this should probably have been put on the drunk thread or the other one but why bother with a story as hamstrung as quake 2 in terms of progressive reference. Read some Iain M banks - granted its illegal to sell his books in the US (ATM) but theres amazon. Anyhow maybe I�ll watch instead of read an reply with an intelligent comment.

fair play for creating something - most can�t be arsed and prefer to bitch about stuff that has been created.

(cough) 

Your posts should be in the "Smoking Crack Thread".

WTF are you talking about, it's a Q2 SP custom map?? 

Sorry - got in last night after a big dinner with alot of whisky afterwards and blitzed a bit. I misread Machina as Machinima.

So now I�m gonna reinstall q2 and play it and give lots of feedback.

Yes, I do like a wee toot on the crack pipe after a nice dinner. >:) 

Its very good.

Combat wise it goes through all types, varying map to map from boss, tactical and horde combats. Architecture is well done strogg base with alot of reference drawn from the original maps - you�ll recognise alot of areas. Gameplay likewise changes throughout the maps with the occassional lateral thinking puzzle early on and becoming more combat orientated later. Lazarus entities are widely used and add alot to the maps as a whole without too many parts where they feel gimicky or wrong - although at the start of map 4 there�s a very dangerous turret as you climb out of a transport pod.

The boss creatures felt a little weak and could have done with higher health or weapons - the makron battle is pretty straightforward but all is forgiven when you complete the map after that and face two flyboss�s with power armour and the help of two of your misc_actor comrades. (A good boss addon is the homing missiles for the supertank, but doesn�t work with flyboss�s cos they spawn too close together).

There is a nasty SZ_Getspace overflow in map 4, the arsenal that can destroy your savegame - its related to a remote control turret, if it kills you then you can�t quickload.

(Andrea, you can fix this by going into worldspawn and setting the corpsefade flag which would lower the active models, but also remove the two or three medics in that level)

This was well worth playing and I�m glad I reinstalled Q2 for it. Now for a nice relaxing smoke of the old purple tin. 

Great to see a new Q2 unit released, and of such high quality !

While the maps feel a little cramped/smallish, the progression is very well done, and visuals are very nice too..the maps really should be larger scaled, would be even more impressive.

What especially stands out are the secrets, you find hidden doors/stuff and there is often even more to discover... some nice ways to make the player really use the inventory items. I hope the author makes more units of this quality :D 

thanks for ruining the map, now i don't even need to fucking play it to say how good it is! cheers! 

the only spoiler was the 2 end-boss bit . . . but you need to play it to see why this isn�t too much of a spoiler. But, point taken, wayon 

I can't connect to the site, can somebody host the file? 

Thanks a lot for your comments, and thanks for those useful tips!

For those of you who found the Makron battle too much easy, try it on 'hard' and see what happens as Makron jumps out of his Jorg...

I'm sorry the server where I uploaded "Deus Ex Machina" is sometimes unstable. I've noticed it too. 

The screenies look good, I might try it... I just installed Q2 again, it´s good fun, while lacking the goth factor that Q1 has. I mainly play the demo (because it gives you better weapons earlier, and some different monsters) and I don´t have the patience for the later levels, I find them boring.

So I looked for custom Q2 levels some time ago, but didn´t find much. The Q2 mapping scene is pretty tiny, or did I miss something?

anyway, I´ll try your episode now. 

Uh-oh. Is there a version of the Lazarus library for Linux? Or does it come with source code? If not, Linux users will not be able to play your stuff. 

Uh-oh. Is there a version of the Lazarus library for Linux? Or does it come with source code? If not, Linux users will not be able to play your stuff. 

I think that this was a well made unit, overall and was good fun and consistent with the Quake 2 theme. It was nice to get this map set as I enjoy SPQ2 and some of the newer releases are insanely hard. Deus-Ex Machina was more to my liking.

Pros:

- Decent level design. The quality improves with the mapper's experience. Good details. Good exploration and progression and lighting was varied and suitable.
- Secrets are good and fair. I'm short a couple but I did find most.
- Good use of novel items like the jetpack, buddies at the end, moving conveyors, torture devices, etc.

Cons:

- That bug that corrupts a saved game and locks my PC after getting killed by that auto turret in map 4 (I think it's map 4 - armory level).
- Problems with fog on the engineering level. It got so bad that I had to cheat and noclip and try and fool my machine into rendering it better. I have a Radeon 9600 Pro so perhaps it didn't like the fog used.

Andrea Rosa - If you make more, I'd like to play them. If I could make one suggestion, it would be to capture more of the Q2 grand scale but I'd be happy with something on par with what you just produced. 

Many guys are reporting this issue concerning the turret. Please, can you be more detailed concerning the level? Is the turret you're talking about the ride-on model in level 3 (Arsenal) or the ceiling turret in level 4 (Treminal-2)?

Thanks for your positive feedback & suggestions Scragbait, I hope I'll find some spare time to design another SPQ2 game. 

The floor mounted turret above the crate handling belt was the killer. I ended up using god mode when in range.

The fog problem was in the map with the lava boat that goes around a central generator. In some reloaded maps, it was totally dark, as if the lightmaps were turned off. I could only see with the blaster flash.

Looking fwd to more Q2 if you find the time. 

This is strange. I've made several attempts and that turret always kill me without crashing the game. I play on a P4 @ 1.8 GHz.

BTW, why did you use 'god'? Didn't find the remote operator? If you kill him the turret stops firing and you can ride on it... 

it�s level 4 in the wide open area above the drop down into the loading area with crates, the turret controlled by the remote user. I think I remember it as an index_overflow that causes the game to be unable to load so many entities at once, either enemies or small pieces of flying shrapnel produced by the turret. The shrapnel has a few seconds before it fades and is forgotten about by the engine but as the turret fires constantly there are always 10+ active models from when you first see the turret. There�s a few ways to fix it, the most obvious being how I mentioned in an earlier post - setting the corpse_fade flag in worldspawn. The downside is that Lazarus will auto-remove your medics if you do this.

As to the other methods it�s all down to experimentation on how much you can remove / modify without spoiling how it plays. It�s a common Q2 problem in that the engine rigidly limits what it allows your PC to do.

A different engine might help (quake2Max for example) but apparantly its alot harder to make an �unrestricted� version of quake 2 than most other engines (q1 included).

(scragbait) - don�t know if this will help because lazfog is gl rendered seperate from the q2 engine (which is why it turns off when you load a game or change level - so you can see the menus) but try "set developer 1" and "fog 0" at the console - which does exactly what you�d think, though this sounds like a card-specific problem.

Anyhow, still great maps - I think I�ll play through again. 

I did eventually find the operator but it was by accident since the door to the gun room doesn't look like a door. It looks like a wall panel so I ignored it. I did get killed by the turret and did reload my game several times and it didn't lock up but then other times it did. To avoid getting shot, I bailed over into the lower warehouse to look for the operator. I also threw grenades down that hole near the turret barred by red lasers thinking he was there. In the computer room, I thought, he has to be here, likewise the upper control room overlooking the gun level. Nope. Nope. Nope. I did go up the ladder and did step on that button but it was only after clearing the level looking for secrets did I find the door to the gun turret room. Fooled me.

But good solid episode. Recomendation for new maps: if you want the player to use a door, make it look like a door, otherwise consider it a secret. BTW, this map had very nice secrets. 

Does anybody still have this mod somewhere? I tried to download it but the link was dead. 

also, he has done this (Which works) :

http://www.andrearosa.bravehost.com/citadel.htm 

Damn, we need someone to archive Q2 SP like Spirit did for Quake 1 

^ That.

I propose Spirit for the job :-P 

If a link is dead, simply use your favorite search engine for the filename:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jimw/q2/Mods1/dexm.zip 

Does "sure thing" mean you'll do it? 

I think he means it more along the lines if RTMF...