Tweet
Map Name: Masque of the Red Death
Author: Tronyn
Year Released: 2005
Review: Underworld Reviews
Download: masque.zip @ Quaddicted.com
I played this map within the first week of it being released in 2005, but I stopped after about 30 monsters. This map has over 400 monsters and at the time it just felt like way too many monsters to deal with. At the time I was a huge JoeQuake fanatic (I still am, but I now appreciate other engines intents/purposes) and was annoyed that I couldn't use that engine, although I understood why.
Sometime around October or November I ended up wanting to play a great map that was extremely difficult and LONG and couldn't think of anything else I hadn't tried and decided to try this one.
LARGEST MAP EVER?
This map, if it is not the largest map ever, is the largest map ever to have been made of such remarkably high quality.
What is striking about playing this map is that despite the enormous size, the entire map is of highest quality and planning.
I know little about the author, Tronyn, except that his other maps are outstanding and early when I discovered single player I was absolutely in love with A Desert Dusk (which Lardarse cursed on the RQuake server because DarkPlaces had some sort of crash bug that cropped up on that map:d ) ... but I don't know how he could have the stamina to build a map of this size and I can only imagine he intensely loves mapping to be able to have made a map like this.
Engines
The map breaks a lot of the standard Quake limits. Engines like FitzQuake and JoeQuake that can support higher limits for entities and such than normal, but this map is so gigantic that it will not work in those engines.
The only 2 engines that can run the map are DarkPlaces and Enhanced GLQuake/WinQuake.
I used Enhanced GLQuake to play the map because I've become very accustomed to using that engine for single player
Gameplay
The Masque of the Red Death is a very large map, the screenshot itself does not do a very good job of portraying the size. The map has at least 3 or 4 large interior "levels" (or floors) and possibly more.
The map is heavily focused on horde combat, where you will occasionally enter situations where you are fighting 20 or more monsters.
Back in 2005, this seemed like too much to deal with. But after playing a ton of single player maps since then, most ordinary maps seem rather easy and the prospect of fighting 20 or more monsters on occasion isn't something overwhelming, but rather very challenging and enjoyable.
As you play the map a little, it becomes clear that you will repeated find yourself in situations facing an overwhelming number of monsters, but once you accept that fact you do more planning before hitting a button or opening a door.
After playing the whole map thru, which took a long time (and required a lot of save games, of course), this map is very satisfying the entire way through.
Although the map does have a few good "puzzles", most of the map is focused on preparing to deal with a very large number of monsters when you enter new areas, etc., so the map never gives you frustrating situations where you can't figure out what to do.
Not for everyone, but it was extremely satisfying to play it and one of the few maps I've played where it felt like an achievement to have actually finished it and then take a tour of the now-empty map to take in just how many hundreds of monsters were killed.
/I used this command line:
c:\quake\glquake.exe -width 640 -height 480 -hipnotic -game masque +map masque (GLQuake is not the stock ID Software GLQuake, but Enhanced GLQuake).
Interesting fact: The map is so large that if you fire a rocket from the top, you can barely see the explosion if you fire at the furthest point and it takes 5 seconds for the rocket to get there. It is very interesting to throw grenades off that point. Too bad this map can't somehow be used in deathmatch
Author: Tronyn
Year Released: 2005
Review: Underworld Reviews
Download: masque.zip @ Quaddicted.com
I played this map within the first week of it being released in 2005, but I stopped after about 30 monsters. This map has over 400 monsters and at the time it just felt like way too many monsters to deal with. At the time I was a huge JoeQuake fanatic (I still am, but I now appreciate other engines intents/purposes) and was annoyed that I couldn't use that engine, although I understood why.
Sometime around October or November I ended up wanting to play a great map that was extremely difficult and LONG and couldn't think of anything else I hadn't tried and decided to try this one.
LARGEST MAP EVER?
This map, if it is not the largest map ever, is the largest map ever to have been made of such remarkably high quality.
What is striking about playing this map is that despite the enormous size, the entire map is of highest quality and planning.
I know little about the author, Tronyn, except that his other maps are outstanding and early when I discovered single player I was absolutely in love with A Desert Dusk (which Lardarse cursed on the RQuake server because DarkPlaces had some sort of crash bug that cropped up on that map:d ) ... but I don't know how he could have the stamina to build a map of this size and I can only imagine he intensely loves mapping to be able to have made a map like this.
Engines
The map breaks a lot of the standard Quake limits. Engines like FitzQuake and JoeQuake that can support higher limits for entities and such than normal, but this map is so gigantic that it will not work in those engines.
The only 2 engines that can run the map are DarkPlaces and Enhanced GLQuake/WinQuake.
I used Enhanced GLQuake to play the map because I've become very accustomed to using that engine for single player
Gameplay
The Masque of the Red Death is a very large map, the screenshot itself does not do a very good job of portraying the size. The map has at least 3 or 4 large interior "levels" (or floors) and possibly more.
The map is heavily focused on horde combat, where you will occasionally enter situations where you are fighting 20 or more monsters.
Back in 2005, this seemed like too much to deal with. But after playing a ton of single player maps since then, most ordinary maps seem rather easy and the prospect of fighting 20 or more monsters on occasion isn't something overwhelming, but rather very challenging and enjoyable.
As you play the map a little, it becomes clear that you will repeated find yourself in situations facing an overwhelming number of monsters, but once you accept that fact you do more planning before hitting a button or opening a door.
After playing the whole map thru, which took a long time (and required a lot of save games, of course), this map is very satisfying the entire way through.
Although the map does have a few good "puzzles", most of the map is focused on preparing to deal with a very large number of monsters when you enter new areas, etc., so the map never gives you frustrating situations where you can't figure out what to do.
Not for everyone, but it was extremely satisfying to play it and one of the few maps I've played where it felt like an achievement to have actually finished it and then take a tour of the now-empty map to take in just how many hundreds of monsters were killed.
/I used this command line:
c:\quake\glquake.exe -width 640 -height 480 -hipnotic -game masque +map masque (GLQuake is not the stock ID Software GLQuake, but Enhanced GLQuake).
Interesting fact: The map is so large that if you fire a rocket from the top, you can barely see the explosion if you fire at the furthest point and it takes 5 seconds for the rocket to get there. It is very interesting to throw grenades off that point. Too bad this map can't somehow be used in deathmatch
Comment