for a quick glimpse.

holy fuck, the intro to roman1 is epic! 

I think it's really helpful to have an infinite-ammo weapon in these epic 300+ monster maps. Sometimes ammo just runs out. I guess the counter argument would be, just balance the ammo better. But, remember the dispersion pistol in Unreal? It worked quite well there to pick off easier or isolated enemies.

Also, I don't think that the medieval-ness of the wand is a problem. Tronyn's maps have almost always had a medieval/fantasy setting. And besides, Grunts and Enforcers look out of place in anything not a tech/base level, but that doesn't stop people from using them whereever, and it doesn't really matter (to me) as long as the gameplay's good. 

fix up the end and this is easily an instant classic!!

I thought everything was pitch perfect in the looks department, it all fit together beautifully even though it probably shouldnt have. Roman1 has a killer layout too.

The spectacle factor in all the maps was out of control.

Gameplay wise, I loved all the new additions, and found it challenging but not impossible on medium all the way till the final fight. You probably need an ammo and health replenishment once some time has passed after the spoiler 1's arrival (ie same thing that happens as spoiler 2 arrives). 

And besides, Grunts and Enforcers look out of place in anything not a tech/base level

I usually hate base enemies in non-base levels but somehow they worked well here. It suited the "multiple unrelated themes merged into a bloody mess" theme.

Environments that bleed into eachother ;) 

It worked in Zerst�rer... 

And besides, Grunts and Enforcers look out of place in anything not a tech/base level

Not to take one comment out of contex, but, any monster can be out of place if it doesn't fit the theme or the theme isn't done well. The theme can be anything the mapper wants - it's just we typically see variations of a handful of different ones.

Not because the people making them don't have imagination, but because the themes are very strong.

It's an old saying that Quake players have different eyes to everyone else, able to see whole spectrums of brown. If that means we can see wide variations of dungeon, castle, swamp, meatech (etc) themes as well then great.

Don't know what ARWOP's theme can be called - meatemple? 

roman bloody hell metal.

That covers it :) 

 

these maps are T's least adored and he's just getting them out the door, hence the disparate themes. Kick me blue if i'm wrong. 

In some maps (ie, if I have lots of Ogres and Flak Ogres, which sort of mix medieval and tech), I'll use grunts (early Unforgiven maps had grunts and even enforcers, but they are now the NSOE goblin variants) since I think they fit with the idea of these monsters having access to earth weaponry if there's an earth/Quake dimension overlap. Enforcers go fully into scifi though, so they are a bit more in that direction, perhaps too much.
The Roman betas actually had Dragons, but I decided to cut them and use Wraths and the Overlord instead to get a more evil rather than fantasy feel; also as the Roman maps are vaguely inspired by Doom and Quake3, in both of which id mixes tech/hell elements all over the place, I thought that going for that vibe instead of a more fantasy thing was more suitable for these maps. Basically, it's a slippery slope from grunts to enforcers! 

well, these are definitely the oldest maps I had to release (started in 99; all my other yet-unreleased stuff was started in 2003/4 at the earliest), so the originals were smallest/simplest out of my maps; but they did have the same mixed themes as are present in the finished product. The only difference is that each of the 13 original small maps had its own variation on the basic theme, so merging 3-4 of them together created varying takes on the theme within the same map - except roman2, which was only based on 2 scraps, both of which originally had the "venice of blood" theme. 

Roman reminds me of the fourth episode from Ultimate Doom, "Thy Flesh Consumed". 

Venice of Blood 

It works in DOOM, because the original DOOM never established a coherent "base" theme or an "every episode starts with a base map" dogma. The color scheme is totally different, too. The former human gang in DOOM isn't so idbase-brown. (A brown enforcer will automatically look out of place in a blue map, for example). DOOM is also simply more extreme - its mixture of hi-tech and "underworld" covers both soldiers and demons. Quake's "base" and "medieval" are comparatively tame and mostly well separated. You have neither "Mars laboratory" nor "Hell" in Quake, not to mention a merry mixture of the two. Runic is again a different thing. I believe this stems from the fact that DOOM was supposed to be modeled after the Alien movies, while Quake was supposed to be a fantasy game before in both cases that didn't work out.

Vanilla Quake already introduced and cemented the base/medieval split, sadly, in the shareware episode, with its clearly separate themes, while DOOM's shareware episode was mostly "tech dungeon" throughout. The first impression tends to stick.

ARWOP is largely very brown, which makes the grunts look more at home, plus it isn't one of the pre-established id1 themes. Hence we're probably more willing to accept the broad mix of monsters. The DOOM feel was definitely there.

Quake's monster lineup simply isn't as versatile as DOOM's. Especially in the lower and middle tier, there are definite holes / not enough variation. This occurred to me while I was implementing Lardarse's randomized monster spawning. There are only so many options to put in a certain slot. For example when randomizing a spawn that used to be an ogre, what are the alternatives? Hknights? Fiends? They don't always work. I was briefly considering Gremlins, but they look like Fiend ripoffs... and are not really all-round monsters.

A medieval grunt, a runic grunt, an Ogre substitute that works in the same all-round way (and is not a hknight) ... would be good to have. 

One of the concessions that Quake does allow is that since everything is connected by slipgates, fantasy and sci-fi enemies can intermingle even in environments that are 100% fantasy or sci-fi.

Though i guess there is still the sense that the "deeper" you get into the fantasy world, the less you should see other human soldiers because that breaks the illusion that it was difficult to make it that far. 

Even that can be storied over though. Say you start seeing humans and come across a broken slipgate or something. Done! :) 

yeah, that works ... while just using all monsters in a medieval map, without any "explanation", feels a bit weird to me. 

How can I turn the music off? No offense, but some of it I find really awful. 

impulse 17, mentioned above, you lazy bum. 

I did read the .txt and searched through this thread though! 

 

Outstanding map...

finally played and record a demo... 129 mb :\ want it tronyn?

Tronyn awesome work as usually... fair gameplay and great visual as all your maps have... but this one in my opinion even in hard is a fair map :) will play the rest of pack soon and comment...

thanks :) 

Good stuff here. It took 50+ tries to get through roman1 on hell difficulty, but the following maps were not as difficult (even considering weapons)... then I noticed that the monsters weren't respawning like they did in the first level. I know "skill" supports only four values, so I imagine the "hell" difficulty is stored somewhere unusual... Too unusual for save files, I believe. 

Hell difficulty check is stored in the serverflags, which is preserved across levels and savegames. However, if a level restarts in a way that erases runes, skill resets to nightmare. In other words, hell skill is treated as a fifth hidden rune that is given when the player selects hell skill, and taken away when another skill is selected later, or when all runes get erased from a restart. When hell difficulty is selected at the start level, the gameplay changes do not take effect until the next level, roman1.

Some easy tests to see if you are really in hell difficulty.

Impulses 9 and 255, the weapons and quad cheats, are completely ignored.

Try to change your health via the 'give h <xxx>' cheat. The attempted health change will be overruled and will not take effect.

Enter notarget or noclip cheats. The player dies instantly as soon as they are entered. Flymode will kill the player if he moves, and godmode will kill the player the moment damage is taken.

The only cheats that work in hell difficulty are the ammo cheats because they are a pain to stop and not worth the trouble to fix. Besides, with god, health, and weapon cheats gone; the player can give himself as much ammo as he wants, and it probably will not save him from death.

There is an impulse that will force Hell difficulty, impulse 77. This will force skill to be set at 4 until the impulse 77 is invoked again or when the player touches a setskill trigger.