I read warp and thought warp exe. 

I was just joking and trying to subtle hint how much I miss your engine. Damn Linux! 

Spirit: OK, no problem :)

neg!ke: Invincible bob is a Quoth progs bug (a pretty common bug in many mods), same as what happened in SRC. If you run under Warp, it won't happen.

metl: Turning back all func_walls to solids will actually increase marksurfaces from 52k to 57k (pretty close to the hard limit 64k). Other values will still be over the normal limits along with vis leafs going up from 5k to 12k (this will crash most engines immediately). Clipnodes went down from 43k to 37k and # models went from 342 to 188, though. Lightmaps are also too much in both cases; about 80 > 64.

Not to mention having 46k portals to vis, just fastvis is about 25 mins and fullvis ... argh. Qbsp also went up from 5 to 14 mins. Having just a fastvis is basically pointless; it can't dismiss much due to the open layout and it's almost 16MB (more than twice the map size 6MB).

As soon as you get above groundlevel, it's constant packet overflows with std protocol 15. And if that's fixed with an extended protocol, the map feels *much* more sluggish than the current release.

Fullvis helps in some areas and would've helped even more if some holes and windows were plugged. So there's definitely room for fps improvements, but the current release is actually rather good, given the extreme map layout and level of detail, monsters etc.

Also, most of the flickering entities are solved in the current release without a full rebuild, if Ricky decides to release a third version. Raising the engine efrags limit is already done in my engines, that doesn't solve the "span too many leafs" issue. 

Need to learn to create more detail with textures instead of geometry. Its old Quake fterall.
Im still yet to see people use alpha grates/fences, since all the engine mods support alpha textures (and old engines are usless for such maps that brake all the limits anyway) 

A lot of good points were raised on this thread with regards to gameplay. I accidently played on Hard (batch file doh!) and made it up to the two end bosses which I couldn't kill without cheating. I found 4 secrets.

High Points:

- Great big DooMy vast space and mega structures reaching to the sky (great wow factor)
- Some nice brushwork and fixtures in places
- sprawling non-linearity
- cool shadows from nice light fixtures
- neat sculptures
- great sense that you're in a volcano
- generally good navigation after you open up new areas
- Another new mapper who can feed us more good stuff if he's inspired to continue

Lows:

- I saw a couple stuck robo-drones that can shoot but not be killed
- Chuggy framerates + Guants = many reloads
- Battles where you are pushed into the enemies and can't avoid significant damage (tower battles - those hateful vorelings at the start)
- speed bumps like the slow short lift near the SK bars and doors that needed buttons to open.
- if you run down after the bosses spawn (to get more ammo or avoid death), you're done since they'll Quake you to death before you get back up or they'll trap and kill you in the elevator.
- sometimes good and sometimes not good supply balance (agree that it gets better after SK bars)

I had my struggles playing through but I was motivated to continue since I wanted to see more of this grand scale setting. BTW, don't feel bad that it took days to vis - my Travail maps took weeks. 

coop 4, coop 3, coop 2 actually do? 

AguirRe has fixed this map up nicely:

-Flickering entities have been reduced to a negligible level
-Error messages on load have been removed
-Monster count has been fixed

Also this version contains all the adjustments that were present in the second release:

- yellow armour at the end of the first room
- megahealth instead of normal near second tower
- red armour instead of blue near main entrance
- SNG at foot of first tower
- more nails if you look for them
- one less gaunt on hard

Im gonna email moderator-type-folks and see if I cant just get the link at the top of the thread fixed too!

New version is availiable:

http://shub-hub.com/files/maps_singleplayer/sickbase2.zip

Thanks again AguirRe! 

see the Warp readme for details on its coop modes.

It has nothing to do with coop as such (i.e. being more than one player), I'm just using that cvar to enable different play modes, which can be used with one or more players.

Having more than one player in a map may still require explicit map support to prevent players from being locked out etc.

Just try it and see what you think! :) 

Ok, if we forget about the earlier versions and make this the only valid one? I would remove the older versions then and rename this one to sickbase.zip (and finally put it into the Quaddicted archive, I was not in the mood the past days). 

I tried emailing Shambler and asking him to change the link at the top of this post to 'sickbase2.zip', but so far nothing has come of it (it was only about 3 hours ago or so).

Any bet says you delete the older versions from the Hub, rename the new-un, and then Shambler updates the link to sickbase2.zip so it wont work. Ha!

BTW - The new one uses highest zip compression so it is about 4-500k smaller. 

Make sure to keep the original bsp if you want to check out the demos posted above by Ankh and ORL. 

cause im watching the old demo on the fixed map and so far it seems to be working fine...

Do you expect it to crash at some point? 

I mixed things up here; the demos will work but the flickering ents will still be there as this info is taken from the demo. Still no worse than before.

However, the savegames won't work if you replace the bsp, all the models will be messed up. You'll get a lot of warnings when loading such a savegame.

Thanks for the heads up. 

I just found the penta secret ...

With this, it's definitely possible to get from the RL via quad to the end balcony in almost no time, skipping GK altogether. Next question is if it's possible to get to the RL without the SK? 

But I think you're suggesting rocket jumping with the pent and the quad almost the entire height of the building.

Demo anyone? 

monsters, you can jump from the GL/SK tower directly to the RL, then down to the quad, use it to quickly get to the penta tele and then RJ from penta to balcony.

You'd better have some penta/quad/ammo/health left, though ...

The open/tall layout of this map offers amazing possibilities for jumping shortcuts, I don't know if I've ever been able to quad RJ this high before without hitting the ceiling. 

Has that 'flying' section secret in the base map towards the end, but I think you hit the skybrush there as well. 

I finally made it to this one :) Very good architecture in parts, without any framerate considerations whatsoever. It was fairly non-linear but I walked into many areas with serious lack of ammo. The drole surprise was very cool. Many of the other ambushes, however, were just too difficult (on normal) to survive. A little more ammo and a few fairer fights and you have yourself a winner.

Keep on keepin' on! 

finally ticked over to the new billing month for my ISP. Planning to check this and Deja Vu out over the next few days. 

if you do play Sickbase, try the newer release (#83) - AguirRe fixed some bugs and gameplay is a bit fairer - could you also update the link at the top of the post please? 

played it finally. i'm not sure what version it was because i downloaded it quite a long ago, but played only a few days ago. so:

great scale (i always loved large scaled maps), some nice brushwork, but pretty unbalanced gameplay (i suppose i played one of the early versions), i don't like fights with many base enemies because their attacks are much harder to avoid unlike the attacks of medieval baddies. also i met one unkillable drole and it was disturbing me from time to time.

overall a pretty good map, next time you'll need just a proper testing before the final release 

updated the news link to the new file 

 

pretty nice map.

Good things are the level size and immersion factor, it's very detailed (although it looks a bit messy in parts construction wise) and the general gameplay. I didnt find it too hard (played on normal) and you managed to avoid the sniping gameplay present in most base levels.

Things to take into consideration for the future are some gameplay annoyances like forcing player to take lifts up and having 3-4 enemies waiting at the top each time. Als, lighting was decent but could have been better. Few bugs such as unkillable bobs and bobs shooting through platforms but I take it they are quoth related??

anyway, nice job and there's definitely some good imagination on display. keep it up. 

Have got it sitting in my HDD for a long time, but never gave it a serious try.

Well, yesterday night I sat down and loaded it in Warp and, wow, this is another really cool map!

The difficulty is definitely very high, proved by the fact that I F6ed and F9ed countless times. But every fight, except the end battle against two gugs, which depends to some extent on luck, is still possible without cheating, although I believe what I played through was the version with difficulty fixed by aguirRe.

All in all, really like this map. Challenging, but still very good.