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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
jakub 

On Fitzquake when I enter the first level I just get this error :
numgltextures == MAX_GLTEXTURES

Ok, sorry if I'm an idiot but how do I solve that? 

Reduce the number of GLTExtures obviously.

N0000b. 

Map 4 was mostly excellent. The main room was probably the most epic seen in a Quake map for complexity and gameplay. I found some texture combinations a bit rich. Exit room was cool but a bit detached. In the main room I managed to curve jump from the top of the spiral stairs to the big platforms opposite and did a lot that when, then fell off and couldn't repeat the jump lol. Good gameplay as usual.

Map 5, the lower bit was awesome, one of the evile-ist bits of Quake I've seen in a long time. Spot on fucked-upness. I actually - shock horror - really liked the red spawn. Possibly because they were changed for a purpose and not just show off "Omg we can change a skin colour so it looks shite and have nothing to do with Quake". These actually worked. Especially when I stood on an upper ledge and gibs kept raining down and I kept panicking thinking they were Spawn dropping on me. The rest of the map was good but not as effective atmospherically, I wish the two sections had been reversed for impact. I god-moded the final battle cos it was going to bore me, but it didn't seem too appallingly cheesy.

The wand was still cool despite model still being teh ghey. In particular running into a Vore on a narrow ledge and simply kicking it off with full charge, muchos fun.

Nitin if you think these maps aren't dark, your settings must be fucked and default Quake maps must look fullbright to you. 

Sorry I dont speak the elite nerd-language. I'm just a casual player that comes here once in a while to check out new levels for my favourite game occasionally - and rather than insulting me why not explain how to actually reduce them instead of pulling a tamtrum because not everyone knows Quake's command lines/code. I'd take it Teaching wouldnt be your choice of dayjob huh? ;) 

Well spoken. Indeed, most people here aren't teachers. The tone can get pretty rough. Ignore it, since rebelling will just waste energy, trust me I know.

Shambler doesn't get the opportunity to say "n00b" on this forum often, so he jumps at the chance. 

first level seems to me somehow broken.... it behaves like fast-vised only.

Not vised at all actually. :( 

to mh: you are serious? :-) 

The first level was awful - constant slowdowns even in fairly small rooms ruined the gameplay and atmosphere. I don't even care about the crummy music or the rain, but the slowdowns hurt it :( 

I thought it was obvious that post couldn't possibly be a serious insult? 

to mh: you are serious? :-)

Quite serious. I've just run it under a debugger in Bengt Jardrups Engine, Fitz and DirectQ and none of them pick up visdata; l->filelen = 0 in Mod_LoadVisibility.

Also checked the leaf visibility offsets in Mod_LoadLeafs and they're all 0 or -1. Definitely not vised at all. 

that's bizarre, if it isn't then that's a mixup/fuckup and the vised version must be sitting on my hard drive a few provinces away. Oh well, seems like people would generally rather skip the first map anyway.