Loved it. Played on easy. Didn't find any secrets. Going to play again on harder level and look for secrets. Didn't use the grapple but it was cool as was the bow. Wish it had more ammo (the bow). Still fighting the big guy at the end.
Layout was fantastic. Nothing not to appreciate.
What a way to start 2010. 

but what a great new year's present! Thanks guys.

I played on easy and found the horde combats were a reasonable difficulty, and I could carelessly blast through some of the less populated areas. Anyone else try to chainsaw the line of scrags outside the castle in roman1? :)

I loved the music also, and the gruesome texturing. Still have to beat the end boss and try some higher skill levels. 

Things I Liked:
- Excellent unique theme. Bloody Roman Hell Metal has never been done before to my knowledge.

- Wide open epic architecture. I'm a sucker for this stuff. I can easily see that this was done over a 10 year period, too (not a bad thing - it's great that all this mappery gets a proper release).

- The wand was quite fun to use. Limited range, low fire rate, infinite ammo, special fire mode - it's well balanced and eases ammo pressure considerably in the latter half. I was blasting all kinds of enemies with the powered-up shot once I got the hang of it, and the knock-back is cool as well.

- Challenging but not insanely hard. Played on medium, did not die much at all until the final boss. I guess I just do not have the white-knuckle, split-second reflexes to deal with 50 bajillion enemies attacking me all at once.

- Extra monsters, mostly good. The nail ogres stood out as the most used and best addition, as they really mix up closer range combats. Gremlins were only used once? I thought that was somewhat odd. Flying imps were somehow more enjoyable here than in NSOE - I think they had previously left a bad taste in my mouth from their respawning in nsoe2. And surprisingly, z-aware grenade ogres did not annoy me nearly as much as I thought they would; I think that's because these ones occasionally under- or over-shot me, as opposed to some others I've seen that have impossibly perfect aim every time.

Things I did not like:
- The weapon order. Why is the uber-special crossbow, with something like 10 shots in the whole game, placed between the super-shotty and nailgun? The following happened to me several times: I'm stalking around corners with the SSG out, then come across fiends or some other close combat monster. I flick my scroll wheel up one notch which usually brings out the nailgun, and start firing away. But in this mod, I switch to the crossbow and waste a precious arrow before I realise I've got the wrong gun out. What I'm saying is, the crossbow should be after the lightning gun, or somewhere way up there, in weapon order.

- Also, why does the Super Nailgun replace the normal Nailgun?

- Did not like the fire-spitting dogs, I thought they were ill-conceived and the skin was terrible.

Don't let these relatively quite minor annoyances detract from the overall awesomeness here. One of the best of 2009 for sure. 

The wand has been a controversial addition, with more negative feedback than positive. It also looks out of place in just about any level that does not have a medieval fantasy theme. Therefore, the wand may get scrapped unless Tronyn says otherwise. For future projects, the wand will probably be replaced by a flare gun, which will be a light source launcher with minor damage potential.

The reason the crossbow is placed where it is at is because it felt like an appropriate choice for an impulse 3 (shotgun) weapon slot. For what it is worth, Tronyn voiced a similar complaint. It may get fixed in a patch later. Speaking of the crossbow, it seems most people lament the lack of crossbow ammo. We may add another crossbow and/or more ammo, especially if the wands will be removed.

As for the super nailgun replacing the nailgun, there are only a few reasons why people may use the nailgun once they get the super version. One, to light up dark areas with muzzleflash, and waste one nail instead of two per shot. Two, to shoot secret doors. Three to snipe around the corner with the right barrel. In the Roman mod, the super nailgun can shoot one nail at a time (at least in single player); and the offsets are changed, so the nailgun is pointless once the player has the super nailgun. 

or should I just dive in? 

I do not know yet. I would like to build a devkit that can be released with the patch. A few days ago, I started writing an entities file for the BSP editor, and will try to do the same for some of the other map editors. Once I finish writing entity files, the documentation is next. 

may as well play it now anyway. 

roman2 and roman3 were really impressive and fun. Difficulty tuning was really solid, never found it too hard but it was challenging enough to kill me a few times.

That is, prior to the boss. I haven't killed him yet, so I can't say whether it's a good fight yet. I'll let you know when I do... 

for a quick glimpse.

holy fuck, the intro to roman1 is epic! 

I think it's really helpful to have an infinite-ammo weapon in these epic 300+ monster maps. Sometimes ammo just runs out. I guess the counter argument would be, just balance the ammo better. But, remember the dispersion pistol in Unreal? It worked quite well there to pick off easier or isolated enemies.

Also, I don't think that the medieval-ness of the wand is a problem. Tronyn's maps have almost always had a medieval/fantasy setting. And besides, Grunts and Enforcers look out of place in anything not a tech/base level, but that doesn't stop people from using them whereever, and it doesn't really matter (to me) as long as the gameplay's good. 

fix up the end and this is easily an instant classic!!

I thought everything was pitch perfect in the looks department, it all fit together beautifully even though it probably shouldnt have. Roman1 has a killer layout too.

The spectacle factor in all the maps was out of control.

Gameplay wise, I loved all the new additions, and found it challenging but not impossible on medium all the way till the final fight. You probably need an ammo and health replenishment once some time has passed after the spoiler 1's arrival (ie same thing that happens as spoiler 2 arrives). 

And besides, Grunts and Enforcers look out of place in anything not a tech/base level

I usually hate base enemies in non-base levels but somehow they worked well here. It suited the "multiple unrelated themes merged into a bloody mess" theme.

Environments that bleed into eachother ;) 

It worked in Zerst�rer... 

And besides, Grunts and Enforcers look out of place in anything not a tech/base level

Not to take one comment out of contex, but, any monster can be out of place if it doesn't fit the theme or the theme isn't done well. The theme can be anything the mapper wants - it's just we typically see variations of a handful of different ones.

Not because the people making them don't have imagination, but because the themes are very strong.

It's an old saying that Quake players have different eyes to everyone else, able to see whole spectrums of brown. If that means we can see wide variations of dungeon, castle, swamp, meatech (etc) themes as well then great.

Don't know what ARWOP's theme can be called - meatemple? 

roman bloody hell metal.

That covers it :) 

 

these maps are T's least adored and he's just getting them out the door, hence the disparate themes. Kick me blue if i'm wrong. 

In some maps (ie, if I have lots of Ogres and Flak Ogres, which sort of mix medieval and tech), I'll use grunts (early Unforgiven maps had grunts and even enforcers, but they are now the NSOE goblin variants) since I think they fit with the idea of these monsters having access to earth weaponry if there's an earth/Quake dimension overlap. Enforcers go fully into scifi though, so they are a bit more in that direction, perhaps too much.
The Roman betas actually had Dragons, but I decided to cut them and use Wraths and the Overlord instead to get a more evil rather than fantasy feel; also as the Roman maps are vaguely inspired by Doom and Quake3, in both of which id mixes tech/hell elements all over the place, I thought that going for that vibe instead of a more fantasy thing was more suitable for these maps. Basically, it's a slippery slope from grunts to enforcers! 

well, these are definitely the oldest maps I had to release (started in 99; all my other yet-unreleased stuff was started in 2003/4 at the earliest), so the originals were smallest/simplest out of my maps; but they did have the same mixed themes as are present in the finished product. The only difference is that each of the 13 original small maps had its own variation on the basic theme, so merging 3-4 of them together created varying takes on the theme within the same map - except roman2, which was only based on 2 scraps, both of which originally had the "venice of blood" theme. 

Roman reminds me of the fourth episode from Ultimate Doom, "Thy Flesh Consumed". 

Venice of Blood 

It works in DOOM, because the original DOOM never established a coherent "base" theme or an "every episode starts with a base map" dogma. The color scheme is totally different, too. The former human gang in DOOM isn't so idbase-brown. (A brown enforcer will automatically look out of place in a blue map, for example). DOOM is also simply more extreme - its mixture of hi-tech and "underworld" covers both soldiers and demons. Quake's "base" and "medieval" are comparatively tame and mostly well separated. You have neither "Mars laboratory" nor "Hell" in Quake, not to mention a merry mixture of the two. Runic is again a different thing. I believe this stems from the fact that DOOM was supposed to be modeled after the Alien movies, while Quake was supposed to be a fantasy game before in both cases that didn't work out.

Vanilla Quake already introduced and cemented the base/medieval split, sadly, in the shareware episode, with its clearly separate themes, while DOOM's shareware episode was mostly "tech dungeon" throughout. The first impression tends to stick.

ARWOP is largely very brown, which makes the grunts look more at home, plus it isn't one of the pre-established id1 themes. Hence we're probably more willing to accept the broad mix of monsters. The DOOM feel was definitely there.

Quake's monster lineup simply isn't as versatile as DOOM's. Especially in the lower and middle tier, there are definite holes / not enough variation. This occurred to me while I was implementing Lardarse's randomized monster spawning. There are only so many options to put in a certain slot. For example when randomizing a spawn that used to be an ogre, what are the alternatives? Hknights? Fiends? They don't always work. I was briefly considering Gremlins, but they look like Fiend ripoffs... and are not really all-round monsters.

A medieval grunt, a runic grunt, an Ogre substitute that works in the same all-round way (and is not a hknight) ... would be good to have. 

One of the concessions that Quake does allow is that since everything is connected by slipgates, fantasy and sci-fi enemies can intermingle even in environments that are 100% fantasy or sci-fi.

Though i guess there is still the sense that the "deeper" you get into the fantasy world, the less you should see other human soldiers because that breaks the illusion that it was difficult to make it that far. 

Even that can be storied over though. Say you start seeing humans and come across a broken slipgate or something. Done! :) 

yeah, that works ... while just using all monsters in a medieval map, without any "explanation", feels a bit weird to me.