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7ae72b3affa5970d30ec9dd0e9bb1e7dd0d08a9f9429daeb417c42c71d66c93f
overall_rating
4.548790007806402
63
“Operation: Urth Majik”, gives me a good “Rubicon” vibe - which is in favour. This also means, there is a ‘Quake 2’ theme woven into it, in own way.
I applaud for a very good difficulty balance on “Normal” level, at least in terms of combat. The progress trajectory throughout the game, is mostly clear - albeit interrupted sparsely with some bad cases of “dead-end-puzzle”; which could possibly turn some players away. Fortunately, such roadblocks, are few.
Size of the stages, is not too much, but just proper, to give a decent example - a well adjusted bite-size.
The narrative at the end of each stage, is a nice touch, definitely for the benefit in terms of general reception. It bestowes a sense of achievement and meaningful progress.
What is bad, is the placement of progress-buttons in terms of visual design; in the early stages, these are obscure in outlook, making them prone to being overlooked - suggesting the possibility of another “dead-end-puzzle” in confusion.
The customary elements - including opponents, weapons and certain treats, such as ladders - feel great and solid as an addon to the ‘Quake’ universe - they are impressive even beyond just the historical perspective, minding the day of release, which dates back to the year 2001.
What in particular stood out as innovative to myself, are the “stations” with health, ammo and armor patches; it felt quite like a next-step for the common ‘Quake’ standards.
I think the campaign, would benefit from a remaster to the “Quoth” foundation, unless the “Arcane Dimensions”, proved to be a better set of solutions.
“Operation: Urth Majik”, deserves recognition.
The ending, though, yes, but no.
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Unregistered user “NailIn” posted:
Nice touch on resupply stations, reminds you of half-life, however, playing with armour-health damage ratio was never a good thing especially when reducing the same pick-ups throughout the maps.
Player’s health quickly drops to ‘0’ while armour still above ‘90’. The armour in this mod is useless. It only protect itself but not the player, I had to repeat otherwise simple shootouts because it seems the shotgun grunt can penetrate your armour as the nail gun grunt. Parameters like these should be left alone.
For that I’ll give only 2/5.
Unregistered user “DameQ” posted:
What a piece of manure of a mod, why replace the rocket launcher with that dumb weapon?
The game is unplayable without the original RL. It seems the author never played his tweaked mod before releasing it. The star goes for the maps only.
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Hello Guys,
Here is my opinion regarding Operation: Urth Majik
Creativity : 5
This MP consists of five levels. The first three levels are Base themed level, while the last two are Egyptian ones. I found all base level interesting and well-designed. Some would probably feel that the textures are repeated many times, but for me, it was perfect. Most if not all textures are new comparing to the base game + MPs. I liked how base levels resembled Quake 2, yet you don't get the feeling of using the wrong game for the map 
The addition of Health, Ammo and Armor stations is also a brilliant idea. I've never thought that I can see such things working in Quake. The latter two Egyptian levels are also nice, although it seems to have less diversity among textures.
The addition of new monsters and some weapons are nice too. Enemies have different skins and weapons. There are even space knights and drones on the third level! BTW, it seemed a bit odd to have them on the Egyptian maps. Last, but not least, the Plasma Gun from DOOM also makes a cameo 
Playability / Balance : 5
Monster placement is great. You start to encounter more and more monster as you progress through the levels. You don't get access to all weapons, and ammo is somewhat limited, forcing you not to waste too many. There are several places where you need to climb a ladder and when you arrive at the top there are multiple foes trying to take you down. You often get into a situation where they are shooting from 2-3-4 angles and those rottweilers are onto you too Not to mention "traps", when you just walk past by something and suddenly two Demons jump at you. It may sound hard, but this is what really makes this MP a great challenge for all SP fans. (I played on Nightmare difficulty)
Secrets are hard to find. I only managed to get the 40-50% of them.
Story & Instructions
There is a story built around maps, which I like. Some maps lack the story, and even if that is not really the aim of the game, still makes it more enjoyable. It's always better to have some "goal" or know why to kill the boss than bursting through and just killing anyone who gets in your way. I like that too, don't get me wrong, but still...
What drove me crazy is how minimal info or help is given to the player. Sometimes, I spent 10-20 minutes, trying to find the next move. There are no instructions, and you just have to do things which don't seem obvious.
Final Words
All in all, this is a great mission pack. I recommend it to anyone, who likes fair, but tough challenges and nicely designed maps.
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Hi there!
When i try to launch “Operation: Urth Majik” with the actual Version of QSS all Text is garbled and unreadable.
The text is there but the letters are wrong.
Older Versions from QSS will work (Git Revision: 3c5059a, Git Date: 2021-03-06, Compile Date: Sat, Mar 6, 06:43:10 UTC 2021) and the normal actual quakespasm will work, too.
I am too newbie to fix the problem in the map, maybe a fix here or a guideline how i can correct the text for qss in Operation: Urth Majik would help!
As a hint: Everything seems to had jumped to the next letter in the alphabeth and also the next number after the correct one.
(I did already open an issue at https://github.com/Shpoike/Quakespasm/issues/82)
I have to add that QSS is mandatory in this case…
@GenericJohnDoe
Just open pak0.pak of this mod and delete conchars.lmp inside gfx folder. Save pak0.pak. That’s all.
@qazzaq Thank you very much!
May i ask for what conchars.lmp was meant for?
Ok, i could answer my question for myselfe:
It is the used textfont in this mod.
I used the guide here:
https://www.quakewiki.net/archives/fatty/defaulte128.html?opinion=conchars
And looked up the pak0 of oum. There is said chonchars.lmp in the gfx folder. But on top in the pak0 is the gfx.wad which contains
(a correct working) conchars.lmp, too.
I wonder what the deal was here… Maybe a more highres version?
The two copies of conchars.lmp (one in gfx dir and one inside gfx.wad) are bit-for-bit identical.
The weird thing is that compared to a vanilla conchars.lmp they ARE off by one. So it makes no sense to me why the one inside gfx.wad would work while the “loose” one wouldn’t.
Also, if you delete the loose conchars.lmp from the gfx dir in pak0.pak and load OUM in the latest QSS, there’s a warning:
Warning: Invalid size for gfx.wad conchars lump (16392, expected 16384) - attempting to ignore for compat.
Well, at least it seems to work without the loose file in compatiblity mode.
Maybe the creators of the mod had to offset the chars by one because of another clusterbug.
What would happen if someone (This is far out of reach for my skills) reedit the conchar and place one into the wad? Maybe one in the wad and one in the gfx folder for comparision?
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