Hmm, is the world ready for a 5 minute spoilers speedrun yet?

(I've got one ready)

I've also got a Nightmare run demo with 0 secrets, 23 minutes. 

Ok Iv played it and its quite cool and rather Q2/D3-like.
Very nice architechture details, and believable building structure but the texturing could be more effective to highlight the shapes and the edges.
Lighting is interesting, with the nice use of color but it should be brighter for sure and again highlight the areas of importance, like passages and spots to look at (which it does in some places indeed, but not everywhere)

The whole idea with the objectives and locations that make sense isnt carried far unfortunately and you still have 'some bars have opened' and many other things that dont make any sense. Still its pretty cool that you tried to give more purpose to the usuall "press some button to go further" stuff. Thumbs up!
Combat gameplay well ... I played with cautiousness and didnt get 'fucked', but overall there were many unfair situations, like the totally unseen grenaders somwhere above you in the complete darkness. Those generous RAs helped big time... hmm cant think of much else now, Im fairlty tired atm
Also the RL secret - if you dont get out on time the bars lock you and you cant get out!
So overall its a cool map with high quality brushwork and the right ideas which need to be carried further but gameplay could be more 'clear' and less 'wtf just hit me' 

....when did you become so wise recently? 

Although I did enjoy this map a lot, you seem to be making a habit of putting gugs on top of platforms that can only be accessed via lifts. This makes it unfair IMO because if you fall off, chances are you will not have enough health to make it back up.

I'm personally not a fan of the gugs earthquake attack. I can see why it was put in to create a tense situation where the player cannot hide for too long. But I think the radius is too large, and when used improperly it's to easy to create hopeless situations for a player who accidentally goes the wrong way.

If you're going to have a gug, make sure the player is 'locked in' to the arena so they cannot stray too far (as done on red777 and the test maps). This I believe also creates the kind of epic battle the monster was designed for. 

you playing with quoth2? I didnt notice any gugs (or is that what he's done on hard?) 

GO MAP :P 

Im drunk

http://shub-hub.com/files/configs/SlaveSpoilers.7z

Your welcome . 

 

Bollocks 

moved it to http://shub-hub.com/files/demos_singleplayer/SlaveSpoilers.7z 

OK, not drunk anymore, just to clarify; There are two demos in the file linked to above, one is a nightmare run with zero secrets, about 23 minutes. The second is an easy speedrun with all of the secrets there. It took me five minutes, but I'm sure that time could be greatly improved on! 

Here's a sloppy easy run: http://python.net/crew/mwh/slave_mwh_142.dz

1:42, 17/111 kills, 2/4 secrets. 

http://shub-hub.com/files/demos_singleplayer/slave_sw104.7z

Thanks again Ricky for the great map. 

Your architecture keeps getting better and better, but you keep pulling bullshit maneuvers with the gameplay like the ever-so-tiring "Look behind you, it's a surprise vore and now you're just fucked because there's nowhere to go."

Went up the gold key lift and was faced with about thirty guys all jammed in my face. Great. And what's my reward for surviving? A Gug, and a shoebox to fight him in. stopped playing at that point. 

Gug was Sielwolf's idea. Glad you played though. Blunt but helpfull.

Honestly, this map was another big learning curve for me. The hardest thing was vis-blocking (which as you will notice there are large areas with shit vis-blocking). Second hardest thing was conception and texturing. I was determined to move away from the IDbase texture set, cause I'd had enough of it. The textures I was using were just what I picked out by eye when browsing through what was on offer. Hence the lack of theme I suppose.

As for the gameplay I really dont know. Parts of it worked out in a way I liked, but other parts could be volatile. I wanted the player to enjoy the NG/SNG, but then get thrown out a bit when supplies ran out of nails and have to use their imagination with explosives and shotgun.

Heh! I tested on Skill2 then moved up to Nightmare and downscaled from there.

Skill2 I thought worked quite well, with the Vores I mean. The area where the Eliminators start is fun because you can use the Vore-balls to take down other enemies, run round the crates in the middle quite easily. Skill3 however this becomes a lot more difficult. My tactic was to retreat and attack the enemies as they came to you to an extent, but you cant avoid taking damage when the Vores first spawn in. The Gug could back you into a corner in the top room outside with the computers on it (the shoebox) but I figured with the YA and PG you could hopefully take him down. I figured it would work because there would be a panic moment where the player is faced from all sides , but the Gug was far enough away that the player would be able to get to a position where they could kill the Gug quite quickly. I the idea of having a Gug on the balcony because I figured it would be pretty climatic. I think what I did wrong was to have the Gug spawn in from behind.

I also think what I did wrong was to start playtesting in skill2. Skill3 would have been better, because I would get to see the 'worst case scenarios' and Nightmare players would be protected from unfairness.

Did you play in Nightmare Lunaran? 

I realy enjoyed your latest maps, this one included. Usually base maps aren't my thing but you manage to convince me to your style and to the quoth monstery also. The texturing, brushwork and coloured lights were great for me and the same applies to your previous map.
The gameplay. It just feets my shoes. You manage to keep the player moving quick and reacting fast. I played on hard and I was twice very low on health but I managed to survive. Skill 2 here seemed to be comparable with skill 1 in The hand for me.
Here is my demo from the first play (it won't play in fitzquake)

http://shub-hub.com/files/demos_singleplayer/slave_ankh.dz

Keep it up. I can't even imagine how great a medieval map from you could be. 

I didn't think it was too dark. But I played with gamma 0.5. Never used idgamma, don't understand what that effort is about. Fitzquake has a command called gamma, use that.

Nice with the bobs hunting me behind breaking boxes. Found one secret. Lots of nice details at places. The plaques helped a lot when trying to hunt down some places. Sometimes hard to see the color of the enforcers with them standing in the colored lights at ledges...

*spoiler coming*

At a few places there were cool gameplay things like when you came to a clearing and spotted a bob on the left, started firing at it and then a fiend came from the front. So the bob was only a distraction.

The sentinels are pretty nice enemies in that they don't have such huge masses of health.

I was in trouble at places since with fitz I have to choose either a good res or dinput. I played this without dinput then and that means mouse acceleration so I was shooting all over the place. Also took off crosshair to make nicer screenshots. :)
Here's one (ran with xnview's auto contrast)
http://i31.tinypic.com/2zyddzn.jpg 

I didn't think it was too dark. But I played with gamma 0.5.

Uhhh.....

Never used idgamma, don't understand what that effort is about.

This is what it's all about:

Default palette: http://frib.planetquake.gamespy.com/screenshots/default_palette.jpg

Palette tweaked with idgamma: http://frib.planetquake.gamespy.com/screenshots/my_palette.jpg

It's not about the brightness so much, it's all about making it look non-shit.

Fitzquake has a command called gamma, use that.

No. Anything other than gamma 1 is bad. Make maps look good with the proper gamma value please. 

id gamma is a low prescision pal shift which kills all the details on the brighter spots and it shouldnt be used with an engine that supports proper overbrights, like fitz or dp 

I'll try Fitz without idgamma, but I imagine I'll just go straight back to it. You know how it is, it's all down to what you're used to.

Especially considering the relatively low res or otherwise poor quality of quake textures (badly converted custom ones for instance), I'm more interested in what looks good at a glance than what is 'accurate' or 'precise'.

Then again I'm someone who cranks the saturation up on my monitor/drivers because I like stuff to be colourful... real artists look at my screen and bitch about the colour balance... :)

I used the idgamma converted palette originally to make standard glquake look less pants though, so I'll have a go without it for the sake of science. 

well, tbh some maps look better with IDgamma, some look worse, depending on the textures and the lighting 

for starters, secondly lots of modern graphics cards can do things to the appearance of 3D images.

The word of advice "to try and get the lighting in a level to the same sort of effect as in the original Quake levels" is probably a good idea!

I may have made this a tad dark. It was meant to be quite dull and dark in places, but people having the effects that Daz did, #11, well I must try to avoid this for the next map!

I have found FitzQuake to render things a bit too light in the past, and wished I could turn the brightness down a bit more, but only ever to a tiny degree, and it was probably to do with my Nvidia control station settings or something (?) 

was perfect for me, not too dark but grungy and moody. 

In the nvidia controll panel is a option with video brighness/gamma/color...

Does this apply on games too? Someone tried? 

but you cant avoid taking damage

Every time a level designer says this and it's not phrased in the form of an apology, a kitten dies in a house fire.