Very good first release, and I think the scale of the map is a good place to start, it is so damn hard to finish maps.. :) You also know your way around the AD entities for future releases.

Thank You Giftmacher!

A part of the reason for the small map was to pour as much quality as possible. It was also a good testing ground for the goodies that AD has to offer.

Fun map with a lot of thought into it, nice job. I was low on health and ammo but that could have simply been due to my chosen difficulty >:)

Out of curiosity what editor do you use? I'd like to get into mapping sometime but ditched worldcraft way back when

Thanks FUBAR! I used TrenchBroom for the majority of the map and then TrenchBroom 2 Beta when it was released. I use TrenchBroom 2 Beta as my stable editor at this time.

I really liked this, please make more! I feel like Arcane Dimensions is a really great base for modern Quake maps that intend to be respectful of the original game.

Thanks faelnor, I agree with your thoughts on Arcane Dimensions and intend on creating more maps using the mod.

Glad you enjoyed!

Fun little map, need to replay to find the secrets. Don't mind the "average" rating, I consider 3 stars above average since it's more than half the stars. :)

I would have liked to explore indoors on the above-ground level but I can see you might have been a bit less ambitious since it's your first map. That said, I only found one secret and that by accident, so maybe I missed something inside.

I trust you will make more maps, if you're not working on a project already!

I noticed someone already tagged this release with with ad. However, I think it would be better to tag AD maps with "arcanedimensions." Searching for "ad" in the database isn't very helpful, as it brings up a ton of entries that happen to have the string "ad" somewhere in the title or author field. When (hopefully) more AD maps get released this would make sorting the database for them a real pain.

Thanks Lane,

Glad you enjoyed and ratings do not bother me...they are just numbers.

You are correct when it comes to my ambition level for the map. I wanted to be able to officially release a map so I kept the layout to basically one large room. This allowed me to pour as much quality to make it "up to standards".

I am working on a much more ambitious project now, although I have no idea when it will be complete!

Cheers for adding the tags...that is a good idea concerning the ad redundant search matches.

Very cool secrets and funny story! Impressive for a first release. I am looking forward to the pack that was teased in the one secret :)

Thanks piesten,

Appreciate the comments glad you enjoyed it for what it was. Nice job finding the rune hint secret! Quake mapping is tough time consuming business especially if you have no level designing experience (me).

I have a grand idea for a new map but I feel I need to have smaller releases to tune my skills.

Great first release.

Looks slightly unfinished though. The wood pieces are floating above the water, and the crate on the chain bobs up and down which doesn't make a lot of sense.

Hey dwere,

The floating wood pieces and bobbing crate are actually func brushes called...funny enough, func_bob!

They were meant to simulate the motion of wood planks floating in water and a crate being suspended from a rope this was the intention! Quake can only do so much but this is the best I could get.

Thanks for commenting.

Man, that secret window is hard to hit!

Well, that was absolutely magnificent. I gave it the full five stars, because it's almost impossible to believe this is a debut map. (The secrets guide in the README is what clinched it.) Everything about this is excellent: the design, the visuals, the combats. I hope we'll be seeing a great deal more from Bloughsburgh.

By the way: a very good decision to go for a relatively small map at very high quality, rather than a bigger one with less detail. This is far more memorable and impressive.

Wow thanks Mike!

I am glad you enjoyed the map and experienced it to the fullest! I think secrets can be "too secret" especially when only the creator knows the answers so I included a cheat sheet if anyone would be interested. Glad to know some people still read READMEs!

I'll be honest and say that creating this map and fine tuning it (Not to mention, learning everything!) was a very daunting task. I have ideas for a next map but whether it will be fully realized is hard to say at this point.

Thanks!

Quake can only do so much but this is the best I could get.

IMO, if something looks hacky, you shouldn't do it at all. I'd rather leave the crate static.

As for the wooden planks, the problem is that at least one of them is hovering above the surface.

"IMO, if something looks hacky, you shouldn't do it at all."

Nah, AD is all about experimenting, I wouldn't change the bobbing for the world! Lots of things in Quake maps look hacky, I respectively disagree with your thoughts on the matter. :)

I'm with dwere on this.

The problem is not with bobbing entities as such, but how they've been implemented here. Have a look at the start of jam1_ionous (the ionous/mfx collaboration in Func Mapjam 1) or retrojam1_mfx to see a bobbing crate (done with func_door, I guess?) that does not look hacky.

And I understand what effect you were trying to achieve by making the hanging crate bob, but then it doesn't make too much sense to suspend it from a chain, which quite obviously is not moving and stretching along with the crate.

The point is that in both instances (the floating planks and the hanging crate) the effect you were going for can be achieved in Quake (even without Arcane Dimensions, although AD does make it easier to achieve), but if it's not implemented more carefully, it ends up looking hacky and detracting from the map.

That said, this is still a very impressive first release.

Thanks ICToaN for the in-depth critique!

I really like it! I like quick plays and I love Arcane Dimension, so this is pretty much my cup of tea. Keep it on!

Thanks ezze,

Glad you enjoyed the small map, cheers!

I really liked it and I had fun finding the secrets. Very nice, especially for it being your first level.

horse noises

Thanks QuakePone!

Glad you enjoyed the level and its secrets. Was a lot of fun to make!

This was rather interesting small map that had a lot of cool mechanics. I have to point out that some of these rope/ladders/stairs might have needed a bit more tweaking to make it fluent to move. There was a lot of little details almost everywhere, it made me really want to see more of that, but having it in a bigger scale map.

Brush work was flawless and very nice looking to me. It's good to make experimental maps like these, where we can demonstrate/learn cool things.

**** stars for you.

Thanks NewHouse,

This was my first release so lots of rough edges but I am glad you enjoyed the level of quality. Totally agree about the vertical transitioning...very cramped and finicky to say the least!

Haven't played this yet, but I watched your walkthrough on youtube and found it to be very impressive for a first map. I'm particularly impressed that you were able to integrate 9 secretes into a relatively small space. I liked the start area as well. Only criticism I can make is that several of the secrets are impossible to access without making acrobatic jumps, but that's a minor complaint.

Thanks JMP,

I hope you get to try out the map as some point and report your hands-on impression here! I agree that some areas (not just secrets) require some finicky maneuvering which I plan to address on future creations!

Acrobatic jumps are OK as long as they're not too frustratingly hard and don't involve fancy MP tricks like rocket-jumping or bunny-hopping. Remember that section in the original game where you had to jump on very tiny posts to access a secret level? That was one of my favorite secrets in the whole game.

Glad to see you back, Bloughs. An entry by you in the new map jam will be sorely missed. Wedding went fine?

"That was one of my favorite secrets in the whole game." As in: easy to spot but reasonably hard to pull off and not involving too much brain-squeezing. This site really needs an edit button.

OK, so I'm finally getting to play this. Well, at least I'm trying to! This may make me look stupid but... how the hell do I get out of the skill selection area? I tried breaking the vista "glass", exploring the upper ledge accessible via the rope, even entering the same skill portal twice... nothing works! Help?

It should be noted that I'm running this map in AD 1.5. Do I need to reinstall old 1.42 for it to work?

Figured it out! The culprit is Darkplaces. When I select a skill, it teleports me back to the skill selection start instead of teleporting me into the map. Too bad, I wish I could play it in DP... Oh well, at least it works fine in QS, even with AD 1.5.

Finished on skill 2 with all 9 secrets found (without peeking at the readme, I swear!) and 73/74 kills... well, I might as well say 74/74: the last one was a spider that was stuck under the pond floor. I had to noclip through it to wake her up and make her jump so that I could kill her inside the map. Funny thing is, I kept hearing these footsteps (which sound a bit like hooves) during the whole time of the playthrough and I thought it was my horse hidden somewhere! I only realized it was her all along once I had killed her.

Anyhoo, this is a very good small map, impressive for a first release! Fun little story, creative secrets, nice difficulty progression, cool platformy bits... I only have very minor nitpicks: the aforementioned stuck spider, the sticking-out brick near the silver door that doesn't match the shape of the wall texture, the yellow window inside the secret that is very hard to hit with the shotty (I ended up lobbing a grenade through the hole), skill 2 is a bit easy (I never really felt any sense of danger), and especially the fact that it doesn't work well in DP. I can workaround the latter, though: now that I know where the map start is, I can just select a skill and noclip to the stable. One last thing: in your stead, I wouldn't have made holes in the stable doors. We can see from the get-go that it's a minotaur in there and certainly NOT our horse, so it spoils the fun of the story a little. I'll replay this map for sure, preferably on skill 3.

@JMP I don't know if you played it yet but rest assured that the jumping bits are quite easy and don't require any particular skill or fancy tricks.

Thanks BFG,

I think the spider only sometimes gets stuck, perhaps more so in DP? I only tested on QS for my first release unfortunately. Yep, learning more about displacement...it seems to be all of the rage nowadays! That's subjective to consider what is difficult and what is not but I went towards not quite as brutal as other maps on skill 2. I wanted it to be approachable for my first map so you won't be dancing with Shamblers or dodging 4 fiends at once!

It's more of a joke than anything, actually I am not even sure why I named the map what I did. But after I did have the name I went with that stable theme...the minotaur just looked like the most like a horse so I plopped him in there. I waned players to be able to look through the stables regardless.

You got 9/10 secrets...that means you had a chance for the yellow frog secret! I am surprised you didn't locate it :) Perhaps checking the start map even more thoroughly could give you a clue hmm. either way thanks for your feedback!

9/10? The map and readme both say there's only 9...

Oops, nevermind...I got the number 10 on the mind.

Ahem,

Nice going on getting all of the secrets without the readme! ;)

Yeah, TBH I only found the yellow frog by accident...

Neat map, well done. Good use of AD all around.

Much appreciated AnthonyS :)

Was the nightmare key suppose to drop when you shoot the breakable wood?

Played this on ad 1.7. Very neat map, clean but very detailed. Open area with some nasty secret. Pixel hunting for the yellow glass, but otherwise it felt very good to get the widowmaker.

4.7/5 would rate this a 5 if it wasn't too short and exploitable (you can refill ammo and health by simply not killing the red mage and waiting for the ammo to respawn)

Hey brunomiwa,

Sorry for long pause in response, I clearly missed this comment.

Nightmare key is accessible after breaking the wood. The key does not drop, you must physically grab it instead.

This was created on one of the first AD releases (1.50?) so it is nice to know the map still works as intended.

Thanks for the review, glad you enjoyed it!