There are quite a few places around the map that need to be clipped better:

The floor torches with the bars around them, especially the ones near the walls.

The platforms that are on a slope and have pointy bits cause the player to stop for a second.

The winding staircase has a couple of spots that does the same.

A few spots here and there in the middle of the level along the walls near sconces (I don't care about jumping and hitting them, that's all good but not jumping and hitting them should probably be avoided).

Those are just the ones that made me make my comment (I don't tend to look a gift horse in the mouth).

On the positive side I liked the level as a whole. There were some really fast paced areas, lots of exploring to do, a consistent theme and a pretty well thought out layout with some monster traps in unexpected areas. The texturing was consistent although I thought that the lighting was a bit too dim in a few places (but that's a just a preference and not a real criticism)

It just felt to me a bit like a late Beta instead of a finished product. 

http://necros.slipgateconstruct.com/temp/ne_catatonic.zip

Fun map, but definitely felt like the RL was missing. Would have loved to have it early on instead of the LG with all those packs of monsters.

A lot of areas felt empty, in part from the size but also from the lack of details. There are super detailed curves but little else.

I did like that the map returns to previous areas from different heights. Also, each area was pretty distinct, so I never got lost and knew where to go.

Oh... and you gotta spend some time on lighting. :P

Still, it was fun to shoot some bad guys. Thanks for the map! :) 

I really liked the visuals on this map, the red haze combined with the large structures works really well.

The game play left me a little bored however. Most areas just seemed to be large open spaces with a random assortment of enemies just waiting there for me to appear. While you could describe most q1sp maps in this way, it is extremely obvious on this one that this is the case.

At many points during the map I could see into areas that came later in the map and there would just be a bunch of enemies staring at the door I would use to enter. It felt very bizarre and contrived.

The combat itself suffered from a few issues imo, mainly that the "large room filled with pick'n'mix enemies" routine is repeated many times over with nothing to keep it fresh or to add variety.

The weapon and ammo situation frustrated me a bit as I felt it was way to long before I got an explosive weapon. This magnified the first gameplay point further as it took forever to kill the mentioned room of enemies with only a shotgun in most cases.

The layout confused me at times also. I felt like I was chasing signposts for the blue/gold keys forever without actually ever finding them. This maybe a symptom of the above gameplay points but I felt like I was not making any progress in the map for a long time. Just clearing room after room.

This all sounds really negative :( I enjoyed many of the fights in the map (I played hard, balls deep yo!) and there were some intense moments involving dodging Shamblers with 3 hp! But overall the issues I talked about above left me feeling cold towards it.

1st run demo (hard skill) : 26 minutes 2/6 secrets https://dl.dropbox.com/u/33279452/daz_catatonic.rar 

1st completely drunk run(skill 3) , sorry there's no demo
just one screenshot

http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/screen_shots/fitz0000_02.jpg

never been short on ammo or armor

thank you, mr. Richard 

In case I sounded too discouraging - I do appreciate the fact that it's a non-base map and I hope you keep at exploring new themes.

Oh, and if you're really going to make an updated version, don't forget to change the platform after the GK door so it returns after a while. 

Demo of my adventures in fucking around
http://www.filedropper.com/scampcata


The map was good, and felt to me like a sense of old Doom gameplay. But it also felt like a jumble of huge spaces and weirdly placed monsters and a mix of areas that were either stupidly amazing to look at, or drab and boring. I look forward to your next map, because most of what this map screams to me is a lot of learning and growing as you made the map, and certainly the next will be fucking amazing. 

 

good break from your base maps.

But it was also obvious that it was designed in a short period with focus given to some key areas and the rest just connected up (so to speak). Gameplay especially felt like just random monsters in random areas.

Framerates also took a massive dip in quite a few places, dont know about the technical side of things but it was usually in large open areas with unbroken line of sight and lots of curves, fog and coloured lighting.

On the plus side, atmosphere was top notch, liked the use of the pink fog with the textures and some cool brushwork in spots. Could have been even more drmatic with more contrasty regular lighting though, and some ambient sounds. 

Sorry haven't had time to play this yet, at least I found a moment to leave a lame message. Non-base Ricky map? Definitely worth looking at. 

Nice map Ricky

Had a great fun playing it!

thanks for your time, comments in demo!

http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/demos/tr_catatonic_1demo.rar 

I've played the map this weekend and I like it, but I expected more. It's big, I didn't expected to be that big. Some areas gave me a strong "deja vu" feeling, they looked like pieces from other maps, especially the end area.

Texturing is nice, but the "poly count" seems low for a modern Quake map. But this has an advantage, it reminds me of the original and oldschool Quake maps.

The best thing is the feeling, those mixed areas and strange textures creating a virtual world that cannot be described with words.

The monster fights were ok, nothing special, but the start was a little unbalanced, getting to fight fiends and shamblers from the starts isn't something I expected in a Quake map. It's good that you get good weapons in the start, but you don't have enough nails/cells to use them until later. Supershotgun should be available much sooner, maybe instead of thunderbolt from the start. 

Some good, some bad - it's pretty big for a turtle map.

Had a couple of ideas while playing;

Nails and shells could have been swapped out to completely focus on TB and a GL... replacing the Knights with Enforcers.

The lower levels would have been good with ankle-deep blood in them. Not enough to hinder movement, just enough to make them splashy. Could always add a few undulations to the floor as well of course, to try and catch players out.

Overall it was fun and old school, felt very metal. 

wholeheartedly.
Not sure I'm a fan of the enforcer idea though - would rather have just had some extra cells here and there. a bit more to start perhaps.

I disagree re the dblshotgun. It seems blatantly obvious RT23 was going for a different progression bringing the DBL in late like that, providing LG and even delaying GL(so as to encourage infighting). A bit more attention could definitely have been paid there (eg more cells) but I liked it and it definitely altered how I approached the fights.
The same applies to the introduction of tough monsters earlier. It's not even that uncommon now, especially on hard mode, to see this in custom Quake. Getting the fiends to smash into the HK's is half of the fun in that section. 

 

Yeah, although I'd have concentrated on the LG as a complete replacement for the DBS - which si why I was suggesting enforcers as well, for the additional ammo. 

It looks like I missed this map... shame on me !
Have to play it now ...:S 

What others said in general.
The map is architecturally very good, very expurgated from details (or from useless amount of details), that makes it so Quake-ish, and that also makes it feeling even more huge.
Fun gameplay; never boring sometimes I have been short on ammos, but never really in danger...
A shame that there is no RL (or maybe I just missed it) :P This could have been a cool weapon in "snipping" mode against scrags...
Well, this is overall a very good map..;
keep it up and go map anower one ;) !! 

I really liked the visuals on this map, the red haze combined with the large structures works really well.

The game play left me a little bored however. Most areas just seemed to be large open spaces with a random assortment of enemies just waiting there for me to appear. While you could describe most q1sp maps in this way, it is extremely obvious on this one that this is the case.

At many points during the map I could see into areas that came later in the map and there would just be a bunch of enemies staring at the door I would use to enter. It felt very bizarre and contrived.

The combat itself suffered from a few issues imo, mainly that the "large room filled with pick'n'mix enemies" routine is repeated many times over with nothing to keep it fresh or to add variety.

The weapon and ammo situation frustrated me a bit as I felt it was way to long before I got an explosive weapon. This magnified the first gameplay point further as it took forever to kill the mentioned room of enemies with only a shotgun in most cases.

pretty much agree with the above comments by daz. i wanted to like it, but the large scaled rooms didn't really lend themselves to varied gameplay. there seemed next to no progression too, with top-end enemies thrown at you from the off.

looks-wise, i liked the theme but thought it could have used more blockiness.. pillars breaking up the walls and such. i love the huge spikes in the end arena but the surrounding walls just look so dull. the lack of detail could have given it an oldskool vibe i guess, but the fog & lighting didn't really help it in that regard