you are the little explorer, aren't you? Trying to jump off every possible surface and take all the trick jumps you can is going to lead to a quick death :)

You died because you moved forward a bit too fast in a part of the level where slow advancement is easy. You went and triggered a bunch of enemies then ignored them and continued to proceed, leaving them to come up behind you.

By the way, there is a way to get the rl at the start, but you need to be quick and not kill the guy that is going to give you a hand. Anyway, as you saw later, good things come (easily) to those who wait. 

I died because your bloody lift squashed me and took off 45 health. If it hadn't then I'd have gone into that area with 100% and survived :P. 

Forgot to comment on this earlier.
While DM settings are of course useless in most SP maps, I still think it's nice to have them - however basic - for the sake of completeness and, again, oldschoolness.
Back in the days, pretty much all SP maps had DM settings. I doubt many people ever played most custom maps in this mode, though, except for the authors maybe. However, as has been mentioned, at least the id maps were played in DM sometimes for casual players didn't have the skills they have today (and the notion of how a proper DM map has to be like in terms of layout, flow etc hadn't been developed this clearly). It's also about the number of players, of course - 1on1 doesn't work in most maps (will be boring - by today's standards).
Still, I you want to feel whole, take a day off and place some additional items/teleporters/spawnflags, it isn't that much more work really. Plus you can play the map with the DMSP mod. 

the exploration was almost always good, i only got truly confused once, which was where to go right before getting the silver key (the ladder went up to two floors, and i went all the way up, which merely led back to an earlier part of the level; i didn't realize at first that halfway up was where i should be going.)

I got the rocket launcher right at the start using trick jumps on the crates.

The message about "all these cells, must be a lightning gun" was exactly what i WAS thinking a second earlier :)

This was as well put together and vertical as apsp1, and makes me wonder sometimes how you keep the player's route figured out when staring at it in the editor :)

Details were excellent, many rooms were screenshot-worthy. 

Good effort on getting the RL, did you do it w/out an Enforcer blast? If so, how? 180' slope jump off the angled crate to the stack? Seemed quite hard with the bridge just above you. 

From the floor, I use the slope of the leaning crate to bump me up at the peak of a jump. Here's a demo:

http://celephais.net/shite/apsp2_rl.zip 

Okay, me and everyone else were thinking one had to get onto the NEXT crate up to get the RL, I had no idea it was possible to grab it from a single crate height.

Than you need to watch that LOL. 

...
I'm going to release a fixxored version of this map now. Too many little annoying things and people getting insanely lost despite the abundance of arrows pointing the way around (see sleepy's demo. OMFG! ARGH! AGRH! I was screaming at him as I watched him traipse around for ages looking for the door he just opened.) 

if you do, be sure to fix the nail box inside the health box in one of the little stairway bits. (on skill 1, at least) 

We ALL got lost, didn't we? :) The path is always clear to the author. Heh. 

...was the point. Deal with it, people. This ain't E1M1. 

would be to give the player a bunch of extra hints on Easy mode only.

And how about that coop mode while you're at it? :) 

That jump is so very hard I don't think it is a "bug".

I thought about hints for players who don't find the way. One could use metl's logic gates TM and have it trigger maybe all 3 minutes after an event happened and until the player passes through the way that event enabled.

Random example:
Player picks up Gold Key -> Gate is open.
A. Player finds Gold Door and passes through -> Gate is closed
B. Player wanders around sad and lonely with no idea where to go, x minutes pass, Shooter shoots and message is sent: "You remember a Gold Door somewhere near the blah at the blubb". Player finds Gold Door and passes through -> Gate is closed

This would be a pretty cheap hack if testing shows problems, it won't affect the "good" player at all but help the "bad" one. 

and move on. 

"...was the point. Deal with it, people. This ain't E1M1."

Than's comment gave me the impression that you're wrong on this.

He said: "Too many little annoying things and people getting insanely lost despite the abundance of arrows pointing the way around"

So he feels the way is clearly marked. 

Oh, and I agree with nitin. There's no point in releasing a new version - it's awesome as it is. Move on to the next map instead of agonizing over perfecting this one. :) 

The one onto the single slanting crate??

Are you sure http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/demos/apsp2_rl2.zip ?? 

...the point I'm making is that intense and complex exploration is part of this map. It's a different style of Quake and is sold as such, well that's the impression I got anyway... 

So overall: exploration is rewarded in this map. I think it is good as it definitely breaks the linearity some Quake maps are suffering, and than's map deserve to be rewarded for this !
A beer for the mapper ;) 

Yes! Might be the engine though, I'll try with Fitz later. 

Ok, with a bit of practise that trick is not too hard indeed. Anyways, in my opinion it is like grenadejumping (and thus can totally be ignored). Only crazy people will do such things when they play a new Quake map. 

spirit: I had something like that in the end area. The were some hints for players who ran out of regular ammo and might not realise there was an lg and a way to use it.

willem: There are a couple of bugs and I am a little bit annoyed by them. I really hate noticing bugs after releasing a map, but then I did rush the release out and skip the final beta test, so I guess it's my own fault.

Also, the trick jump is easy and I knew about that, but I didn't know the rl could be grabbed just by jumping. The rl used to sit actually on the crate and I discovered the problem myself then, so I moved it into the duct and thought it was fixed :/ Of course, I know there is a large shortcut possible by getting a boost from the defender up to the rl secret and then going up the ladder to flip the elevator switch :)

Anyway, Shambler did a much more annoying trick jump in his demo, which is a great deal harder than the rl secret one. At least partly because of the shortcut he took, he ended up getting a bit lost near the start.

Shambler: Whilst I don't mind people getting a little lost, sleepy got utterly hopelessly lost for 10 minutes or so and was trying desperately to find the way forward for quite some time. I've seen a couple of other demos where people got lost too. I actually wanted to encourage exploration, rather than make people lost :( My next map has a kind of confusing layout at the moment too :( 

Don't worry about that. I was probably hungover or something. I was getting a bit frustrated, but as you could tell, I didn't quit the map. I don't mind getting lost for a while, anyway. Well, not for as long as it took me to get back on track on this map, but now that I know where I should have gone, I'd say I was a bit stupid there. 

played on normal, 40 minutes, 5/8 secrets and killed everything.

i don't recall getting lost much. i was only slightly confused sometimes... like the first 'ladder door' message. i hadn't even seen the ladder when i opened the door for it, for example.
also, the vermis arena is really cool and detailed, but i was too afraid to move from my little corner so i just plinked away at it with nails and shotgun shells. :S
i think the vermis could use more work honestly. after seeing it in use for like a couple of years(?) now, i think it could have used some stuff to let the mapper interact with it. force it to hide for a time or something to invite players fighting in vermis arenas to move around and explore. (or have multiple spots where a vermis can appear from... like a whack-a-mole :P)

anyway, found this map really inspiring since i'm working on my own abandoned base type map. this actually gave me some energy to put some more work in. :)

demo: http://necros.quaddicted.com/temp/ne_apsp2.zip
(.zip for you mac dudes ^_^) 

Only crazy people will do such things when they play a new Quake map.

Well, to be fair, i think when people see a tempting item, they will try various techniques to get it. I mean, for all i knew at the time, crate jumping was the intended way to get that secret.

Still, your point is valid, and I would generally consider any speedrunning technique or trick jump to be outside the standard player skillset, and therefore such exploits can be allowed to stay in a map, and add more fun for the speedrunners.