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An Episode 3 themed map

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  • #16
    Adding custom textures is pretty easy, and isn't modding quake (at least in the sense it does not require any new code to be compiled). If you're mapping fever keeps up, one day you will want to make and add your own textures...when that day comes I will be more than happy to help.

    As for the monsters walking problem, I would just leave the hell knight bridge alone. Or make the hell knight a demon that can simply hop over the bridge. Or you could even add a monster jump trigger to make the hell knight lunge at the player, skipping over sections of the bridge...

    For the shambler room, if you simplify the geometry of the bars in the floor to a simple grid of squares spaced no further than 11 quake units on all sides, the shambler will never have to cross a distance greater than 15.55 units (the hyposyenuse of a right triangle with sides that are 11 units in length.) won't look as pretty, but it should theoretically solve the problem. Might be worth trying just to see...hell, maybe I'll test it tonigh when I get home from work, as long as I don't have to shovel any more damned snow off my deck lol
    'Replacement Player Models' Project

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    • #17
      Ok sorry this is a bit later than I had anticipated, but here are the changes I've made.

      For Hard/Nightmare: Around half of the ordinary medkits have been changed to rotten, and some of them have been removed or their position has been altered slightly.

      A small amount of ammo has been removed or downgraded from large boxes to normal.

      I want ammo to be a little bit more scarce but not to the point of being unforgiving. I don't like running out of ammo (entirely) to be the reason that players are having a hard time with the level. I'd rather the monsters and the environment give you trouble, with just enough ammo to deal with them if you're careful about which weapons you use.

      For Normal and Easy: The larger ammo boxes, normal healthkits, and other item placements that were once available on Hard will only appear on Normal and Easy now, thus making the lower difficulties more forgiving.

      For Easy: This change will only appear if you play on Easy mode. The armor pickups (excluding the secret yellow armor) have been upgraded. So the green armor before the Shambler fight has been changed to yellow, and the yellow armor in the outdoors courtyard has been changed to red.

      I have not touched the monster placements but I may consider some alterations for Easy difficulty for anyone that may find the map too hard.

      So in summary, Hard mode should be a bit more unforgiving now, but hopefully not frustratingly so. It's getting difficult for me to be able to properly gauge just how challenging the level is since I know exactly what to expect, so hopefully I haven't made it too hard but I doubt that. Quake players tend to be pretty quick and clever!

      I've also fixed the monster teleports so that they are silent now, but I can't seem to figure out how to make them have the " sparkle " effect when they appear. Currently they just look they're coming out of thin air which looks a bit odd. If anyone knows how to fix this let me know!

      In addition to these changes, I've added a new secret area that will allow you to go back to the start of the level. Due to the reward that the secret offers, I haven't made it too hard to find.

      Here is the new download: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_...041Q2R2Z0djak0

      There's still no name unfortunately so I'm open to suggestions. And as always, feedback is appreciated!


      Originally posted by Dutch View Post
      Adding custom textures is pretty easy, and isn't modding quake (at least in the sense it does not require any new code to be compiled). If you're mapping fever keeps up, one day you will want to make and add your own textures...when that day comes I will be more than happy to help.
      Cool! Thanks for the offer I will let you know if I ever need help with textures!

      Originally posted by Dutch View Post
      As for the monsters walking problem, I would just leave the hell knight bridge alone. Or make the hell knight a demon that can simply hop over the bridge. Or you could even add a monster jump trigger to make the hell knight lunge at the player, skipping over sections of the bridge...
      In most cases he can actually cross the bridge, but has difficulty doing so. It is a bit of an issue but yeah I think I will just leave it alone.

      Originally posted by Dutch View Post
      For the shambler room, if you simplify the geometry of the bars in the floor to a simple grid of squares spaced no further than 11 quake units on all sides, the shambler will never have to cross a distance greater than 15.55 units (the hyposyenuse of a right triangle with sides that are 11 units in length.) won't look as pretty, but it should theoretically solve the problem. Might be worth trying just to see...hell, maybe I'll test it tonigh when I get home from work, as long as I don't have to shovel any more damned snow off my deck lol
      If people think it's a big enough problem I'll definitely look into doing something about the bars in the floor. For now, he can still fight pretty well and hit you from any distance you stand in the room. I think a bigger problem is that people can just leave the fight if they decide to BUT I'm totally fine with this. I think the fight is completely doable in addition to offering you a reward, but there has been plenty of Quake maps I've played with some pretty damn unforgiving Shambler placements that make things frustrating. So if people decide " no thanks! " then I'm cool with that. I will get a bit more devious with any future levels that I plan to make, but for now I'm happy with the overall difficulty of this level given the planned slot I have for it if I were to do a full episode.

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      • #18
        @shambler fight

        I couldn't agree more. The option to yell "shit!" and run for your life is almost never used by mappers, which is a shame. A good Quake map should focus more on surviving than killing everything IMO.

        @difficulty changes

        I like your approach to this. If the map is still a bit 'easy' so to speak, that's fine...you can always make it an earlier map if you include it in an episode.

        @map name

        If you are planning on making an episode, you might decide on a theme for the episode. This will aid in naming the map. Example: will the next map be a large frotress or bastion? Maybe this current map you've already made is the outter limits of the fortress, a 'gate' so to speak. You could add 'gate' into the name. For example, if the whole episode takes place in "Graywalk Bastion", then you could name this map "Graywalk Gate" or "Graywalk Rampart".

        I'll give the update a try tomorrow night.
        'Replacement Player Models' Project

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        • #19
          Nice work! I'll give it a go later, and provide better feedback. But it's looking awesome so far.

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          • #20
            I forgot to address your teleport "sparkle" effect problem. This is likely an engine thing, not the map. What engine do you use? Do you have particles disabled?
            'Replacement Player Models' Project

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            • #21
              Originally posted by Dutch View Post
              If you are planning on making an episode, you might decide on a theme for the episode. This will aid in naming the map. Example: will the next map be a large frotress or bastion? Maybe this current map you've already made is the outter limits of the fortress, a 'gate' so to speak. You could add 'gate' into the name. For example, if the whole episode takes place in "Graywalk Bastion", then you could name this map "Graywalk Gate" or "Graywalk Rampart".

              I'll give the update a try tomorrow night.
              Good idea, but I'm not sure how well I would be able to implement that. Seeing as I'm following the structure and style of the original maps and also their episodes, there isn't going to be much of an overarching visual theme to the levels beyond the texture palette and architecture that I'm using. So each level will be its own self contained place with no relation to the previous one or the next in favor of focusing on gameplay and a consistent visual style.

              However this idea can still be applicable to the feeling of the maps instead of trying to suggest that they represent an actual location. Episode 3 uses a lot of names that imply being underground or in some sort of otherworldly burial grounds ( eg the Tomb of Terror, the Haunted Halls ) and this is something that I'd like to shoot for, but it's difficult to come up with something that doesn't just sound eye-rollingly generic.

              But I get what you're saying. The levels don't actually have to look like a bastion or a rampart, it's more for a sense of continuity I suppose. I'm just rambling my own thoughts about this out loud lol.

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              • #22
                Originally posted by Dutch View Post
                I forgot to address your teleport "sparkle" effect problem. This is likely an engine thing, not the map. What engine do you use? Do you have particles disabled?
                I use Quakespasm and I'm preeetty sure I can see the sparkle effect in stock Quake maps but I may be misremembering. I can check around my settings and console commands to see if I may have something disabled.

                Originally posted by Shadesmaster View Post
                Nice work! I'll give it a go later, and provide better feedback. But it's looking awesome so far.
                Thank you! I'm looking forward to your feedback!

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                • #23
                  Some more thoughts on the name:

                  * You could always go with a Lovecraftian name, like id software did (the Vaults of Zin, The Nameless City to name a couple). "Dunwich Hall"

                  * Better yet, grab a name from Tolkein's universe (Lord of the Rings). "Angband Underkeep". Although with a name like that, you may want to take all the rooms with sky and make them caverns (integrate the metal structures into a rock wall that reaches up high that fades into black, giving the impression of a subterranean environment).

                  * Another not-so-often used word for tomb is 'barrow', which is Norse in origin (if you play Skyrim, you're well aware of this word). 'Shadarak's Barrow'. See what I did there? I included a name within the name. This is becoming a popular trend in recent maps (such as 'Tomb of Fenrir' in Arcane Dimensions...we don't know who Fenrir is/was, giving the map a sense of history/uncertainty...Bethesda does this a lot in Skyrim).
                  'Replacement Player Models' Project

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                  • #24
                    Name it

                    "3 Forgotten Corners: The Tomb"
                    or
                    "Forgotten Corners of 3: The Tomb"

                    Like your map is a forgotten corner of episode 3 and the "The Tomb" part is a subtitle for the map which is more of an example than a suggestion here..
                    http://www.nextgenquake.com

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                    • #25
                      Just played through your update.

                      * Nice job on the 4th secret, that's exactly where I would have put it.
                      * Definitely a little more difficult on hard mode. I personally would remove a few more health boxes and make the last armor (the yellow one near the end) a green armor, or remove it entirely. Just my preference though, I like a challenge. Where the map sits right now is right on par with id software difficulty for a mid-episode map.

                      I don't think there's much more you could do to this map improvement-wise...any changes now would purely be opinion-based alterations. The gameplay is solid, and that's what's most important. Good work!
                      'Replacement Player Models' Project

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                      • #26
                        Originally posted by Dutch View Post
                        Some more thoughts on the name:

                        * You could always go with a Lovecraftian name, like id software did (the Vaults of Zin, The Nameless City to name a couple). "Dunwich Hall"

                        * Better yet, grab a name from Tolkein's universe (Lord of the Rings). "Angband Underkeep". Although with a name like that, you may want to take all the rooms with sky and make them caverns (integrate the metal structures into a rock wall that reaches up high that fades into black, giving the impression of a subterranean environment).

                        * Another not-so-often used word for tomb is 'barrow', which is Norse in origin (if you play Skyrim, you're well aware of this word). 'Shadarak's Barrow'. See what I did there? I included a name within the name. This is becoming a popular trend in recent maps (such as 'Tomb of Fenrir' in Arcane Dimensions...we don't know who Fenrir is/was, giving the map a sense of history/uncertainty...Bethesda does this a lot in Skyrim).
                        I like the idea of using Tolkein-esque names. Angband Underkeep sounds cool, as does the idea of it being in a caven. But seeing as I'm trying to keep things in line with the feel of Episode 3 as much as I can help it, I'll probably be keeping the sky texture. That being said, Lovecrafian names are also something I would like to go for, but I don't know terribly much about the lore beyond a handful of games I've played and some other bits of information I've picked up over the years, so I'm worried I may accidentally pick something that has an entirely different meaning than I intended. In this case, it might be best to just come up with something Lovecraftian sounding, instead of using a pre-existing name.

                        Originally posted by Dutch View Post
                        Just played through your update.

                        * Nice job on the 4th secret, that's exactly where I would have put it.
                        * Definitely a little more difficult on hard mode. I personally would remove a few more health boxes and make the last armor (the yellow one near the end) a green armor, or remove it entirely. Just my preference though, I like a challenge. Where the map sits right now is right on par with id software difficulty for a mid-episode map.

                        I don't think there's much more you could do to this map improvement-wise...any changes now would purely be opinion-based alterations. The gameplay is solid, and that's what's most important. Good work!
                        Thanks for the input! I feel like at this point I'm pretty happy with the overall balance, as I discussed earlier about the map slot being early ( probably the third level ) I don't want items to become too strained yet, so I'll probably be leaving the placements as is now. I'm going to post another update soon that will (hopefully) finally include a name for the map, as well as a couple other minor tweaks. The most notable of these being that, at the beginning of the level, I swapped the position of the Ogre and the Death Knight with one another. I feel that this allows both of them to work better. The Ogre can shoot grenades from across the bridge if he decides it's too much work to cross it, and the Death Knight can start swinging at you in close quarters as soon as he sees you.

                        Another change, and someone might not like this, but I decided to get rid of the lava pit near the first Nailgun. Something about it was nagging me from the beginning. I think it made the area look too busy, and I feel like I like it better now with the barren floor there instead. It allows your eyes to focus on the Scrags instead of being drawn to the detail of the floor right away. Theoretically, lol.

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                        • #27
                          Ok a new update is out, this time finally with a name! I threw together a little word-bank and with the help of my boyfriend we both agreed that " Unholy Ossuary " is a good name. It feels to us like it suits Quake quite well and the theme I was going for ( something to do with a crypt or tomb ) while managing to avoid sounding like a ripoff of the original maps (hopefully.)

                          This should be the final update for the map for a while, provided no awful bugs are discovered anytime soon. In the meantime I will continue working on other levels until I have something new to present.

                          For clarification, the bsp is still named as RuneWorld03, but ingame the map is referred to as Unholy Ossuary.

                          Download: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_e...p6OGl0Rnc/view

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                          • #28
                            Very nice work MissBubbles, runic theme is my favourite so It was mandatory to test your map, and I hope you make more, maybe even an episode, it would be awesome
                            Make Quake Great Again

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                            • #29
                              Originally posted by Blood Vengeance View Post
                              Very nice work MissBubbles, runic theme is my favourite so It was mandatory to test your map, and I hope you make more, maybe even an episode, it would be awesome
                              Thanks! My goal is to eventually make an episode but we'll see how that goes. For now, I will take it slow and keep making individual maps with the intention of them eventually slotting into an episode together.

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                              • #30
                                @names

                                When I want interesting names I use google translate. I made a Cthulhu head for somebody here (maybe dutch, I forget). It came out OK but it looked more like a race of squid people. I went to google translate, typed "squid man" and clicked through some of the more abstract languages. By combining results from 2 different languages I wound up with

                                Kalmar Eniyan (literally "squid man" from 2 languages)


                                It's just an idea that might help you create a name. Even if you didn't find THE name that way, you may find something interesting that you could tweak. I could have just as easily taken Kalmar Eniyan and tweaked it to Kalmare Enis... or something.
                                Last edited by MadGypsy; 02-15-2017, 07:50 PM.
                                http://www.nextgenquake.com

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