My 1st SP Quake map – Intrusion (working title "Pipe_dream")

Quake Quake Maps
1

I think the map is ready for a release and I won’t make any significant changes in the future, only minor things.

Again, I think, that it turned out well, but the ending is somewhat messy. And overall level design has a severe case of “I tired of this theme, let’s try another for 10 metres”.

The map has minor difficulty tweaks and supports color lightning, there are 3 secrets (should be 4 now!) + some stashes that are too obvious to be secrets.

I want to express my gratitude to Smashcutcreative and Func_Msgboard community; was very surprised to get so much help from here and thanks to everybody, who tested it, while it was named pipe_dream_pb2.

You can download it from here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1d-Vt4lK5A9HqqIji3aMHghF3eIJ7JZZs

Screenshots: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1mjUI7tVG7JAl8A2sQL4NEPukgOP0l-em

ATTENTION: I was mapping it with gamma set to 0.65, so with default settings it’s pitch black. I recommend to boost up brightness settings for a better experience (until I fix the issue).

2

Just played through it. Pretty cool map. As you mentioned above, the style is a bit eclectic, and I wasn’t always sure what surfaces were door or walls. On the plus side… you put in a lot of visual indicators of what buttons do. A door suddenly opening was pretty effective for shooing me along the intended path. I like the areas where you reuse space or visit it from another viewpoint.

On gameplay, the beginning was a little slow relative to other modern maps. The ending was pretty neat and unexpected, but I died against a shambler for not taking cover. I should had let him keep fighting the other mobs for a while :slight_smile:

Conclusion: Good fun. A lot of interesting ideas kinda thrown together, but it looks like you have an idea of what you’re after for pacing and length. I’ll keep an eye out for your next map :slight_smile:

3

Thanks for playing and feedback. Yes, I put an effort to make buttons and elevators as pronounced as possible.

Everybody says that there’s not enough monsters, I can see it, but I aimed for more explorative type of gameplay, plus, if I’m not mistaken, the original Quake don’t have that much monsters, usually you encounter no more than 4 at once. Of course, it doesn’t cancel the fact that people find it too easy / sparsely inhabited.

In the hotfix I added about 10 monsters, 1 secret and fixed some issues with textures. Hope, I didn’t break anything.

My next map will take so-o-o-o-o-ome time (not in my priorities at the moment). I have two ideas. 1st one is to make the level in the style of Blood – a medical institute of frankenstein kind. And the 2nd one is to make hazardous exploration level with many traps and jumping and secrets and little enemies.

4

Word, yeah. Original Quake didn’t have as many monsters. Just noting that the trends have moved toward more crowded firefights as source port limits are increased. Sometimes it’s just the size of the room (or the walkable area) that determines how populated a level feels.

Classic quake tended to be more claustrophobic (even in open rooms, by restricting the path, adding mobs/traps), which is always good times, just have consider what would make players nervous. All about feeling ambushed :slight_smile: Lots of factors in that, and it’s probably harder than it used to be surprise players since we’ve been playing for decades.

Anyway, lots of good stuff. I bet plenty of improvements will come through in your next map, too, just from the experience gained on this one. I’m down for exploration, too. Gotta make the maps you like!

5

I did not try yet. But already congratulation to actually deliver a full map!

As Rhoq said. “Gotta make the maps you like!” if you like the map you did, most probably there are players like you that like the map too. Consider that some of the most liked maps are also the most controversial; just read the comments of https://www.quaddicted.com/reviews/warpspasm.html to have an idea. They go from “long and boring walk” to “masterpiece.”
On the other hand, be open to suggestions and comments. There is lots to learn.

About the number of monsters, keeping the player shooting is a sure way to keep the adrenaline up; but it is not the only way. Think to a game like Myst, there pretty much no encounters at all, but still the player stay interested; it is more the strange architecture and puzzles.
Also consider to mix and match the monsters; a room with few Spawns and a Shalrat will scare any player. Even nowadays. Other mixes I found effective are: Zombies and Grunts in small spaces or Spawns and Ogres.

What I think it should be avoided is to have monsters that do not give any challenge. For example because it cannot hit you given the limited AI (e.g., Ogres on the top of stairs) or it can be easily defeated (e.g., a Shambler alone in a place with cover).

6

I played a bit, but still unfinished. As first map is indeed impressive, and while the style changes often I found it fairly integrated. It looked indeed like a strange technology-clerical magic mixture experiment. Very “quakeish” in theme.

About the lack of monsters, I did not feel the problem. As I mentioned in the previous message, the strange messages and the architecture kept my mind occupied. And the battles felt fairly balanced and fun.

I got stuck in a jumping puzzle room, you enter from a water well in a clear brick room where a Scrag start shooting from inside a wall… how I am supposed to go up?

On the negative side, I found the beginning a bit unfair. Sure you write “You have one chance to rise,” but since the timing is fairly tight it is easy to miss the big door going up and being stuck outside. And also, to have a unreachable gold key and have to use a secret passage (that you can activate only once) to jump inside the cathedral sounded a bit forced.

7

@etb_forgot_password

PART I

Very good suggestions, and, of course, different styles of play have their right to exist, but sometimes it can depend on player. For example, when I play my level I tend to run and gun, probably 'cause I know the layout and monsters placement, but other players can be very cautious and kill them one by one; and to them there’s always not enough monsters, while to me it’s a little horde I collected, while running.

I tried to place monsters according to the enviroment, which have limited me considerably. I remember Doom 2016 developer saying that they tried this, but it wasn’t fun. Also, I found that the more monsters I place, the more they prone to fight among each other, sometimes you came down to them and they’re already fighting.

I myself prefer to “travel” across my map on normal difficulty. But I can understand the attraction of intense fights.

PART II

[quote=etb_forgot_password]
On the negative side, I found the beginning a bit unfair. Sure you write “You have one chance to rise,” but since the timing is fairly tight it is easy to miss the big door going up and being stuck outside. And also, to have a unreachable gold key and have to use a secret passage (that you can activate only once) to jump inside the cathedral sounded a bit forced.[/quote]

WOW. That’s not supposed to happen (I should try it myself). Gold key is accessible by shooting two buttons on the left and on the right (big grey ones with red frames and red lights). Rising stela is a secret, I placed it, 'cause many players were shooting Jesus in the face, he complained and they thought that it’s a secret switch :). In the well there’re bricks sticking out, forming the stairs.

HINT about situation in the end: ROCKET…

I just checked map, everything’s working. The only sloppy thing is the last trigger, sometimes it doesn’t show the message. I don’t know why, it’s like sometimes it’s moved a little behind. And the one door to the side room, sometimes it opens, sometimes it doesn’t.

8

Wait, you mean that http://217.182.78.91/jump.zip is not the proper way to proceed? I will play again later… I really thought it was a “puzzley” way to proceed given the messages. :smiley:

9

Man, that’s sick! I wish it was the intention :).

P.S. And about “you have one chance” – I consider this additional gun to be wa-a-ay too powerful to simply give away.

10

I guess now my negative comment will be more clear. The first time I played I missed the jump on the rising stela, but seeing it going up I saw the ramp over there with the Thunderbolt and I thought: “oh, I have to jump from there!”. Little later I understood I could not “rise again” and I had to restart the map. I found it a bit unfair. Sure, it was explained in the messages, but still unfair.

Of course, now that I know one can simply take the Gold Key the whole comment means nothing.

Played the whole map this time. It required a bit more than 15 minutes on Skill 3.

I really liked it. Correctly sized (I am not a big fan of large maps as I dislike save midmap), nice fights, and good amount of resources even for a first time play. As mentioned before the lack of a single coherent theme actually made the map better for me as it sounded like another insane Shub-Niggurath’s base for experiments.
As the whole episode 4 of Quake tells, coherence is not always good.

(Possible) bugs, I get the following messages in the console.
“Couldn’t find a cdrip for track 1”,
“SV_StartSound: not precacheed”,
“Sound ambience/thunder1.wav not looped”.

11

[quote=etb_forgot_password]
(Possible) bugs, I get the following messages in the console.
“Couldn’t find a cdrip for track 1”,
“SV_StartSound: not precacheed”,
“Sound ambience/thunder1.wav not looped”.[/quote]

Yeah, I know about these, they’re pretty harmless. “Track 1” is probably the music on the original Quake CD the map tries to play, “thunder1” is thunder ambience somewhere I placed, thinking it loops as others, but it’s not and I didn’t find loop check box, so I just left it. Didn’t get “SV_StartSound”.

Probably shouldn’t have added the stela secret, but I wanted to give two plates everybody shot a purpose, plus utilize cells you get from enforcers.

Thanks for valuable feedback and kind words.

12

“The track 1” does not exist in Quake. The original CD has the data in track 1, so the musics go from 2 to 11. As matter of fact your level has no music. Perhaps you should use one, in my opinion 4 or 8 fit the best.

13

I do not agree, the stela secret is cool! I really like how the level interconnects and you see the same parts from different angles; the stela secret adds in this direction.

14

I would try to add music as soon as I return to civilization.

15

It’s done!

Now it plays music + I placed more visual cues and moved stela buttons in a way you most probably be shooting at them from th best position for the jump.

16

I just tried it. The music adds a lot to your map. It has a lot of unique moments, i like your style.
Anyway, i died because of the shambler near the end and recognized i forgot to save. Dooh :slight_smile:

17

People often die there. No one wants to rocketjump to safety.

(Though you can survive if you hide in one of the small rooms).

Thanks!

BTW, I recently (like 2 hours ago) decreased the brightness of global light (to make it more moody and to boost contrast) and added some light sources in base sections. And also I added HP to the vore.

18

In the final room, even if you kill everything without jumping you cannot finish the map… I am wrong? I remember when I played the first time that I killed everything and I still locked up in the arena and I understood what to do thanks to the “Sacrifice!” chant. I thought: "oh, they want my blood and I rocket-jumped…

19

There are 4 floor plates (buttons) similiar to the one you opened the blue door with. Press all 4 of them and floor will open.

P.S. I just tested it, everything works.

20

I tried the last version, I am not sure I like the new lighting; but I see it is about personal taste. The map does look more morose.

Still, I am missing something from the last fight. As far as I can tell the floor opens after pressing the four buttons, but the buttons cannot be reached without rocket-jumping. If it is not the case, how can I open the floor?