i�m not that guru, i just wanna make the good looks;)
And yes, sometimes i really dont know what i�m doing, as negke mentioned with that newskip stuff..
Learning by doing, or sth worse than that i think.. 

if you got master-mappers to beta test. 

It's true, I failed there, and it was easy on my second play. Somehow when I record a demo I play differently.

MFX, I have the (missing?) gray sky on QuakeSpasm 0.85.9 on OS X:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7009168/mfxsp10_sky.jpg 

No problem. I understand. 

as negke says its the fog/skybox interaction. 

People aren't moaning, they are criticising -as well as praising many aspects of the map.

Speaking for myself, I have hugely impressed with your two released maps. You have obviously put a lot of time and patience into developing your mapping skills and releasing maps only when they are good enough. It's really cool to have a new mapper appear "out of nowhere" with stuff this good.

And that is WHY I criticised a couple of things about this map, because this map is close to being really great (same with SP8 too), and with a few tweaks to your balancing you could be releasing great maps each time. If your mapping wasn't good, I'd just call it bollox and not comment further.

I presume most people on here are the same - they care about getting good maps out of any mapper, they see the good stuff you've done in these maps, and think a little bit of tweaking and your maps will be spot on. 

Your maps ARE awesome, but there are couple of academic things that we could have probably helped you avoid, such as the missing faces,and the fog/sky bug. And just a few simple gameplay tricks, such as guiding the player to resources when they are scarce. Minor things though really, but nonetheless could have been avoided.... 

We just want your stuff to be even better :)

You're pretty close to having excellence, just a few rough edges to improve, like Shamb and Ricky say.

Can't remember where I stole that qoute from. Got lots of them that get invented while developing stuff.

My favorite: the definition of complex is lots of simple. 

I don't even understand what that means: "The definition of complex is lots of simple."

Lots of simple doesn't necessarily yield complexity. Complex things cannot always be separated in many simple parts (inherent complexity). 

Also I am sometimes rather critical of the Valve mindset of "the player must be led" and "the player must not die". Quake has quicksaving. Quake is also "oldschool". I think that while not dying on one's first playthrough is overrated and would not be considered so important if engines would just fucking support demos over reloads properly... 

and I think a reason for that mindset lies in "cinematic" games where there is nothing to explore but how to spent your time when a scripted sequence bores you again. if it is fun to replay from the last savegame and if the player can save when he wants, then make the player die with no remorse! 

It's about dev pipeline in code, art and design - whenever someone is trying to get a complex feature built typically it's dependencies are simple enough individually.

Spirit:
For me it's more an idea that the player should feel like it's their own fault when they die, not like the mapper or game cheated them.

Of course, if the player does something stupid then kill the silly fucker in the most gruesome way you can!

I work a lot on casual games and there's a general opinion in the higher echelons that casual means not dying. I point to games like TrailsHD or Temple Run and they get confused and start mixing terms 'Ah, but those are hardcore-casual' which is probably the most null sentence I've ever heard when talking about games. 

1) Some secrets are ridiculously hidden. Like that "another secret" in the beginning, or the rectangular wall stone in the ceiling which opens a door if you shoot it.

2) I came across several places in the terrain where you can't climb small steps; you need to jump over them. I thing the map has problem with polygons within the structure.

3) At the very end of the game, before that final boss crawls out, if you jump down to that door-like black shadow at the bottom of the cliff you finish the game before you fall enough to die.

Anyway, it was a good game. I didn't like the amount of popping up monsters in so narrow places, but still I liked it in overall.

Good work. Thank you. 

Looks like you got a hold of knave theme too. High interconnectivity, subtle atmosphere and pretty balanced gameplay.

Keep up the good work!

1stRunDemo
QuakeSpasm 0.85.9
skill 2; 19:09, 4/5 secrets, 91/91 kills 

I was forewarned about difficulty/ammo by the rest of the thread so I played on skill 1 instead of 2, and the pacing of ammo (and armor) was a little tight but worked out fine. Actually I appreciated not having to leave ammo boxes behind. :-) I'm not downplaying any other criticism of that stuff, just saying that it happened to work out in my case. It probably would not have, if I had played skill 2... I'd guess that's one of the trickier things to make everyone happy about.

Mostly I just enjoyed the sense of exploring and opening up an interesting & spooky space. That's one of the main things I like to get out of a Quake map.

I didn't find any secrets in the normal course of play.

There was some good fight choreography in there. A few ambushes, some alternating between hallway scrums and open-air combat, a chance to hop across platforms and pillars while spooting grenades... that'll do me, I'm a man of simple tastes really. I'm not a fan of most "big ammo-sink bossmonster" final fights in Quake maps, but eh whatever.

Keep it up! Sorry for no firstplay demo. I had told myself I needed to start doing that and then I forgot again. 

Started recording demo, but fell into 1st void (the lighted opening seemed the intended path, looking from button room).

Ragequit at 3rd attempt against drole with axe.

Sorry, not for me, won't bother finishing. 

thats a pity, you missed some really enjoyable brushwork ;) 

Suppose I'll give easy a shot. 

Skill 1, tbh... 30 something minutes, all kills, 1 secret.

Very nice brushwork (clearly inspired by CZG catacombs map) and interconnectivity, some odd texture choices (the blue arch continuing on the angled walls... ugh!), very challenging and non skill-realistic gameplay with a rather anticlimaxing boss battle.

The Blue Key Hole should have been visibly blocked, I tried to get the key and jump back to the first shells cache (that I had missed) but got stuck with the knights pummeling me. No point in making the hole just slightly smaller than the player BB other than generate frustration...

Ammo was always barely enough, suppose it's nearly unplayable on Nightmare. Still, some situations are easily dead ends if you don't know the map beforehand, given the cramped architecture and abundance of instadeath pits.

I'd say some advice from the masters would easily have made this a very good map, as it is, it's still missing things.

But, you were right, it had to be played... 

Thanks spambots! 

Ah, yea, spambot has selected map for me!