Just watched your demos: brilliant!

Thanks guys. 

Less of a map, more of a way of life.

Very good in both gameplay, design and layout. The challenge was good and succumbed to both altertness and positioning.

Someone has probably pointed out that if you drop down from the YA secret, you miss a fair chunk of the map out. 

nice design, nice layout, nice gameplay.
i like the atmosphere of the giant underground castle, large caves without any sky cracks.
my next map (that is almost ready) will also be a giant underground. 

Glad you lked it.

All short cuts were put there deliberately, the one near the YA being the easiest to use.

The main (long) route through the map is really just 'follow your nose'. The short cuts add a bit of interest for second-plays: some are available via secrets e.g. jumping out of the window near the start, some via 'trick' jumps e.g. the GK. (It's unfortunate that I wasn't aware of the trigger_once crash in some engines when bypassing the Slaughter Room otherwiae I would have put fancy bars there to stop that particular short cut)

The map can be finished, without touching lava, in about 35 seconds on Easy with just the one kill. 

Nice work. Great texture choices, good architectural details, and nice use of multiple routes (though I wish I could have backtracked to see the areas I skipped when I jumped down into one of the secrets.) The feeling of exploring lots of secret passages and hidden tunnels to progress was cool.

Music was buggy -- didn't loop forever, plus if you reload a savegame it stops playing. I would restart the music every time I saw one of those buttons, though :)

A few textures used fullbrights well, but some others seemed to have accidental fullbrights which looked weird in pitch-black areas. (gold key room I think was one of them.) 

Thanks for your comments.

The music wasn't supposed to loop forever. There were three 'turnoff' triggers throughout the map that played an end-piece to whichever tune was playing. I just felt that playing music all the time was too much. Even the Vermis music finished before you end the map.

If you play the map in the 'normal' route, you will have music1 until the GK room. It then starts music2 when you leave the GK room and plays until you cross the bridge leading to the Slaughter Room. It plays music3 in the Slaughter Room and until you go through the Silver Door. And then back to music1 when you go into the cavern just before the GK Room, and stops that just as you go through the GK barrier. It then plays music4 when you start down the stairs to the Vermis, which stops when you get around the Vermis just before you finish.

In playtesting, I had each loop playing for over one hour without problems (in FitzQuake of course). I found out that the engines only play non-looped sounds for 3m 11secs, which is why I used loops. Anything longer simply stops playing at that point. All of the music is edited from much longer pieces.

As for the savegame problem with the music, and the fullbrights... well, I just ran out of interest: sorry.

That's probably too much information, kind of like explaining how to kill a turkey just as you're sitting down to eat a Thanksgiving dinner! 

The Progs.dat is not encrypted. It can be decompiled with standard tools. Obviously, no comments will be retained but I think the code is fairly self-explanatory. 

I don't think it's my place to prompt a release of other people's code even though I have released a map using other people's code that I have altered. It is still primarily their code.

Oh dear, perhaps a moderator should strike my last comment? 

About the music, I understand now. I actually think you made the right choice by not having it play for the entire level, it's just that I misunderstood and assumed it was a bug rather than the design.

Don't worry about planting bad thoughts in people's heads. If they do something bad, it's their choice and their fault. 

Loved that main atrium. All the best bits happened in there imho. There was one good ambush at the sk, but it was annoyingly hard for me because I had little health when I went in and the drole was just a little too much. Because I have slightly dodgy hands at the moment I decided to cheat there to avoid being killed by the drole for the fifth time.

The music was great too, when it stopped I definitely missed it. Not like the Quake soundtrack at all, but it still managed to fit into the Quake theme.

The battle with vermis was pretty easy, but also very cool - especially with the gate to the city or whatever in the background. There was some nice rock modelling evident in that room, and the scale kind of puts my attempts (in my upcoming map) to shame :)

Good stuff. 

Don't know how many playthroughs but I'd guess 10+, (I'm onto 11 secrets now) and decided to noclip outside and look at the castle beyond the level . . . Mike, please make That Shallot. 

remind me of ocarina of time (in a very good way!) 

as I have seen no one mention this yet, is this all to be installed into the ID1 directory as separate folders, or lumped into its own directory with a -game tag? I am using Fitz btw, but am unaware if it has an option to throw together all these separate folders...

Thanks for any assistance,

S 

its all about the +map command after extraction.

;) 

Mike uses custom sounds and game data, the progs.dat file. If you put every in
folders under Id1 it would override the
progs.dat file in Pak0 and possibly screw up your regular Quake gaming experiences, so it is best to go ahead and make a separate folder for Mike's map. 

Those secrets were a very top notch addition to a top notch map. It's too bad we may not see the castle map.

Kudos on a map that has serious replay ability! 

those links at the top of the page aren't working. Probably should update with info on the shubhub download so those who wonder on to the page wont leave in frustration not getting a chance to experience your wonderful map. 

I played the level only half way, because of the flux the map crashed on my system everytime.
Probably because of its hugh format, but as I started quicksaving the challenge appealed me more and more.

Must save you a bear for this great experience!
Hope to end the level soon. 

Please put this file back up so I can play it please! 

http://quaddicted.com/filebase/fmb_bdg.zip

Some moderator might want to change the address above. 

Here's my take - too bad I missed out the (possible) NG area and thus, also missed a great number of baddies (30+). Superb map, by the way.

http://shub-hub.com/files/demos_singleplayer/fmb_bdg_erc.dz 

Nice demos. What I liked most is that when you died, you came back for more.

Yes, by taking the early short-cut you did miss some of the map but as you found out, the map was still playable. I did notice that one of the switchable lights was the wrong way round because of the short-cut but that is easy to put right.

I notice you looked around a lot, was that just secret hunting or scenery watching? If you are up for it, go past the final monster and enter the tunnel backwards... 

it was both secret hunting and scenery watching. As you know better than me, these maps are works of countless hours of labor and love - thus, the most I can (and I must) do as a player is to enjoy them thoroughly. Again, thanks for the great map.

I'll check out the area you'd mentioned. Better than that, I'll replay the map to its full extent. 

 

Music files need to be 11.025kHz, 8 bit mono

There is a one second delay from worldspawn
before the sound is played.