but it's a hacky way of getting the bounding box to move smoothly over weird shaped brushes

Wow, this is the industry standard way of fixing mesh issues in all games, clip brushes are not hacky. They are designed for a reason, to smooth out the players movement. I think your current low detail project is affecting your better judgement.

Creating detail in maps is fun, it adds to the overall ambiance of a map. Sure it is time consuming to make but Quake is a hobby and there are no deadlines, everyone has as much time as they want to make maps.

Those screenshot errors are strange, they are certainly not a vis issue because there should a func_door at their location blocking those holes. When the player comes back a second time, they are removed and func_episodegate brush takes their place. It may be something to do with the engine you are using. They certainly appear with Fitz/MarkV/QS. 

 

I know some people hate how I "force" engine settings on them, so here is a pak1.pak file "the way that Id did it" engine settings ...

No quake.rc pak1.pak 

"Wow, this is the industry standard way of fixing mesh issues in all games..."

Yeah I know why we have invisible clipping brushes, I used them a lot in Q-Deck, but games like Unreal did not have the same issues with floor terrain. Newer games like Ut2003 only needed a heightmap for terrain, no other clipping necessary :P
Abuse of clip brushes is one of my biggest gripes with modern games, want to walk down that alley? Fuck you, clip brush bitch.
As for my project, I wanted something low detail because my job now requires me to work long ass 10 hour shifts and I don't have quite as much time to pour over details like in your maps. If I'm not able to put down enough brushes in a given session I tend to lose interest leading to lots of unfinished maps.

Yeah I thought this might be a DirectQ thing, at least it only affects this one area. 

Smoothing out movement and having invisible blockades are two different things though.

Unreal always had more robust physics imo, like movers actually transfer their momentum. I remember in the gearhead map in Rage when I took the large elevator downwards and jumped up... I fell to my death.

I was like SRSLY ID? After all this time... lol. 

Fuck you, clip brush bitch.
Got to say that is rude, my maps are far from modern day standards of clipping everywhere. I let the player wander all over my maps, I just make sure that terrain is not so bumpy that you end up falling off edges by mistake. 

Hearing how good it is wants me to wait for the special moment when I can give it my full attention <3 

"Got to say that is rude..."

Hahaha, I wasn't referring to you when I said that actually. Oh lordy, your maps are a breath of fresh air compared to anything today! 

I suppose no one enjoys watching a demo of invisible monsters :)

I know what happened, and I re-uploaded the demo for correct viewing. You will however, need to use the lastest version of enhanced win/glquake to view it, which should be no issue.

The address is the same as before, but I will post it again for convenience:

http://qrf.servequake.com/~orl/misc/orl_zendar.rar

Again, sorry about that. 

@Orl, can't play it with any Fitz engine, oh well no worries.
@Fifth, it sure sounded like you were shouting at me. :( 

I had stated you needed to use enhanced win/glquake (aguiRe's engines) to playback the demo. You can run aguiRe's engines right? 

found all monsters now + one more secret
still missing 2 secrets though, any demo with all secrets? 

The sense of place is amazing.

Here's some demos where I die a lot and wander about gawping at the architecture.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/v075wb80mk0nu2g/ijed_zendar.zip

1/10 secrets and missed a load of kills. Also only went through a single SK door, so plenty left to do!

Challenge felt fine, I was just off my game a bit.

Reminded me of the plague village level from Painkiller. What is that eye symbol on the doors to the houses? It reminds me of something. 

Don't have much to say about this as it was pretty much perfect in all aspects.

Except for one thing: The secret high on the left as you enter the main courtyard is a demon door which are normally openable by switches. I spent a long time looking for a switch for that...

Demo: http://www.quaketastic.com/files/demos/zendarsham.zip

(47 minutes - 30 minutes playing, 17 minutes trying to get into that secret or back to that secret once I got lost). 

@Orbs, there is no official demo of all the secrets but I believe Shambler got them all, I think! :P

@ijed, wow you are crazy! skill 3 first time, its nuts! :) The eye symbol on the wooden door is nothing, just detail. I like your route, you found stuff in cool ways, but you still missed a ton of stuff! :D 

you'd realise I'm a bit of a fanboy for your maps ;) 

14:16 is still much to long
if somoene spoils me that last secret il try improve.atleast have to find a solution for those last zombis i kill


http://members.upc.nl/verorber/demos/zendar_1416.rar 

good thing it wasnt the secret at the end of that demo, geez you fell down alot :)

whats in a a name it was the secret behind the shambler on the roof 

@shambler, very cool demo, you were obsessed with that demon door but it was different, my fault. I also should have not locked the roof towers, the items are not critical.

It is awesome to see all the different routes people are taking and how they are getting to the roof. Very cool demo's so far. :) I will release a pack of the one's I got working next week. 

I think it is interesting.that the horde parts are not criticised. They would be the only common bad thing that came to my mind when thinking about it. I did not mind them when playing, I actually liked them! So you can make good horde fights! 

http://www.quaketastic.com/files/zendar_drew1.zip 

Short review: this is incredible!

My first play: http://www.quaketastic.com/files/demos/zendar_mandel.zip

I must have found some accidental shortcut because I think I missed large portions of the map. At least judging by the monster count - I only found 60 (easy). Unfortunately the demo lacks total monster count since I restarted the recording after the map reload.

Here's a little utility which replaces reconnect messages with nothingness, making most multilevel demos possible to play back in most engines. Should support any protocol since it works on the raw level. Source and mingw (win32) build included: http://mandelmassa.net/quake/raw-unmarathon.zip 

It was a typical orbs screw up that gave me the multidemo playback issue, when i loaded up my command line yesterday to watch a demo to find the last secret it reoccured and i had a closer look at my commandline and saw it wasnt the latest fitzquake, after changing that could watch back all np. + i did a 12! sec improvement over the above posted demo with the last secret, gosh so slow was hoping for more:) 

@spirit, what would the horde of zendar be without a good horde fight!

@Drew, as always you play like a master with perfect jumps and magnificent infighting sequences! :D

@Mandel, it looked like you were toying with the AI, lovely movement, you should really try skill 1 it could be a better challenge. :) 

http://www.quaketastic.com/files/demos/zendarnightmareisforpussies.zip

2nd playthrough, skill 3, no deaths. Don't usually play skill 3 so I forgot how much more effective ogres and shamblers are so I did get below 50 health a few times.

Sock if you like church infighting you'll like the massive clusterfuck I get in this :D