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New Q1SP From Necros - Moldy Tower
Originally inspired by negke's Skinny Norris, I didn't fully adhere to the 768x768 rule. Instead I just used it as a rough guideline that it had to be as vertical as possible.

Medium sized with a bit slower gameplay than usual. Uses id medieval textures and a mix of Kell's kdmtex.wad and apocrypha.wad.

Note: You need an engine that supports the -quoth command line (although it is possible to run it without that with some hackery). The map however, does require an engine with increased limits (such as FitzQuake 0.85 or AguirRe's GLQuake). Some of the mandatory limit increases are: Lightmaps, Edicts and Models. Other increases that help but won't cause a crash: Beams, Packet Size and MarkSurfaces

Download: ne_tower.zip

http://necros.quaddicted.com/
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Screenshots please (Ban Flash!).

I tried the map earlier and a totally stupid bug by nvidia makes the game freeze every few seconds. It is related to complexity or something. So I cannot play it right now, damn! 
Nitin: 
i've found 3 so far, you just have to dig around his site. There's on in "work" for example, and another one in "news" that seems to be reused in "downloads." 
Yep Found Them 
hardly screenshots though are they :) 
:) 
Zommmgggg can�t wait to get home and put my hands in the last release of my favourite mapper work!!!

Will try it tonight for sure...

There is nothing better then 22:30 in a day like today at my home... kids sleeping and me with a glass scotch with water, enjoying an outstanding map that will be for sure :)

Anyway I still got a whole day at work :( I will try not to think on this or time will not pass today :p 
Sweet 
This was excellent! So wonderful. I loved all the machinery with moving bits and pieces, and the cramped battles, like inside a big clockwork.

The detail of mapping in the outdoors area simply amazes me. I mean, who puts little strands of seaweed by a shore that nobody normally has time to look at? I had to noclip around in that area for a while after finishing the map a first time (on easy).

FitzQuake wouldn't work on my rig; after about a minute (up the second case of stairs) sound would begin to stutter, and everything would play in slowmotion. Jardrup's engine worked better, but half way through my first play (I was even recording!) I had to alt-tab back to windows to see what the impulse was for that plasma gun. Alt-tabbing back into Quake did not work. So I have a half first play demo which I won't bother posting. Finished the rest of the map from my pre-alt-tab save game.

After that, I did finish it without dying. And it was a pleasing experience. Sortof short, but packed with fun. Yeah, the body being dragged into a hole was a definite mood setter =)

Always looking forward to a new Necros map (and occasionally enjoying one of the old ones!) 
Mandel: 
try a larger -heapsize value with fitzquake 
-heapsize 
Yeah that solved it for fitzquake :) 
Re Posts Above 
on the monster count,
the end fight is supposed to have continuously spawning monsters, so the hordespawner there is set to spawn 100 monsters.
unfortunately, the hordespawner adds the # of monsters to the kill tally right at the start of the map, so you end up with 100 extra monsters. to get around this and allow a player to get 100% kills, i made a second hordespawner that creates (up to) 100 'boss_death10' entities.
the great thing about boss_death10 is that not only does it add 1 to the kill score, it also fires it's triggers AND removes itself.

the way it works is that each monster spawned triggers a trigger_counter which is set to '100'. when you end the map, the normal monster spawner is killtargetted and the other spawner, that spawns 'boss_death10' is triggered to start. (this is why the monster count 'ticks' up after you win).
the boss_death10 spawner also targets the trigger_counter so when the counter hits 100, it killtargets the boss_death10 spawner.

on screenshots,
there's a pretty big thematic change halfway through which i wanted to preserve as a surprise, so i deliberately didn't take any shots from anything passed the first section.
however, the first section is also where it is most strictly confined to 768x768 and i wasn't able to get good shots that didn't completely give away the entire area.
anyway, here's a couple that i used for cropping:
screen shot 1
screen shot 2

thanks for the comments :) 
<- Func_ Ate My Earlier Post 
So I'll just say that this map is cool, the details i.e. corpse drag are great, I liked the "lightweight" gameplay (low tier monsters and weapons, little health), and the end was superbly spectacular.

Very refreshing to see a classic Quoth map again after seeing all those (not necessarily base) maps with quoth2 enforcers...

Any more Q1SPs in plans? (please say yes) 
Yeah 
it's still very early though, so i'll just leave it at that 
I'm Glad My Map Inspired You To Do This 
Slow and boring demo: http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/demos/ne_tower_negke.zip

Very enjoyable map! Pretty atmospheric, good use of sounds (no cdtrack set, though). The corpse effect and the foreboding voreling ambience were great, too. I definitely liked the lowkey gameplay and the visuals - brushwork and machinery - though better texture alignment would've been good in some spots. A pity the map wasn't larger (higher).
The end battle worked well, but may also be somewhat luck-based for some people. 
Negke 
at one point in your demo, you said 'invisible key?'

when i was watching, a lot of models weren't visible to me (like all the rotating gears), as well as the key you mentioned...

what engine did you use? i think something was up if you couldn't see the key or the rotaters and such. 
Sorry, My Fault 
For some reason I was playing on Fitz protocol 15, that's why some of the entities didn't show up. I missed some great cogwork because of this.

metl: feature request for 0.90 (as if there'll ever be another version) - dynamic limit breach detection/protocol selection 
Negke: 
i have considered that actually. on the other hand, the only reason to use 15 is compatability (for hosting a server, or recording a demo) and if you auto-switched to 666 halfway through it would defeat that goal. 
Well, 
That was really quite strange, and brilliant. Yet another intriguing and entrancing progression in Quake mapping. 
Wow, Instant Classic 
What shambler said. This goes where no one has been before. Quoth showcase too, the sounds, the gears, the "horror" part. Just incredible work!

Just wish it was a bit longer or maybe there was some ultra secret, gonna explore later. (And those few pesky fullbright pixels... ;) ). 
So This Map Has Rotating Gears? 
...shit. 
 
Oh my oh my

I�m stuck in the outside area really hard on hard :)

Anyway got 3 first demos runs with nice noobish deaths

http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/demos/ne_tower_tr.rar

The map so far is what i expected... full of atmosphere and outstanding brushwork!

More feedback and demo after i kill those bastards! 
Very Nice Indeed 
couple of questions, what are the white beams of light at the start of the brown area and why is the monster count 156? 
Necros 
I should say Mister Necros, or even Master Necros: this map is a fucking amazing piece of Quake !! nothing to add more than what others said, except that I really loved to play it. The end is Fantastic :) 
 
I've just replayed the map, sober this time and with the proper protocol. Great stuff. The ladders work well, they even add to the overall appearance/theme. I found the 'secret' this time and also realized that I've missed a whole bunch of monsters in my first run (the ones right before the SK cage). The end battle isn't so difficult after all - all one has to know is that the Cross deflects the 'environmental' Death Guard balls. Nice intermission!

I'm interested in how you did some of the hacky extras. 
Thanks Guys! 
nitin: the beams of light: they are supposed to be rays of light leaking in through holes in the walls and ceiling but visible because of the dust.
the whole idea of the map is that it's an ancient tower that the death guards/knights/lords have taken over, but they've blocked up the bottom areas. i chose to do light rays instead of the electric lamps because i wanted to have a nearly completely silent area right after the lift ends.

as for the monster count, it's an unfortunate side effect of the end battle. the death knights are supposed to spawn continuously throughout the fight. i used a hordespawner for them. the hordespawner needs a 'count' value to let it know how many monsters to spawn, so i just put a big number in there (in this case, 100).
unfortunately, the way the spawners are coded, they add the total # of kills at the start of the map.

i didn't want the player ending the map with less than 100% kills though, so all the death knights spawned by the spawner target a trigger_counter set to 100. this keeps track of how many have been killed so far.

when you go through the end trigger, first it killtargets the monster spawner. then it triggers an info_notnull with a brush with a 'use' key set to 'trigger_void' which envelopes the entire play area. this removes every monster left there.

finally, it triggers a new hordespawner, except this one spawns "boss_death10" entities. the boss_death10 function is used in a progs hack to add kills to get around the fish bug in unmodified quake. the great thing about this function is that, not only does it add a kill, it also triggers it's targets and removes itself! so all the 'boss_death10' entities have a target to the same trigger_counter. as these spawn in (the hordespawner for them is set to 1000), they trigger the counter up until it maxes out at 100 and removes themselves (this makes sure you get all the kills back from the death knight spawner). when the counter hits the max, it killtargets the 'boss_death10' spawner to stop any more kills from being added.

incidentally, that battle was designed from a discussion a while ago, when willem released that base map. we talked about how end battles have a sort of opposite progression to them. as you fight to the end of a battle, the battle usually gets easier the more monsters you kill, which is unfortunately the flaw of any arena battle.
to get around this, i added the explosive shooters and the infinitely spawning death knights.
on top of that, once the 2 death lords are dead, the shooters start shooting twice each, so instead of 3 fire balls, it's 6.

also, on hard skill, the cells only respawn 4 times and the cross respawns every 45 seconds (so you have to spend 15 seconds without protection) whereas on lower difficulty levels, the cross respawns every 30 (or 20 on easy) seconds and the cells are infinite.
the death knights also spawn faster on hard. on easy they only appear every 14 seconds, but on hard, i think it's every 7 or 8.

finally, although you can try to kill the super gaunt before the death lords, it's surrounded by trigger_teleports such that it will port around the area making it really annoying to kill. when the 2 death lords die, the teleporters are killtargetted.

negke, which hacks are you referring to? 
Btw 
grats on getting the PL secret trinca, you're the first to do so even though it was an accident. :P

also, as an aside, because i've noticed every one who recorded a demo doing this:
you can just press jump to get off a ladder and it will throw you in the appropriate direction. 
Had 
A quick playthrough before but am returning to this now - excellent work it is. 
Thanks Necros 
was just a bit confused because I could not see any entrance point for the light beams. 
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