now where do I get that quoth thing? 

http://kell.leveldesign.org/quoth/quoth.html 

this map is huuge! It could easily be divided into a 3 level episode, SK and GK doors being the cut points.

great health and ammo balance (on skill 1). can't even imagine how much work and testing it needed.

over 400 monsters and no horde combat - impressive.

monsters spawn after the player passes the area and chase from behind - great!

great replay value

teleporters were very nice, indeed

the scale of the architecture is just right and it feels to be a real world

the green fog - great choice

fighting in this map was very satisfying (the fights after GK door were very nice)

final area - great look and great fight also. Mixing gaunts and fiends in one area without cover is evil :) 

I got the demo last night but couldn't watch yet, and can't watch now because the link seems to be down, though I do remember you found some b0rky brushwork near the start.

The cut point thing is a possibility but try the map in coop and you'll see why it loops through itself so much - I tried to make it easy to navigate back to a place when you'd already been there through teleporters or changing geometry (doors / func_walls).

I'll watch the demo tonight - cheers. 

I moved it to the appropiate folder:
http://shub-hub.quaddicted.com/files/demos_singleplayer/warpb_ankh.dz 

 

Currently just finished Sealed City. These monster counts are INSANE!$. The feel of the maps are very much like the large custom Doom 2 like Polygon Base and so on. The finale of Sealed City was also very doom-like and cool.

I have to admit that maps of this size (400-500 monsters) are too big for my taste. I think each map could have been split into two-three maps (except the snowy one of course.) I think part of it is a pacing issue, and part of it is an issue of the amount of physical space players have to traverse and remember. An intermission screen not only functions to help establish the tempo of the episode and give a sense of progress, but it also is a point where players can flush their mental-map-bulding process and start anew. It's easier to remember the layout of 5 small shopping malls than one huge shopping mall. 

I wanted to add that I think the Sealed City's various sections that had pop-up text (agony maze, etc.) did help reduce the problem I mentioned above. 

Take a look at the bottom of the console in glwarp.exe or winwarp.exe. It clearly says 1.33, but the latest enhanced engine was 1.32. Maybe 1.33 was only for warp compatibility, or is aguiRe hiding a new version of his engine from us? ! 

are just the current beta versions that'll end up in the next release, whenever that'll be.

Ijed couldn't use the previous public release as it doesn't have the -quoth option, which is pretty essential for this pack. There's also an important fix for saving/loading games in coop.

For more details, check out the included readme files. 

Okay, I got to about 350 / 522 monsters (on Skill 2) without dying, then annoyingly died with a random surprise spawn hit when I was approximately 0.00001 seconds and 2 inches from a MegaHealth. I reloaded and played a bit past that, but the "trapped in a corridor with 3 Shamblers, no possible escape, having expended all nails, cells and armour on the previous multiple Fiend ambush" impossiblity made me give up for the time being. 2 hours of continuous hard Quake is enough for now....I must be getting old.

If anyone wants a very boring 9 meg (zipped) 2 hour demo until there, let me know ;S. 

on one map? Man, that map must be huge. I must admit I haven't played much of the pack yet as I'm a bit behind with Quake playing due to my hands being a bit fucked, but I did start the level (and got spawned straight away). There are only a couple of Quake maps that have taken me over an hour to finish, and they are both fucking huge. Looking forward to getting into this map.

I still play Quake on normal, btw - the hard corridor looked a bit too scary. 

If you feel the combat is too easy/hard/boring and you don't want to change skill level for whatever reason, check out the coop possibilities.

There are far more skill selections than usual; they're there to make the pak more accessible for everyone and to increase replayability. 

This is less of a map and more of an entire game. I dread to think of there being more of them in the pack.

Two hours and I didn't complete it. Probably 3 if I had done. At least 10 minutes of that was getting the Bounce secret. Not sure why that was so hard.

I was taking a hell of a lot of care to try to get through it though. And spending ages trying to find secrets (was on 8 / 16 I think).

BTW, is it just me who finds Quoth's "silent" monster behaviour a little....twitchy? Or rather it makes me a little twitchy. I presume this is deliberate, getting rid of some of their usual noises? 

2 more:)

I have to say on normal, I had an absolute blast despite dying a fair bit. 

I will try the "no quoth monsters" mode for sure ;)
I have also played red777 again to prepare myself for the maps of this pack. 

That's alot - it takes me just under an hour, but I know it like the back of my hand.

The spawning creatures I tried not to make cheap, they sometimes spawn just around the corner, but there's a few times when I'll bring in a couple of Fiends from behind in order to force the player into the next area, generally so they can have grenades / lightning / whatever thrown at them.

The GK corridor was originally a Gug at the end, but his fire pattern meant that he basicly couldn't hit the player.

The bounce secret is overly difficult because there's a Trinity not too far away, giving the potential for instagib nails (x7 damage) but only if you're very quick indeed. I probably should have made it a bit simpler so you'd actually get a chance to kill stuff with that.

The Quoth creatures aren't so silent, instead thier sounds are a bit less distinguishable, especially with the music built into the levels - though they're all excellent, my favourite being the Gaunt. (Gauntdrop!)

Also Shambler, you're on normal skill - on hard there's four Shamblers. 

one of the many things I have liked so far is that the spawning creatures dont feel cheap but more as if they've always been there, lukring around and have finally found you.

I think I'm on the last map now, but I wuld pu this in my top 10, great work ijed. 

I don't recall having changed std Quoth sound behaviour. There's a new sound (or sounds) for the grunt, but I think he's mostly used in warpa. 

I just got a new widescreen monitor running it at -width 1400 -height 1050 -bpp 32 and there's no problem, but when I went for higher rez it just tells me its not supported.

Thats in the Nehahra engine variant. 

If anyone thinks that the external monster skins are too dark (probably because you're used to the idgamma effect) or is otherwise interested, I can describe a pretty simple way to change that using the free XnView. 

That sounds like a std 4:3 resolution, not 16:9 which is AFAIK the widescreen proportions. If you use -height 788 instead, you'll see the "fat guy" effect metl mentioned. 

In order:

I found the spawning monsters fine.

I have no idea where the Trinity is. What is the authorised way to get the Bounce secret? I used plasma off the edge of the beam, although it looked as if it should be a simple slope jump ^_*

Errrr. Creature noises. I meant the Quake ones now seem to be silent or a lot quieter when they come from the distanct of indeed spawn.

There were 4 Shamblers, I miscounted before. I know what damn skill I'm on.

I have a question for you:

Almost every player will appear in that corridor having run out of armour (collected the YA ages ago and run it out particularly around the GK area), and almost certainly run out of nails / plasma on the multiple Enforcer / multiple Fiend sections just before. How exactly do you expect them to defeat 4 Shamblers with no armour, maybe 50 spare health and 50 spare nails, effectively just with the double shotty?? The number of times you will get hit with lightning make it physically impossible, so I'd be interested to know.

BTW, this section, and the ending (which I god-moded through, I believe the ending is possible [unlike the Shambler situation in the player condition described] - however due to the combination of fiend, slime, and the ludicrous amount of damage the lighting does, it boils down purely to random chance as to how much you get hit / what the monsters do, rather than player control [again, most powerful ammo will have been used on Gugs], I'm not giving it the XXX number of goes required for that chance to crop up....I did enough of that speedrunning years ago), were the only pointlessly hard bits. The rest was difficult, but entirely feasible (see my first post on it) and pretty balanced. 

The plasma jump is the way to do it.

The trinity is a secret ;)

Didn't modify sounds from Quake / Quoth.

Ok.

The idea of the corridor sections is that the player can backtrack if they're low on whatever, which is why all the stuff opens up to allow more movement - eg. the first open area links to the GK platform after you take the long way round, as well as a few teleporters opening up.

Granted its not perfect and the levels are big just to go wanderign for a box of ammo, but the pace is set up for a midpoint finale battle. Th Shamblers aren't too hard to take down with DBS - in warpa the player has to take down two, in warpb its four, but only as the end of a large setpiece / sectional battle where they've most likely picked up cells / grenades (admittidly useless vs. Shamblers) from the Enforcers / Defenders beforehand.

As well as this there's plenty of room to retreat - I experimented with closing the player in the corridor or even just the room behind locking up to counter this, but its wasn't necessary (until the end at least) - the battle is tough enough.

Also, I'd hope that the player realises the difficulty of each combat is increasing as the doors open (dogs / enforcers / fiends / shamblers) and use thier ammo accordingly - spamming Enforcers with plasma is fairly wasteful, especially since it'll usually gib them and lose you the ammo pcikup afterwards.

I took this into account for difficulty - there's more plasma ammo on normal and even more on easy. On hard there used to be alot less - backpacks only, near enough.

The final battle is a final battle. The exit opens after you kill the Fiends, so if you're quick enough and don't mind not getting 100% kills you can escape leaving the three Gaunts behind - but thats the cowards way out.

Hard is hard for experienced players, for normal players its more like an extra level of difficulty up (NM is practically the same, just faster attacks AFAIK). This was the reason to include the -/+ Quoth coop options in the start map.

I always tested in NM, then downgraded difficulty to allow for my knowledge of structure, then further for playtesting comments, then further for each difficulty level. 

I didn't try skill 2 so I don't know if there is maybe more ammo and armour but on skill 1 all the fights are pretty manageable because the supplies are sufficient. Just finished the map on skill 1 again in 40 minutes. The bounce secret has to be reached with the help of slope jumping I think.