but it's fucking hard...

I thought the Shambler ambush was cool, but actually I was just god moding through it by that point.

I'll probably try playing it properly when my patience is feeling up to the job :) 

stop stealing textures from other games! 

is free :( 

a bit bright though, and combat was very tough,
couldn't complete it on skill 3 yet :(

>I didn't know how to use the flashlight, it was on until it was off...

the same deal 

...thank you one and all, and thanks for sticking at it Ricky...given your understanding of Qouth(2) I thought you'd eventually come round.

A word about skill levels - with the introduction of Quoth2 and the attraction of hardcore DM players back into the single player fold, the Quake level designer now has more choice and possibly even more responsibility with respect to setting skill levels. Gone are the days when one could even say the range now starts at 'normal' and bumps everthing up linear fashion from there. 'Hard' under this regimen makes the likes of sielwolf, UWF and bambuz nod off while playing.

In setting the skills for this level I made a conscious choice to set 'skill 0' at 'original Id easy with the occassional extra challenge'. Precisely because I didn't want to put off peeps wandering into the game for the first time in years to come. 'Skill 1' is 'current hard with a sting' so that good players can enjoy a challenge. 'Skill 2' caters to the growing number of Uber players who appreciate the extra challenge of Quoth2.

A word on gameplay - the Quoth bestiary is here to stay, given this I've done a bit of work exploring the play patterns of each...you know, the sort of thing we all did when Quake came out. There are some really useful habits in this bestiary, for instance if one has a decent armour on one can stand directly in front of an enforcer_pyro and suck up flame as you pump him full of shot, all the while losing little or no health...then voila he gives you back the little health you may have lost anyway. Polyps are unnerving...but stupid, unless you move a fair distance they always port back to the same spot and they give you a big hint before they use their push attack. Once again, standing your ground and auto pumping shells into the thing OR the space where it was while being mindful to wide sidestep when the push attack winds up (all the while holding down the trigger) works a treat. You can actually fix the thing in place if you can keep a steady stream of tin hitting it.

Learn to love the new kids on the block (as we did the original bestiary), or don't bother with Quoth driven levels.

If you insist on trying to run and gun this level then the skill level required to survive it ramps up exponentially and the gameplay has the effect of becoming suprise rape. If you keep your cool, look around, explore, treat the level with respect (i.e. don't get lazy), and use your commonsense then none of the situations are unfair or unsurvivable first time round on skill 1. 

...because I respect him so much.

I did not try to do DooM3 in Quake. Let it go friend!

The cramped areas in this level contain no enemy, unless you are referring to the ledge under the initial teleporter in which case "What kind of idiot tries to take down a polyp while walking a thin edge above slime." Machismo is deadly in this instance, learn to run away and take the fight to an area that profits you.

Your demo exposes why you believe the gameplay consists of ambush rape set ups...you expect everything to just fall to your hand and don't bother to even casually glance around your environment, it's just run run run to the next encounter. As to the shambler trap...during it you exhibit some of the laziest quake play I ever seen, in fact your game has become very lazy in general (I still have a blindingly good demo of you completing pdbq_sp1 from 2001). You don't seem to take the task seriously until you drop well into the red (in which case your brilliant skills kick in again). You make odd choices, like equipping yourself with a low powered weapon (rather than the charged LG) when you are about to open a door behind which you can obviously hear an Edie. Why anyone would be surprised by the appearance of two 'bobs' while standing on a "security bridge" with a MH at the end of it is baffling. Unpredictable traps?

There are no gameplay jokes here, your prejudices and deficiencies do not allow you to put words in my mouth.

I've contemplated mapping for Q4, and may do so when/if time ever permits.

Thanks for the comments, I obviously think they are misguided but they are yours and thus I respect them. I'm glad to have encouraged such an empassioned response from one of the games best. 

since, it's easier to find news threads in the archives when the map name is there.

Now, to actually install and play it.... 

I thought the Shambler ambush was cool, but actually I was just god moding through it by that point.


Best gameplay feedback EVAR ^_~ 

then none of the situations are unfair or unsurvivable first time round on skill 1.


Did you design Skill 2 so that some situations would be unfair or unsurvivable first time around??

That is not necessarily a problem, but it is a totally different style of gameplay (maybe that's what you were going for) and as such it should be mentioned as such. E.g. "Here is a map I have designed specifically so on harder skills players will not be able to complete first go and will have to learn the tactics required" (as I say, itself not a bad idea for something different).

Very hard is not equivalent to unfair / unsurvivable first time 

and died a lot, generally due to lack of health (i suppose that's obvious) but i don't think the enemy/weapon/ammo balance was off. Just the shortage of health. Ambushes didn't seem unfair to me, as i died the same amount in ambushes as i died from random fire from bad guys in non-ambushes.

There were definitely 2-3 cramped combat situations. I disagree that you could always lead enemies to nice open combat areas.

Map was quite bright due to the fog. I tried some darker, thicker fog, and thought that actually looked moodier and had less banding problems. (i think it was density .05, color .1 .1 .13 or something like that)

Nice geometry, good pacing, and i was happy to play a map that has under 100 monsters in it. Those are less common nowadays.

As for the type of gameplay, i don't think it was "doom3" gameplay... felt like standard quake to me, and played like a lot of other custom quake levels. I definitely died more on this one, but the level was small enough that i didn't mind replaying sections a couple times. Aside from using the ripped-off doom3 textures, this really felt like a middle-to-old-school custom quake level. 

and there were some ambushes that felt a bit unfair and resulted in load cycles, but on the other hand, if you don't spawn enemies behind the player, he could always just retreat and spam. It's a quake gameplay problem because the monsters are so stupid it's so easy to just shoot-duck-shoot if you have a secured rear sector.

Vastly simplified, you can either close the door behind the player (arena combat), spawn enemies behind the player (surrounded), make him have to use a weapon that only works at close range (ammo choice). All have their "meh" side.

I didn't mind the crampedness at all. I never got stuck on anything. It was very well done. I noticed a clip in a few obscure places but nothing annoying.

When the new Fitz comes I can play with 85 Hz and dinput and then aiming works better again.


***SPOILER***
I killed the polyp from the vent, he was stupidly floating there in front and slightly above, not hitting me very well at all, I've noticed some flying enemies are often like that...

I still think the voreling should die of one SSG hit. It's tinier than a rabbit ffs. 

.. from the discussion in this thread alone. i don't play a lot of singleplayer quake but this should be worth the download. will report back later :) 

This map is very well done.

I played it with GLQuake. How do you activate the exit elevator ? I had all the keys, but I was unable to activate the final elevator. 

did you play with quoth? (quoth2 to be precise.)
kell.quaddicted.com 

First let me say that the map was in no way overly dark, nor did I experience any slowdowns during gameplay. Constant 85 fps.

This is a really good looking map. When I first saw the screenshots, I thought it was a Doom 3 map, until I looked closer, and noticed it was for Quake.

Despite what everyone else thinks, I enjoy seeing the doom 3 textures in Quake. They look really good, and they're usage in this map was no exception.

Hard skill was harder than I expected. I died about a dozen times. But that's what hard skill is supposed to be, right?

The detail was also stunning. Particularly the area where you extend the bridges to get across. I enjoyed that one.

Can't really complain to much. It was an all around excellent map with plenty of surprises. Just wish it could have been longer though.

Very nice work Distrans. 

I really would not be against playing whole episode of such a D3-like ownages.
PS: is there any way to avoid the slowdowns while using Fitzquake for this map(to change number of audiochannels in config or something)? 

How damn should I activte the EXIT elevator ? Where do I put the golden key ? 

Add "-heapsize 48000" to your command line, that should get rid of the slowdowns. At the moment, the amount of memory needed to load the bsp/quoth stuff means all the model keep getting fetched from disk. This seems to be happening frequently enough that it should be added to the quoth page/readme. 

This is a meticuluosly built and tuned map which is both sonically and visually rich.

If you rush, you'll hate it on skill 2. You have to learn the map and choose routes and tactics carefully. Even then, expect a sound beating. However, you'll feel a sense of accomplishment when you see the Turkey Puncher.

Supplies are well balanced - you just can't be too sloppy with either health or ammo. I was able to finish with enough to spare. Again, think about route planning as it applies to risk and reward.

I like the look of the converted textures and the cramped feel. A tech base should be full of shadows and you should be scared when enemies close in.

Choose a skill setting based on fun and not on assumption. If you're not sure, don't be too proud to start at 0. It's a good enough map to revisit on the search for your correct skill setting. 

But after dying a few times at the start, I dropped down a gear. Managed to complete it eventually, despite some tight moments (the final battle stripped me of armor and dropped me into the red). It's a map that satisfies, despite its size. Apart from one ambush early on (about 10 feet passed the silver key door), which I think is a little on the strong side, especially at skill 1 (where hitscan weapons will produce a rather short and undesireable ending.

The "higher tier" weapons (GL and shaft) are used well, as very little ammo is provided for them, meaning that you have to be careful not to overkill monsters that drop. They also need to be used well (like taking out or weakening multiple monsters with a grenade) if you don't want to be forced to use your standard weapons when you are in intense combat. Speaking of weapons, I found myself using the nailgun much more than I usually do in this level. I usually use shotguns about 80% of the time, but there we

This map doesn't suffer from the flaw that many maps have suffered from, where they start hard and gets easier. This map starts hard and stays hard. It's rather refreshing, in a way, and I definitely feel that some mappers could learn from this map... 

the monsters are so stupid it's so easy to just shoot-duck-shoot if you have a secured rear sector

And why would that be a problem? The player can DECIDE how to approach the combat, it's either easier or more fun - but the player can adjust the difficulty to his skill level. Can you as a level designer not stand to see the player have fun on his own? I thought we all agreed that choice is a good thing.

(that's mostly what gets me so angry about the d3-like gameplay, btw. it's so hard (ie. you die so fast if you don't do the right thing) you don't really have a chance to react to the ambushes -> no decision on my own (during fluid gameplay) -> angryness.) 

...granted, I suppose a little blurb in the Difficulty Settings: section of the .txt (rather than the standard Yes/No) will become SOP in time to come. Not including one this time round is an oversite on my part. 

... the Gold Key operates the EXIT door, after the lift to the surface lowers you should be able to trigger it upward by merely stepping on to it. 

yeah right, blame the player for not approaching your map right, when he sees it for the first time...
Im not gonna say "What kind of idiot puts a polyp over a thin edge above slime." cause we arent making this personal. You simply can witness how much idea players have where to run away and take the fight to an area that profits them from the Ankh`s demo (the appropriate over-slime part). I might be playing pretty straight-forward but thats how it is - and there is reason I play on skill 1 by default. And even if I tend to press forward too much, I am also retreating - but only to find out that the areas I have covered and cleared are re-filled with some deadly enemies (which a first-time player couldnt expect ofcourse).

If you believe that locking a "skill 0" player armed with a nailgun in a small area against a shambler with no cover, or putting a shotty-armed quaker between 2 rl and lg grunts at the very start is a good setup - then we have very different ideas of whats fair. Quoth grunts were made to substitute the higher-ranked monsters in the base-themed levels, and throwing a bunch of them vs weak wepons is not balanced by the very design.

Never mind the bridge comment - mind the health meter - that part wasnt hard or surprising. Having watched my demo I see it was a pure luck I didnt die those 2 times where I was down to 1%... duh.
And another stab at doom3-ishness: not marking the secrets is uncool for atleast 2 reasons: no info and lack of accomplishing 'finding 100%'

Hey, but here is real comeback:
Now I dare you to beat your own map on NIGHTMARE (since you know it inside-out and have a better understanding of quoth enemies) Fair enough? 

I really don't want to get into a slanging match with someone I have such respect for, my response was in no way meant to be an attack...but here goes anyway:

yeah, right blame the level designer for not designing another level where you just meander along doing the same thing you've been doing for the last 10 years...

that damn pesky teleporter, I wish I could find the off switch, and damn I wish I'd paid more attention at the briefing on these new enemy...

...and a surfeit of health leading up to the situation, including a Mega Health just before the encounter

unmarked secrets? huh? there are no secrets in this map

my default level is also normal, that's why I engage testers of an ability far beyond mine, no not fair enough...irrational.