Dropbox download link is dead already, too many downloads, so here's a mirror :
http://www.born-robotic.net/alkaline.zip 

I also updated the Quaddicted Forum post's download link. It has the download available via Google Drive. :) 

Updated the download link in the OP 

Wow, this looks massive! 

I still have to play it deeply, but all the old maps references as Urth Majik, Backwards Compatible, Hipnotic also an IK weapon show how much has Greenwood knows Quake mapping history, and that this is a true love letter to Quake Base maps.

Congratulations to him and his TEAM and thanks for sharing the passion! 

Wonderful pack so far. Unfortunately, Bal's map has caused Quakespasm (0.93.1, Debian 10.9) to segfault quite a few times on my system, sometimes by just walking around the initial spawn point.

No helpful message appears in the terminal unfortunately. 

And it is rather QSS bug. Before it causes in AD only, and now here in Alkaline unfortunately. Sounds like engine swallows some sounds. If I may say so. 

Just played this one first. Great visual theme, lighting, texture choices, great environmental detail, and I loved the open layout for exploration, and the way I learned it over time while criss-crossing the map.

Some of my favorite environmental things: the helicopter, the little smoke exhaust pipes, the mountains, which weren't very realistic but were very stylish and contrasted well with the sky and the architecture. It is weird that the exploding barrels from quake 2 are here, but do not explode.

One big issue I have with this map is that the intensity curve starts very high, then drops as you gradually empty the map. In the first few minutes it feels like there is very little ammo and health and almost nowhere safe to run to or retreat to, I died several times in that early bit. After clearing out the first 2 floors, now I have ample safe empty space, and access to respawning health and ammo. From then on the intensity was much more manageable. I would recommend actually starting the map with relatively sparse enemy placement in the first 2-3 areas so that players can ramp up and then have the later areas be intense like they are. Also, regenerating resources make it almost too easy, it removes the need for players to advance forward into battle to win more resources. You did do a good job of ramping up to the ending of the level, the final battles felt appropriately intense.

A second complaint, a lot of buttons that do nothing obvious, so you kind of wander around looking for what opened or activated (typically the "sequence completed" type buttons.) Try to say in text what happened, or even better, arrange the button so you can see it yourself. (the buttons to activate lifts worked well because of that.)

A final complaint, a lot of enemies that spawned in did so in locations that felt really impossible, like the guy is behind a pillar or wall in a place that i was just looking at 1 second ago. So there's no way he could have entered the room from anyplace real, in the short time it took me to press the button. If you want us to think they are teleporting, you can use the effect, or you should try to make it plausible that they came from somewhere.

Overall a great map, though! 

That's weird, done half my testing on QS 0.93.1 (but on Win10), have never had that issue. Haven't seen or heard of a segfault in Quake in a long time. :( 

Two maps per day is quite enough for this. Remember how it was as a child? You take new favorite glossy magazine from mailbox and carefully read every glance page. Сlosing the page, you can still feel its pleasant aftertaste. New Depeche of Mapping Mode is revealed. 

Impeccable brushwork, lighting, and texturing.

Gameplay wise, this seems like an even more evolved version of the formula from Tears of the False God. Big, open, explorable, with various tasks to unlock areas of the map. (though of course, this is not nearly as massive as Tears.)

The more specific identity you gave to each unlock event (lifts, lasers, jump pad) helped make it feel more like I was completing objectives.

I really liked the little ventilation duct that connected various secrets... oh, and I just realized I forgot to go find all the circuit boards :P

It would be nice to have an indicator which direction the jump pads will send me, because, if I enter them from the wrong direction, my velocity from entering it might make me fall short of the destination. That happened a couple times. 

That is was very informative. I really appreciate it. I am also glad that overall you really enjoyed it!

The only part that confused me was the the "have the buttons try to say in text what happened" comment, because besides the ones that are not next to lifts, they do (like "west stairs open" or "east lift access available"); however, the LAST button seems to not have a message, so I will definitely add one.

The other suggestions were spot on. If we end up doing an update/expansion to the mod, then I will definitely implement most, if not all, of those changes! 

This is most impressive. It is astounding what you and your team have done in such a short amount of time. Not that I know how long it took exactly, but the mere fact that you count your development time in months and not years is mind-boggling.

So far I've only played through bal's map and can echo most of what metlslime wrote. Aside from a small visual niggle at the start, which I see has been pointed out by others elsewhere, this is a really beautiful piece of work.

Gameplay in this map was a bit of a mixed bag for me, though. Much of it flowed very nicely, but unfortunately I also ended up getting really lost several times and just running back and forth trying to figure out what I should be doing, or which button I missed. To me the environment, beautifully crafted as it is, tended to blend together a little, with all parts looking somewhat similar. But maybe I was just tired when I played the map.

And I second metlslime's suggestion re the jump pads.

Slight spoiler warning for what follows:

I liked how some secret areas showed you inactive robots waiting to be deployed (depending on when you find the secret, I suppose).

The intermission screen is really, really lovely too. It looks like it was made solely for that purpose and contains no actual gameplay, right? Love that sort of thing.

Lastly (this part pertaining to the mod itself, so maybe rather feedback for Greenwood), I've noticed that loading from a saved game resets gravity back to normal -- just as it does under id1 if you manually change sv_gravity via the console. Don't know if that is something that can be fixed, but it would be good if you could.

/end of potential spoilers

Also, is the start map supposed not to have any music? Not a big deal for me personally (I prefer to play Quake without music anyway), but seeing as you had custom music for each map and even for the intermission screens, the silence in the start map felt strangely out of place.

Oh and metslime, even though I have nothing to do with this mod, I really enjoyed reading your analyses of the two maps you've played so far. Please keep them coming! 

Glad that you are enjoying it so far!

As far as the start map goes, it does have an atmospheric ambient music track. If you lower "sounds" in game you'll notice it. It's Verbum Mentis's "Communion I." It's not melodic in nature & super subtle, so I can see how you might not have noticed it. :) 

I should have done my homework better.

For what it's worth, though, I did raise my music volume and lower my sound volume so as to check out the music set for the various maps.

I went back now and had to turn my computer's volume all the way up and set music volume in QS to maximum level before I could hear the music track in the start map. Maybe it's just me, or maybe the track is just a little too quiet? 

Thanks!
It's actually an older map than Tears, a lot of what I had planned with it ended up in Tears later on as I ran out of steam. Alkaline was a good excuse to polish it up and release it without pressuring myself that it had to be some massive thing.

Yeah I definitely should've put some kind of directional lasers on the jump-pads. Jumps in Quake are a bit awkward cause of how much air control there is, impossible to make them as focused as in Quake 3.
It might actually be interesting to have a dedicated jump-pad trigger entity, that reduces air-control for a short, set amount of time after the jump. 

Don't worry about it too much, I can't seem to be able to reproduce the bug. It'll remain mysterious, but on the upside, I was able to enjoy your map till the end without any further problem. Thanks a lot for your work, and same goes to the rest of the team! 

Jumppads are okay, I liked the fact that player is able to spare the station and just ascend with properly timed rocket jump on a final jumppad if found all circuitboards. 

Bal's Map: Easy 9/10 secrets (and a mailbox!) without deaths on nightmare, just as usual. Good nonlinear exploration and beautiful sights as expected. Le epic ost with EPIC REVERB DRUM BEAT just like in ad_tears. And if you found all circuitboards, you'll find a way to skip final sequence with station destruction alltogether as a kind of easter egg.

Zigi's Map: Very good amount of fighting, well hidden secrets, mezmerizing landscapes and skybox, also good ost.

Bloodshot's Map: Usual for him horror theme, cool sounds and scripted sequences. Very intuitive map navigation, never felt lost. Good amount of possible infighting. There are lot of conveniently placed non-secrets with useful stuff or a shortcuts. Also you can run away from final boss to the exit with a sequence of rocket jumps.

Juzley's Map: Good music! Juzley does many things just right when it's challenging yet not punishing like combat and secrets, so map flow remains solid and it's cool. Also the humor is still there, even in combat they always ambush you, but not quite deadly ambush, just to surprise not to actually kill.

Bmfbr's Map: Interconnected map with nonlinear progression? YES. Objective:ESCAPE? Yes.

Grome's Map: Convoluted, got lost while searching charlie board a few times until found that letters actually mark map's districts. This brownish rust somehow feels so comfy. Good combat. Zero secrets but I'm totally satisfied.

Greenwood's Map: Easy, but fun to traverse with all nonlineality and platforming. Lots of secrets, also TOPLESS RAILGUNNER WTF CENTURION STOP HIM! https://imgur.com/OFVwy9c Can skip the last terminal with nade jump btw.

Mista Heita's Map: Finally some grimy industrial cyberpunk. Not so difficult, just overdesigned, got stuck at some corners and some paths are not so intuitive. Killing the player who tries to jump onto roof is not fun. Good combat and exploration. Don't detonate all barrels on sight, there will be use for them later! Well hidden secrets, found 2 of 3. 

Whoa. First person who I heard state that my map was easy! Glad that you liked it, as well as the rest of the pack in general.

Yeah, that Prowler bug (missing top half) happens on rare occasion. We have since located the issue and hopefully solved it. The Malice code available is a tad squirrelly and appears to have been reverse engineered from the original progs. Still far better than nothing to work with!

Thanks for the feedback! It will help with future updates. 

*Slight spoilers*

Are you meant to keep [spoiler]the low gravity after doing the warehouse section in Bal's map? It's a bit annoying as the jump pad to the last section tends to catapult you to the heavens and thus immediately to the end screen.[/spoiler] 

and turn off low gravity before leaving warehouse :) 

Ah, right, didn't even think about the possibility to turn it off. Thanks!

Sorry for spoilerish post btw. Thought it would be hidden, but it didn't work out. 

It's been a few months since I've really said anything here. I've mostly been lurking about watching and reading when things get really interesting, and this mod is one of those times. I've only played through the first map so I haven't fully fleshed out my thoughts.

What I can say though is that finally someone has bridged the large gap that Hipnotic and Rogue have with the base game. Thank you for increasing the availability of that and certain other weapons and enemies that are normally not available. 

No surprise I guess, but this is great!

Whenever there's so much emphasis on screenshot sexiness I can't help having a secret fear that some of that stuff will be a visual showpiece that's a drag to play. But nnnnnope. Not so far. :-)

(And I'm not normally a real "base map" fan.)

I'll come back to drop individual map comments after I finish, I guess. But good job fellas.

One quick comment: it's nice to have the hipnotic lasergun to play with again. Something about its look/sound/dps gives it a knife-through-butter feel when you use it to hose down a group of small fry.