with the SoE issue. You need to select New Game, Single Player before reloading saved games after starting Quake. There are probably some necessary progs.dat code that runs when you do that.

Since I haven't played it yet, I don't know if it helps in the Bastion pak. 

http://starship.python.net/crew/mwh/bastion_mwh2.dz

Three strange things happening: at about 6:40 there's a deathknight shaped like a gib, at about 11:20 there's a fiend with an explosion sprite and just before I die stupidly around 15:00 there's a ogre looking like a nail.

It looks like recently used entity numbers are retaining their shape or something like that? 

MisYu - fantastic! I just love hearing these reviews :) I'm so glad this map is being so well received.

An update on the skybox issue - i'm trying to upload a fixed .zip with skybox included (jpeg version), but my connection keeps buggering me about. I hope to have something up in the next hour or two.

aguirRe, Morfans - good sleuthing :), let's hope we can get to the bottom of this.

Vondur, yep - I made sure that places that require rocket jumps (just that one secret actually), are still accessible. 

Hmmm... I've tried playing the demo in both winquake and darkplaces, but in both cases, it crashes just at the start as soon as you start hacking the knights.

Very puzzling. What engine did you record this in? Also in Winquake, it dumped an abnormally large number of "total channels == max channels" error messsages to the console, much more than i get if i just load the map. 

Just tried the demo in GLQuake; same thing happened - tons of max_channels messages and the thing crashed a few seconds in, just after the knights with the error message:

Host_Error: CL_ParseServerMessage: Illegible Server Message 

do you plan to include a custom engine executable with the full episode? Probably advisable, given the number of QC changes made. 

That sounds like a very good idea. I'll include the latest stable version of DarkPlaces with the episode, although again I will strive to ensure WinQuake compatibility.

If there's one thing I learned from all this, it's that I grossly underestimated the popularity of custom engines. Also, not all engines load skyboxes in the same way :| 

gltomaz.exe -game bastion -con_alpha 0.5 -nomtex -primarysound -width 1280 -height 1024 -heapsize 32000 -noipx -nolan -dinput -zone 1024 +map bastion %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9
IT KICKS ASS! FANTASTIC JOB! 

I forgot to mention before, this map is over the normal limit (32k) of marksurfaces; I get a warning when I load the bsp in my own engine.

I've no idea if this is related to the entity problems but AFAIK, anything could happen in the engine when this limit is exceeded.

If anyone can or cannot reproduce the problem either in my engine or in TyrQuake (which also has this limit extended), it might offer a hint to what's causing it. 

Should work fine now. Same URL as before:

http://www.purple3.co.uk/bastion1beta.zip

skybox still jpeg though, so some people may still have problems. 

I recorded the demo in joequake. Sometimes people have had to run 'demtool -n' on my demos before playing them, I'm not sure what's happening here. 

man another Quake Genius as born! man great, great, great, great job i love it a lot!!!simply greattttttttttttttttt 

I run in joequake-gl, real cool with 24 bits textures for some of then. Man is realy great to have another great builter! 

I just got the update running and played a huge chunk of it. Love the flak cannon bearing Ogres, the ambient music similar to one of Quake Arenas better levels (too lazy to go back and look it up), everything added up to an amazing new experience.

Cheers to you Kinn, you magnificently talented bastard! 

i didn't see the white shuffler's special attack. at the last fight by the main doors, i was way to low on health, so i stood at the top level and 'nade spammed the monsters to death as they were stomping around in the lower part of the arena.

where are they from originaly? 

necros - the White Shuffler has a great special attack that may not be entirely obvious in a big fight - but once you spot it, I think you'll dig it :)

He started life in a HexenII mission pack. His sounds are from a variety of sources. I made the Shuffler missile sprites from scratch myself, along with the Sergeant's plasma and the decorative plasma balls. Rocket explosion sprite is from another source which I can't for the life of me remember.

HeadThump, and cheers to you my friend :) 

playing and noticed that god/notarget cvars are enabled at startup, I have to turn them off explicitly. I noticed this already before when checking out the map that when I thought I enabled the cvars, I actually turned them off (with interesting results ...).

I've checked the saved1 cvar and it's 0 and it doesn't help to set it to 0 again and restart. It's not really a problem since I just turned them off after startup and then they have stayed off, but has anyone else noticed this? 

and so far extremely well balanced gameplay, not to mention the fabulous architecture and eerie lighting.

Minor niggles are some weird shakes when riding platforms and the Q2 enforcer that feels rather out of place, both visually and with its attack. The grey/white static skybox should maybe also have more colours, since the rest of the map is so rich with colours.

This map is a sight for sore eyes, indeed. 

god/notarget are set at startup if you play with "developer 1"

also, with developer 1 you'll probably get a load of funny monster ai messages, also, you get prior warning with many triggered monster spawners - it's not the best way to play the map sadly :(

if you didn't have developer 1 set, and still got the god/notarget, then I'm not sure...

Also, they are now propagated across map transitions, but that shouldn't be an issue. 

I'm not sure what causes the shakes on platforms - it happens to me in WinQuake but not DarkPlaces. I haven't touched the qc plat code AFAIK, but I'll double check.

re: grey sky, well it used to be blood red, but I changed it when I dropped coloured lighting, ;) Besides, I think it matches the grey mountainous skybox better - now provided in the download of course :) 

that's it, I always play with that enabled. OK, no problem. I noticed the other messages (which don't bother me) and suspected them being caused by the developer cvar, but I didn't see the relation to god/notarget, but now it makes sense.

With the grey sky I meant the static skybox (from your JPGs), not the animated sky which I think suits very well. The animated variant is a bit more colourful than the static. 

mwh - I've tried using demtool -n on your demo file, but I can't even get it to process the file - it seems to abort after a second or two. 

Very cool, nice lighting, curviness & massive :)
Specially liked the flak gun ogres & the fiery ball sprites.

Someone mentioned the jerkiness with the plats, I also noticed it when the shufflers stomped around in the big arena at the end.

Great stuff, very ambitious & successful. 

I have changed the name of the zip file just to clarify the fact that despite the name, this is NOT a beta version, but the final map.

This is the new URL:

http://www.purple3.co.uk/kinn_bastion.zip

Please note that if you already have the map you DO NOT need to download this, as it is identical in all but the zip name.

The original file is still there for the time being.

Mods, could you please amend my original topic post to reflect the new URL, thanks.

Glassman - thanks! The flak ogres do seem to be very popular :) You mention a shuffler-related problem. Could you please elaborate - do you mean the framerate drops just when the shufflers charge? 

just thought i'd point out:

i noticed in a few places you force quake to display things faster than 0.1 times a second. this can cause lots of problems for people with slower computers, so i'd advise against doing it. a good example is the 'upgraded' LG from my own nesp06/09.
i made the LG fire every 0.01 seconds instead of 0.1 seconds and reduced the damage to 3, instead of 30. theoretically, this should maintain the regular LG's damage rate, however, on slower computers, where the game can't draw as fast as 100 fps, the game simply skips frames and the weapon does less damage. it seems, everything below 0.1 seconds per frame is not guaranteed by quake, whereas at 0.1 and above, quake seems to still keep track of missed frames.

just a little fyi...