Very nice textures/geometry/atmosphere, I liked the moving geometry too (gave it that good old DOOM feel). Combat was ok but a bit annoying in places. The shambler ambush was just ridiculous, I tried it twice and then just used god mode to get through it. (Played on skill 2). Some of the other ambushes were just a little bit annoying as well, at one point I wondered if I was playing Doom 3... ;)

Other than that it was fun, I enjoyed the abundance of ammo (I'm not an overly cautious player, so I don't like maps that are too stingy with the ammo). I found 3 secrets and got credited for 2, not sure what was up with that.

It has already been mentioned but the extra environmental sounds definitely added to the atmosphere. Lighting was quite nice too.

And hey kids, it runs in FitzQuake... win! 

k, watched the rest :) well, i couldn't watch shambler's. i got the same error as spy, so i guess it was a different engine and not corruption? i'm trying to play it in fitzquake.

in anycase, i noticed a dumb mistake on my part... the lift right at the end isn't consistent with the big round lift. the round lift is a button press lift, and the end lift is just a get-on lift, but cause of the first lift, everyone thought it was a button press lift. :( sorry!
what i'm doing now is hiding the 'recall buttons' for lifts until after the player uses it for the first time. this works better because there's no question on what to do, but then the option to recall the lift for whatever reason is still there.

also, it looks like more people find the secret path than use the normal one, lol!
i noticed right away what was happening in your demo trinca, and when i saw ci475 do it too, i knew i had screwed up.
there's confusion over route progression because after the death knight and fiend ambush, the player can go both ways-- forward and back along the normal path. :S

CI475: one thing i noticed is you seem to hate nails, or at least, hate using them :P at one point, you axed a death knight when you had 150 nails and 100 nails in boxes in front of you. :P i'll have to keep this kind of thing in mind... i might make a map with no shells or something... >:D (j/k) but yeah, kell was always on me to put more shells in my maps too. :P originally there were like half as many shells in ne_lend. :P

Frib: i try to make skill levels relative to current day's standards... i guess. i don't know if that's necessarily bad or not, but i guess it can be bad to people who are expecting one thing and get another. i'll try to go back to id standards for skill levels. :)

cheers guys! 

Especially ne_lend.
ne_doom looks a bit like Prey :) 

ops necros... didn�t know that :q i will try when i get back home ;) i�m in holidays out of my city :) 

Yeah I'm just crap I guess, that's what it is. It isn't that spawning 3-6 shamblers in a very small, confined area with little to no cover and no escape route is a bit unfair. (You could duck back into the tiny hallways where the buttons were placed, sure, but there were so many shamblers that they'd come in from both sides, so you were fucked either way).

Put it this way, I had no trouble at all with the difficulty of the rest of the map, but in this one area I felt forced to use god mode (which I very rarely do) to continue, rather than quit in frustration. So regardless of how the skill levels are implemented compared to id maps, I found that one area to be very inconsistent with the rest of the map.

It's worth noting that I DID cheat past it and continue. In 90% of other maps I would have just quit... this one was good enough to bother. :) 

i see what you're saying. :)

i usually play on normal mode, and i can only beat that fight a little more than 50% of the time.

the trick i've found is to stay in the button alcoves at the start and to try to take one shambler down asap. after that, if you stay in longer, you'll get surrounded on both sides, so you have to run out and do the 'shambler-dance' trick, except you have to remember to interpose one shambler between the other so that the lightning from the second one doesn't hit you.
if the third isn't dead but you have to run out, then it can be tough... you have to finish off the third shambler while doing the dance with another and interposing the second with the first. o.0

you can try running all the way out of the room back into the small cavern too i guess, but you'll get toasted a bit by lightning (but there's a bunch of health back where the water is).

otoh, i've had time to analyze the fight so realistically, i can't expect players to get it right away. thanks for the feedback on that fight, i'll try to keep things smoother in the future. :) 

I'm sure it was possible, but I got smashed on the first 2 attempts and wasn't keen on trying 3+ times... I'm too impatient. Besides which, I'm not a quicksaver and I tend to play through from the start again if I die.

I guess this means I can get overly frustrated in these kind of situations. If I die 3+ times I'll either give up (most maps) or I'll replay it and allow myself 2 or 3 manual saves throughout the map (only for the best maps that I'm really enjoying!)

I really wish Quake had autosave points or some other kind of checkpoint system that gave the level designer control over that kind of stuff, rather than forcing the player to worry about it. For me, manually saving breaks the immersion and feels like cheating... 

I really wish Quake had autosave points or some other kind of checkpoint system that gave the level designer control over that kind of stuff, rather than forcing the player to worry about it.

i just checked and there's a save command... it could be possible to have trigger_commands run the console command "save autosave" or something, it's just that the saves don't show up in the menu, so you'd have to know to type in 'load autosave' 

There was some discussion about this a while back, but I don't think anyone was able to come up with a fully satisfactory system with current mods and engines. 

A great map. I loved it. Excellent gameplay lightning and architecture.
I played on skill 2 and it was real fun. There was plenty of health and always enough ammo. The ambushes were ok for me. It is a good idea to put the player under some pressure from time to time. I didn't have any problems with the shamblers but I was fully equipped at this point. I didn't find any secrets. I also liked that the quoth monsters weren't overused.
Thanks. I will replay it again for sure.
Here is my first play demo on skill 2 recorded in joequake:
http://shub-hub.com/files/demos_singleplayer/ne_lend_ankh.dz 

The shamblers on skill 2 ne_lend were a real pain in the ass for a first run, but not impossible. There were 3 or 4 cover points (the buttons with nails alcoves), for example I didn't die.

I've played also ne_doom now, very different gameplay, more claustrophobic but well balanced.

It's a very good thing that you enhanced the coop play, as I think it's very important and adds a dimension to the map, you can also play it alone this way virtually adding a "skill coop" level.

cool 

Frib FFS use the SNG!!!!

Necros FSS use AGLQuake to watch the demos. 

I really wish Quake had autosave points or some other kind of checkpoint system that gave the level designer control over that kind of stuff

In half-life these are trigger_autosaves. They've been on the Quoth todo list for years. Can't remember what Preach may have had to say about them, but I know I'd like to add them if they're at all possible.


necros: congrats on finally getting these two released. Been too long, eh?

Now, how about Chaosanguinarium while you're at it? ;) 

yeah, been thinking about it, tbh, but i wanted to wait on that for a bit (i sent you an email).

anyway, i've got ne_tower (the 768x768 green sewer/medieval map atm)
all i can say about that is (and this is ironic considering i was so hesitant to add them originally): thank god for ladders. ^_^

nice to see you posting here again. :) 

should also allow you to trigger the save game cvar. At least it works that way with the console trigger you can find in one of the QuakeC patches on this mirrored site:

http://www.gamers.org/pub/idgames2/quakec/

Sorry, too busy right now to hunt it down. I just remembered it worked for me when I tried it. 

It is possible, but I get a save message each time it is triggered, and I do not know how to get rid of it.

Step 1. Define a new float global 'autosave' in world.qc (or defs.qc).

Step 2. (Optional) Set autosave to 0 (zero) somewhere in the worldspawn function.

Step 3. Whenever you want to autosave, add these lines:
if (!deathmatch && !coop)
{
autosave = 1;
localcmd ("save auto\n");
}
For testing, I placed the code at the end of the function 'teleport_touch', so whenever a teleporter is used, it autosaves the game.

Step 4.
In the function 'respawn' in 'client.qc', after this...
else if (deathmatch)
{
// make a copy of the dead body for appearances sake
CopyToBodyQue (self);
// set default spawn parms
SetNewParms ();
// respawn
PutClientInServer ();
}
Add this...
// Modified from here.
else
{ // Single-player
if (autosave) // Reload last auto-save point if TRUE.
localcmd ("load auto\n");
else
localcmd ("restart\n");
}

Reloads the game auto.sav. 

http://www.gamers.org/pub/idgames2/quakec/level_enhancements/trigcons.zip 

PM: your method looks pretty good. i like that it's transparent-- the autosave is loaded on player death.

HT: dunno if that was done after or before the hipnotic xpac, but that's pretty much what they did for their trigger_command/info_command. 

 

step 1) design your map nicely
step 2) the player saves, if he doesn't, well bad luck
step 3) don't waste time and energy for autosaving. Jesus, this is Quake not Metal Gear on Rails 5. 

I see what you're saying, but I don't fully agree.

Yes, designing the map well is always the most important thing. However, not everybody likes manually saving all the time. As I said earlier, for me it breaks the immersion and feels a bit like cheating. If nothing else, people can forget and neglect to do it (especially in a really engaging map where they're having a lot of fun) then *BOOM* dead (unexpected trap or ambush). Naturally you can tune the map so that most players can get through it if they're careful, but it's never going to be perfect - player skill range is quite varied - and outside influences (getting distracted) are possible too.

The thing is, if that happens (player dies without a recent save point) - let's say after 20 minutes of gameplay, there's a good chance you'll lose him right there. If I'm faced with the prospect of playing through for another 20 minutes just to get back to where I was, I'll often just quit immediately. When this happens, it's quite possible I'll never come back to replay it (sometimes by choice, sometimes forgetfulness).

However, if there are frequent and well placed save points throughout the level, regardless of when you die you won't have to repeat a lot of gameplay to get back to where you were. In these situations, it's just a minor setback and I'll almost always just keep playing.

There's a reason why practically all modern games, even those which feature manual saves, have some kind of autosave or checkpoint system. It's a sensible and good thing that allows the player to simply enjoy the game without thinking about saving, and ensures that frustration is minimized in the event of player death. 

Yeah hitting F6 occasionally (I usually find obvious ambush rooms or pathways over lava to be a good cue) is so hard... 

You can add stuff to your map that makes an upcoming danger obvious. "quake guy's inner dialog", "message from the omniscient worldspawn entity", "now you are gonna die!!! ololol!!1", music/sounds, a telegib in front of you, architecture that screams "DANGERDANGERDANGER!", anything like that.

For me a "your game was just saved because there will be an ambush in a moment so make sure you are prepare and don't frightened or be surprised" message is the ultimate tension killer.

It's a personal thing I guess, but for me manually saving is much less immersion breaking than seeing a game autosaving for you because it knows you might die in a moment. 

Somethimes in sp I use it because I know that I've damaged the monster enough so that 1 or 2 axe hits will kill it, and I'm so used to have few nails that in close combat I often use double barraled or axe, in this case there were no shells so... And I think it's fun to give the final blow with the axe :)-- 

I don't have F6 or any autosave key bound :(

Autosave messages don't necessarily have to be broadcast, in a game like Quake you probably wouldn't even notice any chugging indicative of disk access that you might see in a modern game.

Mock me all you want (BRING IT ON BITCHES!) but all I'm saying is an autosave system for Quake would be a nice thing to have. Ideally one which is transparent to the player. It'd just there as a fallback in case there's no recent manual save.