According to the DTWID site:
"The idea behind this project was to imagine that the original Doom had more maps before the release, but they were lost. The mappers tried to simulate the work of John Romero, Sandy Petersen, Tom Hall and achieve that authentic id-feeling in their maps."

Achieving that id feel entailed analyzing Romero, Petersen, and Hall's individual mapping styles/habits and refining submissions based on community feedback to better emulate those styles. You can see how the project developed and find some great design analysis in this gargantuan thread:
http://www.doomworld.com/vb/wads-mods/52046-dtwid-public-beta-5-released/ 

if the name causes so much offence (spiney was rigth re RMQ reference) call it soemthing else and still do what you think is right fifth. 

Community projects don't work here anymore, unfortunately. There's simply too little of an active mapping community left.
Sadly this is the state of quake mapping nowadays, but there are a few people still around. It really depends if the project is going to be organized properly and actually finished!

if the name causes so much offence
I get the impression people are concerned because the project name means something special to them and feel it is not going in a similar direction to the previous doom project.

After reading the first couple of pages of the Doom project it seems the doom community spent a lot of time analyzing and trying to understand the original authors building styles and design ideas. I assume this is what Fifth has been doing, but his design process has not been visible to the community, hence the comments.

Here is an awesome quote from the Doom thread that could easily apply to Quake mapping:

You do know that the main reason the stock episodes looked the way they looked is because:
1. id had to make suire the levels could run on a common computer from the early 90s.
2. Romero was a better level designer than Petersen.

I would say that to create a level that mimics Romero you would have to throw away all bells-and-whistles off today and follow the rules Romero made for himself:

* always changing floor height when I wanted to change floor textures
* using special border textures between different wall segments and doorways
* being strict about texture alignment
* conscious use of contrast everywhere in a level between light and dark areas, cramped and open areas
* making sure that if a player could see outside that they should be able to somehow get there
* being strict about designing several secret areas on every level
* making my levels flow so the player will revisit areas several times so they will better understand the 3D space of the level
* creating easily recognizable landmarks in several places for easier navigation 

being strict about texture alignment

lolololol 

Well, when you don't have fancy preview modes and auto-alignment features... 

There shouldn't be this much of a debate. It's not like Fifth is planning on reinventing the wheel with a tiny mod, he's just trying to redo e1m8's key feature. Blame Romero for being a lazy dicklord who could've easily made gravity a worldspawn key/value instead of doing a shitty hack.

The goal is to make maps that emulate id's, who cares if it's /id1/ or not. Is it 'more' like id did it if he has to use an entity hack and break save game compatiblity? id would never have shipped a map like that. They would do it right in code.

Besides, done in it's own .pak, a custom start.bsp can be made. id wouldn't have had players bring down the console and type in skill choices or which map filename they want to go to. 

Blame Romero for being a lazy dicklord who could've easily made gravity a worldspawn key/value instead of doing a shitty hack.

Actually it was American who's been responsible for the main QC coding
Just wondering why the id had never fix all of the qc bugs 

although some people may be getting a bit butthurt (and not really, even) *I* certainly can't condemn anyone for that even if they do and actually this is a good design-based discussion. I just hope 5E doesn't take any of it for discouraging since it's great to see episodes still coming out these days, episodes are easily among the most exciting releases. The idea of an e1m8-inspired map obviously knocks my socks off as well (it's true though, e1m8 is arguably cooler than e3m5, yet it hasn't got tributes). 

I just hope 5E doesn't take any of it for discouraging since it's great to see episodes still coming out these days
People are just expressing opinions, ultimately its Fifth's project and he can do whatever he wants. Its certainly not much fun to hear lots of people moaning about your project idea, but there are plenty of people who will love it regardless of what direction it is going in. 

Cause it was made with TrenchBroom, and therefore, love. 

all the maps made with TB are my grandchildren. 

Stop it .. all of you, stop it! You're making me want to map and I don't have the time for that. AT ALL. Stahhhhp... 

The reason FE is being publically criticized and subsequently shunned is not because of the mod, but the fact that at least one of the maps exceeds old Quake's visibility limits (*).

Thus the blame isn't on American McGee for employing hacky code, but SleepwalkR for releasing an editor that encourages detailing! 

(*) Which, like I said, doesn't seem like that much of a problem compared to the hard limits. 

Hold on, there was shunning? Did I miss the shunning? Aw man. It's been a long time since I could get a good shun on. 

 

Maybe I should just released it without telling anyone that it didn't work on standard quake to see if anyone noticed... ;) 

You could take the offending maps out of the pak and release them separately.

Or leave it all as is and call it something slightly different. id tribute pack, or, something.


Or: just do whatever you want! it's other people who are apparently having the heart attacks. 

I am looking forward to your release more than the next sock! But the QTWID label might invoke different expectations than what you made. Either live with some bullying from pseudonymous internet twats or name it QTWITIMHDID. 

quake the way i think id might have done it ... dude? 

But aren't we all internet twats? Am I right guys?

...guys? 

 

will have to put up with for the community based new UT development. 

Ha ho no kidding.