Yeah, what the FUCK does that blue ceiling bit do? I explored all around that room and adjacent areas in game, then in no clip, and could find "fuck all".

Maybe it is a than-esque "You Fixed it!" 

I was hoping that negke would play this and have his soul crushed by the obtuse progression.....which I guess kinda happened, but the result seems to be some really good feedback including great general warnings to mappers about design logic :) 

I agree with Shambler's five points. The homegenuity he mentions is probably what made it so hard for me and others to navigate the map with confidence. There are few strong setpieces and together with the gloomy light level it creates the feeling that all looks the same (which it doesn't, but neither does it look different or unique enough to be really memorable) which the "corridor-ness" of the layout ultimately adds to. 

metlslime: thanks for comments. Use runes instead of buttons is a good idea. I will do so

negke: thanks for comments and demo. I wanted to make visible 0 secrets to the player did not know how many there are. And in the beginning did not even know about them. It's an experiment. I'll think about how to change the sign for QRJ point.

I also will see what I can do with the rest of the comments.

My main mistake: I had not given test map before release. It began testing one person, but he was too busy. Next time, I'll consider it and ask to test 

Replayed it without recording a demo and quicksaving all the time, not dropping into the slime by accident. Suddenly it was much more fun. I would recommend removing that slime "trap" window somehow. And/Or add an item at the bottom of the way out of that slime area so the player has a reason to drop down there and then look for ways out.

Got lost searching the third button and gave up. Too samey for me, I never knew where to go. I was not sure if I was supposed to grenade+rocket jump above the not working shoot button but I did that somehow.

My problem with the map is that it does not clearly sets the new rule of "rocket jumping is needed". If there are so many opportunities to RJ somewhere, I get frustrated and lost, not knowing what to do. Might be less hard with god mode.

Make sure the message at the start does not say "one" rocketjump but "rocketjumps"!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111111 

Spirit's comment is key I think, and also reminds me of Portal 1/2.

At the start of every test chamber was a series of helper images letting you know what you're in for.

You could use a similar idea in your map by putting a special texture on the floor whenever a rocket jump is required for progression, but not for secrets.

That way you clarify the visual language of the level (hello Sock's demon head secrets). 

...you mean Sock's Demon Head Secrets where ever single one was opened by a nearby button....except the YA Demon Head secret on the thin ledge in Zendar, which was a shootable door and took me 5 times longer to find than any obscure progression in RJZ??

Or a different Sock's Demon Head Secrets? 

Not ones that changed the visual language and made shamblers sad 

Having read some of the comments here I tried two approaches:

1. Played under Quoth and cheated myself a flashlight. This helped fuck all since the flashlight is virtually useless in such open spaces.

2. Played under id1 with sv_gravity 100. This was instantly much better than having to rocketjump everywhere. Haven't beaten it yet, though. 

First, teleporters inherently make it more difficult for players to learn the layout of a map, since they pop you between disconnected areas. You lose sense of place and direction. This isn't necessarily bad, but does make the challenge higher.

Second, since you had (i think) 3 different pairs of teleporters, it was even harder to figure out what was what. Perhaps giving each pair of teleporters a unique shape to the frame (like rectangle, diamond, oval) instead of all having basically the same rectangular frames. Or, color-code the frames (or color-code the actual teleport texture) so there's a red, a blue, a green.

Finally, the biggest issues with this map is that as you open up more areas, the challenge of finding a new puzzle gets harder, since there is more area to explore and it seems that the new puzzle could be anywhere, even in areas you've previously visited.

I don't have an ideal solution for this problem. There are plenty of sub-optimal solutions like locking the player in a specific area until they solve the puzzle (which would open the route back to the hub), or by eliminating any puzzle where the solution is "find an unmarked passage" but they would take away some of the uncompromizing "maze" aspect of this map.

I think a better approach would be not to change layout or puzzle design, but to improve navigation by making areas more distinct and the relationships between areas easier to learn.

In addition to Metroid, another game that this level reminds me of a lot is Solstice on the NES. That game had a similar degree of openness and maze/puzzle-focus. It was also broken into fairly distinct areas (castle, garden, dungeon) that had relatively few inter-connections. It also had teleporters. (It also had an auto-map!) 

Were awesome. 

Echoing some of the sentiments already posted - layout was very confusing at times, some areas were way too dark. I can always appreciate the experimental nature of digs' maps (digs04 is still my all-time favorite q1sp), but I think much like with digs06, this map is just way too big for its own good, which can easily lead to the player wandering around in circles. I did get a bit bored at times.

On the other hand I quite enjoyed the main gimmick of the map, that being rocketjumping, seeing as I love to abuse such tricks in the game, one of the main reasons I love Quake so much. The puzzles were a bit hit and miss, like the one with the buttons opening different doors in order to enter a teleport, but I really enjoyed the pentagram/rocketjump-one. The one at the end with the quad+RA was quite satisfying when figuring out what the solution was, but the problem I found with it was first and foremost the red "target" texture underneath the grating in the slime. This texture typically means "shoot me", and when this resulted in nothing, I was left quite perplexed. It didn't help that I didn't even notice the shaft in the ceiling until after having first wandered around for a few minutes, maybe it could have been made more conspicuous.

The boss fight wasn't too bad in my opinion. Overall I'd say it was an enjoyable map but with some things here and there dragging the experience down, with some changes it could be really good.

Oh, and here's my demo (skill 3) 

and very hard!

The visuals were great, I loved the motif of the woven beams in the skylights; made the base feel really oppressive. The colored lighting was also really well done.

The puzzle with the pent was my favourite area.. it was clear that you were supposed to climb to the top of the room, and the jumps were fun.

negke and metl covered most of the things I had trouble with. I cleared out the enemies in the area with the quad fairly early on. I noticed the shootable button you're supposed to quad rocketjump on, but once I found it wasn't a shootable button I just abandoned it and didn't realize it could have another meaning (and didn't look up..), so unfortunately I eventually noclipped on that puzzle.

also it took a while of being lost and looping through the map to notice that the pillar buttons were the 3 I was looking for to trigger the big door. it was satisfying, though, once I figured out the basic arrangement was 3 distinct areas each with a puzzle blocking access to a pillar button.

anyhow thanks for this release! 

kaffikopp, ericw thanks for playing and comments.

map updated, link same
http://digspt.ru/quake/maps/digs07.zip

changes:
1. map now lighter
2. fixed bug with slime space of big slime leak
3. smoothed ('clip' texture) base of buttons. Now going from side to push easier
4. add few guide pointers
5. in Shambler room (before QuadDamage) added 2 item_health for normal and easy, and 1 for other
6. reduce time regeneration for item_health from 5 to 3 seconds
7. fixed seizing of Scrag in the tower
8. fixed vulnerability for first boss on hard and nightmare skills
9. in QRJ point add message "You will have to use a QuadDamage RocketJump"
10. changed messages for closed doors
11. three buttons changed to runes
12. add tranparent label for zone which activate teleports for boss
13. teleports now have different colors
N. other small changes 

I'm a little sad that the quad puzzle is now trivial, i really liked that one. But i guess everyone else was stumped on it. 

Figuring out what you had to do was what's fun with that puzzle, explaining outright to the player what he has to do removes the puzzle part entirely. As I said the problem for me was that the top shaft wasn't noticeable enough. Maybe just having an arrow on the wall pointing upwards so as to encourage the player to look up would have been enough. 

I think it all depends on the person. If he likes puzzles, it will look without pointers. If not, then he needs a clue. Difficult to ensure that everyone is interested 

What Metl said. It was a logical puzzle. I think adding a little Quad texture instead of the button would have been perfect. 

Well done for taking on board the feedback and all the other fixes. Hopefully more people will try the map now and enjoy it more. 

Should I rename the old version or the new version for Quaddicted? 

i didn't record a demo since i watched Shambler's first demos.
had i played without watching those, i think i would've given up early on. i'm a poor rocket jumper in the first place. however, the abundant amount of health/armor regeneration kept me very much alive. i also doubt that i would've figured out the QRJ.
as for the darkness, i didn't have any problems, but i play in the dark on my 47" LED tv with 2 million (or so) contrast ratio. i'm sure that helps.
i didn't beat the boss because of my RJ 'skills.' it was on the platform, & i Rj'ed into the ceiling below the crusher button and died. 

Replace the old version to the new 

I did that but realised that I should not. If people downloaded it with the Quake Injector they have to manually delete the file from the download cache or they cannot get the new version. I only realised that now, I will not change zips again anymore (unless someone adds some fancy checksum checking to the Injector).

I reverted to the old version for now.

digs07_v2, digs07v2, digs07b, digs07_fixed?

PS: Next time please add a note about what changed in the readme ;) 

the name of any

ps: ok 

w00t I managed to get to the final boss :D Unfortunately I got crushed by the crusher as it was going back into the ceiling (I was running along the small lip that sticks out just before the crusher part of it).

Seems like it could be a cool fight but I couldn't work out how to get the vore to go into the center. It would teleport around all the time (#tf let me know what causes the teleporting. I had no idea!). The button mechanic seems nice but in practice I bet it could be pretty fiddly. Will have to replay to see.

The lighting is better in the new version but i'd say it is too bright now in some areas and they can look very wasted out as a result. I had no problems seeing where to go (addition of a few helpful arrows was a plus) which was a huge improvement over the original imo.

I like the replacement of the 3 buttons with runes. it feels like more of an accomplishment to collect a rune than press a button! Feels weird not to have 4 runes though :D

Something I felt while playing is that the level could really have been made easier to understand while being potentially more complex with the addition of stronger visual themes to denote each type of jumping mechanic requirement.

For example. You could have used strong red themes (lighting, textures) to show where a pent rocket jump is needed while a blue theme could show where quadded rj's are required. With a suitable intro to each colour theme this could have worked really well to give players an idea of what is required in certain areas without heavy handed text prompts giving the game away completely (example : quad rj text)

I did enjoy the level a lot however. Made me use my brain to figure things out :)

I loved some of the detailing on the walls and ceilings. Some of the boxy lcd panels with wiring and machinery around them looked fantastic.

I will be doing a video of this release when my pc decides to play nice! :P