nice screens. the blood running down the stone pavers... i like that a whole lot. 

I managed to survive for a whole five minutes and six seconds. 

...as already stated,

Plus side:
- Solid theme garnered from a variety of disparate sources. Often hard to pull off, but well executed in this level
- excellent use of water
- excellent use of vores (I played normal)
- I soon clicked that ammo distribution meant I had to make use of the GL early, a nice device to challenge normal weapon usage patterns
- the bloody texture at the end was great
- sky box was well implemented
- the "return to previously seen but inaccessible" sections worked well
- having the rails behind the Ogre dunny angled just right for a player to climb with care was beautiful.

Some downs:
- once one got past the gold door, too much of the combat involved triggering monsters then luring them back to the lift area so one could sit up in the lift section and pump them wuth impugnity
- texture misalignment, especially brickwork in the high sections...angled bricks on one face and straight aligned brickwork on another. Also, large brickwork on suspended walls with small angled brickwork on the underside visible from water. Why not "render" some surfaces where it's difficult to match texture lines. One door-jam was out of wack too.

Fave bit:
- finding the LOTR reference!!! 

The reason I had trouble with this map is that I couldn't get the quicksave function to work. It kept producing corrupted save files. If I reinstall Quake, saving works fine... until I load hdn.bsp, at which point saving is ruined both for this map and for all others. wtf. 

I can't help much here. We need aguirRe :)
What quake client are you using? Are you using a non-standard progs file maybe? I have never observed such behavior and no one of the testers reported something like this. 

it works if I run a clean install and then copy hdn.bsp to the new maps directory (should have done that originally... at first I was just typing map ../../../quakex/id1/maps/hdn). So presumably there's SOMEthing in my original quake directory screwing everything up. I'd go searching for whatever it is if it weren't just easier to use the new installation for everything ;P 

even when copying the map file into a clean install it still corrupts all my save files. 

The common causes are the ones I've mentioned in my ToolTips; newlines in title or various overflow issues. Since the former isn't the case here, it's either overflow or some other problem. I need more info to comment on it. 

to dump all console output? 

-condebug, also add +developer 1 for more info. 

what he's asking for is condump blah where blah is the name of the text file iirc 

he asked for the "command line switch", which AFAIK is -condebug. 

 

Well, that's what Quaddicted is for. ;)
Haven't played the map yet but I'm looking forward to it 

I liked this level a lot. I thought the blue with red trim and some wood worked quite well - I had "evil monastery" in the back of my head the whole level.

I especially liked the Hellknights jumping out of the towers near the privy. 

not that anybody cares but I figured it out. It was something in my old config.cfg... maybe a missing quote mark or my runequake binds. Either way... Q1 actually works now.... Now to play this thing :P 

good architecture, *excellent* monster placement with all the enemies having maximum effect... admittedly I survived the first time through just because I was lucky...

demo for the curious
http://www.suspenlute.com/stuff/hdn_fern.dz 

ankh, this level looks nice and I can see that it has some cool architecture and some classic quake mechanisms (vore lift).

However I have to say, that I constantly get under 10 fps here. I'm using software joequake on a machine without a 3d card. Before you all jump and laugh and point at me, know that I get ~35 fps in most other maps. I can play antediluvian, sm82, ac, could, day of the lords (!), and deathmatch, all fine and dandy. But since the recent boom of HUUGE maps by relatively new mappers, my fps dropped through the floor and I get greyflash in the really large areas in maps like yours, JPL's, hrimfaxi's and so on.

I can play Insomnia (!) which is supposed to be large I think, with over 20 fps, very slight drops in the really large outdoor areas of course, but it´s playable, and nearly enjoyable, though I prefer original id maps and stuff like ac or ant.

So why does Insomnia run error-free and new-style huuge maps don't? Because of my crappy hardware? No. At least only partly. It´s largely due to level design.

There was a time when people used to worry about r_speeds. Also, there was a time when people knew how vis worked and how to build rooms and corridors to account to that. For example, in a standard corridor, nothing should prevent me from getting 35 fps. Now if that corridor has a window to a huge outdoor area and that is visible from my POV, then vis will render not only that corridor, but the huge cavern, too. And my fps will drop through the floor. Not to mention that huuge open interconnected indoor/outdoor areas are slowing down the game in general. It's just not what quake does best. In some of the newer huuge maps, I get the feeling of a not properly vised map.

The biggest problem I think is that level designers have become a bit careless, saying "oh I have this P4 and this Geforce card and this engine which has all those limits removed, so I will make this large thing because I can and because large=good. Screw r_speeds and vis and fps and greyflash and the other crap. People can download a special engine to play my map. Here, it even comes as a .pak."

But the limits are part of Quake! Somehow, the id maps should be seen as guidance on the making of quake maps, and what is quake and what isn't, and how to do things in order to make the whole shit work. (There are maps that contain 200 monsters and are error-free and playable on a P90!) Even Insomnia is clearly sparse on the details, and relying on architecture and texturing (and lighting) in those huge outdoor areas. Inside, in the corridors and rooms, there can be more detail.

Often enough, there is no need for the sheer size displayed (making monsters and players look like insects, perhaps?) in some maps. The hangar in JPL's new map is an example. Sometimes I get the feeling that the author lost the sense of scale.

Is it the LOTR's fault? Bigger than Minas Tirith?
Or Star Wars? Life-sized Death Star?

But any software producer needs to know basic rules. It needs to work no matter what. That's why windows is successful. People at least have the impression that it will always work. I mean, do it cleanly!

Test it in software.
Test it on a Pentium 90.
Test it in different clients.

That´s just good practice. The same rules that go for web designers, programmers, yadda yadda.

Please no "download flash to view this web site" crap. ok?

ankh, don't take this personally. Your level could be worse in this regard. I hope some of the other "huuge" mappers read this ,too.

had to speak out. 

You seem to be pretty experienced with Q1, but still you mention greyflash in software engines. Don't you know how to get rid of that easily (r_maxedges/r_maxsurfs)?

Also, many of the recent releases have been tested in different clients, including software engines, e.g. my WinQuake.

And I'm all for trying to keep r_speeds reasonable considering the map's layout and level of detail.

Ankh's HDN map isn't huge or overly detailed; its main problem is the amount of monsters in the open layout. With a custom progs (which is also suggested in the readme), this can be eliminated.

But suggesting that new Q1 maps should be tested on P90's is pretty ridiculous today. I have an old extra P233 myself and I'm surprised that it still wakes up every morning ... How many P90's do you think are still alive? 

Why shouldn't I adjust the maps playability to the power present computers have? I just get much more possibilities to make new interesting things. In most ID maps you were enclosed inside the building. In maps like cda or hdn you can walk out, visit the rooftop, walk on the architecture, move in seconds from one part of the map to another. Those are some things made possible with present computers. Why not use it?
I have tested my map with winquake and it worked fine on my 800 MHz Celeron. The gray outs can be avoided by raising r_maxsurfs and r_maxedges (as stated in the txt). I know the map has high r_speeds but they are still bearable by medium class computers. Vis blocking doesn't work well with the level of interconnectivity present in my map. Sorry.

Oh, and I don't even try to compete with insomnia and other great maps. 

brings up a really good point. I had both a PIII and a PII die out last year (current system is a P-IV 2.6 gig). If this is the norm , that older pentiums are becoming exponentialy rare as the seasons go by) and not an exception, it would not be sensible to build maps that kept those limitations in mind. I am not even sure that is all that important to vis maps at this stage, as even the PIII with a GF2 had no problems with large un vised maps with disgustingly complex geometry. 

Hey guys,

I'm glad we can discuss these matters in a civil way. Thank you.

I know about maxedges and maxsurfs. If all I have to do to get a map playable is increase them a bit, that's OK. Still, greyflash shouldn't be so drastic from the start. And having to increase those limits is already part of the "problem". Limits are probably at the center of this discussion.
New mappers of course are glad that now they're free to ignore those limits. But while doing so, they should still strive for clean and efficient level design, because that's good practice. Having no limits tends to make people sloppy. Also they may forget considering the relations between monster size and building size, amount of monsters and gameplay, purpose and architecture etc. It's also easy to just lose the sense of scale in a because-I-can way of thinking. And the effect is that one day, three mapper generations later, quake maps will look nothing like quake maps. And the game is altered. From an artist's POV, that's intriguing. From the POV of somebody who loves quake (as in, the original masterpiece by id), that's horrible.
Ankh's map is pretty civil in this regard. What I described is just the consequent thinking-it-to-the-end.

Anyway, I was more talking about general slowness, low fps, and the feeling of a badly vised map. Constructing a map to comply with the limits of quake led to the classic quake maps we know. That's a tradition there. If you have a game engine with limits, you need to construct around them, not use faster hardware to _mask_ the problems that come from stretching the limits.
aguirRe, it should not be mandatory to read the readme _before_ playing a quake map. And P90 was just an example. I meant "any computer under 500 MHz and a software client, preferably the original winquake or comparable". Of course, they are getting more rare, but the quake community is large enough and has some geek people. You can just send your map via e-mail to someone who has a comparable system. Web designers need to _still_ test stuff with Netscape 3.0, and rightfully so.
ankh, I hope I explained the reasons why you should use the opportunities _carefully_ earlier. Use them, but do continue to watch r_speeds and playability. and just design cleanly. "bearable" is maybe not enough. I know that Americans and western Europeans mostly think that the world has P4s and DSL lines and radio controlled fridges. But lots of people are using the older systems that you sold on ebay years ago!
And while you don't compete with Insomnia ankh, try learning from it.
HeadThump, you're making the situation worse than it is. Lots of people still have older machines. The linux community is loving them and using them as routers, whatever. :-) But we should keep the limitations in mind because they can _help us make better maps_. Because those limitations are part of the quake mapping history and tradition. Most great maps were made to adhere to limitations like r_speeds. Not vising maps "because you can" is just careless. It's like putting downloads on the net that aren't zipped. It's not good practice.

I just wanted to give some people something to think about.

gl. 

aguirRe, it should not be mandatory to read the readme _before_ playing a quake map.

What? It bloody well should!!!

And while you don't compete with Insomnia ankh, try learning from it.

Insomnia was kinda shit really. I would advice against taking any lessons from it.

Not vising maps "because you can" is just careless.

This is true. I don't know if this map was vised or not, but if it wasn't you are a shit, Ankh. If it was vised I have no idea what the man with the tiny penis^H^H^H^H computer is talking about.