..real-world settings in videogames so this is heaven for me:)

But why people always think Quake engine could not manage these types of maps ?! It's an engine like the others.. only more dated!
If we saw few of these in the past is only for mappers fault, laziness :) 

It's not that real world settings can't be done in Quake, its more that there isn't really a desire for them. Most are comfortable with Quake's familiar themes. 

More than that, I think Quake's otherworldliness is precisely what makes this game still unique to this day, and it would be a bit of a shame to defile it with bland real-life settings like soooooo many other games do. Quake is a laboratory for creativity, abstraction and experimentation and that's how it should be. From what I've seen, your "real-life" maps in this pack are not defiling anything though, so congrats for pulling that off. All other RL settings I've seen before in Quake were just plain and boring AF.

Blast Chamber
I remember playing the demo on PlayStation back in the day. Was nice, but not enough for me to buy the full game. 

QuakeInjector's download progress bar is stuck at 0% and waits forever without giving an error. 

You should report this to Quaddicted instead of here. 

I don't think the episode is on Quaddicted yet. 

I think my machine won't respond to this large maps 

you have to set sv_protocol 999 and gl_farclip 100000 in teh console, and reload the map 

I tried several farclip 256000/10000, but it only chunks a full unvised path. 

set that, then reload the map and it should work 

Looing clear at the "path" screenshot it reads
using protocol 666 (FITZ) +Fte2(OX2A).
Also reloaded it with that statement. 

These are the first custom Quake maps that I've ever played. When I first saw the screenshots, I was blown away, especially by shib2 and by the pagoda.

The map design was unreal with how intricate it felt at times. They maps were enormous but they never really felt tedious. There was a ton of detail to keep things looking interesting. Shib4 was mind-bending and honestly way more unsettling than anything in the original game by a long shot. The twisted, distant landscape in the valley below alongside the twitching eyeball watching in the distance did wonders for the atmosphere. When the difficulty ramped up, I genuinely started to feel uncomfortable with the looming threat of monsters combined with the landscape.

The western map was an incredible finisher to an already unbelievable map set. I especially liked the ending with being able to escape the confines of the map and walking out into the far distance.

I encountered a few bugs that made me really frustrated at times but the maps were so good that I had to keep going. On elevators, especially within the crusher in shib4, I would get crushed by invisible forces. Sometimes elevators would get jammed due to bumping into some unseen obstacle if I didn't get outright killed immediately. I also found some invisible walls in shib5 but those weren't a big deal.

Also with probably 90% of custom maps that I play, the ammo supply is criminally low and this was no exception after shib3. I lost my save after completing shib2 so I had to do a shotgun start thereafter, but even if I had kept all of my accumulated weapons and ammo, it wouldn't have helped at all by shib4 and shib5. Shib5 especially had an extremely low amount of ammo relative to the amount of monsters in that map. Sometimes it was fun to manage my supply and I was forced to be extremely meticulous with my aim and ammo choice. However, there were too many moments where I had to rely on infighting in order to get through. I don't think adding more ammo would have hurt but I'm a newcomer to custom Quake maps so I guess I'm not in a position to judge right now.

All in all, I pretty much credit these screenshots for really getting me into the game when I never had too much of an interest in it in the past. The game play ended up living up to or even surpassing the screenshots. The maps were not only a treat for the eyes but they were extremely well-designed. Looking forward to seeing more of your work in the future. 

It was heartwarming reading your review, and the fact that you choose this episode as your first custom maps as opposed to the many, many other wonderful choices by the community, it really feels like an honor.

I am aware of the elevator squish bug and the only remedy i can offer is to set your frame rate to 60. Even at 72 the spontaneous crushing still happens. Sadly this is an issue discussed for a very long time with no definitive resolution. As for the invisible walls in
shib5, they were more than likely put there to stop you from going
places you aren't supposed to go under normal circumstances.

The episode has been criticized for being very stingy on ammunition, which i guess is by design, but given the choice now i would have added more.Although each map can be played with a shotgun start, they are meant to be played chronologically, so when you get to shib3 you have a lot of rockets in your inventory ready to be used. The fact that you managed to get through the maps with a shotgun start is very impressive, and shows you have a considerable amount of skill.

I'm just very overjoyed you had a good time with the episode, that's what makes all the hours of hard work pay off. Thank you. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtgA5T3uHoE

Sorry I'm so late on this but I did say I would play it, so here we are!

Okay so first things first, the maps are beautiful! I can't discredit the look of these at all (though the warehouse in shib2 is a little ugly and shib3 has that one house with the really ugly wallpaper ;).

It's also apparent that you put an absolute ton of time and work into these and you're very passionate about doing something new/different in Quake. Good on you!

While beautiful, I do however have some issues with the actual game play in this pack. please keep in mind these are meant as constructive criticisms. Think of these thoughts as thoughts from an average player because I am a very average player.

1. I agree with everyone else on the ammo issues. We need more to take out the baddies!

2. This may or may not be very important to you but it's worth mentioning; the pack doesn't feel cohesive together. In the first map, I love the sillyness of the Quake monsters supposedly having a vacation at this resort and beach and the Quake guy comes to ruin it for them. You leave in a boat and I'm expecting to arrive in the next area, coming from water and a broken boat or something to that effect, but then we're randomly whisked away to the middle of a warehouse? It's a very strange and abrupt change. But then the rest of the pack works in kind of the same way too, so maybe it's cohesive in its in-cohesiveness?

3. The maps to me feel like they were made huge for the sake of being huge; it definitely feels like form is being chosen over function. My opinion, and I doubt it's a popular one here, is I just plain don't care for gigantic maps. Once a map is hitting the 170 or more range of enemies, it's too much. I know Arcane Dimensions did this on a few maps but the thing to remember about those maps is that they largely always had some kind of event or "carrot on the stick" attraction there to keep you going and interested.

Shib1 felt like a really good pacing and set up, Shib2 was different enough in its approach that you forget about the pacing and amount (plus that last area with the spinning thing was very cool! Though i did get completely stuck on one of the puzzles, not sure what i did wrong there). However Shib 3 - 5 were not very fun for me.

Shib 3, while pretty, was very tight in the buildings and they look very similar on the inside so it gets a bit mazey. Ammo started getting short, the rockets started raining down and the Shamblers got to be many. This was one that started out very strong but ended with me being a little frustrated.

Shib 4 I got to and enjoyed the first bit of it, but it was so large and so short on ammo that, to be honest, I didn't feel like dealing with it after what happened in Shib 3. I ended up noclipping around to check the map out. It looks like there were a lot of great ideas in there but by then I didn't have the patience for it, especially with Shamblers and Vores everywhere and no ammo... even if they were weaker.

Shib 5, Gorgeous! But once I saw the enemy count I was out. Almost 300 enemies, and mazey mines -no thanks (though you get points for the shambler cut out! that was awesome!). Again, I no clipped around and realized that this map would be a much better 6 map episode in its own right. Imagine traversing through several western themed levels; The Good, The Bad and The Shambler!

I apologize because I know this is long, but in closing I would just say, I would focus more on the gameplay side of things next time. Have a few more Quakers get in there and test things for you because in the end, I just didn't have a lot of fun with this after the first 2 maps.

But please make more maps for sure! You obviously have a lot of talent and passion and your potential for map making is very very promising!

Again, just the thoughts of an average Quake player! =) 

Thank you for taking the time to play through the episode. I watched your stream and it was very enjoyable, though I do have some questions regarding some of your criticisms. First and foremost, while I appreciate you playing through the episode you didn't seem all too thrilled about it from the start. The general consensus was you as well as the watchers were more looking forward to playing through the one hundred brush competition maps instead of this. It seemed like the only reason was because you felt obligated to, and had a sense of "Lets just get through these maps so we can get to 100b maps. I may be totally wrong on that.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean when you say the maps are too big for their own good. Could you elaborate on that? As far as lack of secrets, I guess in my 12 years of mapping I never got the memo saying all Quake maps NEEDED to have secrets in them. The reason I ommitted secrets in map 2 was to have the player focus strictly on the puzzle segments, and not worry about finding a secret that might confuse their train of thought. As for none in map 3, I just couldn't find an appropriate place to fit them.

As far as letting the player know what kind of experience they are in for as you mentioned toward the end of your stream. Well, what more can I say from my original post that won't spoil anything? As for the maps being very inconsistent with each other, that was intentional. Not a popular choice it would seem.

But I don't want to be all negative here. I completely understand and respect that large open maps aren't your cup of tea, a lot of the community feels the same way. This episode departs from many of Quake's usual mannerisms for something risky and different. Suffice to say it didn't win over a lot of people, but that was to be expected. I know you said it was important to think of the player first while mapping, but I will confess. I was thinking of me first, and my excuse is now that Quake was able to create such large limit removing maps, my long time ideas could finally be a reality. And to the person who said BSP2 abuse, these maps are what BSP2 was made for!

And to the person who said these maps were more like a screenshot pack, I can accept that. Visuals for these maps was my top priority, and gameplay was not necessarily an afterthought, but yes more time could have been devoted to it.

I can understand you stopping when you did. It is a long map pack, and by map 4 or 5 you are pretty burnt out, especially if you are doing it all in one run. You are also the first person to my knowledge to discover the fake shambler in the mine tunnels. Glad that got a chuckle out of you.

I'd also like to point out at how good you are with remembering where things are. Many players have gotten lost trying to find the key doors most prominently in map 3, whereas you remembered exactly where they were and had no trouble getting to them. I was surprised by that.

To sum everything up, I'm sorry that the episode was more frustrating to you than fun, but I am glad you gave it an attempt. I've read comments where people see the screenshots and immediately are turned off refusing to even touch it. You stuck through it as long as you could, and thats all anyone can ask for. 

Had to play through Shib 5 Across the Tattered Amyclaean after seeing the stream.

I played it months back, but had some performance issues, and never recorded a complete demo in the end.

Here is my fantastic run through:
http://www.quaketastic.com/files/demos/redfield_ter5.zip

Loved it. When I first saw the screens I thought, how did Timesplitters 2 get into Quake? I was humming that stupid Western track from the TS2 the whole time.

Don't take the criticism to harsh. The theme and visuals are completely unique, never been done before. And not many would be able to pull this off. Yeah the gameplay and balance is off putting, but you recognize that.

Look forward to more. 

Hi Ken!

I'm always thrilled to play Quake! =)

I apologize if anything came off as negative during the stream, it's all in good fun. As far as starting this stream off hoping for something else, You'll notice that the viewers ask why we're not playing something new, so that is why I started out with saying that. I knew people would show up and ask why we weren't playing the 100 brush release and the reason was because Quakers are very excited for that release and had been asking about me playing it ever since it was in development. Now that it's out, I think that's what everyone was expecting.

Truth be told, I had completely forgot about this map pack until some of the guys mentioned it in chat recently. I thought, oh wow, I promised to play that so I figured it was a good time to do so. =)

When I speak about these things, they are really just my opinion and I like to think that I normally speak from the players perspective. Though I will say that I've been told I suck at Quake, so many of my observations may be due to that. I'm just an average player here and giving my perspective on things.

So, to elaborate on what i mean by maps being too big for their own good, there are a few things to take from that. Say we're looking at Shib3, when you go into each building, much of the floors and hallways are pretty cramped. Because of this, there is a knight or other enemy around mostly every corner. This tends to get a little tedious, grindy and feels too big for it's own good because if there was one building like that, it wouldn't really be a big deal, but if you have to do that 2-3 times, it gets old for me. You could remove a building and I think it would actually add to the map. In this case, less is more.

If you look at a map like Shib5, it's too big for its own good because that's personal preference (like most of my thoughts). I feel like a focused episode for a setting like that would just work better then one huge map.

This is just my opinion obviously, but Quake maps should always have secrets. I don't think the main game hase a map without even one secret, even the hub world has the nightmare secret. Unless your map is super straight forward, then I guess that's fine. I talk in the stream about throwing the player a bone now and then. It's how keep the player interested in the map. Secrets, Events and Landmarks (there are more things too but I'm just trying to describe things quickly) all play a role in keeping the player going. I think that's why we've seen the trend of newer maps having a huge number of secrets, because they're fun to find and it feels good to hear that secret chime sound.

I'm not trying to dissuade you in anyway shape or form. I love having mappers making maps, period. While this may not be my cup of tea, there are obviously other players who adored it. I also think it takes guts to release something that goes against the norms. Anything you created here is better than what I could create, no doubt!

Again, you're obviously a very talented and passionate map author and can make some beautiful and dazzling things, I think they just need a little more focus on gameplay, consistency and what the player is looking to get out of it.

Going forward, I'd be more than happy to play through anything you're working on if you ever need input or another set of eyes.

Also, Fake Shambler rules! =) 

https://valvedev.info/guide/features-of-modern-quake-source-ports 

Thank you for the demo Redfield, was really nice to watch. You did the smart thing by conserving ammunition through axing weaker enemies and saving for the big encounters. You had a few close calls but you made it out alive and with plenty of ammo to spare too. Well done!

It is not my intention to take criticism harshly. Honestly I don't, even if it may sound that way. The criticism that ArrrCee provided has all been valid. The difficult gameplay mixed in with very large maps and sometimes unpleasant looking visuals is all acceptable.

I just had a few questions regarding some of ArrrCee's critique and he explained it clearly. In the case of shib3 being too big, I tried to make each room in each building unique from every other so it didn't feel tedious. As far as secrets, I guess I try and aim a little higher than just a different textured wall that you shoot to try and find a secret. I like my secrets to be elaborate, one that isn't solved so easily, and I often think of different scenarios for how it might work. Sadly more often than not I'm dissatisfied and I wind up scrapping the secret entirely. I'm not trying to make a statement that I hate secrets or anything, I'm just not too good at making them.

I will gladly accept most criticism of my work, as long as its reasonable. If someone were to say I didn't put in any effort to make these maps, yeah that might get under my skin. But I digress.

Again, I was fully aware from the beginning that when I released this pack it would get a lot confused looks and even some hate. But to see it still being mentioned and occasionally talked about almost a year after its release makes me think I did a pretty good job. 

It's interesting how polarizing this map set can be. RC, I don't mean any disrespect - everyone is entitled to their opinion - but I feel like some of those criticisms were birthed from approaching the set with a mindset that is very contrary to the one from which these maps were conceived.

I never found the lack of continuity jarring because it's clear that each map is supposed to be very distinct from the others. Whereas you see a problem with the sudden change of environment, I see talent in the fact that the author was able to conceive such drastically different themes while constantly breaking the mold of the traditional Quake map. If you're taking things at face value, then it's easy to imagine the goons taking a vacation at a resort in shib1 as you mentioned. However, it seems clear to me that shib1 was intended to have surreal qualities to it - the monstrous fragment of the Golden Gate looming in the distance for example kind of gives the map a dreamlike feel, among other factors.

The maps were certainly large but I disagree that they were large simply for the sake of being large. That would imply that spaces were conceived with no particular intention other than to be large, empty spaces. With regard to shib5, the huge space helps bring the western town setting to life. You have distinct environments within the map - a huge railroad system above a giant crater, caves on the perimeter, a small oasis beside a large cavern, and the tiny village area where the final fight takes place.

As for secrets, I don't see their value or utility in some of these maps. Due to the scale of these maps, each one is an adventure. There is plenty to see and so much brushwork plus beautiful textures to marvel over. This provides enough incentive to explore. There is a sense of progression as you tackle these maps. With all this in mind, I never felt that the maps were devoid of anything except ammo.

After listening to some other guys in the community, it's very clear that there is a school of thought that Quake maps all need to be a certain way. Some people seem to think that if a map isn't a base map or a wizard map, then it should be a close derivative of one of these styles. Having finally played a good number of user maps since I initially reviewed this set, I can say that my opinions haven't changed. Ken pushes the boundaries of the modern tools at our disposal and he excelled at environmental storytelling and atmosphere. Shib4 is still so iconic to me with its horror theme and game play shift to a lopsided tower. Some sacrifices probably had to be made in terms of enemy encounters in order for the author's vision to be realized but I still felt that the execution was very much on point.

In any case, I'm not trying to bring any hostility here. I generally enjoy your reviews RC and it's always fun to watch you play through maps. I only chimed in because these maps were hugely inspirational to me and I don't want Ken to forget that his work is tremendously appreciated. When I develop some chops, I'd definitely like to revisit these themes and extend upon what has been started here. 

It is different and it plays different compared to most other maps. There is no doubt about it.
Anyway, I had fun the most time I played. Thumbs up from me. 

I am submitting this within the Ter Shibboleth thread because I feel it doesn't warrant its own news thread. Not feeling satisfied with part 1, I have decided to go back and Drake-ify each map so that it blends nicely with part 2, except now there is no part 2. Ter Shibboleth: Drake Redux is the entirety of Ter Shibboleth, eight maps all within the Drake mod. Its main purpose was to fix the overly difficult gameplay by providing plenty of ammunition, health and new power ups for the player to have at their disposal, as well as giving it a more complete feeling. It's still a challenge on hard but you won't be hemorrhaging ammo at every turn. In addition to the updated gameplay with new monsters, weapons and items provided by Drake, I went ahead and made some significant changes to the first five maps that I felt needed it:

Shib1 has closed its doors on half the hotel rooms as they were deemed not necessary. The rooms that are open now look like you could actually live in one, complete with a bed, television, drawers and night stands. Much better than an empty room with a rug and four walls. More detail has been added to keep it looking interesting such as carpets, more paintings, chandeliers, patches of grass, distant sailboats and cityscapes, a flying airplane, and the bridge which now appears to extend into the horizon instead of being cut off in the middle.

Shib2 adds a new secret area, and on easy skill the timed two button teleport puzzle has been trivialized.

Shib3 changes the sky to a pleasant orange purple sunset backdrop, instead of just plain bright orange. The gold key segment where you float to the teleporter has been replaced with walking along the roof eave. The rockets raining down are less frequent. Gongs now emit a noise when hit, and a secret area has also been added. The map ends early on easy skill, skipping the circular pagoda segment.

Shib4 has had the biggest overhaul. Many areas have had texture replacements and adjustments to keep things looking fresh. More distant scenery has been added to compliment the overall unsettling atmosphere. The all seeing eye is more realistic looking. Progression has changed to be more linear now, as some of the multiple branching paths have been blocked off to avoid confusion. This not only makes the map both longer and less intimidating on finding your way around. The final arena with the mirrored rooms segment has been removed entirely, as I felt it was too low in quality to keep.

Shib5 has better distant scenery along with added details such as large grass patches, gravestones, and towns on the horizon.

Shib6 removes the unnecessarily long walk from the underground bunker to the cave exit.

Shib7 and 8 are by and large the same with a few minor bug fixes and enemy replacements.

I understand Ter Shibboleth is old news and most of you have played through it already, which is I felt news thread is unneeded. Though I hope with all of it now being Drake-ified might entice new comers to try it out, or warrant a second playthrough.

Ter Shibboleth Drake Redux has been tested and compatible with Quakespasm 0.93.2, vkQuake 1.04.1, Quakespasm-Spiked 0.93.2 and FTE 5776.

For much better framerate especially in the later maps, use FTE. Though a few things to note while using FTE:

Game saves and demo recording are in its own unique format.
Doors and platforms can play very loudly on Shib2
The dragonscale armor powerup has movement difficulties.
The lightning effect in shib7 is not present due to how FTE handles dynamic light differently.

Screenshots:
http://quaketastic.com/files/screen_shots/shib1_drake.jpg
http://quaketastic.com/files/screen_shots/shib4_drake.jpg
http://quaketastic.com/files/screen_shots/shib5_drake.jpg

Download:
https://archive.org/download/ter-shibboleth-drake-redux/Ter%20shibboleth%20Drake%20Redux.zip (213MB) 

Hey KenChannar: Thanks for the email you sent to me a little while back. I'll make it a priority to replay these maps and finally get to shib8! 

Cool news!