but on a quickload, its not overly dark at my end. 

play with gamma 0.8

MAPS MUST BE DESIGNED FOR GAMMA 1!!!!!!! 

Between this and the Dark City screenshots, the safe conclusion is that your monitor is pretty badly calibrated. 

first time I hear about it (( 

Digs I salute you for trying something different. A bold step and an interesting map. Congrats on doing in a full, well constructed, action-packed map rather than a bland gimmick map.

There's a few obviously great things in this map: A lot of the designs and areas are very good, the detailing and construction is excellent, there's a lot of fun combats and in general it is well balanced and fair, and with 3 major route choices there's plenty of exploration and non-linearity.

The challenge from the RJ progression is interesting. There's a few major factors that make it a challenge:

1. The regular rocket jumps required for progression (14 or 15)
2. The homogenuity of areas making it taxing for players to know where they are and where they have been.
3. The amount of progression paths that are secret-standard hidden.
4. The darkness that exacerbates the challenge in finding the hidden paths.
5. The very hard boss fight.

To treat this map as a pure RJ challenge is to ignore what makes it a challenge so it's worth considering all of those:

1. RJs - I personally did not have a problem with any of these. They were all reasonable height, without any extra movement required in each jump (even the QRJ was reasonable). The health/armour respawns worked well (including the ones before falling down). However it is quite clear that having RJs as essential will greatly reduce the number of players who can play the map.

2. Homogenous areas - I found this a problem as you can see from my demo. Yes all the areas are different but they are not distinctly themed enough to make it clear where you've explored and where you haven't.

3. Hidden progression - again I found this a problem as you can see from my demo, in particular i spent 5-10 minutes wandering around trying to find the 3rd rune button before going on the slim pipe. This is probably not the main problem in itself, it is just made worse by 2. and 4.

4. Very dark - this is a simple fact digs. Compared to the default standard for almost all other Quake maps, this IS too dark. I started on Gamma 0.7 and changed to 0.6, even then there were areas that were very dark and it was too hard to find the progression required.

5. Boss challenge - I think this works okay, I found it okay in the first/second attempt BUT only because I got the Vore onto the platform by random chance. The teleport method you described is NOT known to the player and it should be shown first. Apart from that it is very hard but okay as there is a good warning.

Add all of those together and it's obvious that this could be very frustrating for many players. I enjoyed it personally, because of all the good aspects I mentioned initially, and found aspects 1, 3, and 5 fine, but 2 and 4 were clear problems.


TL,DR: map and combat good, rocket jumps fine, darkness and hard to find areas bad. 

Would it be possible to have optional jump pads / wind tunnels in all areas where a rocket jump is required, and have a start area with a button where a player can choose to uncover those?? i.e. "RJ Zone" button versus "Jump Pad" button. Then non-rj players could play through the map and still enjoy the rest of it (once the lighting is fixed of course) 

...the alternate wind tunnels idea is a good one. I've been heavily criticised for confusing routes (Grendel's Keep) but progression in this one has me flumoxed. After 10 minutes of going over the same ground I go noclip, float up, look up at the rest of the level, and say "Awesome looking place! how do I get there legitimately?" 

Thanks for comment and etc. I thought about it and decided: in the near future given the comments I change the map. But I can not promise air tunnels. 

For sockbler etc.

http://www.quaketastic.com/files/demos/howtodigs07.zip

I take the "thin pipe", "spawn lift", and "big pipe" routes in that order. The rune buttons can be done in any order, all routes are equally balanced. I then muff the MH secret and die at the boss but who gives a shit.

Please note that I don't go down into the slime. That part is not necessary - it is useful to open up the lift so you can go up the ascending slime pipe with the biosuit, BUT it's just as feasible to go up with 100/100. Obviously it's another fun part of the map so worth doing anyway. 

pretty long one this time, pff digs what a map! First playthrough took me ages! (couldnt find the ledge wich leads to the are with the button wich leads to penta area)
only found three secrets so no clue if this route makes any sense at all:)


http://members.upc.nl/verorber/demos/digs7_ER_orbs.rar 

Shambler, thanks for demo
Orbs, thanks and cool 

Can you guys do a walkthrough of Digs03? I can't figure out that map lol 

well I can see this map fine, keeping in mind it *is* a dark map. I still think those that cant see *anything at all* might have the wrong settings but I will go through calibration again on the weekend. 

Will try, yes. 

...ok, trying now. 

I went to max gamma and brightness and still couldn't see anything, so had to go for r_fullbright, which is a shame.

Also played in a b0rky engine so will have to record a demo later on. 

You can wait a few days. I improve a map 

 

I's suggest movign the porter at the end battle a bit(or give it a delaY), because its easy to get into porter again and again, and i'd say to have some respawning health at the end ( i actualy think you intend to have respawning health there, but it doesnt atleast not for me (using fitzquake V) 

it does respawn, or atleast sometimes sometimes even twce, seems to be soem random factor with it 

Sorry, I do not understand. Please write the details (maybe in other words)? 

This took me two nights to finish.

time: 70:02 (i got lost a lot and went in a lot of circles)

secrets: 0/0 (but i found two things that claimed to be secrets, plus shot a weird blue-rivet ceiling brush that became brown, but didn't actually find an open door nearby so maybe that wasn't a secret)

kills: 204/204

I enjoyed solving all of the puzzles that this map put in front of me. Exploration puzzles, jumping puzzles, speed puzzles, etc. All were well conceived and executed. I also really appreciate the nonlinearity.

I spent a lot of time being lost, but actually began to learn the map through my repeated traversals of the same few loops. It feels very open but each of the looped sections is fairly well isolated. I think the biggest confusing factor for me was the group of teleporters that all connected the same 3-4 rooms.

I would suggest making each type of gate unique and consistent in appearance and function. For example gates that open permanently should look different than gates that close after a few seconds.

I also think that a door that says "press 3 buttons" in a map that has 25 buttons doesn't help either. Giving the player some other task like "collect 3 runes" would help keep the different player objectives more distinct.

I was disappointed a couple of times when i rocket jumped to someplace hard to see and hard to get to, but was not rewarded with anything. 

wanted to say that I got both a Doom vibe from this and a Super Metroid vibe from it. 

Another unique experimental map, much appreciated. Unfortunately, the way it's done is very taxing on the player.

Construction and style are great as usual. A bit dark, but not too much so - although I did increase brightness a little. Shouldn't have used minlight. Combat was fine, not problem with all the items.

The problem is that this maps tries too many things at once, I think. Namely nonstandard movement (RJ), nonlinear secret/puzzle gameplay, and atmospheric style (gloomy light level) all at the same time, which turns into a fatal combination in this case.

The rocketjumping was fine for me. All jumps were managable even if I screwed up occasionally. The repawning items are nice (and essential). Though I can imagine that the rocketjumping may well be a showstopper for players with no multiplayer background. I guess it's just that we take for granted everyone knows how to do it much as things like shambler dancing etc.

The layout felt very confusing to me for some reason. Usually I enjoy nonlinear layouts that allow exploration and multiple routes, but in this map I ran around in circles most of the time. After a while I somewhat got an idea of the areas, but often still couldn't figure out how to get from A to B. What made it even more difficult were things like one-way gates and dead ends - and ultimately the need for puzzle-solving to progress (without having a clear notion of what or where the puzzles were). Felt a bit like a maze.

I think the biggest issue in this sense is the lack of signposting. I don't necessarily mean arrows everywhere, although it would've helped to have some dynamic arrows appear as needed. Visual (and logic) conections are what I'm talking about.
While it's kind of clear one has to find three buttons, none of them is visible before entering the actal room - maybe apart from the one submerged in slime, but even that is too removed from a proper sense of place and direction. So initially, if not most of the time, the player ends up running around thinking "what the hell am I supposed to do here" and "how do I get there". It's counter-intuitive compared to situations where a problem is presented (e.g. button behind bars) and the player has a clear (visual) goal, and possibly an idea of how to approach it. But in this map it often felt fairly random, because there's no clear connection between problem and solution. Sometimes it felt like I was merely stumbling upon the solution. Of course the large size of the map and the openness of the layout adds to the confusion if the player is clueless/without a tangible goal.

It's very hard for the player to make a connection between certain areas and actions. A couple of examples: I would have prefered to have more distinct styles for the different interactable objects. Like the gates that open permanently should look different from those that close again after a moment. Their centerprints aren't helpful, either - rather than "button-controlled", something like "Opened from the other side" would've better for the player's understanding.
The gate puzzle (which is very much digs style, I might add). I didn't even notice that one button opens two gates until someone mentioned "gate PUZZLE". I hadn't made a connection between the teleporter behind the second gate and the one in the locked room in the hub, both somewhat tucked away in a corner. The two teleporters could've been placed more prominently in the rooms and make to look similar, a distinct recognizable style, so the player can make the connection.
The Quad jump. While I sort of got this one quickly, it's another one of those unconnected things. A simple Quad logo (e.g. from the hud graphic) and might have been obvious. Or if there was another crosshair texture beneath the Quad damage pickup - although this may not be strong enough to reinforce the idea. Finding one's way from the Quad back to the slime room is difficult enough.

A trick boss fight is always a nice touch, but when finally reaching it, I was so worn out by the rest of the map that I couldn't be bothered to deal with him. I realized I had to lure him onto the crusher, but it seems like a real chore and also quite deadly, so I shot him for a while even though I kind of knew it was pointless, and eventually just noclipped to the exit. Sorry.

What's the reason that none of the secrets are marked with a secret trigger? Apart from the peculiar fact of being secrets in a secret map... I found a SNG but no idea how I opened the closet.
Bit of a shame there's nothing on top of the industrial area with pipes. I jumped up there several times.

Demo, very painful to watch.
So, yay for a new digs map; good experimentation, but could have been less strennous with a few tweaks. Get more playtesters next time, especially for such a nonstandard level! 

Seems like this is one of those levels that only start to shine on the second playthrough.