as we were talking accessibility elsewhere, this map (like some others) would turn casual gamer types off of Quake forever. So we should probably trade this under the counter ;-) 

So you tried to do doom3 in quake ok, I understand it. And I wish I could say you did a good job but...

The stolen textures look really shitty shrunk x4 and badly converted to q1 pal - which simply doesnt have enough grey tones. Its both a disrespect to the quality art of doom3 and its creators. And it brings down your hard work on building the environment. Which is a very close recreation of doom3 levels - I even recognized many pieces.

The cramped design in d3 was because the player speed is 2x slower.
why bring it to q1 where it doesnt work? Same with light - d3 is dark cause of the technology and boo-horror setting. This map is only playable with gamma .6 - making it all look washed out grey, but hey at least I see whats there. (I played with normal gamma at first but got pummeled at the very start and retried with increased gamma - thats what u see in the demo)

Gameplay is pretty much a surprise rape most of the time. Being teleport-ambushed, surrounded and outgunned (with the lack of even an SSG!) plus often being cramped or lacking any cover. The shambler trap is just nonsense - and its present even on ez skill.
I was fighting off 2 flying droids with a shotgun and 1% health. Thats fucking hardcore! And I played on skill 1 pretty cautiously -_- Its less fun than doom3, ponder that(and d3 was much easier and more fair even on hard skill btw.)
Your gameplay approaches the state of an unpredictable trap where you suddenly find yourself hurt and only have half-second to step away or die. And its up to luck whether this step leads you into another trap. Thats how it felt to me on.
I reckon it feels better if you save-load all the time thus knowing where the nasty ambushes are, still some setups are jokes (in the meaning of 'lets screw the player haha!')

All in all its like some of the bad things from d3 exported to q1.
But there are also good ones - sounds and the neat mech bridges and the recreation of the looks (minus bad textures).

Maybe you should map for doom3 or q4 if you like this style so much

oh and dont feel bad - your map must be art if it provekes emotions, even if bad ones :) 

Be warned - 'HARD' is a thoroughly Quoth2 experience.

That is as damning a criticism as one could hope for, one scarcely needs to add more.

Except, the problem rarely lies with difficulty, but with poorly implemented combats (e.g. little room to move / no room to dodge / situations that aren't survivable first go / situations that force a lot of health off the player with no possibility of avoiding it / etc etc). It's quite obvious in most maps the difference between "Very hard combats that are playable using skill / reactions" and "Skill-irrelevant health-sinks / luck-dependent-situations".

The design and atmosphere were very good and faithful to Doom3. 

I didn't the map is too dark btw. It's just fine for me - the fog brightens the distance a little. At least in Fitzquake. 

someone throw this back into the inner depths of mount doom and hope it never comes back.

everything spds said + i was fighting the two flying things on the bridge with an axe until i died (they almost never come down into axe range).

there's no tactics at all in the fights, because they're all ambush rapes. bla.

make a proper map. 

how the CZG did you make quake this slow. <30fps for me most of the time, where standard quake runs with 150+. 

Your talent will only be recognize after your death, like for all geniuses....

As I already said: fuck purists !!

BTW: The map is passing well on FitzQuake 0.80, with more than 30 fps, if you have a proper PC setting, and nothing else running ;) 

thanks for the forwarning guys. skill 0 here i come! 

 

11:42, 61/72

fun map, wasn't a massive challenge on skill 0 (heh, no shit) but there were enough moderately tough moments to keep me entertained.

call me old fashioned but i think hard should mean hard (yes, that does mean unbalanced & unfair) so that beating it presents a proper achievement. for those wanting balanced yet challenging gameplay, skill 1 is there for a reason! (although by the sounds of it skill 1 was pretty hard in this map too :p )

i didn't really like the appearance of this map. the rooms were nicely crafted with a good eye for detail but i really don't like those textures ported to quake; they look kinda plastic and not gritty enough. also i'm completely at a loss how people are saying it was too dark; i thought it was too bright if anything! must be my gamma settings.. but other maps look fine enough.. *shrugs*

the sounds were excellent. i noticed spectrasonics atmosphere in there too ;) 

..i noticed no subnormal framerates, and i'd hardly call my pc cutting edge (opteron 2.1, 768 ram, geforce 6600). this was using aglquake though 

excellent detail level, very atmospherical (especially with the fog), perfect brush work. too bad I was experiencing some heavy slowdowns during gameplay (probly when D3 ambient was playing?). thanks for allowing not to pickup the flashlight. very nice and enjoyable map. 

For me it was a great map. The architecture and details were excellent. It wasn't too dark for me and the textures are acceptable in my opinion. Sounds and light effects were very nice and the whole map had a great atmosphere. I have decided to play on skill 0 after reading the comments and it was a good choice. The gameplay felt ballanced and fair on this skill. I liked most of the combats. Maybe some day I will try it on tougher skil settings. I have recorded a demo - the start is pretty boring because I couldn't find the way out of the GA area:
http://shub-hub.com/files/demos_singleplayer/dis06_ankh.dz 

This was extremely nice!

Good taste and attention to detail and everything.

Some combats were a little annoying. If quoth2 only had made some monsters (vorelings!) have less health.

Top Class distrans!

I didn't know how to use the flashlight, it was on until it was off... 

Will get later. 

The command to toggle the flashlight is "flashlight". Bind it to a key like normal.

A full list of quoth2 commands can be found in the tutorial(although flashlight is really the only one you need)
http://kell.quaddicted.com/quoth/quoth_tutorial.html#cheats 

Personally, I would have made vorelings with less health - somewhere around a grunt, so two shells would be needed. But it would be unwise to make sweeping changes to stuff from the original version. So vorelings are fixed as they are, being mid level enemies that just look small. 

not possible to release tgas of textures? 

but it's fucking hard...

I thought the Shambler ambush was cool, but actually I was just god moding through it by that point.

I'll probably try playing it properly when my patience is feeling up to the job :) 

stop stealing textures from other games! 

is free :( 

a bit bright though, and combat was very tough,
couldn't complete it on skill 3 yet :(

>I didn't know how to use the flashlight, it was on until it was off...

the same deal 

...thank you one and all, and thanks for sticking at it Ricky...given your understanding of Qouth(2) I thought you'd eventually come round.

A word about skill levels - with the introduction of Quoth2 and the attraction of hardcore DM players back into the single player fold, the Quake level designer now has more choice and possibly even more responsibility with respect to setting skill levels. Gone are the days when one could even say the range now starts at 'normal' and bumps everthing up linear fashion from there. 'Hard' under this regimen makes the likes of sielwolf, UWF and bambuz nod off while playing.

In setting the skills for this level I made a conscious choice to set 'skill 0' at 'original Id easy with the occassional extra challenge'. Precisely because I didn't want to put off peeps wandering into the game for the first time in years to come. 'Skill 1' is 'current hard with a sting' so that good players can enjoy a challenge. 'Skill 2' caters to the growing number of Uber players who appreciate the extra challenge of Quoth2.

A word on gameplay - the Quoth bestiary is here to stay, given this I've done a bit of work exploring the play patterns of each...you know, the sort of thing we all did when Quake came out. There are some really useful habits in this bestiary, for instance if one has a decent armour on one can stand directly in front of an enforcer_pyro and suck up flame as you pump him full of shot, all the while losing little or no health...then voila he gives you back the little health you may have lost anyway. Polyps are unnerving...but stupid, unless you move a fair distance they always port back to the same spot and they give you a big hint before they use their push attack. Once again, standing your ground and auto pumping shells into the thing OR the space where it was while being mindful to wide sidestep when the push attack winds up (all the while holding down the trigger) works a treat. You can actually fix the thing in place if you can keep a steady stream of tin hitting it.

Learn to love the new kids on the block (as we did the original bestiary), or don't bother with Quoth driven levels.

If you insist on trying to run and gun this level then the skill level required to survive it ramps up exponentially and the gameplay has the effect of becoming suprise rape. If you keep your cool, look around, explore, treat the level with respect (i.e. don't get lazy), and use your commonsense then none of the situations are unfair or unsurvivable first time round on skill 1. 

...because I respect him so much.

I did not try to do DooM3 in Quake. Let it go friend!

The cramped areas in this level contain no enemy, unless you are referring to the ledge under the initial teleporter in which case "What kind of idiot tries to take down a polyp while walking a thin edge above slime." Machismo is deadly in this instance, learn to run away and take the fight to an area that profits you.

Your demo exposes why you believe the gameplay consists of ambush rape set ups...you expect everything to just fall to your hand and don't bother to even casually glance around your environment, it's just run run run to the next encounter. As to the shambler trap...during it you exhibit some of the laziest quake play I ever seen, in fact your game has become very lazy in general (I still have a blindingly good demo of you completing pdbq_sp1 from 2001). You don't seem to take the task seriously until you drop well into the red (in which case your brilliant skills kick in again). You make odd choices, like equipping yourself with a low powered weapon (rather than the charged LG) when you are about to open a door behind which you can obviously hear an Edie. Why anyone would be surprised by the appearance of two 'bobs' while standing on a "security bridge" with a MH at the end of it is baffling. Unpredictable traps?

There are no gameplay jokes here, your prejudices and deficiencies do not allow you to put words in my mouth.

I've contemplated mapping for Q4, and may do so when/if time ever permits.

Thanks for the comments, I obviously think they are misguided but they are yours and thus I respect them. I'm glad to have encouraged such an empassioned response from one of the games best. 

since, it's easier to find news threads in the archives when the map name is there.

Now, to actually install and play it....