Holy moly this map is amazing! great job! 

haha, so there are now two levels named Well of lost souls 

Also found and played the previous map (Unholy Ossuary), very 'true' to E3 as well of course. Found only one secret though.

Both these maps have a classic quake style but just a little bit more detail, now I gotta say I got some of Hipnotic/SOA vibe off both of them. 

liked it a lot, lighting, gameplay, top notch 

 

http://www.quaketastic.com/files/demos/shamew2.zip

That start was downright cruel. TBH it's a bit counterintuitive combining <SPOILER> the vore with knights getting in the way of running from voreballs and a self-damaging GL with no armour<SPOILER>.

After that things perked up somewhat but this was still a tough map, made me try hard in a few tricky combats - satisfying later on. Combined with the semi-maze feeling corridors it had a good unsettling air, a bit like playing E4 the first time! I'm not a huge fan of this (too corridory for me) but you did it well, it could have been straight out of Quake. I'd like to see what you can push with you own styles too.

Basically another definitely good early map, keep it going.

P.S. Liked the secrets too, and the trap was cool and indicated nicely. 

@Naitelveni Thank you! I saw your comments on Ionous' stream - really made my day :)

@Yhe1 I knew there had to be another one out there lol. It's admittedly a bit of a generic name.

@Gila Thanks Gila! Glad to hear that you think my maps have that feel to them. What sort of vibes did you pick up from Hipnotic/SOA? I've only ever played both of the Quake mission packs once and I remember very little about them other than the badass hammer weapon that I wish was in vanilla Quake! I forget which mission pack this was in though.

@Jaromir83 Thank you!

@Danzadan Haha, thanks :)

@Shambler Sorry to hear you had trouble with the Vore at the start! I wanted this map to be tough; tougher than anything I've worked on yet, because it's most likely going into a map pack that I've been working towards and I want the Episode 4 style maps to be the hardest. I will definitely change the Vore to something else on Normal & Easy though.

Glad to hear you liked the latter portions of the map though! 

> What sort of vibes did you pick up from Hipnotic/SOA?

I'm not a mapper, so I describe it from POV of player. Quake sure had some nice maps, but they were sometimes limited in extra details, probably because of framerate concerns and self-imposed 1.4MB filesize limit so they will fit on a single floppy for easier transfer and testing.

Hipnotic/Scourge of Armagon had nicer looking maps - they had more detail, as in not just a wall with (often not properly aligned) texture here next to this wall of another texture, but having some trim textured brush in-between, and in general texture alignment was also better, not weird proportions for some rooms/supports, etc.

In original Quake the maps that suffer the lack of detail and visual polish were most of E4 maps by Sandy Peterson. Your "Well of Lost Souls" has E4 theme but the detail is better. Like the room with gold key teleport, the corners have the torches and these columns are textured in a nice way, wall as well, it's nice and on top and bottom the bricks aren't "cutoff" mid-way, and the zombie/yellow key room too, with nice wooden beams in the ceiling. Stuff like that.

I guess it's just that the first time I saw this better attention to visual looks in Quake maps was playing Scourge of Armagon. See first areas of Quake's E2M1 or E3M1 and compare it to HIP1M1 or HIP1M2 base maps of SOA. 

1m43s 

I pretty much echo what everyone has said. A very nice E4 styled map. Its clean, looks nice, and has good gameplay. As well as some evil spike traps.

First run demo, hard skill: http://www.quaketastic.com/files/demos/orl_ew2.rar 

@Gila Ah I see. Yeah I try to take the idea of the original maps and do my own take on them, and of course these days with the powerful editors we have at our disposal, it's a lot easier to go the extra mile with detailing and texture alignments. I appreciate you noticing my efforts!

@Jaromir83 I'd love to see your demo! Here's mine at 1:16! https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_ebtHMHkIfdMmJQUzNBbURVMmM

@Orl Thanks Orl, I appreciate it! I'll check out your demo! 

I've posted a new version with some changes based on feedback I've gotten in regards to the difficulty. You can check out the changes for yourself or read about them over here: http://quakeone.com/forums/quake-talk/single-player/13545-well-lost-souls-2.html 

https://aww.moe/iygblu.zip
skill 2 first play recording on new version.

Got through but with heart stopping moments.
I liked the combat and ambushes. 

Small changes that are spot on. Less exploding in face at the start, more care required with ammo later on. Works well. 

Downloaded it now; will play it later.

I suggest using the same filename for both the BSP and the TXT files. Different names ("ew2" & "WellOfLostSouls_Readme") can be difficult to track when there are dozens of custom maps in the same /maps folder. 

@Shambler Thanks Shambler - Glad you like the changes :)

@Mankrip I'll remember that next time I update/release a map, thanks for the tip! 

Well done, i liked the hard encounters from the start on, was always on edge from not being slaughtered.
Found no secrets, though i looked for them in my 2nd run, maybe i'm spoiled by searching hidden buttons or sth :)
Go map! I'd be glad seeing some more quake from you ;)
MFX 

You managed to create a memorable map, I really like it. For me only one spike wall trap was a bit unclear, one suggestion add on the ground level a wooden button, wide but not tall 192x8x8 for example, player steps over it and activates the trap? This also is used in episode 4's secret map. 

 

I just remember one streamer having a bit of trouble with it* so not the clearest trap ever. There is surely others who just rush through it. 

I thought the spike corridor trap would be another crusher corridor trap, so at first I tried to run through it, yes. But that's probably dumb on my part, since the corridor was very short, and crusher corridors tends to be longer.

Anyway, I couldn't figure out any secret. Those must be really well hidden this time... but I couldn't find all secrets in Sandy's maps either.

The pacing was great, interconnection was great and very clever all around, the amount of ammo and health was perfect, and the combat surprised me at how well it was done. 

Just realised I haven't commented on this (I thought it would be in bad taste to start a thread and then be the first to comment, and then I forgot entirely).

Only played the first version so far, so I can't comment on the changes you've made. Not much to say except that I thought this was great and really captures the essence of Episode 4 maps, recreating their bizarre atmosphere without replicating their technical shortcomings. I played on skill 1 and thought it was hard, but not too hard; just appropriately so for an E4 homage.

I though Unholy Ossuary was good too, by the way, but this map captured my imagination more. There have been a few good and id-like runic maps over the years, whereas I struggle to think of any maps that have captured E4 as well as Well of Lost Souls. PuLSaR's The Elder Reality obviously comes to mind, but while I think it's a fantastic map, it's more of a modernisation of the entirety of E4 condensed into one --beautiful and unmistakeably recent-- level. Your map, on the other hand, feels like a lost E4 map from 1996 (in a good way, and minus the bad texture alignment etc.).

You wrote on QuakeOne
Honestly I'm a bit obsessed with the original mapping styles each designer had
and it shows in your work; you seem to have an exceptional understanding of the id designs. 

GGRC played your map!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Iz7P0ixWdU 

@MissBubbles speedrun under 1m30s? you didn�t go underwater at all!