just my two cents, for what it's worth :

When you publish something really worth it, of very high quality, it is inevitable that some envious, jealous persons, trolls, morons and douchebags manifest themselves to express their negativity. There's nothing you can do against this, whatever the quality of your work and your efforts. This is part of life.

Like many others, I personally appreciate your work ENORMOUSLY, and SILENTLY since my opinion have no value here. So I wanted to say a BIG THANK YOU for your awesome work.

I know what it is, since I've also personally done some very high quality stuffs on other things (not related to Quake), and yet received some negative comments. I take it as a clue that my work had an real impact on others.

In the case of maps/mods done for Quake1, I can also appreciate the work you have done, since I'm still slowly working on a one square room map since the last 6 months (with a single dog standing in the middle) ! So I know how hard quake mapping can be. After some rare comments I've wrote on this forum, I mostly got very negative replies (especially from OneTrueAssHole and another idiot), but why should I care ?

Again, from all the (usually) silent quake playing dudes that outnumber the trolls/morons :

T H A N K Y O U S O C K ! 

Giving up is akin to letting trolls win. I can feel the pain though, the AD team and Sock especially have worked *bloody* hard on this mod.
It's difficult to remain pragmatic on such a passion project. 

I think that should be respected. However, other people aside from sock also put time and energy into this project and I think that should be respected as well.

Perhaps make one final release: add ad_sepulcher and one last round of bugfixes, put a bow on it and move on. 

Perhaps make one final release: add ad_sepulcher and one last round of bugfixes, put a bow on it and move on.

That's what the patch was planned to be all along. 

Hell, yeah! 

Sock, you worked on this because your passion for Quake. Don't stop because of the trolls 

Envy strives people act like assholes sometimes, you very well know the quality of your work, it is very solid and professional. Time to time we all want to get some recognition of our hard work and passion put into this community etc. Even new-comers has this same spark somewhere there.

Everyone on this mod did impressive job, no one can argue with that, except people I just meant; jealous or just trolls. Just ignore those kind of comments, that is only way to deal with those. After all look all these positive comments given by players who really liked what they got, it is too easy to stick only on negative comments. 

Patch was always going to be the end anyway, sad he got frustrated over one fucker, but whatever forget that. AD's pretty well wrapped up after this patch anyway, and there's plenty there to work with in your own maps and the source is there to take in other directions if people want to do that too.

But don't worry about Simon, even if he doesn't make more Quake, he'll make something fun and cool and awesome. Sock has too much desire to fiddle with things to not be cooking up something. 

Sock & other mappers,
you did a great job!

Don't care the ice below the iceberg,
let's invent a func_troll! 

So if 1.5 was/is the last patch (Which is nice, in some ways, since now we can do all kinds of kooky and weird things to the progs.dat), what does that mean for sepulcher and the missing entities it's supposed to add? I'd hope that when it comes out, we'll see a "1.5.1" or something along those lines that includes it so that people who want to use those new monsters don't have to tell people to download both 1.5 and a specific other map... 

https://twitter.com/SimsOCallaghan/status/810209707252154368

There's a patch tomorrow (Sunday). There just won't be anything after that. 

Technically, since 1.5 came out, that "fucker" is one of the contributors to AD, no matter how small and insignificant.

Unless you meant the proxy guy, who wasn't that offensive either. I've seen worse things being thrown around on this forum.

At this point it seems that sock is just very tired and needs a break. 

I had assumed the update with Sepulcher would be the last AD update, but I had also assumed sock would stick around and release a map or two now and then, maybe continue work on ITS as he mentioned once or twice. But it's natural that people come and go in these communities. Shit happens. It's a shame, but not the saddest thing in the world today by any means.

Cheers, sock. AD is part of Quake's legacy now, and I'm sure there will be many "third-party" AD maps in the future. If you decide to stay, all the better, but if this is really it, thank you all the same. 

"For the amount of praise sock is getting, he seems to be rather easily upset by negativity. I can sorta understand, but, in my experience, creating anything worth talking about will inevitably produce at least a certain amount of drama. Taking it to heart is counter-productive."

This, really. 90s FPS isn't my only hobby, I also spend some time in the poetry scenes near where I live, and also observing poetry on a national level. Let me tell you--the beefs that happen here make poetryland beefs look like the Eastern Front in comparison. You can't imagine the hostility, both justified and unjustified, people have for each other over the words they write. In comparison, AD has received almost universal praise from this (admittedly smaller) community, with most critics being people who just have different personal preferences (don't like huge maps or whatever) with as far as I can tell one or two real "haters." Like I said, as far as internal disputes within niche creative communities--this ain't nothing! 

*in the AD threads specifically, maybe not this forum in general. My point is, have some perspective! Though I know from experience stepping away from the keybaord forma while can help with that.

Sorry for triple-posting. 

for taking criticism to heart. I think it's part of why he is so good at this. I hope he'll be back when he has cleared his mind a bit.

Making something like AD in your spare time is very exhausting. I know this from my own hobby projects. Sometimes you ask yourself why you're doing this at all, esp. when faced with criticism that upsets you like in this case. But at some point you remember why, and you get back at this. 

I hope he'll be back when he has cleared his mind a bit.
Ditto. AD has so much more yet untapped potential that it'd be a pity to put it to rest permanently. 

But yeah, let's hope that he uses this toolset now that it's done. 

I think wed all be wise to respect whatever choice sock makes in regards to AD. His reasoning likely extends far beyond this thread. Its in more than a polished enough state to call final and any changes can be taken on by the new wave of mappers/content developers.

Best of luck to Sock on all his creative ventures. Though, he doesnt really need "luck".

Now, everyone, GO MAP. 

... and it only gets worse on every release. 

... d�j� vu all over again.

The king is dead, long live the king. 

Weapons:

I was sceptical of the projectile shotguns at first, and still not sure changing them was really necessary, but one gets used to them and it works. It's even admittedly somewhat satisfying to kill enemies with the pellets, because of the visual feedback and 'having hit' through slight movement prediction. It feels hitting things is slightly more difficult now with the delay - at least it seems I've missed way more shots than I would have with hitscan, as if the monsters were lucky to zig-zac their way through my attacks.
The triple-barreled shotgun kicks ass. An actual improvement over the normal one, and good thing the maximum shell count is increased.

The plasma gun, like Shambler put it, just works, gets the job done. I can't decide whether it's an improvement over the LG and occasionally I would have prefered to be able to switch back to the LG as the plasma felt less powerful (possibly caused by restistances) and dangerous to my self at point blank range. At least it allows shooting under water (right?).

Axes are good, not as useless as the stock axe, and in many cases the axe upgrade is found quickly to make it suitable tool for emergencies.

Monsters:

The new and modified monsters are all very well designed and reasonably balanced. Some seem to have oddly little health while others have surprisingly much within their context (e.g. normal knights vs. crossbow guys). But it works out in the end, no Quoth-grade ammo sponges. Even the vorelings, although I wouldn't have minded if they had had even less.

Z-aware ogres are a bit of a mixed bag. Generally, I think removing their grenade limitations is good and adds to the gameplay. At the same time, the z-awareness can make it quite unfair for the player occasionally. Seems to be as if at short ranges the grenades are very fast and harder to dodge. Glad they have a range limit, too.
Zombies, on the other hand, are still unable to attack vertically. Maybe it's for the best, though.

One thing that bothers me a little is how some of the modified monster models, especially hell knight and ogres, are so thin in their posture compared to the originals.
Knights and zombie knight models, while being good overall, could've used a little touch-up perhaps. Something about them feels wonky to me, maybe because they are so round now?
Same with the updated shambler model. He has been working out obviously, but his death animation is a bit of a diva move...

The monster spawners are tricky. They add tension to the gameplay and a further component of target priorization which is good. However, mappers must be careful not to let this get out of hand. YES, YOU, IONOUS! :) Depending on the situation, this can cause ammo shortages. Most maps handle it well, or at least it worked out for me in most cases, secrets and respawning items etc.

The scrag queen is cool if not slightly overpowered. Or maybe it only felt that way, because the arena in Zendar is fairly small and dead-endy in terms of cover with regards to the additional mobs. You should have added the scrag boss from Travail as well -> scrag kind and queen in a scrag kingdom map with a permanent flight powerup. Hmm, looks like there's now way around AD 2.0 now!

The resistances to certain weapons didn't really look clearly communicated to me. There's mention of particles indicating resistance somewhere here, but during the game I didn't recognize what does what. The only obvious thing is grenades bouncing off certain enemies and rockets seemingly flying through scrags. Not sure I like the latter in particular. While in theory a system like this can add some flavor to the gameplay, I think in Quake, at least for me and in this mod, it's largely irrelevant as I just keep shooting until the monsters are dead unless it's clear they don't take any kind of damage from the current weapon.

Maps:

I had some thoughts on each map, but can't really recall. Let me just repeat what other have probably mentioned and say the maps are amazing. Great detail, many secrets, so much to explore. The rune meta game is a nice touch. Ever so slightly intransparent, but rewarding if completed with a stunning credit map.

Newschool stuff like skyboxes, fog, colored lighting, alpha textures and (excessive) particles was used to great effect. Made things look fresh and modern, yet still sufficiently Quakey. As far as I can tell the new map functions add a lot of potential for unique designs and gameplay/story/event opportunities, much of these probably yet to be explored. 

When playing ad_lavatomb, I caught myself thinking "this would look a lot better with colored lighting". In its current state, the level is fairly bright and mostly grey/white. Imagine how it'd look with a more dark and gloomy style and walls tinted in subtle color by candles, flames and flowing runes...
Clear indication how much the rest of the MOD has spoilt me! 

I reported the same thing in the past, but I was told that the level does have colored lighting.

I dunno. No matter how hard I squint, I can't see it. I'd love to take a look at the saturation values. Most likely, the person who told me that was mislead by the occasional use of fake tint on the textures themselves (typically near lava). 

But I have no idea what it does