9/30/96 ================================================================ Title : The Crucible Filename : crucible.bsp Author : Gyro Gearloose Email Address : gyro@nwlink.com Description : Single and Deathmatch Quake map wif fun features Additional thanx to : Deathknob, Hootie, Gagger, Mel, Yoyoyo, DonB, Player, Unconnected, id, the authors of several examples (especially qtricks and and cannon) and most of all Dr. Benway for putting up with all this Quake nonsense and humoring my annual year-long forays into childhood. Check out further wackiness at: http://www.nwlink.com/~gyro ================================================================ * Boilerplate info * Single Player : Yes Coop : Yes (3 starts) Deathmatch : Yes (8 starts) Difficulty Settings : Yes New sound/music/graphics: No Base : New level from scratch Tools used : Quest 1.03, text editor, and qbsp_dos Build Time : About an hour and 40 minutes. Oh, you meant how long it took to make the map file? Legal: : (c) 1996 Gyro Gearloose. All rights reserved. This level may be distributed only at no charge to the recipient, and only if it is not modified in any way. In other words, don't make any money from it and don't make it look like I did something I didn't. * Way Too Much Other Info * This is my first map. I want heaps of ego-boosting mail, suggestions, constructive criticism, outrageous demands, and so forth. To use: Copy crucible.bsp to quake\id1\maps (create the "maps" subdirectory under your "id1" directory if you don't already have one) and try one of the following: quake +skill 0 +map crucible <-- easy single player quake +skill 1 +map crucible <-- medium quake +skill 2 +map crucible <-- hard quake +deathmatch 1 +map crucible <-- deathmatch ================================================================ This RULES vs That SUCKS (or, why did you do things that way?) Choosing between squishing a player into flying guts as they helplessly look on, or releasing them if they cease fire and perform the requisite amount of grovelling rules. I'm sure you'll do the right thing. Grabbing the Quad Damage rules. Grabbing it, and then discovering that you have a player cornered due to their own greed totally rules. (Passing judgement on others and not having it apply to yourself is okay in Quakeworld.) Gibbing campers rules. Reading whiny blubbery messages about those darn campers fills me with chortles and mirth, so this level is camper-friendly. Deal with campers appropriately if you can, or type bawlings about them until someone comes and shoves a pineapple down your throat. Getting telefragged due to placement of deathmatch starts in high traffic corridors sucks. Maybe that aspect of the standard levels is deliberate design, but I kinda doubt it. It's just not fayyyyerrrr! Boohoo! (Someone toss me a pineapple quick!) Utter mayhem all the time, with individual battles lasting no more than three seconds is okay, but it doesn't rule. Sometimes mayhem and sometimes hard-fought battles where a clever move wins out rules more. Level-exiting weasels suck. Barbequing them rules. ================================================================ Info for after you've explored the level a little: If a player jumps down the mail delivery tube heading for the exit, don't follow straight away or you'll wind up stuck on top of them. Lobbest thou the holy hand grenade instead. Wait for the grenades to blow, then follow. If they survived the grenades, take them out while they're on the island waiting for the slow exit drawbridge. There is a pentagram and a teleporter inside the crucible. The pentagram protects you from the lava, and the teleporter drops you into the goody room. The pentagram is not visible from the surface, so players who want an edge will need to keep track of when the pentagram has respawned, because if you dive for it and it's not there, you'll probably fry... but not always. There are two ways into the tower room - the lift, and a secret way. If the tower room is inhabited by a grenade-dropping resident, you can forget about the lift. Only the pentagram will get you up that lift alive. The secret way takes awhile, but permits you to get liqoured up for the attack. Of course, by then they will probably have gotten scared and left, so the existance of the secret way can also be used to bluff them out. The water room has a tunnel in it that leads to another highly defensible position in the level. If you want to be left alone for awhile, you can go there. However, there are only two ways out, and one of them is to leave your body, so you'd better be a committed camper if you want to go hole up in there. If you've got the right weapons before you go in, others will soon figure out that it's really better to just leave you alone, so bear in mind that you won't exactly be racking up frags. The cage-on-the-wall in the big lava room has two buttons that control it. The button immediately below it releases an unfortunate victim who has been caught in the trap. The button on the wall between the two floor buttons commits the human clove to the giant high-speed garlic press. Note that if a player believes you are going for the release button, it is in their best interests to cease fire. That brings you directly under them. What you do next depends on your ethics, and perhaps on how many nails you have at the time. All those goodies in the cage-on-the-wall room are on a platform right below a blower duct. A player standing up there may be hoisted up into the path of the rushing air by someone else coming down the mail tube. Generally, they are blown into the teleporter moat and wind up in the cage. Surely the person who inadvertently knocked them into the cage will be kind enough to release them. The overlook with the rocket launcher on it is climbable without making any noise. Go to the dark corner below it and check out the series of hand and toe-holds. They appear only in deathmatch. There are numerous hiding spots for campers and snipers. I have noticed that chronic campers virtually never score high in the rankings. Mayhem-style players tend to do way better, simply because they encounter far more players to splatter as they race wildly about. If campers get you down, just shift your tactics a little. Start "prospecting" by lobbing grenades into dark places once in a while, for example. If you see someone occupying a place consistently, you have an implicit advantage over them. Exploit it. There's almost nowhere here where you will be blasted by someone with a rocket launcher the instant you spring to life, so qwitcher whining and play around with the whole camping thing. ================================================================ Problems: Some of the teleporters have the side-effect of triggering a nearby door, even though they're nowhere near enough to trigger. I done scritched my haid some over that but apart from moving things farther apart, could not find a workaround. On some of the teleports, you'll hear a door open and close - sorry. If someone knows what's going on there, please toss me a clue. I pulled the fish outta the pool. It looks as if the 1.01 registered version of Quake has a bug where any fish in a level are counted twice but can only be killed once. So, if a level has fish in it, a perfect score is not possible and players wonder where the extra (nonexistant) monsters are. E2M3, The Crypt of Decay, is the first level that contains fish, and also contains the dopefish message. Meaningless trivia or an astounding cosmic message from the Incas? You be the judge!