Looks nice. Wish I had a working engine to play it on. :P 

@dreadlorde: If all you need is the engine that's no problem at all. You can get fitzquake next door => http://www.celephais.net/fitzquake/ 

This was great!

Eight skill1 demos: http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/demos/otp_rodent.7z (thanks negke for quicksave recording trick)

I'm still quite worn out from playing this behemoth so I'll keep this short. This map looks tremendous, you can easily see how much time and effort was put into this - it oozes polish everywhere. The custom textures drew this map over the top, it's a very simple change (wbrick turned terracotta) but it's very powerful. The animated fire looks much better in game than in the screenshots. I did wish for a black (void.tga) skybox though, to suit the burning trees better (and for easier rendering :))

Most of the gameplay is pretty meat and potatoes but with an occasional novelty (or several). Reminded me of czg's maps in that aspect (03, terra5). The combats were very high octane, I was on my toes constantly. The vores mostly sucked though, and I would appreciate more health (it's skill 1 after all). The finale, again, drove this map OTT.

I see you're not very proud of the cave section at the beginning but personally I liked it a lot, with all the climbing up and looking down - the player constantly sees his progression. It's a bit like the lost e2m6 cave part, or the Sunspire outdoors in Unreal (this is a compliment).

Thank you for this great map. I dare say this one rivals arwop/masque in scale and scope :P 

I did wish for a black (void.tga) skybox though, to suit the burning trees better (and for easier rendering :))

this is what I meant. 

I was playing on a laptop and it got really sluggish when I hit the area with those three buttons.

Here's a demo of my first try but it stops when I die for the first time (got pissed off and had to quit): http://www.mediafire.com/?zaz6xd644kmb7ch

I'll continue playing tomorrow. So far it looks good but the fps drops brought the exprience down a bit. 

The map is awesome, congrats.
The details are incredible, so much broken objects, you really pushed the Quake engine to the max.

But I have a complain - it's way TOO HARD. I played on easy and it was ok, I died a few times, but that's no problem. Ammo is "too low", I found myself a few times just with the axe and the grenade launcher facing a shambler...and that sucks bad.

But the main problem is the end battle - I just couldn't finish it without cheating. Now, I'm now a very skilled played, but I'm not noob, I'm playing Quake since 96, it's my favorite game, I played all the maps that I could get, I can finish Quake on nightmare without any problems.

But this map I simply couldn't finish and remember it's on EASY. This is very frustrating, I found this in almost all games, the end (or the boss) is too hard on easy - this is a MAJOR problem - you have 4 skills :
-nightmare : make it almost impossible to finish, I don't really care
-hard : make it hard, but not frustrating, skilled played should finish it on a few tries
-normal : casual, it shouldn't be too hard, but also not very easy, a casual FPS player should finish in a few tries
-easy : that's it man, that's it - EASY - that means that even an unexperienced player should be able to finish, I'm very sorry, but a guy like me that finish Quake on nightmare should be able to finish your map without using the mouse !!!

Sorry for this, but I had to told you that, I know that there are a lot of people that likes challenges, ok, they can play on nightmare, but PLEASE in the future make easy EASY 

Nice map with alot of good ideas.

BUT! There's alot of problems in it: extremely complex brushwork that quake engine doesn't like. Alot of things was possible to build much more effective there. Giant areas with huge r_speeds, that was also possible to avoid if to build with r_Speeds in mind. Alot of slopes that slowly pushed me to LAVA. Alot of places where silly jump leaded to death. And final battle is just deathtrap. It's kinda unplayable.
I died because of poor design in the area near the final room, u'll see in the demo.
http://vondur.net/files/vonoms2.7z

Despite alot of problems, this level has nice quake feel to it and rly nice little things here and there, bad things will go away if u'll improve :D 

looks great. 

Looks really nice orl, I appreciate all the details - good job on the architecture, even though Vondur is probably correct. Nice feel.

I have to admit that I also found skill 0 too hard, way too hard, and also ran out of ammo and started axing things right before leaving the cave. Tried six or seven times, and the last time I made it into the castle (with only grenades left), and was exploded by a vore while trying to dodge a lot of monsters and hearing a shambler close by.

I realize that I say this about every map (easy too hard), but at least this time I'm not the only one :-/

I only play Quake since 2004 - 2006 and almost never play online, and I usually play pretty different games actually, so I didn't absorb Quake with my mother's milk like some of you here.

I do probably suck, but the degree of difficulty in most maps nowadays (ON EASY) is ridiculous for me, which means that I can't enjoy them.

Easy should have lots and lots of ammo and health, to start with. I saw your map has over 130 monsters on Easy, which is just too much even for a large map.

Easy should be id easy, pretty much. Throw health and ammo at the player like there's no tomorrow. And do put them on the main path.

The player should meet almost no resistance on easy, get to know the map, and if he liked it he will replay it on Normal.

negke's latest map had an OK easy skill, btw. Madfox' was way too hard as well though. Let's not start about Tronyn's maps.

Great architecture is a nice thing, but remember people are meant to play those levels and even enjoy them. Making skill 0 really easy takes nothing away from other skill settings.

Try having non-veterans playtest your skill levels. Your mom should be able to finish on skill 0. 

gb, you read my mind, it's exactly what I feel.
But this tend to be a problem with all games. I play a lot of games on PC, XBOX 360 and PS3 and almost all of them are extremly hard on easy - a few months ago I finished Uncharted, it also has 4 difficulty levels - easy, normal, hard and crushing. Let me tell you that - I spend more than 2 days on the last level until I managed to finish it, you must have very fast reaction, you have to stay under cover, quickly get up, instant aim and shoot, then duck again or you die.

I do think that's the problem with the guys that test the games (they play all day long the same game, over and over - sometime for more than one year and they feel it's easy, but's it's not)

Orl probably made the same mistake, he tested his own map and he knows every corner of it, every move that a monster will make, etc.

That's not the way to test the easy skill, you have to ask someone who plays FPS games only from time to time and he's not very good - if he manages to finish the map without major problem (he can die a few times, it's ok, but not get stuck at a point) then it's ok. If not, add more health, ammo, everything that's needed.

In this map I found that ammo was the main problem (it's no use that you get almost all weapons, if you're out of nails and shells), grenade launcher is not good against flying wizards and shamblers and it's even dangerous for you in small rooms or when you get trapped in a corner..

The second problem was health, way too low, on easy you should find health boxes after each fight and near bad monsters (shambler, vore) you should have megahealth and at least green armor.

The edges are fun, you just have to be carefully, btw, I found a "shortcut" in the map, there's some bars blocking you to get to some broken bridge over lava, you have to press 3 buttons to open it, I didn't press the buttons, instead I jumped on some arches nearby and bypassed those grates :)