The Ancient Aqueduct



The Ancient Aqueduct is the eigth level (slot eight) of Catacomb Abyss (1992). In one of the game's more impressive designs, it is set in the watery channels of an aqueduct, including Water Trolls that can submerge themselves. It also features the Blue Gem.

Walkthrough
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Messages

 * The Bottom of the Well of Souls
 * Leaking Walls
 * Aqueduct Settling Pool
 * Don't miss the Blue Gem in this region!
 * Aqueduct Eastern Channels
 * Aqueduct Southern Channels
 * Aqueduct Northern Channels
 * Aqueduct Western Channels
 * Conduit to the Orc Mines

Enemies Present

 * Water Trolls

Items Present

 * Treasure Chests (submerged)
 * Blue Gem

Trivia

 * This level actually utilizes the fact that the floor and roof are not textured, by simply clearing the floor to blue which meshes with the blue bottoms of the wall textures.
 * This theme is revisited in The Subterranean River in Catacomb Armageddon and The Water Node of Time plus The Flooded City in Catacomb Apocalypse.
 * Water would play an increasingly important role in first-person shooter map designs, starting with the ground pools of water and toxic waste in Doom (1993), actually splashing and flowing rivers in Heretic (1994), and finally as submersible and fully explorable areas in Duke Nukem 3D (1996), Quake (1996) and beyond.
 * A very similar effect is used in the seventh level of the freeware first-person shooter LAB, entitled "Flooded Lab", which features half submerged environs. The creator, mutantleg, confirmed that it was inspired by the Catacomb Abyss level remarking: "I see you are a man of taste, that was exactly the part where the flooded lab idea was stol-- borrowed from (it only looks different because i realised i can use the camera frustum to cut the bottom half of the map to make water look deeper)".