I think I come off as being more critical than I actually am about this map in the demo.

http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/demos/mfxsp10_drew.zip 

It's caused by the fog. Even though, it seems, the visible surface of the sky brushes have the black texture, it's still treated as a transparent sky volume and thus affected by the sky vs. fog behavior in Fitz.

I does look odd, because the map is clearly designed to be caverns deep underground, and in most areas the ceilings are just dark and solid, suggesting rock structure. In the visible sky areas, e.g. in front of the GK door/library, a solid ceiling, however simple, would've been a far better solution even if the ceiling isn't as sophisticated (rock-shaped) as in the other rooms. An 'infinite' ceiling seems somewhat strange and inconsistent here. If it is intentional, the grey effect could've been avoided by placing a black func_illusionary (again, upscaled texture!) over the sky surface. 

It was an interesting demo, it's a shame you haven't found more secrets, i was hoping to see them. At least you got one. I got none. Actually, i thought that step you used was an error in the bottom floor so i passed on suiciding for be sure, as i was recording a demo.

I do see why you choose hard difficulty, dancing like you do would be way harder and you seem very proficient at it.

You got me figuring for long how you'd beat the drole when you were wasting so much ammo, even more when you lost the monster infighting possibility of the hell_knight. It was fun.

You had the same idea as me and i suppose the same too for a lot of other people of shooting the flickering lights for secrets.

Why did you used the noclip? It was a fun moment. As fun as thrilling it was when you began dancing with the vores when you had cover enough. The old tactic was boring for you, i suppose.. haha 

The map is very nice, congrats. But the difficulty skill is ... I really can't find the word for this. Dude, I played on easy, I wanted just to take a quick look on the map. I found 3 secrets, that helped me a lot.

But the end... 2 vores, only shells left, ok, no problem, stayed behind the pilar and killed them. 2 more vores... same strategy. Only a few shells left, going forward, knight, shells are gone, axing the knight like crazy, killed him, just a few points on health...

And then another vore????????

Come on, are you serious?????? Did you test this map on EASY? I don't really want to imagine this on nightmare, in fact I don't want to do it.

I said this for other maps: you guys, I know that there are people who love challenges. But I'm not one of them. And there are 4 skills, one of them is named EASY. Guess why?

You made a great map and you TOTALLY ruined it by making it impossible to finish for me (on easy) without cheating on the end. Maybe I'm a very bad player, but I expect that playing on easy I should be able to finish any map without cheats. 

I die.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/oiyyv1fw1sv9ghk/ijedmfxsp10.zip

Now to finish playing... 

RMQ engine again. 

If you got to the vores, you can't complain, that's one of the easiest parts of the map, so it should be easy for you, because you completed the harder parts.

Get some demos and look what you did bad. 

Final verdict - first half felt like I was being drip fed resources and din't die by my own fault.

Second half was a lot more fun, the fights seemed more creative, especially the void leap = horde instances.

The end battle lacked punch, definitely.

Layout was good, as were visuals.

No ambient sounds? I missed hearing the classic ambient_suck near the void pits.

To 'fix' the Drole battle I would have stuck some resources just behind it rather than adding more overall - but that's just me.

The shambler fights after that felt a bit meh as well. I suspect the first would have worked better as a fiend or three.

Overall, pretty nice :) 

Its funny because most of us compalining about this map complain about the ammo situation. Again, I'm wondering about intention and the line between community values and the mappers interests.
It seems a few people were out of ammo (but just) by the encounter with the drole, and that like me they had to dive into that knight infested hallway, get a few minor scrapes, and then draw the knights out into a communal infight with the drole. Despite whining about it, it was actually a pretty nice moment of gameplay.
Was it intentional? Like a lot of func dudes I'm not a big fan of forcing the player to use the axe (discounting orbs recent speedmap, that one by negke etc - where that's the whole point)...

I don't know. I have shit to do but that thought occurred to me, so I thought I should excrete it... 

I liked that bit as well. I think it was just the continued lack of resources afterwards that bugged me.

Even so I nearly survived, just got stuck on the edge of a doorway and zapped.

When I mentioned having resources visible behind the Drole it was to make it more obvious that the do or die approach was required.

There's players who wouldn't bat an eyelid at axing a Drole or five to death, which is probably where the misconception comes from. 

I was out of ammo for the drole as well, retreated to find some nails, then tried to axe the hell knight with 7 health and died. Upon reloading, I ran straight for the ammo boxes at the end of the hall and took care of the remaining enemies with no problem.

Players usually choose a defensive approach rather than rushing in (and past the enemies in their way) to get the items. This has to be taken into consideration when designing combat, and it's easily forgotten since the author may too readily expect the players to play the map like he intended them to or would himself. I'd say it's a fine line between daring the player to approach into unknown territory for the sake of resupplying and 'locking him out' of areas with a seemingly excessive risk. A lack of health/medkits like in this map further supports a defensive play style. 

considering all of your complaints for my next release.
A single box of shells more? No!
Go for it, or go home.
Nevermind thanks for your feedback,
and .dems are helpfull, even now!! 

Locking the way back until the drole is dead would work as well.

Reminds me of a game I made where score recharged your health, and performing combos got you more score. The Idea was to make the player be aggressive and play excitingly. 

In sm169_jackfapoff, there is a good example of the defensive tendency being used strategically by the author. There is the one gold key tower with a bunch of shamblers - rushing in and getting the key would be easiest, but the natural response is to backtrack, and then they converge on it, forcing you to kind of confront it... 

I backed away there as well, since the chance of those big fat 64 unit bbox's trapping you inside and mauling you to death is 100%.

Really needed a step down on that bit...

When challenging the normal gameplay convention of 'back off, snipe enemies' you have to do it in a very careful way. Look at In the Shadows and all the thought that Sock put into making sure people could understand the stealth game play.

If he hadn't it'd have fallen flat on its face.

Anyway, this is all theoretical.

Spending an extra 30 seconds thinking about what game play you want to achieve in each little encounter usually solves everything though, at least in regular mapping. 

I have found this for you:

http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/screen_shots/mfxsp10_1.jpg

And, if you go into where the first death lord appers, and look to the other side of the chasm, deep down, even lower than the trigger_hurt, you can see something that looks like a grey door frame on the rock.

By the way, I have played the map in normal, and it's good, i don't think it needs more monsters, ammo or health, i do even think that you could transform some of the big ammo boxes after the silver key into their normal counterpart.


If you accept suggestions, not that i expect you to follow them, it's your map after all, i have some that i do think could spice the level and make it more thrilling after the silver door in terms of combats. But only in nightmare or maybe on hard.

- Move the monsters behind the corners some units back so the player can't get on them a free shot before they see you.

- If the player knows that there is a possibility of an ambush he'll be cautious and ambush from above from vorelings won't work, even more if you did it before. Maybe adding into these situations another monster on the same floor as the player to lure him and make him less aware of it's surroundings.

- Adding some monsters that flank you, on the sides or in the back/front after the third shambler dies (some appearing through the silver door could be cool), when you get the gold key some flying polyps or scrags on opposite sides with silent teleport except one of them that lures the player; or 2 scrags or death guards, or 1 vore on the arch, when you open the gold door; or maybe a vore or a drole behind the second pillar in the library, and maybe restrict the movements of the ogres so you can't snipe them. After that, a monster that lures you into the vorelings could be good, but i don't have any ideas.

- In some of the bottomless pits, make an ambush with a scrag or voreling for those that approach the border carelessly, just in 1 or 2 or the pits is OK, to make people more cautious, not to kill them.

- In the library, when you push the buttons, put a knight or doom guard on the same level as you so the player can't hide from the monsters in the pillars all the time and is forced to move, at least a bit.

- For the final fight, one less box of ammo of each type maybe. And putting less cover or adding monsters that come for you could be good. Maybe, if you holed the part behind the player, you could put scrags or polips in a high place, so they cannot hit the boss, is the only way i have thought that could spice the fight and not force monster-infightings.

Like i said this would be too much for normal and easy, but maybe it can be used in less quantity.

What do you think about this? 

pretty good designs, although needs more polishing/playtesting (I also noticed door like things in the pits as Cocerello mentions above and jumped down thinking they were secrets). Still, you have some very nice visual ideas and the execution is pretty good.

Gameplay wise, also not bad but it gets repeptitive with the knights behind the wall/around the corner method.

Overall, very enjoyable map but playtesting/polishing these up a little more will make them great ones. 

On Skill 1. Apparently I suck at Quake, because I died at the 3rd Shambler. Was a lot of fun though, and I'll try it again.

http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/demos/sleepmfx10.dem.7z

Only thing I'd complain about is the lighting, which looks a bit inconsistent (unlit light fixtures etc). Maybe you should spend a little more time tweaking such things. 

who�ve send me demos, it was very kind of you letting me see how you
fail...

Cocerello:

Long i have thought of your suggestions, and no
i�m not going to make a 2nd version of this map.
(Although i�m playing with the idea of building a A4(V2))

reasons are:

when reacting to everybodys claims, i should�ve sent a playtesting version to all of you...which doesn�t make sense, cause i want to surprise you with my stuff.

nothing else.

So much people moaning, means so much people caring, which is good btw. i think.
Your suggestions for improving gameplay are not totally new to me, actually i�ve played with some of them in this map.

Spawning monsters in the lib right after the button touched,i think it�s
a bit too hard..;)
Original layout had that feature btw.

Pushing some enemies further behind the corners i also did(regarding original layout), but somewhen the walls came in.

That lighting flaws are my fault, was hurrying and hungry.

To make this absolutely clear, i didn�t want to fuck you off with my earlier reactions(all of you regarding), i was terribly under the influence of some society acclaimed drug, my bad.

Nevertheless, that theme of this map was developed a long time ago, and though i�m a big fan (not to say the greatest) of THAN, it wasn�t meant to be a ripoff .

Now i go map again on that E3M1RMX, i care because you do... 

make changes, the .map file is included, so teach me the better! 

<Qoute>On Skill 1. Apparently I suck at Quake, because I died at the 3rd Shambler. Was a lot of fun though, and I'll try it again. </qoute>

Mfx, pay attention to this!

The player never fails.

You need to think of the game play narrative a little bit more. "After they shot this grunt this thing happens, they turn round and then they get surprised because this mad shit happens on their left..." 

you dont need to send it to everyone for playtesting, just 3 or 4 people. And then listen to and consider their feedback. Taek time during betatesting and dont rush the release.

You have made two very good maps but with a bit more testing, they could go to that next level. 

I watched the demo, and sleepwalker made it it the shambler an easy game to kill him. Not that SW sucks in playing quake, which i heavily doubted, but in dealing with that situation.

The player never fails, sometimes he just dies earlier...

Whats that quote from btw? 

I�ve tested this map on two fellow friends from the still not dead doom and quake community over here.
I sat next to them, sniping over their shoulder while they played my many beta versions( and i was silent).
they had no problems in pushing this map to be released.
I really don�t know what to do. 

sorry perhaps I didnt explain properly.

I was suggesting getting other mappers to test, like negke or ijed or others. They would give useful advice not just on gameplay but also technical stuff about mapping.

Maybe your friends already do both those things but the people on this forum really know what they are doing.