At least in Fitzquake, there was a feature that tried to display a blue checkerboard on models with invalid skins. In practice the checkerboard was just some blue shapes (due to my poor UV scaling.) Also we agreed it was a bad feature and we should just draw the last valid skin like vanilla quake does. I wonder this feature made it in to some versions of QSS. 

I didn't notice it on knights in my playtests (neither did any other playtesters), there are custom skins used in this map but only for enforcers, grunts and ogres. And indeed if invalid skin is used it produces this blue effect. 

jpal, where are maps 4,5, and 7? would love to check them out. 

@rampancy - #4 is kinda 'lost cause', don't think i'll ever finish it.. #5 exists (under ad-jpqm5 aka "The Battery") and #7 is in progress :) 

I think you should put #4 on the scrap thread then 

here's my playthrough on skill2:

https://youtu.be/LnG8ZAIJD_E 

Same issue as Barnak, also with QSS:

file:///F:/games/Quake/jpqm9/jpqm9.png 

Sorry. wtf, should be:

http://www.quaketastic.com/files/jpqm9.png 

Corrected the skin issue on hknights, some of them had a leftover "skin" attribute set to 1, for some reason it was not a problem for quakespasm, but for QSS - it was :) also made trigger_changelevel dormant till the end-fight.

Updated .bsp here:
http://www.quaketastic.com/files/single_player/maps/jpqm9.bsp 

+ Nice blend of base and elder worlds monsters.
- A bit too much rocket ammo to my taste.

QSS skill 1 demo, 9/13 secrets: https://mega.nz/file/EUg2Vaba#o8xQ-6nUQh6ewpUzPxyp7Rj5UZHgoZ1J62RhOEG8qMI 

Why not upload an updated zip instead of a loose bsp? As it stands the bugged version is on Quaddicted, and Spirit doesn't want to put the update there unless it's in a zip.

Nice map btw. 

QSS strikes again. 

true.. here's the zip then, Spirit was also informed (hope it can be replaced).
http://www.quaketastic.com/files/single_player/maps/jpqm9_upd.zip 

finished it, what a great map. i spent the whole hour wondering why there was no sky lol. when i finally got to the end, i climbed up the hill next to the last little secret and realized that there is a sky, you just cant see it for 99% of the map. im assuming this is just a byproduct of the scale of this behemoth, but its kindof a shame since its sctually a cool looking sky.

anyways, your last couple maps have been legendary imo 

Haven't finished the map yet, but I was wondering about the pitchblack sky, but it seems it wasn't the sky then. 

If you get close to the portals you can see the rest of the sky, at least when I played it. 

I experimented with different skyboxes (even pitch black option) but this one I found best. firstly, the reddish clouds are low enough to create a "bloody-evening-horizon-like" impression on otherwise dark background, secondly - the mid part creates a nice effect on the teleports. two wins with one skybox :) 

your map is awesome, so i cant bring myself to argue about the sky. if we disagree i am probably just wrong and too dumb to realize it lol 

Fun map, sky was awesome.. contrast thing ? Liked the nail ogre's skin. But too tough for me on skill 1. Day of the tentacle laugh. 3/13 secrets. 

Quick bug report: the music file is named Track102.ogg, with a capital T, so it won't play on non-Windows setups. It should instead be track102.ogg. I didn't realize the map had music until I was about done!

Great map though, a real adventure. Will be back later with more thoughts maybe. 

A few unordered thoughts over breakfast:

* The thing with the gated buttons is a good "go somewhere else and then come back" device. Functionally it's much the same as a keyed door, but it's a nice distinctly different-looking thing which I like better than just having a bunch of different keys (gold, silver, bone, rust, banana) and needing to remember which doors were which.

* The very FIRST gated button though, since it is unlocked a lonnnng time later... that took me a bit to figure out where to go. I know there's a teleporter that dumps you out facing the now-available path, but I honestly thought I had already been down that way.

* For a map with a lot of monsters like this one, I appreciate that you went ahead and provided the RL and LG early enough that they (especially the RL) can be used for a while, rather than just for some final fight. The ammo distribution on skill 2 also seemed good at encouraging the use of grenades/rockets.

* I think I picked up the gold key before even seeing the gold door? Did I take a weird path somehow?

* The brief trip into the basement cave-space was very good for variety and pacing. I think it would also have been good to have a jaunt outside the castle walls, or at least through some area that was partially open to the outside (not just overhead) -- as well as being good for variety, it would really cement the whole level as a "place".

My playtime was an hour on skill 2; found 8 secrets. 

I got stuck really bad here during the final fight while seeking cover.
https://i.imgur.com/XaWPEXg.png
If I were recording a demo, it would have been all over. That's not a review, just pointing that out. 

It was really fun to play this map! Nice job!

Does anyone knows why FTEQW won't display the skybox texture in the portals? It worked fine with Mark V!

As you can see in the screenshots below, the skybox is set correctly, it just won't show in the portals!


https://imgur.com/a/4LcrgFg 

Awesome map, I like it a lot. One question: from where did you get the music? I am 99% sure I heard the same music in a Doom mod, maybe you had something to do whit that mod... 

music track is "Often Not Their Right Time" by Verbum Mentis. It's part of an alternative quake music pack released by Greenwood few months ago (when yt & twitch started banning videos containing original quake soundtrack).