The Last Bastion Reimagined

[Pringles Man]

11/14/14 UPDATES

The level has been tweaked in MANY places and skill-related spawnflags have been more carefully placed this time around. Deathmatch has been taken into full account, and all the crap that was causing problems before was patched. Redundancies like sealed doors, single player related messages, and other things are no longer in multiplayer. There is now a huge difference between easy, normal, hard, and deathmatch.

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I don't know about you, but I hate disappointing final battles. When I first played R2M7, I realized that the level wasn't used to its full potential because let's be serious here: grunts? Enforcers??? Screw that crap. Bring out the overlords! Bring out the shamblers! Bring out the totally ludicrous kill count! So anyways, after about three months of on and off work, I totally modified a large amount of entities in this level, making it just as epic as it was supposed to be from the beginning. You'll have to battle your way through many monsters, and most of them won't be a walk in the park. We're talking things like 30+ vores and hell knights, 10+ shamblers and overlords, and more. I've also included a purpose behind the silver key, added sounds to many doors and trains, made use of lesser-known entities such as the statue and mummy, added a large collection of explosive boxes that may help you in certain places but could really fuck you up in others, distributed armor and ammo that is fully optimized for all difficulties and deathmatch (hell, the entire level is optimized for all skill levels), added dynamic particle effects in fitting locations, and pretty much fine-tuned the textures to make them fit more with the theme of the level. In short, this level is brutal, and will take some time to get through.

This is HEAVY .ent file editing which has been maximized to its full potential. The pain of play testing this thing over and over, making sure that no vores were stuck in the walls was just a massacre of my brain cells. Either way, the level is totally done, and I think you will enjoy the results of my efforts.

MUMMIES
You can download the HD QRP skin for the mummy here:
Mummy

VARIATIONS ON DIFFICULTY THAT I'VE PLAYTESTED AND YOU CAN TRY

Vore health/attack damage: Buff the health to about 700
Wrath health/attack damage: Buff the health to about 600 and attack value to about 30
Overlord health: To better enjoy the fight at the near end, I suggest you buff the health to any value below 2000
Plasma: These cvars make things interesting, as plasma becomes extremely powerful, but you have to be careful with it or you'll take a lot of damage easily

set player_plasma_impact 150
set player_plasma_radius 200
set player_plasma_discharge 65

SCREENSHOTS

Entrance


Lava nail shooters


Mummies and statues


Generator room


One side of the drawbridge (although there are many more monsters on the other side as well)


More mummies and the main subject of my RTlights edits


DOWNLOAD (please note that this mod requires SMC to work properly)
http://www.mediafire.com/download/hi...y_Pringles.zip

SIDE NOTES
All the textures, including sky textures, you need are included with this zip file (except for textures that I didn't modify).

[Adam]

This looks really well done.
Downloading...

[MadGypsy]

Will this work in JoeQuake?















hah, I'm JK

[Pringles Man]

It might, if JoeQuake uses .ent files. I think that they may be exclusive to Darkplaces. But even if they aren't, you need Darkplaces and SMC to support customized particle effects, so I would suggest that you clear them out of the file before trying. But why not just use Darkplaces? It's much nicer than JoeQuake and it was built entirely for eye candy.

Edit: I just remembered that I forgot to include several textures that will be useful in the folder. I also added a hidden antigravity belt and a few more ogres into the map that for some reason were missing before. I will update the download link soon. Finally, I don't think the reward for getting the silver key is worth it really, so I made some of the normal health/ammo lying around exclusive to easy/normal difficulties, and stocked the silver key room full of goodies.

[MadGypsy]

But JoeQuake is awesome! You can set the width and height of your window and even start a game that isn't in ID1!













methinks my sarcastic humor is not translating well
@ But why not just use Darkplaces? It's much nicer than JoeQuake and it was built entirely for eye candy. - Exactly

[Pringles Man]

Took me a while to even realize that small text under each post was there. Guess the case is closed then .

But in other news, I've found out about two small bugs that shouldn't be there:

1. Statues don't appear on normal and easy skills (fixed)
2. Train in the final room plays sounds forever because stupid Rogue didn't put "wait" "-1" in the parameters...(fixed)

I will keep updating the link every time I find something small like this. For any bug that you encounter in this mod as you play, reports are strongly encouraged, as I want to make this level reach the perfection it was meant to reach.

As far as the current fixes go the link will be updated tomorrow.

[Lightning_Hunter]

Just for future reference, I was able to get this to work in Qrack by simply removing all the entries in the .ent file that have "seven" in the name, and merging the .ent file with the .bsp file. I haven't fully playtested the map yet (I'm currently on R2M5 in Rogue) but will make a full report when I do.

[Pringles Man]

Yes that'll do it. Remove any entity with "seven" in it (just some particle effects on the top), and it'll work fine with anything that uses .ent files. Thank you for your playtest offer though. I could seriously use some play testers that aren't me for this map. Hell, I should've put this in "works in progress" due to the abundance of unanticipated bugs and entity mismanagement. Too late for that now I guess. I guess you can say that this map will always be 99% complete due to the fact that I just keep finding more and more tiny details that need to be improved. Be sure to keep me posted, though, and be sure to download the latest version when you get up to R2M7.

EDIT: just updated the link with fixed statues and trains at the end. Also added some ammo near the generator room.

[Lightning_Hunter]

Just tried this out. I enjoyed the game play much more than the original, but did find it to be very frustrating at times. The map isn't too bad once you know where all the monsters are, but some of the traps are in your face and completely unexpected. As a result, most parts of the map involve trial and error and a lot of quicksaving/quickloading to figure out. Some of the traps that take place immediately after going up a lift or falling down a pit need to be toned down. An example of this is the lift that takes you up to face like 10 wraths (after the room with the invisible swordsmen), and the pit that drops you down to a horde of mummies (there should be less mummies and more zombies in this pit). There is another lift that takes you face to face with exploding boxes, a fiend, ogres, and an Overlord. That is way too many monsters in such a cramped space and nowhere to run. Nobody enjoys facing hordes of monsters at the top of a lift. The number of Overlords in the map could be reduced; especially the one's in cramped spaces. If these things were toned down, this map could be the definitive version of R2M7.

I also want to note that there were a few bugs, but they may only happen in certain engines like Qrack (probably not Darkplaces). One such bug is the Quad Damage not appearing near the Knight Statues. I modified the .ent to raise the Quad a bit, and it appeared. I guess it's too low to appear in Qrack. Also, some of the exploding boxes are stuck in the walls slightly off the ground. I removed all the exploding boxes anyway, because I felt they were out of place (especially in a non-base map). They ended up making things too frustrating.

Great job overall! I think the map could be toned down in the places mentioned, but the rest of it was great. I especially enjoyed the two Overlords in the outside area above the water (with the bridge). They made great use of teleporting.

[Pringles Man]

Hello again and thank you for your post. First of all, you can't imagine how relieved I am that there was enough ammo prior to this level to give you everything you need to survive (I was never too certain about that). But let's move on to the problems. I AGREE with that lift challenges, as some of them are a tad rediculous. In the version that I put up yesterday, the explosive boxes that are in your face as you descend down from the generator room have been moved to hard and nightmare difficulty, while the wrath that is supposed to set them off was removed entirely. The room which follows (the one which makes you fight an assload of monsters in a tiny space) will be toned down, as I too hate trial and error gameplay. Even though I myself knew the level quite well, I still had lots of trouble in this area.

Some of the places are escapable, however. When you fall into the mummy pit, you can instantly run to any one of the buttons to hide, and spam grenades around a corner or walk the mummies into the spike trap. And the same goes with the wrath room. While I agree that sticking an overlord into there was quite ridiculous, you can escape that room by quickly running into the passage to the right. Although, I'm sure that if you play the map blind, a lot of these things will only be figured out later because of trail and error like you said. Getting past the entrance is also hard as hell, but I don't think I should tone that down because it is the entrance the the last thing quake throws at you aside from the dragon/himself after all.

As for the explosive boxes, I felt that they could be made "in-place" in this map because it has stuff like a generator room, buzzsaws, lightning shooters, and a drawbridge powered by two lightning cannons. They do make the game harder, which is why many of them only appear on hard/nightmare difficulty, but you are right about them being totally unfair in certain places. I will look into the problem. What with them floating around in the air...I think that has to do with the way they were coded since they were used so rarely in Quake. As in, since they weren't so abundant as monsters, they didn't have to be coded to perfection. Either way, I spawned them a little higher than the ground so that they could drop to the ground at start. This was mainly for the reason that it enabled me to replace it with other things without having to modify the z axis all the time. I don't know if DP is the only engine that drops them (sometimes it even fails to do so itself), but this is definitely something worth looking into.

Glad you enjoyed it and thanks for playing! I will continue to update the level in due course.

[Lightning_Hunter]

Hello again and thank you for your post. First of all, you can't imagine how relieved I am that there was enough ammo prior to this level to give you everything you need to survive (I was never too certain about that).

I definitely had plenty of ammo! Imo, the Rogue mission pack contains way too much ammo - especially Lava Nails, Multi-Rockets, and Plasma. By the time I reached R2M7, I had like 60 Multi-Rockets, 200 Lava Nails, and 75 Plasma ammo. However, I think I also have something like 95-98% accuracy when I play SP (I make sure every shot counts, and get up close and personal to cause more damage). The official Quake maps have far too much ammo using my method of play.

[Pringles Man]

I've made an updated placeholder that is very stable and playable with less unfair challenges. However, I've decided that the mummies should stay for now. As compensation for the lowered number of kills, I've added a bunch of extra hellknights, but as this is a placeholder, I will try to get some less "uniform" challenges in there by the next update (hopefully the last). Stay tuned.

EDIT: THE PARTICLE EFFECTS HAVE ALSO RETURNED AFTER THEIR TWEAKS IN THIS VERSION! They are here to stay now forever.

Also updated the credits file as per request.

[Pringles Man]

11/14/14 UPDATES

It took a few weeks, but the level is just about done for good.

The level has been tweaked in MANY places and skill-related spawnflags have been more carefully placed this time around. Deathmatch has been taken into full account, and all the crap that was causing problems before was patched. Redundancies like sealed doors, single player related messages, and other things are no longer in multiplayer. There is now a huge difference between easy, normal, hard, and deathmatch.