i'm there :) 

demo: http://shub-hub.com/files/demos_singleplayer/whiteroom_spirit.zip

This map steams with atmosphere and flawless execution. 

Aww shucks! 

Lighting looks quite cool from the shots on the white textures....
I'll try it soon - Im gonna go for a lunch break now so I'll do it... 

I respect your artistic vision, and don't take this the wrong way, but I think the visual style is absolutely horrid. That's pretty much all the negative I'm going to say about it though.

Considering you're from Epic, the minimalist approach is something unexpected and bold. I haven't played it yet, will try to tonight, so I can't comment on gameplay (no shots with monsters?)

Also: even though you went with an extremely experimental and 'abstract' approach, you still have crates in your map! :P 

Hey, crates are Quake and Quake is crates. (say that 5 times fast) 

Oh, and you might appreciate the style more in motion. It looks cooler when you're running around. You may still hate it, and that's fine, but don't judge it entirely from the shots. :) 

Shots look interesting: gonna play that now ! 

Woah that was cool, really liked the transition to textures and the atmosphere with the writing on the wall and the dead bodies lying around. (Gotta learn how to implement those myself) I will check out your source for sure. Really enjoy your maps! How do you make them so fast? I would like to see you record a desktop video of your process.

Demo: http://www.st3ady.com/files/whiteroom_st3ady.zip 

loved it. Very fresh, very crisp and clean. Reminded me od a traditional japanese house interior. Was there a Q3 map that fully went for that style?

I like how the textures draw attention to the brushwork, which was very clean and solid. It seems that you've deliberately avoided crazy Geocomp style architecture, and that makes the experiment more interesting I think. More restrained than I would have expected.

It's a good reminder that quake can in fact handle bright colour palettes. I can't remember a level since http://retroquake.planetquake.gamespy.com/blog/?p=103 that that tried it.

The one jarring thing is that standard quake items and enemies don't fit in visually, but that's not a flaw as such, it's pretty much an inevitability.

After not playing quake for a while I always forget how much I enjoy the movement and the gameplay, jesus christ. For me, the gameplay and the mood of quake have always been equally strong reasons why I love the game, but I've never felt them to be strongly linked together, just two separate things that a lot of us really like that come in one package.

A lot of people call the gameplay 'visceral' but I'd say it's really quite quite cartoony: it's run and gun, shoot and jump, bounce dodge and weave. It's mechanical and fun, it's almost like a sport. The style is a mixture to be sure, but its muddy and foreboding, Lovecraft and strange ancient evil, and that style screams Silent Hill gameplay, it suits survival horrors with clunky controls and a sequence of terrifying scripted events (by Lemony Snicket).

I don't want to rant and derail the thread, but this project got me thinking (as successful experimentation should I suppose)... to me, the Quake gameplay made a lot of sense in this abstract stylised setting. Team Fortress 2 springs to mind - they essentially realised that it doesn't make sense to have guys doing rocket jumps when it looks like they're from Call of Duty 8.

In a further possible tangent, I know that we always talk about the "Big Community Project" and it never happens, but if it did, and it wasn't to be a scene-by-scene recreation of Quake that no one else would play, it seems clear to me that we should take EITHER the gameplay or the style and run with that, and make the form match the function.

In conclusion, (and slightly back on track) this is an abstract theme, and it's an abstract game. It's very obviously a game too, it never attempts to be realistic, and that's especially obvious if you've been away from it and playing modern games for the past few months.

Hopefully this starts a trend for maps with abstract visuals, it seems like there's definite potential there. 

86/86, 3/3.

I liked this because it was very unsettling as a whole. The "holy shit, where am I and what is this" feeling kept increasing as I progressed further and further. It was a definite plus how every other room had its separate sub-theme, made the map more memorable as a whole.

The ending was the best example of this. Gameplay-wise it needed to be more intense, it kind of felt unfinished (too short and weak). The texturing however was brilliant.

Seeing zombie dogs bite zombies to death would have been a great scene but it was something of a missed opportunity ): 

Ummm yes. I managed to exit without going down underground, which was weird.

I respect the concept but didn't find it that inspiring personally. I quite like the gameplay although it is very easy.

Good to see people trying new stuff anyway. There's probably some potential here. 

I enjoyed this to say the least. The visual style was cool - very surreal. I also liked the bodies and the decals. Looks like you had a lot of fun making it! Nice!

I dont think its fair to say that it looks horrid, although it is a matter of opinion. It looks DIFFERENT. Which is nice - refreshing. The QMB engine has a mode for cell-shading, which looks quite cool - would make the models look cell-shaded also, although I used FitzQuake.

I found all three secrets (see demo) but I cheated to find the last one (not the "end" one, but the "first" one)

I would say it was a bit easy. I enjoyed the bits where I was let loose with a SSG on a load of grunts. But I thought that the SNG was overkill. It would have been more fun taking out the Enforcers with an SG, let alone and SSG, let alone and SNG!!

But hey - I had great fun, and the brushwork was really neat. I like the downwards sloping curved corridors. That stuff can be a pain in the arse to line up right.

Willem - Have you ever played my map "Thehand"? - It has a corridor with a curved-arch ceiling, which slopes down and round. Probably the hardest thing I have ever made. Its *literally* the first corridor you come to, if you wanna check it out....

(The ceiling is a func_wall, mind) :P

Anyway - full kills, 2/3 secrets (without cheating), skill 3!:

http://shub-hub.com/files/demos_singleplayer/rickywhiteroom.zip 

"But hey - I had great fun, and the brushwork was really neat. I like the downwards sloping curved corridors. That stuff can be a pain in the arse to line up right. "

Oh lord, you don't know how many times I had to fix that thing. Leaks, corrupted geometry, etc. Sometimes you just want to scream. 

with a curved ceiling! 

Willem, I have a problem extracting the wip file: all the extracted files are 0kB... I want a clean archive... or a tips that would help... please :( 

I tried with WinRAR instead of WinZip, and it worked fine now... I'll run play themap now ;) 

I think the map looks cool. Brushwork and texture work well together. I didn't like the blood stains/text very much and that biohazard text felt out of place, too. The third secret (which I found before realizing where the regular exit was supposed to be) adds a special nuance to the map which is very nice and probably necessary to make it stand out from a mere concept piece.
Gameplay was easy on skill 2, with so (too) many medkits and fun zombie carnage. I died once because I was so stupid as to miss the GL.
A nice little concept map - that is, if the texture on the sides of that droning tech thing in the basement hadn't been misaligned!

Here is a demo, complete with unspectacular play style and silly comments: http://shub-hub.com/files/demos_singleplayer/whiteke.zip 

go play my SM134 (avec le Fitz) while you're still in the mood. 

shots look sooo great! 

"that is, if the texture on the sides of that droning tech thing in the basement hadn't been misaligned!"

Grr... 

Spoilers for all who played it:

Gurer ner gjb rkvgf sebz guvf yriry. Lbh jnag gb svaq gur bgure bar. Hayrff lbh nyernql qvq (juvpu lbh jvyy xabj). Bx? :)

http://www.rot13.com/