flawed execution. Clipping really should have been tested more.

brushwork is good although I fell through the curved stairs in the early room a few times. Texturing and lighting are solid though.

Gameplay is a mixed bag, annoyingly cramped in parts, nicely implemented in others. Final fight is fun. 

should be "all Quake engines except those developed by administrators of, or regular contributors to, func_msgboard"

Thanks though - cheque's in the mail ;) 

oh wel there are lots of things that already been said!

i will just add it some more amazing map in brushwork... real top stuff... lights and construcion make me cry :( i will never make this kind of stuff.... chif!

the puzzle part is not my kind of stuff, after the and 2� room i quit...

the other part was much fun i finish untill the end! first dfemo i died in slime :9

was fun as hell puzzle didn�t lkike it much... i dont like to stay ages in a room :( sorry...

but the map was fucking briliant congrats on this one negke is a map that we will all remenbered!

now demo

http://trinca.quaddicted.com/temp/768_negke.dz 

Sure. You have mail. 

Would you want more ways to script puzzles? 

I had the same problem as Kona with the Vores using an old version of DarkPlaces (darkplacesengine20070110beta1), and the same problem with Fritzquake (Mod_FindName: NULL Name error) as Shambler.

I went for the "Puzzles" option. Bad mistake. After what seemed like an hour, I gave up after I managed to get the laser to hit the target, and release the lift button lock.

"Traps" was better, although I feel the "Dont Hit This Button" was a missed opportunity. A simple external dll included with the map could have quietly deleted my hard drive contents as I continued to play. That would have learnt me proper. 

fuck my not working computer! GOD DAMN YOU ALL!

I want to play all these maps! This one in particular. 

Puzzles/Traps: It's interesting to see how differently everybody approaches such areas. Each player seems to get stuck at/have no problem with very different spots as others.
Some of the button-related puzzles (first room) might seem like pixelhunting, but I thought their black sides give it away. The entire section probably should have been brighter, too.
necros: I imagined people would hear the base sound when trying to solve the barrier puzzle - a slightly different texture would have been a good idea, indeed. As for the capacitor, my plan was that the player realized that the puzzle involves self-damage from a source other than the button.

Traps: Yeah, I see the slime pool is a bit too strong. It's easy to see how to get past it, but can still be tricky from some side.
The Button trap is awesome because it shows that the largest threat to one's live is oneself. Megazoid: hmmm... ;)

Clipping: Didn't it expect it to be that much of a problem really and in none of the demos it seemed to be such an issue. Though the 768 restriction and the way I built this thing definitely make it more awkward than regular maps. I know some areas where bumping into geometry is particularly annoying in some situations, but while there are clips here and there, I didn't want to use too many so as not to make the player feel even more suffocated.
The catwalks, yeah, best to get off them quickly.

jdhack: Indeed. It would have been cool to be able to jump all the way back down or at least have the intermission screen show the whole map from the outside.
(btw. fun fact: this entire map isn't so tall after all; it fits into my smqe08b)

nitin: Where did that happen exactly? Do you have the coordinates or a screenshot? 

If you're playing in DP (and your post didn't make it clear), then do r_speeds 1 to get the co-ordinates. I don't know if AGL has anything similar. 

clipping was a serious issue with this map. since you were already using an engine with extended limits, you should have not only clipped a lot of stuff but turned a lot of the pointy outy details into func_illusionary so that you wouldn't get hung up on them. 

sorry have neither, but it happened on the curved stairway in that room you take the lift into at the start.

I ran back down the walkway from some monsters and stuck close to the wall. Then I fell out of the map.

Will see if I can replicate it and send you a screenie. 

ans was using AGLquake. 

I found the traps kinda fun and the puzzles annoying. Some were fun, but too many i 'solved' by randomly flailing around. Found the end combat fairly hard (on skill 2). Found no secrets at all, go me.

Still a very interesting map! 

At the 3rd area(blue brick) of the puzzles run. Got here mostly by chance. I suck so much @ secret hunting.

Already finished the traps route and found the whole thing very very good. Gorgeous brushwork if a little cramped(unavoidable, obviously). Loved the checkered protruding walls.

Traps very creative and fun, hey, but it's Negke's right? What were u expecting?

I'm a huge fan of your work Negke, if I manage to finish the puzzle route in less than a week, that is...

This thing rocks. 

I'm going to record a walkthrough demo (including secrets) some time. This will probably make for some Ahh! effects (or channel all stored-up frustration and anger to me). 

Traps route

30:35
1/6
87/88

Negke is the most creative and clever mapper ever.

This things rocks.
Bad. 

For anyone who wants to see where the secrets are and how much the puzzles/traps routes experiment failed. (I originally wanted to make a Kascam demo, but I guess it wouldn't have worked so well in such a cramped map.)

http://negke.quaddicted.com/files/768_demo.zip

Btw. re: demo compression.
20mb demo files -> .dz: 2.65mb, .zip (7zip): 2.61mb, .7z: 1.81mb. Seems like DZip is now obsolete indeed. 

I fucking loved it, personally.
I've always been ridiculously intimidated by your skills, and this doesn't help things. Architecture was fucking awesome and creative, ditt You o for lighting. Tmhe gameplay matched my playing style perfectly. I didn't find *ANY* secrets! I never do though... just slow that way.
To summarize: You crushed it, period. 

I never liked Dz 

Thanks. Don't let this intimidate too much, there are still some scraps you have to finish. 

cause I don't. My computer had a mid-life crisis and broke down. 

Give me your mail address and I'll send them over. Did you think you could get way this easily? 

No, in the back of my mind I knew I'd get dragged back in. 

For some reason this map felt too small, compared to other 768 maps I felt like I was constant bashing into walls and getting stuck on ledges all the time. Plus the odd time I would take damage for no reason at all on lifts which is never good if the skill level are hard, hard and extra hard.

I feel the scale is wrong on the architecture for the size of the map. The trims are just too large, the window borders are too thick, doorways felt too small with large metal frames. Alot of the curved staircases were awkward to walk up probably because of basic Q1 movement over odd angled surfaces.

The encounter balance felt all wrong to me. First AI was 2 ogres up high bouncing grenades at me while I was wondering where I was. To compound this problem further is that the first curved staircase is awkward to climb and the ledges have no strafe space. The tiny lift you go down and have spawning AI on your head is difficult because there is no room to move and to compound the problem the lift caused some damage from some wierd clipping problem.

The first locked door should of been more obvious and had a blue key symbol on it. The route back up after the blue key room is crazy, it felt like too many AI being thrown at me. Ogre's spawning out of thin air, enforcers going crazy from ledges and even one of those really annoying bob flying robot things. (I am sure most people hate those things)

The switch in the middle of a room that opens a door on the other side was awkward because the sound clue was masked by the door closing behind me. Plus the timing of the event did not make any sense that is opening a door out of view and on a short timer.

After a while each room felt like a trigger for an event that will probably kill me. Like for example the fiend trying to sit on my head when I came up a lift into a brand new area. Or the shambler at the top of a curved staircase with no where to dodge besides going back and using a low archway. The AI did not feel right in the space they were in and balance felt wrong.

At one point I went up a really long lift shaft and briefly saw a really good stash of weapons and missed it. Once at the top of the lift I was presented with a crazy hard quoth monster and luckily kill it with a shotgun! That cache of weapons should of been easier to get, it would have made the fight more fun and not make me feel like I was trying to kill a crazy monster with a tooth pick.

I really liked the idea of the level spliting off into puzzle and death traps. It was really nicely done, I liked the choice. So I tried the puzzle route first because I was curious to see how it was done.

The first puzzle room was hard, in the end it came down to some crazy hard to find button panel buried in a texture pattern. The first button to open the doors should of been easy and the style should of been consistent. The second button on the ceiling was crazy hard again but the best bit was the 3rd section to smash the jammed button. It made me smile when it was complete and I felt clever for solving it.

The next puzzle of the bridge extending thing I could not solve, I could not see any mechanic that worked, needed fixing or texture button to unlock something. There were no clues what to do next and the thing on the ceiling did nothing. (I assumed it was button from previous experience) I think the puzzle section failed because there were not enough clues (except the button jam). If you are going to do hunt the button, it has got to be consistent and an obvious mechanic of what is expected to be done.

I tried the death trap route and I liked the air lift puzzle section the best. Sadly after a while I just ran out of health and switched on god mode to see the ending. There should of been a health pool or respawning health box somewhere near the start so I can stock up and retry the route again. Also the don't push this button thing, was weird and did not make any sense in the context of the map.

The final fighting felt like a typical spawn fight sequence and I was expecting something much more clever. I am not sure why this is so popular in Q1 maps where you run around a tight room fighting hordes of AI and just end up bashing quicksave all the time. I really wanted a puzzle boss fight, where I did something with the environment for a change.

Overall the architecture and textures are gorgeous and well placed. I really liked the vertical element to the map but the gameplay did not feel right to me with forced encounters squashed into a small space. I really do love negke work but it feels like it needs more polish and skills levels for explorers like me! :P

Here is a couple of demo recordings : http://www.simonoc.com/files/misc/768_negke_sockdemo.zip I am not sure how to play them, I recorded them with Fitz 0.85 engine, hope they work ok. 

Thanks for the detailed feedback and demos. I agree with your points - and most of them have been commented on before by the others.

The crampedness (and subsequent bumpiness) is partly due to the rules of the contest and partly because I got carried away on details (that's also the reason I added curved spiral walkways instead of regular ones or stairs, which in consequence makes walking on them awkward).

The first room is too hard indeed - and I have no idea why I made the medkits small on easy, that's pretty dumb. There are some other monster encounters that are unnecessarily mean, too. The lift damage is caused by some engine glitch, though. Even on easy skill, the map assumes prior Quake experience, not least because of the Quoth monsters, although in your second demo you got through quite well (minus the fun probably).

Puzzle and traps sections were things I wanted to try for quite some time and put them here as a sort of filler. As it turned out, it was twice a challenge - coming up with interesting puzzles/traps AND fitting them all into the small 768� space - they suffer from that, too. The puzzle bit is divided into three rooms, each one requiring a different approach. First one is button hunting (made unnecessarily difficult by the texture theme and low brightness - I thought their dark sides would give the buttons away easily), the second one is about figuring out mechanisms, and the third one is just some random stuff.

The "Don't push it" button was more of joke - the actual trap is the player's curiosity!

This is an experimental map (always a good excuse) in terms of both contruction/theme and gameplay, but in retrospective, it should have undergone much more testing - even despite the fact I was running low on motivation towards the end. I'll keep your comments in mind for next time.