So I haven't beaten your level yet because it's getting super late here and I'm a shitty Quake player when I'm tired, but I wanted to give a few thoughts I had on it before I forget.

* In general, the level flows nicely. I did get lost once (I didn't see the room with the button that opens the underwater bars at first), but the player always has some sense of direction and objective. The bridge leading to the shrine lends itself to players getting curious and peeking down into the water, seeing where they have to go next.
* There's a few bits here and there where the construction seems pretty rickety. I have no clue what happened with the slipgates, for instance, or the weird mutilated crates. Aside from that, the detailing is nice and the texture usage is appropriate. I especially like how the computers relay information to the player. Cute idea and one I'm gonna take for my own maps, I think.
* Monster selection is questionable in spots. I would've rather seen more ogres than death knights that early on, especially in that upper window, and an underwater spawn in such a tight place is hell without the grenade launcher at the start (which I had trouble hopping on top of the computer to get to). The vores at the bottom of the runekey shaft always get me on my way back up. Vaguely annoying.
* No map name. Always remember to name your maps with the message keyvalue in worldspawn. It just looks unfinished if you don't.
* Off-topic, but anonfiles gave me an onclick popup ad when I went to download your map. uBlock Origin didn't do much to catch it. Blegh. I'd suggest Dropbox, Quaddicted, or Quaketastic next time.

Good ideas and I enjoyed what I saw so far, but there seems to a relative lack of polish or playtesting that'd really make it feel complete. I'll record a demo and post it in the morning. 

Thank you for your feedback!

First,here's a link to dropbox https://www.dropbox.com/s/qomn2uoizr4uxu9/the%20metal%20shrine.zip?dl=0

Won't use anonfiles anymore.

-There's a few bits here and there where the construction seems pretty rickety. I have no clue what happened with the slipgates, for instance, or the weird mutilated crates.

Yes, indeed. I didn't have much of a standard while using the brush tool at first, you may notice that some walls are also very thin.

-Monster selection is questionable in spots

True, I was trying to populate the map and some areas with specific types of monsters, but it turns out that the monster variety is not that big in vanilla quake. That Spawn can be killed with the ssg before it moves if you don't panic, but I know the in reality it can be scary. Also, the vores: there used to be a megahealth there, but I ended up switching to two health packs because I would always kill one vore, grab the key and leave the room with 150 HP or so

-No map name. Always remember to name your maps with the message keyvalue in worldspawn. It just looks unfinished if you don't.

Right, now I won't forget! 

The screenshot shows some nice brushwork and lighting, Will play this ASAP. Congrats on the first map! 

Tried it out again. Here's a demo of this morning's run, done in Mark V.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/syxx9yoz8ug5wcd/mx_shrine.7z?dl=1

Still got absolutely fucked, this time by the shamblers in the rune room. I'm not normally a cautious player, which is probably my issue, but I was pretty reliant on the Ring of Shadows to skip any confrontation in the area with the runekey. I think a lot of the map is balanced on requiring the secrets, which just seems off to me. Either that or I'm just bad at this, but I beat id1 and hipnotic on nightmare, so maybe, maybe not.

Also, I did not see that little lava pit with the spawns before. Nice nod to the Pain Maze, but it definitely caught me off-guard. 

I definitely don't wanna make it sound like I didn't like the map, because for a first map, it's pretty good. Secret placement is good, detailing is good for the most part, and it flows well. For a first map, not bad at all. Just needs some tweaking. 

@dumptruck_ds

Thanks, have fun!

@mariteaux

Now that you mentioned, I noticed that the last room is pretty difficult if you can't find the silver rune key secret. I should have done that differently, specially because the map is not very generous on ammo. Thanks for your insight. 

Skill 1 played. Pretty hard, but not frustratingly so. Well balanced.

I wouldn't rely on secrets to progress, personally (re: the bars near the beginning). And the door out of the watery room didn't really need to be shootable, that wasn't obvious and had me scratching my head a bit. But otherwise decent enough to navigate around. Although I missed a few areas judging by the intermission & a brief noclip round outside afterwards.. this is good, makes me want to replay it!

There were some cool angled brushes in a few rooms, would have been nice to see them more throughout the map as a few rooms/areas felt a bit boxy.

Also the light looked a bit jagged-edged in parts especially the last room, I'd recommend running your final light compile with -extra4 to smooth things out.

I liked the underwater staircase (even though I nearly died on it) - cool idea, felt different.

I made a shitty demo here: http://x901.net/quake/misc/shrine_rj.zip

Keep mapping! 8) 

Hey I suck at SP maps. I do. This is why I rarely post demos. You have some game play issues with this map. Not enough ammo. It's pretty tough for avergae players like myself. That being said, the world itself is very good for a first time map and you should keep mapping! Play through some highly rated maps on Quaddicted and take notes. you have skills... just need to work on game play and balancing your levels. 

forgot to post the link to my demos.

http://www.quaketastic.com/files/dumptruck_shrine1.zip 

Haven't had a chance to play the level but saw that it's hosted at some random filehost - anonfile. Somewhere like Quaketastic or submitting it to Quaddicted would be better... 

Thank you all for playing! It wasn't my intention to make a hard level, specially because I've played through some hard maps (A roman wilderness of pain, the elder reality) and got frustrated with them. But I did want a careful gameplay and some exploration (thus the map relies a bit on secrets, which now I see that is not a good thing unless you can show the secret through some window or crack on the wall).

In terms of archtecture, I had some performance issues on my laptop and ended up removing several brushes. Later I found out that the issue was caused by a few small leaks. That's why some areas are less detailed and also the reason behind that shootable door (I thought that blocking the player's vision would have helped).

Thanks for the demos.

@PRITCHARD

Yes, indeed. Here's a dropbox link https://www.dropbox.com/s/qomn2uoizr4uxu9/the%20metal%20shrine.zip?dl=0 

Secrets necessary to progress = generally bad, unless advertised as a puzzle map. 

I loved the teleport at the beginning! 

Here is my blind playthrough =D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VM_jiDQ4b4M 

@Qmaster
That teleport is pretty cool. To be honest, I stole the idea from some of Kell's maps, but I used the teleport texture instead of the knave mold texture :P


@Tribal
Thanks for your video! You found all the secrets, but the first one did not trigger. I should have made the trigger a bit bigger. 

For a first map, it's really not bad. The map flows and monster encounters are paced well. The most glaring flaw to me is that you compiled without bounce lighting. Are you using ericw's tools? There are many fullblack places that make it impossible to see without shooting. There are actually several places in the map that you need to progress through that are completely black, like the stairs before the two-fiend room. I thought it was just a wall and ended up accidentally walking up it at some point. I think simply compiling with -bounce would make your level much less confusing and more fun.

I only found one secret, so I'm not sure if I'm echoing what others have said by saying that a lot of the doors and pathways that you need to find in the level seem like half-secrets to me. Many of them are tucked away in dark places and don't seem like natural pathways of progression.

Unless you go down the left side underwater passage to the GL first and then go back up the right side through the rest of the level, you have plenty of GL ammo left at the end. This means you can just walk into the rune room and then turn right back around when you aggro the shamblers. I just lined them up in the halls leading to the rune room and pummeled them with grenades until they died. Fighting them in the rune room is very difficult because my natural shambler fighting instinct is to hide behind cover and draw their lightning attack. But with two of them placed on each side of the room, they come around either side of the pillar and I'm trapped. No way of fighting them in the room on hard for me.

I hate vores. Putting them at the bottom of a vertical shaft is particularly cruel because it makes it almost impossible to dodge their orbs. 

I was surprised that this was your first map because although I don't know much about Quake mapping, first maps in other games that I have played are usually a lot less detailed than this. The teleport at the start was awesome and I especially liked the messages at the computer terminals.

I didn't even realize that I had the grenade launcher from the start until I accidentally selected it, so I had to make a few attempts at getting the golden runekey because I was just trying to grab it passively. Once I realized that I already had the launcher in my inventory, I breathed a sigh of relief. I get what others are saying about mandatory secrets and I agree that those are never okay but to be fair, this was a "free secret" since it was kind of impossible to miss at the start.

I played on skill 2. I didn't have any issues with ammo and I wanted to compliment you on that because a lack of ammo is almost always my number one complaint in user maps. The bottom line is that I had a lot of fun with this map. It was challenging and I actually did feel that you had the right monster choices. There was only one questionable monster choice that caught me off guard the first time but everything else was just right. I'm probably gonna go back eventually to try and find the rest of the secrets. I was a little bummed when the map ended even though I had never gotten the silver key.

Really nice work, looking forward to your next map. 

was fun, did not finish it at first (too dark early in game, could not find how to operate the bars), well done 

I liked the map! You can read most of my thoughts on my demo and Quaddicted review, so I won't go into much detail here.

Blind run (nightmare, all kills, 3/4 secrets, 15:50

I found the last secret on another playthrough in easy difficulty. Seems I had had a brainfart on my first run and didn't realize to try out the switch for the final secret (the door of which I had actually detected before opening it). I guess I was just so preoccupied with the switch being a potential spike shooter and the Vore right above me.

Speaking of easy difficulty, there don't seem to be any adjustments done for different difficulty levels, so something to keep in mind for future maps. 

Doesn't feel like someone's first map, so yeah, impressive. It took me five attempts to beat it at skill 2, mainly because I'm bad, but honestly, first two times I got distracted IRL almost at the same place and I was really mad about it. Like really? I swear people sense when I'm doing something that requires concentration and barge in to bug me with something or ask questions. Enough excuses :)

Map could seriously benefit from clip brushes, I was really annoyed of being stuck on every little corner. At my 5th attempt I was already pissed at myself, annoyed by pitch black darkness, lack of ammo, so I took an easy way out, even though using ring of shadows to skip last two shamblers like that felt like cheating :D

But overall this map left good impression. Here is the demos if you want them:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ejd8wxq1kin5eu1/The_Metal_Shrine_dbear_demos_skill2_qs093.zip?dl=0 

Thank you all for playing and for the criticism.

The way I thought the map should look is more or less the same as it's shown on Tribal's video. After watching DelusionalBear's demos I noticed how dark it actually is.

@sevin
I'm using ericw's tools with Trenchbroom's own compiler. Perhaps I should switch to Windows and use Necros' compiling tool. Those dark areas are not supposed to be half-secrets.

@Poorchop
I think other people had the same problem with the grenade launcher. Maybe giving a strong weapon early in the game is not a good a idea because people will accidentaly forget about it.

@Esrael
Thanks for the demo, I enjoyed reading your comments.

I might release a tweaked version of this map along with my next one. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUS7hN7bXEk&t=584s

Hey vaf, it's late but welcome to the community! We talked a little on Youtube already about your map, but regardless, great job on this!

We already talked about the issues with some of the brush work, level design and short supply ammo towards the end. However, there is some really nice stuff going on here too! My favorite area is probably the underwater zombie area. It's a little unconventional but I think it works really well! I had fun trying to figure out the best way to take out those Vores. ;)

Looking forward to more!