I had MHColour 2009 make a .lit file for it.
It took 8 (!) hours to complete, that should be a record. But it looks great ! I am a great fan of maps like this. They give you a real sense of exploration.

Quote from Negke "I could have skipped a large part of the map as I jumped up the rocks in front of the large broken gate at first. :)"

I did that too. The 1st thing I do with new maps is trying them out for stuff like that.

I love it so far, I'm going to finish it now ! 

Fantastic !
I only got 184 monsters, maybe because I didn't find any secrets ? The ending is a little difficult, but the monsters fighting each other can really help you out there. Besides that, you could go there with 100 + health and yellow armor from the silver key area, so it's not at all undo-able.

Really, a great map ! 

I finally had the time to play this and it was great fun. I loved the architecture and all those impressive rocks and caves. All those damaged buildings were super.

It was a bit too hard for me on skill 0 but not impossible. I had to /god 2 times including the end fight. I guess I could have made the end fight with more space but I couldn't use my grenades in that tight spot and had no LG so how was I supposed to kill all of those monsters?! As long as I had ammo for SNG it was ok but afterwards it seemed impossible. I had no QUAD though, only secret I found was the MH very early.

The lava traps annoyed me sometimes, I saved and loaded often because of those and /noclipped out of a few. (I know I'm a Quake SP lamer, hehe.)

The cage taking you over the lava and the animation when the door to the final fight opened were especially cool.

A great map overall. I found no floating brushes and though the lighting doesn't look to hot on those screenies it didn't bother me in-game. I'll watch the demos Ankh posted now.

Thumbs up from me Orl. 

33:52, 1/3, 135/138 @ skill 0 

I thought this was brilliant!! The visual style is spectacular and I thought the gameplay was tough but not frustrating on Normal (end is fine if you have the GL with a bit of ammo).

Only gripe was a few slowdowns, basically in big open areas with not much visblocking which the quake engine struggles with too much. 

Amazing map. The designs are next level business. So many cool details.

The big area was ridiculously slow but great to play around. I went the wrong way which was fun.

All the ruined bits and water / lava details were ace.

The lava jumping was fairly annoying. I did okay with it but it was mostly due to luck which is dissatisfying.

The gameplay was mostly fine, sometimes good especially in the slow bit. It was hard on hard but okay in most places where you had room to think. Only the lava lift was annoying....again due to lava not fighting.

The ending was farcical. Not sure how that slipped through in an otherwise excellent map?? I guess your playtesters didn't test that bit.

Thankfully there's an easy way to avoid it. Grenade jump past the YA and this triggers the exit rock but not the door bars. Either exit or just return to the door and kill things as normal. 

that was the one part of the map that i didn't have problems with, ironically.

it hinges on anticipating where monsters will spawn and on my first run, i guessed right and lobbed grenades onto the raised floor. the only tight part was the shambler, but if you catch the other monsters right, you should have enough armor and health left to take a few hits from the shambler before you down it.
or at least, that's how it was for me. o.o 

never found the sng, so 2 shamblers and a bunch of scrags landing on my head at the end with just the ng was a bit too difficult. not impossible, but not fun either.

the rest of the map was great. i was expecting it to be too difficult and not enough ammo from what others said, but it was pretty normal. adequate ammo and health.

i loved all the little broken bits that you have to climb up and down. unique and excellent design. 

at least on normal, you get the NG and SNG together dont you? 

yeah, they are near the start, after you climb up the sides of the big cavern, iirc. then the NG again at the end of the long ramp jumping section. 

Luck dependent = toss. Maps should test a player's skill not random luck.

SNG and NG are together on hard. 

does that mean you think randomisation of game features is bad as well? Because it might throw you a fiend at an inopportune moment, for example, or give you a hellknight instead of a knight.

Jumping across lava isn't entirely luck-dependant either; it comes down to how well you can handle the controls and judge distances. I do think that there should usually be a way out of lava though - like in that Unreal level with breaking bridges over lava. You can fall in, but depending on how well you look around (and how little you panic), there are ways out of it.

Quake's lava is more deadly than Unreal's though, I think.

Just dumping the guy into lava with no way out is just a very slow trigger_void :-/

and instadeath is usually bad. Death is too much of a punishment for failing a jump. Falling into a pit full of monsters would be OK. 

No, as long as it's done in balance. Most situations throwing a HK at you instead of a K will be okay. Guessing where and what monsters will spawn in a small unmanouverable room is less okay (as many people have found).

Lava jumps, no not luck dependent, but can be annoying as they are a tangential Quake skill rather than a core one (and we tend to play for the core skills, or we'd be playing jump puzzle games).

I agree with your last paragraphs, I enjoy jumping puzzles more then the penalty is something other than certain death. 

 

Well, this map is architecturally really fine, with very good details, very good layout. Texturing has been very well chosen, that could have been even more beautiful if lightning effects have been better (there sould need more contrast IMHO... though...)

But: in term of gameplay I didn't liked it at all, even after several tries I found the map way too hard. I also noticed several items (health for most of them) falling off the world on map load, that does not help the player to survive, particularly poor killer like me ;)... so I had to godmode in order to progress, and I ran out of ammo several times so I have to refill by myself (i.e give <S/N/R> 100)

Anyway, I'd rather prefer to see a good looking map with bad gameplay, rather than the opposite: visuals are really important to me, but it is my personal taste afterall..

I'm in anyway looking forward to a next map from you: keep it up ! 

this is one of the most infuriating maps i've ever played. if it wasn't so awesome in every other department i would have LONG stopped playing it out of frustration

ammo balance was shit, monsters being thrown at you from all directions while carefully dodging lava = not cool, having scrags & ogres spawn around you when in a tiny little cable car above lava = not cool...

i ended up going completely the wrong way first time round as when you get to the main fortress entrance you can slope-jump up to the ledge on your left towards the gold key, which i did thinking it was the right route! was only once i got the keys and ended up going backwards through the top inside bit that i realised i'd gone wrong - by this time the main fortress was virtually unplayable as all monsters were in there at the same time; i decided to cut my losses and start again. but it didn't end up being much easier second time round either...

the 'end arena' (not knowing this at the time) looked like it was meant to be accessible from the gold key bit (possibly as a secret) and i spent ages trying to trick-jump my way down there to get the supplies, eventually managed it after copious quickloads and THEN realised it was an end battle accessed from later on so had to reload.

there was also another irritating bit early on in the cave underground - you can slope-jump to your left to get a YA on a ledge, and when you turn round and look down to your right there is a cave entrance further down that looks like a secret. if it was meant to be accessible then i gave up trying to jump to it after about the 10th attempt, having to quickload each time.

--

all of the above is really such a shame as shitty annoying gameplay aside, this map is amazing. really amazing, especially for id1 - the attention to detail is nothing short of astounding; probably moreso than in any other quake map i can think of. the layout is awesome, the designs are awesome, the atmosphere is fucking immense - especially early on before you encounter any monsters.

i strongly believe this could be a classic of the highest order with (a) the minor route problems fixed and (b) the monster-count slashed by at least half. i'm normally fine with battling off epic hordes of monsters in big maps but this one REALLY DOESN'T NEED THAT MANY!! the atmosphere, design & detail are that strong it doesn't need to turn to hard relentless combat to justify its existence, and in doing so it just hampers it

(i played on normal btw) 

i'm not saying it should be completely bereft of challenges - it just maybe needed to save them until late on 

Exactly the same things happened to me (slope jump to GK at entrance, trick jump into exit etc.), which made the map really really annoying. When I replayed it, I took the "correct" routes, but even then, your other criticisms apply. I also agree that the map looks and feels amazing, but that doesn't make up for the shitty gameplay. 

I guess i mostly agree with above three posts... but (a couple of death pits aside) gameplay was good. The first time through, i was just amazed by the awesome landscapes and multiple route choices... i never perservered trying to find a 'correct' route - realising there really wasn't one - and had a ball.

... The second time, hmphh. Novelty wasn't so great and I got shitty shitty bored with dieing/reloading after returning with the key; down, past the two fiends, the devilish scrag ambush, and the board traversal with an ogre lobbing grenades at you. That bit sucked hard.

But kudos for the amazing open architecture and landscapes. Imho, possibly the best of any Q1 map i've seen. 

and I got shitty shitty bored with dieing/reloading after returning with the key; down, past the two fiends, the devilish scrag ambush, and the board traversal with an ogre lobbing grenades at you. That bit sucked hard.

haha. yes. especially so when you only have grenades, ~40 health & no armor going into it :/

considered releasing the source orl? ;) 

Well, I certainly was expecting a few comments criticizing that the map is too hard when I first released it, but I wasn't expecting it to really frustrate and aggravate players to the point where they quit out of rage.

When I, and my playtesters confirmed that easy skill was easy, and then come to find out that many players insist its too hard and quit out of desperation, that makes me feel that I haven't done my job to give players a fun and challenging experience.

I'm gonna have to really re-think my gameplay strategy for any future maps I build, as I see that what I have done with this map, is not adequate.

As for releasing the source, I certainly have no trouble doing that, but I'm just curious as to why. :) Would you plan on looking at the map to see how it was built, or perhaps did you want to change it so its more suited to your skill level? 

Easy skill certainly isn't easy here. But it also isn't overkill.
There shouldn't be much frustration when you use a careful approach. So the frustration level depends on the style of play.
I thought there wasn't much difference between the 3 skill settings. You just added some monsters to normal and hard skill so there were not many surprises for someone who already played on easy.
I was happy with the easy skill setup you have done but you should listen to the voice of the majority and reduce monster count together with replacing some of the tougher monsters.
About the apparent lack of ammo. There was enough ammo independent from the path you chose. You just need to use it right. This map requires more GL usage all the way through.
I often see that people refuse to use grenades and after they get short of nails and shells they meet a shambler and complain. 

When I, and my playtesters confirmed that easy skill was easy

hey now... i don't mean to be a dick, but i don't know how you got that from my emails. :(

I often see that people refuse to use grenades and after they get short of nails and shells they meet a shambler and complain.

i've seen this same behaviour with nails and it drives me crazy! i think i will make a map one day with no shells and all just out of spite. :P 

necros all maps from you are a bless from the gods! 

I was under the same impression, somewhat.