Cool bit of convoluted quake fun with a very strong theme. I liked the maze-like feel, it made a "mere" 73 monster map feel substantial and interesting to explore, and the slime feel and designs were cool, especially the slime waterfall area - "acid trip" would have been a good name there. A few nooks and crannies felt a bit underused, and it would have been better with a proper end-game, although the gameplay was good up until there. 

looked quite kewl 

Too old school map for my taste, but the pipes are really cool. Modern maps should have more of these. Nice fog too. 

Here is my demo:
http://www.quaketastic.com/files/demos/redfield_snaut.zip

All the details, pipes, windows and slime was great. Loved the atmosphere. The combats were a little prosaic, but not unfair. A very dark and atmospheric map with some unexpected twists allowing for replay-ability. 

Dark and dingy and pretty darn fun, I'm a sucker for anything with broken pipes and absent guardrails, especially when it involves jumping from pipe to pipe. Wound up screwing myself over on the first two attempts though, due to getting a bit too tricksy with pipe-hopping and finding myself at dead ends with no way out other than a slime-covered death. The map certainly feels a lot bigger than the enemy count would show.

Final demo here- forgot exact time and kill count, but finished with three secrets (RL, RA, SNG) and probably missed the last two in a really stupid and oblivious fashion. As Redfield and Shambler said, there's definitely some branching-paths and exploration to be had, all three of my playthroughs took me on different paths due to forgetting what led where or being afraid to jump someplace in case it was a death-trap. 

@redfield, good job surviving that early encounter with such little health

I hope you had another playthrough after finding the secret exit, otherwise you had another third to a half of the map to go.

@spud, you missed something in order to unlock those "stairs to nowhere" :)


Nice playthroughs guys. The biggest takeaway so far is, make enounters a little more interesting, and make the end encounter more difficult, especially on harder difficulties. 

http://www.quaketastic.com/files/demos/sham-acidtrip.zip

Inept play despite being the 3rd run, but also managed to find a non-intentional bonus route :)

Yup, make encounters and endgame more interesting, that's pretty much it. Also still a couple of small boxy areas, and some of the more spectacular areas could have had a couple more monsters to keep you engaged in those scenes. Small issues tho - lots of good stuff in this. 

Can't say I loved the level, but I did really enjoy the theme and texture choices. I think the map may be too dark in places and the layout is too obscure/complicated for its own good.

The door you need the four buttons four in particular is really innocuous and easy to miss. It would've been better if the door was accessed way earlier in the level and made very obvious, so players know they have to hunt for switches. I also thought the secret exit was the way forward.

The biosuit could also do with being respawnable.

Still, a nice map all in all. Was your retrojam5 map your first? If yes then this one is a pretty incredible improvement overall.

Demos: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1DCHIUm_Mgk1GEFgwNVkqcZBksqTovXnz 

 

thanks for the demos skacky, it was only during your playthrough that I realised that the respawning biosuit is broken :( 

I enjoyed this little map. Nice layout and lighting. Though I'm not sure if I liked the acid pool in the beginning, but it's a creative way to make low healthed base monsters feel dangerous.

demo: http://www.quaketastic.com/files/demos/acid_pulsar.zip 

Not a bad little base snack. Theme is good and I thought the low lighting was fine except in a few places where it made certain doors hard to see, e.g. SK door; or the door towards the exit which isn't well-lit, highlighted and doesn't strike the player as important.

I like the flanges and rivets on the pipes. The rivets seem just a couple of units too tall on the smaller ones, though. And it would have been good to turn them into func_detail_wall or func_detail_illusionary as they produce a lot of polys where they touch the flanges (check with r_showtris 1).
There's something that bothers me in the big slime area. I think there are too many thin pipes or their placement looks too artificial, sticking out of the walls and far into the room. Something along these lines.

I like the nonlinear approach, but I can also see how this can be confusing, because it's not always obvious where to look for the buttons. Adding to this is the fact that the level is basically divided into two parts with one-way connections. The slime dive is okay to use the first time, but afterwards I would have wished for a shortcut that bypasses the slime, not least because the biosuit is gone by then. Unless there is one and I simply missed it, but I don't think so.

Strange not to have the SSG, but then again, it might have been in a secret; I only found two or so.

Technically, not doing a fullvis on this map is a no-go. Like it would have taken long...! And my standard broken record complaint: the map could have worked on vanilla ports just fine. All it would have taken is removing or grouping two or three brush models and running a fullvis to bring it down under the limits. Easier than in any other recent map.
Also, please get someone to playtest the map before release next time. It helps a lot.

Demo 

I thought that the map was a touch more tricky without the SSG, there are no real health sinks (unless you count the shamblers), so there wasn't a big need for it when there's a nailgun, snail gun and a grenade launcher.

My path conveyance could have been better, yeah... I tried to do as much passively as I could.

The broken respawning biosuit is catching a lot of people out, it's a real shame.

Thanks for the demo :) 

Its not always easy to get a nice, dark and moody feel going, but I say you pulled it off very nicely here. Also very clever use of bright green lighting to make it look like falling slime on a water texture, providing green colors that don't exist in Quake's palette.

Gameplay wise, hard but not impossible. I believe I found an inescapable path that leads to a slow death via acid. I show it in my demo, which I god mode out of afterwards to keep the progression.

Overall, nice job!

First run demo, hard skill: http://www.quaketastic.com/files/demos/orl_snaut-acidtrip.rar 

There was a way out that you missed, you pretty much played this map exactly how I envisaged people playing it, except for the bits where you struggled to find the doors and buttons =P

Some of the feedback I was given was to make those easier to find, or light them better. In hindsight two of the doors probably could have been removed completely. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2-9W6um72k

I loved the look of this one! All of the green slime and the rusted green surfaces... very cool! It's also one of those rare maps that combines the medieval characters with the base characters and it seems to work here.

There was only one area with the pipes where I got a little lost. I really liked how you have to platform and climb you way over some pipes, but I guess I must've went the wrong way because there didn't seem to be another way to go but into the slime. You'll see it in the video.

Other than that, this was really well built and fun to play. Thanks for making it! 

Hey, Arrrcee

You sequence broke when you jumped onto the pipes just after the laser trap. I actually tried to prevent that, but it seems like people are actually a little more tenacious than I thought (you weren't the only person to sequence break in that way). So yeah, directional conveyance wasn't designed for that path because I thought I had blocked it off... Whoops, an oversight on my part.

I'm glad you broke the box to reveal that final spawn. You're playthrough is one of the few that I've seen that did.

Thanks for the playthrough :) 

I actually thought the pipe climbing was really original and interesting. Hopefully next time I won't break any sequences. ;)

Nice job on the map my friend! 

https://www.twitch.tv/ionous

Probably going to run through sm180 as well. 

What a beautiful map! I loved the atmosphere, the colors, the textures and the details... man, the details... every room have something unique and beautiful to look at, it was never boring... the multiple routes to choose makes me want to explore to see everything and find all secrets... and about the secrets, it's unfair that one of them (and one of the enemies) it's in a secret exit. This way the players can never have full secrets/kills count in the end of the map :/

The darker areas and the slow paced gameplay feels like a horror game, and i loved it. You could give less health packs and less ammo to make the player more careful and the combat more difficult =D

The only thing that i dont really like it's the last fight. It was too simple and too easy for such a good experience :/

Too bad the video of my first playthrough was too dark to see anything... so, i went back to OBS, changed the gamma and recorded again =D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAiq1wwu3cY 

Thanks for the video and the feedback :)

One of the things I've revised in the final version of the map is a teleporter so you can return from the secret exit if you like.

Maybe I'll tweak the end fight some more to make it more interesting. 

I kinda felt invited by Snaut to have a go at this map, so here goes. Overall, I loved it. Short and sweet (I like 'em that way), very cool visuals with rusty industrial theme (and the goo!), intertwining paths. It was fun.

That said, I must really suck at the game, because on skill 2 I struggled to save enough ammo for the final encounter. So I beat it on skill 1, but feel somewhat ashamed :D

And no SSG? That was unexpected.

4/5 secrets, that's not bad considering I'm usually shit at finding them.

You guys mentioned a secret exit, I have no idea where that was. Oh well.

My playthrough (Polish commentary, as always):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoESRSuoF_w

Make more, kind sir.