Thanks for the feedback, here and on Quaddicted as well.
This was one of my most tested maps, and for that reason I think the gameplay ended up being smoother and more sophisticated than usual for me. The end arena was maybe too hard though. I had more areas built (which will be used in something else) for that map, but I decided anyone who got through wicked.bsp would be pretty exhausted so a concise end map was a better choice.
Also, I submitted new reviews to Spirit a couple days after I release this map, so Round the U-Bend review should be up soon - definitely an interesting take on the map, though Geophobia might be my favourite remake of yours. Cheers. 

I did enjoy the end, it's just it was a different kind of enjoyment to the main map. Dying over and over isn't much fun, but I'd saved just before dropping into the final arena, and the feeling that I could do it was there all the time, so it was one of those one more go type of maps. Quite enjoyable. wicked.bsp was amazing though. Insanely huge and grueling but so much fun. Seems crazy that I didn't really get lost in a map that huge. I think there was one point where I wasn't sure how to enter the rune towers, but I guess it was kind of obvious, and I had fun fighting the droles and ogres from a distance with my rocket launcher. Respawning items were a BIG help :) 

this is one of the best releases i have ever played, all hyperbole aside.

the start map provided the same kind of heart-in-mouth jawdropping moments as marcher, neh2m2 & mexx9b did back in their respective eras. the scale was mindblowing. i picked easy skill after looking at the monster counts in the readme; i'm not normally a fan of your excessive horde-based gameplay if i'm being honest. i actually started playing unforgiven on skill 1 before this and quit halfway through the first map, but i digress...

the main map has a wonderfully complex interconnecting layout yet due to the distinctive large open areas it was easy to keep bearings; particularly when i passed armour/health i didn't need only to track them back down later on. the shortcuts were really well executed. the verticality aspect was insane; i must have fallen the entire height of the quake grid when jumping off the building during the dragon ambush at the end

play-wise, was a decent, balanced challenge despite the skill level. favourite point was the quad secret followed by the scrag hordes :) long range combat with the RL was generally awesome, once i finally picked it up. my only gripe was with the monsters' increased sight distance; it was definitely needed but is perhaps a little *too* increased, given i was occasionally shot from the opposite side of the main cavern when i couldn't even see the enemy through the fog! minor inconvenience though, since the arrows didn't do that much damage

last map certainly kept up in terms of impressive scale. final arena was impossibly hard the first time round since i missed the RA behind the baron's throne.. when i killed him the first time i was immediately dumped into the water along with one of the hellknights; that was another awesome moment :) but ultimately led to me dying. i beat the final battle at the third attempt and only THEN noticed the buttons on the ceiling, which presumably lowered those big pillars. alas. still a fitting end, i can deal with that level of intensity when it's reserved for the finale!

all in all... epic. definitely worthy of inclusion in the pantheon of all time quake greats. great job! 

huh... i NEVER noticed those buttons. I would just rocket jump up to the cross, then rocket jump to the other 3 pillars (cross makes you invulnerable to explosions). 

i did have an issue with the start map but it is more engine related. when looking down from the top of the skill towers, liquid is not obscured by the fog, which spoilt the vibe a bit. in terms of RMQe cvars i'm aware of r_slimefog and r_lavafog but neither seemed to have any effect 

these maps are HARD. every time i try play I keep dying in the slime in the start map. need totry when I'm sober 

Thank you, Tronyn!

For those who use the latest experimental revision of RMQ (3736) and have the granade bug, just download the previous revision (3714) from
http://svn.icculus.org/remakequake/engine/Experimental/RMQEngine-Win32.exe?view=log

A nice touch for that RMQ revisions:
sv_aim 1
r_show_coronas 0
gl_texture_anisotropy 16

Again... Thank you very much.

Cheers and happy new year! 

im getiing a "wrong map version something...111 shoudl be 29, i geuss this has todo with the bsp2? il try redownloading rmq, else it just might be my crappy system 

solved by downloading the 3714 version, i think i had a very old version of rmq:) 

possible to turn of the effect from being hurt? This severely hurts my fps and would be awfull for speedrunning 

Which effect are you referring to? Getting hurt doesn't have any unusual effects for me. You could try...

"v_kickroll 0.0"
"v_kickpitch 0.0" 

That does makes things a bit smoother 

a bit smoother but when i get hurt i still get this blur 

r_motionblur "0" 

motionblur 0 made it kinda playable, thx. Best i could come up with and was doable:

http://members.upc.nl/verorber/wicked_241.dem 

Finished wicked.bsp, really pretty awesome (skill 0 (not played a lot recently), 75ish mins, 330ish kills, 10 secrets). The quantity of supplies meant it was pretty easy on the whole although I ran out of armour a few times and that made for a trickier time! I got kind of used to being sniped at with and mostly ignoring arrows from enemies impossibly far across the map -- they don't really do a lot of damage.

I love the way you keep on getting to higher levels in the castle even when you think there can be no higher to go. I thought the droles were used well.

I played using RMQEngine-Win32-3714.exe under wine on my laptop with sandybridge graphics and it all worked fine, performance was certainly "good enough".

I only properly got lost/confused a couple of times, once I think after finding the first gk door and then finding the exit! It did feel a bit like you built this massive intricate consistent-with itself castle (seriously, I have no idea how it's possible to work on something that big) and then had to splat game-world-nonsensical arrows and lifts and so on around to make into a map that could actually be played. Not sure if there's any way around that really (maybe the arrows could have been *more* obviously not part of the game world?). 

I sort of assumed a certain Quake-cheesiness was going to be accepted/inevitable, although there weren't any spike shooter traps ;)

Just curious, did anyone recognize which sections were Tyrann's or Necros'? There was a fair amount of retexturing for consistency and I also built in a lot of my own scraps, but I hope that the original styles were still apparent.

PS the start map began as a dumbass joke incorporating a tower from each mapper (whose tower is biggest - heh). I was going to scrap it but ijed convinced me it was worth finishing.

Thanks for the feedback everyone! 

my attempt to try to find all secrets failed when I spent about 15 minutes looking for secret 2 in the start map :-)

It's a good excuse to replay wicked.bsp though. 

Late to the party I guess but I just now played this (using the experimental build of FTEQW). No technical issues aside from getting stuck on terrain a couple of times.

TLDR => Lots of fun. I love exploring a big swiss-cheese structure and your "hint" arrows were just enough to be useful without getting in my face. The arrows and shortcuts (and messages about shortcuts) did feel like late-in-the-design sort of additions, but it was still a very cool space to run around and fight in.

I think I'm getting a bit more used to the Drake additions; they feel sufficiently Quake-y... maybe. :-) It was nice to deal with some monsters that I haven't completely figured out yet.

Hard mode was about right for me for first time through. I didn't particularly enjoy the end arena fight but that's just my Quake tastes in general.

Some of the few secrets I found in wicked.bsp were fantastic... actual rewards rather than just more ammo/armor. Especially the quad secret that others are mentioning. :-) I think I only found 6/30 while playing through "normally" so I'm sure I'll eventually go back in to poke around some more.

Good on ya! 

Found 28/30 now. Know where one more is but not how to open it (has an unstoppable superweap^W^W crossbow in). Getting there... 

the one in the room with the pilars totake you all the way for the end fight? if so when you enter that room go left when at the door turn around and look up 

That was it. Found the last one by reading the save file and lots of edict 1 -- predictably it was very easy! Do I get a cookie? 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jeah5DAIYf8 

I believe the red barrelled GL fires a rocket/grenade that locks on to an available target that comes within its "sensor" range; the drunken path is used to maximise that range. No targets, the shell just just follows its drunken path till it hits a wall. Good weapon to use against dragons :) I think. 

I really liked the video, the flythrough at the start had a very cinematic quality, kind of like the demo at the start of Unreal 1. distrans you're exactly right, the sidewinder is a great way to guarantee that you hit something given that it seeks - good for archers far away in the fog, or enemies that move quickly like dragons or axemen. the drawback of course is that it has less power than a normal RL.

as people have noticed, I'm hesitant to give the player the RL until late in a given level/episode, since it makes most Quake, and even Quoth or Drake enemies, too easy. And it doesn't have the danger of the DOOM RL. You can just pwn (and rocket-jump).