Blimey, did I post something so bad no one has an opinion? :E 

..sooner wait til it didn't make my face explode ;) 

That's going to take a while :p 

Had a quick look / dick around without Quoth.

Running around the vents and jumping / exploring around the crates and those weirdo industrial rooms was cool. Some good gameplay potential in those. But too many box rooms and not enough of a catchy theme to it - more like stuff just thrown together. It has potential. Keep the more interesting stuff and make it tighter and more distinctive. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkijXULeN4Q 

Skill 3, I never got past 2nd room. Boring and unplayable.

Skill 1, Still a little too much, I think... Coupla notches beneath playable. Died in the jump puzzles.

Skill 0, just for the sake of getting to the end with little sweating, lovely idea with the maze/jump puzzles. Nice end battle, lots of niceties gameplay wise.

What Shambler said. Gospel. Don't give up on this.

Hm.
Wanna demo? No fancy stuff. Skill 0. First run.

silent_1steasyzqftest03s.rar 

And the layout is NOT half way done, seems it'll be a bit longer than I thought.

http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/8601/zmm11.jpg

http://img843.imageshack.us/img843/3977/zmm12.jpg

http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/6253/zmm13.jpg

http://img545.imageshack.us/img545/2382/zmm14.jpg

http://img835.imageshack.us/img835/9316/zmm15.jpg

Maybe there will be some new textures in this, which apparently is now part of an episode with nntt and negke (maybe?) and someone else.

I wanted this to be done by now, akshully. 

I said it was an idea. That's all.

And you're the one who wanted to make textures...

;p 

Haha, awesome! Hadn't seen this before, definitely alot in common. :) 

Haven't done any serious mapping. The room I posted is kind of meh, should have thought of a layout first. 

I'm currently ripping up a couple of areas or rescripting them so they're smoother or more interesting.

As for the difficulty, I'm not too concerned about people finding it horrific on Hard (although I'm making the starting rooms less dick-move like). I'm one of those masocist players who enjoys the challenge of insane difficulty (I can't think off hand of any examples in Quake, but from Doom things like Plutonia or Hell Revealed), but I don't want to be an ass and flat out prevent others from playing (and hopefully) enjoying it.
So the fact you didn't like Normal gives me great concern and I'm looking into it. I've already made the first jumping area easier on normal. Looking into other areas. Out of interest, how easy did you find easy? :E

Again ta for the comments, will hopefully have another version up soonish. Will have a think about how to make it feel a bit more atmospheric.

PS I wish Nightmare was a seperate difficulty flag :( 

Like to try this map:

http://www.quaddicted.com/reviews/sickbase.html

Pump the difficulty up to 2 or 3 and see how far you get :) 

...on skill 2. Died once (the bomb just before the droles. Droles didn't kill me, but bomb left me on 2hp and I blew myself up :P )

Was fun though. Nice to have plenty of ammo and bigger guns for a change :) FPS drops made some bits annoying though, had to try and face away from the centre of the map whilst fighting (and led to further self-harm via grenades).

I recorded my run. Missed a few monsters and secrets, took 28 or so minutes iirc. recorded with Fitzquake

http://www.filefront.com/17294539/zqf_sickbase_demos.rar/ 

Son I am disappoint. 

And, just to clear things up, I died in the jump puzzles because I generally suck at those, it's not they're too difficult IMO.

I think that maybe it's just the first rooms that are a pain in the ass, having to take out all those Rocketeers and Defenders and Eliminators with a meager shotgun is a bore, not a challenge, from my point of view. It essentially boils down to luck.

There's lot of good here, but has to be dug hard. 

cruel trick. 

Heh - thanks for the demos, just watched them. You've got some skills with the old Quake, thats for sure :) That map was my second ever release, I build it in a week (then it took 6 days to vis, lol) out of pure spite for all of the comments I received for my first release. Im glad you enjoyed it, but watchin it again just makes me see all of the terrible faux-pas I committed with regards to gameplay, and brushwork, and general optimisations. It's basically just a huge arena box style map. Inspired by GTA for sure :)
For a softer but hopefully more entertaining map the maps I built after that one are a bit more suitable I would say.

I had a look at your map on skill 3. I always test my maps predominantly on skill 3. You see the mapper has the upper hand of knowing where everything is. Well, I hope you start doing the same. Test on skill 3. You could almost call this map fair if you gave some armour and a better gun. And by a better gun I mean a nailgun. Or a grenade launcher. Cause at the moment it's like masochism. Just frustrating. If you make it past the four rocket-grunts in the first room (which you likely wont do on your first run) then you get through the corridor into the next room. This room isn't too bad, but if you make it past two more rocket-grunts and the two defenders, then you avoid being killed by two more rocket-grunts, then you probably have very little health left, and seeing as you have no armour, and only a shotgun, the sight of the two health kits in the next corridor is a welcome one. So when you then get ambushed from behind by two extremely deadly, plasma rifle-toting boss-style base enemies AND two more grenade-launcher toting defenders, SIMULTANEOUSLY, well, it's just not fair. So then when you repeat this whole piece over and over again, maybe 4 or 5 times (cause it's barely possible) and you finally get past these four ambushers (with 1 health), and you try to get to the damn health kits, you are teased with first darkness, then you have to kill two more grunts (which you can't dodge their bullets, so insta-kill is likely), then when you do make it to the health kits you are ambushed AGAIN, SUDDENLY, STILL WITH NO ARMOUR OR DECENT WEAPONS - well, I just gave up in disgust. I took it as though you were mocking me, because I am supposed to know where everything is coming from before it comes. It's like "well I can do it, so you must suck, Ricky"

AAAAAAAAAAAAANYWAY (don't despair):

It reminds me of all the terrible mistakes I made with Sickbase. Like the part where you died. Not fair really. Anyone within the blast radius of that explosion would be severely wounded, then attacked by three droles. I mean there is plenty of ammo and health in that map, but that's OK because people enjoy searching for stuff. But things like getting blindly to the top of a lift, only to find you are boxed in with a bunch of fairly tough enemies, most of whom are facing you - well trust me, I got a LOT of bad comments and feedback for that one. And some of the guys who read this forum are true professionals. After I got over the blow to the ego, I actually learned a lot from it, but if you want people to enjoy your map then don't make the same mistake I did. You see, when you get to the top of the lifts in Sickbase, you are likely holding at the absolute minimum a Super Shotgun, with some armour and lots of health. In your map you don't get given SHIT.

The way I see it you have two options. Either give better guns and more armour, or remove some of the really tough enemies and replace them with softer ones. Hopefully you will do both. Some of those rocket-grunts could quite happily be normal grunts. Those plasma-defenders (what they called again - I forget) - well I dont think they should be there at all.

The map shows promise - some nice brushwork, exploding stuff, light effects. Reasonable atmosphere, even for an un-detailed map. I just think that skill 2/3 is too hard, and not really fair, even for the experienced player. You have to remember - EVERYONE who plays your map for the first time wont know what's coming. And skilled players will hate you if they die lots of times. It's just not going to be fun.

I hope you find this helpful, and I'm looking forwards to your finished map, or even if you want me to take another look at your next version you want to be tested, I would be happy to - nice work :) 

> And skilled players will hate you if they die lots of times.

All players will, actually. :) 

Yeah it the first rooms are a bit too much. I've moved the weapons forward so you essentially spawn on them. The enemy spawns are more or less the same but you have much better tools for quickly killing them.

The main problem I see in making a map truly challenging is that open form or non-linear layouts easily let the player fight on their own terms, rather than the mappers. By this I mean a fight starts (or a trap is sprung) but the player is free to run away, hide, snipe, or just avoid. It's tough to force the player to meet the threat full on without being a dick about it, and I've gone too far in the opening sections. It's hard to reveal a threat, give the player time to understand it, and then push them face first into it :E

Did anyone who played it on easy or normal have a problem with the pauses in the arena areas (the sky area with pillars and the finale)? To me they feel quite long because skill 2 enemies are pouring in constantly, but are they a nice break for players or should they be reduced/removed? 

http://img190.imageshack.us/img190/3738/shot0086p.jpg 

Really beautiful !!! 

Very nice. 

Very cool, looks more like an UT2004 map though. 

Early days but I think it's going okay:

http://img64.imageshack.us/img64/5757/zqftest03construction2.jpg

http://img694.imageshack.us/img694/2983/zqftest03construction3.jpg 

look like put lights more bright near source! look muck cooler :) put light 300 with delay