but its cool, it reminds me of tomb raider or something, more later!

:D 

Quake maps where you use the environment as your weapon isn't totally new, I'm sure a few speed maps had similar gameplay, but it was done pretty well here. One thing that would have made it more obvious that you weren't supposed to shoot the monsters would be to force the player to exhaust their ammo at the start (like put them in a shootable box or something, lol). But then again this would probably have been annoying and maybe the player should be allowed to use their weapons as a back-up from time to time.
I was quite disappointed that you couldn't explore that weird boat like thing in the end screen, unless that was part of the secret. 

Interesting puzzle concept. Nice architecture, nice details. As rickyT23 said, it reminds mome Tomb Raider adventure...
Good try ! 

Nice idea. The stealth approach usually disregarded in a game like Quake. Could have been a little more varied in terms of ways how to kill the monsters (e.g. pushes, shooters, lure them onto trains or into cages). The secret!!!! 

gears of war? :)

Nice little map here, felt a bit strange at first but I got used to it and was having fun by the end :) 

Interesting idea, pulled off pretty well imo. A few things I liked: the visuals, the sudden shift into intense combat right at the end, and the way those three buttons at the beginning introduce the idea that you'll be solving puzzles throughout the map. Yay speeds!

Didn't find the secret. :( 

Cool map. I like that concept. It's underexploited in Quake.

You could make another map with this theme, mixed up with classic Quake : get into a large metal room with 50 Shamblers and not enough ammo, then you have to screw them all by pressing buttons and bar switches... 

... and zombies getting in the way...

Could be fun to play this in nightmare mode under the dmsp mod (deathmatch -> SP), with 200 mnsters everywhere ! 

There is something so incredibly rewarding and motivating if I have to figure out how to proceed and manage to. The puzzles are very well designed and "demanding". I love it.
The horde fight in the end is a bit out-of-place though and ruined my first run. :p

http://shub-hub.com/files/demos_singleplayer/cogs_spirit.zip
I knew the first rooms already. (And should have known better about the end room...) 

I have a "second run" demo, which I over-wrote after the first run (got killed in the bit where you SPOILER#SPOILER#SPOILER#SPOILER#SPOILER#SPOILER#SPOILER#SPOILER


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have to jump over the buttons
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so i decided to just quicky tap the tilde key then up and enter

But died again on another bit.

Ill do a full-un later. :-P 

the props for pulling this off. Fantastic. 

What can I say, I didn't enjoy it. I almost quit. I normally don't quicksave (diehard mode?) and I didn't like that I was practically forced to.

"Die until you find out how it works" doesn't work so well, and it indeed reminded me of the worse puzzles in Tombraider (the instadeath ones of later games in the series.) Same goes for "try the jump until you land just right."

The fiend cage was a bit unfair. Most players will practically die there, except the ones with Quake engine physics and typical timings hardcoded in their head... Instadeaths are practically always shit.

It forces you to think exactly once for each problem. After that, it's pure mechanics.

I would enjoy one or two such setups as "spice" in a normal map. For example, I always thought it should be possible to squish the ogres with the crusher in e1m6. I love submerging monsters in lava, or dropping crates on them, or electrocuting them, or exploding them by shooting at barrels, IF IT IS OPTIONAL. Like in Quake2 warehouse etc.

I'd like to have the choice (i.e. weapons.) A whole map built around this, IMO, doesn't work. The most "fun" part for me was finding out how to ABuse things. I used the lava bridge for the shambler, for example. I just shotgunned the stupid ogres (they really don't deserve any better.) Guess that's just me. I'm not too hot on riddles or contests. I want two things from a Quake map:

1) immerse myself in alien atmosphere, gaze at cool architecture (your map was actually not bad on this part, I liked the lighting and texturing, reminds me of the original Hexen.)

2) do some target practice, fire large-caliber weapons, do trick jumps, cause infighting, and generally wreak havoc (i.e. have a ball.) I love breakables for example, or interactive map features. I love climbing crate towers for a secret. Your map has interactive things, but almost no other stuff. The ending feels tacked on, I hopped past the fiend because I had no patience left.

The stealth factor was a bit ruined by quickloading. I generally wasn't very stealthy, after I picked up the general scheme of things, why worry about alerting the shambler when there is enough cover and a giant crusher nearby, plus quickloading? Sportsmanship?!

I respect the effort, the obviously good mapping and especially doing something (relatively) different. It's not the beginning of a great friendship, though. I find it rather super-seriously academic. I'll take the double barrel shotgun and a pack of shells, plz.

But yeah, props for doing it. 

demo? 

oh and I forgot to mention lazy_bum as a tester ;/ 

Nice skate park ;> 

Yup, will make demo later. 

mail me please speeds@bk.ru - iv some questions, or come to irc quakenet #terrafusion 

Demo here.

http://shub-hub.com/files/demos_singleplayer/cogs1.dem.7z

needs 7zip to unpack.

I'll mail you Speeds. 

It might be that I accidentally had Quoth on my command line while recording, I don't know if that affects anything... just so you know.

The demo is one go, without saving etc, I actually don't know if it's even possible to load during a demo. 

You can see very well in the demo how I had problems "switching gears" when the end fight started. I was still in "mechanical mode", not in circle-strafing mode. I normally don't suck that bad. The effect is quite interesting. 

i found it was sometimes a luck of the draw. you might turn the corner and a monster is facing away from you during it's pathing, or it might be facing you and get out of position.

i think some use of the transparent water as glass trick would have been nice so that you have the ability to see the situation before you blunder right into it. unless that was what you were going for, but i never really liked games where you have to die first to find out what happenes and then try again.

the one area with the pathing shambler and the two buttons on opposite sides, with a wall about player height was good. you can see the top of the shambler's head, but he can't see you which allows you to keep track of where it is. as opposed to the room where the shambler paths around a pillar and you have to press a button to raise the floor to crush it cause you can't keep track of where the shambler is much, so the first time, i ran around the corner and he was just coming around the pillar and saw me. 

all the monsters that have to be turned away are always turned away - no randomness (unless maybe you played in some mod or engine that messes it?). I tried to make all the encounters survivable on the first try even if the monstesrs see you.

first-time demo or a description of where and why you died/get confused/frustrated might help 

I was glad i played this again -- significant additions and improvements made it worth another play. As I said in my beta feedback, designing non-standard gameplay in a quake level is a challenge.

First, you have player expectations to overcome -- quake levels usually all about action an aggressive combat, so you have to strongly communicate to the player that this level is different, or else they will approach things wrong and not enjoy it. The final release of this map does a good job by not having any normal combat until the end (the combat arena used to be earlier in the level.)

Second, there is the issue of first-person view -- if you can see a monster, it can see you unless it's facing away. Most stealth games are third-person and this allows players to plan scope out a room more safely. Necros' glass idea probably would have helped here.

There's still an issue with stealth in any game that also has combat, in that you have to make it clear to the player that combat is a bad choice in your stealth sections. Often this is done by making the enemies near-invincible, or have deadly attacks. Or, you take away the player's weapons. This level would probably have benefited by having the player totally unarmed, but on the other hand the shotgun provides a good way to survive after screwing up one or two puzzles.

Speedy did a good job of introducing the level's unique mechanics. By using distinctive and consistent button/lever types, and by repeating the "three buttons to exit the room" mechanic, he also quickly moved players past wondering *what* to do and into wondering *how* to do it, which is where the meat of the gameplay is in this level.

I think the weaknesses with this level are primarily that quake's intended gameplay goes against the stealth/puzzle design of the level. With a mod, one could easily have removed the starting weapons and/or made the monsters tougher, changed awarness radius, etc, to help support the intended gameplay and make things clearer to players. As it is, it does a pretty good job. 

sorry if that post came across as overly negative, but as with any feedback, usually you only hear the bad stuff. :P

i agree with metl, the map showed me exactly what it was about the minute i started playing, and introduced me to different traps well (monsters being affected by lava -> lowering bridges with monsters on it -> lowering the bridge quickly as a fiend is jumping your way at the speed of light)

as for an example of an area where i was a little frustrated, i already gave you one:
the room where the shambler paths around a pillar and you have to press a button to raise the floor to crush it cause you can't keep track of where the shambler is much, so the first time, i ran around the corner and he was just coming around the pillar and saw me.

but yeah, it _was_ a good map. :) (and the mapping itself was well done, btw) 

not my kind of map. One of the things i most like in quake is fast action with lots of blood and is something i only found in this map at end... but was fun to play lost many times but didn�t quit :p

please return to old Quake :)