finished snack2 and actually it was alright, i think the first set starts with a few kinda poop levels which sucks but there are good ones in there too. my impression that the levels were being stretched out with combat encounters is only true for a few of them, and the rest were closer to what i was hoping for. most maps took around 7 mins to complete, which i think is the sweet spot.
there’s also a yang level in here which i didn’t know about until afterwards; it’s alright. i remembered it fondly when i went back through all of them but it’s nothing to write home about.
few levs i liked:
doom of the pharaohs (s1m2): good size, not too many enemies, and each encounter is distinct. in particular there’s a real great fight w a couple ogres and some knights in this funny cramped L-corridor that makes the few enemies real scary and effective, it’s excellent. overall nothing crazy but i had a good time.
volcanoconiosis (s1m4): this feels like the kinda level i wanna see from my students, just a real honest level tryin its best. all this map needs is someone to go over it with a nice tasteful art pass and you got yourself a real winner. good size, good spatial narrative. a solid little level.
bed pasta cheese bomb (s2m3): well, i liked it a whole lot more before i knew what it was called. i was ready to hate this one cos it immediately made me think of arcane dimensions but it’s actually pretty nice. i had a good time bumpin around lookin for secrets, and the map didn’t overstay its welcome. i still think it looks kinda tacky, but the actual geometry and space was enjoyable.
plantbase nugget (s2m4): wow there are some bad names in this set holy moly. i didn’t think much of this one until i went back to it and was like oh yeah i really liked this one! it seems to be kinda broken in one room (or that’s a really weird texture choice) but its central combat space was so so excellent and i really enjoyed returning to it again and again to fight whatever new enemy set was there. really well done.
an even worse place (s2m5): this one feels almost like a more matured and confident volcanoconiosis; really honest and clean geometry, with wonderfully distinct and memorable spaces, while also being very stylish, coherent, and tasteful. this map trod the dangerous ground between disorienting and expansive without actually being either. it’s quite a small space which constantly loops back on itself, but because each area was so well defined i never felt lost or like there was too much stuff to hold in my head all at once. this is maybe my favourite map from this set? i can’t really do it justice with screenshots, you just gotta play it.
vitriol by grue (s3m1): really great opening map for the final set; blisteringly fast and quite beautiful. clean and evocative brushwork, not difficult or sprawling, nice little secrets. it’s great! i really liked this one.
unfortunately all the maps after that one are kinda whatever. s3m2 in particular is wayyyy too big (it’s actually one of the better ones from set 3, and it isn’t terrible to play, but it doesn’t really belong in this pack imo), and the rest of them were just kinda like, okay yeah sure i guess. not dreadful (often very competent even) but just not particularly interesting and a bit too strenuous.
anyway all in all a cool set, i’m glad i played it.
played through all of the overgrown speedmapping pack (sm210) and most of them were real bad! but i thought i would mention it cos it also has a yang map in it and this time it owns! easily the best map in there and well worth playing. holden’s map was also pretty good (it seems to be the poster child for the pack) but it felt a little messy and the geometry wasn’t very easy to parse. however i’ll forgive it simply because it has my favourite level design trope: walking precariously along a thin ledge above a long drop. fuck me up w that shit i can’t get enough.
the last map was suuuuper tiny (9 enemies!) but really quite stylish and look at this sick texture:
hell yeah what the fuck is that!
have been working on a map project for a while now. i’m learning tons about the tools and about my own process. it’s such a nice experience. basically every day i do a little bit of work on this after my job, and i constantly feel like i’m growing and discovering things about Trenchbroom, the technique, and myself. i’m very excited about this one. i think it will actually be playable eventually.
^yeah same. i was gonna ask how you’re going about those softer shapes? like the ground in the second pic. just manipulating verts by hand or do u have a particular process?
yep, that is exactly what I am doing. I learned a tehcnique watching dumptruck_ds’s trenchbroom videos where he produced natural terrain by making large grids of like 4x4 or 2x2 tiles, and then selecting the vertices of that whole group to make pleasingly bumpy terrain. it results in a higher vert count, but it seems fine if you don’t over do it, and it looks good. Something else which might account for the smoothness is that I’m scaling up all the textures two and sometimes three times their normal size just because I like the look.
modern GPUs can handle more than a polygon per pixel, does the version of Quake you’re using have some major polygon budget bottlenecks? It should be hard to physically subdivide enough brushes to even attract the attention of your computer
No, I’m sure quakespasm can handle anything I can dream to throw at it with Trenchbroom. My presumption has been I shouldn’t need to worry about perf… but figuring out to what extent that is true is gonna be part of that lesson.
Sounds good. I’ve spent way more time asking people to hit the gas on things like this than asking them to hit the brakes. Perf issues are tricky because you tend to underestimate how fast a computer is if it’s doing something it’s supposed to. The things that eat performance are when you’re doing it in a way you’re not supposed to – and it’s hard to tell. Especially when the tools built for beginners and marginal users specifically invite that sort of behavior, which both Unity and Unreal do.
I’ve been trying my best to make interesting environments without strong use of curves, and I just know that avoidant behavior is going to become untenable after a while. going to end my map with a big curve and use more curves in the next one.
Inexperienced level designer grumbling about combat design… Now that I’m seriously trying to make levels for Quake, the separation of certain enemy types into themes feels like such an annoying limitation. I like the medieval and runic themes, and hate the look of the base theme, but selecting only from the medieval/runic enemies deprives you of so many kinds of mid- range fights. I’m probably just not thinking about this enough.
Just mix ‘em all together. Better yet blend the different themes together in the same map. Have a sci-fi base inside a runic dimension growing out of a medieval space. Have fun with it.
