I remember running around in the "scrapped" pieces of A Roman Wilderness many moons ago. Despite being unfinishable and having no lighting there were some really crazy ideas in there. I didn't think it would ever see the light of day in a finished form.

How wrong I was! I'll rock it out this evening. 

Thank you Tronyn. Keeping Quake alive, seriously 

Difficulty is well balanced now for skill 1 ... The lava skins would've been more at home in outdoor levels. Holy hell ... C****d*m*n finale was teh only hard bit ... Like the grappling hook ... Fave was the gargoyle(imp?) melees.

Yeah, the start level secret was nice. I didn't look around first up, and shame i didn't go get the moljnor (hint ;>), but , really, there's an abundance of weapons. 

Good spoiler avoidance. No-one can possibly work out what it says ;p 

There wasn't a single moment I didn't enjoy when playing these maps. The gameplay is fast, challenging and rewarding. Not to mention the map architecture is great all throughout.

As Tronyn mentioned, I was one of the lucky ones to give these maps a beta test playthrough, and from the looks of it, every small issue I had seems to have been fixed (Not that I had many issues with these maps to begin with)

That, in addition to the new monsters that weren't present in the betas, such as the hell hounds and ghosts, as well as the final battle which was nothing like the beta, that was a very pleasant, and hard surprise :)

The music was also a very nice touch, especially the Doom music in Roman3, that was sweet :)

I didn't make first playthrough demos, because I wanted to really take my time with these maps, and appreciate all the details and hard work put into them, and that would have just been boring to watch.

I gotta give these maps an A+ overall, theres really nothing negative I can say about them other than they are VERY hard.

And the best part is, there are even more fantastic maps on the way by Tronyn, Unforgiven and Arcanum ;)

Excellent work to Tronyn and PM for this awesome map pack thats sure to get plenty of playthrough's from me. Download and play this now! 

I really wish there was a website page with details on how this set of map were made. The design decisions, thoughts on AI placement, architectural styles and blending them together, weapon test, balance issues etc. I don't have a copy of Q1 anymore but I am still very interested in how these type of maps are put together.

I did check the website link in the readme file but it is dead (points at PQ). I always feel it such a shame that talented mappers from this site never sit down and publish notes on what they did.

I can't really comment on gameplay or ingame stuff besides what I see in screenshots. Looks like a lot of work went into this project and having it stretch over 10 years is amazing. 

What's the code for the crossbow? I'm recording firstrun demos and didn't keep it from the start map. 

not sure about the crossbow code (I'll ask PM), but thanks for the feedback so far everyone. Good idea sock - my PQ site is indeed down, but maybe I'll put together an article on development thoughts with PM and post it on Quaddicted. If any of my maps have gone through enough changes to warrant it, it's these ones. 

Code for crossbow? Do you mean the 'give' cheats? The 'give' command does not work for weapons because the weapons are not stored in the items and weapon fields. The only way to give weapons in Roman is the standard impulse 9. Crossbow shares impulse 3 with the super shotgun/riot controller (the latter cannot be found in the roman maps). Since some weapons replace others completely, weapon removal impulses were added. Impulse 18 removes the current weapon, and impulse 19 removes all weapons and ammo. 

As for maps, I can only speak for mine, which is merely the start map. I just looked at Tronyn's roman maps, ripped the textures from roman1, and began building. I experimented with a few patterns, and when I found one I liked, I stuck with it and expanded from there.

In case of the mod/progs, this is just work in progress for Drake, which evolved from Dragons. It is simply a collection of stuff I like in Quake. Since I joined up with Tronyn, it became a combination of my desires and what Tronyn needs or wants for his maps.

In any case, there is a bug in the Roman progs that adds and counts enforcers in dmsp mode when it shouldn't, and there are probably other minor problems lurking around that I did not have time to address before a Christmas release. Soon, I will fix whatever bugs I can, assemble a devkit for roman, and make an entities file. 

Nevermind the crossbow. Finished it already on Normal. The demos are mostly screwed, because even though I used the quicksave trick to continue recording after dying, I didn't realize I also should've done it after each level change and since I played on Fitz protocol 666, it's impossible to fix the post-changelevel recording with BJP's convdem. Sorry (or hack the tool to make it work).

So this is a cool little mapset. Quite hard, Tronyn-style, but bearable with caution and frequent quicksaving. Strong Doom vibe. The theme is very cool*, a wickedly weird Quakish mix - metal.wad and flesh work well together and the Egyptian bits do the rest. Great architecture and a good sense of grandheur with all the high structures and coloums etc. Some parts seem a little sloppy though: unaligned textures and no proper transitions, for example.
The new and old-new monsters rock, like the fire dogs (somewhat annoying attack though) and the imps. Always good to see the Rogue monsters again.
I found all the secrets (yay) - there could've been way more.

I didn't like the boss fight. The Summoner took me a few tries, but his follow-up (ugly pale model still) was annoying and made me swith to god mode after several attempts. There's simply not enough ammo (not having the crossbow probably added to this) - respawning items would've been better - and the area was a little too tight for my taste.

*It also reminded me once again of the Dry Sorrow scrap, that I already started fiddling around with a couple of times in order to turn it into a full-size SP map... ;) 

With all the xSOE, ARWOP, Arcanum, whatever stuff out there or in the works, are you going to eventually merge them all into some sort of super mod that we can then play like an mmorpg for the rest of our lives or something like that? I mean, why else include a grappling hook...? 

actually, as a matter of fact, yes :) 

The grapple is a common feature among mods, and I decided to add it just in case. Plus, the grapple could be useful as an unusual key. That is, you cannot progress to more areas without it. I found the grapple to be a time saver in roman3.

I have much to finish before I can think about working on the merger for real. 

That was fun, and it looks like you'll be beating warp for monster counts - 449!

The ice crossbow is cool, but I wasted it completely at the start, later finding out how to use it.

Hell hounds are good as well, but they definately need a new skin, maybe a modified mesh as well.

The level was nicely laid out and fun to roam around, I got lost once, but quickly found the way. The sloping surfaces on the floor got a bit annoying when I or an enemy would get stuck.

Otherwise fun stuff. Had to resist impulse 9 to play with all the new stuff though ;) 

Sounds awesome. What's next, someone using the jetpack or the hoverboard from Slide in a single player map? 

I'm getting an error/crash at the Loading screen when running it with Darkplaces.

Host_Error: CL_ParseServerInfo: Server is unrecognized protocol number (666)

Using DP 2009-07-09.

Hope someone can shed some light on this cuz this mod looks totally awesome. 

It is the demo1.dem in the pak2.pak that is causing problems in BengtQuake and DarkPlaces. For now, add +map start when running, or just extract everything except demo1.dem from the pak2, then get rid of the pak2.pak. 

Thank you for your help. Modified shortcut commandline as directed. Worked like a charm :)

This mod is great -- you guys have really outdone yourselves! 

Impulse 248 is the Tome of Power cheat. Happy gibbing! 

Oh, whatever. Here are my borked demos. At least they show me get through the first map and then how I fail miserably during the boss battle. http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/demos/arwop_negke_skill1.7z

metl: please fix continuous demo recording in the next FQ version (like BJP's engines do). And someone please modify convdem as well - usually continuously recorded demos can be fixed by just joining (-j) them into one (or adding an additional demo snippet at the end if it's just one file). Problem is, convdem only supports protocol 15 and BJP's.

PM: btw. good job to you, too. ;) 

http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/demos/spy_arwop_skill0.7z

Great pak, Tronyn.
i like all changes of gameplay you've made since the last beta(s).
'm definitely will waiting for your next projects.

as already been said the gameplay is VERY hard and i found out that skill 0/1 is more suitable for me.

thank you Tronyn. 

... not finished yet (I just died at third map) but definitely the jewel of this end of 2009 !
I cannot add anything more but what others said: great pack ! 

convdem is closed source (not written by id) and not easy to modify, plus it might be OS-dependant.

I suggest using protocol 15 for demos if you want everybody to watch them, otherwise you should note that engine X is required (in this case Fitzquake 0.85). 

Tronyn and Pm.., for this great recharche of Quake1 !!!