Definitely a good experience. Played with DarkPlaces, enjoyed the fog, the windows, and of course, all the water... Something thats felt rather unexplored in Quake maps since e1m4. I was surprised to see the lack of bobbing crates, since Q2 did it fairly decently just using trains. It would be fun to see a map like this partially redone, making all of the crates with models and Twig physics so they bob and float about, defined by mass.

The map unfortunately, was a bit empty (played on Normal, since thats what I think of my skill level as) without having a 'desolate' feel like the id base maps, it was more so empty than desolate. I'd like to see more maps that have the same monster count, but the monster and item choices making for the difficulty. Perhaps fewer grunts, more enforcers from Easy to Normal for example. Speaking of difficulty, the lowest my health ever went was 76 which was a bit disappointing, maybe I should have gone for hard (and that drop to 76 was an accidental brushing against a crate in the water, just high enough, that my guy tried to do the 'boost out of water' bit, and got smacked in the face with a grunt rocket). Actually the most memorable fights came from Bob and the Scrags. The combat was a little too 2d most of the time, and the Edie was able to escape from his crate, but kept hopping right back into it, so he turned out to be completely painless, just a shell sink.

I enjoyed the sheer amount of detail, without any of the scenes ever feeling cluttered (I'm looking at you UT2k3 and onward) and no significant drops in framerate.

I loved the way the map reconnected on itself, but I was disappointed with the exploration, it was still linear, just if I backtracked, I could now more easily get lost by the connectivity. I'd love to see a map like this, with at least 2 or 3 situations that can be approached and solved from literally different angles and applications. The megahealth crate got me all excited, but didn't go anywhere (shoving me underwater and confining me like Houdini with lots of health suggested that you were going to fuck with me - the fucking with me consisted in letting me down and giving me a few grunts to pop after an uneventful crate delivery).

Lastly, the boss was cool, but... easy. I didn't grab the RA, and didn't notice the lightning gun until after I killed it... The 'dry spot' was very apparent to me, and I was completely invulnerable in there. I fired off my rockets, then my nailgun, and that was it. Seriously, I noticed the broken window and latter immediately, and decided to go for it... I think a good solution to this, would be to break the floor in the 'dry spot' into a series of brushes, each being breakable brushes, so as the boss fires up at you, it breaks apart the floor, and you gradually lose cover - so it exists as an advantage, and a chance to use the lightning gun, but it doesn't let you get away with simply chipping away at the boss.

I was REALLY hoping for some good gameplay in the long sloped flooded shaft, which looked very cool, but sadly nothing seems to have been done with it, other than making it a timed threat to reach another section of the map.

Definitely a great map, lots of impressive work in it, but the fact that it came so close to so much more coolness, and backed down from those moments, multiple times, kind of hurts it for me.

BTW, 51:03, 84/84, 5/8 - A good 10 minutes of that time was me recombing the map for additional ammo before entering the boss arena, as I was anticipating something a bit more structured. Nonetheless, despite my criticisms, a very worthy addition to the Quake single player timeline, and particularly to the base theme (and the vastly underused water theme). 

because the boss could still definitely fire at me while I fired at him. 

but it was completely ineffective, I never got nicked by even a hint of splash damage (thats a whole different meaning on a map like this!)

A few times I stepped away very briefly from the opening, but I doubt I would've been significantly hurt had I not. It was like fighting an Ogre trapped at the bottom of the staircase, when you're up top; just a suction of ammo. 

39min, 84/84, 4/8.

Yeah this is a really really great level, but at the same time I don't think it's the best base map ever. In fact, I even prefer apsp1. The build quality and detailing is great, the main elevator shaft is really well done. But I did get a bit sick of staring at those same brown textures all the time, and apart from the elevator shaft it was a little lacking in the set-piece aspect. It's not the kind of level where you think 'woooooow' and just stare at the design.

The connectivity was really good. I didn't get lost at all, but there were a few times where I wasn't sure how to progress. The damn MH in the crate stumped me, I didn't need a MH and assumed this was a secret to save for later. I didn't realise you HAD to take the MH to progress. Couple other times I was searching around but it wasn't too bad. Most people like non-linear, but I'm not one of them.

I remember at one point looking down to the final arena from earlier in the level and wondering if that's a secret area, and it would be very cool to get down there somehow. Nice way of capping the level off with the underwater boss. The gameplay was fairly well balanced, I never died or got too low on health. But at the same time there's not a lot of high paced action in this level, with the low enemy count.

Anyway awesome to see it Than! Look forward to you finishing the others :D 

For whoever complemented the modified textures before, here is the wad I used, which contains all the idbase textures + most of those used in other maps (by NotoriousRay, Biff and Gibbie I think) along with those I made for this map. http://than.quaddicted.com/files/idbase_ultimate_20091801.7z

Anyway, regarding comments, I kind of agree with those of you who were a bit more critical of the gameplay. Whilst I think I made a pretty decent level, I think it could have been better. I tried to take tester opinions into account, but perhaps I worried too much about lack of health + ammo in previous builds and added too much and made it a bit too easy on hard.

Also, some of the encounters are a little bit boring because I chose to focus on base only monsters and not use any (aside from scrags and vermis) other monster types. I knew about some of the problems with the edie fight, but chose to leave it because I wanted to use edie and there wasn't really anywhere else to put him. The vermis fight was kind of hit and miss. I really enjoyed ducking and diving around the crates to collect cells, but it was hard to balance the level so that there would be very little other ammo available and force the player to grab the lg and cells before going above vermis to kill it. Also, vermis doesn't attack the player when the player is above the water and just keeps firing at the last point it saw the player, which kind of works for the ducking in and out part, but maybe makes killing it too boring and unsatisfying - especially if one didn't actually need to get the lg.

One thing I was thinking about doing was using quoth coop flags to make a super hard coop mode using more of the id monsters such as shamblers and vores to toughen the gameplay up. However, by the time I had got the regular gameplay in with skill settings I was so fed up of working on the map I just decided to release it. In retrospect I should probably have ditched the dm mode instead, since it is a shit token gesture to dm players, and I know that it probably isn't much fun and nobody will bother to play it :/

Anyway, thanks for all the comments, both positive and negative. I shall try and make my next map a bit tougher and take the gameplay into three dimensions a little more than with this one :) 

I think there will be another base release fairly soon, but with very different gameplay and scale to this...

eh, Ricky ;) 

" In retrospect I should probably have ditched the dm mode instead, since it is a shit token gesture to dm players, and I know that it probably isn't much fun and nobody will bother to play it :/ "

I had that same thought the first time I read that you had DM support in here. That's way too much work for a community this small, IMO. Nobody will play a single player map in DM. They barely did when Quake first came out. :) 

If you ever happen to make a tougher Coop mode, be sure to remove the LG from the end :) 

There are many there which I have never seen before! I like the porn one :P 

I shouldn�t comment people maps that don�t make comments in others works, but i will put a short one!

Brushwork and layout amazing(brilliant)...

game play boring and frustrating...

another dis_sp6 nothing more!

Brushwork is a mather of time game play in professionalism 

You are a gaylord. 

E1M1 

i�m not Trinca!

calm down madman! 

because I haven't played that many recent releases. I have a lot of catching up to do :(

Anyway, thanks for the comments. I will try to make the next one more action packed and challenging.

That wasn't a sarcastic comment btw. Thanks. 

I found Normal quite challenging. Pretty much perfect. 

go and play Painkiller.

Seriously though I would expect a map about plumbing to be base around confined spaces, rather than open-planned horde combat. 

Nobody will play a single player map in DM

What makes you so sure? I do, for example. I also test maps in DM, instead of typing notarget. Unless I'm doing monster placement etc. of course. It's a good way to just look around the map and control traps, lighting etc.

I don't think it is very hard to add DM support.

They barely did when Quake first came out. :)

E1M2, ferrari, etc. 

OK, ALMOST nobody. 

...DM in SP maps is 99.999% pointless. Rubbish design for it and there's 20,000 much better custom DM maps anyway.

Spirit is also right, I thought the challenge was pretty fine on this one. 

me too, don't worry about it. i have this map and like a dozen or more maps from last year i have on my list to get to when i get time. 

i haven't even played the marcher fortress or travail yet! :( 

thing is player skill varies so much around here its hard to balance. 

the gameplay IS great, don't let them influence you, I think we quakers need this kind of gameplay. It's tense and challenging, rarely fast, but the claustrophobic setup helps to create a dangerous atmosphere.

Also I love when a custom sp has dm support. Sometimes I play LAN with friends and we play dm in various sps, especially the id ones, and it's another way of playing quake dm, you can hide and camp, or you can do ambushes, much more than in a "pro-dm" map. 

I agree with you completely. gameplay was interesting, for example sniping Edie cyborg from the rl airduct secret felt almost Deus Ex.

+I like DMing in my ejm2dm level (originally SP level, part of my miniepisode called In Ovo). pace of action is very different there. 

Gameplay was great. Monster setup perfectly matches the architecture.