q1sp is coming in deluges at the moment, checking it out now. 

Enjoyed this alot, very tense. Gameplay really stood out - nothing else was bad, but the play was the best.

Whenever I thought I had recognised your style it changed again, never letting me relax - spose that shows your time in Duke mapping.

Bad points:

Grunts sniping from long distance.

No Armour? The only one I found was from a secret (1/3).

There were a few other niggles but just stuff you've probably already spotted for yourself.

Very nice, especially for a first Q1 map. 

annoying, but not bad...? 

Solid construction and style for a first map.
A regular armor somewhere would have been good indeed - I only found the second secret one too. Some areas were a bit dark even though there were quite a lot light textures.
Hope to see more Quake maps from you in the future. 

i liked the map a lot just think the slime pool might have a heathy :\ died on that once
:( looking for some secret...

the gameplay was hard on hard and only finish with no deaths at 3 rd try :p

keep it up... contrucion is good and lights also!

p.s- hope to see more from you! 

The sniping grunts are not that much of a big deal, but the lack of armor is a bit stressy after a while :)
But i liked the structure and gameplay a lot. Very well done for a first map - bring on the episode :> 

what's with all the q1sp releases nowadays? It's like when a bunch of babies are born, you figure everyone was extra horny nine months earlier. 

Maybe Cthulhu's call was stronger a couple of months ago. 

Being a basemap-hater I enjoyed playing this. Thumps up!
I especially liked the atmosphere, looks and the "logical feeling"/interaction (like plats, button etc). Nice monster selection too.

Not so good:
-The GK door had a wall texture or no visual hint about being a door at least.
-Overall the map is pretty dark (apart from that the lighting is nice!).
The end was pretty hard for me, it would have been nice if the (remaining) health boxes were not "sealed away".

Great first Quake map, keep on mapping!
http://shub-hub.com/files/demos_singleplayer/spirit_firstrun_distract.zip (I accidentaly overwrote the actual first run where I died on the "fiend couple".

And one word from me as "archivar", please name all the files the same next time: distract.bsp, distract.txt, distract.zip :) 

This is a nice map. I prefer gothic style, but ...

The only "problem" I had with this map is a scragg which froze at the end, near the teleport gate. I wasn't able to frag it, and the two schamblers weren't able to come out so I can exit the level. I had to pass through the walls, locate both of them and frag'em. So apparently there's a small bug here. 

Thanks for your comments and... Keep 'em coming!

Some of your points:

ijed:
"No Armour? The only one I found was from a secret (1/3)."

Three of them actually, but yeah, they were all hidden. Couldn't really think of any better way to fill secret places since a Quad or something similar would have been a bit too powerful in a level of this size.

"There were a few other niggles but just stuff you've probably already spotted for yourself."

Yeah, every time I fixed/improved something I noticed a zillion new things that could have used a fix so I just put a stop to that near the end.

Spirit:
"The GK door had a wall texture or no visual hint about being a door at least. "

Hmmm... I thought it looked pretty much like a door texture? But yeah, I see what you mean. The sets didn't have that many good textures for doors that go either straight up or straight down (these are pretty rare in Quake).

"The end was pretty hard for me, it would have been nice if the (remaining) health boxes were not "sealed away"."

Well, the ending actually went through several adjustments. Originally, the Shamblers spawned at the bottom level which made it way too easy (they're not able to hit you) so I just had to place one of them at the top level but so that I also added those three crates for cover.

Barnak:
"The only "problem" I had with this map is a scragg which froze at the end, near the teleport gate. I wasn't able to frag it"

I'm pretty sure this hasn't got anything to do with this map per se. Sometimes monsters just seem to freeze for no apparent reason. 

>>Sometimes monsters just seem to freeze for no apparent reason.

Well, that may be because I'm fuckin' ugly and the monster didn't liked it ! 

hate to be the negative one but I didnt like it.

The potential's definitely there for future maps and all things said its a pretty decent first map but I found it frustrating.

Looks wise, its fairly basic but well built, but the lighting definitely needed more work. Its too dark overall and also too flat. Coupled with the sniping grunts, I found it too annoying.

Gameplay was decent but the repetitive tactic of sniping grunts got boring and as mentioned above, the light level didnt help. The ending was also quite unfair I thoguht, but maybe I'm just a crap player. I definitely think some armor at some stage woudl have benefited the player's chance of survival a lot.

anyway, hope that was at least partially constructive and not a rant. 

i thought the level was fun, but i did not like the lighting and even though i though it was fun and such (there was one switch that disappeared though) never finished it because, like nitin said, the ending was unfair for me too. 

It worked pretty well for me with good looks and no progress problems.

The main complaints would be uneven floors (i.e. no clipbrushes) and uneven gameplay. Especially the two-shambler fight outdoors was a steep challenge (you can see that in Spirit's demo as well when he's down at single-digit health).

The ending was a bit easier, if you knew what was coming that is ... 

I liked the gameplay most of the time. It was fair on normal skill but also not too easy. The architecture was interesting in many places. I liked that you have put some attention to the vertical detail above the player. The light posts and lamps look very good also. Nice starting area with the view from the windows.
There were also some flaws in your map. The lack of armour and not enough lightning are the bigest problems and were already mentioned by others. There were also some other minor flaws like the disappearing button (I can bet you knew about it) and uneven floor. Also I found the SK before I got to the the right door. Good work anyway.
Here is my skill 1 demo:
http://quake_1.republika.pl/distract.zip 

Kind of cramped by today's standards but it gave me an hour of enjoyment. Yeah the box brushes for doors....not good. Found 2 secrets without really looking, the water and the ledge. What's with the shamblers at the end? Has anybody got them? It was kind of dark but if you played it in the dark it was probably OK. If this was your first quake map you did good. The pole lamps looked original. Make more maps! I have played some of your duke Nukem maps as well. Btw these serious critics will make you a better quake mapper. They know their sh......... 

I assume that by "sniping grunts" you simply mean grunts that fire from a distance so that it's pretty impossible to dodge their bullets (no particles to dodge)?

And thanks for the demos.

The secrets:
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y259/msandt/sec1.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y259/msandt/sec2.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y259/msandt/sec3.jpg

aguirRe:
"The main complaints would be uneven floors (i.e. no clipbrushes)"

This is actually something I noticed a few times but when the time came to fix them I simply forgot.

Ankh:
"Nice starting area with the view from the windows."

Yeah, I think scenes like that (plus the towers behind the mountains and the tunnel behind the boxes) add depth which is something Quake maps lack. Duke3D maps tend to exploit unreachable sceneries a lot. 

AFAIK grunts aim slightly behind the player, but not much. At long range with little armour a group of 3-4 can leave you very weak before the next combat, which is probably against meaner enemies. 

Two grunts scoring a direct hit causes more damage than shambler lightning or a voreball. Three enforcer shots cause as much damage as a fiend jump. People forget how powerful the little guys are in numbers. 

Nice map. I just kept getting stuck in the slime. A lift would've been nice. But I liked the rest of it. 

Great first map. Some interesting designs especially in the outdoor bit, with a good atmosphere to them. Some areas a bit simpler. Good gameplay overall with a particularly fun use of non-base monsters. Casually picking off grunts and then being faced with two Shamblers was cool stuff and quite reasonable with some thought. Keep it going. 

For a first map, it is really good ! I hope to see more good map like this one, and even better, in the future.

Keep it up ! 

Great work Mikko - even though it has a few weak points in architecture, it has style. Hadn't any problems with the actual gameplay, moreover, ambushes were highly enjoyable. Hope you'll map more for Quake in the future.

By the way, here's my first run (recorded under GLQuakeBJP 1.32):
http://geocities.com/ercicin/distract_erc.zip 

Great first map, Mikko despite some minor brush/texture alignment issues. The gameplay was challenging and fun. I thought the armor came a little late, though, and there were a few funky button/lift setups. Try using clip brushes to keep the player from bobbing on uneven floors and spotlighting on lamp-posts in the future.

Good stuff!!!