I've experienced no slowdowns on my ati 3670 with Aguirre's plus -nomtex 

that seems pretty much impossible, I can't imagine how that could happen, fuck. In a month when I'm back I'll find the vised ones if anyone still cares I guess.

Quakespasm/RMQ Engine runs way faster than Fitz for me for some reason. 

I had another go at arcanum1 and a dab arcanum2.

Had more fun this time (knowing that i can kill the Zombies with the axe) - I think i saw the centerprint last time but i was too busy escaping the dogs to really notice it.

Arcanum1 is a cool map, i like the music as well - reminds me of Tangerine Dream :) Makes the whole thing seem kubrikesque. The lighting isn't really too dark either, it's just a dark map, set on a dark night - moody atmosphere.

I had problems with killing the Wizards on skill 2, but i did notice that the Wizards have very cool animations, their skins seemed a bit bright (maybe put dirt and blood all over them like everything else in Quake) but overall they are cool. The spiders are also very well animated. I like the way that when you kill a spider it lights the surrounding area green for the rest of eternity. Bit strange, but it cuts through the darkness and adds to the strangeness vibe.

Arcanum2 - started to get into this but I died not too far in, so i will try again later. M only criticism would be the fullbright pixels in Kell's floor texture. Didn't anyone else notice that?!?!

Having fun with this now though, and that is the main thing. 

..I've enjoyed the demo and I liked that outdoor dog-infested intro.. trees weren't so nice though.
I love outdoor setting so every effort is appreciated :)
My mod is 90% all outdoor

-Where did u get that angel statue in screenshots ? Or you did it yourself ?

-Maybe Drake mod is what I'm lookin for..
but does it support camera/cutscenes, actors, mp3, trigger sounds, push-objects, ..? 

It's amazing really. You always make epic levels with unique ideas and themes and even created a de facto trademark map style, yet at the same time there's this blatant disregard for common sense tech quality prevalent to varying degrees in all your releases which manages to infuriate me to no end...
I'm not even talking about my regular peeves. The performance in many of these maps is so abysmal because they are FUCKING UNVISED!!!! (1, 4, 5). Is this a fucking joke?? I demand it to be fixed! Also, the maps don't seem to have be compiled with light -extra, or at least -extra2 or 4, since there are many obvious jagged shadows. What fucking gives????
This made me angry because it kind of derailed an otherwise awesome episode.

I played this on a different computer and the low frame rate spoiled the otherwise excellent maps for me. As a matter of fact, the first map put me in an angry and overly critical mood for it seemed it didn't use any of the feedback from the demo. Being drunk while playing only made it worse.

Chose skill 2 and got my ass kicked like I asked for (very hard and died many times). Considered switching to skill 1 after the second map, but eventually didn't for whatever reason. Ammo balance was okay, but I would have wished for more health in places.
The low-supply zombie gibbing in the first level was shit, but from then on it got better. I didn't mind the trees and the rain too much, even though they are obviously VERY retro. The warlocks/hordes made for some solid trouble and frustration, too. The boss battle was surprisingly beatable compared to earlier fights. I didn't even need the items on the upper floors (and only realized there were some after the fight was over).

I lov the ikblue mix themes, especially ikblue+flesh was great. And the epic architecture/setpieces, as usual - at times it reminded me of modern Doom maps (large details areas with chaigun snipers).

First run demos: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=SN6CNM3H with lots of dying and ranting (to be watched with a pinch of salt).
I'll have to play the map again on Normal on my home machine. THE PROPERLY-COMPILED ONES, THAT IS! 

The reason this got me so on the edge is 70% because, while I really appreciate your stuff and admire his output, such errors are totally unnecessary, especially considering your experience; and 30% because the kid discovered his new and anticipated toy was broken when unpacked it. 

did you notice? no items fall out of the map! 

alright so it wasn't nearly as done as I thought. sorry, April was a panic for many reasons & I must have somehow mixed up files. I'll put out a revised version of the episode (maybe finish the other couple unfinished maps) for QEXPO, alongside Unforgiven. 

yeah, that'd be awesome. the techish one (arc7 i believe?) is really awesome looking. 

necros: Re-check arcanum3, then. And all maps have monsters in walls. But that's not the problem here.

Tronyn: No worries. Despite the rant, I did enjoy the release after all. Like surfing on a partially polluted shore - fun ride but not without splashes of bile. BUT DON'T YOU DARE MAKE THE SAME MISTAKES WITH UNFORGIVEN!!!!! ;) 

i see no falling out items in arc3? i fixed them all, afaik.

i intentionally left the monsters in wall for 2 reasons, i never noticed any cases where monsters were stuck in bad places and there's sometimes good reasons to stick the into walls, so that they don't move and you can use them as snipers. 

As long as it doesn't take too damn long. Wvis.exe -level 4 -threads 8 and clight.exe -extra4 -threads 8 should be good right? I have a core i7 with 4 physical cores that are all hyperthreaded. clight.exe is mh's bengt jardup's light.exe with colour support (i think :p). 

I vised one of them that took most of February iirc. It was the small one. 

don't need to light them. just extract a prt file with bspinfo and then run wvis. 

I stopped it after a few minutes because I could see it was going to take hours. That was arcanum1. These maps are big and open. Not vis-friendly. Im using 4 threads at 5Ghz per thread! 

His doesn't look like it's going to work out. Too much heat from the laptop also. :p 

or I just have a properly calibrated displayu that I use with lights off for quake maps :) 

tronyn, thanks for reply. i'm looking forward to the new patched version. i don't like the first level and i would suggest that you leave it out, but the rest is incredible. i generated the lit files for arcanum with mhcolour and i really like it. some might say it looks quite funky... but quake doesn't have to be black/grey only.
-
jakub 

just fix what's there and add more maps if they fit in (if they dont, release them spearately). 

Anyone tried the Hell skill level yet? 

Just when I thought I was done with this thing!!!!

Anyways, a little more rant.

Did not mention how much I like the WAND. It's the Quake equivalent of the Painkiller: a multi purpose weapon, jump booster, potentially lethal, if you're out of ammo but you have cover. WONDERFUL.

All maps seem to run perfectly on my 2004 rig, even without vising, on all skill levels...

A few more nits: a coupla centerprints keep appearing when passing through. Most notably the message about the magicians in last room, but there are more that I don't remember right now.

Also, can anyone (Tronyn?) confirm what I said in my spoiler about an empty secret with no way out? Am I missing something?

And last. Don't get me wrong, I like this a whole lot!

On to hell. 

I hit that too - in a well in map 3 or 4? I figured it was a bug.

Oh boy, there's a hell difficulty? I've only played skill 0 so far :0 

jt_: Please do light them while you're at it. It doesn't take long. I just did a quick -extra4 run (with fade gate 1 to speed it up) and the shadows looked much better. Though I foolishly overwrote the original maps and couldn't compare. The jagged ones were only really noticable on the ceilings iirc.

necros: So it's all intentional now? Hmmmm.. Fair enough, though I did notice at least one ogre that was stuck but (imo) wasn't supposed to. Two items fall out in arc3 on skill 2: a box of rockets at -448 1544 38 and a box of spikes at -528 1544 38.
In arcanum5 the doors "wtfvore" and "wtfvore1" have an unmatched target "lightning".
There're also invalid fields in worldspawn (mapversion, wadversion, 0.85). And a note to anyone who intents to use the .map sources: Be sure to delete the multiple worldspawn entries in some of them!

A drop-in-the-ocean hotfix for people who are affected by novis slowdown:
Download visbjp.zip and extract bspinfo.exe and vis.exe to the same folder as the maps. Then run bspinfo -prt arcanum1 and vis -fast arcanum1; do the same with arcanum4 and arcanum5. This will not make the maps super-playable, but the polycount will be a bit lower in some areas which should make for a slight increase in fps.

Haven't checked out the other two maps, were there precompiled versions in the source zip? 

I tried to open the source in an editor to check things, and it looks as THERE ARE items in the pool(25 health, rockets, cells).

So, these fail to spawn? Or did an unfinished version of this map creep in? 

Yes, there are precompiled versions in the sources pack.