http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/

Good way of configuring your monitor, if everyone did this then we'd be halfway to getting some parity/unification on custom map lighting.

Also a good test is to play through episode 1 to get a good idea of what kind of brightness your maps should be. 

Mappers can't be perfect in every aspect Kinn. And episode 1 is not my taste of coffee to be honest, episode 1 doesn't have darkness almost at all. I am not trying to please only older quake fans, but also people who love horror games nowadays such as Amnesia and Outlast, that in mind I try to find solutions how to balance these things. Screen brightness can be too dark for most users to be able to play horror games right away without setting screen brightness level inside game. 

The only thing I can say about that NewHouse is while darkness is good for horror games, Quake is a shooter. The player needs to see the environment and make decisions based on cookie crumbs (ideally indistinguishable and not obvious) by the mapper.

When said environment is just black and more black, the player can get confused and therefore frustrated...which is bad.

Darkness is fine in Quake, you can create deep and vivid shadows that really bring a scene to life and set a proper mood...but there needs to be a happy balance! 

The only thing I can say about that NewHouse is while darkness is good for horror games, Quake is a shooter. The player needs to see the environment and make decisions based on cookie crumbs (ideally indistinguishable and not obvious) by the mapper.

When said environment is just black and more black, the player can get confused and therefore frustrated...which is bad.

Darkness is fine in Quake, you can create deep and vivid shadows that really bring a scene to life and set a proper mood...but there needs to be a happy balance! 

Windows 7 (probably 8 and 10 also) has a simple, but decent built-in calibration. You can find it in the "Display" properties or just run dccw.exe

I've always thought most of the original Quake levels were pretty dark. I normally have the brightness slider set 2 or 3 steps from full left (gamma 0.90 - 0.85).

I am also one those who use the original levels as a "go by" for setting brightness in my own maps. 

Bloughsburgh did you read my latest comment? I don't like darkness if it ruins gameplay.. the thing is it does. Problem is not every people uses same settings as mappers (even if options are default or something). If I can see, and enjoy I know others can do, like some of them really did. I want to make it possible by adding options to set brightness. So I don't understand what is so wrong about this idea. 

The thing is it doesn't ruin.. only settings fail. 

It sounds like you deliberately want the map to be darker than normal then, which is fine. But there's dark as in "I can't see shit, anywhere" - which is bad obviously for Quake - and then there's dark in a sort of Episode 4 way, where you have large swathes of black, but you can still see what's going on because the light is applied to create areas of bright contrast amongst the blackness so you can always make out the structure of the environment.

Making the map too dark everywhere, and then relying on the player to yank it up to a playable level using r_gamma (or some in-game interface to r_gamma) is silly and totally defeats the point. 

The brightness sliders in engines aren't there to adapt to specific maps, they're for adapting to the room brightness you're playing in, whether you're playing windowed/fullscreen, how good your LCD's black level is, etc.

Dark/horror maps are fine but they should be built for the same gamma setting as, say, the dark maps in episode 4. 

What settings episode 4 then used? 

If something is silly, it is not stupid. But yeah episode 4 is my favorite episode. And also I like colors used like in old italian/france horror movies. So only way to make it pleasant for everyone is try as stupid as what I mentioned.

If someone doesn't like the result, at least I tried. But this is basically only thing that motivates me to do these maps. 

Stick with it and don't get discouraged. Lighting in Quake isn't easy. I probably spend as much time on lighting as I do on everything else combined.

Try to avoid fighting with the engine as much as possible. Cool ideas which are difficult or nearly impossible to implement really aren't worth the time when making your first few maps.

Don't put 95% of your effort into 5% of the map that most players won't appreciate anyway. 

I have watched many playthroughs by several people, where people appreciate mood in maps.. just good map layout or idea isn't enough. This is also my hobby.. so I want to make maps I also like to play. Is it really worth making something mapper itself doesn't want to play. My goal is to make maps which I would play many many times and enjoy. For example I like challenge, so I make challenging maps, and hard has to be really hard even if I know the layout all the way through.

Darkness is important because enemies can hide in darkness, great way to set up ambushes. In jam map I used pulse lights very much because I wanted enemies to surprise player "mild jumpscare without awful noise". And many more things, which I need to learn how to do things properly.

In horror colors are the must, I cant capsule same mood using different or too bright colors.. that is why I have been spend 3-4 days in a row trying make blue color stay visible yet not let white color clear everything off. In my eyes quake is still horror action shooter no matter what others might say. 

I pretty much believe.. I can't see this map with different lighting:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwxYkKdSD855STItZWF3VlNGcmM/view?usp=sharing

I was working horror fantasy theme before this jam suddenly started. I was lucky I spotted it on time. 

Wait a minute.. I could use blue fog to create that cold feeling*... now I will stupid. 

feel* 

those screenshots look like an ok brightness to me anyway 

Maybe biggest reasons why this jam map (ice core) were so dark, wasn't because I didn't use enough intensity (light value), but because I used blue as a main light source and blue is quite dark color. If there is not enough intensity in shiny blue colors, there simply is no color then. Hopefully fog can add that extra boost to that mood, though I am not sure will that replace actual blue lights totally or not. 

Ice Core? Is that the name of your MJ7 entry? It's called Untitled in the map pack. Anyway, I don't think it's too dark and it certainly isn't darker than Khreathor's map. I happen to love the dark blue color you used for your lighting, it gives your map a very distinctive atmosphere, something that is often lacking in base maps. 

Stupid me was struggling to understand what people were talking "unfortunately untitled", I was that blind that I thought I changed the title, but nope. Welp, standalone version sure will have that name that is for sure.

It can be unclear to see why that name, because I cut off the whole 'ice core' section. Original vision was.. you need to turn power on in ice core, because pyros cut it off because they started fixing wires or something. Then elevators works, then you can go to security center where you find gold access key. Also after entering that last door in jam version, there was meant to be teleport room and one last battle, which teleports the player into fantasy world.. possible to this one map I was working before this jam map.

So those are things I'm working on. Lighting is still very important to keep in mind all the way through, because if I need to make changes to lighting.. even if I organize them to different layers it is not fast by any mean to make changes.

Mixed opinions about it doesn't make it any easier, other say that they like what they see and others say they can't see shit. And I just suggest something to fix lighting by giving a player options adjust brightness level, it seems like whether it is impossible in Quake or just silly(stupid).

In Quake, people are used to this kind of skill selection map thing, so obviously same logic "would" go on other specific settings too, that is only reason why I suggested something like that (having an options inside map). I could write something on readme, but who read them anyway - even I jump right into game. 

So you're working on an expanded version, that's great! I suspected there was more to it when I saw "level 2" written above the exit door. If it's as good as the jam version, I look forward to playing it. As for fog, I think you should save it for the ice core once power is restored. You know, like cold produces condensation in cold storage equipments.

By the way, I noticed something odd in your map. In the LG room, there's some kind of flickering electric panel near the floor between the two doors. There's a neon flicker sound coming from the light on the left but this panel is strangely silent. You should add that sound there too, I think. 

Also, I played it on skill 1 and there was A LOT of ammo. Like, I used maybe only half of it. 

" As for fog, I think you should save it for the ice core once power is restored. You know, like cold produces condensation in cold storage equipments."

- I will keep that in mind, it is a good idea.

"There's a neon flicker sound coming from the light on the left but this panel is strangely silent. You should add that sound there too, I think. "

- I just quickly added something weird there, because that left wall has secret door and it's texture is even misaligned on purpose. I assume you didn't spotted secret* Sound might have been wrong in this case, I need to experience more with ambient sounds. If you played fixed version.. I remember adding there broken lamp & that sound.. 

So that's the one secret I missed! Thanks for the tip. The thing with hinting at secrets with flickering light/sound is that these defective lamps are also used just for ambiance, without any secret, so I tend to overlook them. I think it's better if the hint feels more out of place, like a slightly misaligned, discolored or particular texture, or an odd architectural detail. I've just checked and you did put a misaligned texture, but I failed to notice it during my playthrough.

While on the subject of secrets, the rocket jump one had a cool message that made it feel like an "achievement", but as a rule you'll want to avoid secrets that aren't accessible by normal means. Another thing: In the control center, there's a shootable button that makes a block rise to reveal a secret with rocket ammo. The problem is that once you do this, the quad above becomes inaccessible because you can't jump on that block anymore.

Glad you like my idea about the fog. It just seems logical that there should be ground fog in there, and it wouldn't really make sense to have fog in the entire base. 

Thanks for reminding me about that computer room secret, it indeed blocks way to up to get that quad damage. I haven't yet figured out how to make it, but one idea was to place another button inside that computer room secret, because I will make it lower after certain time so player can get quad damage*

I received same kind of feedback from couple people about that rocket jump secret.. so I made it so player can either find illusionary secret path or just rocket jump and message is "Illusionary/Rocket Jump secret". Hopefully that is good way to say it, so player knows that it is possible to access two ways, and naturally if player just rocket jumps, he/she will find also illusionary secret path.

Also I let my friend play play test my map, and I realize I need to move rocket launcher secret on same wall as megahealth secret, if you spotted these 2 secrets before yet near Rocket Jump secret. Basically when you jump from up to middle of boxes where that flashing red door is, there is red arrow shootable button, which opens secret door up where you jumped. Problem was because it wasn't 100% in player view, my friend missed it twice! So now I even placed that in front of face, if player misses it first time, at least when he comes back after picking that GK, he sees it in front of his eyes while walking/running up stairs.

So it kind of feels like I need to make "easy" secrets very very easy to spot. And leave only couple of them, quite hard to find.