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Q1SP: Arrogant Erratum/The Kuras Stronghold
So mid-last year, NewHouse contacted me out of the blue to ask if I wanted to be the guest mapper on his Blue episode. Since he's always been a good friend, despite not mapping for this game for ages, I took him up on it.

Despite me asking if I could keep my own "director's cut" of these levels for id1, I didn't release them here or on Quaddicted (um, some of you might know why). I was playing them again tonight and decided they deserve letting people know they exist at least. Consider it like an appetizer for Blue (which is still one of my favorite things to come out of this scene, by the way).

Two levels, plus a start map, plus three new music tracks by Immorpher. Install as a mod. The second map requires a source port, but it's all id1. They're fairly big, certainly by my standards, and I tinkered a lot with bits like monsterless areas, underwater combat, levitation, homaging older levels, traps, etc.

Download: https://mariteaux.somnolescent.net/quake/arrogant-erratum/arrogant.zip

Screenshots:
arrogant1_big.jpg
arrogant2_big.jpg
arrogant3_big.jpg
 
Thank you for creating these two, it is nice to have original maps available to be played before hand. Lots of voidy dreamy vibes and action to blast through* 
 
Unique otherworldly feeling. Thanks for sharing. 
Mixed Bag But Fun 
Arrogant Erratum:
Lots of interesting bits, definitely mysterious and ominous feeling. Teleports were confusing. There were whole areas that were easily skippable by mistake (not counting the secrets of course). I was quite surprised to exit with almost 100 kills left. The areas I did skip though, were...um...well...I suppose you have to use your old old poorly made map scraps eventually, it's just usual to update them a bit methinks. Even still, it added to the overall mysterious vibe. Felt incomplete in places though, even if this helped the mysteriousness. The underwater section was good, very cool progression. Never seen someone require the Thunderbolt to kill zombies before, not in that way anyways ;)

The Kuras Stronghold:
Some quite amazing traps and jumping floaty bits...loved all of this. This was quite fun. The progression was confusing at times, same as Arrogant Erratum. Felt like most of the level was a secret area...or was it? Don't take this wrong, I love it when maps dramatically blur the line between "this is normal map" and "this is secret area" or have large secret areas with enemies in them. Fun stuff, also adds to the mystery. Could have benefited from some slight variation in texturing to aid with wayfinding.

Potemkin:
This looks familiar. Downright impossible unless you come back to it later after Kuras, but didn't provide anything new compared to the portion that was in Kuras. Tricksy tricksy....but maybe not intentional. Lots of things like this were hard to tell or read, again, helps the confusing mysterious vibe but won't be for everyone.

Overall, brutally hard. Very mysterious.
Also, love blue! 
Mysterious Is Good With Me! 
Arrogant's all over the place, by design admittedly. I kinda meant it to be like stitching together old memories like dreams sometimes do, hence going from the start map to E1M4 to the two teleporter areas, which actually aren't my map scraps! They're little homages to two very old custom Quake levels, Anoxia and the Forsaken Citadel. They're technically terrible but I love them anyway.

Potemkin's just me working around Quake's limits. I wanted to teleport the player right to the end without their gear should they pick the Hard hallway (hence the "arrogant erratum", because I play on Hard and get my ass kicked all the time...), but then I had to split Arrogant and Kuras into two maps since they were originally one and it got too big. So that became a third to keep the effect.

There's lots of little areas in both of these that I love a whole lot, especially the underwater bit in Arrogant and the crusher bit in Kuras. So satisfying to throw a bunch of death knights into the press and watch them explode.

Thanks for playing so far guys. If NewHouse ever taps me again for map stuff, I'll be at it again. 
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