Ghost Death Knights - awesome touch. Work well with the rest of the visual vibes. 

Obviously this was not a map to try as an early taster of AD. There is still no limits to the vast amount of Fuck Off the Crossbow Knights can do, and the ZOgres are more punishing in this than in other much easier maps like Firetop.

OTOH the design and exploration is truly excellent. As a remake it's perfect, apart from perhaps a weak ending arena. The crypt secret and the SK terrace are ace.

I do think there needs to be more marked secrets to reward the player hunting around though, for example:

<spoiler>
1 - left blue room at start
2 - right blue room at start
3 - ammo cache above main entrance
4 - LG on shambler terrace
5 - left ledge nails opposite GK
6 - right ledge nails opposite GK
7 - silver key terrace (gotta remember SK door)
8 - blue window on SK terrace
9 - blue window in SK terrace
10 - biosuit behind window
11 - shortcut back from GK door
12 - ammo pack in SK terrace
13 - plasma gun near end
</spoiler>

Plus the normal 3...

There might be more OFC. And no I didn't do the time limited ROS thing, fuck that. 

It's because the secrets are so secret, it's a secret that they're secrets. 

I dont know I find most Q1 monsters to be cannon fodder so the crossbow guys and zaware ogres are a nice change of pace for me. And their reload delay is their doom. 

That's why I haven't been reading this thread much.

Someone make a box room full of 30 spawn, with 30 crossbow knights on surrounding ledges, so you people can use more fucking skill there. 

Not a very fun sounding map obviously. Though Devil Daggers currently looks like that madness. 

Via console, I haven't found runes.

Lovely map, proper vibes, really nice to have as a secret map. 

yea that map was soo pretty. I full map in that style would be something else! 

Jesus, this is a game in itself. Got both silver keys, the blood key (that whole section is fantastic), and 7/8 tomes, and still only got 20/25. Gonna be a long hunt.... 

Oh one other "thing" that's kind of a shame although obviously unavoidable is that each map has its own visual language and that definitely makes it harder to find secrets on the first time through. Maybe I should have played the test maps first (still haven't played those...) 

Anyone got a fixed entity definition?

I looked at fixing it myself but the errors on reading are odd, the lines it says are erroneous seem fine.

TB1 BTW. 

Yesh thoshe secretsh be tricky. Tough one is near the part where two skull wizards are spamming you from behind breakables and bars...no one looks up, not even I and I make maps too and use this trick to make secrets. That quad secret took me days to find. 

I used the .def with TB1 for ad_e2m7 and it worked fine.
The .fgd uses some Jackhammer extensions. TB2 does support it though. 

Apparently I had found all tomes, and I got a Drole as a reward.

Had to noclip to find the last few, I think the trigger is missing from the one in the tower overlooking the MH bridge. 

 

 

Several of you have smaller cocks too. Whatever. 

Okay, I have a final verdict on one thing: The lack of hitscan weapons sucks.

Hitscan weapons are usually bad, but there are cases in which they're needed. There is a single enemy in AD which is a perfect example of this: The flying saucer drones in Crucial Error.

They dodge quickly, they fire fast, they're small and they keep themselves distant from the player. They make us waste ammo like crazy because:
1) When they stop for a moment and we shoot, they dodge again to a random direction before the bullets can hit them;
2) When they're moving, their movement ends too quickly for us to predict their path, aim and shoot in time for our bullets to travel and hit them. And they shoot a barrage of lasers immediately upon stopping, which punishes players who tries to aim for their stopping position.

I'm not against the modified shotguns per se, but the lack of a hitscan weapon to take care of those flying drones makes all battles against them frustrating. Those drones makes us waste ammo like crazy, I end up just shooting randomly in the hopes that some of the bullets will hit. That's awful.

And this highlighted a lost opportunity. In vanilla Quake, the thunderbolt is the most useless weapon to me. It consumes ammo too quickly, its ammo is sparse, and it's not much more effective against enemies because in vanilla Quake the nailguns fills the "high rate of fire" role in a more economical/easily replenishable way, the shotgun is a more economical hitscan weapon, and the rocket launcher deals more damage per hit.

Arcane Dimensions really lost the opportunity to make the thunderbolt shine. If Crucial Error had it, I'd use it against those flying drones every time, while the projectile weapons would still be used on everyone else because I'd conserve the thunderbolt ammo for the flying drones. And that would be a perfect thematic match of high-tech weapon against high-tech enemy. It would be just flawless.

The projectile shotguns helps to make the thunderbolt strategically unique, and the flying drones helps to make this strategical strength of the thunderbolt a requirement. 

But I'd like to add that the Plasma Gun absolutely SHOULD NOT permanently replace the LG, it's not an upgrade in my opinion. 

This. Wish it was just toggleable like the plasma gun in mispack2. Wait...plasma gun...Plasma Gun 

I think the thunderbolt doesn't reach too far. It would have to be a close combat. 

Doesn�t this depend on the map you're playing? 

The thunderbolt has a 600 units range. That's plenty for this case, because the drones keep some distance from the player but they don't go that far away.

By the way, the limited range of the thunderbolt also helps to ensure that its instantaneous hit property can't be abused. 

I just started playing AD and I am just floored! Floored by the amount of offerings this mod has for the Quake community. It mixes Quoth, and other mods in addition to new ones and provides the base for new mappers to utilize these tools.

I am going to slowly convert what I was working on to AD because I am just so impressed by the variety provided. The best part, is the conversion has been relatively simple so far.

I only played a handful of the maps so far: (Swamp, Crucial, Deaths, Tomb, Mire) and they blew me away!

The entire AD team should be proud of themselves not just for the wonderful maps but the collaboration to provide a basis for future Quake maps to come.

Cheers to you all!

Now, I just gotta dive through the readme and make sense of all the new offerings there are! I did hear that Sock will be making a more friendly fancy web version of this document? I happily await that as well. ;) 

I did hear that Sock will be making a more friendly fancy web version of this document? I happily await that as well. ;)

Yay, that's what everyone hopes for.