...telling you how great it is! 

1st run

Tried hard, failed hard.
Some notes tho, liked the brushwork, did not like some texturing.
Seems like you wanted to use them all, and that htek* ones look really out of place.

Placing of monsters was fine, why no quoth?

That jumping ladders really annoyed me, there are microbrush workarounds which would be a better choice.

Noticed brush disappearing in in that slime/elevator area, hmm...

Lightin� was sometimes too bright, some areas were totally black.
Balanced lightin� is hard, i know.

But overall a cool SP version of that "other game"!

Keep it going 5th! 

1st run demo (hard skill, failure) https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/33279452/daz_fesp1.rar

I found this map quite frustrating tbh. Lots of monster closets and "cheap" tactics used to damage the player. It's also brutally hard on hard skill if you don't find secrets to boost your survivability.

Specifically:

1) Didn't like how extra monsters would be teleported in if the player hits triggers set inside secret areas. Feels like you are punishing players for finding your secrets!

2) Too many uses of sudden fast moving plats or walls to reveal enemies right in the players face. Once in a map is ok but it was used too many times here and ended up feeling cheap.

3) I think the reduced scale of the original Deck16 map hurts more in SP than in DM. Not a lot of space to move around in most areas and very cluttered ground/walls made navigation difficult in a few areas. Mainly the large end fight in the main atrium.

4) Difficulty. Hard is really, really f'ing hard :D Mainly because there is not enough armour/health in the map unless you find secrets. I generally dislike when secrets are "mandatory" to have a good chance at survival. I dunno, maybe I just really suck at Quake (certainly possible!) but I felt that in this map the difficulty balance was off, rather than me just being shitty.

Some things I did like, the Shambler fight on the slowly sinking slime bridge was quite neat. Didn't like how you were basicly stuck there and had to go through slime afterwards though.

The map looks sexy as shit, as did the DM version. Very nice brush work and lighting! Cool detailing on all the screens and wall panels around the place. 

Stasihost: https://www.quaddicted.com/filebase/fesp1.zip

Haven't played it but I betatested and really like it. Looking forward to tonight. 

1) Didn't like how extra monsters would be teleported in if the player hits triggers set inside secret areas. Feels like you are punishing players for finding your secrets!

I'm interested in what you say because i am using this tactic in my last map even if it is on a diferent way, so i'll tell you my reasons.
- I do that as a reward (extra gameplay and maybe extra areas (the new opened paths from where the new monsters come)).
- As another way to adapt the difficulty of the map to the player. If the player is good enough to reach the secret, he can withstand and will like the extra difficulty. If he isn't that good, he will enjoy the map as it is.
- The third reason is to add replayability.
- The fourth so what i placed in the secret doesn't become too powerful and adds more to the gameplay than making it easier. 

I'm saddened to hear that you found it frustrating. I put a lot of thought into each set piece, I watch all your quake vids and I wouldn't consider you a bad player at all! (in fact from watching the demo I'd say up until the room you died in you were doing quite well, but you decided to use your face to absorb as much shambler damage as possible)

I did test to see if it was completable without finding any secrets, it can be done! (but I made all the secrets bar 1 quite obvious for a reason!)

Cheers for the feedback though! :) 

I found the ambushes to be pretty awesome.

Re the monsters in secrets - not uncommon in id levels, or in doom - provides extra motivation to find all the secrets! And I don't recall any monsters in secrets being particularly 'punishing'.
Could be chalked up to playing style. I had a pretty good experience recording testing demos, finding it too easy on hard and then suddenly having my ass kicked. I never died but was constantly low on health... in a good way.

I suppose in retrospect I should have suggested making the ladders climbable.
But yeah, DLing official version will post runthrough eventually. Thanks for putting in the effor 5th! 

As i were going to write, i read DaZ comments, and i thought ... Hard? �No way! �This is easy as hell! Then i later found out that what i was thinking was hard was instead normal difficulty. I played hard difficulty, and yes, hard is hard, but nothing big, it just will take me one or two more tries to get it done.

The map was fun to play, good and varied combats with some nice ideas, like the demon, the GL secret and the hilarious slime secret, and as expected from a DM map it has a good layout. The brushwork looks like ID style with lots of details and good lighting. 4/7 secrets so far.

Issues are with the placing of shamblers, except the one near the gold key, that are a bit overwhelming where they are if you don't find enough secrets. The one at the slime is a bit of a contradiction: you tend to flee from shamblers, but the ramp pushes you to go up, and when you finally understand that you shouldn't be in there anymore, the ramp has lowered too much and you can't escape. Maybe a bit more of health in hard would be needed for the shamblers. And a bit harder in normal so you are more prepared for that final fight, that is way harder than the rest and caught me by surprise when i was playing in a relaxed way.

It isn't completely clear what the gold key door opens but having the answer nearby helps a lot.

Here you have my first and second run demo in normal. At the first a shambler on my face surprised and smashed me to a pulp. At the second i run like a girl and took care of it at distance. That shambler needs room to go down the ramp. And more room too for the rest of monsters on the main room.

In normal, there is too much ammo and one of the packs of nails and shells at the golden key room should me moved to the main room.

http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/demos/fesp1_coce_normal.dem.7z

Next time i have to play the maps at night, i was a bit slow in these ones. 

final area is pretty hard now! requires a little strategy. 

I forgot to say this. There is a brush underwater with tech texture on, on the right part if you look from the silver keycard, that appears and disappears. Have anyone else encountered this one? It doesn't seem to come from a leak, behind it there is still brushes.


Oh, and the computers and their messages are a very nice touch. 

That you find just take a screenshot and send it to me. I thought I had eliminated the disappearing brushes (I tested in a few engines). 

on skill 1, died though: http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/demos/sleepfesp1.dem.7z

It is pretty dark on my machine, but I suspect this to be a problem of QuakeSpasm on the Mac. Wasn't too hard until when I died, which I suspect to be the final fight. 

 

http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/demos/otp_fesp1.zip 

Yeah I totally screwed up that Shambler dance didn't I!

I think overall it was the small scale of most of the areas that turned me off. I like to have space to move around, the fast speeds combined with lots of projectile based attacks is what makes Quake so much fun for me, in a small or enclosed space that aspect is diminished somewhat.

I played through the map a couple more times and still only found 3 secrets total :) The final combat in the large central atrium is pretty damn brutal on hard skill. There is a lack of cover I think that makes it even more so, especially once the Shamblers and vores start showing up! :)

Cocerello/etc : I didn't like the enemies triggered from inside secrets in this map because most of the time I was very low on health and just didn't want extra shit in my way :) It's a delicate balancing act. On normal skill maybe it would feel ok but I haven't tried normal yet.

I think if there is a Quad damage secret then a few extra enemies actually is a good idea as its great fun to mow through legions of weak enemies with a quad. However the early GL secret in this map spawns in Enforcers that you really don't want to waste precious grenades on that early in the map. 

The GL secret only spawns a single enforcer. And that is the only secret that spawns an enemy. I would say that if you find all the secrets the map could be considered on the easier side of hard, but isn't that the point of secrets? Its a reward! :)

I don't mind making maps a little on the harder side for hard mode, but if people find it hard on easy or normal then that would be cause for concern. 

...since I last posted a demo.

1st run, skill 2


I fared unexpectedly well, if you consider I hardly ever play Quake regularly. The next to final ambush got my ass though.
Proceeded to complete from last Quicksave, but did not record.
In the end it was 33.19 minutes, 5/7 secrets, 87/90 monsters.

Nice effort. Loved the though gameplay and secret placing. And interconnectivity is really good, but you'd expect this from a DM conversion, I guess.

Good work, 'Phant! Can't wait for the next one! 

Needed correction. Sorry.
Fuckthelack (of an edit function). 

The map is awesome, I liked it a lot, so much detail... And the feeling that you are really there. Played on easy, it was ok, so I'm happy, people who play on hard and complain that it's hard are... let's say "strange" :)

Hard is meant to be hard, if you don't want a challenge just play on normal or even easy. If the map is hard even on easy... well, then there is a serious problem, otherwise it's perfect.

Found only 4 secrets, 3 of them were too easy to find, but I liked them a lot, there were mini areas, not just a box.

I also found a biosuit hidden in a place trigerred by a secret button, but that didn't triggered a secret, went into the acid pool nearby, didn't find a secret, alos checked all acid pools, no luck... so it's a bug or I have to dig deeper...

Anyway I enjoyed a lot this map, I know it's not easy to convert a MP map to SP map because I'm trying the same thing for years now :)