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A Roman Wilderness Of Pain By PM And Tronyn Released!
Today we are releasing A Roman Wilderness of Pain, the only set of Quake maps to spend a decade in development! These maps went through many incarnations to arrive in their present form as a modern episode. There is an extensive mod by PM with the episode, including new and modified monsters, weapons, and artifacts (see readme for details). This mod also supports NSOE, and can be used to update NSOE as well (again, see readme).

Download (32 MB):
http://www.quaddicted.com/filebase/arwop.zip

Readme:
http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/single_player/arwop.txt

Screenshots:
http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/screen_shots/arwop1.jpg
http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/screen_shots/arwop2.jpg
http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/screen_shots/arwop3.jpg
http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/screen_shots/arwop4.jpg
http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/screen_shots/arwop5.jpg

The environment can be described as "variations on metal/temple/hell." Each map has its own manifestation of the general theme. There is a great start map by PM which is well worth looking around for some secret treasure. There are five skill levels and the episode is pretty challenging so choose wisely.

Thanks to our testers Orl, Spy, Stevenaus, and ijed. Merry Christmas!
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Success! 
Thank you for your help. Modified shortcut commandline as directed. Worked like a charm :)

This mod is great -- you guys have really outdone yourselves! 
For The Inner Munchkin In Us... 
Impulse 248 is the Tome of Power cheat. Happy gibbing! 
Demos 
Oh, whatever. Here are my borked demos. At least they show me get through the first map and then how I fail miserably during the boss battle. http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/demos/arwop_negke_skill1.7z

metl: please fix continuous demo recording in the next FQ version (like BJP's engines do). And someone please modify convdem as well - usually continuously recorded demos can be fixed by just joining (-j) them into one (or adding an additional demo snippet at the end if it's just one file). Problem is, convdem only supports protocol 15 and BJP's.

PM: btw. good job to you, too. ;) 
My Skill 0 Shitty Demo 
http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/demos/spy_arwop_skill0.7z

Great pak, Tronyn.
i like all changes of gameplay you've made since the last beta(s).
'm definitely will waiting for your next projects.

as already been said the gameplay is VERY hard and i found out that skill 0/1 is more suitable for me.

thank you Tronyn. 
Played On Normal... 
... not finished yet (I just died at third map) but definitely the jewel of this end of 2009 !
I cannot add anything more but what others said: great pack ! 
 
convdem is closed source (not written by id) and not easy to modify, plus it might be OS-dependant.

I suggest using protocol 15 for demos if you want everybody to watch them, otherwise you should note that engine X is required (in this case Fitzquake 0.85). 
Thanks! 
Tronyn and Pm.., for this great recharche of Quake1 !!! 
Yeah 
I got screwed over by buying Torchlight . . .

Nice maps, good balenced gameplay. 
Bawww 
Fitz .85 beta for mac crashes when immediately after loading roman1.bsp. Can any other Mac users comfirm this? It crashed on the demo once too, and then it didn't.

Darkplaces works, but runs ungodly slow as usual on these crazy wide-open tronyn maps. 
Fitz SDL Beta 
Try it with "-nosound" and see if you still have problems [tears out hair] 
Http://tronyn.planetquake.gamespy.com 
?

Not in the Quakewiki.net archives. And spirit apparently didn't mirror the site and the archive.org last version was July 2007 which is before the NSOE release.

Grrr ... 
Terrific 
Haven't finished it but after 25% done it is just as satisfying as the Masque of the Red Death. 
Nice Work So Far... 
just finished level 1. The architectural style seems somewhat inconsistent but at least it is always interesting. I like the open exploration in the beginning portion of the level, nice to have multiple ways to approach things. Lots of nice touches on the monsters and weapons.

Level 2 appears not to be vised? 
Love It. 
I've never seen a grappling hook used so well -- they're usually just a gimmicky little addon but I actually couldn't have survived the end battle without it.

Architecture and layouts were pleasingly Quakey without being pass�.

The end boss monster would have been a bit boring if he weren't in such exciting and versatile surroundings.

The only things that bothered me were that I never really figured out how that red diamond weapon worked, and I don't find Hexen stuff very Quakey so the wizard fella and the crossbow looked a little out of place.

All in all this pack is masterfully balanced and really engaging. It rockets in to my top 5 Quake episodes. 
Tronyn.planetquake.gamespy.com 
I have a backup but not the time. And I cannot share the plain files because I have to check each and everyone for private stuff. IGN exposed directory listings and thus wget got files from some sites that were not supposed to be public... 
Fantasy Weapons In Roman 
I did not think the wand belonged in Roman. Style aside, Roman does not have any dark spots, and the action is too fast-paced for me to tolerate its low damage rate. The few times I had ammo trouble, the chainsaw was sufficient to kill things. I guess Tronyn wanted the wand in there as a fallback in case the player runs out of ammo. If roman3 is played from scratch in skill 2, there is not quite enough ammo in the beginning. Also, someone noted ammo problems at the end of the level. There used to be an Equalizer item on the map, but that was removed.

Since there are some glaring problems, a re-release seems to be a good idea. Things to fix include the following: remove the offending demo, fix some annoying bugs in the mod, and maybe alter some of the entities in roman3. For instance, have an equalizer or riot controller available at the end of the level, and have some of the ammo respawn. Will need to see what Tronyn thinks about this.

As for the crossbow, I originally planned that as the secret weapon in the treasure room (in the start map), but Tronyn enjoyed using it enough that I moved it out in the open and put Mjolnir in the treasure room. 
How The Wand Works. 
This is same weapon as found in the Arcanum demo, except it fires a bit faster and gibs zombies at maximum power. While held as the current weapon, power builds up until fired. As power builds, the wand glows, and when it glows brightly, it is at maximum power.

I built the wand because I wanted a light source and weapon combo, and a wand was easier for me to build than some weird space gun. Also, I may add a mage class to Drake, which may extend to Tronyn's future projects. I will need to add the appropriate fantasy weapons to make this idea work. Before you think "Hey, awesome!", this is a low priority task, and it has a good chance of not seeing the light of day. 
Note About The Grapple. 
The grapple was added because there was a time during testing when I got sent over some wall and (thought I) got stuck. Rather than have Tronyn suffer a full level recompile fixing problem architecture, the grapple was added as a band-aid fix to unstick the player. In addition, on my first run through roman3, once I made it past the gold key door, I fell down so many times that I got sick of wasting thirty-something seconds on each trip back up and noclipped to save time.

Thus, the grapple is a time saver and perhaps a life saver if the player gets wedged into something that without the grapple, only noclip would save the player. 
What This Mod Has Done Right ... 
I'm almost at the end of the first map and then the thought occurred to me ... I have scarcely had an explosive weapon the entire map.

Quake and single player have always had the "explosive weapon" problem.

Either you have ineffective weapons (axe, sg, ssg, sng) or murder 80 monsters weapons (gl, rl), with the regular nail gun being sort of in the middle.

And explosive weapons just aren't fair to the monsters --- or interesting to use --- and can turn a room with 100 monsters into "hide behind wall and strafe out."

In this mod, due to the presence of the red spawns, the "explosive advantage" lies in the monster's favor and a being surrounded by 15 monsters was a real problem.

I wish there was a better laser.mdl and maybe a better sound for the laser --- it really doesn't fit in, although the strategic value and occasional self-damage from the weapon is great it really does stick out like a sore thumb and the view weapon model (PrimeviL's debug fix model?) doesn't really look like it should shoot lasers.

Maybe if the model were different for the view weapon or for the laser model or for the sound. The role the weapon plays is good and functions as a more effective weapon without being overwhelmingly advantageous.

I think every Quake map in a long, long time has suffered from the "too much" rocket launcher use problem. The Rocket Launcher really is more suited for deathmatch as a "close is good enough" weapon and it just isn't fair on the monsters.

Congrats on having monsters with non-explosive attacks that are still dangerous.

These are really the first new/altered monsters in years going back to 2005 [except for the dragons in NSOE] since The Lost Chapters when faced for the first time of the unexpectedness of the Droles, Polyps and mini-Vores. 
@stevenaaus 
Ah, thank you! For pointing me in the direction of the problem. I have had -sndspeed 44100 in my commandline, never caused a problem 'till now, but I removed it and it worked. -nosound not needed thankfully. 
Grahf 
Does -sndspeed 44100 actually give you 44 kHz sound? What engine? 
It's Fitz .85 Sdl Mac Beta 
hehe umm... I thought it just upsampled the original 11khz sounds. Maybe it was just placebo but I thought it made them sound a little better, less scratchy. You cannot turn shit into shinola, of course. 
Otp 
Does -sndspeed 44100 actually give you 44 kHz sound? What engine?

only if the game provides 44.1kHz sound samples, like Nexuiz, Mindgrid's pak and RMQ do. On its own, -sndspeed 44100 makes the samples be played back at 44100 Hz. It broadens the pipe so to speak. How much water you put through it is another question.

If you install the manually upsampled 44100 Hz sound pack that floats around somewhere (original sounds, resampled to 44100 Hz but otherwise unchanged) you might hear a difference. When the soundcard upsamples 11kHz sounds during playback, you get an unpleasant digitized effect (if your ears can detect it) which should not happen with that "Quake resampled" pack and -sndspeed 44100. Basically, the holes that were left after downsampling are "plugged" (with a flat line) by the re-upsampling. That pack doesn't magically give the Quake sounds their original quality back though, just removes that side effect (from the missing data, ie holes) when playing them back at higher sample rate settings.

Frequencies that were lost during the downsampling process (to 11kHz) cannot be restored by doing that, they remain lost. I could draw a picture for you, but I think you might get it as it is :)

Using -sndspeed 44100 and 44.1kHz sounds only has an effect if the other parts in the chain can deal with them. So if you either have crappy speakers, or crappy ears, or both, 44.1kHz sound will not do anything for you. 
Replies 
re: Metl
Roman1 is the most inconsistent map in terms of theme and layout, because it was two maps for a while - the gatehouse section, then the sprawling city/dungeon section. The second map (Venice of Blood) and the third map (Towers of Torment) I thought ended up being much more consistent. All maps are fully vised but as usual with these types of maps you will only get so much optimization out of it.

Re: Text Fish
Glad you liked it, the grapple was indeed a lucky accident. PM had that "unique key" idea and after he put it in the mod I thought well, given that the final area is now accessible either way and the map's really vertical (not to mention the sky ambush), why not let the player have some fun?

Re: Spirit
I have copies of my web site on my computer, so maybe when I get the time I'll see (if your offer still stands) about moving my site to Quaddicted.

Re: Baker
I know what you mean - Roman used to have a lot more explosives until I removed a bunch to make the player rely on other weapons, especially melee when possible. This of course meant that there might be insufficient ammo, so as PM said I pushed for the wand just in case every player didn't like the idea of resorting to the Chainsaw all the time. The laser is I think a really good halfway-between-shotguns/nailguns and explosives type of weapon. At the end I gave the player RL, but no sooner, because I generally think that only a boss-type fight can justify giving the player the RL.

Again thanks for the feedback all glad it's mostly positive. 
So Before I Start Playing 
will there be an update in the near future? 
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