Thanks for playing it, and for your feedback. Sounds like you need to try it on Easy or Medium level :) The weapon properties were not changed. Hard requires: good aiming, good dodging, good use of each weapon for each enemy, and finding most/all of the secrets to get the additional ammo, health and armour in them. One of my beta testers - who is a very good Q2 player - said this: "I managed to finish on hard mode pretty easily in the end, but for the average gamer I think hardmode is very balanced."

*shrug*

For vanilla SP maps, there's a whole bunch of good ones out there. My personal favourite is SPoG's SP map - it's awesome. The Fileplanet download link is defunct, so here's the BSP file I have. 

Thanks for doing those demos, they were very useful to watch. For example, I assumed knowledge of Q2's physics peculiarity in that to get on top of a 64-unit crate, you hold down 'forward' when you jump. So, I'll need to reduce the height of those crates slightly for those who don't know this trick.

And yes - the superhealing station on the last map was intentional (for the boss battle) :)

I couldn't hear any ambient sounds during the playback apart from on the 4th map (Power Core) - did you hear them / was that just an artifact of the demos? I think the RL that the Iron Maiden dropped got crushed by the door that she died beside - there was an explosion when it closed. Doh! 

Looks incredible. The brushwork is crazy! 

Is awesome.

This one is still on my to do list, will get to it :) 

is definitely one of the classics. Go play it now! 

Power sphere quest was good as well. Citizen Able was amazing as well, another Lazarus pack that made great use of it all to tell a story - you end up working for the Makron, a crime lord.

I remember a motorway escape (in vehicle), dodging rail gun shots from the 'amateur sniper squad' and a crippled stealth sequence that inspired me to do my current map. Maybe a bit heavy on scripted sequences in certain parts, but very well made and had me grinning all the way through. 

..someone has made new fresh content for the legendary (and better than Quake1!)Quake2 !

best regards to you Musashi :)

..let's be honest 1997 and 3/4 following years were the shit:the best age for videogames,period. 

but there's heaps of good q2 stuff. But I havent got access to my q2 saved maps/episodes right now :) 

Apparently power sphere was primed for coop...

'Light' which used the Awakening weapons mod was ikbase greatness.

'Prince of stroggos' wasn't as good but still memorable.

'Pax Imperia' had a Tronyn horde type vibe along with lots of Custom stuff.

Forgetting loads of awesome maps, just remembering bits and pieces but the names escape me. 

>The weapon properties were not changed.
But the enemy stats were changed, right?
>the secrets
Oh. Damn dude, write about such stuff in the readme. Well, i certainly don't like when secrets are required to beat the map, maybe i'll give it another try on Medium after i'll quench my vanilla Q2 thirst. Thanks for the recommendation, appreciatin'. 

looking through my folder, favorites would be (alphabetical order):

1964 Echoes of the Past
Castles of Stroggos 2
Castles of Stroggos 3
Citizen Abel 3
Citizen Abel 4
Dark Undergrowth
Deaf, Dumb and Blind
Last Day on Stroggos
Light
Love Story of the Prince of Stroggos
Machine Reborn
Monumental Misery
Nightmare Orchards
Powersphere Quest
Premonition of Angron
Se Wsi Testamentii
Small Pile of Gibs (spogsp1)
Space Odyssey 2
Space Odyssey 3
The Widening Gyre
What The End is For

And Musashi's pack also easily makes the list. 

In fact, everything on there is worth playing at the very least once. 

Not SP, but DM, Gothic Resurrection is one of the best set of maps for Q2 ever made. Really if you haven't had the chance to check out these four maps, grab them somehow and have a wander around. It's pure awesomeness. 

Ugh, posted too quickly.

Here you can download them...

http://tastyspleen.net/quake/downloads/maps/individual/

I believe it's the gr_dm 1 - 4

My archive has all four in a pak file.

"Gothic Resurrection is a unique deathmatch experience, brought to you by The Freshteam. Four new environments each sharing a common theme and atmosphere throughout. These maps unluck some of the hidden visual potential of the quake 2 engine. The new textures and sounds combine to create an atmosphere like no other."

Load up a couple Eraser Bots and off you go. 

If those downloads are not the correct ones for Gothic Resurrection, I have the pak file so I can see about uploading somewhere? 

but like you say DM only. 

it makes me sad that none of the maps on that website have the original text files attached. 

Yep ele-h-mic, 97/98/99/00 were the best years of video gaming for me. No matter how good games get now, graphically, they won't ever beat 97/98. Logging on to awoq/awoq2 and marvelling at the latest custom levels was awesome.

Gothic Resurrection was a nice pack. yogi, voodoo, kamarov, kaneada - of course they were going to be impressive with those mappers. 

Thanks a lot people, bookmarking this thread for some future Quake 2 fun.

PS: damn it feels good to use Quake 2 icon in the real Quake 2 thread. 

if you want I can list my complete folder of worthwhile q2 maps/mods, its a lot longer than what I posted above.

Probably best to do it in the general abuse thread though instead of this one, lets leave this for comments on musashi's pack. 

Here I've rated most q2 maps:
http://www.etherealhell.com/etherealhell/ratings/quake2.php

Doesn't include my stuff and a few of the very last releases (by mark shan) and missions packs like zaero, juggernaut, oblivion. But everything else is pretty much there. No links will work though. 

Maybe in a month or so nitin, i've got to check out the ones already mentioned first. 

Ah, I remember some of those maps :) Brendon Chung's ones were amongst the most original, especially Gravity Bone. Weird in a good way. That's prompted me to go and download them for playing again... found them here.

If anyone is interested, KyperTrast has uploaded a video of his run through SMD here. Good shooting and movement skills. 

All around solid architecture - every single map here has a monolithic quality (which fits the base game perfectly) and shows great attention to detail. Various Lazarus features are implemented very well and add to the adventurous vibe of the unit.

Although I used to play custom Q2 levels on Hard, SMD proved too difficult for me due to the modified enemies. I was already having a hard time by the midst of the second map, thus I restarted on Medium. It turned to a smooth and enjoyable ride then.

However, I encountered the same bug that Kona has mentioned - that is, after overloading the core and escaping the facility, the Hub level wouldn't load and crashed the game instead. Loading the last save on that map and trying to load up a different level just froze it up. So I had to manually load the cutscene and the last map. (Unofficial 3.24)

Nevertheless, the unit was highly enjoyable. It was a great experience to return to the sequel and have a blast with such a great pack. Thanks Musashi. 

Thanks erc.

Sounds like the crash might be due to the new countdown clock entity having issues with the v3.24 client - I'll have to do some further testing with it.