Map on the Edge of Forever

[sock]

@MrLego, hey did you record any demos?

@Johnny Law, part of the challenge for me was to try and create a puzzle orientated single player experience using just vanilla q3 and that alone is a crazy idea. The main problem is that you are limited to 255 brush based entities and that soon goes when you are using Q3A logic.

Often the type of puzzles I wanted to create were just not possible because there is no engine support for toggled states (I did via a hack) and all the moveable entities are two position only. Even thou rotation is supported, it cannot be toggled on/off and draws regardless of portals! The list of problems with the vanilla Q3 engine are too much without a MOD and I would prefer to spend my time working with a better engine.

If you have any discussion or questions about the map, fire away. I think the 5 people that the map was designed for have played it by now :P

@obsidian, thanks. You should check out the demo's that are avilable for the map at func_message board They are amazing to watch if you know the map really well.

@Foo, LALALA I can't hear you! :P

@Silicone_Milk, hope you like it, record a demo!

@g0th-, yeah the right hand puzzle for the double door is designed to prevent random completion. You got to pay attention to what is going on and try/observe switch settings.

@AEon, nah vanilla Q3 is too limited on entity types and quantity. Once I release the source files, maybe someone else will pick up the torch and run with it. By all means, chat about puzzle construction in this thread. I am sure the majority of people have seen it by now. The Q3 community is really small <100 lurkers.

@monaster, umm I say at the top of the thread 'This map is designed for Quake 3 Arena 1.32 and IOQuake 3' so I am not sure why you are running an old version?

[cityy]

@citty, wow your demo is amazing, Ive got no idea how you got the hidden stuff so quickly!

Well as I said earlier in the thread I had some problems with the first two puzzles (according to your site). I solved the left room's puzzle randomly and stucked at the right room. I spent like 45 minutes in the first rooms, watched everything and found most of the skulls there kinda randomly - that was my first try. Then I watched the youtube video to figure out how the puzzles that I didnt understand work. (I only watched until the second puzzle - this is the truth! ) Then I started again - that's why the first rooms went pretty quick - All the other stuff I found was just random. As you have seen I had some problems finding the trigger below the lift.. that one was cheeky.

I used to play zelda on my N64/NGC and kingdom hearts on the ps2 - there were a lot of this kind of puzzles in these games and I enjoy them a lot! Still a great map - even my friends who usually only play cod4 enjoyed it and they were impressed by the visuals.

[AEon]

Finally found the last scull... I had reckoned with a lot but not with two sculls being in relatively close prolixity.

indirect spoiler

• I had fully expected to find a scull in the "panoramic view", opposite the lift that leads to the planetarium room.
• And I also had expected second one to be placed somewhere on the outside walls (the walk-able balcony area).
  

Concerning the pacing towards the end. I found it a bit strange that your planetarium room did not have a more central role, i.e. I had fully expected to only be able to enter this room after solving the "yellow lift" and the "angled spools" (activate generator) puzzles. And that the final "showdown" would be the puzzle concerning the planetarium. Alas it was only deco... The "back room" TP, out the of main building was a bit of a let-down, felt a bit unglamorous, if I may say so.

More trial and error and a bit of thinking, makes most puzzles actually logical (i.e. the metal bars from ceiling and the yellow "spools"). The other generator puzzles, IMO, are still pretty trial and error.

indirect spoiler

• Something I was very surprised about was the "yellow spool" puzzle. Here I was expecting to turn *on* all of them, not *off*. Change of pace? Or does it have a "hidden" logic that was discernible by looking at them very closely...?
  

Awesome voice acting, BTW.

Only "bug" I noted were the many sparklies (30+) - but it seems I am the only one (old ATi card, old drivers) who actually sees them?

Really beautiful map.

Thank you for making this map, it was a wonderful, visually stunning and fun experience.

[^Ghost]

great map looks amazing! very beautiful work sock!!

i think this map would work great as an offline defrag map.. you have a start and a finish ;D

[Pat Howard]

Sock, it's beauuuutiful...

[InsaneKid]

>>>



edit:
cool, now i understand those switches rly cool! (Y)

[neoplan]

Really great Map sock!
How did you create the the sounds?

[Pat Howard]

Aaaaaah! No way! I was stuck in the cave for about a half hour playing without /cgdraw2d on until I realized the level was over. I might have realized that door was not actually a door if it showed bullet holes but the phong shading on there leaves no marks! Oh well.

Really groundbreaking map, Sock. Production levels are light years beyond anything I've ever seen in Q3 land. The Guardian voice especially sells the experience ( to whoever did the voice acting) and the machinery is amazing. A few words about my experience:

Like some other people here, I had the most problems with the first puzzle on the right hand side. (Just out of curiosity, how many people went left before they went right?) I managed to solve the left side without actually realizing what I was doing at first and then when I got to the right it took about 45 mins. before I got the right idea. I was surprised at how subtle some parts of those first puzzles were (like the switches only working when their lights are on), but then, this could just be that we are not used to this kind of thing in Q3A and that I'm embarrassingly bad at puzzle maps.

I had no problem with any of the skulls. I did find it a little weird that your whole planetarium room was dedicated to the 10th skull, which kind of went against the easter-egg status of the skulls you had established in the beginning. That whole room is so amazing though that I could care less!

Now that I think about it though, I really don't think the whole level should have revolved around the skulls the way it did in the end. The way you had the first few skulls set up, I figured they would just be a secondary objective and the level's true end would lie in the finishing of the last puzzle.

I also thought the progression itself would be more linear, but there is actually some connectivity here, which I am personally not a fan of because I always worry that I'm skipping something.

Would've been cool also to have some different kinds of puzzles, like Mario-esque moving platform puzzles and keys that have to be found and brought to locked doors. While the machinery is awesome aesthetically, it is very difficult to give it much variety with Q3A's limited trigger system (especially since it lacks toggling) and the puzzles can often be solved randomly.

I never thought of episodic levels as a work around for the 255 entity limit. Smart thinking there. I might just try a similar idea myself someday... but for now I'll stick to normal game modes .

Anyway, those are just some extra ideas I had while playing. I had an absolutely amazing time playing through this thing and I've already spent hours looking around at all the detail. Congratulations, congratulations, congratulations!

-pat

@obs: Yeah I just did /cgdraw2d 0 to get rid of the HUD after the first puzzle because I thought I didn't need the hints and was too lazy to type in all the specific commands. Serves me right .

[obsidian]

Did you disable the on-screen messages as well? There were lots of hints telling you what you were supposed to do.

[sock]

[lvlshot]http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/ma ... urce3l.jpg[/lvlshot]
The Edge of Forever - Source files

Web : http://www.simonoc.com/pages/design/map ... source.htm

The map source file is very large (10Mb) because I have included 200+ ASE files with relevant map files and a few of those are linked together to form other files. The ASE naming convention is a bit strange but the level was developered over 8 months with 156 map versions so some stuff will probably be in the wrong place. I recommend you turn on camera clipping in the editor, otherwise you will not be able to move the camera around.

The map is compressed into a small space in the editor so that the light grid has a better density on surfaces. I have included map compile options in the readme file and it works fine with q3map2 version 2.16. All the Q3A logic stuff is high above the map and is colour coded via textures to show the different functions used. Once I get a free moment I will sit down and go through some of the logic stuff because unless you are into scripting or coding it will be very difficult to follow.

@AEon, I just ran out of entities and could not add anymore to the map. I thought of at least another 5 places I could of created more secrets but Q3A has hard code limits. I could of got around this limitation with a MOD, but I wanted this to work with base Q3 as well.

The pacing at the end is weird because after I created puzzles 1-5 I hit the engine entity limits and had no chance to create anything else. The map had already been cut down in size twice before and I just wanted to finish the map and move on. The orrery is my nod to 'Dark Crystal' the film and is just something fun to find, a visual treat for playing the map close to the end. I originally wanted the orrery to rotate and be something you solved by aligning the planets but that is just light years ahead of vanilla Q3.

I tried to make every teleporter unique in style so that it was easy to describe them to someone else. The teleporter back to The Guardian room is suppose to be very industrial and feel like it was manmade. It certainly does not look as special as the Guardian portal. It probably could of had more detail added to it because I did not spend a much time on that room compared to others.

Puzzle 1 is usually completed by people running around like a headless chicken madly pecking at switches. It seems to be a favourite style for people and FPS games.

Puzzle 2 is the tricky one that actually requires players to observe, think and stop playing the map like a traditional Q3 map. It is the one puzzle that catches everyone out because you have to take note of the visual clues and re-use switches. This is very similar in style to puzzle 4 with multiple switches being re-used several times to complete something.

Puzzle 3 / 5 can easily be completed by random chicken effect. The real fun is to try and spot the patterns and complete it logically in two moves from beginning to end. Sadly these puzzles show quiet clearly how vanilla Q3 is just terrible for puzzle creation.

Puzzle 4 is a scripted event with some button mashing to advance each stage. No special puzzle logic, it is just something cool to look and listen too as the machine changes and develops into something else. I had a lot of fun making this one and all the people that saw it for the first time, always had a grin on their face when it was complete.

@^Ghost, if you want to convert parts of this to defrag maps then have a look at the source. Hope you have fun with the map file and come back to Q3W with screenshots!

@InsaneKid, OMG that screenshot is ugly, you really need to fix your version of quake to have a lower gamma setting or just get a better monitor. Hope you enjoyed the map glowing at you!

@neoplan, all the sounds are custom made from raw sound files. I used a crazy amount of them and I really should credit all the different sources but I don't know which one's I have used anymore. I downloaded a ton of stuff from http://www.freesound.org/ and I recommend you check the website out. Amazing stuff.

@Pat Howard, I have been waiting for your feedback and I was wondering what you thought of it. The Guardian voice is by a friend of mine and it was worth the wait to get it recorded. It really makes the map shine and makes the environment/story much more interesting. The map is full of subtle clues to how things work and ways to help anyone solve puzzles. I think the clues should of been stronger (visually) but that is probably why nowadays anything that is remotely interactive or useful has a huge glow around it

Thanks for the kind words everyone, it does mean a lot to me after such a long time in development.

[fKd]

played it, loved it. nice work sir

[obsidian]

*Spoiler Alert*

Moteof Done Quick - Completed in 3:40 (even after a few screw-ups)

[D Scrama]

I love every pixel!

[v1l3]

That turned out really nice Sock! After watching the YouTube video I'm understanding why I had such a hard time..it's completely genious. I'm really amazed by it.

[Johnny Law]

A few more specific comments since we're onto a new page and clearly in the Spoiler Zone.

AEon already read my mind about pacing and the orrery, and Pat H. about the way that in the end the map felt like it was more about the skull-finding than the puzzles. So skipping past that and onto new ground:

One of the great things about exploration in games is when you get to break the pattern... find an area with a different feel and/or manage to get into a place where "you're not supposed to be". When I saw the cave area through the floor near the beginning, that was where I wanted to get to, even though the indoor rooms were cool. When it became pretty clear that I needed to collect all the skulls to get out there, that was my motivation. I'm guessing that initial glimpse of the cave wasn't accidental. Oh also, seeing that area through the back of the Guardian portal was nifty (and frustrating).

Some of the secret areas in the map gave tiny bits of a "getting behind the scenes" vibe as well. More of that would have been great! ... and, it's too bad the player doesn't get a chance to climb around on the outside ledges.

(Speaking of which, sort of, I'm impressed that apparently you created a whole duplicate version of the outside of the castle just to be viewed through the portal.)

[pjw]

Moteof Done Quick - Completed in 3:40

Holy crap. Nicely done (mostly--I made an audible "awww..." sound when you fell back down into the four-way puzzle pit. ).

Sorry sock, I promised you a speedrun, but I don't think I'm going to beat that...

[sock]

@Johnny Law, The Guardian portal was suppose to the past on the front and the future on the back. The original idea was the player was going back in time to correct a problem with the place and eventually move on to the future place (the cave). Due to engine limitations the map changed so many times that most of the original stuff got changed around.

The skulls were suppose to be an optional secret and the primary reason for the place was the puzzles. After a lot of different prototype maps I soon discovered that trying to create interesting complex puzzles was always going to be next to impossible with the functionless Q3 entity set. After enjoying placing the skulls in cool secret locations I felt that they were too good to be missed out on and made them the second objective instead.

Ideally the whole map should of explained things better and had more visual clues of what was going on, but so many things are missing with the Q3 engine that I just wanted to finish this map and move on. I did not want to leave something like this unfinished because so much work and effort had been poured into it.

@pjw, what!?! you know that demo can be beaten!

[Anthem]

This map is brilliant. This has instantly become one of my favorite maps simply because of its creativity. The game play is similar to quake 1 in that it's single player, rather linear and has secrets. I enjoyed this map so much... What would be interesting is if you added a timer for defrag so we could really time how fast we are doing it.

Well done, mate.

[obsidian]

I don't play defrag, but do you mean something like this?:

/cg_drawtimer 1

[^Ghost]

not quite..

adding start/stop timer entities in radiant linked to a trigger which can be found here .. http://q3a.ath.cx/?editing=df_install

[Anthem]

not quite..

adding start/stop timer entities in radiant linked to a trigger which can be found here .. http://q3a.ath.cx/?editing=df_install

Indeed. It is essentially a timer that is started and stopped with a trigger at certain locations, so the start could be right after you exit the portal, and the end could be right where it says "To be continued..."

[sock]

@Anthem, I am glad you like it, I hope you enjoyed searching for the skulls. The map only has space for one more player trigger, so it would be impossible to add defrag triggers to this map. The engine limit is 255 and this map has 254.

[Anthem]

@Anthem, I am glad you like it, I hope you enjoyed searching for the skulls. The map only has space for one more player trigger, so it would be impossible to add defrag triggers to this map. The engine limit is 255 and this map has 254.

Haha, what a shame. Indeed, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

[AEon]

Sock,
to "close off" the whole SP map topic, the following may be am interesting "special" for the mappers here in this forum: You should still have all your nicely prepared screenshots that show the development and progress of your map? It could be quite spiffy to create an additional screenshot sub-page on your site, that lets folks browse the progress (mapping history in images). Especially after seeing the finished map, the "old" shots could give interesting insights into how ideas take shape. Short comments added to each shot, explaining a few ideas (at the time) might also be spiffy.

If you have the time, that is.

[obsidian]

Sock, you need to add one more entity in there, "just because" (like a ceiling fan or something)

AEon, when Sock sent me one of his betas, he neglected to tell me that he hadn't completed the ending section of the map (where you fall down the hole and jump through the teleporter). So after bonking my head trying to solve all the puzzles and find all the skulls, I found myself in that pit with a broken teleporter which destination was just back to the same pit. I spent a good amount of time trying to find a way out (thinking it was just another puzzle) until I finally gave up and emailed Sock cursing him for the infinite loop.

Here is my write-up for one of the earlier betas. The layout on the first floor is significantly different (teleporter room that was removed) and the first room with the skull counter didn't exist. The orrery room was added later as well:
http://www.robotrenegade.com/temp/moteof/