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Posted by JPL [82.234.167.238] on 2006/03/31 11:34:43

Here is my last Q1SP map. It a base map, based on DKT1/4 texture set, plus some I made. Monster count is 85 in easy skill, 150 in medium skill and 207 in Hard skill.
The story: The action take place in Event Horizon Moon Research Laboratory, which studies interdimensional travel using black holes, but something terrible happened: Quake Hell's forces invaded the base, and now you are the last one able to save earth... so let's go ! (Note all similarity with Doom3 is completly unwanted ;P ...)
I would like to thank aguirRe for technical support (compilation issues and progs.dat providing) and beta testing. I also would like to thank Scragbait, Trinca, Hrimfaxi and distrans for beta testing. All advices and comments provided by these 5 men were very helpfull, and really improved the map. Thanks a lot again: You rock !!
Screenshots:
http://lambert.jeanphilippe.free.f...
http://lambert.jeanphilippe.free.f...
http://lambert.jeanphilippe.free.f...
http://lambert.jeanphilippe.free.f...
Download:
http://lambert.jeanphilippe.free.f...
Home Page:
http://lambert.jeanphilippe.free.f...

Errata
#1 posted by JPL [82.234.167.238] on 2006/03/31 12:37:49
Here is my last Q1SP map
Read Here is my latest map... ;P
Hehe
#2 posted by aguirRe [213.101.69.171] on 2006/03/31 13:05:45
You had me nervous there for a moment ...
Holy Shit
#3 posted by necros [70.31.50.57] on 2006/03/31 13:24:12
so many q1sp maps lately :o man, i gotta get some time to play all of these!
is this related at all to the movie by the same name (beyond the obvious blackhole stuff)?
i really liked that movie... i think a map based on some of the stuff in that ship (specifically the main corridor and the core) would make a crazy cool map.
Good Stuff!
#4 posted by Mike Woodham [86.136.82.239] on 2006/03/31 14:01:37
Well done JPL.
I lost 11 monsters somewhere but no worries (139/150)
Some nice touches and the coloured lights were nicely balanced. And I enjoyed the battle in the hanger. Different, and immersive.
Nice!
#5 posted by Trinca [87.196.217.191] on 2006/03/31 14:40:16
as i said in beta testing this is not just a map! is a peace of art i realy enjoy this map a lot another one to my top 10 quake maps :)
Mike Woodham go back and take a look ;)
Decent Map
#6 posted by nitin [138.217.1.73] on 2006/03/31 19:11:46
pretty good overall, great texturing. I thought the build quality was a bit inconsistent though and the lighting could have been better in some areas.
I also thought it was very difficult, the nailgun was introduced too late given how many enforcers there were. Also, the cyberdemon combat was quite boring.
But overall, quite a good map.
Nice Build
#7 posted by HeadThump [65.140.56.195] on 2006/03/31 19:19:10
effective use of a set of textures I have not seen before in Quake. I extracted them from the map because I'm missing the Daikatana sets. 203! in one .bsp!
I agree with Nitin about the nail gun. You have to have one if you are taking on Enforcers.
But otherwise, good variety of combat set ups. I was suprised on several occasions and died many times as well.
Ooooh
#8 posted by Bal [86.205.27.183] on 2006/04/01 02:04:11
Didn't think this was about to be released, thought it was some silly april fools. =)
I have to be honest, I wasn't so thrilled by the screenshots you'd shown, but it actually looks great in game! I really enjoyed it, visuals and build are good (I just didn't like those silly stealth planes so much =D).
I didn't find it too hard, I liked the large ammount of monsters, nail gun was maybe a bit late in coming though, that's true.
Once again, great work! Keep'em comin.
#9 posted by vb [211.30.158.51] on 2006/04/01 02:48:37
oic latest not last \o/
Nice Map
#10 posted by bambuz [213.169.6.75] on 2006/04/01 06:20:39
the difficulty was ok, the map looked great. The lighting and texturing and architechture played well together. It was untraditional, but it worked.
Only in the first big area with lots of flicker lights, somehow I got quite bad fps, 30 or so.
I liked the interconnections, it worked but I didn't get lost at all.
The end took too long in my opinion. I tried looking for a quad to hasten it up but I suck at finding secrets, I found only one in the whole map.
Nice crates in the small rooms btw :)
I recorded a demo, it's quite big, I'll see if I can upload it somewhere. I died many times but not too many. Nq movement feels always a bit strange after qw.
I liked the shooters btw. And enforcers, it's interesting tactically to shoot them with ssg, they're much nicer opponents than hellknights since they don't take ages to kill. And you can dodge the projectiles somewhat, but you have to get close with an ssg. With a ng it's more of a bore, just back up and finish from a distance.
Great Map
#11 posted by Zwiffle [69.210.79.87] on 2006/04/01 06:40:58
I thought this was a great map. It's not perfect by any means, but it was very entertaining.
I only have 3 complaints:
1.) Too easy all the way through until the end. I had stockpiled quite a huge amount of ammo, relying mostly on the GL throughout the map to pop 3-4 Enforcers at a time. This left me with enough ammo by the end to have... well a lot of ammo.
2.) Few respawning monsters. I opened the Level 2 doors expecting the halls leading back to them flooded with more monsters, only to find nothing to use my ammo on. Sad face.
3.) Cyberdemons were too hard! One rocket hit me and the other three were able to bounce me in the air 4-5 times. I died, without saving for quite a while, which pissed me off, which is probably why reason 3 is here.
Otherwise this map was pure sex. I rate it 5 Bowls of Soggy Oatmeal and 3.5 virgin sacrifices. Keep up the good work!
Cyberdemons? Good Choice.
#12 posted by Baker [67.149.145.114] on 2006/04/01 09:50:58
I've been waiting for those to appear in a custom map. I compiled them into a map once and I actually -- heheh -- kept lobbying for Cyberdemons in Phait's Quake System 4 when he visited the recently-deceased Singed.Net site . ;)
More Infos
#13 posted by JPL [82.234.167.238] on 2006/04/02 00:26:17
First, thanks for all the comments... I'm glad you globally enjoyed the map...
To give you more informations: I effectively took inspiration from Event Horizon moovie (you are right necros, see http://www.imdb.com/title/tt011908... ;P ) and also Doom's UAC interdimensional/teleport travel..
So the title was obvious.. The little map story came as a mix between the movie and Doom game... Easy to find...
Anyway.. To explain briefly, Event Horizon terminology is also used in Physics: it is the stable point that determinates the frontier where a light particle can either fall into a black hole, or escape from a black hole... This is also the last point of visible events for Physicians... They use it as an indirect method to detect black hole in the Universe... (I always loved Physic Sciences ;) )
Concerning mapping, I can understand that it can be sometimes frustrating to have so much ammos (the more at the end)... but if you don't find any secret, it is mandatory to be able to defeat CyberDemons.. and as CyberDemon is 2000 health (equivalent ot 50 rocket hits !!!), you need ammos for sure...
Furthermore in hard skill, in order to not run out of ammos, you need to find at least one secret (preferably with an armor.. the quad is better) to be able to defeat the 5 beasts at the end...
Well, CyberDemon model is not perfect, and I guess an other attack would be cool to add.. I'm thinking about a nailgun attack or something equivalent to give more diversity... I think I will try to add it later...
Thanks again to aguirRe, Hrimfaxi, distrans, Scragbait and trinca for providing help/comments/advices during these last months.
Just A Minor
#14 posted by aguirRe [213.101.70.94] on 2006/04/02 01:03:59
correction, each cyberdemon has 4500 health points, compared to e.g. a shambler's 600. And the rockets have the same damage as the player's. So he's a pretty powerful guy and devastating in packs ...
AguirRe
#15 posted by JPL [82.234.167.238] on 2006/04/02 04:08:03
Thanks for the precision... I was not sure about the CyberDemon's health...
Nice Theme
#16 posted by Megazoid [82.152.178.52] on 2006/04/02 12:04:59
I do like the movie Event Horizon. It's been a while since I watched it, so I can really remember the ship's architecture, but the map had excellent architecture and textures. Good gameplay, but I'm glad I read all the comments before playing otherwise I would have been "Are these cyberdemon's EVER going to die?" Having read all tips, I was ready for them and knocked them out with the Quad.
Doom things in Quake... I started PC gaming on Doom, but unlike a lot of Quaker's I'm not a big fan. I dunno. Doesn't seem quite right seeing Doom monsters in Quake. Oh well - no big deal.
Top marks on this map JPL. Great looks and good gameplay. Thanks for the release. \o/
Je Peux Elle
#17 posted by negke [82.83.40.228] on 2006/04/04 04:33:44
awesome map, yeah.
felt pretty oldschool/doom-like for some reason - and i appreciated that. hooray for cyberdemons!
lighting was nice, at least in places where minlight didn't dominate. the architecure looked great, especially small details like pipes beneath stairs and so on. ah.. i remember the hangar and the ships. :)
very cool secrets (partly even interconnected)! and this time i even found all of them, which is usually far from happening. they were quite helpful, too.
i discovered the rocket launcher too late - only after i had already killed 3/5 cyberdemons - maybe it should have been placed in a more obvious spot, like next to the control station/button, since these monsters eat A LOT of ammo. i popped one solely with grenades. something to spice up the end fight would have been good, indeed (that doesn't mean i found it boring or anything, though).
i second the opinion that there could have been more monster teleports in backtracking areas.
two walkmonster warnings appear when the door in the beginning opens - probably related to the spawn code.
a very enjoyable map, good usage of the textures (that i haven't seen in another map, yet) and nice gameplay.
what really pissed me off (again), though, was the stupid sun shining through the blends, which made some parts of the map almost impossible to see. :(
Huh?
#18 posted by aguirRe [213.101.69.73] on 2006/04/04 06:06:31
What sun and how can more Q1 light possibly make it more difficult to see things?
I Meant
#19 posted by negke [82.82.179.205] on 2006/04/04 07:55:18
the real sun. it decided to remind me of her sorry existence just when i was playing the map (i know. stupid me for not playing quake in the evening), so the room became unecessary bright and i couldn't see much (had to increase gamma, bleh).
LOL
#20 posted by Ankh [212.121.135.226] on 2006/04/04 08:23:16
about neg!ke and his problems with the real sun
Neg!ke
#21 posted by JPL [82.234.167.238] on 2006/04/04 09:12:46
Another possibility would have been to either close the window, or wait for the night !
Aha
#22 posted by aguirRe [213.101.74.226] on 2006/04/04 10:45:55
I often have the same problem ...
And...
#23 posted by JPL [82.234.167.238] on 2006/04/04 10:53:57
.. as I map in (almost) the dark (just with the TV light when my wife is watching it..), it can explain why I think a map looks great, when they are a little bit dark for many of you... damned... I really have to check the map with enough light... ;P
Nice Enough. Only
#24 posted by nico [213.178.93.233] on 2006/04/04 11:42:24
:
in the first large room, the one with the gold key, I got severe greyflash. Also in the GIGANTIC hangar. I can understand some of you saying, "wow, let's make this thing really big". Only it doesn't really need to. A hangar half the size with only 2 ships (the ships are cool) and 2 cyberdemons in it would have been just as good and caused no greyflash on older machines and smoother rendering and playing. More fps is always a good thing.
For example, some areas in could.bsp like the final arena are pretty large, but give me neither greyflash nor significant slowdown. even in software. Go figure. Same in antediluvian. At least the gold key room should be greyflash-free and fps-friendly on slower hardware, because comparable structures in other maps are.
Did you test the map in software? The textures look pretty pixel-y compared to speedbase or the other base sets. Before you say "no one uses software" please consider that it is good style to do so (testing). like in programming, there is a "good style", for example commenting your code etc. very basic things. in levelmaking it should be the same (testing in software, testing on older hardware, testing in different clients). This critique goes for a lot of the recent "HUUGE" maps. Others even more than yours.
the crate constructions were good.
in general, i liked the map, there were a tad too many enforcers, but it was ok. The hangar was unnecessarily big.
The cyberdemon's HP is ridiculous. I thought there was some mechanism I had to use like Chthon's. It's too much.
Nico
#25 posted by JPL [213.30.139.243] on 2006/04/04 23:14:10
Please adjust r_maxedges/r_maxsurfs values.. and replay the map..... I tested my maps with WinQuake, increasing r_maxedge/r_maxsurfs values, and there were no major issues. Even fps was acceptable !
When you say slower hardware, I hope you are not talking about 15 years-old PC... I suppose they disappeared for most of them, and have been replaced by nowadays PC.. Be serious, except geeks and nerds, who still have such machine ? You ? wow.... hum... anyway.. You should consider to buy a new PC, realy.... ;P
Concerning CyberDemon, I use the model as I found it on the web (except for the skin... ). And as CyberDemon has never been easy too kill, even in Doom I/II/III, why would I made it weaker in my map ? Come on...
Just a reminder: when you play quake, you are supposed to be the Hero, so winning without danger doesn't give you any glory/self-satisfaction... So I don't see any interest to make "easy" maps... :)
JPL Is Right
#26 posted by Mike Woodham [82.110.116.38] on 2006/04/05 05:23:30
"when you play quake, you are supposed to be the Hero"
Right on! So all you others who God, Fly, no_clip, etc; shame on you. Play, kill, win - be the Hero. Live the life. Get the girl...
JPL
#27 posted by nico [213.178.94.26] on 2006/04/05 08:52:24
I give some critique, and I get this in return. It is not about slow hardware. It is about sensible level design. The cyberdemon isn't too hard to kill, he's too hard to kill in relation to standard quake monsters.
The map doesn't run too slow and isn't designed sloppily when run on modern hardware. It is running slow and designed sloppily in relation to standard quake maps. It just _shows_ when run on slower hardware, modern hardware _masks_ those problems.
The hangar isn't too big, it's just out of proportion.
I didn't ask you to make easy maps.
Come on, it's not like I killed your babies or something.
#28 posted by czg [213.115.252.84] on 2006/04/05 09:56:04
It wasn't that the cyberdemons were too hard to kill, it was more that killing them took 5 minutes and was not really exciting. (Strafing around while holding down the fire button.)
Sorry about your hardware sucking so hard though, nico
My Main
#29 posted by aguirRe [213.101.70.156] on 2006/04/05 10:47:37
gripe about this map was actually also the demons' high hp and firepower. Its original power was of course since it was the Doom end boss (and only one).
Like Zwiffle mentioned, I also felt the step-up in difficulty from the rest of the map was too big. Otherwise, this is a fresh map with new colour tones and good combat to match.
And the map is definitely not sloppily designed; load up WinQuake, enable r_draworder 1 and take a walk around. You'll notice how well occluded the various areas are.
Nico
#30 posted by JPL [82.234.167.238] on 2006/04/05 11:42:36
The hangar isn't too big, it's just out of proportion
Please, try the map in hard skill, and defeat the 5 CyberDemons... you will see then the hangar is quite "stretchy"
And about the fact you felt hurted by my reply: It's not against you, but you have to admit 90's PC are not usable at all nowaday... and here on func_, fitzQuake is taken as a reference engine for most of the players (I guess)... sorry fot this...
I'm Not Overly Serious About This..
#31 posted by bambuz [213.169.4.79] on 2006/04/05 13:11:53
I had mostly nice fps, this was much better for my computer than Ankh's map (it was different style anyway and I am only commenting system requirements here, not overall "map goodness"). I only think the big amount of flicker lights or something in the first big room caused my fps to go to 20-30. Otherwise the map was fine, I probably had solid 72.
Maps like czg's terra series or metlslime's ant never lagged for me for one millisecond, I even know at least terra is playable in plain software (many play qw with that). I've played QW with this computer succesfully and never had FPS problems there either.
I have a P3 500, with 256 megs of ram, it's a somewhat old system, but not totally unreasonable.
I understand if Marcher gives some lag, but it's a concept map and really couldn't be done in any other way. It's stretching quake's limits and all that jazz. Necros' marble quoth map lagged to me at points even though it didn't have big rooms but the vis blocking was done badly, or not much taken into account. All the major areas were connected by pretty small but short and straight corridors. This was not a problem in your map. Your map would have been perfect without that one hitch, that was noticeable since it was in the beginning. It doesn't make the map bad or anything, I'm just saying that, well, it's partly my problem and partly a design issue. It's a tradeoff and I understand that you can say that old comps don't need to run new maps greatly, but if it's easy to do some small modifications to make them run it without detracting measurably from the map's overall goodness, one should do it. I didn't have any fps problems in the end hall.
In conclusion, an example: Necros' marble should have run with good fps on my comp. Marcher could never ever have run well anyway and I understand it. Not to dis Necros, it was a Quoth demo map anyway and he probably didn't spend months perfecting it. :)
Just A Tip
#32 posted by aguirRe [213.101.74.30] on 2006/04/05 13:44:46
In my GL-engines and FitzQuake, you can enable cvar r_flatlightstyles 1 and improve fps significantly when there are many animated lights (torches, flickering lights etc).
In bigger maps like gmsp3, this can have a major impact on fps even on otherwise fast machines.
Thx Agu
#33 posted by bambuz [213.169.4.79] on 2006/04/05 14:40:02
will try that!
Yeah....
#34 posted by metlslime [204.15.3.5] on 2006/04/05 15:00:28
At some point I want to write up a page explaining how to do performance/quality confuguration in fitzquake. They're documented in the readme, but there's no guide to using them that explains the tradeoffs.
Good Map
#35 posted by Ankh [212.121.135.226] on 2006/04/11 04:12:23
Nice map with interesting base architecture and good gameplay most of the time. I liked the base textures and the lightning. Also the way the base (or is it a space ship?) is build is very good. I have replayed the level again on hard and it still was interesting to walk in the corridors and watch the details. There were many good ambushes (opening windows/walls with monsters behind them, fiends) and also getting the GL early was fun. I didn't even notice that the NG was introduced too late, for me it was ok. GL and SSG was enough for the first part of the map. I was lacking armor in the middle part (but a secret helped me). Maybe too many monsters were hidden inside secret areas. I didn't like the gameplay in the final area. The monsters spreaded all over the hangar were an easy kill and the cyber demons were terrible for me. I have found 3 secrets which were very helpful. The amount of ammo was just right (sometimes it was too much to pick it up and after a while I had to go back to take it). The same thing about health. There were too many weapons introduced in the level. You could easily leave out the RL and the LG if there weren't those stupid cyber demons.
Anyway the map was great and I enjoyed it very much.
2 Penny Worth
#36 posted by ijed [201.222.204.248] on 2006/04/20 21:38:57
I liked this, well laid out and seemed well balenced. I had to quickload on one ambush where I was destroyed to go back and escape to the right place but otherwise they seemed to hit at the right time where they leave you weak afterwards and are scary/suprising when they hit. The blastertraps I didnīt like, but thatīs just my preference. The cyberdemons were kind of spoiled - there should have been less in the final area, with less health, but one featured as a mid boss before youīre fully armed in maybe a mini-maze type locale. The final hanger was just too big. It doesnīt work well with Q1 monsters. The modeling was good (ships) but I get the feeling flying enemies (scrags, basicly) were left out unnecessarily. Using an area of this size needs respawning horde combat, serious sam style. Other than that, and the slight dissapointment at not seeing a new model (yeah, moon on a stick) the map was well built, paced and styled.
thanks.

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