I had no idea the Quake mapping scene was still this much alive :) I've already looked through the tutorials and am learning a lot. Thanks once again for the feedback everyone, I can't wait to make more levels. 

"I had no idea the Quake mapping scene was still this much alive"

Quiet! More than a whisper and we might all vanish =) Quake will never die unless we let it, I geuss "we" is pretty accurate as I dont know of any other large communities still mapping for quake. 

I have the feeling that on Zanzibar stands several proud men who can perform bsp miracles that would humble even the best of us on decade old PIIs; and in the Mongolian Steppes there are artist who possess a computer system any of us would envy from wence they recieved from kindly Bahrain born Strangers who requested nothing more than the missile the Soviets* left in the ground just outside the village decades ago at the height of tensions with China. These young, unsung visionaries have built a phantasia of several dozen interconnected levels whose designs are more true to the vision of H. P Lovecraft than anything we have yet to see (a dogeared copy of The Lurking Fear and other stories was retained from the last tasty missionary who ventured there in the dead of winter**).

But for the limitations of current telecommunications technology, we can only infer the existence of our brother communities in Quake.

*Not saying they were the only ones with an irresponsable foreign policy; those stinger missiles we gave the Afghanies have come back to bite us on the ass, eh?
** I know, the last recorded case of cannabalism in Mongolia was in 1972, but I neaded to pep the story up a bit. 

Think of all the time you spent writing that you could have spent mapping instead... But still it was very entertaining to read ^_^ 

windlash: shots of that second map look like an improvement already. try to break up the flat walls a bit, that would help. Also, I personally like the dark and moody lighting very much, it looks fine on my monitor.

headthump: maybe if the entire quake community got together we could actually do that. nah that'd never happen... would it? 

ignore anything bad shambler says about your map, its just his "sense of humor".

Yes, heaven forbid they should listen to someone with years of playing/reviewing Q1SP custom maps.

If you don't know your stuff sucks, how the hell will you improve? 

Regardless of how many years of experience you have "this is a festering camel turd of a map" on it's own is not a particularly helpful comment to a rookie.

"this is a festering camel turd of a map because in all my many years of playing/reviewing Q1SP custom maps I have noticed that...." could be.


Still, everyone knows Shambles contracted review-jaundice some years back so it's to be expected. Probably kindest if someone was to take him to a quiet spot with a shotgun and put him out of his misery. I wonder if it'd take 25 shotgun blasts to kill him... :-) 

we perform that shotgun action every day on irc, so don't worry, he's in reliable hands ;) 

Yes, heaven forbid they should listen to someone with years of playing/reviewing Q1SP custom maps.

If you don't know your stuff sucks, how the hell will you improve?

It really doesn't take much intelligence to distinguish between 'anything bad' (in the context of UWF's post) and constructive negative criticism. Added to the fact that Shambler wasn't being serious in the first place (I think...), your evaluation seems kinda useless.

Not that being told your map is a 'festering piece of camel turd' can help you improve in the slightest anyway... 

My post wasn't necessarily a defense of Shambler's post in this instance, it was far more a critism of underworldfan's comment of 'ignore anything bad said'.

Yes, while you can read that to mean 'ignore stupid flame bait insults', it is the lack of differentiation on underworldfan's (and others') part that leads to nothing but mindless praise, which is even worse than mindless insult. 

in your above post.

I indeed should have said 'ignore stupid flame bait insults', especially from shambler, becuase he has done them a million times, and quite frankly they are pointless, tiresome, and reflect only badly on him.

Sepcifically regarding map reviews: Constructive criticsm is good, so is encouragement [which is not "mindless praise"]. Its all about balance. 

I have posted on this subject and it must seem like boilerplate now but my message to any mapper out there is to stay away from Qoole - period. Find a better editor - I switched to Worldcraft after putting what must have been a few hundred hours into Qoole. Qoole has internal bugs and it's floating point calculations result in maps that are different in the BSP then what appears in the editor. Qoole's bugs result in microleaks and brush seams galore that cause no end of compile errors. Try this - make some tricky geometry (conical roofs, complex gables, outdoor terrain, etc.) and export a .map file. Read that .map file in. See the errors? Vertices are not where you expect them to be. If your map is boxy - it's somewhat Qoole friendly. If you are going more curvy for your 2nd map - switch editors now or prepare to hate mapping. I'd hate to think that some hard working mappers abandon potentially good maps because thier tools aren't up to the job.

BTW - I paid and registered Qoole - that's how much I liked it. It had some nice interface features and I learned mapping on it. Only after finishing a 2100 brush map that was not VISable did I learn about my editor's shortcomings.

Haven't played your map yet but thumbs up for releasing it. 

Personally I'd reccomend Radiant, but the overall point remains, have a play with editors and find one you like, 'cos Qoole 'blows goats' 

Because I was mapping!! The irony, all right, that word is getting old, the destitution of it all!!! I stay out of here on purpose to get some things done and you guys have the most fun looking flame war I have seen since I started coming in here :( 

what Scragbait said. Qoole isn't bad because it's using floats (probably all editors and definitely all compilers use it internally), it's bad because it just chops off the fractional parts of the floats (i.e. 3.1415 becomes 3) before writing integers to the map file.

This causes massive accuracy loss and all non-axial planes (and even some axial) will get warped one way or another. In a big map this will cause a lot of unnecessary grief.

Windlash, please consider changing editor to a better one, there are several, e.g. WC 1.6, QuArK 6.3.0 and GtkRadiant (needs some special setup and conversion, though). 

Qoole does have a few, rather annoying, bugs. But I have figured out ways around the problems that stand in the way of my mapping. I may try another editor soon enough anyways though.

Here are some more pictures of evspq2. Just worked on it 10 hours straight and now about 50% done with it.

http://www.planetquake.com/sda/misc/evspq2_10.jpg

http://www.planetquake.com/sda/misc/evspq2_11.jpg

http://www.planetquake.com/sda/misc/evspq2_12.jpg

http://www.planetquake.com/sda/misc/evspq2_13.jpg

http://www.planetquake.com/sda/misc/evspq2_14.jpg

http://www.planetquake.com/sda/misc/evspq2_15.jpg

Some people say the pictures look too dark, some say they look fine. Sorry if they look too dark :( 

I find that when there are areas in my map that I intentionally want dark that as long as the intended path in front of the player is lit they will have little problem getting through. I hate walking around blind almost as much as I hate jump oriented puzzles. 

They are very dark, I can't tell what's there. I'd have to save and brighten them and I can't be arsed ;). I'll play it when it's out. It could be my monitor, but mine is plenty bright and all. Maybe yours is brighter, or that map really IS dark. 

Do yourself a favor and learn a better editor, you will thank yourself later. The excellance of Worldcraft or pure power and eligence of Radiant FAR outweigh Qoole's single saving grave of a nice UI. I used Qoole for Q1 and Q2 mapping from when 2.5 was first released until just before Q3 came out, and have never regreted learning better editors. 

...is to completely rewrite the code to make it as good as WC, Quark, BSP or GTKRadient. Making brushes overlap etc. to fix leaks is no fun and precision building requires a precision tool. Boxing a level to prevent leaks will draw boos here since I know that mappers like to noclip and check on people's construction techniques (after playing through of course.) I had another mapping friend who refused to change because he found WC too difficult. His maps always leaked and time which could be spent creating was spent troubleshooting instead. I went through the pain of transition and it was painful but I have no regrets at all. Your 2nd map is not lost - just export your .map into a new editor.

I don't know about the other editors mentioned but WC's visgroups are way better then Qoole's Scope-Up : Scope-Down function. I depend very much on an editor's ability to allow selective display. You can also transfer brushes and ents from one visgroup to another. The Scope function requires ungrouping and regrouping since it's less flexible.

I played your map and enjoyed it. It is well made and pretty nice looking. A nice Quake fix in these lean times. I spent a lot more time in it looking for secrets and found 4/5. Finding the 5th is driving me nuts. Two secrets I found during my first pass through. The funky shaped teleport was neat and original and I liked the drop-down cross. Texture work was nice and aligned too. You've already read comments on your rocks and outdoor terrain skills are just one of those things that will need developement (as does my rock work.) It was worth releasing an I look forwards to your next map.

On a side note, the lava looks great in FitzQuake0.75. Maybe it looked just as good in the other versions but it is pretty. 

I have always had a strange problem with Qoole and some of my brushes ending up strangely deformed inside the actual level when playing. I found out this only happens when I cut and paste intricate brush groups, so if I want to make four of something rather complex I end up now having to make all of them individually to avoid this. Other than that problem and the occasional program crash - I really haven't noticed anything restrictive or limiting about Qoole.

However, I guess my options would be limited to Radiant or Worldcraft. What would be the definate way to go? Is QUEST a good editor? I've noticed Iikka made his maps with that editor and was curious what you guys thought of it. 

In the very early years of mapping, it seemed that the best maps were made with Quest and the best mappers of the time used it. As time went on, Worldcraft developed and gained dominance. In the Q1 mapping scene, WC seems to be the most popular editor although this may be more a case of timing and of it being the most versatile tool of its time. Many recent and excellent Q1 maps are made with WC. Perhaps GTKRadient is the statte of the art today - I don't know. You could download several editors and try them out. There's Quark and BSP as well. Editors like Thred, Quest, Toe-Tag and others may be outdated since developement could have stopped well before the mapping scene got up to speed. 

There's Tread, but development has stopped on it. I don't know if there are any lingering problems, or if it is as suitable for making maps as WC and Radiant. 

i'd say go for gtkr. ;)

seriously though, gtkr (and wc both) are powerful editors, and the safeness of the mapping you get from them is really soothing to the soul.

i know the same feeling you're going through. i used to use quark to map, and i honestly thought it was the greatest map editor out there. now that i've moved on, i can do things i never would have been able to do in quark, and do the things i was doing in a fraction of the time.

there's a good reason both gtkr and wc are popular. :) 

also wanted to say that, although the screenshots are a bit dark for me, the brushwork that i can see looks really good. (i haven't played your first map yet, so i can't compare)
you may try to get a bit more contrast out of the lighting with some more apparent shadows and more 'forceful' sourced lighting.