Is this gonna be the theme for the next jam. 

I'd like to start off by saying viewing Ionous' stream last night was the most enjoyable thing I've watched in a very long time. And not only that, but listening to the reactions of others as they witnessed the maps for the first time. I was not at all expecting the response of "What in the hell, I've never seen anything like this!" and "I want what Orl is smoking". It put the biggest smile on my face.

These maps in particular, are very special to me. Why is that you may ask. When I was younger i would brainstorm all kinds of themes and gimmicks that might or might not work in Quake. I would get lots of ideas, but these five maps were ideas I had for a very long time. Even as far back as oms2's release, I had invisioned a Quake map set on a tropical island with an enormous golden gate bridge in the distance, a western town filled with foilage and old houses, and a far east pagoda fortress sitting on the edge of a cliff, overlooking a vast valley. Sadly, Quake's tools were not yet ready to create something like this, so for years these ideas just stayed ideas, but I never forgot them.

Once I felt Quake had matured enough, both through engine and tool capability, I had set my goals into action, and from the very beginning to the very end, I knew exactly what I wanted to build, and how it would look. Thats one of the reasons why it didn't take long, five maps in 18 months. Each map built exactly to my liking, and the end result was even better than I had anticipated. But I certainly didn't do this by myself.

EricW was the main reason these maps were able to exist. Starting from the very first map, requesting that he expand tyrqbsp's capabilities to larger map sizes, through trials and tribulations, all the way to the end, where he entirely re-wrote the leak code just so the map would compile. EricW was at my side through the whole process, and I thank him greatly for help making these ideas of mine a reality.

I took a drastic approach with each of these maps, setting aside my usual mapping habits for something different. I knew many had complained in my past works that it was too cramped, and not enough manueverability. I made sure the player got lots of room to move around in each map. Likewise, I ignored my instinct to make each map ridiculously detailed, and just settled on decent detail, never going overboard. It was the right decision.

Of course we can't neglect Xaero and the Jack editor, which is an incredible piece of software.

Ken Chennar is not my real name.

While I love each map, if you were to ask me which one is my favorite, it would be the third map, Sun. The asian theme. I imagine the knights are highly trained samurais, the scrags are ancient Japanese ghosts come back to life. Unfortunately, as shown from Ionous' stream there is a game breaking bug for those with less powerful systems below 30 frames per second. It prevents you from proceeding through properly without having to noclip your way. I will have a fixed version hopefully soon.

So, the episode is released, what comes next? My hope is to see more of these themes, and possibly even new ones from you. BSP2 really opens up an entire world of possibilities, and with the soon arriving Quakespasm 0.93.0 that removes the leafs cap altogether, the sky is the limit.

As for me, I can't promise any more maps from myself in the future. I am at a really hard time in my life, and I have a lot of personal battles to overcome. I can't give you an answer, or even an estimate on when, or if I make another map. I'm sorry to have to say this, but I have to get my life together first before I can spend time at the editor again.

But to everyone who has played, or are planning on playing soon, thank you for doing so. I feel as if I achieved a life goal seeing these maps now at last complete. 

on releasing what seems to be something of an instant classic, and moreover, achieving a realization of your early game design dreams! I'm glad you're edified by creating this, and by the reactions -- and here's hoping this thread doesn't devolve into bullshit! 

If you can do this pack you can do anything. I wish you luck in RL. You can do it man. Onward! 

it's to do with the simple quake launcher.

launching the map directly causes issues.

upon entering the two console commands then reloading the map with mapshib1 and the problems go away :) 

Excellent episode! ORL proves it. He has really delivered a series of great maps that are huge, experimental, unique, and different from each other. Settings are what make them stand out from every other Quake level the most. A tropical hotel island near the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge, an industrial refinery with some rotation stuff and a healthy amount of puzzles, a Japanese/Chinese/Asian/far east/"you name it" world concentrated on these dojo buildings on the cliffside, a crazy twisted take on the traditional id1 Quake themes of wizard and metal, and a wild western mine town with some underground areas, all of them very well done to a degree that oms3 can't catch up to the new Quakespasm-admod limits (like oms3 can't be bigger than these 5 levels). This deserves to be called a "masterpiece". "Instant classic", indeed. 

raising the benchmark springs to mind :) 

I wish someone could speedrun this episode. 

because of the sunny resort feel, i decided to play narkopop 5 from the new gas album, and it worked wonders for me!

such a distinct feeling of detachment was felt as i wondered around this map.

135/150 kills

skill 1

1/3 secrets

it was touch & go as i emerged from out of the first initial hotel area, as i was about to run out of shotgun ammo (i shell left).

and i am not used to wasting shots, so this was alarming.

until i decided to use the lightning gun for enforcers so the ammo used on them would be roughly replaced by their dropped backpack. 

https://twitter.com/SimsOCallaghan/status/903815793829437440 

Quick tip, if you get low framerates on the first map, try setting "r_oldwater 0" ("1" is the bad looking triangulated version that is only useful on ancient PC's). 

When are we going to crash the fvf server trying to play these coop? 

Would take Spiked Quakespasm admod to run the maps in coop. 

But fuck me it's impressive. Makes Neil Manke look like Hexcalk :o 

I guess there is not much to add as it's strengths and weaknesses and general impressive worth are pretty obvious. As far as this sort of non-Quake style goes this is possibly the best I've seen, simply for how well it's done, and the epic scale of the maps involved (which suits Quake gameplay well). I salute you for that Orl, if anyone asks "Can I do a real-life style map in Quake?", this is now the definitive answer.

I liked the gameplay for the most part, although supplies were very limited in a couple of places (this might partly depend on route choice, and having so many choices were good).

I do think these maps could have benefited a lot from modern engine enhancements (fog, coloured lighting, skyboxes, etc - would have worked well with the large scale and more realistic themes), even some AD enhancements although I realise that would have been getting quite complex mapping. 

Played up to map 4. This is incredible. The insane teleport/jump puzzle box in map 2, the Wonderland-esque huge vertical wizard map 4. Damn. Congrats ORL, and Eric W, this is amazing. 

 

https://imgur.com/a/sBayT
shib3 start and the whole level is been drawn. Same deal with the rest of the maps bar shib2. Have tried everything I can think of to find a fix. Any suggestions? 

 

Nothing fixes it. Clean install of qs-admod and 0.93.0, both with sv_protocol 999 + gl_farclip 256000.
The vis is broken somehow.
Running windows 10 64 bit. 

I don't think these were vised. 

Not sure what the difference is but did you try it in the qs-admod "spiked" version? 

shib3-5.bsp are unvised, so the whole map will get drawn 

 

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/172517961