secrets, 5/7, I have never really been good with secrets though. Played it on medium first 2 times, hard the third time but I'm not an expert at hard and found it pretty challenging. I found it pretty challenging on medium too but that's because of the monster placement unless you changed the AI?

Monster crushers, second and third time yes. First time through, I usually just shot stuff :) 

because you didnt answer it before. 

 

@nitin, there are no changes to AI, I just tried to place the AI in advantageous positions so their attack is more effective. For example, tweaking height levels for ogres and Hknights and hiding knights around corners so they can get to the player quicker. I am glad you tried different skill levels, I spent a while tweaking them. :) 

but wanted to confirm. It is very clever placement. 

http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/demos/spy_mstalk.rar 

I made some func_walls act as counters in mstalk1d which results in their removal after the end battle. I should have thought of that... 

@negke, I would not worry, hardly anyone went back for secrets after the final battle (from all the demos I watched). I get the impression most people don't hunt for secrets, if they find some then it is a bonus, otherwise they march to the end. 

When I create a demo for public display I don't go for excessive secret hunting so I don't bore the viewer. No idea how/if others change their playing style when observed but I could imagine others doing the same and skewing the "first run" with that. 

@spirit, actually that is the stuff I like to watch in demo's, getting a proper understanding of what players are looking at and for how long. Plus the Mark V engine has FF/RW functions for watching demo's which I use to skip obvious stuff or watch an encounter again. One thing I do like about demo's is that it forces players not to rely on quick save/load functions, the bane of Quake IMHO. 

I try to find secrets, and often return from before the exit to do so. By which time they are all useless of course.

I like secrets :D 

re: secrets, that's definitely my take on them. if i see something during play, i'll make some effort to figure out how to get it, but usually don't spend very long on it.
secret locations are more of a draw to me than items. 

depending on my mood and how much time I have spent/have left to spend I tend to hunt around afterwards. I figure if the mapper wants to stop watching at any point they can do so. 

I die after getting careless and alerting a horde.

Some secret hunting, a few comments.

Missed all the crusher traps :P

https://www.dropbox.com/s/x7ws8qsfb3jms4t/ijedmstalk.zip 

Final collection of demo files (21 total, 39.6Mb)

@ijed, that is a shame about the lava death, things were going really well up till that point. I was looking forward to the final battle.
@spy, at the beginning of your demo it felt like you had played it before (found LG/SS secrets very quickly). Nightmare mode looked crazy hard.

@necros, cool, I did not know that, I will make sure to add more secret areas next time :)

@shambler, I am glad someone loves the hunt for secrets, it is always great replay value for me. 

yeah, items in secrets are rarely useful to me anyway. kell was a master at this. he'd make windows looking out on areas that looked like they were just for decoration and then you'd find out that it was actually part of a secret.

those were really rewarding and you got a nice visual treat when you found your way into them too. 

yeah, i guess it was 2nd run, not sure what version i've been playing 1c or 1d

looking forward to your next release 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vhlgjkwvwylco2h/ijedmstalk2.zip

7/10 secrets, 22 minutes. 

@spy, your demo was 1c (the extra stuff). I know this because when I play 1d demo's with 1c all the entities (doors etc) are missing visually.

@ijed, thanks for the second demo. As you found out some secrets are designed for second+ runs, just like the crushers. I designed the map to be played several times and each time get new things to play with. It was cool to see the RL ambush working as planned. The zombies pushing the player to grab the RL and the HKnights forcing the player to switch weapons or be punished with rocket damage. 

I did that the first time as well.

It felt like it would have worked better with fiends instead of HK's and 4x as many zombies - all cramped into that tiny space. To try and provoke 'stunning' the zombies, so the player can deal with the fiends and then escape. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OQz_M78TuI 

You manage to make 20 minutes of waffling on about bog standard Q1SP we've been playing for 17 years interesting and thought-provoking :)

BTW, I didn't panic on the shambler lift, it was a tactical decision. 

@ijed, fiends would hit the ceiling infront of the RL area and just be sitting targets. The Hknights have a range attack that travels along the floor and a nice melee to greet the player when trying to exit the platform. The zombies were just a distraction not the main combat focus, too many and the player would panic.

@Daz, awesome video and comments :) As I said on the youtube channel the video is extremely dark for me and probably be hard to watch for anyone not in a dark room.

@Shambler, just admit it, you panicked on the lift!?! :P It looks like my plan worked ... :) 

The player could ignore the fiends (but still be scared of them) until they got hemmed in by the zombies and had to make it past the fiends.

I prefer making it so that when in close quarters the player is only receiving damage from one group at a time. 

I didn't panic because I saved the pentagram for when I opened the gold door, it was a wise decision that paid off pretty well ;)