Tuesday July 4, 2000 ============================================================================ Title : Castle of Oblivion Filename : oblivion.zip Author : Rick Lipsey Email address : rick100974@aol.com; rlipsey@northstate.net Description : Classic Quake (Quake 1) .bsp file ============================================================================ * Play Information * Single player : Yes, primary reason for existence. Cooperative : Yes, I squeezed in 4 starts. Deathmatch : Yes, 10 starts, and one extra Rocket launcher. Difficulty settings : Yes, differences in types and number of enemies. New sounds : No New graphics : No New music : No Demos replaced : No ============================================================================ * Construction * Base : New level from scratch Editor(s) used : WorldCraft ver. 1.6 (registered) by Ben Morris BSP program : WQBSP ver. 1.65 by Ken Alverson Light program : ArghLite ver. 2.0 by Tim Wright VIS program : RVIS ver. 1.0 by Antony Suter Known bugs : None, as far as I know Build time : Over a year (off and on) since starting it again. Texture wad used : textures.wad (a custom wad of just my favorites) Design machine : Homebuilt Pentium II 400 MHz, 128 MB RAM Compile machine : Homebuilt Celeron 366 @ 550 MHz, 128 MB RAM WQBSP time : 249 seconds (about 4 minutes) ArghLite (-extra) time : 816 seconds (almost 14 minutes) RVIS (-level 4) time : 551 seconds (a little over 9 minutes) Average Leafs Visible : 106 Brushes : 2393 Entities : 753 (389 Lights) Models : 122 ============================================================================ * Credits * id Software for the game Quake, and most of the textures. Raven Software for the Hexen 2 textures. Rogue Software for the Dissolution of Eternity textures. My nephew Jeff for starting what eventually became Castle of Oblivion. Mr. Shambler for convincing me to finish it. Thanks to all. ============================================================================ * How to Use * Please read the section about memory requirements below. Most people will know how to do all this by now, but just in case... Put the oblivion.bsp file into your quake\id1\maps directory (folder) (create it if you don't have it yet) Start up a new Quake game in the mode you want to play, single, multi-player, reaperbot, etc. Drop down the console (~ key) and type (without the quotes): "skill 0" (for easy) or "skill 1" (for normal) or "skill 2" (for hard) or "skill 3" (for nightmare) and hit enter. Then type: "map oblivion" (again, no quotes) and hit enter. Remember, you have to set the skill level first. I recommend playing on "Hard", Ogres are stupid on Nightmare. If you get a "Error: Hunk_Alloc: failed on XXXXXX bytes" message, see the following section about memory requirements. ============================================================================ * Memory Requirements * Castle of Oblivion exceeds the .bsp size limit for 8 MB of RAM. To play Castle of Oblivion with regular Quake under DOS you need 12 MB of RAM, 16 MB is better. It will not run with only 8 MB. To play Castle of Oblivion with regular Quake under Windows 95 or 98 you need at least 24 MB of RAM. You will need to start Quake with the -winmem 16 command line switch. It will work with -winmem 12, but Quake will play much smoother with -winmem 16. The easiest way to do this is to navigate to your Quake folder using Windows Explorer, right click on quake.exe and drag it to your desktop or to an empty area in the quake folder. The + sign on the mouse pointer will turn into the curved "shortcut" arrow. Release the right mouse button and select "Create Shortcut(s) Here" from the pop-up menu. Next, right click on the "Shortcut to Quake.exe" that you just created and select "Properties", then click on the "Program" tab. The area labeled "Cmd line:" will say something like: C:\QUAKE\QUAKE.EXE Add the command line switch to the end so that it looks like this: C:\QUAKE\QUAKE.EXE -winmem 16 and click the "Okay" button. Double-click this shortcut to run Quake with 16 MB of RAM allocated. To play Castle of Oblivion with GLQuake under Windows 95 or 98 you must have at least 32 MB of RAM. No special commands are required. I think WinQuake works the same as GLQuake, but I've never used it so there's no guarantee. If you have any problems trying to play Castle of Oblivion, send me an email. ============================================================================ * Technical Info/Comments * Castle of Oblivion was designed primarily as a single player map, but there is deathmatch support (barely). It's a pretty basic map, there is nothing terribly fancy about it. It uses standard id textures for the most part and runs fine under Quake 1.01 in software mode. Due to errors I was getting because of the size of the map and the number of entities (lights, items, monsters, etc.) I couldn't add much extra in multi-player mode. There are 4 co-op starts (all near the single-player start), 10 DeathMatch starts, and one extra rocket launcher (for balance). In hindsight, I probably should have left out multi-player support completely. There are enough (too many!) DeathMatch maps as it is and those extra entities would have been very useful in the final tweaking stage. Too late to worry about that now. Most of the final tweaking was to get r_speeds down and get rid of any grey flash in software mode. With the exception of the memory requirements, Castle of Oblivion should run as well as any of the original Quake levels. There is one custom texture you won't see until after you finish and exit :) Castle of Oblivion was tested with the following: Quake 1.01 (software) at 800x600, Pentium 2 400Mhz, 128 MB RAM, nVidia TNT2 Ultra, 32 MB Quake 1.09 (gl 0.94) at 640x480, Pentium 2 400Mhz, 128 MB RAM, nVidia TNT2 Ultra, 32 MB Quake 1.09 (gl 0.94) at 640x480, PentiumPro 200Mhz, 32 MB RAM, 3Dfx VooDoo2, 12 MB Quake 1.07 (software) at 360x350, PentiumPro 200Mhz, 32 MB RAM, Diamond S3 Virge, 2 MB If you haven't already, check out my other Quake and Doom2 levels at: http://members.aol.com/rick100974 Thanks for downloading Castle of Oblivion. I hope you like it. - Rick ============================================================================ * Copyright / Permissions * This Quake level is copyright 2000 by Richard D. Lipsey You MAY distribute this .BSP by way of the .zip file provided you leave the archive (.zip) intact. You are NOT allowed to commercially exploit this level. Do NOT put it on a CD or distribute it in any other format that is sold for money without my explicit written permission! Note: This does not include any normal fees associated with access to an online/network/internet service where this level is made available or the cover price/subscription fee of any magazine that wishes to include it on a CD. TC/Episode/Game Designers can email me for the original .map file in order to use this level as is, or as a base to build upon, or to be modified as part of an episode or TC. There's no guarantee that I'll give it to you, but it doesn't hurt to ask. Heh, heh, just kidding. ============================================================================