wall texture behind you at the start -- are they from a painting?

They are from the DeathmatchMaker CD, which inspired me to make the stairs aside you in the level.
Yes, the first map was made with it.

http://members.home.nl/gimli/bukyou.jpg 

It looked like something out of American McGee's Alice to me.

Damn that's a narrow ledge 

broken archive, downloaded twice 

i believe you are referring to the bug that is found in stock quake. ;)

I've been playing this game how long and never noticed?!?!

Anyway, I meant to mention the urns were also a nice touch and that I managed to bypass triggering the Shalrath and company from teleporting into the big round room (just before Granito) for the second time by jumping in the water.

Cheers! 

@kona - there was an upload corrupted. It seems my webspace was temperary changed.

It works now.

@generic - I played it 2000 times but never been able to teleport in the big round room.
There isn't a teleporter destination.
Can you make a demo of it? 

Took me 29 minutes, found 1/4 secrets (the RA on the roof).

The biggest problem was that you were a bit cheap with weapons. It took me ages to get the Nailgun and I never found either the RL or the GL so I had to rely on the axe a few times, including during the boss fight (luckily it took only three or four hits to take him down after I had spent 120 shells, 100 nails and 22 cells on him).

Design was good (especially loved the street area although I could swear I have seen very similar constructions in Quake & Q3A maps before) although a bit sloppy at times (clipping errors, lack of trimming, teleports without frames, doom doors when the door texture shows a two-part door etc.). I played in FitzQuake080 and for some reason (or maybe because of the port/version) I never saw the skybox.

Anyways, still a good map, just a bit sloppy and I really would have wanted to get my hands on the RL early on. 

It was lots of fun and had some very cool parts.

Skybox was there with fitzquake085, some zfighting in a few places though.

Just as Mikko mentioned, it also took me ages to find the NG. I also ran past the GL area a few times before I finally got it (it's in a recess at the open city area with the bridge and lots of balustrades around the water, you get there pretty early).

It was way too hard for me at the default difficulty but I suck. 

@mikko - I must admit I played the map so many times I never doubed the weapons couldn't be found. Neg!ke pointed me out to make much clear to change all the closed doors in a uniform way, only doors that opened were in another texture. It also looked clear to me that at the end of the street there's a hole in the wall where you could see a monster. The crosbow knight would take your attention so you could see a door above. Sorry you missed the skybox.

@dfs_spirit - I hoped people would explore the map, not simply rush through it. I was assuming too easily the skeleton would come out and show you the entrance.

In the demothread is a secretsdemo attached.
Not when you havent played it before of course, only when you're curious.
Yes, gimme some demo's! 

I liked the variety of environments, and the ambiance of the planets in the skybox was cool. Granito's foot-lightning was funny, but he was tough! Overall it was cool, the oldschool experimental feel and whimsical design worked out well. :D
demo(s):
http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/demos/veni_ericw.7z
I suck and died a lot, so it's in 5 parts.
Thanks for the fun map! 

@ericw - glad you liked the level! I had to use the foot_lightning, as the monster turns very fast. It could have been possible to position it right under its fist, but than it would have looked odd when it ends up behind it. Thanks for the demo!

@necros - you have a tricky way to set up monsters against eachother. Mostly I take them one by one, but I'm a faintplayer. The greek commands were translations of the english ones. I was surprised you didn't notice the door in the roundup street. Now I see I had to give the "shoot" message, so you missed the GL. Also I think there is too much health, only the wayup castle you went to 24 health.

The other example of dark torches went beyond my hat, as the weaponcycle command. I never use these habbits. I was concerned you would treshpass the last runup to the castleround when you jumped in the water. This way you would loose all monster spawning in, but I couldn't avoid it, even when I opened the other door not the same time. It went alright well in the end. Fun to watch the demo. 

I think I've played this before somehow!!

Texture combinations gave me anal prolapse. Build quality is 10 years out of date. BUT.... layout is magnificent, theme is good, good ideas and designs. Progress is interesting and gameplay and monster load is good too. Skeletons are MEH but that's only to be expected. It just needed texture and build polish until it bled. 

http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/demos/gbvenidemos.zip

Place of two deaths, one sooner, one later.

I can't remember that trick where you can continue demos after dying, and tbh I cba to write it down somewhere because I don't often do demos... so you get live, raw and bloody deaths.

On skill 0.

To get this out of the way, your skill 0 is way too hard. It is like id hard. If the map supports skill settings, I don't want to see skill 2 - first time I looked into this I accidentally had skill 2 on and it wasn't pretty. So I went for skill 0 this time.

New monsters: Crossbows and skeleton bolts are what got me in the second demo. From a distance. The guys have perfect aim, too, and I hadn't noticed that they appeared in a previously cleared area. So they got me off guard, and pinned me from a distance while I was ogre-dancing. I couldn't do much but type GG after another skeleton popped out of the door next to me while I tried to locate and eliminate the snipers.

They dish out a lot of damage and you often don't notice them spawning or appearing somewhere, and from a long distance in Quake you don't even hear their firing sound. That's pretty unfair. Bolts and lasers coming out of nowhere.

Ammo and health: Not enough shells around the water/bridges area. Health not well distributed; it's enough, but placement could be better. There were a couple dead ends (like in the first demo where I died) that should have had a health pack for people who get cornered there.

The mega at the spawn pit was nice. Spawns in skill 0 are questionable though.

I collected a lot of rockets but couldn't do anything with them. I'd have preferred shells.

The silver key is hard to see; it blends in with the wall texture and that area is pretty evenly lit. Almost missed it.

Found the nailgun by accident; it was behind one of the doors that weren't locked or fake. How am I supposed to know that this one door among all the others in the area isn't locked and has a nailgun behind it?

You want to make sure that the player gets the vital weapons; the nailgun is one of them (only ever found the SSG and the nailgun). Don't require exploration to find vital items. It could almost have been a secret.

Gameplay and routing:

It wasn't always clear where to go next. You can enter areas from different points, and some of those will give you a huge advantage (like having a choke point for example when you enter the canal/bridges area through a doorway vs. from the water). The underwater areas were a bit uninteresting, and it wasn't easy to see where you could get out of water.

I get the impression that you built the environment first and put in monsters later. You should plan key ambushes and scripted things while you build the environment, though.

To be fair, there was a good amount of typical ambush situations and the gameplay was generally OK, mostly around doorways and when getting out of water. Quake is pretty forgiving there. It's not a bad map. Liked the vore combat. Fiends were also placed pretty competently. The skeletons got on my nerves. ;-)

Had to cut here because of 5000 character limit... 

Architecture, theme and ambience:

I liked the overall setting. The choice of texture theme was all right, but the big stone blocks don't really look citylike. Should have used brick walls or even plastered wall textures. The blocks made it look too medieval/castle style instead of city. Otherwise, the impression was pretty good.

I would have kept the Latin messages away from doors and instead have inscriptions on walls, that print the Latin words when you touch them. Messages on doors should be understandable for everybody.

Like others have said, the brushwork was pretty oldschool, but that wasn't necessarily bad.

I liked some of the details, like the big vases and the faces spitting water - much like Tomb Raider. But don't copy the same 4 vases all across the map. rather have some places that have only one, others have two, and others have 4. Combine things like that with other details. I'd like to have seen plants and gardens, if only a few.

The Venice levels from Tomb Raider 2 are the obvious comparison, actually. In both cases, you get something that resembles Venice, but eerily doesn't seem to *be* Venice. So much for the thing they have in common. Of course both versions of "not-Venice" have canals and ample amounts of water and lots of windows and bridges and every second Tomb Raider map ever produced has these Roman faces on the wall, some of which always vomit water :-)

What the TR version of not-Venice has over yours are plants, trees and gardens; quite some transparent and/or shootable windows; dogs (where are the dogs btw, they would have fit well); traps (some traps are always nice); boats (both decoration and vehicles); ladders, and other stuff like that.

One thing I was missing were interactive elements. Buttons, levers, floor plates, shootable buttons, breakables, etc. OK, there was a button at the beginning, but there could just have been more stuff to do besides combat. The waterways could have had switch-operated grates that you'd need to raise to proceed. Sluices. Raising and lowering the water level. There are mods like extras that contain QC which allows you to do this.

Anyway. There are many coulds and woulds, but it's a cool map for what it is. And it is a pretty straightforward, combat focused map (actually similar to Trinca's latest in that regard). What makes it nice is the setting, feeling of the environment, and the nonlinearity (although I thought maybe it was a bit too nonlinear in the first parts).

Too bad I haven't seen all of it. A really easy "easy" skill would have allowed me to finish it (that's why I picked "easy" to start with).

To sum it up:

There are more things you can do in Quake maps than just combat. Adding a few more buttons, traps, spike shooters and maybe even small puzzles would have made this map even better. There were some promising details that looked properly Roman, I especially liked the amphores and the water-vomiter with pool. Some trees or plants would have been cool. New monsters were a bit raw around the edges. Easy skill wasn't easy at all. Underwater areas weren't interesting enough. Underwater access to the canal area should have been blocked off. Progress could have involved more ladders, climbing (maybe over roofs), and jumping. Item placement wasn't ideal. Monster placement was OK. 

The map was complex, way too hard, huge.

Now ... I consider those pluses to people who like their single player hard.

It was a bit rough around the edges, I could occasionally see "seams" where 2 plane surfaces in the map, particularly the vertical areas didn't seem to be aligned to the same grid entirely or whatever.

That being said, I find maps like these the beauty of Quake custom maps.

The map in truth couldn't be a mainstream favorite because the map is very hard and at times frustrating, but there are a lot of easy maps out there already. 

Well, what I was on about was really the skill 0. You can have Easy easy and Hard hard, that's why there are skill settings in the game. 

Maybe if you hadn't bound movement to any keys, it might be...

The complexity and layout was the highlight. 

@shambler - you did.., the version I quote when I read your commands. (Which were decently, otherwise I wouldn't taken your advice). Glad you didn't read the included txt,and as the quality is ten years out of date, I will stick the textures in my ass.
Madfox discovered a new texture, now the world will never be the same, remember?

@gb - Sure, but I wore this one on my toes so I still had the feeling the play was too easy.
I think you could have survived more by finding the secrets.
New monsters, I gave the crossbow a clear whish on its arrow, but I think youre shooting has oversounded that.
Neg!lke pointed me to that fact of fake doors, so I changed the texture of the closed doors uniformly. I saw several demos where Bones comes out of that door, sorry you missed it.
Also the one that has the message "quo vadis" was simple by shooting,
I know.., me stupid greece.
I was already on the 32860 clipnodes when I started to add decoration. It might seem easy to see these things apart, but after the first map collapsing I knew what I wanted. Therefore talking about these things is rather quirry.
If you saw the map with that limit, you wouldn't want to play it.
Youre Venice complaint I can follow, but you missed a lot of secrets to say there weren't enough buttons etc. Realize the qc was a hard carrot, even without addons like moving water, I've been through that. It just wasn't possible with max_eddicts.
And I Did'nt Want WARNINGS!
And don't forget, I had Venice in mind, but venividivici does means something else.
Thanks for the demo, and youre thoroughly advice!

@Baker - I have wondered a long time about the fact that there were so many megahealths. I deleted them after trinc called me a witty. Maybe it could help to watch the secrets demo. I don't know, some call it much too easy others too hard. Playing a map hondreds of times can shade a man's vieuw. 

I definitly appreciate the creative effort in this level, being a Quake mapper also.

Points:
- Bones has improved alot since I saw it quite a while ago. Great looking sprite, and at times I hear a bit of horse in the death sound. Bones attack could use some unique weapon fire though (not laser, maybe something runic).

- Arrows sure beat a swinging sword from 20 yards away. Knights and Crossbow Knights make a good combo.

- Granito is well done, but the arena could have been bigger and more complex to show it off better.

- Fish head effects are not a bad thing. Think of it as a blowfish being deflated.

- Areas look good and interesting with an old town look. I'm not sure, but it looks like selected places have fog and other places don't? Is that possible to do?

The only thing I'd add is a bit of scare-factorb to this level (as in textures) to make it a more forbidding place to be. 

The player should never need to find secrets to finish the level. That's why they are secrets; they're optional goodies.

Hard vs. not hard: The map has 145 monsters in skill 0, 150 in skill 1, and 156 in skill 2. That is practically no difference between skill levels. For skill 0, it was too hard. That's why there *is* a skill 0.

Crossbow sounds: What I meant was that sounds only travel a certain distance in Quake, and if a monster is beyond that distance, you won't hear the firing sound, or if it is far enough away, the sound will be pretty faint.

The messages were Latin, so was some of the decoration, hence I got the impression of Rome or Italy. :-) 

I have wondered a long time about the fact that there were so many megahealths.

I desperately needed every one I found.

Some people might complain that this map was too hard.

I think Quake lacks some good "too hard" maps.

I played Masque of the Red Death almost effortlessly the whole way through scarcely ever getting hurt seriously.

Your map, I was frequently bloodied up by long distance culprits. I died several times. I really like that.

A list of "too hard" maps that I can remember:

1. The Middle Evil. OMG. Talk about too hard. It might be skill 2 that I'm thinking of. Several Shamblers, almost no ammo. Ambushes.

2. That distrans Quoth map with Doom textures JPL ripped.

3. The Ijed Spacehulk map where fiends are always somehow magically behind you without notice. Not really a too hard map after you make the assumption you are never, ever safe.

4. Some sort of Hell in a Can type map that wasn't Hell in a Can. Can't remember the name.

You map was too hard in a cool way. Some of the "too hard" maps in the past were just unfair ... like maps with situations involving no cover and vores, etc.

Your map is an attrition type of "too hard". A bit of damage here, a bit there ... nothing inherently unfair. 

Try Sickbase, if you didnt already. Its very hard. I made it, and I cant finish it on skill 3, and its really hard on skill 2 and would take me like a week to do it.

Not that that's anything to be proud of. But I remember Sielwolf loved it cause it was so hard. TBF he just pissed all over it. 

it's unfortunate that 'nightmare' isn't a full skill level, because that would be the place to add the extra 9000 monsters and such for the 'too hard' mode. :P

check out the how hard is too hard thread here for the discussion on skill levels... may be helpful. 

@roblot - I have a version of Bones throwing a bone, but then it don't has the wide area.
Fishheads, sorry you're the second that point me out, I start believing I still play Quake1.01.
Fog is really low 0.03 Reason you see it only in large places.
I was planning to make the level darker, but by complaints of not finding things I didn't.

@gb - I didn't say the player needs secrets to leave the level, it would be more easy.
I know this fact of skillpath is tracking me down. What to do with one player saying there's many health, and another that can't reach halfway. I know the largest part of the map went to the architecture, then the new monsters, and finally monsterplacement and supply. When I had the level on a reasonable skill (to me) I changed some monsters at stratigy points to lower and higher.
Of course this is a little easy-way-out, but there were so much more things I wanted to do like better lightplacements, more other monsters etc, that I suddenly got the blackout, this map is dead to my imagination.
I know this sounds rough, mostly the result of mapping too long without hardly any progress.
Crossbow knights.., you'll hear a gun, do you hear an arrow?

@baker - I truely concern your comment, I really was on the right way untill someone claimed my lack of attitude about the megahealths.
I read the early Qents, and it is right to make the level not too hard, otherwise people get distrackted. On the other hand it takes a real long way mapping to get things done so it is only fair to remind the player about these wits.
I think I'll change the easy settings, so for a experiencing walkthrough it would help.
Chance people will only play on easy level.
I hate it when I die! Not from the point of restarting or quicksaving, no if a level is interesting I won�t mind. But now I�m playing Hellboy and I have too defeat an end boss which is almost impossible. And I can�t get further if I don�t. I hate it, really I do!

"RickyT23 - Play me a demo, shoot me an arrow! 

That's a good fog setting. Little to no fog banding, and it looks like it's only seen outdoors and in dark caves. 

I know this fact of skillpath is tracking me down. What to do with one player saying there's many health, and another that can't reach halfway.

Make the hard skill really hard, the easy skill really easy, and the normal skill somewhere in the middle. How hard can that be?

Quake veterans have forgotten that skill levels exist. I only play Quake since 2006 or so, and almost never play vanilla Quake. So I'm one of the people that would please like an Easy skill that deserves the name.

I'm puzzled that some people don't get this. Lack of proper skill settings is a bigger flaw than lack of proper lighting.