Tronyn reviews: The Death Lair by Trinca
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
Tronyn reviews: Grendel’s Keep by distrans
- qt_pre02.zip – Grendel’s Keep by distrans
- Download: qt_pre02.zip
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
VeniVidiFuzzi by MadFox
It’s a new map by Madfox: VeniVidiFuzzi!
Download veni05a.zip (6 Megabytes).
Weeding out spam user accounts
Just a small and quick update. I forgot to add some spam protection on the account registration which led to some suspicious accounts.
nodyfxgqm, ynqsyh, srfempu, tfiubhjkoqa, if you are legitimate users, please tell me in the next 7 days. Otherwise these accounts will be deleted. I strongly support anonymity, so such account names are welcome. But due to the previously missing robot protection this are more likely to be non-flesh intruders.
edit: They are gone
Quake Injector Alpha2
Ladies and gentleman, what you’ve all been waiting for: A new version of the one and only Quake Injector, a tool to install and play maps with one click!
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.
« Previous Entries Next Entries »