I think with Drake, impulse 117 turns off music. You're free to find the first map frustrating with all the close combat, and the rain effect is subjective though I thought it added to the mood. As for the darkness, it sucks but it varies a lot from system to system... all I can say is it looked good on the systems I tested on. Thanks for the comments so far. 

and of course giant thanks to Necros for releasing this, as I'm across the country now and won't have internet access after tomorrow for quite a while. And lol, Pulsar, thanks for your patience! 

The darkness appears to be deliberate because all the screenies look very dark, too. But yeah, it's still problematic to get it right across all systems.

The rain... I can't get over that. Seriously, am I the only one who thinks it looks like some throwing nails from the sky? Well, that's just a minor nuisance, anyway. I'll try the other maps later on. 

as one of the guys here who's notorious for saying 'i see nothing but black and a few points of light' when commenting on screenshots, the darkness in the engine didn't seem to cause much problems for me.

i think i nudged quakespasm brightness up 1 or 2 notches and i use the wand for illumination (which is the intent, i believe?).

in some ways, i think it's unfortunate that arcanum1 is the first map. it's decidedly less impressive than the last 4. that said, i'm not a fan of the rain either. it's clearly falling in huge clumps and there's no rain sound. o.0
and yes, i deleted the arcanum1 music. it's not even that it's THAT annoying, but that the clip is so short, so it repeats very obviously.
the other ones were fine (and, apparently, some maps use the warp music AND cd track music, and they blend well together).
concerning that locked door after killing the zombies, when i was testing this again, i didn't pause on that one very long. i played arcanum1 like a few months ago i think, when tronyn released it as the arcanum demo so i already knew where to go. i should have hacked the counter to say "basement door has opened" or something though. that's my bad, as tronyn asked me to make any last minute h4x0r changes i felt were needed and i missed that one. 

Played maps 1 and 2.

Gameplay in map 1 is meh.

Spiders are meh.

Faggot wizard dudes are just nonsense. Boss one even worse.

Footsteps are annoying but get in enough combat and it's easy to forget them.

Music is an instant OFF.

Gremlins are welcome back!

New SG and SSG are good for combat BUT need new models.

Ruby wand is gay as fuck model BUT is excellent in gameplay. Charge up is fine, pushback is cool, lighting effect is very cool. A definite enhancement to gameplay and vibe being able to light up areas.

Rain is fine, best Quake can do.

First map is okay.

Second map is excellent and full of impressiveness.

Gameplay so far is....generally all good in the second map. Lots of variety, lots of action, lots of balance. 

It would be tremendously helpful to have a standard brightness/contrast/gamma test map. With both stock Quake textures and replacement textures (engines might handle them differently), if possible viewable at the same time (eg one half of the screen).
One or more spawnpoints that can be used to test specific things.

That way one could make people adjust their monitors or Quake settings according to Quake. Obviously the map and the guidelines would need to be created on a perfectly calibrated monitor and by someone who knows how to provide a good testing environment. 

You must have hit a nerve.

I agree with some of your comments, but yeah, the tone was pretty rude considering the effort put into the pack by everyone who worked on it.

My default opinion on anything that comes out is 'good' but this is better, at least so far.

The RMQ fiasco continues, don't worry. 

isn't indicative of later maps, in my opinion.

I like it just fine though - I think the rain, along with the trees, the lighting, the gameplay - it's less about lack of quality or polish and more about reaching towards a certain aesthetic, which I like. It's like playing an ambitious map from 1997 or something, with much of that wild creativity still intact - just much higher quality. Kind of like CZG03, but more E4... maybe that's a bad comparison, but you get the point.
Definitely though, it is less impressive than the later maps - and I really do prefer the more ambient, less overtly low quality music in those levels.

Also yeah, spiders were meh, compared to some of the others - I'm thinking Travail - I remember liking those notably big and tough spiders a lot. 

one thing that's good about the spiders is that they are very slow and not very dangerous at all.
i like that it's not psycho-quick and impossible to hit. 

is it possible to replace my map with newer version and upload a new pak? it has some visual bug fixes and minor ballance changes (also there are places that you can walk/jump easier. 

tho i haven't heard any flaws so far =) 

props to tronyn and everyone for for this impressive release! I'd been looking forward to this since seeing the original arcane wizard screenshots and it was awesome to see it happen.

map 1 was the weakest IMHO but still good. I got stuck at the same place as when I played the demo (took me ages to find the silver key room when I first entered the basement- I think it was around a corner that's really hard to see.) Also I couldn't fit though the hole in the floor at first. I wouldn't mind more maps using bolder music like this, especially over-the-top doom inspired ones. It reminded me a bit of some of the music in the DVII doom mod.

map 2 was really sweet. solid knave map, really polished. restrained compared with what is to come!

map 3 & 4 started to get insane. I felt each could have been the finale of any other pack. The blue theme looked great. These maps may have had the most buttons/doors of any Q1SP ;) In places the visual or gameplay polish wasn't up to the standard of the best recent releases but the awesome scale and atmosphere made up for that for me.

map 5 wicked theme. satisfyingly over the top conclusion. I have to play it again because I couldn't quite make it through the end battle.

the drake mod is pretty cool - I like the beefier weapons (chainsaw, riot controller, although it would have been cool to use the zer model for that). Did the SNG have an even higher fire rate? Probably too much normally but it worked here :-). 

Continues the general greatness (+annoying wizards) of map 2. Still a bit dark to fully appreciate the designs tho. Some classic gameplay moments there. 

I've been trying to finish this all day. Though the gameplay in these is somewhat restrained by Tronyn standards, that final fight is basically impossible for me at this point!

I think the riot controller actually was in the original Arc Demo - definitely different than the drake shotgun which is merely 2x as powerful (I think). I would have preferred the riot controller though - it's my favourite since it does the double tap thing, allowing you to juggle between enemies - really fun to use on groups of less powerful enemies etc. 

just tried again, but something weird is going on. when I try to load my saves all the models are screwed up - the invisibility powerup is a lightning gun, and all other models are wonky too - any idea what's going on here? 

sounds like a bug in the drake mod. i dunno if PM is hanging around these days, but he might have to look into that.

this kind of thing happens when models and sounds aren't precached in the same order. basically, the engine just assigns a number to represent a certain model or sound, but these numbers are set incrementally as the engine sorts through the progs and sees a precache function call. if the precaches are not being loaded in the same order, then the saved precache numbers won't match.
...... i think.

so yeah... i guess i'm not all that helpful here, sorry. afaik, there's no way to fix that kind of thing once it has. 

I must say I had no issues with the pak being overly dark, never once used the wand for illumination.

As for the rain, it fit into that particular map's aesthetic as someone else said. Not to be used universally though.

Maps 2-5 are seriously special IMHO. 

if anything's broken, it's certainly not noticeable. 

That`s too bad, since the boss fight is the kind of thing that makes me ragequit, hahaha! 

hehe damn.
i suppose you could just noclip back there and impulse 9 it, but it's just not the same. :P 

What others said...

Just my complains about this shity music that ruins the first map.... Overall great atmosphere, great map, well executed... some areas are too dark, but it is manageable.. Got lost many times, but rewarded by secret finding during "additional" exploration...

Tips and Tricks to prevent from music: Just Quick save, and reload... the music vanishes away ;) 

Wow!
I spent the better part of the weekend playing this monster, and thought I'd share some impressions.

I first run through it on normal skill, wanting to avoid ragequit (I like that!) like with the ARWOP boss battle (which I have not completed yet, and will not even try again) and I must say that gameplay is A WHOLE LOT more balanced than per usual Tronyn's offerings. I restarted on skill 3 and, up to map 4 things are totally manageable, and that's great!

Secrets are coherent and not overly mind bending, a bit more variety in items contained may offer some gameplay twist, but they're quite good as they are.

Architecture is as wonderful from map 2 onwards as it is flawed in map 1. Rain and trees look like they've been built in 1996 and the whole map has a similar feel to it. While I'm a sucker for a classic vibe, I think map 1 is just too far behind in build quality and overall effect to stand comparison with the quality of subsequent ones.

The first zombie battle remains seriously flawed as it was in the demo (and, having already been pointed out how this did not really seem to work, one wonders why this has not been taken care of), playing it on skill 3 the only gameplay ability required is a very fast quickload finger...

There's an area, behind the tombs on the left where the zombies stand that you cannot escape without noclipping, and it's rather easy to fall into it since killing the zombie requires jumping on top of the coffin.

ROT 13 Spoiler complaint:

Gurer'f rira n fvzvyne vffhr va gur cragntenz frperg va nepnahz3, orybj gur EY, jurer lbh pnaabg trg bhg bs gur cbby (b qvq V zvff fbzrguvat?) nsgre pbyyrpgvat gur frperg, juvpu vf rzcgl naljnl. Nyfb, gurer'f n frperg qbbe va gurer gung vf fhccbfrq gb or xvyyrq gung vf rira npgvingrq ol gur znva cragntenz ohggba naq pna or irel pbashfvat...

So, while this is surely a stand out pack, it still feels unfinished and unrefined in places(not in Pulsar's, even though he seems to think differently). Maybe holding it back a coupla weeks more wouldn't have hurt, after all...

Going back to find last 2 secrets in Arcanum4 and then... Arcanum5 Nightmare!!! Brrr... me shivers! 

The swapping models bug can be overridden by trial and error, restart the game, executable or the whole system. Worked for me... 

Slightly confused having just beat it. So I took on the 5 wizards which was a pretty awesome battle. Then i'm going upwards getting more weapons and powerups, then a machine comes down which I shoot once, door opens and it's the end. Was there a big end monster that failed to spawn??? I didn't think the wizards were actually too difficult, especially if you have full cells.

Anywho, awesome pack! Didn't really care much abotu the rain and darkness in the first map - it's over pretty quickly. Love seeing blue theme awesomeness. I'd comment more but I've gotta get up in 4 hours lol 

thanks to all involved in this pack. i'm still somewhere in the middle so it's too soon for final conclusion, but it's good so far. my only complain goes to the first level. don't get me wrong, but this level is horrible. i'm not talking about gameplay. i managed it through the zombie battle - it wasn't enjoyable, but i can live with that - and continued to the basement section when brutal fps drops begun. my pc is old, but still i'm able play most of the q1 stuff with darkplaces without much problem; even big maps like day of the lords or menkalinan.
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but this one... i don't get it. even though this level is quite small, it became absolutely unplayable after i entered the "celar" section. i tried different engines - fitzquake/directq - and it improved situation only slightly. i have fps 80 (directq) one moment and 2 fps a second later. eventually, i used cheats to get to the second level in which fps is fine. first level seems to me somehow broken.... it behaves like fast-vised only.
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diferent note:
music is annoying (can be deleted)
rain is ugly (i wish it could be deleted)
from the second level onward it's pure gold.
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jakub