The good thing about it is that it doesn't rely on monsters hiding in cupboards, or dark crawlspaces. Quake's horror is in its completely 'other-world' feel. The fact that there are no kitchens, bathrooms or fire exits suggest that the inhabitants have no purpose other than to guard these vast grandiose chambers that in turn seemingly have no other purpose than to be guarded. The death knight standing in wait behind the next door may have been stood in that spot for hundreds of years without moving an inch. Dust has probably collected in thick reams on his armour. Then one day the door opens and without a second of hesitation he lunges at you. The enemies are completely single minded in their desire to kill you, and you don't even know why they want to do that in the first place!

It's scary because it's inexplicable. 

I played at normal skill. Argh, but now I realize I should have played with Quoth and not basic as I did. Well, I can comment on the architecture:

There were quite a lot of small lighting glitches, nothing very serious but still kinda caught my eye that was trying to hunt for secrets.
The halls were biggish but maybe they were nice with the Quoth monsters...

Played with fitzquake. 

It's the exageration that matters, that can't be explicable and leave you breathless and scared.
So this map works. Thanks god the mapper can create a little game in his map (like in a lot of cases in the sp quake maps) without thinking that quake is a sport game. In this case ijed made the dark at the distant corner a fear maker. 

what you said, rocked.

I like the cut of your Gib. 

There�s a difference between claustrophobia and fear. I just tried to make some tension. It�s supposed to be played in hard, where the only source of health is the pool.

By the way, I reckon this is pretty much an open source type map - I�ll post a link to the source if anyone asks for it. In all regards I see the map as 60% - gameplay, architecture, what-have-you.

Yes, than, I habitually mispell Qouth. Or Quoth. 

There�s fog - 0.05 0 0 0 to emulate the darkness. The brazier�s are easly fixed by deleting the trigger_hurts I put in. Yep, they�re irritating.

As Kinn said, text_fish, you speaketh well.

I never liked the Doom3 ideal of fear. The creatures I was most scared of were in the alpha - in the full game it was the Trites.

Glad the coop worked well; I�m trying to gear my pack, Warp Spasm (plug!) towards it, since I don�t like deathmtach but really like netplay.

I was personally dissapointed by Q2 - very slow, the character design uninteresting. The gladiator and medic were the only highpoints. In D3 it was the Bruiser - a great enemy, ie. something you want to kill.

CI475 - I reckon it�s the innormalness (?) that creates the fear. It can big overscaled or underscaled, but it�s the oddness that makes it scary, strange, unsettling, or not. The easiest fear to play off of in the human animal is that of the unknown.

Glad you all like the map, more or less. Email me if you want the source. 

Phew, this is a interesting map indeed. When I first loaded it I thought "ugh, looks boring". Then I realised I should 1. use Quoth and 2. use an engine with fog. Stupid me. :D
The distance shadow works very well towards the dark atmosphere. Textures and brushes were left pretty basic with some good parts (the SNG area looked nice) and some bad (often badly placed/aligned textures in my opinion).

I have not yet beaten the map. On the first try I thought the healing pool would give unlimited health and relied(?) on that.
On the second try I ran out of ammo with 2 Shamblers and 1 of the "hand"-monsters chasing me.
I recorded both in Darkplaces, just shout if you want the demos (they will only run in DP because of the new netcode, hooray...).

I listened to http://www.entity.be/entity/releases/release37.htm whilst playing which added a damn creepy feeling of being lost and all alone in this "demon-posessed" evil palace. Gave me goosebumps... 

I WANT THE DEMOS!
Oh, cool album, very very interesting but only wait for mine to come out, you'll see... 

Compressed as .zip: http://www.quaddicted.com/filebase/tpof.zip

My demos: http://shub-hub.quaddicted.com/files/demos_singleplayer/spirit_tpof_demo1.zip
(ugly...) :D 

As I was playing this map I remembered the feelings I had when playing the original e4m4 for the first time. I was really scared then. And now I was also scared a bit while playing this map. Didn't finish it though. After using up all health from the pool (on skill 2) I had no other choice and died. Quicksaving didn't help much. You can check out my last quicksave and try your luck (hehe): http://shub-hub.quaddicted.com/files/misc/tpof_ankh.zip
The ammo was also very sparse all the time. I guess I should have used the "hammer" everytime it was possible but I didn't bother since I hoped to find some ammo on my way. I guess whit some more ammo I wouldn't be scared at all :). But it was a nice try from you.
Did you build the level from scratch or did you upscale it somehow? 

made me think that id remakes/ interpretations(like than�s dm3rmx) would be a great theme for a speedmapping pack or even a full-blown "id tribute pack" :D 

Skill 2/3 is very difficult because there's no health packs and the ammo is tight (there's just enough to kill everything). The heal pool will fire 20 times before becoming inert. There's a nasty bug whereby if a monster stands in it they can use up your heals - that's why I stuck a fence there ;) You can also waste heals if you try to use it whilst pented. I tried to make a hacked healer but couldn't get it to work for some reason, probably a typo somewhere.

At first I tried to build over the top of the original but it just produced alot of mess - so I restarted from scratch. 

be interested in a 'remake/tribute' orientated turtlemap event, if one were to be organized.

I need something to get me back in to mapping now that the ole monitor's working again [sort of -- I have a desk fan pointed at it to stop it overheating :P], and the Base project looks far too messy to return to for the time being. 

The heal pool will fire 20 times before becoming inert

Argh. before playing the map I have read some comments and I understood that the pool has limited health. So I didn't even try to gain max health each time I entered it. Now I see I did it the wrong way. Here is my unfinished demo. I died rather quick after a stupid mistake. http://shub-hub.quaddicted.com/files/demos_singleplayer/tpof_ankh.dz 

forget my previous post please 

IIRC there were two MHs as well; one at the SK and one near the exit. 

I like the map. I hope I didn't sound as if I didn't.

I just played Cassandra Calamity. There was a part where you walked down an empty hall towards a huge door, which suddenly began to close. I mean, most doors in Quake _open_ when you approach them. I thought that created some "tension". I also found the rest of it quite spooky, probably because of the darkness and the computer voice, and the absence of purpose (I repeatedly thought "what am I doing here? How did I get here?")

Another thing that seems to alert me are spinning fans in otherwise empty areas. Sadly not possible in standard Quake. Also very scary was the tank coming out of the exit (!) lift in the Quake2 demo. Alien-type stuff.

You (whoever said it) are right about inexplicable things being scary. However, if those cavernous rooms are filled with a horde of monsters and are nicely lit so you can see the monsters (the norm in Quake), the impact gets lost.

Anyway, people might be scared by different things. Even if I doubt it. I think all human animals can be scared with the same simple methods. 

I was so disappointed that the tank didnt appear at the end of base2 in Q2 like it did in the demo, it is such a good close.

I think Im gonna replay Cassandra Calamity, its been... since the release date that I last played it.

Crap this thread keeps giving me map ideas. If only itd give me some mapping motivation.

Ill give the e4m4 remake a go when I get off of work. 

I made had the tank as end boss coming through the wall (smashing it) then the standard arena combat with four pillars for the player to hide behind. The difference was that the tank had homing rockets and the thick pillars were slowly chopped down to thin sticks when hit by the tanks attacks. Not all in one go but bit by bit. It was pretty hair-raising, and a different type of fear.

Just wish I hadn't lost the HD it was on. 

I haven't tried this one yet due to the following errors while loading the map:

TOO MANY EFRAGS!
...
TOO MANY EFRAGS!
HOST_ERROR: TOO MANY STATIC ENTITIES


Any help would be greatly appreciated ;-) 

Yeah, I know - sorry. AFAIK fitzquake or DarkPlaces will run the map. I tested for Aguire's Nehahra engine, which'll run it no problem (as will the standard glquake version). I put it in the readme but to run it in the Nehahra version;

-id1 -game qouth

Is the commandline you need. 

You are a disgrace!

(Admittedly E4 is the weakest episode....even so!) 

I tried this, I died a couple of times and gave up. I need to use quicksave more, or try harder. 

It's more difficult than standard maps, especially with the Qouth critters. There's no standard knights, for example, just the Death Brigade. I also replaced some points that originally had Fiends with Droles.

Try AguirRe's coop2 mode, it replaces Qouth creatures with the standard Id versions. 

Apologies, coop2 isn't available.

Though the coop starts are in the map, and that'll make it more forgiving playwise.

I didn't do any external beta testing for the gameplay; which is why it's pitched too high. Although I did modify the end boss - the quantity is the same as the skill number, apart from nightmare.