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Conundrum 3
| Author | DocRock |
| Date of release | Final - January 30, 2023 |
| .bsp filename | con3_1 (+16 maps) |
Quick Summary
17 bsps, 45 substantial submaps, custom textures, custom models, custom sounds, 6-player support with 4-level difficulty adjustment that can also be manually set in each bsp. This campaign represents more than 2.5 years of work by DocRock and qUiCkSiLvEr.
Description
While solving puzzles and fighting legions of monsters,
explore Egyptian ruins, snowy mountains, buried tunnels, deep mines and volcanic caverns
in this third installment of Conundrum by DocRock
There are some 35 unique areas to experience as you play this incredible and challenging campaign.
The overall goal is to find and collect the six relics in six perilous zones. The first two to find are blood and stones.
The adventure starts in Con3_Huba where you can see samples of the different environments and start the campaign, or you and friends can vote to jump to any one of the 16 key Maps where you can also choose from 4 different levels of difficulty.
Things start with a simple challenge where you have to push an ornate box to a matching decal on the ground followed by a couple of sections where you have multiple boxes that have to be placed for gates to open so you can progress, all while trying to stay alive as various monsters let you know they don't like you and your friends invading their space!
Map sections after that get more difficult but there are only a few boxes to move, rather you have to be agile and nimble with tricky platforming (jumping and landing and moving) in breathtaking sheer cliff landscapes.
On most of the map sections, falling is a bad thing so you need to be good at crawling, jumping, long-jumping and always aware of what is going on around you.
If you lose control and push a box off the edge where you can't get to it then the map will reset, too bad and try again!
Map sections like this are only in the beginning, later maps are focused on survival and it's important to have team members that can heal you if need be.
There are 3 interlude maps where you can see the relics you've collected, take a deep breath and then move on to find the remaining relics.
At the end, you will have a final battle to test your skills, be patient. You will deal with many kills including the big boss.
Note: In a number of places the monsters will fight each other. This is by design and not an accident. We found that playing on an active scene where all the bad guys aren't just shooting at the players made game play much more interesting.
Additional info
Known problems:
If you have problems while pushing the boxes on this campaign you might see these symptoms:
1. boxes don't want to push or are very slow
2. your player perspective rubber-bands as you push things
This problem is caused by the video sync between the game and your monitor refresh rate. You can fix this by setting "GL_VSYNC 1" in your game console or go to your GAME OPTIONS > VIDEO > and check "WAIT FOR VERTICAL SYNC" This should fix the problem for you for the most part.
Also, if for any reason you get stuck and can't figure out (at that moment) what to do you can always votemap con3_huba and then jump back to the map to restart it or come back at a later time when you've had a chance to think about things and talk with other players.
Servers may also have an empty map running where someone left it so do the same thing to get things started again where you want it.
Difficulty Notes:
One other note about Gameplay Difficulty Selections. The maps vary in difficulty.
Some maps are more focused on platforming and jumping then on just killing reams of monsters.
Choosing a more difficult level only adds monsters and might make the existing ones harder to kill.
Things were done this way because with 3 or 4 players all shooting and healing each other, things would otherwise be much too easy.
Then again, one or two experienced players can run through the maps on the "Difficult" setting as a challenge.
The maps are set up so one player automatically selects "Easy", Two players get "Medium" three players get "Hard" and 4 players get "Difficult".
This can be easily changed at the Selection Kiosks, but once any player breaks the start barrier and you hear the suit zipper start sound, the difficulty selection is locked at that point even if more players join.
Special notes:
On Con3_10 there is a hidden button that will enable snow on part of the map (just for fun).
Special notes for Server Operations:
This campaign is set up so you only need to add Con3_HubA to your mapcycles and votemaps.
All of the other maps are accessible through that start map.
Additional credits
- LEVEL DESIGN -
DocRock qUiCkSiLvEr
- CONCEPT -
DocRock
- MAP EDITORS -
DocRock qUiCkSiLvEr
- MODELS -
converted by qUiCkSiLvEr:
Egyptian Mummy 3D by Mimoun KECHE
Dagon monsters originally by Gearbox, version released by the Cthulhu Half-Life mod
lavadog monsters converted from Natural Selection
several custom skins for stock monsters to fit the environment
- SOUNDS -
Olivier Giradot
Northern 87
deleted-user
Sinatra314
Mattias Michael Lahoud
Swiftoid
Alan McKinney
Leszeck Szary
Mark 1985
Julias Galla
Martin Kinrus, Ignacio Arfeli
Lowshape
TT
Optimuss, Dok & Martin
InspectorJ
Morpheous Project
(c)Taira Komori
Halloween Tx Labs
qUiCkSiLvEr
- SKY BOXES -
Anachronism JPolito
Crashsite Valve
Embassy unknown
StormClouds Serhat Ondes
Tornsky Valve
Train Valve
- TEXTURES -
DiscountKiller
qUiCkSiLvEr
Erupting Volcano (unknown author)
- BETA TESTERS -
babykitkat DocRock
DiscountKiller qUiCkSiLvEr
Grimlock dArK
PastaSquid AberrantQueen
Sparks
Other Credits:
Egyptian Mummy 3D by Mimoun KECHE https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/egyptian-mummy-3d-1434214
mesh and textures converted and updated by qUiCkSiLvEr with bones and animations from the sven-coop zombie model.
although I started with the dagon model from the Cthulhu Half-Life mod | Released 2006, credit for the Dagon in that mod was given as originally from Gearbox.
https://www.moddb.com/mods/cthulhu/addons/cthulhu-reanimations-pack-v1
several size and animation variations were made from this model by qUiCkSiLvEr for DocRock's incredible Conundrum 3 Sven Coop mod.
the volcano gif - no specific author credit was given for this.
https://scitechdaily.com/images/Big-Volcanic-Eruption.gif
article: Volcanic Winter: Ever-Present Threat of Catastrophic Supervolcano Eruptions Revealed By CURTIN UNIVERSITY SEPTEMBER 4, 2021
sized and converted to a Sven-Coop sprite by qUiCkSiLvEr for DocRock's incredible Conundrum 3 Sven Coop mod.
lavadog monster original mesh by the HL1 Natural Selection team
this was an alien_level2 monster from the original HL1 version of Natural Selection that qUiCkSiLvEr originally converted and retexturized as a lava monster for DocRock's great map "Vicious" released back on Feb 22, 2003
Changelog
Community fix:
Tags
Rate this map
4.3 / 5 (8 votes)
Reviews
Comments & discussion
Rules:
- Feedback should be constructive.
- For discussion not related to this map, post in the forum.
- If you need help installing maps, please read the installation guide.
Pretty excellent campaign… Took Gauna and myself 5:30 hours to play through the whole thing. The architecture is mostly outstanding.
This mapper sure does like barnacles too… they're so frequent, and come in a variety of skins to suit their episode.
A few things I didn't like:
- Many areas had a lack of ambience. Some environment sounds would have worked well.
- Squads of monsters spawning out of thin air repeatedly… detracts from the game play somewhat.
- Respawning with almost no equipment. (Feels like map configs or "game_player_equip" should be used.)
- Some NPCs for no reason had thousands of HP. Mostly during the ice episode.
- Level change sprite/indicator would be nice to have.
Still worthy of 5 stars though. Very cool to play with some good friends!
Thanks,
Adam Reece.
As Adambean reviewed it above. That was one of best series I ever played. I have only one small complaint that it doesn't need to fix: Completing Conundrum 3 on Medium difficulty felt like it was played on Hard one. Probably I guessed it was designed for up to +4 co-op players, not 2 which was a bit okay-ish and still playable.
DocRock, we respectfully salute your talents and you for all of your marvelous work on detailed textures and stunningly beautiful architectures and brushworks. Adambean and I already enjoyed every view per map as it already gave us many vibes of DOOM, QUAKE, Indiana Jones, Tomb Raider and more. ^^
I agree with this addendum entirely. :)
Thanks,
Adam Reece.
Things to fix on this:
- Restarting maps or going back to previous maps in any way is very bad for sven in general. Griefing ensues, and should be avoided at all costs. This is not singleplayer and players would rather rock the vote to change the map instead of dealing with constant map resets because of a mistake from a random player or some troll after 5 seconds of loading. Please remove this immediately! I know it may require some out of the box thinking to modify the puzzles or such, but it must be done.
- Weapon progression: never pit players against hordes of monsters with just the starting pistol and almost to no ammo. Bad choice. Unplayable most of the times. Players avoid maps like this unless its a 32 players mayhem.
- Hordes of monsters: if there are hordes, and this is not an horde map, dont make the entire map have hordes of constant respawning monsters. When respawning, getting from A to B will be annoying. Players will avoid the map…. Also, making the monsters have a long respawn time makes it even worse, much much worse. Players left behind after clearing the map are left with fighting the entire map again all alone. Couple this with the weapon progression problem and you have an even bigger issue.
- Spawn points should be more frequent, so players dont have to run all the way to the action. Either this or having shortcuts is fine.
more stuff needs to be adressed:
- turn monstermakers into squadmakers
- add xenmakers for the squadmakers
- reduce number of spawned monsters and/or the spawn time to almost zero
- add the hull queue flag for squadmakers so they spawn anyway if they are blocked by a player or npc
- reduce game counter triggers amounts if they are tied to monsters dying, by at least 1 monster, as a failsafe if said monster doesnt spawn
- maybe add the previous maps weapons to the cfgs, using game_player_equip can also do this while ingame, so weapons are added as players find them and then respawn with all weapons
- check for any env_shooter that has "scale" "100" on its properties. This is a bug from old editors. Since this was a half life mod at one point (was it? conundrum 1 and 2 are… idk), this bug may be present
- check for any missing file with resguy, and generate .res files properly, just in case
- give players hints for objectives. For example the crossbow shooting of boxes is not present in any sven map and may not be discovered by players easily. Small game_text prompts with hitns could fix this
purely a suggestion thing but lobby maps where you can get a rest should also have a bonus of 100 armor points, i think its fair since getting relics means you did 33% of the progress and armoring up the players never hurts in action maps
The maps are really well made and remind me of serious sam but at the same time some of the maps balancing is all over the place. Even if I was playing on difficult, yes it was designed for 4+ players but im pretty good at the game so I can take the challenge. The problem is that the maps only gives you glock at starts and that it would take a map or two to gear up properly, can be either fine or bad depending on which map you pistol start on
The main 2 problems I have is monstersmakers having sometimes 10-20 monsters stored that spawn 30 seconds each which sometimes forces you to either rush the map or go running back and fourth before actually just rushing into the level change so you dont have to deal with them, I have no idea if this is difficulty-depended but even if it is, that's not a good one, and the fact that the maps could get repetitive since you either: "shoot monsters and gear up" or "push boxes and maybe jump sometimes", can be fine if you just feel like killing everything though, it's a shooter after all, but at least even simple puzzles sprinkled in would've made it much better then just moving boxes around (e.g say using monsters to your advantage like absuing stukabat to get up to a secret, maybe collecting all the boxes into one pit to both progress and making it look more engaging, using secondary's displacer attack. etc)
It does some stuff right though, the ammo placement in most maps is fine so you never wont ever run out of ammo, unless you only use one weapon.
The use of nihilanth is something that is not seen a lot in sven co-op maps and xbow pushing boxes is a neat thing at start
Brushwork is pretty good
LJ doesn't make traversing thru big areas tedious
Some of the coolest levels I've seen, but do not put these on a public server without babysitting or ripenting. Many maps have restarts triggered by things like pushing a box off a ledge or breaking an explosive box at spawn. To no one's surprise, players started triggering restart loops so fast that slow joiners could not even finish loading. If you manage to reach the final level, it will loop back to the first one. So, if the server is full then this is all you'll be playing for the day (hard to vote out of short maps).
I don't think I've played anything like this before. It's kind of like the KZ maps but with action and puzzles thrown in too. The box-pushing mechanic is overused but works well enough as a break between action and wandering. Beautiful architecture and tons of open space. The longjump makes giant outdoor areas fun rather than tedious to get through. Serious Sam must have been an inspiration for some of these areas.
think making the triggers teleport the pushables instead of restarting the whole map would've made it less griefable, same with the explosive boxes at the end by making them invincible until you put it right besides the wall
Uploaded a repacked\fixed version, it is recomended to downlaod repacked version since the old version for some reason has commented out .res entries (????) and bloat files.