Finally I did it! Haha! Well… in just 138 minutes. I’m speechless — it’s like playing a completely different game. A spectacular map, especially considering it was made in 2010!!!

Sadly, the adventure never continued… and now it’s already 2026. It left me wanting more.

Will this ever continue? I'm Surprised people haven't made their own campaigns for Quake 3 Arena yet

nice work bro......looks interesting.....old edge version? q3?...show me.....

-=- a challenge -=-
i haven't looked at this gorgeous, challenging map in about a year. i used to do speedruns as a personal added challenge. retried today and attached my latest, not my best, run. can you beat? time finished in upper right corner. may need to run as /devmap and add /cg_drawtimer 1 in console. on my linux, screenshot is saved in .q3a folder in home directory. converted tga to jpg using imagemagic's convert or magick depending on version used. good luck ;-)
[p.s. : thanks to Tig in helping me get the image posted]

I finally got to play this yesterday for the first time after not being able to play it for 13 years! Relatively short, but I bet this likely took a long time to make. The puzzles took me a while to get the hang of, and I'll admit I completed a lot of them via the scattershot approach.

I also really loved the ambiance of a Medieval/Gothic style astronomy tower in the sky with enough books lying around everywhere to attract the whole Ravenclaw House! The skybox and lighting gives me the feel as if this map takes place early in the morning, though I could understand if for some it seems like it takes place in the evening.

If I ever return to making maps for Quake 3, the puzzles and dialogue give me ideas if I ever take a crack at making my own single player map. 4.5/5 from me, because I think SP puzzle maps are better with traps along with puzzles, and strategically located bots like in Lo sota Olt. Encore!!

Hey author, you know what would be cool??? making a second chapter after this. Would be cool. Since you left us on a cliff hanger :(

What a great map. I struggle to master the first generator riddle though ... any help?
Edited 22 seconds after the original posting.

Shock try to do something what you're never seen before, something unique!
That's the reason why I like Shocks works more than any other authors works!
I like it!

Okay, I found out the map has hint how to finish the map - demo probably recorded by author. I did not see all the skulls till now :D

Well, returning back to this map to judge: It looks brilliant and plays pretty smoothly on my Core 2 Duo machine :) Visualy, it's pretty dark in places, I had to place the map in clean install of Q3 to be able for run the map, with second launch the game ignores gamma correction and it got even more dark than before, not sure what happened. It was hard to find shootable triggers that opens some hidden areas with that overdark in game, found at least seven of skulls. There is two-sided portal view, one to the building, the second one from behind looks in the final cave. However only one side works as teleporter, the one to the building. The cave look out is only view. By the way, sock, how did you made the portal not to shake? It is like looking in mirror, but there is brushwork from the camera view instead. To the cave, I was forced to use noclip cheats, maybe caused by the hard to find skulls :/ And when do you plan to make continue?

Wanted to try out the map and it displays me CL_PARSEGAMESTATE: BAD COMMAND BYTE error. What the f*ck is that? Using Q3 v1.32c as recommended in notes, I used map commad with the recommended gametype, but map won't load up, awaiting challenge message shows up and then the error is displayed. What to do?

///Edit: It works on my clean installation, looks like developer install holds too much pk3's to start TEOF here...
Edited 1.57 hours after the original posting.

I miss maps with this kind of creativity. Maps which compose the 10% of the Sturgeon's Law which makes a game worthy enough to be played. I wish I could be able to do maps like this, my mapping knowledge is pretty limited. Nothing more to say. 10/10.

PS: It took me a while to find all the switches. :P
PS2: Hoping for Part 2, if possible.

Top notch map. Very creative.

DOwnloading this map ..tehe lol cats//

Played through this entire map, so intrigued of all the details. This is one helluva map, guys. For those who don't have this map, GET IT. I don't care what you think, just GET IT. For those who downloaded this map and have played through it, PLAY IT AGAIN. Again, don't care what you think, PLAY IT AGAIN.

Wow, this map is stunning! 10/10

Turns out my version of Quake 3 is version 1.30! :o

com_hunkMegs is set to 176 I think.

@SW12: What are your com_hunkMegs set to? It should be at least 96 if not 128. If that's fine, then what error message are you getting?
Edited: 01 Jul 2012 AEST

Couldn't get it to work ಠ_ಠ

And yes, I use version 1.32 of Q3

@ich de vicy: I like EntityPlus too, but this map does not use it :] This map needs nothing more than an up-to-date version of Quake3.

cool, i like entity +!

Wasn't to be great make EntityPlus version? You'll have more options here, sock...

Visually appealing. Everything about this map is very interesting. Wonderful work Sock.

Is this like a mission that takes you at the end to a boss fight with this giant scenery that explodes or something? If it is, awesome.

Love it! <3 took me hours to complete it the first time around

detail is wonderful too :)

@lol, this is a single player experience only, there are no BOTs or AAS file for this map. The design is about solving puzzles (simple push button combinations) and finding skulls hidden around the map. Check my website for further details on what the map is trying to achieve.
@Anonymous, yep this map is designed not to reset if you die or restart so nobody will get frustrated trying to resolve the puzzles again. Need to reload the map a fresh to reset everything back to the beginning. Either use the '/map' command or via the menus.

Some things that might help everyone load and play the map better that are mentioned in the readme file and on my website, but who reads that stuff anyway! :)

Memory Problems
The map requires the default memory settings to be changed so that the level will load correctly. If the map will not start from the menu please check your memory settings with the console command.

The default value is 'com_hunkmegs 56' and it needs to be changed to the following 'com_hunkmegs 96'

I recommend that certain HUD elements are turned off to enhance the atmosphere with the following commands. Do not turn all HUD elements off because the map still uses center print text for information on what to do.

cg_drawgun 0 Remove gun from screen
cg_drawstatus 0 Remove all health/ammo/armor numbers
cg_drawfps 0 Dont need to know about FPS! :p
timelimit 0 Zero just incase set before
fraglimit 0 Removed fraglimit from screen

Great map. Cool gameplay, even cooler architecture. I've beaten the whole thing, it was fun.

One weird thing: make sure you reload the map from the console or skirmish menu when you're restarting it (don't just click restart). The custom shaders in the map (which are significant to the puzzles) don't seem to refresh if you simply restart it.

Awesome map, awesome setting. You really should think of creating a multiplayer map in this style.

@RotaryFist: go ahead! I love those experimental maps, kind of single player, trying stuff with entities. I cannot make them myself (at least for now) but I encourage anyone with ideas to try them, get some people to beta-test them and get suggestions. As Sock says on his site, this map took 6 months and about 1000 hours of developing. There's no need to go that far if you just want to try your ideas; in this case, the guy is a professional, so he decided to go as far as he could.

I made it to the end, after a few hours of playing on hangover :P Damn, those hidden buttons and skulls! The final section of the map, when you find all the skulls and the gate is open, is even more awesome than the other sections... I'm looking forward to part II, if Sock ever finds the time to work on it... (I hope he does).

I really do like this map - it looks awesome and it's also fun to replay it if one has made it to the end(? - .. to be continued).
Only problem i had was an error: cl_parsegamstate: bad command byte, but i googled and found the solution - sock(sims) explains it all in the comments: esreality.hexus.net/ maybe this was because of 3rd party .pk3 files i have in my baseq3.
10/10
Edited: 02 Apr 2010 AEST

Oh my... This map is simply genious; I love the setting and the gameplay is puzzling but very logical.

Few months ago, after playing Portal, I was thinking about doing an adventure map, but I dismissed the idea after few tests. Dammit, now I'm thinking of revisiting it. What you do with those entities is quite incredible.

Anyways, off to get those last two skulls.

10

Brilliance at its best. ;)

Holy sh*t! This is a masterpiece of Q3 mapping. A true work of a professional mapper.
Works fine on my 5 years-old computer w/ 512 Mb RAM and a GeForce 4 (geometric and texture detail set to medium, though) on Ubuntu.

10/10

@sock: Review updated :]

@zihaben, this map will ONLY work with point release 1.32b+. It really needs to be mentioned in this review.

oh winXP - I thought this was a linux issue! Looking for a fix..

@Tig: WinXP Pro SP2, 2GB RAM, Core2 Duo E4600, GeForce 8800GS
First time encountered this problem. I have downloaded hundreds of levels from LvL and I got about 250 my own bsp's ( some of them crashed bspc or q3map), but I never seen Q3 displaying similar warnings. Q3 release version is 1.31
Maybe I'm just unlucky. Let's wait for other replies... Map is really great =)

@zihaben: What Operating System, video card, CPU and how much RAM have you got?

@Sock: I forgot about adding the source code info to the review, its fixed up now.

Google said:

www.quakelive.com/forum/showpost.php

It failed to load =*(
I had com_hunkmegs =128, but I had full console of shader creation failure warnings, then "ERROR: default_model(SARGE) is failed to register". I have removed all other pk3's to free memory, but it still crashes =(

Thanks a lot for the review TheMuffinMan. I was wondering what the review was going to say because this map is really experimental and does not feature any MP elements.
I have also released the source map file, previous beta's versions and a texture pack for this map which can be found on my website. (www.simonoc.com/pa...s_q3/moteof.htm)

50 mb quest? "Must have" (c)
Looks awesome.

Using Quake 3 to bring something Myst-like that outdoes Myst. First time I ever voted a 10 for a map here, and that'd go even if it was for effort alone.