the visuals are very well done, I�d like to comment mainly on the gameplay:
-the spawning issue: the first shambler crew is very doable, space to retreat is there with cautious play, but the second one at like 133 enemies is just lol.
Why ? Because those situations are so damn easy and boring the second time, figure out where and when they spawn, park your arse on the right spot, game over. Though of course it depends on the type of monsters spawning. Had the map been an overkill from the first moment I wouldn�t complain really.

Still a great map ;) 

I knew about the item placement / layout etc, I read the readme :). Fundamentally it�s a problem with the original map that you�ve inherited and there's nothing wrong with that. I�d love to see tweaked item placement. It's still a good laugh as it is.

I wonder though what DM would be like on the full SP layout? 

Wow! Great design. Looks perfect, one of the best base levels ever. When I played it for a first time I was sometimes feeling lost and those shamblers were too tough for me. Much better than my attempt for base level called Slipgate#13 (part of an In Ovo "episode"). 

And Than, I am looking forward for your planned Quoth map very, very much! 

Original DM3 with its lack of detail and misalligned textures looks really funny in compare with this masterpiece. 

This level is practically perfect and a much-welcomed addition to the remix line of maps. The feel of DM3 is there, with the lower water section and the lifts to the Quad, but the intricate brushwork and excellent texturing of this map blow the original away!

I hereby nominate Than to the idbase Hall of Fame!!!

P.S. Do a quicksave before pushing any buttons and you will eventually figure out a way to deal with those pesky Shamblers ;) 

don't press THAT button. Look for a brightly lit fuse - shoot it, and jump out the window to the lift ;)

I should have made the quad easier to get without tempting the player to press that button before they jump out the window, as they are likely to fight the enemies before getting the quad and drop down to face just a few base enemies :(

By the way, for anyone who is interested, I put a demo of me doing nightmare skill with all kills and secrets (NOT a speedrun, so it's not particularly interesting) on my booth during qexpo. It's here: http://qexpo.quakedev.com/uploaded/29/dm3rmx_than_skill3.zip

I should do a nightmare demo with no secrets and fight all the shamblers man to shambler to show there is just enough ammo before getting the shaft. 

You remember how everyone complained about lack of ammo in RPGSP1 even though I had no trouble playing on nightmare?... ;) 

I don't get the "guru meditation" thing. What's going on there? 

yeah, and I stuck LOADS more in the map after people moaned. On normal, you could probably take out all the shamblers in the map twice over and still have enough ammo to launch a rocket with... If you are careful of course.

Assuming the lightning gun doesn't fall out of the world, as it seems to in some engines sometimes. Never happened to me in Fitz or aguiRre's engine though :)

The guru meditation thing is an error message printed by Amigas when they crash. That whole thing was a hint to the super secret, but I got carried away animating the computer screen and wanted to make it crash. The screen before it crashes shows the area the secret is found in, and although it is blocky as fuck, you can see a red button hidden on top of one part of the architecture.

Anyway, for more info on Guru meditation, look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guru_meditation

I used to have an Amiga, so that strange message is fondly remembered. 

I can't say anything that hasn't been said before!
Very nice brushwork and texturing indeed!
Nice combat situations.
Greath work!

The guru meditation made me long for my dear old Amiga 2000! 

Shells were a little tight on normal, but I always had nails to rely on when such occured, and vice versa. Nor did I find the shamblers tough, and that was without quad - which I found later on (I considered the circuit bit and lift to be part of the original game flow, not for a secret, but forgot it after the shamblers for a while).

BTW, DP is usually the one that has the problem with items falling out of the level, but I didnt encounter that with this map, and the lightning gun proved very useful against the horde of enemies + fiends (when I encountered this, I thought it was supposed to be the herding moment, but I had been saving my shaft ammo so I used that right then). 

Counting the beta tests, this is my third play of the map and after 30 mins of hopeless wandering, I can still not proceed after the three shamblers nor can I find the SK. I complained about this early on; extremely confusing layout, constant ammo shortage and unfair opposition.

I'm sorry if I sound harsh than, but the gameplay of this map is really putting me off. Its otherwise very good looks and professional build quality can't save this fact. I hope your next map will feel better in this aspect. 

finally got the chance to play this :)

it's a very very interconnected map and thank god there were arrows or i'd have been lost for sure, hehe.

excellent build quality throughout. difficulty was just right for skill 1 for me. i too got lost a little bit after 3 shamblers and trying to find SK. i dunno why, but either the door down to the second button in the room down below wasn't open before or i just missed it (add more lighting there to make it more visible maybe?) but i didn't find the door until blundering into it by accident later on.

asides from that, quite fun fun. thanks for the awesome mapxors, dude :)

http://necros.planetquake.gamespy.com/temp/ne_dm3rmx.dz 

the SK can be missed... either make it so that you can't continue until you pick up the key, or make it visible as you approach it. as it is, it's tucked in a corner on the right side, and i walked right by it without seeing it at all. 

Not to discount your comments aguire, but I had quite a different experience with this map. I'm sure it helped that I am very familiar with the original map, so navigation was probably a bit easier as a result.

I didn't have any progression problems despite the fact that I intentionally bypassed the silver key door without the key (was this meant to be possible?); I was going for all kills/secrets rather than a quick exit anyways, so I just wandered around till I found everything and took my time about it, got a little bit confused at times of course but not hopelessly lost, given that each area looks unique and there are often arrows or other visual cues pointing the way. I found it to be a nice change of pace from the usual extremely linear SP maps you tend to get these days (not necessarily for Quake, just in general).

No real ammo problems either, there was certainly enough around to get the job done, no complaints there.

I think I played on either skill 1 or 2, can't remember. Overall it was challenging at times without being overly difficult, especially considering the open nature of the layout allowed me escape and go find more ammo/health etc if I did get into any dicey situations (e.g. coming across a fiend, armed with nothing but an axe!)

The shortcut to get into the RL area was particularly devious, so it was pretty satisfying to get that one.

Nice work Than! 

I am pretty amazed that after three plays you still can't find the silver key, despite the fact it is visible from a window, has some arrows pointing the route to it, and is in the area just after the shambler attack behind some doors that tell you they are opened from below. Also, surely if you follow the arrows when the shamblers appear, and aren't so determined to fight them, you might be able to escape intact.

I wanted the player to be constantly short of ammo for the first part of the map, so that is intentional, but I added a lot more, so it is possible to have a lot remaining by the time you reach the shamblers on normal and easy. Hard and nightmare are a different matter, and you might expect to have more ammo shortages there - especially if you are careless when picking up items/shooting at enemies.

Anyway, your suggestions were helpful and I took them on board to some extent, but I didn't want to overfill the map with ammo.

By the way, I watched ankh play on normal or hard, and the lightning gun fell out the level (something I've never seen happen). He managed to reach the end of the level regardless of this (died fighting the scrags at the end), and although he used the axe to take down an enforcer, he seemed to be encountering ammo just as he ran out. This is without the most powerful non-explosive weapon in the game, the quad, or full ammo for it 2* over.

Anyway, I will take on all the criticism I've received regarding this map for the next one, so it shouldn't be so tight on ammo. You've seen the layout before, but I will try and make sure it is easy to navigate. Sorry if people got lost on dm3rmx :/ 

Now I think about it, I guess I can understand how the silver key can be missed. There are three buttons in the sk area, the one that reveals the lightning gun also opens the doors above. The door to the room with that switch is not amazingly clear, although it is textured differently and has bright lighting on it compared to the surroundings. Tyrann suggested to increase the trigger size of the door, so it is easier to open the door when you walk past. I did this, but didn't make it really big. Anyway, if you miss that, you won't get very far. Perhaps I should've had the lower switch on the computer pillar open the door... hmm. Too late to change it now.

Also, the timing of the shamblers was a bit shit. I tweaked it multiple times to try and get the shambler appearances to lure the player in the right direction, but actually I should have made the furthest shambler appear first, because players always seem to run to attack it. That would at least have put them on the right side of the big door... and yes, maybe I should have made the door to the sk area clearer and put a window in it (also revealing the quad position and perhaps giving the player an early clue that the quad is up the lift outside (assuming the player knows the dm3 layout).

The silver key door skipping jump was not intentional - I never tried it like that, and didn't think Quake had air control that good.

Oh, and before you reply, the first paragraph of my previous post was not supposed to sound patronising, so sorry if it does. 

I just played it again. The changes you made are good, the red arrows help navigating a lot. In fact I did not get lost once (ok, I kinda knew the map).

This is a very impressive map and I really don't think the issues brought up here are too bad. 

I think that a proper use of the GL is important on this map. If you can manage to take down groups of 2-3 monsters (grunts and enforcers preferably and that one big group of fiends+other monsters) with grenades you can spare the needed amount of nails and shells. I have missed a few grenade shots and thus couldn't kill the scrags at the end and had to escape with some luck (the scrags didn't kill me :). I had a similar issue with my hdn map - without using the GL you would run out of ammo very quickly.
And I think that I was playing than's map on hard skill.
Oh and the problem with LG falling out of the level never happened to me again. Strange :) 

used to be a way to escape past the scrags. It would cause a bright flash every 5-6 seconds, and when it did that, it would teleport whatever was inside it to the bottom of the pit (telefragging some of those bastard scrags in the process). I changed it to only flash when monsters teleported into that area in the end though, so you can only use it in coop. Might help speedrunners, but not likely. 

...I'll be playing this again tonight, as I believe I got through largely by accident first time (I suspect I missed a few sections), not that it bothered me as the architecture and lighting I did encounter was of the highest quality. I got one of those "Awe, crap! I'm never going to be able to make something this good." moments when I looked through the window into the section that later holds the jumping vore ambush. Not that it will stop me mapping :)

The lighting in FitzQuake was superb.

Ta much! 

Isnt it the most detailed and well-textured q1 map ever. Great (and very original!) designs.
Exceptionally fresh. And many many hrs of work, I assume.

Navigation was a bit puzzling, not bad tho (arrows help). Shamblers.. well I finished the third one with grenades and ol` rusty axe.
But after LG its a cakewalk. 

Not knowing my way around DM3 I did get a bit lost on occasion, but I independently agreed with the two main thrusts of this thread:

- It's the sexiest architecture ever to grace Quake
- The first shambler teleports were pretty fucking cheap, and the rest were equally lethal.

I lived, though. Overall, huzzah. Looking forward to the next one. 

News:
http://speeddemosarchive.com/quake/

Direct link to the demos:
http://speeddemosarchive.com/quake/mkt.pl?level:dm3rmx