09/11/2024 - "Temple of Eelhandra" by Jean "El Chicoverde" Rochefort

[Sat42]

Map Title: Temple of Eelhandra
Author: Jean "El Chicoverde" Rochefort
From: New ShamuQuest
Filename: stemple.unr




Video Playthread:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_n2DgVzYP8
With text commentary:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjllppMvcG0
On Unreal difficulty:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWnOSffPbJM

Synopsis: You have battled hard to get here. The Sacred Stone is somewhere in this temple... Watch your step: your enemies are not the only danger lurking in these desecrated rooms and hallways. All who seek the artifact are intruders here. Talandri'n, the Goddess of Lightning, is the ultimate guardian of the chamber of the rune. If you survive her trials, you will still have to journey to the Underground Temple... will you ever find the Nali Crown, which can unlock the power of the rune?

Discuss!

[Semfry]

Visuals here are good, with the large temple ruins (including an extra bit of exterior at the start to sell you're only seeing a small part), as well as some setting variety as you go into the deeper parts of the temple, as well as the more active touches like the collapsed parts to further sell it. Since this is Chicoverde, map 2 of Shamuquest is a bit of an elephant in the room when it comes to temple maps, and this doesn't really match it, even if it's much more visually polished.

The base combat has some non-standard moments like the invisible Skaarj and the Krall vs Skaarj fight at the end (unfortunately getting the AI to actually fight each other can take a bit of work), but a lot of it is base enemies spammed in pretty simple ways that don't make especially varied fights (Although it's probably the most challenging of these maps with the confined spaces). The big letdown is the major trial and error/jank elements though, like the infamous no warning insta-kill lightning if you just walk in certain places after getting the rune, although it's at least easy when you realise all you have to do is go around the side of that room. With how you get locked in the room for a bit, plus the damage amp to help, I also think the invisible enemies are supposed to trigger after taking the rune, but they seemingly were just there right away on my attempt before the playthrough? They are at least avoidable but the swing blades moving in a strange triggered way makes them odd to deal with. Then there's the rooftop collapses, which used to freeze the game for several seconds even on decent hardware at the time; that part isn't a issue anymore, but I seemed to have issues with randomly dying which I don't recall before, and I had to find some specific positions to avoid that, I wonder if it's related to performance (like the game freeze also made the hitboxes miss you). The ambush room with the Pupae also made me fight with a long earthquake effect going on once, but it didn't happen in the playthrough. It almost feels like an overambitious contest map that had to be rushed out without proper testing, but I guess it isn't at all, and it also doesn't really match with any of Chicoverde's other post-Shamuquest 1 single player releases.

While the story is still pretty bare there's some more lore and details on the intended progression of the full series at least. The final message is a little odd as it's a character addressing you like the Nali earlier, but the only "creature" there is the statue; between the talk of pain and it saying about something like a "tribe" I guess them being a petrified krall is the intention?

[Sat42]

I have to say it was very entertaining watching your playthrough, Semfry! It's rare to see the unexpected factor in your videos but this one definitely conveyed something that absolutely spooked me back in the day: the unpredictability of Temple of Eelhandra!

I am not going to lie: this is my personal favourite temple map by Chico. Perhaps a controversial opinion so this requires some context: as I've previously stated in the Nak'halinra Peak thread, the latter is actually the first community map I played (and I also started playing UT before Unreal, so playing SP maps via Oldskool was how I became interested in Unreal), and back then there was no official release of the New ShamuQuest series with its maps tied together so that drove me to using the editor for the first time (after initially taking the easy route of playing some other, lesser mappacks). In the end, I played Temple of Eelhandra before both the original ShamuQuest and Chico's Operation Na Pali contributions. This was over a decade ago so I was young(er!) and inexperienced, and I remember getting seriously frightened around the "chamber of the rune": panic mode kicked in as I wondered whether the lightning was actively following me! Plus invisible enemies!?! Holy shit And I died again later on, including due to sudden collapsing geometry (@Semfry: even with the game freezing for a couple of seconds; likewise, no more performance issues for me now), and the final main fight in the "Dark Chapel" can be brutal (also died there on my latest playthrough).

Consequently, what I mainly retained from the experience was a sense of adventure and wonder: remember when games were just experiences, and you had no idea how things were done behind the scenes? There's definitely an element of the supernatural in Temple of Eelhandra which hearkens back to the original Tomb Raider series which I had experienced earlier. And that typical Unreal-like mix of sci-fi and fantasy just really works for me.

With that said, while I still feel like trial and error can have its place when done well (i.e., in a way that increases tension by being used smartly - which should encompass sparingly), I do recognise the problem with some of the gameplay implementation here: too much trial and error for one, and the earthquakes leading to tons of debris causing performance issues at the time is just janky (that certainly hurt, rather than enhanced, the immersion back in the day - I was relieved it didn't crash at least!). Some of this is tempered by the knowledge that hazards can affect your enemies too: just from my latest playthrough, I remembered that the swinging blades can be very useful to slice and dice Skaarj Troopers!

The visuals remain very good of course (slightly better looking than Unreal), and hence stand the test of time: this is partly why Temple of Soquatre couldn't take the crown for me, as while the latter does boast vistas that still hold up (including at least one sight more impressive than anything in Temple of Eelhandra), other parts of it have really got a "n00b" feeling (texturing issues primarily) - i.e., it's uneven. And since I'm making comparisons, I might as well add that The Lost Sanctuary of Kalishr'a for ONP is spread over two - individually short - maps, and as a result the sense of scale suffers by contrast.

At the end of the day, I feel Temple of Eelhandra is still a great map, and flaws notwithstanding, I appreciate the challenge to this day. As for the story, there will always be a sense of mystery and of what could have been, as we indeed get some details on the intended progression beyond but never got more levels. I do wonder how the hell the "Eastern Swamps" would have been handled in this engine, however! It's a shame the campaign was never finished, however, if it's any consolation, I feel the "Nali mages" angle got covered perfectly by Nali Chronicles later, so we did get that fantasy brought to life eventually.

The final message is a little odd as it's a character addressing you like the Nali earlier, but the only "creature" there is the statue; between the talk of pain and it saying something about a "tribe" I guess them being a petrified krall is the intention?

Well, the message says you must stop the Krall and the Demon, and the narrator says they're part of the Kh'halan clan: based on what we learned in Valley of Eelhandra, I thought the Kh'halan clan was a Skaarj-only faction. Hence, on my first playthrough, I assumed there was a message left on the ground near the Shield Belt (maybe Chico forgot to add the accompanying Skaarj corpse): the fact we'd just faced giant Krall who'd fight Skaarj Troopers led me to believe the next big threat would be the giant Krall, with the Krall statue heralding your arrival in the domain of the "Krall and Demon" (presumably a Skaarj Warlord).

[Darkon]

Title was familiar, but the playthrough didn't ring a bell for some reason. Thank you for the playthrough though, much appreciated! Looks like a great map with some unexpected "traps".

[Sat42]

[...] Looks like a great map with some unexpected "traps".

Indeed! Nice to see you're still around, Darkon I was pleased to see your reaction to the announcement of the return of MOTW on the Site Speak forum, we keep going!

[Delacroix]

It's true that this is no Temple of Soquatre, but Eelhandra's still got it going on for itself. The mentioned traps add a Velora-ish feel to it, essentially turning the player into an Indiana Jones wannabe. It's the highest point of ShamuQuest II. In fact, I feel like I'm going to take it for a spin soon.

[Aspide]

Temple of Eelhandra is the final map of Shamu Quest 2, very unfortunate since there were supposed to be more maps in this pack but the project was cancelled, Chicoverde has always been one of the most ambitious mappers of the older mapping era, his incredible use of terrain and his love for temples set him apart from the rest, this map is like a great representation of Chicoverde's greatest strengths and also his greatest flaws.

The level geometry is really nice, the interiors and exteriors of the temple look great (good choice and alignment of textures as well) but the terrain is what steals the show, however even though the terrain looks great, the BSP is very unstable which can cause a lot of geometry errors, with that being said this map is much more stable than the previous map of the campaign. Lighting is great, nothing to mention since Chicoverde has always been a master of lighting, light has sources and I found no technical problems with lights, the only nitpick I have is that the map doesn't use any Ambient Brightness but maybe it was done intentionally to create a darker atmosphere.

Sound design is very strong, the level uses plenty of Ambient Sounds, however I was disappointed when I found out that the map only uses 2 Dynamic Ambient sounds, oh well. The choice of music is great however it's odd that the map doesn't use any Music Events to spice things up, even during the final fight the music doesn't change. Whenever I play this map I'm always thinking of that beta track called Suspense, that track would have been a good fit as well, however Cliff Bleszinski will most likely spawn behind me and headshot me with the Chainsaw if I ever try to play that song .

Gameplay is a hit and miss, while you have to deal with the usual Unreal monsters (except that now in very tight areas, so you better learn to plan ahead) this level also has plenty of strange moments that can really annoy players that don't know what's going to happen next, the worst example are those lighting bolts that try to kill you after you get the key (Rune), the problem is that there's no previous warning that something like that is going to happen and those bolts can kill you in one hit, this map is full of moments like this where you encounter something that can kill you or severely hurt you without any warning. Another big problem is the level geometry can get in the way of the flow of the map, the worst example is the staircase where you have to go down and unlock the door with the key, that staircase is badly designed because you can easily fall to the bottom. The majority of the environments were not designed for fighting because they are usually very tight corridors with death ends, so gameplay is very boring since the game forces you to use powerful weapons since you are basically trapped in almost every enemy encounter. It's almost like the map wasn't made with the enemies in mind, the map was most likely designed for exploration and the enemies were an afterthought, so at the end this level may look pretty but it's poorly designed.

Issues I found :
- Player Starts and Teleporters use filtering, a big technical problem. This issue also appears in the first map of Déjà Vu Gryphon Revisited
- The map uses teleporters to create Coop checkpoints but the system is flawed but the effort is appreciated.
- This map is infamous for having sections where the game freezes when earthquakes happen, this is caused by the Exploding Wall actor. You can fix this by reducing the values ExplosionDimension and ExplosionSize, also some of this actors are out of bounds, can't believe that Chicoverde didn't fixed this before release.
- There are some decorations floating in the water, however if you touch them they sunk to the bottom.
- This map uses Thing Factories to spawn weapons when playing online, this causes problems when using mutators.
- There are pathnodes but they aren't used properly because the map has an abundance of them, which can cause issues with the AI.
- The two invisible Skaarj use fog to tell where their location is, however if you play with fog turn off you will have a huge handicap, also the corpses of these invisible enemies don't work if you play in OldSkool, however I don't blame Chicoverde for this.
- There are many actors that don't do anything, like patrol points with no pawns that use them or dispatchers that activate events with no actors attach to them, it gives the impression that this map was left unfinished.
- Besides the coop checkpoints, this map has no coop or difficulty filtering.
- There are some subtracted brushes that don't do anything, however they could have been placed there to correct BSP errors but I find that unlikely.
- This map has the actor WaterImpact placed in the level, this actor wasn't supposed to be placed in a map. The same goes for the actor Ring Explosion which is also placed in the map.
- Because of BSP issues and useless subtracted brushes this map has 50 zones..... This map should have had 14 zones approx.
- The map has trigger lights in the skybox, most likely to simulate lighting storms, however it doesn't work and the feature was left unused.

[ebd]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjllppMvcG0

[Sat42]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjllppMvcG0

Thanks for sharing your video, ebd! why didn't you use the save file I shared, it would have made your life much easier (see the beginning of Semfry's video, you would have started fully equipped!) I did like how the invisible Scares got you, reminded me of myself

I also think the invisible enemies are supposed to trigger after taking the rune, but they seemingly were just there right away on my attempt before the playthrough?

It seems the invisible "guardians" can indeed come into play before you get the rune, ebd's video shows one of them somehow attacking really early (the other one intervened after the rune was acquired), I just never personally experienced that so maybe this is an RNG thing...

[Masterkent]

This map is nearly impossible to finish without dying if you play it the first time and don't know how the traps work... One of the most sadistic levels I've ever seen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWnOSffPbJM

[Sat42]

@Masterkent: Wonderful playthrough on the Unreal difficulty setting, thanks for sharing and added the video to the OP! at the final main fight you were a tiny 2 HP away from dying, well played