Dwell

I think the degree to which it is a "puzzle segment" depends on your skill level, though, right? Your precision here is very high - I don't think you miss a shot at all, despite the rapidity of your aiming switching between targets whilst moving. So, sure, it's a puzzle segment (in terms of target priority)... if your execution is already near perfect. (If you think this is "sloppy", then...)
My aiming really isn't great there though, and I lose lots of health cause of my not picking up shells before the fight. If you think this is near perfect you underestimate how well many players play quake (and those are the people targeted for Nightmare skill in Dwell).
But anyways, Nightmare should require players to get things "near perfect" so that sounds about right, especially for this fight. :)

I think Markie did a good job balancing this fight for the different skill levels myself, been great watching people react to it so far.
 
Fairweather updated Dwell with a new update entry:

V2.2 - Spring Cleaning!

A much more minor update than the last, this update is mostly to fix lingering bugs to put a bow on things. This'll most likely be the final update until D3 or a Dwell Jam. Enjoy.

Overall
- Many minor visual improvements across maps.
- Added aliases for Shotgun Start (sgstart) and Coop Entities in Singleplayer (solocoop)

D1M1
- Fixed a softlock in coop mode.

D2M1
- Fixed a missing texture in an OOB area (Thanks Sleeper!).

D2M2
- Fixed...

Read the rest of this update entry...
 
Weird, to me this is more of a puzzle segment than an actual skill challenge (if you're used to playing copper NM). You shouldn't be running out of ammo, there are 50 nails before the fight, and 200 in the arena + plenty of shells.
Here I go in with 0 ammo (just the 50 nails from before the drop), and even forget to pickup the shells (takes me a second to figure out why I can't switch to shotgun hah) and still manage to survive it on NM with my very sloppy aiming and movement. :D

Well, you were down to c. 10 health two times, so one more kamikaze guy would have taken you out those times. Also, I didn't mean that I completely run out of ammo in the arena - I run out of ammo while staying in the center, which you do as well.

Anyway, I survive almost every time now, so thanks for the tip and sorry if I've sounded grumpy, but I wrote the first post after rage quitting. I stay in the center until ammo runs out, after that I run to pick up more while running around picking off the last kamikazes in the first phase. After that it is a question of not getting unlucky with the second batch of kamikazes for me.
 
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My aiming really isn't great there though, and I lose lots of health cause of my not picking up shells before the fight. If you think this is near perfect you underestimate how well many players play quake (and those are the people targeted for Nightmare skill in Dwell).
But anyways, Nightmare should require players to get things "near perfect" so that sounds about right, especially for this fight. :)

I think Markie did a good job balancing this fight for the different skill levels myself, been great watching people react to it so far.
Oh, sure, that definitely wasn't a critique - what I think I was more angling towards is "if you expect players on Nightmare to have perfect (or near-perfect) execution, then surely all combat encounters become puzzles naturally?".
(and I reserve the right to be impressed: even when I was playing a lot of instagib deathmatch in Unreal Tournament back when I was 19/20ish, I never got precision+reflexes as good as in that video!)

(I should say, this fight on Easy is, indeed, very different, and felt about right for me as someone playing through on that difficulty. Although, some of the other encounters with Kamikazes across Dwell were much nicer for me than they could have been due to the Kamis getting stuck pathing to me - I'm not sure if that's an Easy mode thing or if their logic does just tend to get them to do that. Please don't "fix" that: D1M8's final fight is
much better if I can cheese them into getting stuck behind the fountain so I can pick high value targets off first!
)

Out of interest, though, since you've alluded to the design target for Nightmare ("player has near-perfect execution, all challenges become purely puzzles to them"), what were the one-sentence design targets for the other skill levels?
 
BTW, is the music in The Pale Sun by Markie or Alekswithak? I guess the former, as it reminds me of the music in Tears of the False God, which I think he did.

EDIT: Here's my nightmare playthrough. I barely made it out alive, but, more importantly, I did! (Sorry, noticed that I had it on "private". Fixed now.)

 
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D2M6 patch 2 looks great! I miss the intertextual references, but replacing the pillar button iteration messages with one conclusive message solves the pillar puzzle ambiguity issue.

* D1M9 flashback secret now appears broken, the side passages won't open.
* On easy, there's a vis disparity between the 2 cell packs in the cave by the gold key stairwerll; the cell pack sat on the broken pillar pedestal isn't getting lit with same properties as surrounding brush surfaces.

Still missing a handful of secrets, suspect this is a me problem rather than a trigger issue. Attached a zipped demo file with superfluous .txt extension to get past Slipseers upload front-end.

vkQuake has developed a new issue since last release of some weird brush off in the far distance bursting through fog, also further model placement discrepancies. It still doesn't place the critical explosives in the ruined fort.
 

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BTW, is the music in The Pale Sun by Markie or Alekswithak? I guess the former, as it reminds me of the music in Tears of the False God, which I think he did.
All the music for both Dwell episodes was done by Alekswithak. The track for The Pale Sun is #6 (Merciful Sun) here.
 
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Not quite. A single track in the first episode is done by Markie, the track for his own map.
I stand corrected. Hadn't listened to the Dwell E1 soundtrack on bandcamp yet, so at a glance I just assumed it was the entire thing. My apologies for omitting Markie's contribution, it's one of the best tracks in E1.
 
BTW, is the music in The Pale Sun by Markie or Alekswithak? I guess the former, as it reminds me of the music in Tears of the False God, which I think he did.

EDIT: Here's my nightmare playthrough. I barely made it out alive, but, more importantly, I did!

It was me
 
Am I missing something or is it a soft lock in That We Should Voyage So Far with the huge platform, that lowers with two Shamblers to the watery arena where you get a Quad? If you trigger it to go up again, but don't stay on it, there seems to be no way to lower it again, so you're basically stuck?
 
Am I missing something or is it a soft lock in That We Should Voyage So Far with the huge platform, that lowers with two Shamblers to the watery arena where you get a Quad? If you trigger it to go up again, but don't stay on it, there seems to be no way to lower it again, so you're basically stuck?
I believe it is a softlock in the initial 2.0 release. If you're playing on version 2.1 or newer, the gold key gate in the main room should open as soon as the big elevator starts going up, which will lead you back to the intended progression path.
d2m4_2023-02-13_12-24-25.png
 
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Further bug reports on D2M6 2p2 😅 — the gold key in the suspended crate counts as 2 keys, and 1 remains in inventory even after the slipgate is revealed and the bridge gate opened.

Also I haven't managed to find all of the initially marked 12 secrets or get a 100% kill count, so this might be an intentional mechanic I'm missing, but I noticed that both super secrets accord 1 secret point but also up the secret count by 1 each 🤔🤔🤔
 
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A better (and 3,5 minutes quicker) 100% nightmare playthrough of The Pale Sun than the one I posted when I was glad just to get out of it alive:

 
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I think there is a way to get trapped on the D1M9 Vestigial map. In the outside area with the lake and where the quad damage is and two vores spawn when you climb the tower at the side... there is a small room with a walkway leading to a door containing some Spawns. Later when you come back to this room, the button on the floor on the walkway is used to open either the door leading outside or to the room with the spawns.
If you press the button to close the spawn room door but run in there while its closing, I don't think you can get out.
 
I'm getting a Program Error crash when I transition to 'That Which Can Eternal Lie' either from 'Arrivée de L'étranger' or 'Vestigial'.

OBJECT ERROR in SUB_ShouldSpawn:
EDICT 453:
origin '112.0 2288.0 320.0'
classname item_armor2
spawnflags 15360.0
Host_Error: Program error

I'm playing using Quake Remastered - I know this isn't a supported base platform, but it has been smooth sailing apart from this issue. Any ideas?
 
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