Judging from the screenshots, has this map been run throught light.exe at all? 

review is here:

http://www.planetquake.com/underworld/quakerev040717b.html 

I get re-routed to file.dhtml when I try to save-as.

And if I click the d/l link, it downloads with nothing inside. 

Trinca: dm map with these textures? I'm not sure, I'm currently working at a dm map, but in other texture style.

Shambler: Bad textures???? hm, I was totally impressed by these texes, when I saw them the very first time.
Also I thought I had fixed that error on startup, but I've never meet in when qickloading.

Phait: Look at the lighting in game, screenshots are rather brighter.

HeadThump: thanks for your comments:)

Jago: see comment to Phait

uwf: thanks, great review

nitin: It seems you have used the direct link (..../files/menk.zip) in your browser. Better download it from the page: http://quakemaps.nm.ru/maps2.html

And no first run demos so far?
Also has anyone found the secret exit? 

even from the page I cant right click on it to save. 

right click doesn't work, simply click on link at the page, it should work 

someone could create a fileplanet mirror for this file? btw personally I don't like FP. 

i also got the
SZ_GetSpace: 8014 is > full buffer size
error quite frequently.

its slightly annoying, so you might want to look at you or aguire or someone else fixing it if possible. 

would be good because there's nothing in the zip file when I open it by clicking on it normally. 

I liked the textures, architecture & gameplay and the egyptian theme works very well with all the traps and things.

The only thing that let it down for me was the lighting which verged on a bland wash almost throughout. That's a shame as it could have looked very dramatic with this architecture if the light looked more like it was actually coming from the the apparent light sources.

Very good in all other respects :) 

See 

I guess I thought they were too "busy" and tended to clash with the designs a bit. Also a bit too "bold" in their style with strong contrasts and stuff which makes them look more cartoony than some Egyptian / temple textures. And the complexity of the textures put me off hunting for secrets, as everything looked like it could be a secret trigger.

Actually, come to think of it, the "cartoony" look is probably the biggest problem with them...

But it's good aside from that. 

I noticed also that several of the d/l links at PuLSaR's site have a problem. You get redirected to some other site where the file doesn't exist.

I use GetRight and the trick seems to be to make the downloader build the referer reply from the d/l URL instead of the currently open page. Then it works fine. Look in the downloader's config for this.

This behaviour is different on different sites, I think often used to prevent remote linking.

As for the "bland" lighting, you can blame me. PuLSaR wanted a darker, more classic high-contrast lighting but I talked him out of it. You can check the original balance in the start map.

I'm well aware of that lighting seems impossible to get to everyone's liking. On my GeForce3 setup this looks very good and promotes the architecture instead of hiding it.

GlassMan, Phait: What engine and graphic card do you use? 

Can someone please send me a zipped savegame file where you get the SZ_GetSpace ... error upon loading?

When you get the error, does it prevent you from continuing or do you retry until it works?

If you get stuck, please try my engine GLQuake 1.20 and see if it helps. I've specifically tried to fix this error. Savegame files should be compatible. 

I've found the problem now. It probably only happens in Hard skill due to more entities. Several engines (GLQuake 0.97, FitzQuake, WinQuake) seems to have a problem with this but my GLQuake 1.20 seems OK.

If it happens, you can either restart and hope it disappears (it often does) or switch to my engine.

I believe the only way to fix it is to either modify the engines (developers), reduce # entities in Hard (PuLSaR) or switch to Normal skill (players).

Possibly it helps to use a progs.dat that removes corpses while playing (like in 100brush). 

I cant for the life of me get this to download.

A mirror would be really appreciated. 

I'm using fitzquake v75 and the card is a Geforce4.

Like you say it's a matter of taste but, especially in medieval or egyptian styled maps, I prefer the light to look like it's coming almost wholly from the sky, flames or light fixtures or whatever the source is. (As a generalisation, I put bright lights with high 'wait' values on each of the main light fittings & then low value fill in lights only to ensure all the main floor areas are lit. Areas away from lights recede to darkness.)

The light here is too even - it's not used to guide the player's eye or to throw the architecture into dramatic relief. Walls next to light fittings look the same brightness as walls well away from them. I'm speaking generally of course - some areas are better than others but showing off architecture is not a matter of ensuring its all evenly lit.

Having said that I should repeat that I really enjoyed playing the map. Well done Pulsar :) 

and it was great fun, very good looks, textures, atmosphere and gameplay overall. 3 secrets found including the secret ending but I haven't found a way to get 100% kills (it doesn't seem possible).

I was afraid that the jumping puzzles and traps would be detrimental but they weren't at all, just like in gmsp3.

And I still have the opinion that the lighting looks great on my setup. Any darker overall and it would've been unplayable in many areas. I hope that not all find it too bland.

Maybe I should clarify about the lighting. PuLSaR did all the hard work with positioning and tweaking all individual light entities and I just suggested this balance from the light tool.

If you want to see how the original light balance looked, just run

light -extra4 -sunlight2 50 -dist 1.1 menk

On my rig this takes about half an hour.

Great map PuLSaR! 

i want to play this map again [on hard again] so i will probably try your Glquake 1.20 aguire. 

GLQ 0.97 before, just make sure you set the desired gamma from the command line (e.g. I use -gamma 1.1) otherwise it'll probably be too dark. Please also check the readme.

Btw, while playing through this map and reloading saved games, I noticed it's pretty slow to load even on a modern machine. I wonder if this is related to the SZ_GetSpace problem? 

Just as an example of how different systems have very different brightness, I use the above mentioned gamma 1.1 on my old Voodoo2 system but gamma 0.6 on my main GeForce3. This still yields pretty similar brightness using my GLQuake 1.20 in both cases. 

http://scampie.spawnpoint.org/maps/other/menk.zip 

But like others I also found the ligthning to bland.
I just played through it again after running ligth with aguirRes suggested settings for the original light. It was very good I much prefer this light setting over the one in the zip.

Other than that I really enjoyed the map overall - really good work PuLSaR! 

hated the lighting so I did what aguire said and compiled the light again. Looked a lot better, maybe the defautl settings just dont work with idgamma.

Anyway, fantastic level! The design is great and it's quite a challenge, I found it pretty hard on medium.

As for the textures, the originals are great but the conversion to the quake palette is not too kind. But they look better when you recomplie the light, the cartoony look is less pronounced than with the default lighting.

good work pulsr, it would have taken ages to build this beast. 

Wow, this is enormous! Gameplay was great - monsters kept popping out all over the place - I would have prefered a bit more health/ammo overall though.

Architecture looked very impressive, huge and complex, a feature no doubt enhanced by the rather busy looking textures, which I thought looked great btw. I'm afraid I have to echo the familiar comment about the lighting - it needed a lot more contrast and it seemed fairly sourceless, like a sort of washed out radiosity effect.

There was so much to look at in this map - I was particulary impressed by the striking visuals in the Crystal-Maze-like jumping/mover puzzles. Little touches like the dead marine at the bottom of the pit showed great attention to detail.

Excellent work :)