Peril Mod updated to 0.3b

News
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PERIL VERSION 0.3b

The latest version of Peril, a mod based upon Arcane Dimensions.

In Peril you play as Robyn, the daughter of one of the Rangers who were sent in through the slipgates in the first wave. Robyn’s father never returned, and despite a national nightime curfew, Robyn sets out to seek revenge.

Peril pushes the Quake engine towards its upper limits, with huge open maps, hundreds of custom textures, platform vehicles, flowing interlinked missions. A whole host of new concepts and ideas.

The main concept behind Peril was to add a female protagonist, to create a unique single player experience, and a wholesome co-op campaign, set in a world that is both believable, beautiful, and well worth re-visiting.
Another important aim was to blast into smitherines the whole notion that Quake ‘cannot do outdoor area’s well’, or that Quake is ‘only good for abstract ideas’.

Modern builds of Quake (and our modern hardware) are well up for creating maps that are completely set outdoors, and can be crammed full of detail and interest, thus breaking away from the repeat/repeat format that many mappers seem unable to break away from. The tools are under constant development and are there to push the boundaries, not all mappers take advantage of this.
It’s been necessary to take some risks to demonstrate to the contrary, that Quake using a modern engine can now handle and work really well with huge open areas, and that there’s much more to mapping than the simple regurgitation of old ideas, and that engine advancements (QSS) are offering opportunities to create maps that were once almost impossible because of unneccesary limitations.

These are the first maps I have ever made for any game, and I have little technical expertise. But I have played from beginning to end almost every shooter from 1976 to 2008 and made a point of studying in detail the evolution of the shooter.
I love breaking all the rules, and have tried to create something different.
It may not be Quake as you all know it, and you might not like playing it as a girl, but it breaks free from tired often repeated formula, which for me has gone a bit stale.

I hope you enjoy Peril, it’s my tribute to my favourite game.

This will be the last update for a while. You can download the mod as early access, and help to improve it, or wait until the final update in a couple of months time.

PERIL ZIP:

https://www.mediafire.com/file/0mq7a50yytxigew/peril0.3b.zip/file

VIDEO OF CITY/START MAP: (by my son ‘Cypher’).

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LrcWFxK56Ug

REQUIREMENTS:

Quakespasm-Spiked (QSS).

Launch using a shortcut with-
quakespasm_spiked.exe -game Peril -heapsize 2048000

and in the console add-

gl_farclip 128000

Theres more in the readme.
Any probs setting it up let me know.
I hope you enjoy it.

ALPHA TEXTURES FOR DARKPLACES: (tga’s converted from mip’s specifically for darkplaces) place the textures folder in Peril folder within your Darkplaces directory.
Experimental only. Not all maps work correctly in Darkplaces yet and the texture saturation needs a bit of work after conversion from the Quake palet.

https://www.mediafire.com/file/mi19yyora5gzuj5/dp_textures.zip/file

Updates will be mostly map by map from now on, and as maps are updated I will put up a download link so they can be replaced in the directory.

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Latest stable QSS release
https://quaketastic.com/files/clients/quakespasm_spiked_win64_dev_14.10.21.zip

Version 14.11.21 highly NOT recommended!

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I’m only in the first map (city) at the moment, but I want to drop a few comments.

This is heckin’ rad, my dude. Super total-conversion energy in here. :slight_smile: The environments, weapons, vehicles, and music kinda make it feel like Malice 2.0 (which to be clear is a good thing IMO).

Now, unsurprisingly I do think a bit more player direction of some kind is needed.

My specific situation at the moment is that I have over 160 kills and I know I need the security disk to get into the train station. Probably need the gold key to get to that. I’m pretty sure I’ve covered all the outside ground areas, and I think I’ve rinsed the skyscrapers as well – but less sure of that. So, what to do? Going back up through the skyscrapers again feels like it will be tedious because of the elevator situation; you’ve got some really long and slow lifts that are atmospheric the first time through, but not great for going back through a second or third time.

In general I also think that an environment this open will benefit from giving the player some way to figure out where they want to be headed. The example that leaps to mind are the rough map diagrams in Thief; you have to figure out where you even are on the map, and then think about what that might mean in terms of getting to the goal marked on the map. E.g.: ok this plaza looks like this spot on the map. Is that skyscraper over there the place I need to go next? Hmm, maybe that means I need to figure out a way to get across that bridge I see. Etc.

If you’re going to require Quakespasm-Spiked then I would bet that CSQC could handle displaying a static map image when a keybind is hit – but, I’m not requesting a particular solution, just thinking out loud that there are ways to help direct the player more while still leaving your environments open and not resorting to straight-up telling the player in centerprints where to go next.

(As a related thing, some other way of delivering hints could be cool too, like for example letting the player find out that someone left a rocket launcher somewhere on the outside of the Cabalco skyscraper. That’s an item that is really easy to miss, and the map wouldn’t be as much fun without the RL.)

Anyway, congrats on getting it together, it’s a uniquely fun release. I’m sure I’ll dip back in later to look for that security disk / gold key again. :slight_smile:

Edit: yah got the key now, trucking onward.

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FYI you do have a nontrivial amount of unintentional fullbright pixels in some of the textures… in the second map this is particularly visible on the shipping containers and some building facades. You can use https://github.com/ericwa/defullbright to help correct that.

Neat ending to map 2!

One thing I’ll suggest about map 2 is to signal the breakable grate (the one necessary for progression) in some way. I think the only other breakable in the first two maps up until that point was the crumbling gantry at the red armor? Ideally you’d want to remind the player “hey things like this might be breakable” earlier in the map.

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@Johnny Law.
Brilliant that you played it, and thanx for your observations.
These are exactly the things i need to hear so I can fix them.

I have played with the idea of having Robyn speak in the way many similar fps games do it. It it’s difficult to pull off and I have yet to try it.

In terms of the fullbrights I know, but I can’t get defulbright to work, and so I have to manually repixel the offenders. Which is taking ages, but now I am really good at spotting them in Wally.

I will have a real think about direction. I don’t do any QC, so it all has to be done some other way.

Thanx.

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About defullbright:
Just drag’n’drop your.wad on defullbright.exe. That’s all!

I was puzzled to how to get through the (breakable) bars on the second level to.
Yet one about second level:
While traveling by train at the beginning I stay close to the window. It hurts! train even stopped. Vertical lamps inside the tonnel should be illusionary or train windows thicker.
Pines trees should be illusionary too.
Gold key seems to be not exist on this level? But GK door does.

First level:
Should fix angle direction on some elevator buttons. Pit under elevators should have hurt triggers - falling from a height must be fatal.
Behind GK door there is a simple way by wires. W/o GK. It is feature or mistake? Proceeding by this way does not start road traffic.

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Level prison:
Secret red button on church - fix angle.
Upd:
Visited before underground zombie cemetery through the catacombs has no trigger secret. Revisited after through the floor grate in church has secret trigger but there is nothing to do here: all cleaned before.

Level powerplant:
There is nothing behind GK door at the beginning of the map. There is no reason to visit first tower (Tower 3). Reaching the end of level is possible w/o any keys just swimming by water.
Seems to be it is needed to change level scenario.

@Johnny Law:
… Now, unsurprisingly I do think a bit more player direction of some kind is needed…

Nope! Here we have unique for quake mapping “open world” mod. It is feature of it!

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Quick note, you have a map that exits to “subbase.bsp”, but the actual filename is “SUBBASE.bsp”. This mismatch will end up working ok on Windows but not on Linux or macOS.

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Lots of advice which I will attempt to fix.
Glad to know now what to do with defulbright. It had no instructions.

Gold key door in map two is not completed yet. I need to find or make a good skybox of earth from space for the Skylift.

The Powerplant map evolved in a strange way.
Originally it was meant to be played only from the boat, and the pirate ship was to pull alongside. The islands were only for hopping onto to grab ammo. But it proved to be really boring.
The dropship in the tower provides a neat way to reach the rest of the map because any time spent on the island and the boat leaves you stranded.
I will have a think about how to improve it.

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Breakable bars.

The base HMS Forward is a real place, and those bars were to prevent access while the sentry turned you into mincemeat.
How about the bars can be either destroyed as they are, but will automatically break once the sentry is dead?

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@quazzaq
The wire was something I put in for the co-op.
If a player dies they respawn at the start and it’s hard for them to catch up again via the long lifts.
I put in the moving dropship as one way across too.
The wire is meant to be electrified, with a shootable fusebox on the opposite side. I couldnt decide whether to only make acces by the wire permanent for single player as well, or to only enable that access after another point is reached via a trigger.

All the traffic are func_trains, and were a nightmare to set up because they can’t reverse because itceould look wrong, they have to loop back outside the level.
I left some of them visible inside the fast highway tunnel, they are flying backwards…

The problem is that all of the triggers are set within the long elevators, and another set of triggers in the longest gravity lift. Unfortunately unless the player descends the traffic won’t start, and putting the triggers anywhere else ended up with all the cars starting at the wrong time. The only way was to make the player travel at a controlled speed inside the lift so that the space between each car was right.

I dont know of any other way I could have done it?

Maybe the whole roof section of the start area could open up only in co-op once the lift has been descended?

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How about the bars can be either destroyed as they are, but will automatically break once the sentry is dead?

That would be OK (although the sentry seemed “unkillable” when I was playing) … but a little odd in a quasi-realistic sort of map. I think having breakable bars as a progression-blocker is OK, it’s just that the player needs to know (and be reminded) that bars can be breakable. Especially since that’s not a normal Quake thing.

In other AD-based maps I see mappers use a collection of tricks like making the object look breakable by having it be cracked/damaged, and/or having a situation at the beginning of the map where the player is guided to break a similar object, or a situation where a monster breaks a similar object in the player’s view, etc. In this case, maybe just having the bars look damaged and with a few pieces lying on the ground … that might be enough of a hint?

Anyway, I’m still coming back to this periodically. Still having a good time. :slight_smile: There’s a couple of specific things that bug me so I’ll mention them here for you to ponder:

  • You’ve had two or three un-telegraphed instant death traps in the maps so far (crumbling walkway, crushed by falling thing). In general I don’t think those are great, and even less so in a giant map where a death could cause someone to lose a lot of progress if they haven’t been savescumming.

  • It seems like some of the monster instances are bullet sponges. Like, some spiders go down in 1 or 2 shotgun hits, while other identical spiders in the same area will take half a dozen double-shotgun shots or more. Similarly with some of the flying enforcers, some of the skull wizards, etc. It’s possible I’m imagining things? but the difference seems pretty clear. (I’m playing on hard difficulty if that matters.) If I’m not crazy, then: IMO this isn’t good in Quake-ish combat for a few reasons. 1) some of these monsters don’t have any/many flinch reactions so the shooting then just feels kinda bad, 2) it looks weird in cases where things really don’t seem they should take that much punishment (e.g. spiders), and 3) if fighting a bunch of monsters at once, you have expectations about how many shots it will take to kill this or that, and when something suddenly DOESN’T die “on time” it yanks you out of your flow.

OK last note for now. In the underwater base there was a moment where I fell down into a sub-floor area (while fighting) and I couldn’t find out how to get back up. Actually I’m not even clear on how I fell down there. Here’s a https://jkb-hosting.s3.amazonaws.com/temp/whoops.png.

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Sensible remarks, Johnny Law.

About instant death traps in the maps for my opinion otherwise is good idea. Especially when I was blown away by a waterfall into an underwater tunnel at the end littered with stones and corpses. Without an exit and the ability to swim against the current. I"m just slowly suffocated. It was epic!

All scenario decision by Balgorg should stay, because this is his mod and he is a scriptwriter. We can only hint at obvious miscalculations, which he has the right to ignore.
We have chance to obtain a good game!

“shot from the area looking back upward”
Ha-ha! You didn’t thoroughly look for a way out!

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Damn, sounds like a classic movie quote.

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What is up with QSS 14.11.21? What are the downsides to 14.10.21?

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It has problem with correct entities spawning.

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ok, then i should change the QSS in my pack, too…

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Another file capitalization issue FYI. The changelevel for island tries to change to “clovelly” but the actual BSP file is named “CLOVELLY”.

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Finished clovelly and onto crossroad now. One bug to report on both of these maps BTW is they don’t have a map name assigned (no message key on the worldspawn), which among other things means that their savegame slots don’t have any title.

Couple of bits of feedback about clovelly:

The way to get the gold key is the sort of thing that would normally be a secret in a Quake map, as opposed to a progression-blocker. If you miss that button when you first go through that area, it means you’re in for a lot of running-around-a-huge-empty-map later. So, I’d have a similar comment here as I made a few posts back … with a really free-form structure in a map, if you do have progression bottlenecks then ideally you give the player some way to figure out what to do to get past them.

(To be clear though, this map is a great overall construction.)

Also on the final big-guy fight it’s kind of a shame he gets stuck on the upper level and can’t meaningfully follow you. Maybe a monsterjump trigger would help that to some extent?

Anyway, I’m still having a really good time with this! Just some ridiculous setpieces. I kind of want to run through all of the wacky stuff I’ve seen just to let you know I’ve seen/appreciated it :slight_smile: but no time for that now I guess.

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Much appreciated Johnny and qazzaq.
Been busy here with work. Ongoing for a while yet.
The small matter of 40,000 trees to plant.
I will be fixing these issues for sure.
Having some other issues will full vis, as you might imagine.
Got five new maps in the go for the two extra episodes.
Desperate to find someone who can get me Nazis into Quake for the episode Far North is to feature a Wolfenstien theme.