For whoever complemented the modified textures before, here is the wad I used, which contains all the idbase textures + most of those used in other maps (by NotoriousRay, Biff and Gibbie I think) along with those I made for this map. http://than.quaddicted.com/files/idbase_ultimate_20091801.7z

Anyway, regarding comments, I kind of agree with those of you who were a bit more critical of the gameplay. Whilst I think I made a pretty decent level, I think it could have been better. I tried to take tester opinions into account, but perhaps I worried too much about lack of health + ammo in previous builds and added too much and made it a bit too easy on hard.

Also, some of the encounters are a little bit boring because I chose to focus on base only monsters and not use any (aside from scrags and vermis) other monster types. I knew about some of the problems with the edie fight, but chose to leave it because I wanted to use edie and there wasn't really anywhere else to put him. The vermis fight was kind of hit and miss. I really enjoyed ducking and diving around the crates to collect cells, but it was hard to balance the level so that there would be very little other ammo available and force the player to grab the lg and cells before going above vermis to kill it. Also, vermis doesn't attack the player when the player is above the water and just keeps firing at the last point it saw the player, which kind of works for the ducking in and out part, but maybe makes killing it too boring and unsatisfying - especially if one didn't actually need to get the lg.

One thing I was thinking about doing was using quoth coop flags to make a super hard coop mode using more of the id monsters such as shamblers and vores to toughen the gameplay up. However, by the time I had got the regular gameplay in with skill settings I was so fed up of working on the map I just decided to release it. In retrospect I should probably have ditched the dm mode instead, since it is a shit token gesture to dm players, and I know that it probably isn't much fun and nobody will bother to play it :/

Anyway, thanks for all the comments, both positive and negative. I shall try and make my next map a bit tougher and take the gameplay into three dimensions a little more than with this one :) 

I think there will be another base release fairly soon, but with very different gameplay and scale to this...

eh, Ricky ;) 

" In retrospect I should probably have ditched the dm mode instead, since it is a shit token gesture to dm players, and I know that it probably isn't much fun and nobody will bother to play it :/ "

I had that same thought the first time I read that you had DM support in here. That's way too much work for a community this small, IMO. Nobody will play a single player map in DM. They barely did when Quake first came out. :) 

If you ever happen to make a tougher Coop mode, be sure to remove the LG from the end :) 

There are many there which I have never seen before! I like the porn one :P 

I shouldn�t comment people maps that don�t make comments in others works, but i will put a short one!

Brushwork and layout amazing(brilliant)...

game play boring and frustrating...

another dis_sp6 nothing more!

Brushwork is a mather of time game play in professionalism 

You are a gaylord. 

E1M1 

i�m not Trinca!

calm down madman! 

because I haven't played that many recent releases. I have a lot of catching up to do :(

Anyway, thanks for the comments. I will try to make the next one more action packed and challenging.

That wasn't a sarcastic comment btw. Thanks. 

I found Normal quite challenging. Pretty much perfect. 

go and play Painkiller.

Seriously though I would expect a map about plumbing to be base around confined spaces, rather than open-planned horde combat. 

Nobody will play a single player map in DM

What makes you so sure? I do, for example. I also test maps in DM, instead of typing notarget. Unless I'm doing monster placement etc. of course. It's a good way to just look around the map and control traps, lighting etc.

I don't think it is very hard to add DM support.

They barely did when Quake first came out. :)

E1M2, ferrari, etc. 

OK, ALMOST nobody. 

...DM in SP maps is 99.999% pointless. Rubbish design for it and there's 20,000 much better custom DM maps anyway.

Spirit is also right, I thought the challenge was pretty fine on this one. 

me too, don't worry about it. i have this map and like a dozen or more maps from last year i have on my list to get to when i get time. 

i haven't even played the marcher fortress or travail yet! :( 

thing is player skill varies so much around here its hard to balance. 

the gameplay IS great, don't let them influence you, I think we quakers need this kind of gameplay. It's tense and challenging, rarely fast, but the claustrophobic setup helps to create a dangerous atmosphere.

Also I love when a custom sp has dm support. Sometimes I play LAN with friends and we play dm in various sps, especially the id ones, and it's another way of playing quake dm, you can hide and camp, or you can do ambushes, much more than in a "pro-dm" map. 

I agree with you completely. gameplay was interesting, for example sniping Edie cyborg from the rl airduct secret felt almost Deus Ex.

+I like DMing in my ejm2dm level (originally SP level, part of my miniepisode called In Ovo). pace of action is very different there. 

Gameplay was great. Monster setup perfectly matches the architecture. 

than great map, love it! only looked but hope to play it soon 

rarely fast

is the one nitpick I have with maps like this or Ruined Nation. I'm not a monster player, nor have I a good resolution on this f* laptop (I think this is part of it), and most importantly, I have a super short attention span when a game is so... simplistic as Quake. Chewing through 100 Quoth enforcers with standard Quake weapons is a horror to me. I can't live without PM's DOOM shotguns patch anymore, and tbh I think Quoth should do the same, since Quoth's monsters aren't really more intelligent or something, they just have more HP (and more dangerous attacks). This slows the game down especially in a relatively cramped environment with crates etc. if the player doesn't have adequately more powerful weapons.

Veteran players and diehard Quake fanatics might welcome the upscaling of HP and damage without changing monster AI and weapons, and maybe not even notice a real slowdown.

The other nitpick (OK, I have two) is the possibility to get lost, or to explore, or the interconnectedness, or the nonlinearity or however you want to call it. This was already in dm3rmx, where quite a few people got lost, but in this map, with the water and crates, it's increased. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, just personally, again, I don't have the patience. I like a well laid out main path that is relatively easy to see. Once I complete a map, I'm much more likely to go back and look for secrets.

As follows logically, I liked the gameplay in Biff's map slightly better and thus am more likely to replay that, in turn getting to know it better, which leads to even more replaying.

To put this into perspective, I like "action RPGs" or FPS-RPGs slightly better than pure FPS normally. If something is pure FPS, to me, it should be kept simple, like DOOM. Putting in more secrets isn't enough to increase the depth of a pure FPS IMO.

This is still a monster level on all other fronts, though. No doubt.

I hope you don't see this as trolling, I did try to be cohesive. 

About the combat style, I think it is objectively a good thing because it is a more specific focus and a more distinctive style of gameplay. I don't know if I like it more or less than normal hardcore action or horde combat or movement-based stuff or what-have-you, but I do like that it's different and that it has a focus... 

I do like that it's different and that it has a focus...

OK. I can see that.