Although Quake is a fantasy world, the architecture must still make sense

No. Maybe it's more believable to some but not necessary at all and limiting to have to create "realistic" architecture. Think about void maps like HipDM1 or the space maps of Quake 3 Arena. Those really defy all logic but they are fun. 

I only play Q1SP.

When I say it needs to make sense, I mean that an ogre who can make a chainsaw capable of slicing your head clean off your shoulders, would not be so naïve as to not lay his bricks in proper, off-set, courses to ensure good bonding and load bearing strength ;)

But I suspect that we may have to disagree on one point: I don't think that 'making sense' is necessarily the same as 'realistic'. The best maps (imo) have fantastical architecture that, nevertheless, makes sense i.e it won't all fall apart with the first grenade explosion. 

I see you've been reading "Better Caves & Crypts" magazine for those Orge bricklaying tips and tricks. Cheers! 

Because I stumbled into this awesome conversation I would like to say the following:

In one of the levels I've been working on, and maybe this is just a form of narcicissm as my theoretical builders suck at modern (Quake) design techniques, I think the builders, even if they were Ogres, did such a good job building, that it is kind of a shame to kill them. Alas, that's what the level is there for. Maybe I'll try to incorporate a merciful "no kill" alternative gameplay where a Ring of Shadows is always available within proper timing, if you can find it based on hints. But I swear at least some of those Ogres really can do infrastructure right... 

I just watched the Daz stream of your Zerstorer Jam entry the other day. WTF was that level?

Amazing... that's what. I digress...

I think we should refrain from culling the Ogre herd until we can be sure there will be enough for the species to survive. I've read at least one theory that those chainsaws were originally designed to cut bricks. Makes sense to me. Grenade launchers were originally "mortar" guns that spewed uh... mortar. In a bureaucratic mix up, the term mortar was confused and explosives suddenly were introduced into their construction routine, to catastrophic results.

The rest, as they say is history. 

You're right about Better Caves & Crypts, I was given a subscription as a retirement present a few years back, and it has had a bad influenced me over me ever since

And I love the ogre chainsaw theory - mortar/mortar - brilliant.

Tronyn: having used some (plenty) of your mapwork in some of my released maps - A Roaming Wildebeest in Spain comes to mind - I would describe your maps as great examples of fantastical architecture that always makes sense. Please keep mapping. 

http://imgur.com/a/WAr8y

https://github.com/hrehfeld/d2-tools 

Sliced rivets always look very wrong to me. I've never seen less than a full rivet in real life.

Any time a texture with rivets spans across two surfaces and rivets fall on the seam, then it should align perfectly.

If the texture ends at a seam, it shouldn't end in the middle of a rivet.

This is not always possible to avoid, but should never be allowed in an obvious location. Hidden in darkness or where a player is not likely to see is okay. 

I'm using a ton of the rivet texture in my current map. Trying to avoid "splitting rivets" is challenging. I've been tempted to fire up photoshop and make a rivet-less version of the texture to use as a clean-up for those edges. With content aware scale - this might be possible to do without too much pain. 

Splitting hairs?

Ha, no i agree, don't split rivets. 

New Screenie.

I have a title but not 100% convinced it's right. 

It doesn't remind me of E1M3, but that's fine.

I'd put some stone faces in the walls. 

It doesn't remind me of E1M3, but that's fine.

I'd put some stone faces in the walls.

Well, inspired is the key word there. ;) There are tons of stone faces. One directly behind the player in this shot. I still have a few weeks to go but looking forward to wrapping this one up. Almost finished with the first pass at gameplay. This will be my second SP map for Quake - I've learned a lot.

How did you recreate your start map BTW? Did you do it by eye? If so, very nice. 

Well, I've just opened the GPL version released by Romero and started overlapping the original brushwork with my own to get the proportions and the positions right, deleting the original brushes afterwards. There's also a lot of brushes where all I did was adjust the position & scaling of the textures to align them. It's not a full remake. 

GPL version? What is that? Where'd you get it? 

http://rome.ro/news/2016/2/14/quake-map-sources-released?rq=quake 

Oh, I have the map sources. I thought GPL meant something special about the file he has, but I guess it's just referring to the GPL license? 

 

Alright so here's a beta of my second proper map, for Arcane Dimensions. Some info:

- Metal/tech theme with some otherworldly bits.
- Coagula style, with horde- and vertical arena combat.
- Skill 2 is meant to be pretty chaotic and hard. For warning... if I did my job right, anyway.
- Final area could probably most use some additional balance and tuning, I think.

Link:
http://www.quaketastic.com/files/single_player/lpspad-beta.zip

Couple of screenies:
http://www.quaketastic.com/files/screen_shots/lpqsp2b1.png
http://www.quaketastic.com/files/screen_shots/lpqsp2b2.png

Any comments, advice, aesthetic insights, and pointing out of dumb shit I overlooked are appreciated. 

 

 

Really nice shots, specially the second. And I liked the custom textures in the first. 

Hi, I sent you an email with a 1st run on hard. Good looking runic oldschool feel to the map. Difficulty is very very very hard, could not complete even the first room after a dozen attempts. I suggest deleting a few monsters, or giving them a delayed, staggered spawn. Or create more line of sight blockers to hide them from all aggroing instantly.

Couldn't complete the map because I got stuck in a room after the plinth floated up when I pressed it... Looks very promising overall. 

Wasn't logged in apparently. 

Thanks for the demo!

One thing I want to make clear is that skill 2 is meant to be very hard, for people who normally find skill 2 too easy--I will make this clear in the readme. Obviously knowing the map inside and out it's hard to judge myself what's fair, so I'll keep that in mind. Ideally, if people could try skill 0 or 1, that would be great--if *those* are too hard, that's bad.

In any case, I already noticed some important mistakes--you are *not* supposed to jump straight into the gold key elevator! Also, the .lit and .bsp files do not match. I'm quite the dummy! So yeah, let me fix those and reupload before anyone else plays this, hehe.