... look very nice and I like the look of the stairs in that 2nd screenshot.

I'll have to try this one. 

excuse me, but how do i have to kill packs of vores and shamblers with no health and double barreled?

this map feels completely not balanced 

The map looks great, is large, the textures go together well and surprises with a few sections that weren't expected that also looked great.

I like large cavernous base maps and I think this map epitomizes what a modern Quake base map can be as far as size, appearance, use of lit files/skybox, textures, the various displays/pipes/"machines".

I played it on normal and the first 25 monsters were very challenging, but after that I never was "at risk" again.

It will be interesting to try this on hard some time, considering the large monster count increase from normal to hard. 

Vondur: Im listening; seems a little strange, I was wandering what engine you're using (I dunno, sometimes DarkPlaces jumbles stuff up, things fall out of the map etc) - maybe it's just my entity placement - seems weird though, the idea is that whatever skill you're on, you should have a SSG, NG and GL after about 20 kills, erm 100 shells (excluding grunt-packs) 125 nails (I think) and about 6-7 grenades (!?) - maybe with a demo I could see where you're running afray ;-) Might help my next map cater better for all sorts (?)

Orl: Thanks, Im glad you liked it, I'm glad you enjoyed skill 2, thats the skill I did most testing on - downgraded from there for other skills (although I think there's less ammo on skill 2/3)

Gibbie: Thanks man - I believe I have learned a lot, particularly from the aftermath of the Sickbase (l0l) - that hallway nearly got removed, but I decided to keep it cause A.It took ages to build and B.You dont see many hallways like it in Quake. Although I will say I probably will avoid such architecture in future projects! (czg was right - too complex, used Ijeds advice and func_walled the cieling)

Mikko: Thanks for the demo - really enjoyed watching it, also good to see someone complete it without finding most of the secrets!

Baker: Also v.glad you liked it, thanks for you kind words! Please do try it on skill 2/3 - weapon config is slightly different, a few ambushes 'n stuff too!

Thanks everyone for the feedback :-) 

you got there.
I really enjoyed the map, took me about 25minutes on normal skill.
The usage of textures is great and stunning: ie i love the tunnel/cave area!
Gameplay was fair, always enough ammo/health and a good resupply of armor.
Gonna go try this on nightmare now :D

keep on mapping that good stuff! 

Cool map. Very nice visuals. Great texture use and good architecture. The build quality is also top. I liked the layout and the combats. You should put some info about the need for quoth in the news text. Found it only at the very bottom of the txt file. My first try was without quoth and i quit frustrated after 5 minutes (guess the same happened to Vondur).
Anyway the map is very good. Keep up the good work. I'm amazed that you made it within two months. You didn't get that much sleep lately right? :)
I have recorded a demo on skill 1 but shubhub doesn't seem to work at the moment. 

Lots of detail and the theme changes were cool as well. Also lots of cool features - the bulletproof X's and the exploding X were fun.

I thought the Gugs were a bit underused, they could have been spread out a bit more (second appearance) and in higher numbers (first appearance) to be more challenging, on hard at least.

I did have alot of cells all the way through but I just left off using the PG too much and it was ok.

Anyhow, again an excellent map and I think you made a good decision there, switching from packs to a single concentrated map.

Also, Preach, I noticed this again here (probably you already know), but another bug in Quoth1 is the impulse 12/10 for weaponswitch. If you have both RL and PG but no ammo for one or the other (I forget) then only 10 or 12 works. 

I tried this without Quoth. I had to g+rj past one bit and noclip past the end. Doh.

Have a first run demo, one "death" from lava (a sort of "oops I'm in lava, quick put god mode and no clip on" death...).

I wouldn't say this map is the flagship standard bearer for smooth gameplay balance...

I did enjoy it though. I though the overall theme was rather good. 

...Doh!

Would perhaps one of the moderators do the deed!! 

I played skill 2. As I betatested it earlier I had some advantage to a new player but still it felt pretty unbalanced. Apart from that it is a nice map!

http://shub-hub.com/files/configs/thehand_fr_spirit.zip 

work better: http://shub-hub.com/files/demos_singleplayer/thehand_fr_spirit.zip 

What is the "proper" method to select the plasma gun?

I bound impulse 9 to a key and unwittingly it kept giving me full ammo as I played every time I selected it. 

you're actually not aware that impulse 9 is the give all cheat in 99% of all Q1 mods? Bind impulse 255 to another key (hint: Q) and see what happens ... 

I always use the "changeweapon" key to switch to plasma or any other weapon that uses a different impulse besides 1-8. Much easier I think. 

so is impulse 12 the PG? i.e.

"bind 9 impulse 12"

would work?

:-/ 

you're actually not aware that impulse 9 is the give all cheat in 99% of all Q1 mods?

Sure, but Quoth is a mod can define that itself.

Maybe in Quoth 2 some impulse will be dedicated to selecting the plasma gun, as it seems that it is only available using impulse 10/12. :(

For horde maps, I prefer being able to press, say, 5 for the SNG and so on to choose a particular weapon. 

Baker: Impulse 250 will set the PG directly, see Quoth docs.

Ricky: I found a problem with your map; when you use the fog command, you forgot to add the newline "\n" at the end of the message. This may cause strange effects when passing those areas, e.g. player movements might not work properly.

Preach: The above important info is also missing in the Quoth docs for trigger_command etc. 

In the demos you uploaded, the total killcount is wrong in the later demos (328/352, should be 306), do you know why that happened? I tried to reproduce it both in my NehQuake and TyrQuake using a similar savegame/demo handling but couldn't.

Also, did the engine crash during the demos? You died once without getting an obituary. 

Excellent Base map indeed, Ricky! It was nicely built and textured well. It could have used a teleport or two to assist with backtracking for those of us who fell in the laser machinery room :) Good surprises and no nasty ambushes like your last map ;) Looking forward to your next map... 

Couldn't something be put in worldspawn or somewhere that allows an engine to auto-detect a Quoth map and then, say, an engine like FitzQuake could be modified to automatically switch gamedirs to Quoth?

Some of these more recent Quoth maps really use the extra characters/powerups/etc very effectively, but every Quoth map is somewhat of a pain due to the command line and it seems like it is not always made clear (this map, the one JPL made with "too many" Bobs) that a map requires Quoth (I tried to play it without Quoth at first).

/Anyways 

this map, the one JPL made with "too many" Bobs (...) I tried to play it without Quoth at first

It is title Slime Refinery Complex (SRC)... and everybody should read the txt companion file before playing any map :P

Anyway, it is a good idea that could be extended to any mod, and for such particular query, as example for Quoth, you should ask directly to Quoth team (Preach, Kell, necros,...) and to metlslime who is fitzQuake owner. 

Monster count - I was gonna ask about that. One of my testers got the same thing, but I tested it a few more times and got 306/306...?

AguirRe - I was unaware of the \n thing, allthough I have seen it in a few .map files, wandered what it does. Can you use the same syntax to create double line centerprint messages? Also, is there a way of making centerprint messages stay on the screen for longer?

OH also - "bind 9 impulse 250" = plasmagun working

Spirit - Trying not to shove my foot too far up my own ass for the lava thing... :-o 

Oops, I used Darkplaces (shame on me), just because it supports loading of multiple gamedirs. I think I made it use the normal Quake protocol for demos somewhen in the past but that might be an additional source for errors. The missing obituary might be due to a frustrated "disconnect, quit". No crashes. ;)


Baker: No good idea. You would be lucky to find one person to implement it to his engine. And looking at the poll at Quaddicted the two most used engines are a pity for Singleplayer anyways. If aguirRe's glquake and Fitzquake would support it, it would be great of course. But it would not help the "generic stoopid user" as he is using some other engine (with questionable SP capatibilities) anyways. Better preach people to read the manuals and learn to use their OS accordingly. 

I used tyrquake. Darkplaces was for some Warpspasm... 

tyr-glquake to be more specific. Compiled from a git snapshot ~07.12.2007 (a66c5fdc68c62bb3ff8e6c617a8df60843a06fc4).