http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/7020/quake00.png

Found something more than what appears there, guess I should have access to the blocked teleporters...

Now... gotta get to that lock. >:( 

...you may be interested in knowing that the map works like a charm in stock Fruitz Of Dojo's GL ( a little HOM effect if you hit a particularly long diagonal).

Lots of maps crash it. 

Got them all.
I got the thunder.
And the Cheers from the Mastah!!!

And I still have to try skill 2&3... YUM! 

can you just tell me? (or email me if you don't want to spoil it) i'm beyond trying to figure it out myself.

your map looks great, but it's very frustrating and not very fun for me.

esp. the tarbaby gimmick fight. their jumping is pretty much random, so it's not like you can really try to coax them into the crushers. i spent like 2 minutes in there. the respawning health kit made it not completely retarded, but it still wasn't very fun for me.
i liked the shambler gimmick though. 

It's in an alcove next to the upper teleporter (if you walk up the stairs left to the big face texture).

I agree the tarbaby fight is random, sometimes they're squished instantly, sometimes it takes ages. At least the principle is more easily understood than in the Shambler fight. 

that wasn't cool. that teleporter is blocked so there's no reason to go near it and not only is the key squirreled away to the side, it's also down low enough that it might not be in you fov if you do look there. and it's pretty dark so that the key doesn't really catch your eye even if it is in your fov.

at least the key in the tube, there was a reason to look up there (it's a cool piece of brushwork that draws your eyes upward). the other key is just plain hidden. 

After many frustrated attempts I manged it all.
45:10, 3/3, 88/88, Skill 0. Sorry, no demo.

I'm not posting so much even though still following everything Q1. I played a lot of cool maps recently, but this one has really something more. Beside Quake, I love puzzle games and judging by the sceenshots I jumped in that one right away. Didn't read to much of this column and tried to solved it by myself. Spent 121:10 on my first run, quicksaved a lot and finished with the RA secret only. Came back several times to find the other two secrets and the SK lock access. Went to bed last night after a lot of coffe and a slight headache. The complex connectivity of the map pushed me way to far, looking for secret triggers. This way I only found a moon...

Today's fresh approch was finally much easier and successful. Pity I didn't demoed my run for the final top combat, lol! I ran all over the place, the monsters jumped from the platform and after what must have been a brief infight, they all bounced in the void to their instant death! Probably frightened by my mighty run, ah!...

OK. This is not a map Negke, it's a full GAME by itself! Such a top quality design. It's so original, you don't feel it's plain old iD textures. The double helix central building is fantastic. Connectivity is very fluid and it's a real fun to jump your way down, once the SK is solved. The respawn/restock after each tower is a treasure trove. In such a complex map, it really increases the immersion and the full game feel. This map is more than a classic. It's a wonderful maverick, so full of ideas (as most of your maps btw). I'll sure be back on it in my wet Quake dreams! Outstanding work. Bravo and thank you for the fun!

Some notes and suggestions:

- I ran this map in BJP and last DP build on PC, but mostly in DP (UB) 05.17.2007 build (!) on MacPro 2x3.2 Quad Mac OS 10.5.8 without noticeable problem.
- 3x centerprint "You need the gold key" should be "You need a gold key".
- Centerprints " You failed/Success! - Now proceed to the top" never failed to appear.
- About the shambler and tarbaby fight in the towers: Why not allow the player to drop in and figure the mechanisms first, then manually trig the monster by picking the pent?
- Is there a reward for killing all the zombies in 4 minutes? I didn't find any difference between success and failure...
- More Puzzle Quake map like that in the future. Mmmh? Yes!

JohnXmas salutes you... 

necros: The key is somewhat hidden but not badly. I'm actually surprised you managed to miss this long. The teleporter is initially blocked, but since there is no floor, I expected people to at least go near it to see what's below. Then you practially can't miss it - unless the area was too dark on your setup. But then the entire map must have been overly dark. Was missing this particular key a problem for other people as well?

JohnXmas: The boss monsters slided off and telefraged each other because of a physics bug in DP. It's fixed in the 6-Nov-09 beta build (and subsequent ones), that's why I mentioned it in the news post. A 2007 build should give you some trouble in other maps (e.g. my 768 vertical one), I recommend switching to the more recent if not lastest version.
Letting the players figure out the mechanisms first - good idea.
Zombies: On skill 1, your regular weapons are removed for the zombie run. If you succeed, you get them back for the boss fight; if you fail, you have to (quad)axe the remaining monsters.
On skill 0, you keep your weapons anyway, but failure results in the removal of all ammo boxes (unproblematic if picked up enough beforehand).


Thanks for the feedback, people. I didn't expect this to be this confusing and/or frustrating. The map's layout is kind of like a DM map (you can practice by running around it a bit in DM mode), there are also a few neat trickjump spots.
If you managed to get through the standard game mode and don't have hemorrhoids yet, go vent some steam on skill 0 - it's much more straightforward. 

go vent some steam on skill 2 

I have found 2 secrets (RA and SNG). The mysterious button-door combo to the SNG secret was very disturbing. [spoiler] I have found the door only because there is a beep sound when you step on it.
I found also 2 shootable buttons and lost 30 minutes on finding the third one without success.
I know where the SK door is but don't know how to get to it.

I didn't do that much secret searching for years. Mostly without success but no frustration either.

Also still can't find my way around the map easily. 

Very fun map although I still get lost after playing it for hours! Easy and Nightmare 100% routes would be challenging to memorize.

I made a Nightmare Run demo in 0:28. http://nahkahiir.thps3.net/quake/coag3_negke_028.zip

The crappy movement in my demo is thanks to a hdd issue which generates lag spikes every second during recording. :/
That's why couple of seconds could still be shaved off.

There still secrets that I haven't found... 

i am pissed at the map, yes, but that certainly doesn't mean i don't appreciate the imaginative and creative gameplay here.
the super-open layout is a lot of fun to run around in and the visual style is great being all stock id textures used in a completely new way which is something i'm a big fan of; (your 768 map was awesome for that).

that being said, each area could have been slightly more distinctive (heavier use of the coloured bricks instead of just on the sides of the pylons, for example). and the central area can be very confusing because it winds all around itself. some more visual cues would have been nice (otoh, more distinctive pylons would help in there too, since you can see the pylons when running around the central area). 

For those who got stuck and those who couldn't be bothered to play the map.
http://negke.quaddicted.com/files/coag3_demos.zip (spoilers: main secrets)



NahkahiiR: Nice one. I didn't think this map was speedrun-friendly in any kind. But perhaps it's possible, after all - the ultimate chance to prove who's really pro. Skill 3: start from the yellow tower, get the RL secret, then the Quad secret, then the GA, teleport upwards, quad rj to the exit?
Skill 0: Probably won't work, but maybe someone could get to the exit by some insane grenade+Scragvore (GK) jump - mind you, there's a small hurt trigger half-way below the exit trigger. 

I tried giving each tower a distinct color theme (front bricks and stones above the metal) at one point during beta testing, but it looked kind of odd - I didn't like it. The central area, I thought, people would eventually get to know, however roughly, after having moved through it a couple of times (i.e. after each tower).

I'd be interested in seeing how DM players approach this map, as perhaps we SP people are used to different kinds of layouts with a clear red line to follow (linearity?). Dunno. 

Too different for me. I want to love it but I can't. The quote in the readme says everything, I cannot even guess what I might have meant. Pure confusion. At some point during beta testing I kinda knew the layout but this time I had so much trouble again.

I do not like the punishment of weak players who do not finish the zombie run. 768_negke was much more for me with it's closed and close puzzling. I did not really like the main texture of this one either, but that might be 8 years of QuArK's default texture burned into my eyes, heh.

As usual exceptional brushwork and creativity. 

there's the obvious stuff like 'following the trail of monsters that haven't been killed yet'. i would do this every time i'd finish a pylon and then when all the monsters were dead, i'd realize i didn't know where to go.

it was only after my third play through (after dying twice) that i knew where 2/3 keys were, so that would provide a clear path up until it was time to find the last key which was hidden almost at 'secret' levels. (in fact, some secrets are easier to find because attention is usually drawn to the prize, or the usual stand-by: misaligned/non-matching texture)

this map is pretty much devoid of the standard progression cues. you finish a pylon, and you are not told where to get the next key.

if this had been your typical hub layout map, there would have been a single gold key and then gold keys at the end of each path (-1 for the final path, of course, probably killtargetted away).

there was also the concept of exploration first.
while some people have commented here that that's what they did, my initial actions in an SP game is to do everything methodically. i see a key door, i look for a key. i use the key on the key door, go wherever it opened up, and then continue from there.

the first time through, i killed the ogres, found the gold key where the scrags ambush you and fought the twin ogres. i didn't pick up all the ammo and so was dangerously low when starting the fight with the ogres.

i'll also point out that i didn't realize it was the ogre/marksman trick, so it didn't occur to me to get them to infight. (i discovered this by accident on my second play-through when i was circle strafing them and one hit the other).
i then got shat on by all the respawned monsters and had barely enough ammo since i hadn't picked up all the ammo the first time (so when they respawned, only like 2 or 3 boxes respawned). i died shortly after. (mostly because i had to axe some scrags and ogres which usually means taking at least *some* damage)
i suppose it frustrated me more than it would have because i had just finished tronyn's map which also featured a lot of axing, so i was already a little annoyed.

i think your modified progs should have had the ability to spawn in new items (not just respawn old ones) so that if you hadn't picked it all up, you'd have more to use after activating a pylon.
or, just open up ammo closets for the major caches of ammo.
you could have used the respawning for small ammo boxes, that way the punishment if you don't pick it all up before causing a respawn isn't so harsh.

in any case, these are just my thoughts on the matter and i don't think you should stop designing maps like this. keep it up, there's something great in here. 

my demo was recorded in quoth at first because I'm dumb. this made some stuff work incorrectly.

firstly, the special monster, after finding the 'hidden' key, took the form of a grenade launcher.

other monsters were shotguns.
Instead of Shambler statues I had ... nails.
I realised the models were wierd but didn't really consider why that might be happening.

I was tired. and dumb.

The monsterfighting between ogres and ogre marksmen seems to be removed in quoth? kind of wierd, and fucked it up for me.
I died from the shambler, but when I tried again I got it immediately and was very very satisfied.
I have to agree about the tarbabies being a pain in the ass.

Looks wise, it is great - duh. love your style - the gameplay is more 'cerebral' than I usually prefer, but enjoyable in a different, and oddly compelling way.

I also found it to be a tad mazey, but it didn't bother me too much. then again I didn't make it to the zombie section everyone keeps talking about.

I still haven't finished this due to REAL LIFE, but will give it another go some time soon, and record it in vanilla quake, instead of being a dumbass.

http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/demos/coag3_negke_dcs.zip 

i didn't really like this. great design and style, good use of architecture and texturing. but it was too much of a mazemap. the only way to navigate the map is finding out where the monsters are that i haven't killed, otherwise i'd have had no idea where i'd been before. eventually just started noclipping around in the end because i couldn't be bothered figuring out how to get back to the big elevator at the top. and noclipped around to find the zombies, they were really quite pointless and just forced you to go back through a level you've already gone through many times over. never found the palace end, but i was only missing 3 kills so can't have missed much. the other problem was ammo - nowhere near enough.

i must admit i've never been a coagula fan. black makes such a boring architectural/scenic feature imo, but look forward to your next stuff negke, i'm sure it'll be awesome! 

I replayed the map last night. After 2 hours of playing (skill 0 to ease my life), I finally found all the GK keys, but none of the secret.
As some other said, the architecture/layout/details are awesome, but there are too less ammo IMHO: I had to cheat by adding by myself some shells/nails/grenades in order to finish the game with more than a single axe....
BTW: axe + Quad to kill zombie is a great idea !!

Anyway, overall it was a good time, as except some cheats (I'm used to), the map is really good: I wan't more maps like this, go map !! 

Drew: Haha, that was dumb indeed. You should've realized right away when seeing nails instead of the Shamblers from the screenshot. Also, did you really think I would have lightning-shooting shotguns and flying grenade launchers attack you? You might expect some 'uncooperative' ammo boxes in the future, though. ;) Telefragging and Ogre infighting issues are related too.
Check your shortcuts. Don't play a map with a mod, especially Quoth2, unless it's required. I hate Quoth2's 'optimizations', it fucks up my all hacks. You don't want to know the trouble I had to go through in order to ensure backwards compatibility in my 768 map (or forwards compatibility actually)..

JPL: There is enough ammo overall, but the problem is that it's not clear one has to replenish it after each tower (don't forget the GA area). Not doing so will lead to shortages if multiple towers are activated in quick succession. Killing the tower monsters by shooting adds to this. I didn't consider all of this carefully enough. 

I haven't had chance to play properly yet since my old rig choked badly in FPS, will try giving it a run today on another machine.

But I did find the black spoiled the map some, for two reasons - a skybox with a sun or other prominent feature is useful in this sort of complex Coagula map because it gives reference to direction.

I mean it gives the player a fixed point of reference 'north'.

The other way it would have helped was in the floors, which had those thin gaps and also occasional black patches - I was subconsciously nervy about walking on some of them since they look the same as the void. 

What hacks are you using generally? We're putting in wrappers when stuff pops up, but there's nobody dedicated to it. 

There is enough ammo overall, but the problem is that it's not clear one has to replenish it after each tower (don't forget the GA area).

Well, it is always easier for the mapper to play his map, than others has they have to discover the map, and sometimes die to progress (quicksave is your friend there)... :D
BTW, were there any beta testers for this map: it is not clear in the txt file.. I think yes, so maybe it is me and my very low SP player skill :P

Anyway, thanks a lot for this pure jewel ;) 

ijed: So many even I lost track of all. Customized monsters (both armorhack & built from scratch), point triggers that borrow the bbox from other entities, Shambler models, fake items for the tower monsters, backpacks, invisible medkits beneath the Quads, sound hacks, a door that takes away your weapons, countless messy interlinked entities, activatable triggers and teleporters,...

JPL: Of course there were beta testers and, yes, they also found it confusing, but some also said they slowly got the hang of it after a while. Ammo didn't seem to be a problem for them, though this might be because they learned (or instinctively did right) to pick up enough before entering another tower. IIRC, anyway. 

We've got entities that do most of what you mention, but true backwards compatability is probably impossible for such a spaghetti junction of hacks.

Played properly and can't say I'm a fan of the gameplay. It's a decent experiment but doesn't have any signposting, or so it seemed. Felt alot like DMSP - which I think was already mentioned.

I kept running in circles. Maybe I'm just spoilt by how accessible modern games tend to be. Although I do regularly play SoaSE . . .