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Q1sp Maps That Work Well In Co-op...
gb, onetruepurple and myself have been blasting through a bit of coop q1 this week. i wanted to create a thread to discuss what maps work well and what ones don't, so feel free to contribute...

id1 - naturally, decent, although the spawns in later parts of e4 can get pretty ridiculous

zer - doesn't work at all after the first map, avoid

contract revoked - this didn't seem to work - three of us played and two got stuck in the first room until i got the first key, then none of us could get the silver key in the library for some reason

sm82 - this worked well. mostly focuses around a main area near the start, which has both the NG and SSG so easy to restock on weapons when you die. worth a shot

mexx9 - first map worked a treat; second map unfortunately has a LOT of catch-up running if you die further up the tower, so caution advised. didn't play any further unfortunately although imagine it would improve

czg07 - again large size doesn't always fare best here, if you die there's loads of catching up and it's easy to get lost in if you don't know the layout that well

in short, maps based around a kind of start 'hub' seem to work best, with easy access to weapons, no traps that close rooms behind you and not too much excessive running. we wanted to try warpspasm but after figuring these guidelines we're not so sure :) (unless we enable cheats on the server)

so has anyone played it or thought about playing it & have any ideas or recommendations?
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the biggest problem is that Q1SP dont have a proper server clients that give proper pings for users :|

I wish I could coop more but with pings of 130 is almost impossible... 
Darkplaces 
gb got darkplaces to work as a dedicated server and we could all connect with quakespasm clients. ping seemed fine & very playable on my 10meg connection, not sure what the actual ping was 
Insomnia 
 
 
These maps work great ... all have been heavily coop tested ... again and again and again over the course of 4 years.

http://qexpo.quakedev.com/uploaded/108/10intromap.png

http://www.quake-1.com/files/maps/rquake2full.7z 
 
I think rj's ping was about 60 or slightly less, otp's was 108 when I looked.

My problem with insomnia was really getting killed and having to run back to the front, which took ages. I also get lost because I can't remember it that well to know how I get to point X. I don't have this problem in things like id1 or hipnotic, or recent maps that are perhaps a bit smaller than Insomnia.

Probably going to string individual coop friendly maps together into an episode. Hence why I asked about maplist.txt or something similar at q1.com.

By the way, FitzSDL, including Quakespasm, apparently can't run as a dedicated server. Looks like an oversight :)

WARNING: SDL_WM_GrabInput(SDL_GRAB_ON) failed.
Segmentation fault

This happens. It tries to create a window even if -dedicated is given. Should be an easy fix.

Darkplaces is generally the best choice for a dedicated server though, since even sm82 crashed the proquake server I was running with complaints about too many edicts. Let's not start about running Nehahra or Warpspasm coop.

To allow normal Quake clients to connect to DP, one must give "+sv_protocolname quake" on the command line. Since the renderer isn't running, I didn't notice any lagginess with the DP server. 
 
also Trinca, why not come to #rmq on irc.anynet.org so we can get you cooping with us. :)

Zommg!

Worth a try, right, although ping from Portugal to Northern Germany might indeed be well over 100. 
Sv_gameplayfix_dontuseDPforquake 1 
Hrim's recent big map is great.

You must play Travail. At least e2. 
Dude 
i need to get on there...... 
Otoh 
One could argue having to respawn from the start is an appropriate punishment in coop. It should require proper cooperation (which then also includes backtracking of the team in order to ease up catching up for the respawned player), whereas usually coop games seem to be more like everybody is playing SP on a server. Of course it's needless to say that Quake's lack of distinct coop features/requirements (for it's basically a sort of tacked-on mode) doesn't encourage such a behavior, either. 
 
depends what you want from coop.

A more tactical game (forcing players to do this is not good I think, since that's simply not what Quake is about) or mindless fun.

I think DOOM and Quake are simply not the games for deep tactical teamwork. The focus is on deathmatching at the frontline, basically. You have no medics and no engineers in Quake. 
 
gb my ping to germany is less then 100 :) 80 I think creat a channel in irc.quakenet :p 
That SDL Bug 
is probably my fault because I never really implemented the dedicated server loop. Looks like the Quakespasm gang hasn't, either. 
Tactics Vs Mindless Fun 
what i like about quake is that it's generally a mixture of both. you have your all-out action arena battles but they work best when balanced with slower, tricker moments rather than just being full-on all the time. creeping round maps with low health & trying to survive can be just as - if not more - exciting than balls-to-the-wall action

in mexx9c & insomnia i played cautiously and didn't die once so the respawning + long runs weren't an issue for me.. but i appreciate there are more guns-blazing rambo lemming style players out there (like gb ;p) who prefer to rush through though 
 
lol ;) 
 
I remember all of us were dying quite a lot in sm82 though, so I guess the fact that you didn't die in czg07/mexx9 was due to you knowing those maps inside out.

I constantly ran out of ammo in mexx9, and when I have to axe a shambler, there is a certain chance of getting killed.

Also, someone has to kill the monsters ;-) 
 
ne_marb should work in coop.

the big long elevator ride uncovers a teleporter that leads to the top so you can't get stuck and you can either split up and take both routes at once and get both keys or stick together.

i'm not sure but i believe red777 should be fully coopable.

ne_doom has extra monsters and ammo for coop. you can't get stuck, but it can take some time to get back to where you were after you died cause you might have to take that floating lift all the way up to that room with the spinning blades.

ne_lend, again, won't result in players getting stuck, but they have to go allllll the way around the cavern so it really sucks if you die. 
Warp 
Was built with coop in mind. Originally it was going to have DM as well - the only way to make it work across maps that size was to interlink everything a lot.

I ditched DM when I realised nobody would play it, coop wasn't tested much but the shortcuts are all in there - warpb being the most friendly.

c+d aren't too bad since they use a hub style (d can be passed much quicker if the players split up at the start) but can still require a bit of jogging. 
 
negke suggested the obvious in irc: only use a small portion of a huge map for DM, block off the rest with func_walls.

no need to use the entire giga-map in deathmatch, hence the problem of traversing a huge map fast enough is eliminated.

Similar to your idea of special DM versions of large maps, only simpler.

See dm3rmx for example. 
Yeah 
But I gave up on DM completely seeing as it was a SP pack.

Mentioning blocking off again makes me think of rocket arena, with three arenas inside a single bsp. 
 
we'll have to come to an agreement eventually :)

before 2016.

rocket aREna would be nice. why not. 
 
RA would be a lame compromise. Unless as an additional mode beside standard DM. And don't forget DMSP.

Fixing the levels up for DM isn't so hard in most cases - and it's actually fun, putting some thought into how to realize it most effectively within the limitiations of the SP layout. Admittingly, it can be tricky in large maps. I think it wouldn't be bad if there were means to increase/decrease the scale of the DM layout depending on the number of players (automatically or by vote) - a certain area blocked off for DM, and within that, another smaller area for duels. Of course this probably would be too much work for little gain and not always be possible in every map. Or is this what you meant when mentioning RA (mutiple arenas, but still with items and regular gameplay)? 
RA 
Just an idea. My focus is SP so I won't have time to code it in. Maybe Supa will want to do something, but that'd be up to her - I don't want to foist my stuff on others since we're all in it for the fun.

There's feature creep to consider as well.

On the other hand, we basically scrapped mangling the SP maps to work for DM. Maybe we'll go back and enable it later, once we've got the complete maplist. 
... 
Negke upgrade Watcher -> Member for DM conversion collaborations? 
 
negke is full of good ideas.

Just as a footnote, Episode 1 always supported multiplayer. 
 
coffee ... is a gateway to [creativeness] [and anxiety].
But what drugs are you doing now ? 
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