THANKS A FUCKING LOT necros, NOW MY MAP LOOKS EVEN SHITTIER THAN IT DID BEFORE.

Seriously though, this is pretty damn breath taking, might even kick Marcher out of top place for Most Epicest Map Ever award, if it existed. Your skills are truly humbling. 

I think it should be clear by now that anything released by necros is going to be outstanding, and this is no exception.

I don't know where to begin. The great environments, the new and altered monsters, the gameplay, the level details, its all fantastic. I'm having trouble finding any sort of criticism, but the only thing I can think of is not using more of those doors like the silver key door. That made my jaw drop the first time I saw it :)

Even though I'm not a huge fan of colored lighting, I didn't find this bad at all. It really set the mood to the theme, a theme I've never seen done before in Quake, but you pulled it off nicely.

My final verdict: Play this now. Its incredible and hopefully we'll get to see more of it in the future.

I included a first run demo of ne_ruins, but not the start map, as I didn't know at the time that the start map played a crucial role in the gameplay, before and after.

http://qrf.servequake.com/~orl/misc/orl_ne_ruins.7z

Great job as always necros :) 

seems everyone has said everything. I thought there were more than enough regular enemies in this, and REALLY enjoyed everything about it. Seriously, if you watch my demo all I say is "awesome" or "Jesus, fuck" over and over again. Congratulations on releasing a more or less definitive release Necros, even if it isn't 'quake'. Definitely good enough for me. I actually would have liked it if there were even more wandering before combat began in earnest, with more grenade traps, and etc.

Another thing you might notice is that I accidentally skipped out on a part of the map, activating the GK lift before properly exploring the gears area. don't know what I missed, but I'll make sure to check it out the next 10 times I play this!

http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/demos/start_drew.7z 

and I thought the boss combat was the best thing evar. 

to play this uninterrupted.

These comments have me salivating. 

I'm just holding it back to savour everything properly... 

Don't really have much to add that hasn't already been said, pretty fun!

I really liked the outdoor areas with the cliffs and snow, the crisp and clear textures, the mountains and constructions in the distance, and of course sloped terrain that allows you to gain speed! Always great.

I also enjoyed the main (underground) part of course, lots of room for movement and different maneuvers. Fast zombies were hilarious and fun to fight, especially considering they went down with one shot with whatever weapon, even the nailgun.

The only thing I thought was a bit "meh" was the final boss fight in the void area, as I basically resorted to just waiting out in the healing pools while the boss did his thing, jump out and fire at him a little, and repeat until he died. The mechanism and moving parts of the architecture was pretty impressive, though.

Here's my skill 3 demo, though I forgot to restart the recording once I reached the final map, so no boss fight:

http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/demos/ne_ruins_bern.7z 

I did both skill 0 and skill 3 just now on 2 trys and one of my only real complaints is that there was hardly a difference between the skills. I took quite some risks a the end fight ignoring the stone golems (did pick up a ring at some point) getting close to deliver that punch with that shotgun. As berntsen said the endfight is a bit to easy , especialy since the void is safe to

Didnt find (nor look hard) of the secrets, maybe thats the hard part :) 

well sort of atleast, if i dont kill the hordes my quake behaves like it has parkinson, so just the first finish i got and no optimusing :)

http://members.upc.nl/verorber/ne_ruins_orbs.dz 

...just WOW.

Necros, yours are the fingers of god... 

of progs and the theme is awesome!
Really enjoyed this one...
Necros anyone?!? He wins... Hehe 

i run it in darkplaces so wery impressive, thanks a lot for having fun especially for me since i very love hexen2 )) 

orl, you're lucky i made a final pass and added extra ammo! it's not normally balanced to kill all the tarbabies! they don't count for kills, but i guess you just couldn't leave them be knowing they're in there. ;)

drew, i only got to see you play the start map. when you went into the end level trigger, the engine seemed to load the next map fine, but then it just skipped over everything and started up again when you returned to the start map. :P
still, it was fun to see you take on the boss!

berntsen, pretty meticulous playing. :) also, i didn't realize it was possible to make the jump from the stairs to the ledge for the RL secret without ramp jumping! i used to have to ramp jump UP the stairs then curve back around to land on the edge. hence why you get the RL (i figured it was a serious trick jump so probably only speed runners would get it) but then you just jumped up there like it was nothing. lol!

optimus, badass quad rj up the tall shaft! :D about the slow down, the pathing ai is pretty rough on the engine and the further you are from a monster, the longer it takes for it to get a path to you. so yeah, whenever there's hordes of zombies, i kind of had to force the player to kill them. for speed running, it's probably not really an ideal map due to it's enormous scale as you just have these long treks across the rooms. still, it was worth it just for that quad rocket jump. when you took the right turn to the shaft without getting the GK and you still had the quad, i was like, 'huh? yeah!' ^_^;

i run it in darkplaces
i'm happy this worked! i was worried there might be something gamebreaking in it as i never tested it heavily, just ran through once or twice. 

they don't count for kills

Now you tell me?! 

maybe i should have added that in the achievement. "...even though they don't count for anything."
sorry dude! :( 

i had to test to see if the "jarbabies" had any effect on monster count ... once i saw that they didn't, i avoided waking them. 

...last night, then discovered I'm going to spend a good while enjoying this, so I'll be revisiting it this weekend when I've got some time and mood lighting. 

You know, when I finished the map and read the congratulations, I hit the jump key as usual.

And the jump sound reverberated in this dark space. I hardly understood that if was not a real feature but just my impression getting so high.

Thank you Necros. 

*it 

do you have to dis/re for that as well? 

most of it has been said but I think the greatest thing about it is that it should never have possible in quake's limitations. That was the thing that struck me most.

No wonder zwiffle is depressed :) 

dpmod
fog 0.1 1 1 1 1 64
and

{
"classname" "info_notnull"
"mins" "-2500 -3500 0"
"maxs" "0 -2000 2000"
"absmin" "-2500 -3500 0"
"absmax" "0 -2000 2000"
"nextthink" "0.1"
"think" "snow_think"
"dest" "0 0 -100"
"count" "1000"
"cnt" "13"
}

results in snowgasm (and low framerate):

SPOILER, do not watch these if you have not played it yet. Seriously, you will regret it.

http://www.quaddicted.com/stuff/
ne_ruins_snow1.jpg
1 to 5! 

Others have pretty much voiced my opinions, hopefully I'll get a review posted up on my site soon though. Pretty sure I set it to and played on skill 2, demos: http://taw.duke4.net/rqr_ne_ruins.rar (ps: messed around a bit too much with the silver key gate in the 3rd demo, only then realised the neat effect!) 

Every once in a while a spectacular map comes and reminds me that in Quake, possibilities are endless. Upon loading the map I was struck in awe - sure, I've seen amazing vistas before... but that early evening sun smoothly falling upon the vast, snowy landscape - was this really Quake, that fifteen year old love?

I am generally irritated by poorly done additions to the stock bestiary but this time, all the custom stuff and the little touches felt right at home - great work as always, Necros. I was getting ready for a combat-heavy setup (thus opted out of recording a demo) but pleasantly surprised by the Hexenesque, adventure-like flow of the map. By the way, the outro is without a doubt the best I've ever seen in Quake and added much to the satisfaction of having experienced a work of art.

Congratulations. 

but that early evening sun
fuck, i forgot to credit hipshot for his awesome skybox! :x

that's miramar. if you want to see it in original form (i compressed the tgas to save space) get them here: http://www.quake3world.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9242
there are five fantastic skyboxes he made, all in high res!

I was getting ready for a combat-heavy setup
yeah, i'm starting to enjoy slower paced gameplay now. i guess i'm getting old, lol!