I was going to leave that un-responded, but yeah:

Getting lost and not knowing where to go is a problem in big maps as much as hubs. And even in small maps if they are confusing enough. In all cases, good design can guide the player and make sure they know where to go. 

depends how deep you want to go as well

Do you want the dimensions to have cross dimension puzzles, or should the dimensions puzzles just be confined to the amount of maps that make that dimension?

It wouldn't hurt to try link up 3-4 military base type maps as a trial, also have the added bonus of placing higher level monsters in the later stages.

I find it fun remembering where a puzzle piece could potentially go over a few maps and seeing how they snake between each other and open up into new areas is fun, that moment when you finally get into that room you could see and the light bulb moment is always good.

You also have the added bonus of using harder monsters from the start in later stages and don't have to worry about making a "startup stage" where you build up weapons.

This can be further expanded by making some dimensions just hard to begin with, forcing you into other dimensions to get started.

and just having super legendary versions of the weapons would really give the player a drive to search the maps, especially if the runes unlocked the real boss, which naturally will be easier if you have the super weapons.

Come on it's worth a try, just put one dimension together and see how it goes. 

just put one dimension together and see how it goes.

i think youre underestimating the amount of time this sort of project would take.

what you want greatly differs from the design goals sock had for this and seems like the perfect time for you to learn how to map. that way you can do this all yourself and show us how great it could be. 

I just might.

i noticed it already had the hub map tools on the AD page, so no one will mind if i load up some maps and try string them together, purely for testing reasons, guage reactions to this gameplay type.

How do i get the textures to load though when opening the AD map files? i don't know where to get the wad files for it.

I was thinking using the map with the laser to access the boss for the future dimension, except you would need to search that map and 2 other base styled maps for the 3 parts you would need to operate the laser.

That seems like a simple enough plan. 

Well since somebody else bumped the thread this time, I guess I'll jump on the opportunity to post about my additional experiences. I'm playing through the second hub right now. I've played a few of these maps in advance after sock had suggested them to me a while back. I replayed them anyway and I had fun 100 percenting them.

Zendar was interesting because I played the standalone version first. I remember thinking that it was an amazing map that would've been made better by the addition of being able to traverse the rooftops in some areas. Lo and behold, the Arcane version added this in. There's one very tiny courtyard in particular where the roof is just begging to be explored, but that wasn't possible in the original map.

I think that I've played Arcane Adamantine 4 or 5 times now and it was still just as impressive and fun as the first time. It has a really interesting layout and it's really impressive in terms of all the circular brush work from the pipes that make up the playable area to the large spiral staircases.

Leptis Magna was my most recent adventure and what a map it was. In a way, it feels like the answer to or the sister map of Foggy Bogbottom. Pretty huge map with an awesome distinct atmosphere accentuated by the lore. This is another example of a map being essentially an adventure game in itself. Ionous and Pulsar did such a phenomenal one with this. I had to ask for help with finding many of the secrets but even with a guide for several of the final secrets, I couldn't believe that I clocked in over 2 hours in this map by the time I 100 percented it. There was one glitched scrag that I couldn't kill but otherwise here is the result of a play through that spanned several days:
https://i.imgur.com/DUanu4g.jpg

I have a few more maps to go but I'm taking my sweet time in order to savor the experience. Aside from the quality of the maps, I love the additions to the game play that the mod adds. I like the new shotgun mechanics as it makes the regular shotgun less like a sniper rifle. The new monsters are good additions too. The ambient sound effects in particular help to create more lifelike and believable worlds with monster groans and creaking wooden structures. I've been replaying some id1 user maps with Arcane loaded up and it's a ton of fun. 

One major headache you will come across - especially for someone not terribly experienced with all this quake modding bojangles - is that the quake engine's ability to transfer data between levels is pretty awful.

Beyond retaining a few things relating to player inventory (weapons, ammo, runes etc.), you'll have to write QC that packs and unpacks bits in the "parm" variables and a few others like "temp1".

For AD maps which all have hundreds of monsters, you'll need to accept that every time you revisit a map, the monsters will all have to be pretty much reset to their starting state. You could preserve the (dead / not dead) state of a few important boss monsters maybe, but good luck doing much beyond that.

And unless you somehow magically have hundreds of bits to spare on storing the state of all AD's secret areas, you'll have to accept they'll reset too.

I haven't touched on the topic of savegame abuse to do this - that's something I haven't really looked at. 

oh that pretty much puts a stop to that if its hopeless at retaining data between levels. 

the other option is just paste 3 maps together...


but that will probably hit the limits 

A far better project would be to create a single, original map with a layout designed to create the "hub" gameplay you are looking for.

Bolting multiple AD maps together into a single bsp seems a bit pointless. 

There's one very tiny courtyard in particular where the roof is just begging to be explored, but that wasn't possible in the original map.

No, it was possible in the original. 

"A far better project would be to create a single, original map with a layout designed to create the "hub" gameplay you are looking for."

Not sure how it worked but I think Rubicon Rumble Pack had an autosave feature that would help for this. 

AD does has a system to save variables across savegames/loads as of version 1.7

http://www.simonoc.com/pages/design/sp/ad.htm

Scroll down to Map Variables.

This is a new system which allows for mappers to update, query or toggle variables that can be used to trigger events. The variables are stored in the player save file and can work across multiple maps or be used in a hub map to record progress for an episode.

The test map shows all of the map variables as a wall of buttons on one side of the map and the other side is for specific examples of how to query, update or toggle values. There is no exact use for this system, its really up to the mapper to use it however they want. 

As I've mentioned, almost every Arcane map feels like a self-contained adventure game and Terror Fuma helps to especially drive that point home. I didn't expect to be blown away by a base map so soon after playing ad_crucial but this map left me stunned. The attention to detail was off the charts. The poison theme was not just reflected in the environment but also in the monsters themselves. It seems that this map also made use of Arcane features that I had not seen in previous mod maps, or at least the execution was a bit different.

I knew that I was in for something amazing from the very start when the drop ship came flying in. The glass archway gives you a beautiful view of the outside area and the skybox. The map felt alive with all of the infighting going on between the grunts and some of the other monsters such as the spiders. It's different from the usual infighting that the player can normally induce since it happens without any play involvement. Nothing special for a modern game but to see this in Quake was a treat.

The flow of the map was unusual in that it afforded the player a great degree of freedom. After accessing the rooftop, I felt like I had stumbled upon some crazy secret. It took me some time in order to decide where I wanted to drop down. None of my decisions ever broke the map though, even if I did end up grabbing keys in the nonstandard order. The combat on skill 2 hit the sweet spot for me with some challenging encounters, but fights never once felt unfair.

This could very well have been a standalone sci-fi adventure game. Something about the atmosphere or execution reminded me vaguely of Prey 2006, and I loved that aspect about it. People who complain about long maps will enjoy this one because even when playing slowly and attempting to 100%, I came in at under an hour. Each subsequent AD map that I play never ceases to amaze me.

https://i.imgur.com/bC2JKX1.jpg 

This never occurred to me... Still doesn't.

I came in at under an hour.
A lot of AD maps are this long if not longer. 

Yes I know, I haven't looked at the code, but I assume it will just be packing a limited number of bits in variables such as temp1 and the parms.

The ideal hub support would let you save any amount of state info from all levels in the game, including state of all monsters, secrets etc. Not possible with the above method. 

I know it must be getting annoying by now sorry about that, but you have some quality maps and they are quite time consuming to make so why not make the most of it,

some great base maps in particular could be the starting points to create 4 mini eps and final boss map like in the OG quake game, it would really be good to see a collection of maps build of each others difficulty and remove startup parts where you just fight grunts for a double barrel.

The monster and polish and just in general is excellent quality and if quake 2 was never released i would consider this quake 2 tbh, its knocks the socks of any 90's expansion pack. 

Thanks for all the kind words man. Terror Fuma started life as a very different kind of map, it was going to be a megamix of all the E1M1 style maps (hence why the bit in the beginning looks a lot like the first bit of Doom 2).
Sock persuaded me to make something more unique as AD already had a bunch of remake maps. Some of the cooler ideas were by EricW, he made the spaceship flyover and the tank ambush for example. Sock made a bunch of really cool unique textures too (all the flashy new monitors and some nice wall textures etc).
One of the design goals I set out with was to make the map very non-linear. Originally you started on the roof of the map and the spaceship would fly away. The roof was never going to have gameplay though and Sock suggested that it become a super-secret, so I spent several days tidying up the shitty brushwork so it would look nice, EricW made the super cool rising spiral staircase...

The map took forever to make and really wouldn't be quite as special if it wasn't for Eric, Sock and the rest of the team and their input. :) 

The ideal hub support would let you save any amount of state info from all levels in the game, including state of all monsters, secrets etc. Not possible with the above method.

Already have that on my hard drive since 2014.

Takes the "QUAKE2" modification of the Q1 engine in the Carmack source release that stores the state of everything in a level.

Removes the requirement for an irregular progs.dat, instead depends on certain named functions in the progs.dat.

And instead of saving the states of all levels in a freaking folder, Mark V internally has pak read, write, edit, compress.

So a save game with such isn't some messy folder requiring a whole damn folder for every save game but a single file .pak containing a save game for each level (.sav.pak or something?)

But I don't see it making it into the "real world" anytime soon because it would require some major serious single player development to make it worthwhile --- i.e. probably an episode that depended on the feature.

And beyond that, it is difficult to imagine a Quake episode that could make good use of re-entrant levels.

So it would likely be just another unused engine feature in an engine. 

I feel like the feature would just be best used in Quake for maps that didn't want to break limits but still wanted to be big. Having some load points that you could go back and forth through to bring back keys etc. for one "map" (that is actually several maps).

Of course, now that we're just making huge, 200+ monster maps that take hours to complete i think it'd be less desirable a feature to have. Could still be neat to have for a few niche cases though... 

Sounds like the opposite of fun 

Just a heads up the regarding the terra level in co-op the circuit boards will not respawn 

Thanks for the clarification. So the AD stuff seems like it would work for switches and keys. Very limited usage overall. 

Thanks for the insights into the design process. I think that dumptruck mentioned doing some interviews with mappers and I've been looking forward to it. In the meantime, I've been getting some great tidbits from sock, ionous, and now you as to how these maps were approached. It will help me think about how I approach mapping going forward. It seems to be a common theme that the player spawn location changes as the map develops.

I've already started another play through of the map since last finishing it. The game play is fun but it's also nice to just go back and admire all of the details that went into the map. The time that it took to make paid off extremely well in the end because this has been a highlight for me in terms of single player shooters, not just as a Quake map. 

I was nose deep in ModDB's dark corners earlier when I stumbled upon this umpteenth E1M1 remix for Doom. Yeah, I know, but hold on, the funny part is coming...

Excerpt from the map description: Some areas are heavily inspired by ad_e1m1 from Arcane Dimensions mod for Quake. Special thanks to them for inspiration!!!

So in other words, here we have a Doom map that is a remix of a Quake map that already was a remix of a Doom map! Ouroboros much?

Haven't tried it yet so I can't judge its quality. I just thought it should be mentioned here. 

I guess I missed this when it came out, or didn't play it all for some reason. So far I've played through a few of the maps on normal, and there are some fucking corkers in there. Standouts so far have been the gorgeous floating arabianish winter palace with the huge boss encounter, and the firetop mountain level, which had some really fun combats in it (the Cthon setup was particularly memorable).

There's just too much to comment on, so I'll try and make more of an effort when I've played it all, but it's incredible so far, so thanks to Sock and all the others involved for making such a fun addon.