Tuesday July 4, 2000
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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
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* 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

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* 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

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* 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.

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* 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.

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* 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.

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* 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

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* 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.


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