Ancient Aquaduct

Content - Quake - Quake Levels - Quake Single Player

Author: Roger Staines | Rating: 7.00 | Download: aquagl.zip

The Ancient Aquaduct level is well named, because it’s all about the water! Once you get into this level, you notice right away that there is literally water everywhere you look, so it helps to see where you’re going. The original designer did not implement transparent water support in this level, but your friends at RetroQuake have thoughtfully taken care of this oversight. With all the water, if this level were run on older systems or with poor video cards the r_speed’s would be terribly slow; but on modern systems with a good 3Dfx or OpenGL card, even the biggest areas run smoothly. So feel free to set wateralpha to 0.4, and go!

Aqua is broken down to a Red Sector, a Green Sector, and a Blue Sector, each one filled with big adventures and challenges, but overall it still seems a little too short. Some of the areas boast some really nice architecture though, with one area having a movable elevated tunnel, and a nice underground lake with some sunken buildings that remind the player of E1M4 (The Grisly Grotto). There is also a very cool elevated aquaduct in the Blue Sector that’s worth checking out (it leads to the exit anyway).

There are some nice secrets to be had (6 in all, they are detailed in the README, and a decent balance of enemies, although an experienced player may find the level a little too sparsely populated for any great challenge. One of the secrets is a large ammo/weapon cache which is unguarded; a rarity for a Quake level. The pace picks up a bit in Blue Sector however, with a Shambler or two, a couple of Fiends, and some Enforcers to keep things lively. Again though, the level is over surprisingly quick, considering it’s broken down into 3 good-sized zones.

There is one glaring problem with this level though. In Red Sector, the main objective is to open the gate that is blocking the entrance to a wind pipe. However, once the player enters that pipe, the force of the wind inside the pipe is so strong that the player gets stuck at the top of it, and needs to use the NOCLIP cheat to get out. This is the only major flaw in an otherwise very entertaining map.

Overall, The Ancient Aquaduct is a cool map with some fun enemy encounters and pretty neat design. It suffers from a somewhat sparse enemy count and a problem with getting stuck in one of the windpipes, but overall it’s a very enjoyable level. Recommended.

- Zoop