darkplaces_gameplayfix_dm2.avi (5 Megabytes, XviD and MP3 in AVI)

That is sv_gameplayfix_stepwhilejumping. It is 1 by default, because obviously it was a bug that you could fall into that lava pool and those platforms were only decoration.
Thanks to Sajt for mentioning this variable.

Edit: Wait, is it? I set it to 0 and I can still shamble over those platforms like a stroller on a sugar rush.

The A Roman Wilderness of Pain maps spent ten years in development, on and off. The project began in 1999 as a series of 13 short maps, each basically a setpiece surrounded by a few small hallways. The first 12 maps each featured a roman numeral marking the map number, and the final map had a Quake-style Q. These maps were eventually scrapped, the lighting in particular was annoying and generally too dark, though the scrapped maps were generally playable, featuring items and monsters (I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, Q). A while later I returned to the maps with the intent of remaking the same layouts with a much greater level of architectural detail, and explicitly trying to develop a very gruesome style with flesh, skulls, spikes, blood and so forth. This effort produced NewI and NewII, the first with totally revamped architecture, the second with just a few rooms revamped. I then abandoned the maps again and released all of the map sources.

   

 

In 2004, five years after the inception of the maps, Mike Woodham released A Roaming Wildebeest In Spain his second level based on my scraps (the first one was FMB8, a large open Egyptian temple map). The story behind this map is its own epic saga; Mike Woodham had been trying to create a large terrain map called “Caves and Canyons” for months, and was having a very tough time of it due to engine and compiler limitations. Mike writes, “I lost weight, friends and the will to live many times during the last several months and I wont be doing another terrain based map.” The result of this was Mike combining one of his terrain sections with Roman Wilderness of Pain maps i, ii, viii, ix. He explains, “I removed all lights in the individual maps and re-lit, changed 95% of the textures and only changed brushwork to make joining the individual sections easier.” The new texture theme was sunny and Egyptian, rather than dark and metallic, with lava rather than blood.

 

In the meantime I had been trying to string together most of the Roman Wilderness scraps into a single map (BigRome). The layout was very flat, but I did manage to get most of the maps into a single map. Luckily, this map was so huge that I could not get it to work properly. aguirRe had a few laughs at this map. The outside of the map was surrounded with rockwork, which he advised me to keep and cut other parts of the map. I eventually decided to chop up this large map into four maps, so that each one could have a more coherent design and theme. The first map, CanyonRome, kept a lot of the terrain work, and had only the gatehouse structure in terms of manmade architecture (a combination of VI and VII). The second map began where the first one ended, and consisted of everything after the gold key door in the final Roman1 (this is why, as many players noted, the second section of Roman1 is not really linked with the first section, and has a distinct style). After having trouble with getting this outdoor terrain and rockwork to vis properly, I rebuild the entranceway to the first map as a smaller, enclosed canyon with a bridge in the centre. I then realized that the second map was quite small, and could be pasted onto the first map as a second section, and the whole thing would still compile faster and better than the version with wide open terrain at the start. I had now moved from four maps to three. Roman1 now incorporated I, II, VI, and VII. The theme of the first half of Roman1, “A Roman Wilderness of Pain,” was more runic-metallic, with a brick temple sitting on top of a metallic fortress with a sewer and a dock. I included tech monsters as well to reflect the Doom 1 or Quake 3 style of mix-n-match evil. The second half was a series of rooms and hallways which mixed flesh and metal.

  

Roman2 incorporated only maps IV and IX, but it was important to stick to these two sources only for this map, as it had a very specific theme, a “Venice of Blood,” and only IV and IX of the original Roman Wilderness maps had architecture overtop pools of blood. The pools were on different levels so I had to adjust the level of blood to fit the two maps together. The final raft ride at the end leads to the entrance to Roman3, a section I built from scratch. Roman3 incorporates V, X, XII, and Q. There is a fair amount of totally new architecture in the map, especially the higher levels, huge arches have been stacked on top of the V map for example. Thematically, I decided to go for a slightly gothic look, using some flying buttresses and spiked arches right alongside the usual Roman architecture with metallic details and flesh/blood wherever possible. I was particularly happy with the player’s ascent in this most vertical of the three maps. The final confrontation might be too difficult, with two boss characters, however.

  

A Roman Wilderness of Pain was released in December of 2009, ten years after the maps were first started, and five years after Mike Woodham released his map based on the scraps. It was very nice to be able to use most of the good architecture from the original project and build it into three coherent subthemed levels.

BSPs and map sources for all of the versions of the maps here mentioned can be downloaded here. Mike Woodham’s FMB100 can be downloaded here. The Quake episode, A Roman Wilderness of Pain, can be downloaded here.

Written by Tronyn

Madfox’s new map takes place in a large, interconnected city/castle/cavern landscape. The sprawling layout connects all of these different areas in sometimes unexpected ways. There is a fair amount of water in the layout, one of the first main areas is a venice-style city street (stone walkways and a road of water) and numerous water tunnels connect other areas to this section. I liked this use of water, in some places you can use the water areas as an alternate route through the map, which is nice (and reminded me a bit of my old map The Autumn Citadel). Now to turn from the layout to the gameplay and architecture.

 

The architecture is great throughout, a mixture of detailed blocky town buildings, arches and pillars, which (along with the use of Hexen II textures) provides a Graeco-Roman feel. Later there is a more castle-like section. There are also some very Quakey darker indoor bits with stained glass, some caverns, and a very nice canyon bit which shows the best rockwork in the map (though there is some nice rockwork elsewhere as well). Generally, the look is very “busy,” yet despite the complexity of the architecture and the “mix ‘n match ancient/medieval” architecture, the map feels quite coherent as a place. This is probably due to the fact that the texture set is wisely chosen (and limited, so that all the areas appear related), and that even in the most “townish” areas rocks appear, while even in the most “rocky” areas town stuff appears. There is a light fog which adds to the atmosphere, and some nice new map objects are used to decorate the town parts of the level. The use of ruined temple architecture that you can climb on was nice; for me the design highlight was the gold key area, a sort of open cave with a temple in it, which came across as nicely designed, cool-looking, and unique. Finally I should mention the cool touches like the entrance (look backwards when you spawn in), and the secrets, which keep you exploring. There’s much worth noticing here, including plenty of Quakey detailed ceiling beams.

 

The gameplay is good throughout, though a bit more mileage might have been squeezed out of the layout (especially the initial town section). The new monsters are cool, the crossbow knight has always been decent, but it’s the totally new skeleton character (from Q3) that shines here. His two attacks are effective, you as a player have to adapt to these guys, so this is a new monster well-implemented, filling a new niche. His effects look cool as well. Other than that, it’s the usual mix of medieval monsters, though surprisingly no zombies. I played on normal since I haven’t played Quake in months, and I still died a couple times; my one complaint is that ammo is a bit short, adding in a better melee weapon or more ammo would fix this. Also sometimes the messages directing the player where to go are not entirely clear, so be careful to look around when you get a message saying a door opened. Monster infighting was a useful tactic for me, if you can get it going you can save yourself ammo and health.

The ending is very dramatic, there is a very imposing circle of arches, and a highly challenging confrontation in the pit below. All in all, this is a very nice map, it’s basically setpiece after setpiece which is awesome, with a unique style, variety in design, and new features. The ambition on display here, and the effort that went into making this, have to be admired. Enjoy.

Score: 17/20

 

This is a quite hilarious short, fast paced map. It is done in a medieval theme, with very simple, angular blocky architecture (fast build time!). However, each blocky room does have at least one wall decoration to reward the player for moving from room to room. The layout is similarly very simple, the original id maps have more multileveled areas and interconnection than this map. There are a couple decent looking areas later in the map, the only really interesting looking area is a small outdoor courtyard with zombies, which is also one of the more fun fights. Anyway, the emphasis here is on running basically full speed through these large areas, and blasting enemies (especially groups of hell knights) with the double shotgun and grenade launcher (the latter is especially satisfying, explosives tend to be held back a lot these days). This map, I’d say, brings absolutely nothing new to the table, at all – except one weird wall decoration consisting of gargoyle horns (nice to see that new runic decorations can still be made out of the same textures after so long!) – but, the map is still fun, just don’t expect anything on par with id’s originals or current standards.

Score: 12/20

 

distrans’ newest map, Grendel’s Keep, takes us back to the warped realm of Travail, one of the modern masterpieces of episode-length Q1SP. The dark runic/base style is a little similar to Travail’s start map, so the connection of this map to the original Travail as a prequel is believable. Nevertheless, the style is unique; it is not industrial (jjspq3, Glassman‘s old rorshach screenshots, etc) so much as a mostly seamless blend of Quake 2 base and Quake 1 Runic. Perhaps the best analogy is Zerstörer, but that still doesn’t capture the gothic/runic details (id-style sky beams casting crisscrossing shadows, buttresses capped with spikes, gargoyles) which exist alongside machinery, computer screens, and of course, crates. The machinery becomes more prominent as the level progresses, and the ending mixes in a whole lot of flesh and blood for, definitely the coolest part of the map.

Build quality and lighting are, as we would expect from distrans, basically impeccable. The map is gloomy, with lots of curving corners and a very smooth look overall. However, the layout is not as impressive as other recent Q1SP maps; this might be personal taste but it doesn’t seem as logically interconnected as it might be (I got lost once, but most players won’t need to worry about this). The gameplay mixes all kinds of enemies, culminating in the vores/shamblers ending, so if you play on this on hard, you will get a challenge as advertised. There are a few confrontations in particular that killed me more than once.

 

The coolest feature of the map for me, was the atmosphere and the hints of some mysterious power behind the place (in classic Quake fashion, explained only vaguely). The machinery, and especially the flesh sections, contributed to this sense very well. This does seem to be a bit of a step backward in terms of distrans’ other maps, but it is still a well-made map with a groundbreaking theme.

Score: 16/20

edit: They are gone

What’s new:

• Scan your Quake directory for already existing maps and mods
• More stable and safe, less bugs
• Icon by the graphical genius Starbuck
• Rating is shown with golden stars
• Progressbars for anything downloading
• Better engine config dialog
• Window that shows you the engine output
• Links open in browser
• Downloads are stored locally
• Uses a custom user-agent when downloading
• Conflict handling

For the whole list of commits check out the log on GitHub.

Thanks for all the feedback and for using it.

Download quakeinjector-alpha2.zip and read the readme. And don’t forget visit the project’s homepage.

I have not heard back from the Ogg Vorbis bountieer. If you read this, please send me a sign of life.

The origin brush bounty might be unnecessary. Enter Urre:

Origin brushes are overrated, you can do fine with the func_rotating->info_null combo to get origin, no need to specify it manually. (Or was it called rotate_object?)

I’m starting to feel like I should make a tutorial for this, as it’s still a problem.

If that would solve the issue for mappers, Urre would get the bounty.

← I can haz a mew poll.

I did not work on the site.

Everyone loves negke.

Download tsd.zip (7 Megabytes). You need to play it in Nehahra.

What? I should add those maps to the main database already? There is still work to do, maybe this weekend will be more productive. Sorry!

PS: You might have noticed the favicon. What do you think? Be as critical as needed. megaman is forbidden to comment on it. More on this later.

Download qt_pre02.zip (3 Megabytes), alternativ download. The ZIP archive at Quaddicted is different as I repacked it. The actual contents are the same.

Sorry for taking so long to post about this, I wanted to finish the new/edit part of the site but well, I didn’t.
Again, a short objective descriptive description would be appreciated.