this was rad. i had fun playing it. the new monsters and items were definately top notch. Great Job!! 

at last!
congrats to kell&necros!
it turned to be rather nice pack :) 

Great stuff. I couldn't put it down from start to end, effectively killing my afternoon. I nominate Flying Polyp for most aggrivating baddie of the year. 

Polyp - most annoying enemy ever (possibly even more so than Ground Zero's turrets). Like the disappearing shizznit, loathe the fucking attacks and dodging shit. For some reason in Kell's lucifer map they weren't as awful to play against.

Trole or whatever the fuck it's called - second most annoying enemy ever. Could have toned down the damage just a little EH??

Voreling - kinda annoying but pale in comparison to above.

Random map entities - all good. The corpses are great.

Start map - favour map in the pack, loved it.

Innousis - S'okay. Not enough health.

Eric - neat ideas, I think he got some of the essential contract vibe. Low build quality though.

Zwiffle - good enough map but lacking in sparkle.

Necros - another one with a strong vibe to it AND inconsistent in quality. The start area theme could have been continued which would have been better. Quite distinctive gameplay, some frustrations.

Vondur - good designs with it's own flavour, and good build quality. Some very annoying gameplay with moving platforms above lava and infinite scrags. The end was much more fun.

Kell_Lucifer - my other favourite map. In fact this was really good. Surprisingly unfrustrating given the design, as there was always room to escape somewhere. Nice gameplay that rewarded tactics instead of just shoving you in a small room with two polyps. I like the vorelings in ammo crates. Design was very cool and atmospheric, especially the corpse tree.

Kell_other_one - Was okay until I ended up running into the polyp hell with 25 health - fighting 4 polyps with that health above lava....no way. Died and finished with god mode. Seemed a decent enough map, but lacking in the sparkle of the other one.

Boss map - OMG a non-frustrating boss combat. Surprisingly easy - circle strafe until dead. Some cool designs despite being a boss arena - the hanging corner early on was great.

Overall, I liked it, although I thought the styles, designs, and atmosphere of the maps were better than the gameplay, which was often frustrating, almost entirely due to the new monsters. Well done everyone who did the maps, they all were worthwhile and had qualities in their own way, as well as distinctive executions of the chosen style. 

Sorry Eric and Innou I didn't mean to dismiss your maps with single comments whilst lavishing attention on everyone else's. It's just that I played yours first so they're less fresh in my mind, and my views on them aren't as strong. Basically Innou's was good for design consistency but needed more creativity, Erics was good for creativity but needed more design consistency, both had reasonable gameplay but needed more health. 

Polyps - Good monsters when used in small quantities and in appropriate areas. Shamblers are also good monsters, but are not well used when in large groups and in open areas; similarly, polyps also need to be used intelligently.

Droles - Really tough monsters, and I thought they were a little over-powered.

Vorelings - Cute little buggers that like to gnaw your feet off. Good in small numbers, and nice for giving the player a scare.

All monsters fit in rather well with Quake, and I didn't think any of them were bad or frustrating when used well. 

the corpses, how could i forget about that. very very very nice touch! 

kells maps were the best imo :>
and the final boss was indeed fun, and i liked how it threw me all over the level. very nice idea and implementation!
oh and the mysteries page rocks!

kell rocks!
necros rocks!
we all rock dammit! :) 

great work!

the new monsters are pretty nice and i'm glad they offer a little more challence than the regular quake monsters, but i didn't find them to difficult or anything, even though more than two or three polyps at a time can become tough in a room without cover.
the vorelings are neat little buggers, i would have liked to see them used in larger amounts...

imho all maps were very satisfying, though some had a bit more atmosphere than others, but nevertheless they all fit into the theme rather well.

originally i intended to do a map for this, too, but then abandoned it due to the deadline. now considering the actual release date, it could have been easily done 'in time'.
oh well, maybe there will be "more lost chapters" sometime... ;) 

is a sustained error message in the console of several engines (DP, FQ, GLQ) when there are shamblers in view. In some engines the console is completely flooded with these messages. I suspect something in QC.

Is this a known issue? 

Nope, not seen that one before. Will look into it. By which I mean: I'll throw empty soda bottles and assorted cuttlery at necros until he makes it stop happening. 

That "3 Nails" powerup is a bit weird. Let me explain:

-I saved before picking it up.
-I picked it up, the screen got a green/blue touch
-I died :>
-I reloaded (powerup isn't picked up yet!), the screen is still green/blueish

Seems like the state "picked up that powerup" isn't cleared...

(Yuck, gotta work on my english =)
I hope you understand. 

Thanks, you can see it immediately after enabling developer 1 cvar and loading e.g. the shamblertest map. 

The monster behaviour, aside from what they actually do to you, is good. I like the randomness of the Polyps (not their attacks and dodging tho), and the manouvres of the Droles - when one actually jumped across the void to get me, it gave me a right shock (note: interesting and more challenging monster behaviour without being annoying).

The models were good too. Vorelings could have been a tiny bit larger. Didn't like the polyp skin. But in general a cut above most custom monsters. I like the Drole death anim BUT it could have been more obvious.

Monsters oozing into the floor were cool.

The lava/spike pit in Von's map was real nice. 

It downloads for a few minutes and then adbruptly stops. I'll give it another try tomorrow. 

I got some weird bugs with the corpse models in some of the maps. Using JoeQuake GL in windows xp.

At first some models start up huge and stretched all over the level. Then, gradually they are contracted to what they should look like. But it's weird.

Screenshot here: http://mandelmassa.net/temp/oddgfx.jpg
Avi (500 k) here: http://mandelmassa.net/temp/oddgfx.avi 

that is definatly an engine specific bug...
i have no idea what that is...

the only solution i can make is to use fitzquake, as we have tested it the most on that engine, or normal glquake/software quake. 

Cheers to everyone else involved, great job by Kell on pulling this all together.

I actually liked the new monsters. I thought that the Drole might have too large of a splash radius with his attack, but that's my only gripe.

Start map was very nicely done, very non-standard in its layout style.

Vondur's map was large amounts of goodness, as i suspected it may be. A fun fight with Chthon is a rare thing indeed.

Kell's main maps were pretty decent, with "Lucifer" being the real winner. The new monsters really mopped the floor with me on these maps.

Necros' map seem to run slowly on my computer. I'm not that big of a fan of the horde combat presented. First area looked really nice, but after that the quality went down.

I liked Zwiffle's map. Nice, claustrophobic place monsters placed to cause maximum amounts of headaches. I died many times on one of the ambushes near the end.

Eric had some good ideas. I think keeping that he would have been better off concentrating on making a whole level in the style of just on half of the level.

I didn't realize how plain my map was until i played the other maps. Well, back to the drawing board. 

I think the plainness of your map was because you expended brushes on trimming the flagstones with the limestone kceil0 texture; that's how my knave maps look, but I don't usually use extra brushes to construct it ( that's how I could get away with it in 'He Falls Like Lucifer' without exceeding 1666 ) and you also used plenty brushes for the non-prefab arches in the central room.
These were both attractive and welcome architectural choices imo, and it's clear your solid brushwork is the foundation for some fine mapping now that you're free of my tyrannical brushlimit.
I'm looking forward to seeing what you map next. 

^^^ Agree with that last paragraph - Ionuous, you've made a well good start with mapping, definitely good potential there. 

The JoeQuake model issue seems to be caused by the interpolation code. Just disable smooth animations in video menu. It appears local for JoeQuake as other engines with model interpolation (NehQuake, DP, Tomaz) have no obvious problems.

Interesting effect, though; the corpse model is slowly zoomed in from infinity to the real position and size. 

Mandel, that was very cool!

Thanks Kell, Necros et al. I rather enjoyed this.

Start level was excellent - with places one couldn't get to (normally) providing added perspective. Great technique, which I'll be adopting.

Kell and Vondur served up some fresh 'contract' work but I must admit to enjoying Eric's level immensely (even though it didn't really evoke 'contract') - necropolis floating in a void, shadowy environs, shambler by firelight, yum!

Zwiffle's was much more enjoyable with the right progs.dat :)

Ionous' level reminded me of Leviathan's style... though with more detail and proper lighting.

The construction of the end level was impressive. Let me guess, Kell made the level as new then necros went in and crumbled it. Fantastic! Pity about the bland lighting.

Vorelings sleeping under ammo boxes, priceless. I agree with Ionous about Drole splash damage. Wonderful anims though. That other thing... bleh!

All in all, yay and hugs all round. 

Very astute of you... 

Thanks for the kind words. I've been at this for approaching five years now ( Around the time Nehahra came out ), and it's taken me a RIDICULOUSLY large amount of time to start to become decent at it. 

Do you plan on releasing an updated .fgd file so we can use Vermis in our maps?