You sure missed the NG early on, but still managed very well! 

that I actually forgot to post my first run demo(s). Divided in two parts because I died in the lava once :/
skill 1

http://shub-hub.com/files/demos_singleplayer/thehand1.dz

http://shub-hub.com/files/demos_singleplayer/thehand2.dz 

You did well, mwh, but I was yelling at my screen at several points "The Nailgun is RIGHT THERE!!"

It would have come in handy for you!

Ankh: Havent watched yet, but Im gonna soon. :D 

Yeah, I was pretty aware that I must have missed the NG -- for example when I found the secret with 100 nails in and had 200 nails before I even got to the nail box outside :) But I was aware (hoping) that people would watch the demo and thought that a 5 minute hunt for it would have been pretty boring.

I was also a bit more aggressive in places than I might otherwise have been, for the same reason.

The best bit was that when I reloaded and finished the demo after that death (and died quite a few times, actually) the intermission screen I got was pointed squarely at the NG :) 

I find that when watching ankhs demos that theres a crash whenever a Bob is encountered. Its when the bob dodges to the side, I think. It happens in FitzQuake. I remember it happening when I watched some of my beta testing demos that people sent me. Which engine did you use, Ankh? Was it JoeQuake? Isnt that a TomazQuake engine? I remember Trincas demos did it too, and some others I think. Trinca recorded his in JoeQuake.

It gives the console message:

HostError: Cl_ParseServerMessage: Illegible Server Message

And crashes to the console, in Fitz.

I wander why? 

watch the demo in a Nehahra-enabled engine like one of mine, or convert it using my ConvDem utility to std protocol 15. Then you can watch it in any engine.

Please see readme for details. 

The demos were recorded in Joequake.
I have replayed your map on skill 2 and after extending the bridge I had not enough ammo to proceed further. I think that in big maps each big area or part of the map should contain sufficient supplies to beat that particular part of the map.
Maybe it was your choice for the hard skill to force the player to preserve the ammo trough the whole map but it is something the player doesn't know at the start. 

"Illegible Server Message" indicates that the demo was recorded in a nonstandard protocol. There are a number of engines (such as nehahra) that have a protocol that says it's protocol 15, but has extra stuff added. Since the demo says it's 15, fitzquake will start to play it, and then only fail the first time it gets a message it doesn't understand.

As aguirre says, his convdem tool can process demos to be unmodified protocol 15. 

Thanks for the info AguirRe/Metlslime. I was unaware of the idea of there being different demo versions (or if I was ever aware I must have quickly forgotten)

Ankh: I agree skill 2 is pretty tough. Next map will be fairer ;-P 

Thanks Ricky. Was much fun. Finished in 25 min. Missed half the secrets and 1 monster. I did not find medium too hard at all. I prolly should have played it in hard but warpspasm ruined me. I may never pick door #3 again. 

should be tough, that's the whole point of it :p 

Analised a lot of us senseless I think. 

I thought it was just a Quake pack.

Very easy, easy, normal, hard, nightmare and with -/+ Quoth enemies. Could have been integrated better I suppose, but if I warn in the readme of the difficulty grade you can't really complain if you approach it the same as any other. Most players wouldn't even think of playing Nehahra on hard.

Maybe the thing is that when every single pack ever made says 'this is an evil pack' you stop believing it. 

gave me the opposite reaction, its in my top 5 quake packs. I loved it on medium. 

Have you forgotten how many monsters you put in?? ;)

There's nothing "just a ..." about it! 

I like WarpSpasm. I mean I like skill2. I was playing Warpd last night on skill2. Very hard. Kept running out of ammo. I guess you need to find the secrets. Also, I guess you need to make your ammo count. If I wanted to have an easier time I would play skill 1, but it kinda takes the challenge out really, doesnt it?

FYI I go 220-odd monsters in, and gave up.

Doesnt mean I'm not gonna try again tho. It means that I AM!! :-D 

I realised after release that warpd just wasn't finished enough and that I should have been alot more generous on the ammo, and details. It was basically me and Sielwolf playtesting it - he almost never puts a foot wrong even on the most difficult maps and I knew where everything was.

For warpd ammo-wise you should try and cause as many enemies as possible to leap into the void, find as many secrets as you can (there's a practically invisible one near the second silver key / above the two vores) and snatch every single enforcer backpack for the plasmagun. Also, make sure to switch between weapons a fair bit to try and balence against the ammo that you're finding.

That's the kind of underhanded tactics I was balancing for - I also managed to beat Xaero on nightmare just by taking advantage of the bad AI. And I've sent that fucking gnome from episode 2 into outer space:

http://www.pentadact.com/index.php/2007-10-15-gnome-quest

But I didn't get the achievement - got a load of screenshots but my Steam id didn't update to include "Little Rocket Man". Fuckers. 

And warpd has 666 monsters on hard. It was interesting working within a set limit of enemies. I'm not advocating filling the map just for the sake of it, but maybe as a speed or turtle mapping event it could be good - ~10 monsters only, for example. 

You probably would have had a hard time finding playtesters for the whole thing. 

Sending out the odd email or beta update as time passed, building the thing. I was using every spare minute to map - lunchtimes, after work, at home, weekends etc.

I had a good base to work from with aguirRe and Sielwolf - both experts in what they do in the Quake sphere.

A wider playtesting base would have helped, but the volume of mapping there made it a daunting prospect. 

I like Sielwolf, but he's frighteningly good at Quake. I mean I dont really want to look the gift-horse in the mouth here, but if he say that the map is a "nice challenge" it probably means that most people would find it "far to tough"

Hehe - he has posted demos of Warpd in the WARP thread, right?

We should really move this discussion there... 

Sorry for being an ass, could you please upload both sickbase demos to the shub-hub, I lost them myself (serves me right I guess).

Thanks for the kind words :() dunno what else to say. 

Played this.

Numerous nice things!
The FPS was a bit low in the room that had lots of lava down and had that spinning yellow circle thing. Pretty near end.

There were lots of varied architecture things with details and it wasn't the same throughout, and I liked how the light made it feel so different inside and outside. And I didn't get so badly lost as with many maps. Either. The bridge button could have been a bit more obvious perhaps.

I also loved the end how it was so "sense of awe" that you could actually break outside.

I made a demo too, first play, skill 1:

http://shub-hub.com/files/demos_singleplayer/bamhand.dz 

Been playing this today and come across an error, which I've recieved a few times. Pretty far into the map when you step onto the 'teleporter', it'll blow up but then FitzQuake will hang, then quit the map. The following error is then displayed in the console:

Host_Error: Program Error 

...I've never had that one before!

Erm, I always tested in Fitz too! OK, so what operating system are you using? Cause if it's not windows then I wouldnt know.

The only really obvious thing I can think of is are you playing through Quoth? Some people didnt realise this was a Quoth map before and had problems (but not like the one you've described).

Maybe its an error between Quoth1 and Quoth2.

It could work in Quoth1 but not Quoth2, although I would assume otherwise, cause they assure us Quoth2 is backward compatible.

Anybody got a clue?