thank you,

two demos, not succeeded to beat this map on skill 3 yet

the beginning and overall mood of the map reminded me of Konstantine's mansion from Thief Gold

http://quaketastic.com/files/demos/spy_reslario.rar

the health packs were on the short side, tho 

Gameplay balance was the worst I've seen in any recent Quake map. I presume it wasn't tested, possibly not even by yourself.

Coloured lighting and fog in the first bit was somewhat nauseating.

The texturing was quite repetitive and semi-broken in places.

BUT

Some of the designs, particular around the main castle and the first main room of that, were really good. The disjointed cubes and the pillared walkways there especially.

Progress and layout was pretty interesting and worked well.

Some of the progression and design ideas were pretty neat and promising.

Basically if you can hone down onto the best areas you've made and really refine those and the gameplay around them, there is great potential here. 

You're a brave man for trying to jump to those backpacks with three health, a shame it didn't go over so well. I hope you don't give up yet, though! There's a whole other area left. And you were so close to finding a secret as well! 

I'd appreciate if you went more into detail with the gameplay balance part, though. I can accept you saying it's bad, but with such a complex topic I would love to have more info than that. A demo would have also been great, but I guess it's a bit too late now. 

Gameplay balance was the worst I've seen in any recent Quake map.
Really, worse than Hexcalk's first map?

Heh, I think I'm gonna give it a go... ;) 

Downloading. I haven't looked at the screenshots yet, but a 13mb map either has a ton of textures or was not properly VISed. 

There are lots of good ideas in this map. I'm kinda surprised this is your first map, because the archtecture is very complex. The use of floating and moving objects and structures is also not very common in beginners' maps.

Some areas felt too detailed and others underdetailed, though. The wood part is too cramped and often I was caught in the geometry (quakespasm doesn't seem to like slopes).

The lightning on the cellar was really good and that might be my favorite area of the castle, congratz on that.

As for the enemies, AD has a good roster of weak monster, and you could be using them. It's ok to make a map where the player is mainly in disadvantage, but it's not that fun to fight some of the stronger monsters 150 times. That's why not many vanilla maps have 150+ monsters, it's kinda boring to shoot an ogre 4 times with the ssg and repeat that over and over. In Doom large monster counts work because a single ssg shot can kill three of them.

Considering you still have the map's source and got some feedback, it would be awesome to see a tweaked version of this map, because, like I said, there's a lot of good stuff in it. 

According to the readme, reslario grants us the right to do whatever we please with his map, so you can tweak it to your liking yourself ;) 

You'll have to wait for a completed demo (maybe tomorrow) but to expand on what Shambler said: I think the main issue, at least near the start of the map, is that the spaces are often quite cramped for the monsters used. I'd contrast the first big fight room (with the bone altar) with what came before it. The big fight room can be handled with a combination of quick reaction time and exploiting infighting, but it only really works because there's plenty of room to move around in. What came before: well, after grabbing the nailgun it's a few tricky fights with mostly mid-tier monsters that can hit pretty hard, especially the ogres. The issue is the fighting takes place mostly in pretty narrow (by Quake standards) corridors, catwalks, and staircases, so sometimes there really isn't much leeway for dodging their attacks. This is especially the case when so little health is available. The safest way to play seems to be to repeatedly shoot and duck behind cover, which isn't super fun in a fast-paced shooter like Quake.

I died a couple fights past the SNG grab, specifically on the fight with the shambler in a cage plus buddies. I like the idea of using the shambler as a turret, but again, it might be better in a more complex/bigger area with more room to move and a bit more cover. I can already tell the ideal way to handle that encounter is probably to deal with the ogre first by sniping it from outside the room.

http://www.quaketastic.com/files/demos/disjointedrealms_lp3.dem

Here's a demo on skill 1. Skill 2 had way too little ammo imo. Skill 1 is better but I feel it could use more health for how brutal it is right off the bat. As vaf said, don't feel bad about throwing in more trash monsters instead of the big ones. (RE: vaf's SSG comment: AD's triple shotty is not quite Doom 2's SSG, but it's close. It chews through trash monsters quite nicely.)

The style and architecture, as others have said, is pretty elaborate at times for a first map, even from what little I've seen. I'll try to check out the rest later and post a complete demo. Might switch to skill 0 honestly. You can be proud of the fact that it's the first time I've had to do that in a while. ;) 

here's another not completed demo

http://quaketastic.com/files/demos/spy3_reslario.rar

once you know the level's mechanics it's become an easy task, sorta :) 

Trying to play this but I can't see shit in the first room after the throne/lift. Is it just me? I'm using a fresh install of QSS r10 BTW, on the default brightness settings. 

Agree with you Mugwump, it's so dark I can' see anything, and it's really hard to find your way or detect secrets.

Appart from this, very impressive for a first map! 

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/289187231 3:40 onwards.

Main balance issues are a severe lack of health and probably ammo later on too, combined with some disadvantageous gameplay situations. 

The map is fine for me on gamma 1 (though I obviously know where everything is). Some secrets do require you to look quite closely but I think the important ones stand out well enough (Widowmaker, Gold Armour), but I guess that's hard to judge from the mapper's perspective.
Thanks also to everyone for their feedback and demos! I think I see what people are having difficulty with now and I'll see about adjusting things accordingly.
I'll probably also go and record a playthrough myself.
And what a death, spy. 

Yeah, I'm gonna not be lazy and actually implement difficulty settings. I totally do not get some of the complaints you made but a second version of the map is definitely coming. 

a second version of the map is definitely coming.
You should've first released this version as a beta (in the "screenshots & betas" section) and only release the final version as news. 

I originally wasn't going to make any changes unless really major issues would crop up. Seeing people's playthroughs though, I do feel obligated to change some things. I'm not sure if moving topics into different categories is possible here, but I would gladly accept it. 

http://quaketastic.com/files/demos/spy4_reslario_skill3.rar

it seems i'm done for now :)

cheers 

...one single post from one thread to another but I don't think it's possible to move an entire thread into a previously existing one (confirmation, anyone?).

It's generally a good idea, most especially for new mappers, to have maps playtested by several different players before release and not just by the authors who know their maps inside out. That's the whole point of releasing it first as a beta. Just think about it for your next map. 

I'd advise an update.

Played a bit further but forgot to record.

My advice is to add more health and armor and ammo and replace some of the stronger monsters with weaker ones. And keep mapping, of course! 

Too late now. It is best to do the feedback in the screenshots/feedback thread first or email/discord people to test first.

As it is the map is released and is on its own now, a nice first map. 

reslario already said he was gonna release a new version. This one may be on its own here but I suppose it's not yet on Quaddicted, where most players get their custom maps anyway. 

Difficulty settings are now implemented.
Hard remains largely unaltered, a couple more resources as well as slightly different enemy placement.
Normal has less monsters, weaker enemy types and even more resources.
Easy has even less monsters, even weaker enemy types and, again, even more resources.
Nightmare shall remain true to its name.
Very slight adjustments to geometry and lighting have also been made. I've updated the file on archive.org, so you can still use the download link in the first post. 

Definitely needed some testing. Ammo was adequate, but health was almost non existent. The map was impossible for me to beat in conventional way (no quicksave/load). Getting ganked by swarms of knights and ogres in cramped areas is not very fun. After 12 deaths I finished with 4/6 secrets and 143/150. I think the map would benefit from being split into 3 different maps. There were some performance issues on my machine as well- areas of stuttering and reduced framerates. I used my computer for a bunch of newer,higher end games. The beginning area was slow to open up, the throne you have to jump on is a bit too high without some trickjumping. The arena fights would've benefitted from some verticality as they were just open areas filled with monsters. The final arena fight was fine except for the unending waves of enemies with not a single health powerup thrown in! Overall pretty frustrating to be honest. Looking forward to more though as there is lots of potential here! I would be happy to help with any future testing.

Big demo download: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ybRlleSaubEhKeIbRYtMEZnroTa93J-i 

Looks like you just missed the new version (post above yours). It should fix at least most of your complaints. Some of the bad situations you were in just came from enemies you didn't kill coming back to haunt you, though.