[12:31] <RPG> Menk rocks, btw
[12:32] <Dinnerbler> wtf is it with madfox
[12:33] <Dinnerbler> i mean, is he on crack or something?
[12:34] <RPG> BTW, get Menkalinan as soon as possible.
[12:34] <popa> is it limited edition!?!
[12:34] <RPG> Gameplay = bestesterest 

when I answered you

[15:32] <RPG> Gameplay = bestesterest
[15:32] <scampwork> yes
[15:32] <Dinnerbler> rpg: just thinking that
[15:32] <scampwork> i'll be deleting the news in 15 mins 

man what a peace of art! make a dm map with these textures please! :) realy beautifull! 

Good gameplay, good design, good layout, good variety, good traps.

Bad textures.

I also got a larger than average amount of
SZ_GetSpace: 8014 is > full buffer size
errors when quickloading... 

Hasn't anyone noticed the flat lighting? 

Good traps (the jumping Shambler, yeahh!) and environmental interaction. Good stuff. Loved it.

Complaint? Not much to complain about, but if you twisted my arm, I'd point to some of the terrain.

The terrain here looks good in the perspective of traditional Quake oriented mapping but the style of using trigs and cut brushes is getting to be more noticeably manneristic and unnatural in appearance.

Soon, Bay Raitt's theory of Edge Loops will apply to mapping as it is now the standard for modeling.

Not your fault, but just how the scene is evolving. 

Edge Loops? 

http://cube.phlatt.net/home/spiraloid/tutorial/modeling.html

Is the simplest explanation and it is directly from Raitt though you can fill volumes with the material that is out there. All of the forum sites for the modelers (I use Wings3d and Blender) discuss the matter in great detail.

Essentially, you keep track of the horizontal and vertical lines when creating surface contours with polies. Triangles are to be avoided as they cannot extend in both directions. 

http://p212.ezboard.com/fnendowingsmiraifrm3.showMessage?topicID=135.topic

Personally, i've never liked doing the regular grid-aligned heightmaps in low-poly games like quake. If they're high-res enough, it's fine, but at low res i'd rather have edges follow the contour of the terrain. So this edge loop thing is right up my alley.

But for Q1/Q2 i try to make stuff out of chunky polyhedra rather than out of a bunch of wedges. Quake seems to handle it better and stylistically it can be nice. See The Powersphere Quest for a great example of this chunky technique. Or my own Concrete Dreams for a sort of blend between the chunky technique and Distruptor's wall-shearing technique. 

. 

Judging from the screenshots, has this map been run throught light.exe at all? 

review is here:

http://www.planetquake.com/underworld/quakerev040717b.html 

I get re-routed to file.dhtml when I try to save-as.

And if I click the d/l link, it downloads with nothing inside. 

Trinca: dm map with these textures? I'm not sure, I'm currently working at a dm map, but in other texture style.

Shambler: Bad textures???? hm, I was totally impressed by these texes, when I saw them the very first time.
Also I thought I had fixed that error on startup, but I've never meet in when qickloading.

Phait: Look at the lighting in game, screenshots are rather brighter.

HeadThump: thanks for your comments:)

Jago: see comment to Phait

uwf: thanks, great review

nitin: It seems you have used the direct link (..../files/menk.zip) in your browser. Better download it from the page: http://quakemaps.nm.ru/maps2.html

And no first run demos so far?
Also has anyone found the secret exit? 

even from the page I cant right click on it to save. 

right click doesn't work, simply click on link at the page, it should work 

someone could create a fileplanet mirror for this file? btw personally I don't like FP. 

i also got the
SZ_GetSpace: 8014 is > full buffer size
error quite frequently.

its slightly annoying, so you might want to look at you or aguire or someone else fixing it if possible. 

would be good because there's nothing in the zip file when I open it by clicking on it normally. 

I liked the textures, architecture & gameplay and the egyptian theme works very well with all the traps and things.

The only thing that let it down for me was the lighting which verged on a bland wash almost throughout. That's a shame as it could have looked very dramatic with this architecture if the light looked more like it was actually coming from the the apparent light sources.

Very good in all other respects :) 

See 

I guess I thought they were too "busy" and tended to clash with the designs a bit. Also a bit too "bold" in their style with strong contrasts and stuff which makes them look more cartoony than some Egyptian / temple textures. And the complexity of the textures put me off hunting for secrets, as everything looked like it could be a secret trigger.

Actually, come to think of it, the "cartoony" look is probably the biggest problem with them...

But it's good aside from that. 

I noticed also that several of the d/l links at PuLSaR's site have a problem. You get redirected to some other site where the file doesn't exist.

I use GetRight and the trick seems to be to make the downloader build the referer reply from the d/l URL instead of the currently open page. Then it works fine. Look in the downloader's config for this.

This behaviour is different on different sites, I think often used to prevent remote linking.

As for the "bland" lighting, you can blame me. PuLSaR wanted a darker, more classic high-contrast lighting but I talked him out of it. You can check the original balance in the start map.

I'm well aware of that lighting seems impossible to get to everyone's liking. On my GeForce3 setup this looks very good and promotes the architecture instead of hiding it.

GlassMan, Phait: What engine and graphic card do you use? 

Can someone please send me a zipped savegame file where you get the SZ_GetSpace ... error upon loading?

When you get the error, does it prevent you from continuing or do you retry until it works?

If you get stuck, please try my engine GLQuake 1.20 and see if it helps. I've specifically tried to fix this error. Savegame files should be compatible. 

I've found the problem now. It probably only happens in Hard skill due to more entities. Several engines (GLQuake 0.97, FitzQuake, WinQuake) seems to have a problem with this but my GLQuake 1.20 seems OK.

If it happens, you can either restart and hope it disappears (it often does) or switch to my engine.

I believe the only way to fix it is to either modify the engines (developers), reduce # entities in Hard (PuLSaR) or switch to Normal skill (players).

Possibly it helps to use a progs.dat that removes corpses while playing (like in 100brush).