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	Message: : : Tempus Irae 9 Towel Boy : We're back faster than ever! : Last time on Tour of Duty, Martin discovered that the Venetians have : spirited away the manuscript, which Leo himself described as documenting : his inventions of war machines. So we've been collecting blueprints for : war machines (at least, that's what the next one contains). That's the : "scientific treatise" between Leonardo and the shadowy figure : (S'bbhuth?). Pretty spooky. : We start off on a balcony overlooking a night time view. Apparently, a few : hours passed between teleporting from the last area into this place. It’s : accompanied by a new ambient sound of crickets, which goes nicely with the : flowing water. This scenario does the no background music thing right. : : : : Is this a floating plant? I’m sure we’re supposed to believe this is being : supported by the building’s architecture, but to me it looks like it’s : suspended in air. : As an act of mercy, we get a save terminal right at the start… i mean pattern : buffer… i mean… this thing with Leonardo’s face on it that the s’pht : somehow rigged to store our pattern. I was even bold enough to save before : killing the pfhor in the room. : For the first time, we see a book that’s not a flat wall texture: : Reading by candlelight with ambient sounds is always pleasant. It’s too bad : the medium of the Aleph One engine can’t emulate the burning candle wax : smell. I’ll go ahead and light a real desk candle, then, : : : : : Cosimo? Who is that? It's not Leo, but he's been visited by the same demons. : There’s a neat transparent waterfall trick here that’s done using a very thin : water polygon. In the original engine this was built for, there was no : transparency, so the player must have had to find this path behind it by : guessing they could walk through it. : We wade through this… place where the pool water flows through, I guess. It : looks like a flooded basement or underground dock with support beams. : There’s a pointless lowered ceiling here because we can just walk around : to the other side. : An assault rifle teleports in, I guess because there’s going to be some : required button shooting and the map designer panicked that there might be : scratch starters playing this. Fighters teleport in from behind to ambush : us, and they’re about as effective as you would expect three pfhor : fighters to be. Here’s a little mini-rant: when I think of the word : fighter, the image that comes to mind is the character class from HeXen; : a huge bruiser. That’s just specific to me, but it’s also a common rig : class and just the word itself still implies the same connotations. It’s : the name Bungie gave to the weakest enemy. A more fitting name would have : been drones or grunts (hi Halo); something that describes their : expendability. : We open a door, and water on both sides of the opening door doesn’t have the : complex reaction Leonardo thinks it would because of the engine we’re : playing in. This map continues to be a cakewalk because it assumes you’re : scratch starting, which I’m not. I came in with 3x health and excess ammo : from Total Carnage. There’s another switch-operated door which closes : momentarily, so we should store a copy of our pattern to the k’alima : before continuing. Scratch that, it’s one of those Colony Ship type : buttons that you can deactivate before it closes :) Why is it obstructed : by a candle? : : That is dangerous. : The other door at the end of this bridge doesn’t open, so just as we turn : around thinking we hit a dead end, a cyborg on the other side opens it for : us! I dodged every shot thanks to my jamming the door open. : Before moving forward, I should show off these water-spewing angry faces. : : The strongest thing that can be said for Tempus Irae is it’s architecture, : and it really shows in this map. : After some swimming we find a pfhor taking a bath : : There’s an amusing display of an enforcer standing behind what looks like a : reception desk, and as we find more bathtubs it becomes clear that this : map is a bathhouse and we were just swimming in the disposed water of : those baths (yuck). : : (I killed the enforcer before taking that, sorry) : Now that I'm speculating where we're supposed to be is as good an arbitrary : time as any to show the map. : : : The first few rooms look not as watery as they should. What's with that? Are : sectors only azure if you can sink under it? : There’s an irritating ambient sound of a metronome in this room. Not the loud : annoyance kind of irritation, but the creepy kind that will drive you : insane and make you afraid to sleep, like a beating heart. : A trooper rises out of a bath, as if there was a rising platform underneath. : Wait, so, there was a window with visible ground at the reception desk area, : then we jump down here and there’s another window lower than that ground : level above. : : : I’m confused about the geography of this place now, but I once lived in a : house that was half on a hill and half below it, so half of the basement : had windows, so it doesn’t break my suspension of disbelief (I have not : forgotten the floating plants at the balcony… which I think was at the : same elevation as the reception room at ground level). : There’s some ambushes here where the TOZ-T is useful. Some failure in : texturing gives us bright green grass under a starry night sky. : : You need a darker hue of grass there. : The cross in this room made me believe it was a pattern buffer, but it’s not. : : There’s a rising and lowering door that we have to jump to with perfect : timing and it leads back to the wooden tub area above, making me wonder : what was accomplished until I see an open door that was previously shut. : : We have to do some underwater diving. In the last map the author mentioned : that he cut out an underwater maze because it was no fun, and it feels : like he pasted whatever that was into this section. We have to find : buttons to open doors, one of which is a really big door, and with my : shield still in the yellow, I’m disappointed that all we’re getting here : is red shield canisters. : We reach a cavernous area, and what’s really annoying about the alien weapon : is that it auto-switches to the SPNKR rocket launcher when it runs out. : There’s this rule that explosive weapons should never be auto-switched in : FPS games, you know? That trooper got what was coming to him. By the way, : that enforcer dropped in from the roof, and you can see how the : architecture was designed to accommodate him. : : Is that a chimney, or what? : There’s a button here, which I don’t know what it did, but there’s another : button that you have to shoot, making my prediction about the Assault : Rifle’s purpose correct. : Upon consulting the spoiler guide: At the large tank of water there is a : switch that controls a door to the upper left. This doesn¹t actually do : anything important so ignore it. : Er, okay? *looks back at the map, then pushes the lever again* Oh, I see it : now. The map maker didn’t even try to hide that it’s a dead-end. : There’s a corridor with an extremely low ceiling we have to crawl through, so : we’re literally up to our neck in water, and wouldn’t you know it, the : place is a maze! : We finally end up outside the bath house, and there’s a SPNKR for anybody who : didn’t get one yet: : : Some pfhor teleport in and the troopers amusingly blow themselves up against : the railing. A button to slowly raises a bridge, which will descend back : down again. Why not just have it up at all times? A violet shield canister : is a sight for sore eyes waiting for us across a gap, but we really need : to rocket hop to get it, and, well… : : It’s not that much of a problem, as there’s a 2x canister up ahead (we have : to wait for the troopers to walk past so they don’t notice us. Cool use of : monsters with scripted paths). : I read on the level notes that this is, indeed, a bath house, which led out : to the aqueducts. The secret level is Venice =) : We have to shoot a manual lever to raise a bridge, which brings into question : the mystic abilities of grenade and fusion explosions to operate such : machinery. We can swim out to where the troopers came from before crossing : the bridge, but all that’s there is a single grenade clip. : We need to grab that 3x canister across the gap before moving forward, : because guess what teleports in? No, not a juggernaut, but… well, yes, : it’s a juggernaut. : : New model. Same behavior. : I choose not to fight it because a lever slowly drains the water on one side : of the bridge revealing the exit. : : The vitruvian man teleporters do not follow the normal laws of space. : Next time on Tour of Duty, Martin will be—what? A terminal I missed? : According to Lh'owon.org, that book way back in the first room has a : "success" message. When the flying xibalban skulls did that : happen? What is the success condition of this map? : : : : : Oh, false alarm, it's just the same message again. Lh'owon.org, you troll, : you. Am I going to have to look up this Cosimo guy on wikipedia? : Anyway, next time, Martin plays The Gauntlet. Sounds like another tough one. : It's got to be, if those venetians want to protect the stolen war machine : manuscript. Have fun! (Oh, Venetians — it means Venice! hey, aren't we : already in Venice on this map?)
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