And then I forgot. Exciting huh? 

also all of than's maps are crazy good: http://www.quaddicted.com/reviews/?filtered=apsp 

Ok, I just worked on the site some more and it is now more or less finished with all unneeded sections removed and new sections/pages added!

People who want are now free to send me their maps/mods if they so desire.

While the site now has everything that it strictly needs, it is still very possible that some minor tweaks or changes might be made in the future.

Anyways, I hope people will send me their maps. I also included a link to TrenchBroom's homepage on the site. 

I forgot, if anyone knows about any other sites that might be clever to link to on my own site then feel free to mention them. 

Q: Do you use vanilla Quake to play maps?

A: No, I use the Epsilon engine for improved graphics and features.

First of all that is the Darkplaces engine with a collection of fan-made content replacement. The collection is called "Epsilon" something.

That is not good. You won't be playing Quake but some sort of absolutely moronic looking amateur-quality abomination. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sGQ98QAfJA 

My eyes! Please switch to an engine such as QuakeSpasm and don't use the replacement textures and such. What you are playing is truly not Quake. 

Apart from visual controversy, note that Darkplaces has some compatibility issues with certain maps; they may not play correctly or require a special setup beforehand. This has to be taken into consideration when reviewing them to avoid deathz0r-style judgement. 

To set it in perspective, think of it as jDoom with 3D models and other pseudo-modern stuff paired with some of the much argued-over ZDoom features. In the end, it's your decision of course. 

I wasn't aware that you guys did not like the Darkplaces epsilon engine. I will update the FAQ to make mention that I will just play the maps in whatever engine will run them. 

The site's FAQ has been updated. 

My face is melting!!!!!

To echo what others have said - it's not a good idea to use some random engine to review maps - most modern maps have very specific engine requirements, as will be explained in the readme's.

This usually means: FitzQuake, or a FQ fork such as QuakeSpasm, or Mark V. Sometimes, it is a custom engine that ships with the map, but in all cases, a correct and bug-free experience can only be expected using the engines that the designer explicitly states have been tested and shown to play the map/mod correctly. 

A little heads-up on the current situation. Sadly, unlike Doom, there are only very few releases each year, perhaps around 15-20 max. This year has seen only one Q1SP release so far. News about new levels is typically posted here at Func_Msgboard and at Quaddicted.
Of course people may well send you their older stuff, but it's probably unlikely to happen. Hence the suggestion to pick some levels from the Quaddicted archive and review them just to get started. For example, you can sort the list by date (year) or rating. Rather than recommending maps myself, I'd say you could go through the Excellent-rated maps (five stars) and pick some that look interesting to you from the description and screenshot. Using the Quake Injector can make this even easier.

I certainly hope TrenchBroom will make for some higher number of releases in the future, but it remains to be seen. If it doesn't, well, SleepwalkR will have to answer for that! 

I wouldn't put it this strongly. It's more like a matter of what works and what doesn't. Generally, you can say that pretty much every regular Q1SP can be played with Fitz/Quakespasm (unless clearly stated otherwise), wheras there' a fair chance to encounter problems with Darkplaces in certain cases.

Many authors didn't/don't test their levels on a wide range of engines, so often potential issues may not even be known and mentioned in the readmes. 

About what engine to use:

I have already written it into both the FAQ and the "how to send me your map/guide" that those who send me maps can tell me exactly what engine they would like me to use to review their maps/mods, so I don't get it why you are still complaining about this. Perhaps I should update the FAQ to make this even more clear?

About how maps are reviewed:

I have just added an entire new page where I explain it in detail how my review system works and how maps/mods are given scores. You guys might want to check it out.

And as for there not being enough new Quake projects: I am aware of the fact that new maps don't get released as often as for games such as Doom. This is ok, because I also intend to review maps/mods that have already been released in the past. Though I guess I should probably mention this in the FAQ now that I think about it. Yea I will am going to do that right after finishing this post. 

I just posted my first review on the site! Perhaps I will post some more reviews later this weekend :) 

I like the honours system, it's fairly straight to the point. A couple more screenshots would be nice. Maybe one large screenshot at the top, and a couple of smaller ones in the text to help break it up. One on the left, and lower down one on the right, perhaps. With text wrapped around. Gives a break to the reader for line-length.

The second-last paragraph - watch the spelling of length, and one instance of 'the level' should probably be replaced with 'it' or 'this map', the phrase is repeated one time too many.

Overall I think it's a good review.

I would give it a solid 7 :) 

Interesting, keep up the good work. The more sites the better.

About the maps, i have some maps that i never released and about 200 DM maps i got somewhere back in 1997-1998. But more than see them reviewed, i want to get comments to improve them. I am currently bug-fixing them and adding some things, taking advantage of that WC 3.3 has vertex editor (yes, the last editor i used was WC 1.2 and a very old Quark, i came back to Quake 1-2 years ago).

And lastly don't ever say that epsilon is an engine :D. It's just a compilation of mods that someone choose to bundle and put on the net, put on Darkplaces engine. Ther's lots of people, in fact I am one of them even though i use Quakespasm mostly, with their own choose of mods for Darkplaces or other engines that support them, that compilation is one of many others you could do by yourself if you get modifications on your quake engine. By the way i am still perplexed when i see how weird some maps look when you use RTWorld in Darkplaces, for example, with marcher_kinn. What kind of lights are the ones that make so a weird effect on RTWorld? It would be nice if i could adapt my maps to work with RTWorld too. 

bring down the console and enter:

r_drawviewmodel 0

notarget

fov 70

I like low fov settings for screenshots. High fov can be fun too. (try anything from about 50 to 150 to experiment, you'll see what I mean).

Notarget stops the monsters from attacking you unless you hurt them first.

r_drawviewmodel 0 removes the player weapon from the view.

Also you can increase the size of the viewport to remove the HUD bar at the bottom. 

It was a good review, but i think that the text is a bit homogeneous and big, maybe giving an space between the main text and the rest and reducing 1-2 points the font size of the main text would be better for readability. 

Will you be fixing the mobile version? It's currently just some placeholder atm. 

Thanks for your replies guys. I have corrected some spelling errors on the site, and also added a link to the map being reviewed (I was going to do so in the first place, but forgot).

I guys make some nice points about the screenshots, but I think the text is fine as it is for the most part. Also, I did as Cocerello suggested and replaced "Epsilon" with "Darkplaces". 

Will look into that right now. Will get back at you soon... 

I edited the site to make it look cooler on mobile devices.

Note that I don't personally own a mobile device so its hard for me to know just how good the site is on a mobile device. 

768p screen I think.

Looks OK now - you can see the pic and see all of the text in the article. Navigation works and is accessible. The style looks 'OK'.

The one thing I would change for mobile devices is the paragraphs of text. The main text for the review for example has the lighter orange colour, but there is a light grey background. This is not a good combo. Whilst I can read it, I have no colourblindness, and to me it's still a bit of a strain to read.

So - if possible - change the background to a darker colour, or change the font to a darker colour. I do web dev a bit, and this is achievable with CSS or JS, but I don't know how easy it would be to edit with your setup.

As it is though, it's passable :) 

I have messed more with the mobile version.

The background is now black and the text yellow orange on most places. For some reason though I just can't seem to find a way to change the background color on the review pages. That's a shame. But at least the mobile version as far as I know looks mostly fine now.