I should say Mister Necros, or even Master Necros: this map is a fucking amazing piece of Quake !! nothing to add more than what others said, except that I really loved to play it. The end is Fantastic :) 

I've just replayed the map, sober this time and with the proper protocol. Great stuff. The ladders work well, they even add to the overall appearance/theme. I found the 'secret' this time and also realized that I've missed a whole bunch of monsters in my first run (the ones right before the SK cage). The end battle isn't so difficult after all - all one has to know is that the Cross deflects the 'environmental' Death Guard balls. Nice intermission!

I'm interested in how you did some of the hacky extras. 

nitin: the beams of light: they are supposed to be rays of light leaking in through holes in the walls and ceiling but visible because of the dust.
the whole idea of the map is that it's an ancient tower that the death guards/knights/lords have taken over, but they've blocked up the bottom areas. i chose to do light rays instead of the electric lamps because i wanted to have a nearly completely silent area right after the lift ends.

as for the monster count, it's an unfortunate side effect of the end battle. the death knights are supposed to spawn continuously throughout the fight. i used a hordespawner for them. the hordespawner needs a 'count' value to let it know how many monsters to spawn, so i just put a big number in there (in this case, 100).
unfortunately, the way the spawners are coded, they add the total # of kills at the start of the map.

i didn't want the player ending the map with less than 100% kills though, so all the death knights spawned by the spawner target a trigger_counter set to 100. this keeps track of how many have been killed so far.

when you go through the end trigger, first it killtargets the monster spawner. then it triggers an info_notnull with a brush with a 'use' key set to 'trigger_void' which envelopes the entire play area. this removes every monster left there.

finally, it triggers a new hordespawner, except this one spawns "boss_death10" entities. the boss_death10 function is used in a progs hack to add kills to get around the fish bug in unmodified quake. the great thing about this function is that, not only does it add a kill, it also triggers it's targets and removes itself! so all the 'boss_death10' entities have a target to the same trigger_counter. as these spawn in (the hordespawner for them is set to 1000), they trigger the counter up until it maxes out at 100 and removes themselves (this makes sure you get all the kills back from the death knight spawner). when the counter hits the max, it killtargets the 'boss_death10' spawner to stop any more kills from being added.

incidentally, that battle was designed from a discussion a while ago, when willem released that base map. we talked about how end battles have a sort of opposite progression to them. as you fight to the end of a battle, the battle usually gets easier the more monsters you kill, which is unfortunately the flaw of any arena battle.
to get around this, i added the explosive shooters and the infinitely spawning death knights.
on top of that, once the 2 death lords are dead, the shooters start shooting twice each, so instead of 3 fire balls, it's 6.

also, on hard skill, the cells only respawn 4 times and the cross respawns every 45 seconds (so you have to spend 15 seconds without protection) whereas on lower difficulty levels, the cross respawns every 30 (or 20 on easy) seconds and the cells are infinite.
the death knights also spawn faster on hard. on easy they only appear every 14 seconds, but on hard, i think it's every 7 or 8.

finally, although you can try to kill the super gaunt before the death lords, it's surrounded by trigger_teleports such that it will port around the area making it really annoying to kill. when the 2 death lords die, the teleporters are killtargetted.

negke, which hacks are you referring to? 

grats on getting the PL secret trinca, you're the first to do so even though it was an accident. :P

also, as an aside, because i've noticed every one who recorded a demo doing this:
you can just press jump to get off a ladder and it will throw you in the appropriate direction. 

A quick playthrough before but am returning to this now - excellent work it is. 

was just a bit confused because I could not see any entrance point for the light beams. 

Necros you really outdid yourself this time! =)

Great, great theme. Loved the new sounds you added, they really notched up the atmosphere. Cogs are the new crates =) 

The Quad thing, for instance. And the boss teleport setup. And the knight drag.
It's probably less complicated than it appears, but I'm always up for new technical tricks. 

Bunch of demos from me (if they crash, please tell me): http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/demos/ne_tower-spirit.dz.zip 

negke:
the hack where you get a free quad after killing the death lords is actually abusing the built in quake 'unstuck' feature.
when you go through a teleporter (or turn on noclip), the game saves the origin you were at so that, if your new origin is invalid (ie: stuck in a wall), it can pop you back into place.
so all i do there is teleport the player into the floor. he picks up the quad, but gets 'unstuck' and put back where he was.
the only thing is that it doesn't remember your orientation, which is why your view changes, which is unavoidable.

there's also a transparent trick involved with the shooters. when the death lords die, the shooters start shooting twice per 'spike' instead of once (6 fireballs instead of 3). the tricky thing there was that they had to both have the player as the activator AND had to start firing at the right time (otherwise the fireballs would come out at uneven times).
there's a logic gate with a lightning trap that starts firing at the same interval as the trap shooters which starts off blocked. when the dlords die, the logic gate is opened.
the trick is that it doesn't turn on the info_traps. it triggers the teleporter that gives you the quad.
it's actually the quad damage you pick up that triggers them (so that the player is the activator, if the lightning started them it would be 'world' that triggered them). that's why you will sometimes get the quad sooner or later when the dlords die, and not always at the same time.

the boss teleport is pretty simple. there are 4 info_teleport_destinations surrounding the arena. each destination is surrounded by 5 trigger_teleports (4 for the sides and 1 below) that teleport to another of the destinations.
each destination is surrounded though, so no matter where it goes, it's bound to teleport somewhere else eventually.
when the death lords die, all the trigger_teleports are killtargetted.

as for the knight drag, it's actually from when preach coded in model support. previously, you couldn't assign a model to a func_ because the game would complain about not having it precached.
there was supposed to be a func_train_point made specifically for assigning models, which is what i would have used, but that entity is actually broken, because it's still coded to set the func_train_point as SOLID_BSP which is not allowed with a .mdl (or external bsp afaik), so the dragging knight is actually a func_rotate_train (which is never solid).


spirit: i was able to watch your demos fine in aguirReGLQuake. pretty funny, if you don't mind me saying so, especially the first couple. ;) 

the hack where you get a free quad after killing the death lords is actually abusing the built in quake 'unstuck' feature.
when you go through a teleporter (or turn on noclip), the game saves the origin you were at so that, if your new origin is invalid (ie: stuck in a wall), it can pop you back into place.
so all i do there is teleport the player into the floor. he picks up the quad, but gets 'unstuck' and put back where he was.
the only thing is that it doesn't remember your orientation, which is why your view changes, which is unavoidable.


Brilliant!! It's really cool hearing about such trickery with very basic quake functions. 

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

Slow, cautious, vaguely inept, but I made it! 

Great job, Necros! The gear lift, light beams, and end-game hackery make this map more than memorable. The added sounds were put to good use and I loved the little touches like the knight drag. The textures and architecture were a mixed bag overall, but they somehow worked. I was a little disappointed at not having to revisit the water area on the bottom floor. I also found the ending slightly confusing, but I eventually caught on.

It will be tough trying to top this release, but I know you can do it! ;)

P.S. Quoth ladders need help now! 

i had some issues with quoth ladders since i'm so used to climbing rubicon2 ladders (where jump = climb and you face away from the ladder to fall off) 

i myself prefer the hl style ladders where if you walk 'towards' the ladder, you move up (and move down if you back 'away') and when you jump, you fly off in the direction you're facing. they're also a lot faster.

the quoth ladders are at the mercy of the mapper.
you have to set an angle key, and contrary to docs, the angle key has nothing to do with what angle you have to face to use the ladder, but instead, it refers to the angle you are thrown off when you jump.

it's unfortunate but i noticed nearly no one jumps off the ladders in this map, even though they are set up for it. i can only assume it's because they don't know. :( 

You can jump off ladders??!!?? 

T_T 

You can jump off ladders??!!??

Isn't that the ONLY way to get off the ladders? 

jumping off was the only way, don't know which ladders you guys wee using :/ 

One of Gb's Qouth testmaps with multiple ladders, jumping between them was the only way to finish the level. 

Thanks for explaining. Pretty clever. 

Oh, my... 

I thought this map was pretty awesome. I mean that literally too, my jaw dropped several times while playing, and I had to remind myself I was playing a 12 year old game. I was drawn into the ambiance created through architecture and map entities. My disbelief was well suspended, and I really felt like I was in a creaky moldy clock tower, crawling with vorelings. Using new sounds for the lifts was a pretty simple change, but it was very effective in making the map seem different. Also, the rotating bits are some of the best utilized I've seen in any quake map I can remember, so kudos for that.

The gameplay in the first half actually felt like a medieval version of xplore by speedy - tight gameplay with well placed monsters where every shot counts. A welcome change from the mindless horde-killing maps.

The final battle was way more difficult than I was expecting, on hard (it took me probably 20-30 tries), but it was certainly something different, so I had to figure out what was going on and what to do in the heat of battle. It was mostly the player-seeking bomb launchers that I would forget to pay attention to for a brief moment, and then pay the price for. I certainly don't intend to advocate stifling innovation or anything; no, new styles of boss fight are definitely a good thing. (and I'd never have thought up an entity setup like that in a million years) 

Not dead while the netherworld plasmatic heart keeps beating.