Looks good and I wish I could play it but ever since I patched my Doom 3 I haven't been able to run it (because I'm running it on ME - the hex editor trick won't work with the new patch). 

Once everything starts happening, the framerate plummets to obscene depths.

Oh well. I liked the music. 

System specs? 

Apart from the shakey screen, which went on too long, I'll play more of these. Thanks. 

What format did you use to get the 3dsmax cave sections into the Doom3 editor?

Why did you choose to use 3dsmax instead of the Doom3 editor for the cave sections? 

Running at 1024*768, no AA, 16*AF. I might revisit this with some different settings and see if there's any big difference. r_swapinterval 0 r_shadows 0 and the res at 800*600 should get me some frames. 

"Why did you choose to use 3dsmax instead of the Doom3 editor for the cave sections?"

I thought that it was kind of obvious? 

Couple of things I noticed...

When you start there are basically two routes to go, and they both go to the same spot, but one way is way easier than the other. (more ammo, some health, height advantage) I didn't really understand the point of having both, but ok.

I thought it was really hard...I kept dying at the 90 second part with the screen shaking...it was way too hard to beat that part...monsters hitting you making your FOV shake, plus the already violent shaking, plus 6 monsters on screen at once minus ammo = not fun.

I liked the caves and the overall feel of the map...in fact when I saw the screenshots I thought this was gonna be the map to get everyone saying "Yes! Ok we can do some cool mine/temple type stuff in Doom3, I get it now!" But the layout and overall gameplay experience kind of killed the uniqueness of atmosphere.

Scripted sequences and custom PDA stuff was top notch, and the lighting was generally good. But it was just too dificult, and the layout was boring.

Overall I'd give this a 5/10. 

yay ! its cool+
its for doom3++ (I really want more d3 maps)
its caves+
its by zombie (he rocks)+

5/5 

Mike I chose 3dsmax cause I wanted to use vertex painting to blend textures in the caves, you can not do this in DOOMEdit. :)

Z 

Vertex painting, I need to look at that.

What about the format out of 3dsmax into Doom3Edit? 

I use ASE for D3 work too, it just makes sense. Being able to eyeball what the exporter is doing with smoothing groups and vertex colours is kind of nice, and having the referencing in plain editable text makes for a minimum of fucking round with materials. Want a new material on your ASE model? Just edit the file.

Vertex painting, while not quite as tasty as in-editor painting (*cough*Hammer*cough*), is damn easy. 

Obviously limited in scope, but I thought it was done quite well...

- Strong style.
- Not just a base map.
- Some purpose to it (important).
- Decent design.
- Multiple paths/exploration.
- Good challenge and tense finale.

About the latter though, you do have to be careful, stuff is limited in this map. I died a couple of times because I ran past the Hellknight and then got trapped by it, doh. Also, the end bit, I ran past almost all the monsters, obviously. I think the screenshaking should have been less as it's annoying.

Things that could have been better:

- Longer.
- More spectacular designs
- Maybe more sustained gameplay although the sparcity made it reasonably tense.
- More variety on monsters.
- Machine gun.
- Less screenshaking at the finish. 

Hmm, Coober Pedy hey? Maybe I should go and drive up there and see if I can find this facility. :) 

but not enought to make me install this crap game...heheh just install once! :p 

Gonna play the map now, and I'll give my impressions on it, but for bleh's sake, always name the .bsp after the .pk4!

So if the map is "Final_key.pk4", name the bsp "final_key.bsp", for simplicity's sake. I always read txt and stuff, but if I wanna play this in a couple months, I'll have forgotten about it...

You could also stick to the map_mapname.pk4 convention, which is also clean and nice, and everyone knows that the actual mapname is "mapname".

Now, off to play the map. 

Atmosphere: Quite unique, nice, well lit, and overall, pretty, well detailed and nice. And most of all, performs nicely.

Gameplay: Didnt really have issues with ammo and all that, but when the earthquake starts, why do I die randomly? no matter where I am and what I'm doing, I just die. That totally kills the experience, not knowing what's happening. I dont mind the shaking, but that much shaking, dodging cacodemos and imp projectiles, and dying randomly, makes the map boring and stupid.

Too bad, with a few slight gameplay adjustments, this one could be a real gem, for sure. 

What nano said. 

Thanks for the honest feedback guys I really appreciate it.

There were a few things I could have done better.

The screen shaking for example, I don't mind myself all the shaking, but I really wanted to keep it minimal, just enough to give the impression it was going to collapse.

The reason for dying anywher was because there is a giant trigger_hurt around the entire map, due to Doom 3's ordinary physics system I couldn't make the boulders do damage to the player, so I had to stick with the instant kill thing. there is a machine gun in it, it's on the temple top route, where the entrance to the temple is, there is another right beside it uptop, kinda like a little secrect entrance.

Thanks again :)

Z 

hmmm what you *might* have been able to do is have a couple of 'special' boulders that weren't part of the general physics thing. Just create a little setup whereby a triggerfield triggers a 'special' boulder to fall and a small trigger_hurt to appear, if you get the positioning right you could 'fake' the player getting local damage based on them walking thru smaller trigger fields.

I did quite a lot of this trigger stuff in those RtCW SP maps you saw, although nothing specific as this this. Basically you'd be creating a trap. 

Well I patched my Doom 3 back to the original cd-version and edited the doom3.exe to make it work on Millennium Edition.

Anyways - well done! I liked the design, I liked the gameplay and I liked the ending. The design could have used a bit of variety of course but I see this was not the point. Gameplay was pretty standard in the beginning - in the end it got clearly tougher but I see this was the point. The ending was well balanced - It took me three tries.

The level also played quite smoothly on my poor system (AMD 2Ghz, 512Ram, R9600Pro, ME) with all settings turned up. 

i was going to ask why i die randomly, but i guess that's made apparent with the MASSIVE TRIGGER_HURT THROUGH THE ENTIRE MAP THAT KILLS PEOPLE... this is about as much fun as throwing grass into the wind only to have it blow back in your face/mouth

With a map this open and not having many main features it seems rather bare

No problems with the item placement (aside from the 2 route problem near the start).

framerate unbearable and screen shaking was excessive

the rock modeling was good (would have liked to have seen more obscure shaped cliffs and stuff inside that had been cut away etc. (it looks like a worn away cave with no visual minework taken place... besides the lights scattered around)

lighting for the most part was good, but lighting can't save a map can it? 

Why would you die RANDOMLY? You're supposed to have ninety seconds to escape for perfectly logical reasons.

And I had no major problems with the framerate although my comp is crappy.