wasn't too dark for me and the textures are acceptable in my opinion. Sounds and light effects were very nice and the whole map had a great atmosphere. I have decided to play on skill 0 after reading the comments and it was a good choice. The gameplay felt ballanced and fair on this skill. I liked most of the combats. Maybe some day I will try it on tougher skil settings. I have recorded a demo - the start is pretty boring because I couldn't find the way out of the GA area:
http://shub-hub.com/files/demos_singleplayer/dis06_ankh.dz 

This was extremely nice!

Good taste and attention to detail and everything.

Some combats were a little annoying. If quoth2 only had made some monsters (vorelings!) have less health.

Top Class distrans!

I didn't know how to use the flashlight, it was on until it was off... 

Will get later. 

The command to toggle the flashlight is "flashlight". Bind it to a key like normal.

A full list of quoth2 commands can be found in the tutorial(although flashlight is really the only one you need)
http://kell.quaddicted.com/quoth/quoth_tutorial.html#cheats 

Personally, I would have made vorelings with less health - somewhere around a grunt, so two shells would be needed. But it would be unwise to make sweeping changes to stuff from the original version. So vorelings are fixed as they are, being mid level enemies that just look small. 

not possible to release tgas of textures?