@mwh, cool thanks for the demo.
@Rick, unfortunately this map is not really designed for NM skill. I would recommend Hard as it has a much better setup and balance.
@SleepwalkR, yeah, I thought the same about the RL when I saw people miss it. I even added a second clue to the next altar but no one connected the two together. There is always a fine line between subtle and obvious for secrets.
@nitin, I can see how people think the setup of enemies facing away from the player is broken but I always liked that setup in Quake.
@Shambler, good, at least I know the texture was alright. :)

I think your maps do have a degree of sameness about them - textures and room sizes/decals dont vary too much
This is a prefab problem, once I find a prefab/style I like I often fall into the problem of copy and paste, the downside of prefabs. I thought this map was better because each area has a theme and the boundaries were more obvious.

Halflife 2 is maybe an exception. I'm always finding the routes interesting, but not confusing. Perhaps a mapping sign of excellence ??
@stevenaaus, Maps worked on by many people always have more unique styles and the chance of more memorable locations. This is why good games companies rotate maps around between people, it keeps them fresh and interesting. 

i played on hard and it was no challenge. final battle was meh, I don't like that kind of painkiller-like g/borefest. worse because of respawning ammo (iirc).

felt the same "oh poop I have enemies showing me their back" moments where I felt disappointment about not playing the map as intended (as I was thinking at that moment). I only read readmes for technical instructions.

loved the secrets I found but they ultimately lead to the feeling I just mentioned.

loved the combat, monsters were very well placed and felt natural. wonderful looks and brushwork as usual. felt lost most of the time though. #41 is spot on. I think I prefer linearity as in having a clear objective (not as in being on rails and being severely limited in a bland story hello halflife2).

demo later.

Looking forward to playing it again (nm!) and finding the secrets.

I think the silent majority of quake players actually replays maps they like a lot. At least that is my impression from when they post something after all. 

Maps worked on by many people always have more unique styles and the chance of more memorable locations.

That does not sound very logical to me, if this is more than just a guess do you have actual examples? Isn't many hands a danger to the most unique or even eccentric design? 

@Spirit, Now I understand why the post at quaddicted is labelled as nice. I am disappointed you don't like the map but I do not have any regrets about wanting to explore the idea of multi-route map design.

That does not sound very logical to me, if this is more than just a guess do you have actual examples? Isn't many hands a danger to the most unique or even eccentric design?
All of the maps for RTCW:ET at Splashdamage were worked on by multiple people. I have found this at all games companies I have worked for. There might be a key designer in charge of a map but this is not an exclusive thing, others will work on it as well. I think it is an excellent idea because the diversity of design ideas can make better maps. 

...found the LG (10/10), and I'm kicking myself because the visual clue (unique sconces) was obvious with hindsight.

kudos Sock! 

The Ogres are rough in this map on Nightmare.

I don't worry too much about "breaking" the map by following odd paths. The first elevator, I naturally jumped back quickly after pressing the button, hopped on the roof and went up instead of down. Arrived at the top to find myself behind a Hell Knight.

In some ways, the shortcuts were maybe less than helpful. Often the shortcut is found before visiting the area that it will take you away from. At this point it doesn't work and I found that to be a little confusing.

Still, a really nice map and not too big, I may give it another run today. 

the rating at quaddicted is meant to be objective, don't read my personal review here into it... 

Here's my first time demo, recorded with DarkPlaces: http://koti.mbnet.fi/jeejeeje/quake/ivory_jim.zip

Took 21:58, found 4 secrets and got 97 kills. Every time I had lost all armor, I found a new armor :) 

>felt the same "oh poop I have enemies showing me their back"
>moments where I felt disappointment about not playing the map as
>intended...

That's why I like multi-routes maps. I like to surprise the monsters and jump on their back : "Hello you moronic thing, I got you in the ass, dude. Arf arf arf !" Hehehee!

Even if a map is linear, I always rocket-jump to places so I can surprise the monsters and look at their poopin'ass. So fun to electrocute them, with a Quad-dammage ON, and see their head flying to the ceiling (yep, I cheat a lot).

If a map has multi-routes (non-linear map), the monsters could be walking (patroling) around instead of just standing still like a day-dreaming fat ass.


By the way, tonight I'll reply the map using the DMSP mod (adding more monsters and infights). There will be a real Rave party on the whole map. MUAHAHAHA! 

demo https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/33279452/daz_ivory.rar

25 minutes, 7/10 secrets Hard skill.

I got sooooooo lost :P Spent about 10 minutes just wandering around looking for what lift/door I didn't go through in order to progress. I could see where I SHOULD have been through grates in some secret areas but couldn't for the life of me work out how to get there :)

Aside from that I had fun with this. Fun combat and fun puzzles as always from Sock. Hard difficulty was never really too hard however, I never really felt much pressure from enemies. Even in the final arena it was fairly easy to survive. 

@Daz, thanks for the demo. Everything was going the right direction up till the point where you had to drop down to the final gold key area and I think I know why.

It is interesting from watching 10+ demo how players do the same things. Even different types of players all do common things and there are several breaking points in the flow. I suspect it is a physiological reason and probably linked to what I said earlier.

In the altar area with the RL there is an archway to the left that goes round a corner to a drop down. Pretty much every demo reaches this point and every players looks at the drop down and I can hear the cogs whirling in their head "oh that is a one way drop down, I wonder if I have missed something, I will come back ..." and that is where everyone just gets lost. Everyone leaves, goes off exploring and then cannot find their way back.

This happens a second time with the gold key area, players see the Quad locked behind bars, want it, forget about the gold key and door and then try to get the Quad. Often falling down or realizing the releasing mechanic is out of reach and then go off exploring trying to find it.

I can see where I went wrong, lesson learned.
* Players hate one way routes
* Players will feel the need to complete areas
* Critical route locations need to be visually obvious how to get back too
* Players will gladly ignore current objectives for worthwhile items

Often these problems are fixed with key/arrow symbols all over the place but I know these can be fixed with subtle level design. 

http://www.quaketastic.com/files/demos/ivory1b-ivory-spirit-hard-firstrun.zip
Hard skill, first playthrough, Quakespasm. 

i'just finished this jewel with smc and i'm impressed. somebody wrote: "it wasn't a chalange on hard". make no mistake, with smc it's definitely a real chalange. i took me almost 50 minutes to complete this level with 7/10 secretes.
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i changed texturemode back to linear_mipmap_linear. don't like pixelated textures... that was by design? why? 

Seriously though, blurry textures is heresy. Even though I played a lot of 3dfx quake back in the day I like the sharpness of the unblurred textures. 

that's matter of personal taste... i use hires textures from qrp and in ivory tower about 80% is replaced with the hi-res ones. the rest is pixelated it looks awfull. at least from my point of view. 

Grrr, apparently, the DMSP mod doesn't work on another mod.

Another game play style I use very often on a second/third/wathever map run is to use noclip to pass through all the walls, just to "awake" all the monsters on the map. I then return to the start point, turn OFF noclip, and run through the map in the default way. Monsters are then often at unpredictable and surprising locations, and several infights may be already occuring at some locations. Hilarious, especially when you notice that some corpses are lying on the ground, and a Shambler walks away in another part of the corridor ! 

a fantastic map from sock!

I really liked the open layout.
The ammount of details are mindblowing.

It's a good thing you have come to quake to map, please continue, let us have more maps in the future.

Everything in this map rocks! I had a lot of fun trying to find secrets and staying alive.

Played at hard and finished with 101/101, 7/10 secrets!

Thank you very much for a fun evening!

Demo: http://www.hrimfaxi.dk/hrim_ivory.rar 

why don't you simply remove the .bsp file from the .pak and run DMSP mod through it that way?

I'm fairly sure that Sock uses .pak for his custom models and settings purely for neatness of the releases. I don't think this mod will be anything different from his other releases in this way. 

Warning: random speculation follows.

I think perhaps some of the disorientation that this map inspires comes from not having a 'global' sense of the map, i.e. it's not clear what the overall progression is. Compared to, say, wicked, which was certainly a map I got lost in but it was pretty clear that getting higher up was the goal most of the time. 

I'll pay more attention next time I play it, but it seemed to me that there were multiple "shortcuts" that served the same purpose, just in different places. I didn't see much reason for that. Also, there were what looked like lifts/elevators, but I could never get them to move.

I have a quicksave on nightmare from right before the gold key door, maybe I'll just load that and go look around. 

you can remove the bsp and lit and rund dmsp. The pak files are only there for the custom models and an edited quake.rc that forces the particular GL texture settings sock prefers. 

On a Mac, how can I extract the .bsp file ?

A long time ago, there was an app (depacker, I think) to extract ressources from the .pak files, but it's no longer working under OS X (Classic isn't supported anymore).

Sock, if possible, I suggest that you also release the BSP version, to give users a choice. 

"If you want to play the map with *your* original quake settings delete the pak1.pak file. It contains the extra models (items) and the quake.rc file with my recommended engine settings."

You can also extract the BSP from pak0.pak using PakExplorer ( http://www.quaketerminus.com/tools/pakexplr.zip ), I'm looking at it right now, along with its .lit file. 

make a new mod dir, put ivory pak0.pak inside and add the dmsp pak as pak1.pak 

thanks Sock

1st run shitty demo, skill 3 (fitz085)
http://quaketastic.com/files/demos/spy3_ivory.rar


Architecture is a top notch, a very sock's style.

i'm just wondering your productivity, it's like your fourth or so map this year