Map on the Edge of Forever

[monaster]

@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?

Just me being conservative and anxious. I usually tend to interpret "designed for" in terms of "tested with that version but might as well work with an older one", my bad. That's why I proposed adding an "only" to your description so in case there are other people as stupid as me, that they won't fall for 1.30 and keep wondering why they can't get your great map to work. By the way, just played through it, I only found one misaligned texture to be quite obvious the rest is -as said- great. Took me about 30 minutes to restore power everywhere and find 6 skulls, 40 minutes to find 9 skulls, and 1:20 h to find that damn last skull!
Don't let yourself get hired by id the community would miss your maps.

[Anthem]

@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?

Just me being conservative and anxious. I usually tend to interpret "designed for" in terms of "tested with that version but might as well work with an older one", my bad. That's why I proposed adding an "only" to your description so in case there are other people as stupid as me, that they won't fall for 1.30 and keep wondering why they can't get your great map to work. By the way, just played through it, I only found one misaligned texture to be quite obvious the rest is -as said- great. Took me about 30 minutes to restore power everywhere and find 6 skulls, 40 minutes to find 9 skulls, and 1:20 h to find that damn last skull!
Don't let yourself get hired by id the community would miss your maps.

Pff, if ID hired sock it would be one of the best things ever to happen to quake.

[sock]

@monaster, I am still surprised you were using version 1.3 but I am glad you finally upgraded. The latest pointrelease is certainly much better on limits but I still found a way of breaking things. Did you get a chance to record any demo's? Also what was the last skull you were stuck on?

@Anthem, 20 times! wow that is a lot, I've lost count of the amount of times I have been staring at that map, I was very happy to finally finish it! The working at id thing is not that easy, I am euro person and the quantity of available american work visa's are very low and soon run out. There are plenty of cool opportunities elsewhere around the world.

[Infernis]

Offtopic:

Which raises the question, what is Sock doing lately? I only remember you leaving Raven right?

[Anthem]

Now it's more like 30...

[monaster]

@monaster, I am still surprised you were using version 1.3 but I am glad you finally upgraded. The latest pointrelease is certainly much better on limits but I still found a way of breaking things. Did you get a chance to record any demo's? Also what was the last skull you were stuck on?

The first time I played through moteof I didn't record any demo. Meanwhile I completed your level in something like 7 minutes at my third or fourth attempt, recorded it too, but until I beat obsidian's 3:40, I don't dare to upload it anywhere
*no spoiler alert*
Besides I was missing obsidian's skull #4 seen in his speed run, this one is pretty nasty.
*no spoiler alert end*

[EDIT: corrected grammar]

[Shadowdane]

Sock- Great map... I love it!! Really amazing you did this with Q3. I remember trying to do some various weird shit with switches and triggers. I gave up as the crap was too frustrating.

I'm almost tempted to look at the source for this, but I bet I wouldn't be able to make heads or tales of it. lol

[monaster]

from lvl-world:

@zihaben, this map will ONLY work with point release 1.32b+. It really needs to be mentioned in this review.

Greets to zihaben, being just as stupid as me!
Oh, about the misaligned texture I've mentioned a few posts earlier: when looking out of the final "room" (I just don't want to spoil anything) through the "ceiling" you can spot it, it's one of the brick textures.

Edit: Made quote work.

[sock]

@Shadowdane, you should have a peak at the forever source map file, it is not too complicated. I might help out with your own projects. Thanks for the comments and shacknews link.

@monaster, it amazes me that people are not running the latest patched version of Q3, I can't understand why anyone would want to run an older version. The map is borderline crazy on most Q3 limits and it seems the lvl reviewer had the latest version of Q3, probably why no mention of version problems. Should be fixed now.

[GT-Agressor]

my lame demo )

http://rapidshare.com/files/371809575/m ... _.rar.html

[Bliccer]

Astonishing Map, in a positive way, of course.
Always wanted to create something like this myself. Of course it is hard if you don't know this shader/texture replacing stuff. The puzzles are cool, but still don't have all skulls. I will find them, but without the tube link. Like Pat I also turned off cg_draw2d. Didn't know that there is text included. Solved the puzzles myself anyway. I love adventures!

@sock: Defraggers even put start and stop timers into test_bigbox...

[Anthem]

Astonishing Map, in a positive way, of course.
Always wanted to create something like this myself. Of course it is hard if you don't know this shader/texture replacing stuff. The puzzles are cool, but still don't have all skulls. I will find them, but without the tube link. Like Pat I also turned off cg_draw2d. Didn't know that there is text included. Solved the puzzles myself anyway. I love adventures!

@sock: Defraggers even put start and stop timers into test_bigbox...

Yeah, haha. Test_bigbox is a bit much.

[skinNCNmaster]

its lacking in reward effects, its the most complex q3map ive ever seen puzzle wize, and wow yeah the youtube run through was pretty amazing, but at the same time,it seems to lack something...... not sure though, it makes a great trial, but it has no prizes.... or pretty stage completion effects or something that would entity up in another manner, like youve done very complex things with buttons and triggers, hows about transferring some of that complexity into effects of some kind interactive...

been playing wizard101 a lot lately and ADMIRE their magical effects and environmentals and par tickle effects.

aside from that, it feels missing a bit of rough contrast, like a stark stone color contrast or something, it feels very full of one color, which is not bad or anything, im volun tear-ing my open yawn

[Anthem]

its lacking in reward effects, its the most complex q3map ive ever seen puzzle wize, and wow yeah the youtube run through was pretty amazing, but at the same time,it seems to lack something...... not sure though, it makes a great trial, but it has no prizes.... or pretty stage completion effects or something that would entity up in another manner, like youve done very complex things with buttons and triggers, hows about transferring some of that complexity into effects of some kind interactive...

been playing wizard101 a lot lately and ADMIRE their magical effects and environmentals and par tickle effects.

aside from that, it feels missing a bit of rough contrast, like a stark stone color contrast or something, it feels very full of one color, which is not bad or anything, im volun tear-ing my open yawn

The prize is the map imo. That and the hope of another..

[sock]

it feels missing a bit of rough contrast, like a stark stone color contrast or something, it feels very full of one color, which is not bad or anything

Originally I had strong contrasting colours but I wanted to use the colour to highlight parts of the level which are part of the puzzles instead. So I moved the basic palette to brown/grey so the blue/yellow stuff was easier to see. The map was designed to work with vanilla Q3 and sadly most engine limits were hit very early on which restricted what effects could be done without creating a MOD. I can understand you want more 'magic' effects but I did not want to go over the top with particle explosions, so I decided to use subtle shaders and sound effects instead. The ambient soundscape is completely missing in the youtube video and can only be appreciated by playing the map with headphones on.

@Anthem, it is very unlikely I will do anymore to this map series because it really needs a MOD to create any better puzzles. Unfortunately I dont have the time to learn Q3 engine coding at the moment and a project of this scope needs a team of people. I am very happy with the reaction the map generated and it shows there is a place for puzzle oriented maps.

[sock]

[lvlshot]http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/ma ... of_ql1.jpg[/lvlshot]

I have been experimenting with QL recently (only had browser access last couple of weeks) and was curious about what I could do with the browser engine. I thought I would try and see if Edge of Forever would work and to my surprise it mostly does ... except for the shader remap commands. I can understand why ID left the remap code out of QL, it is prone to problems and can be abused causing engine crashes with client/server packet overflow errors.

I had to convert all the WAV files to OGG and include a couple of extra assets I used by mistake from Q3 (I know copyright issues, but it is only 3 textures and 1 sound file) I was surprised the browser loaded all the high resolution textures, sound files, coped with all the entity logic I created and allocated enough memory to load the map correctly. If only the shader remap commands would work, QL would be awesome for offline puzzle maps... If anyone is curious and wants to play the map inside of a browser here is the new pk3 file.

QL pk3 : http://www.simonoc.com/files/maps/q3/mo ... al2_ql.zip

If you don't know how to play offline custom maps with QuakeLive then you need to check the QL forums. There is a browser plugin or you have to manually place the pk3 in the right folder and make the pk3 read only. QL does housekeeping on its folders before running so you need to prevent it! Launch an offline/practice game with no bots, bring down the console and manually load the map ... Bingo! Puzzle mode!

[Silicone_Milk]

When you think it can't get cooler, this smacks you on the back of the head.

I wasn't even aware you could run custom maps in QL. Nice.

[roughrider]

Soon as I have a few minutes away from this other map I am looking at, I plan to dl this and run through it, sock. Good to see you man, been a long time.

[Anthem]

Hehe. I am not a big fan of QLive, but that really was a cool idea.

[sock]

I have always wondered about the idea of 3D scripting with the logic functions being defined as 3D shapes. A couple of years ago I started experimenting with a small set of entities to see what stuff I could create and the initial tests were a lot of fun.

Eventually the test maps turned into a huge single player puzzle map called Edge of Forever which consequently took forever to finish. Afterwards I was going to write an article about the puzzles in the map and then I realized, no one would be interested, the project was a crazy idea to start with!

After two years of avoiding the idea I recently found the time and energy to finish writing the article on puzzle logic I promised. Funny enough it turned out exactly how I imagined it would ... barking crazy!

http://www.simonoc.com/pages/articles/puzzlelogic1.htm

A big thank you to PJW for helping me with the proof reading of the document

[Bliccer]

Really nice to read, as every tut/aticle on your site.

[quaker82]

Hi. Can any body share TEST_BIGBOX.PK3, please?

[CZghost]

No need, its content is already part of pak0.pk3