It is just kit of colors for painting brushes even rather not textures. Playing sm214_breezeep and you understand that light is much more important textures. I think with colored ligts and absolutely white textures you can create a masterpiece. And this map is lighted definitely perfect.
I found out a key model created as if on purpose for prototype mods. I don't know who it created and from wich mod it is so if someone know it plz credit creator.
https://quaketastic.com/files/models/prototype_keys.jpg
https://quaketastic.com/files/models/prototype_keys.zip 

...and a lot is from new folks too!
• PQP's has a neat Southwestern theme, albeit the cacti have a ridiculously large, "insta-kill" trigger_hurt surrounding them.
• Mari Mk.V's map has an ingenious gimmick when it comes to map progression.
• Moesh's map would've been more fun if it didn't have the grenade launcher in an esoteric location. I had to do a noclip fly-around, just to figure out a strategy. General concept was interesting though.
I've played through the bulk of them & each one has some nice qualities. In my opinion, the highlights of this pack are (in no particular order) DragonsForLunch, DanteScanline, Omni, and Breezeep. 

while scrolling up to choose the LG there is no v_light.mdl visible until pressing "fire". 

I'm fascinated by how beautiful everything looks and plays and I'm not even finished a first half of the pack! 

 

sm214_breezeep very beautiful visually, good exploration. Ability to telefrag the final encounter shambler is priceless.

sm214_burnham also good visuals, but gameplay is much better.

sm214_chrisholden Of the whole mappack this one has best visuals and game design decisions. I adore this map, its' lighting and layout, also its' jumping out secret backpacks, its' "true ending"'s view, its' "new game plus" option with restarting the map with all gathered weapons and ammo.

sm214_dante One of the best maps, very good exploration and visuals, and fine combat.

sm214_draqu Best combat in whole pack, once you manage the rocketjump escape from shamblers and raising the bars to outer gardens, which is like, right from the start, the gameplay becomes dramatically good. And you can speedrun it real fast!

sm214_hcm SO GOOD. Got all secrets and all kills on max difficulty, and had a bloody good time doing so! And whilst having so much enemies and action onscreen, IT DOESN'T LAG A BIT.

sm214_mememind good take on low gravity.

sm214_mrtaufner Good combat, good secrets and excellent final encounter!

sm214_pinchy this is a rehash of map Clay River from sm186, but much better than original. And much harder!

sm214_pqp Nice short wild west themed map.

sm214_zigi Nice colored slaughtermap, had much fun completing it with various weapon mods. Also appreciate that it doesn't lag.

So this mappack has some quality stuff in here, flat textures are so beautiful, amazing. Now I want retextured similarly mobs and weapons/particles. 

Tried -game smp and -game sm214, tried renaming the zips supplied sm214 folder to smp... But by all indications it's just loaded id1: 3 demo(s) in loop in the console, no visible indication the content has loaded, and when I start a new game it dumps me in the difficulty selection hall.

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong? 

You have to load the maps manually. If you're sitting at the console with the sm214 game loaded then just type the name of the map. "map sm214_alexunder"

An example command line configuration:
-game sm214 +skill 2 +map sm214_alexunder

Also, just use Simple Quake Launcher, it's easier. https://github.com/m-x-d/Simple-Quake-Launcher-2