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New Q1SP: Ne_ruins
Here's my QExpo map!

Stuck atop frozen mountain peaks known as the Fingers of the Gods, your only way out lies in using the Altar of Storms to open a gateway and escape. You will need an ancient Rune to activate the Altar, conveniently held deep below ground in a buried city...

One lonely screenshot

This is a two map mod for Quake. (This is NOT a quoth map. DO NOT use quoth).

Engine Requirements

This mod requires a FitzQuake variant as some parts are completely unplayable without fog interpolation. If you just hate FitzQuake variants, then you will need to turn off fog from the console whenever you can't see.

Installation

unzip the pak0.pak file into a directory of your choosing, eg: /quake/ne_ruins

Running

run quake with: -zone 2048 -heapsize 192000 -game ne_ruins

Make sure 'max_edicts' (in the console) is set to AT LEAST 4096. 8192 to be safe. Failure to set this may result in the map crashing the engine. The pak0.pak contains a config file 'ne_setup.cfg' which should take care of this on it's own.

When using a fitzquake variant, make sure sv_protocol is set to 666 (or whatever your variant requires, 999 for RMQ I believe), otherwise you'll probably get invisible items or other oddities when recording demos (wink). I could not include a default protocol setting in config files because each engine has it's own protocol number.

Playing

Once the engine starts, select your skill level in the console by typing 'skill #' (Replace # with a number, 0, 1, 2, 3; for easy, normal, hard, nightmare.) Select 'New Game' from the menu.

if you want to record demos, you can use the "quicksave, disconnect, record, quickload" trick to record demos mid-map.

Additional notes

This mod includes an autosave feature. Every once in a while, you will see the message 'Saved to ne_autosave.sav'. You can press 'F8' to reload to that point and pressing attack or jump when dead will automatically load the autosave instead of restarting the map.
HOWEVER, if you quit the game and wish to load your autosaved game later, you will need to type 'load ne_autosave' into the console instead of pressing F8. F8 will function correctly AFTER the map has been loaded from the console.

Finally, I recommend playing with gl_texturemode 3 to disable bilinear filtering! :D

Download .zip (47mb)
Download .7z (37mb)
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Easy Run 
well sort of atleast, if i dont kill the hordes my quake behaves like it has parkinson, so just the first finish i got and no optimusing :)

http://members.upc.nl/verorber/ne_ruins_orbs.dz 
Wow... 
...just WOW.

Necros, yours are the fingers of god... 
Nice Coding 
of progs and the theme is awesome!
Really enjoyed this one...
Necros anyone?!? He wins... Hehe 
A Great Work 
i run it in darkplaces so wery impressive, thanks a lot for having fun especially for me since i very love hexen2 )) 
Great Demos Everyone! 
orl, you're lucky i made a final pass and added extra ammo! it's not normally balanced to kill all the tarbabies! they don't count for kills, but i guess you just couldn't leave them be knowing they're in there. ;)

drew, i only got to see you play the start map. when you went into the end level trigger, the engine seemed to load the next map fine, but then it just skipped over everything and started up again when you returned to the start map. :P
still, it was fun to see you take on the boss!

berntsen, pretty meticulous playing. :) also, i didn't realize it was possible to make the jump from the stairs to the ledge for the RL secret without ramp jumping! i used to have to ramp jump UP the stairs then curve back around to land on the edge. hence why you get the RL (i figured it was a serious trick jump so probably only speed runners would get it) but then you just jumped up there like it was nothing. lol!

optimus, badass quad rj up the tall shaft! :D about the slow down, the pathing ai is pretty rough on the engine and the further you are from a monster, the longer it takes for it to get a path to you. so yeah, whenever there's hordes of zombies, i kind of had to force the player to kill them. for speed running, it's probably not really an ideal map due to it's enormous scale as you just have these long treks across the rooms. still, it was worth it just for that quad rocket jump. when you took the right turn to the shaft without getting the GK and you still had the quad, i was like, 'huh? yeah!' ^_^;

i run it in darkplaces
i'm happy this worked! i was worried there might be something gamebreaking in it as i never tested it heavily, just ran through once or twice. 
 
they don't count for kills

Now you tell me?! 
 
maybe i should have added that in the achievement. "...even though they don't count for anything."
sorry dude! :( 
Yeah.... 
i had to test to see if the "jarbabies" had any effect on monster count ... once i saw that they didn't, i avoided waking them. 
Started Into This... 
...last night, then discovered I'm going to spend a good while enjoying this, so I'll be revisiting it this weekend when I've got some time and mood lighting. 
Impression 
You know, when I finished the map and read the congratulations, I hit the jump key as usual.

And the jump sound reverberated in this dark space. I hardly understood that if was not a real feature but just my impression getting so high.

Thank you Necros. 
A Typo 
*it 
Really? 
do you have to dis/re for that as well? 
This Was Seriously Amazing 
most of it has been said but I think the greatest thing about it is that it should never have possible in quake's limitations. That was the thing that struck me most.

No wonder zwiffle is depressed :) 
SPOILERS If You Visit The Images 
dpmod
fog 0.1 1 1 1 1 64
and

{
"classname" "info_notnull"
"mins" "-2500 -3500 0"
"maxs" "0 -2000 2000"
"absmin" "-2500 -3500 0"
"absmax" "0 -2000 2000"
"nextthink" "0.1"
"think" "snow_think"
"dest" "0 0 -100"
"count" "1000"
"cnt" "13"
}


results in snowgasm (and low framerate):

SPOILER, do not watch these if you have not played it yet. Seriously, you will regret it.

http://www.quaddicted.com/stuff/
ne_ruins_snow1.jpg
1 to 5! 
 
Others have pretty much voiced my opinions, hopefully I'll get a review posted up on my site soon though. Pretty sure I set it to and played on skill 2, demos: http://taw.duke4.net/rqr_ne_ruins.rar (ps: messed around a bit too much with the silver key gate in the 3rd demo, only then realised the neat effect!) 
 
Every once in a while a spectacular map comes and reminds me that in Quake, possibilities are endless. Upon loading the map I was struck in awe - sure, I've seen amazing vistas before... but that early evening sun smoothly falling upon the vast, snowy landscape - was this really Quake, that fifteen year old love?

I am generally irritated by poorly done additions to the stock bestiary but this time, all the custom stuff and the little touches felt right at home - great work as always, Necros. I was getting ready for a combat-heavy setup (thus opted out of recording a demo) but pleasantly surprised by the Hexenesque, adventure-like flow of the map. By the way, the outro is without a doubt the best I've ever seen in Quake and added much to the satisfaction of having experienced a work of art.

Congratulations. 
 
but that early evening sun
fuck, i forgot to credit hipshot for his awesome skybox! :x

that's miramar. if you want to see it in original form (i compressed the tgas to save space) get them here: http://www.quake3world.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9242
there are five fantastic skyboxes he made, all in high res!

I was getting ready for a combat-heavy setup
yeah, i'm starting to enjoy slower paced gameplay now. i guess i'm getting old, lol! 
Necros 
This has been a long time I never felt so immersed in a game (last one was for COD2 and Doom3... so to say...)
Holy shit !! How did you built all that ? You just disgusted me from continuing mapping man ;) !! I will feel so ridiculous with maps now :P

This map is really fantastic, awesome, marvelous, etc.. I can't find words for such jewel. I didn't see something so brilliant since a while... As others said, even "Bastion of the Underworld" and "Marcher Fortress" are far away behind you.
I am so happy to see how much miracles are still possible to build with Quake today.

Really, you made me really happy since a long time, almost you teared my eyes... not to say I was about to cry :) ...

Please we need more Quake mod/maps like this... congratulations, I guess you won the 'mapper of the year" title ;)

Keep it up !!

PS: BTW, it would be cool if you could release a kind of "user manual" for this mod ;)

PS2: metlslime ! We need a double beer icon for necros !! ... or even a barrel beer for him !! 
Awesome 
played an early version of this, and I'm looking forward to reviewing the final release for Quaddicted. I'm sure it will be even more awesome! Great job Necros, & as always can't wait to see what you come up with next..! 
 
Wow. This was epic. Everything looked beautiful but especially the beginning and the end sequence. Also the high quality new monsters and additions fit the map very well. I enjoyed it thoroughly.
skill 1 demo ( I have lost the beginning after dying from firs encounter with fas zombies). btw. quick zombies are fun.
http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/demos/ne_ruins_demos_ankh.zip 
 
i just realized i forgot to include the new skin for the fast zombies.
oh well, i guess it's pretty obvious they're a different type. :P

your demo was pretty funny, ankh! you had me going when you pushed forward after awakening the 4 statues and then hiding out on top of the water wheel mechanism before sprinting into the next room. :D
i was amazed you pulled that off, well done! 
 
sent us the skin necros!!! 
2nd Pass Through.. 
... Skill 3.

Pretty manageable, I must say, with a little ammo shortage in the rune section, but very doable.

Only found 3/6 secrets so far.

A coupla questions & something to be pointed out..

1- Is it possible to get 100% kills in the intro? I supposed not because of the end boss being there, but I still get sometinhg like 6/11 kills. I guess they should be like, 6/7.

2- On skill 3 I only got like 270 kills, but the total counter keeps growing at the end, starting from 330 up (I quit around 347)... What's up with this?

A coupla observations, as well: I tried to wake the boss from the lower zone, then opened the door with the rune and awaited there, trying to start infighting beetween the boss & Ice golem, but, alas, the monster shot 2 fireballs at me and then got back up through the mountain , getting stuck on the side of the main altar. From there, I can damage him up to the point of having him open the portal, but then it's over. He cannot be damaged and cannot enter the portal either, 'cause h's stuck. All you can do at this point is go through the portal yourself, maul the remaining golems on the other side, then quit and go for a beer (or 15)...

One last thing: the lavababies summoned by the boss are teh aw3som3, but they fall too far from the player, freezing before having a chance to attack. Is this intentional? Their ranged attack is fantastic. 
 
trinca: http://necros.slipgateconstruct.com/temp/zombie2.zip (156kb) (.bmp and .psd, although the psd probably isn't very useful as i tend to just palette shift manually when working with quake skins (ie: open up an image of the quake palette, pick a colour using the dropper tool, use magic wand selection tool to select all pixels of one colour on the skin, and replace them in one batch.))

in my mind, the original zombies are the zombies that have been around for years. their bodies held together purely by whatever magic or somesuch. if that magic was removed in one go, i sort of picture them just completely falling apart. (like that one guy in cube zero who gets sprayed with super acid and melts within seconds).
the fast zombies were freshly converted, still retaining some of their humanity and their minds marginally functional. hence why they can run and know it's not generally a good idea to tear pieces of themselves off of their bodies.
the skin was supposed to reflect this and look like he was 'fresh' and still had some skin that wasn't all rotted off.

the result just looks ugly and there's a fullbright i think i missed. honestly, it's pretty bad, and i'm sort of glad i forgot to include it.

the silent:
Is it possible to get 100% kills in the intro? I supposed not because of the end boss being there, but I still get sometinhg like 6/11 kills. I guess they should be like, 6/7.
not on the initial run through, definitely, because the boss counts as a kill.

On skill 3 I only got like 270 kills, but the total counter keeps growing at the end, starting from 330 up (I quit around 347)... What's up with this?
there's a monster count bug somewhere... i don't know exactly where though. i tracked down (i think) all the instances where total_monsters is modified in the code, but i must have missed something.
that's why the kill count is inflated in the second map. this was very very frustrating and i just gave up since most of the maps (2/3) don't have the intermission screen anyway.

A coupla observations, as well: I tried to wake the boss from the lower zone, then opened the door with the rune and awaited there, trying to start infighting beetween the boss & Ice golem, but, alas, the monster shot 2 fireballs at me and then got back up through the mountain , getting stuck on the side of the main altar.
i was experimenting with a tethering code for monsters. anyone who's played WoW will immediately recognize the behaviour where, if you run from a monster for a while, it'll run back to it's start point and have it's health reset to 100%.
the WoW engine has fairly decent pathing that allows them to get back to wherever they need to go. unfortunately, quake doesn't, so i basically made him noclip through the world if he doesn't get back into his spot fast enough.
i must have messed something up though, because it sounds like he didn't fully reset position when noclip was turned off resulting in him being left partially inside geometry.

the lavababies summoned by the boss are teh aw3som3, but they fall too far from the player, freezing before having a chance to attack. Is this intentional? Their ranged attack is fantastic.
yes, this is intentional! :D

this boss' gameplay is loosely based on prince malchezzaar from WoW.
in a very early version, the meteor storm was just explosive meteors, and you had to hide out in the towers or risk getting pasted.
at the time, he didn't crouch down, and kept attacking during the meteor storm and this was boring and really random so the meteors were changed to spawn stationary fires.
this was still fairly boring because the fires either had to do tons of damage to make players stay away from them, and then they were unfair and annoying, or they did such low damage that players just ignored them.
so i swapped to monster spawning.
the initial implementation of lavababies was to just keep them spawning in until you were swamped with them and had to take the time to kill them.
this was a bit overkill, as you can imagine. also, that map is pretty rough on the engine with the high wpoly, so having dozens of lavababies running AI and spawning dozens of sprites each was killing even my machine.
so the freezing thing was kind of natural, since it makes a lot of sense with the map and accomplishes the whole 'increasing obstacles' that i wanted without killing the player or his computer.
it also makes it (i hope) clear that killing them is not a priority. 
Oh! 
btw... if anyone's bored...

load the start map and type in the console:
notarget
sv_friction 0
developer 5


this activates ski mode! then use impulse 103, 104 and 105 to teleport up to some of the mountain tops!
you don't need to press any movement keys; you will 'ski' in the direction you are facing. 
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