I've sort of (to the extent it's possible, given that the map is somewhat broken at this stage) playtested your map while trying to find solutions to the problems you posted earlier. I jotted down some notes but haven't posted them as I wasn't sure (a) if my opinion is worth anything and (b) whether this thread is the right place for this. But then I thought, what the hell, I might as well give you what feedback I have. Feel free to ignore all of it and please get other people's opinion too, as I might not know what I'm talking about.

THE GOOD:

I think the map has some cool ideas. The "city in ruins" setting is nice, and the "3d platforming" gameplay is entertaining (where you have to work out your way forwards and hop from broken piece of architecture to rock to broken bit, etc.).

THE BAD:

It's waaaaay too tough (on skill 1), for at least three reasons:

1) The hop-from-bit-to-bit gameplay is nice, as I said, but the lighting is often too dark too see all the nooks and crannies, and then it just becomes frustrating. My advice would be to work on the lighting to make things easier to see, even if it means using minlight (I realise this is usually a terrible idea, but it's better than pitch blackness).

2) The enemy placement/weapon+ammo placement and enemy/ammo/weapon balance is far too unforgiving:

2.1) You start by assaulting the player with a crowd of grunts (i.e. hitscan enemies) that drain your health in no time. I would get rid of those if I were you. Perhaps you could replace them with dogs, and even then, you don't need so many right at the start.

2.2) The Vore that you teleport in (by the stairs that gave you trouble before) is unfair: there is no cover (so it's just a matter of time before the voreballs make contact), PLUS the player has to hop over tiny platforms in lava, PLUS there are enforcers all around. I'm betting few players can survive this.

2.3) You wait far too long to give the player weapons and/or hide them out of sight, which makes them easy to miss. That means many players will be stuck with the shotgun for a large part of the map. Plus there are too few shells and nails for the number of enemies. My advice would be to place the weapons directly in the player's path and make sure the player gets the super shotgun almost immediately (as opposed to halfway through the map on a hidden ledge). And either up the ammo or reduce the number of enemies, or possibly both.

2.4) In general, the fact that you have this platform-jumping gameplay (over basically insta-kill lava) means that when you bombard the player from all sides at the same time, the map just becomes a difficult grind. I'd say go easy on the monsters. You currently have more than 100, which is way too much for this kind of map.

THE UGLY:

The map is unplayably slow, buggy and leaking. I suspect you're trying to do far too much in one project, and I would suggest simplifying things -- gameplay, brushwork and size:

Gameplay: So having rising lava is tricky to do in Quake. I actually think your map will be much better without it. It is currently so tough that few if any players will be able to complete it, so you really don't need even more tricks and hazzards. I honestly think the platform-jumping gameplay makes the map interesting enough, and that you don't need half the complex trigger setups you are trying to create.

Brushwork: I think the map looks best where the visuals are simpler, e.g. the escalators and the subway line with the train. These parts are recognisable as parts of a city. Later on, where you get to those ruined skyscrapers built out of a million small elongated brushes and you have all those rockfaces and other things all around, the visuals just get so busy and overwhelming that it stops being convincing and just becomes, well, messy.

Size: I think this could be a far more enjoyable map if you cut a lot of it, and made it 25% (or even less) of its current size. Get rid of the messy brushwork and the huge, grand vistas. I don't think they work well visually (although I can see what you were going for) and I strongly suspect it's going to make it easier to get rid of the buggyness, seal the leaks, etc. 

Eh, I wrote this before I saw #576, so the bit about the rising lava is no longer relevant. 

 

My first idea was to create a map then copy the geometry and add the lava so that you went one direction through the map and reach the end. The last room would be a platform that would be lowered into lava and down to the copied geometry. Then they would have to navigate through the level geometry in reverse filled with lava creating all new paths using water to create platforms.

That took too much planning for the time that was given. :-( 

Can be done but not in the standard progs.

I used it in FMB-BDG2 to flood an area to allow the player to escape from the sewers/drains. I know I didn't code it, I think it is func_water from Extras. 

WarrenM : Your map wants a "devpun_*" skybox but you didn't supply a skybox in your zip. Can you send it?

ShoTro : Your changelevel trigger links to "Start" with a capital S. Can you change it to all lower case, do an -onlyents compile and re-send the bsp. Thanks!

Also as a note, I am officially recommending Quakespasm for this particular map jam pack. A few of the levels will not load or will crash other engines (jam6_necros will crash Fitz, "mod_loadleafs exceeded" and jam6_ericwtronyn is 2PSB format). Quakespasm is the only engine currently that has played all the levels without any issues. Of course you can see if your preferred engine will work but for a hastle free experience, Quakespasm!

The pack can be released when I get the files requested above :)))) 

 

Crap, sorry ... it's just a skybox off of sock's site:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/161473/Misc/devpun.zip 

I think it's possible to fix entities by opening bsp in notepad without recompling 

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it's not very editable ;D 

Try HxD, or a similar hex editor. Open the file, search for the string "changelevel", you should be able to find and fix the issue easily enough. 

bspinfo -copyents mapname
edit mapname.ent in notepad or something
qbsp -onlyents mapname.ent <-- NOTE THE EXTENSION!!! 

Messing around with the entity lump in the bsp file leads to corruption if you change the length of the text, the bspinfo/onlyents method avoids that. 

Yeah or edit the .map and compile with -onlyents (with .bsp in the same folder) , takes like <1sec to recompile just the entities :) 

If you scroll down far enough you will find the entities section (I think this is used by "light") which is plain text from the .map file. I'd be surprised if it was safe to edit and re-save it in Notepad++ though. 

Oh, damn it, I didn't know that, my mistake. Thanks for the tip! 

Oops, wrote my msg without having seen czg's posts� What he said! :) 

Editing the map file and doing -onlyents can be risky because there can be problems linking the correct bmodel to the correct entity, and I've experienced switchable lights being broken as well. 

If you only edit the changelevel trigger, -onlyents is fine. It's only problematic if the order of brush entities changes. If the map has switchable lights, you need to run light -onlyents as well. 

I realise there are ways for me to edit ShoTro's map but if I somehow fuck things up and his map is broken in the pack i'd feel awful. So I'd rather wait for the man himself to issue a quick fix :)

Thanks Warren, that skybox kicks arse!

SOON HYPE SOON 

for switchable lights, aguirre's light.exe and the jury rigged util has a -onlyents switch to relink switchable lights. unfortunately, ericw's light does not have this. (nor the original tyrlight) 

2PSB

Can someone delete Tronyn's compilers so he switches to good ones? 

i will add that to the todo list, I forgot that qbsp -onlyents would break switchable lights (but it makes sense).

I ran a last minute "qbsp -onlyents" last night of Tronyn's/my map, luckily there don't seem to be any switchable lights, so it should be OK. 

I compiled to 2psb because Tronyn's other releases used it, and also some more engines can run it; I'm not sure if he uses RMQEngine. AFAICS, it doesn't make much difference which BSP2 variant is used?

We're planning to release a cleaned up version at some point so could switch to BSP2 then I guess. 

ericw/necros/czg, what do you mean by "switchable lights" - you don't mean, say, a light that's off by default that gets switched on by a monster dying? heh heh -_-