I No Longer Fear The Ranger Guarding My Heel

A large prototype-textured map with non-linear progression, slaughter fights, and trick jumping. Runs on the Copper mod, which is included. Originally intended as an entry for SM224.

Requires up-to-date Ironwail or vkQuake on Protocol 999. Quakespasm will encounter bugs.

Please play one difficulty lower than you normally would; hard and nightmare are intended to be impossible for the majority of players.
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Submitted by
ComfyByTheFire
Downloads
848
Views
3,290
Release date
May 14, 2023
First uploaded
Last update
Rating
3.80 star(s) 10 ratings

Latest updates

  1. v1.7

    - Updated to Copper 1.30 - Fixed z fighting issues in a number of places - Added slightly more...
  2. v1.6

    - Fixed a bug where the player could get stuck with the red armor in the jump/surf area - Fixed...
  3. v1.5

    - Added 1 key to the portal slaughter fight to make it a more viable early option - Changed...

Latest reviews

Very understandably not many players are going to be able to finish this map. Even my blind playthrough of it was quite rocky with a lot of quick saves and experimenting different ways to approach challenges offered here. This is easily one of the hardest well designed Quake maps ever made and that alone should just be 5/5 for this.

Visuals go hard with the scale and at the times you don't even feel like you are playing prototype textured map. There are some technical issues especially on Quakespasm port like view getting cut by draw distance and sounds getting overwhelmed in the last battle.

What I love about the map is that you can really choose how to approach different locations and you don't have to do all difficult arena fights in middle of the map. Whole market idea is great and offers more non linearity to the map. Pretty sure I know where that is inspired from.

Final area caused me to make quick saves in middle of all the fight as I couldn't get lucky enough rolls to survive it with my strats. I could never single segment this, but that is fine. That is why we have Koren.

Awesome map Comfy!
I'll be honest, I can't beat this level. It is ridiculously difficult and brutal. I ran around it in a screaming panic looking for keys to acquire weapons and to open the doors to the end... and then was met with the largest horde of enemies I've ever seen in Quake. Try as I might, it was just too many monsters for one old shrimp to defeat.
And yet... this level is fucking cool. It's completely different from the standard of Quake mappery, filled with brutal death traps and unfair situations, completely expecting that you'll need to quicksave/load or just run past enemy encounters that you don't need to fight. It ends up feeling sort of like a dungeon crawler, a map where you explore the different parts of it feeling out where you're going to die, where you'll find silver keys, or where you're just running into a dead end so that next time you load up you can do it better.
I think there's a lot here that could be done better, or made more fair, or etc etc... but who cares. I'm glad this map exists and is doing something cool
It's a bit jank, it's a bit crazy, but goddamn. This is a one-of-a-kind. Truly brutal and unflinching in it's sadism, conquoring this for the first time even with saves was an experience. Gud map.
bruh..
first Quake map that I could not finish even with save scumming and made me use god/impulse9 halfway through. I ran out of ammo and had virtually no way to acquire more silver keys without bumping into a secret (and found quite a lot of them).

I'm sure there's method to this madness. while some of the encounters are amazing, some are plain cruel and an ammo sink.

really enjoyed the map and it has great potential to be a 5/5. I know it's hard to accommodate all skills levels with such a large scope, but I'd have a few suggestions:
* ammo balancing maybe needs more testing (I played on Normal skill).
* add shortcut teleporters to the market and back to sections, for restocking (if there are any, maybe I missed them)
* tone down a bit turrets rate of fire or swivel rate
* progression and overall objective is not very clear. what unlocks the final zone/encounter?

anyway, cannot wait to see the Quake Done Quick guys have a go at it.
It's very playable on Hard and Nightmare (on subsequent playthroughs:p), and it's definitely challenging, but as someone that is not very used to "cramped" slaughter arenas, the last one gave me troubles even on Easy as I don't quite know how to best juggle the quad/pentagram timings while generally getting swarmed. It's well sign posted so getting lost is not an issue (even in the shifting elevators/lifts), progression makes sense and it's very fun to hunt & explore for the keys (and the many secrets) as it is quite open. Speedrunners will obviously find what the best meta is for the keys for both 100% monsters/secrets and any% runs, looking forward to seeing others' use of the ring of shadows (in a single segment!). Pro yumper was great, but I avoided the lava surfing section with the platforms that activate from shooting buttons like the plague. The jump pads and arena encounters are exhilarating and of course you can't go wrong with red and purple lighting, the map is a looker.