Nice work. 

very good style, JPL. I liked the visuals and the atmosphere of the map. Got a very good sense of place there. Tho the gameplay was mostly rather easy, but it made a pretty nice (and unusual) atmosphere of walking thru half-abandoned castle.
Found 3/4 secrets. They were easy.

And I even managed to make one trickjump in your map (shortcut) but then I returned back to the main route.

I didn't find SNG btw, but who needs it when I have RL. I'm not the one who likes to place RL in SP maps, they work good only in the end of maps with a great horde battle (Kinn's marcher or Tronyn's latest maps are good examples of maps with good use of RL) 

JPL, this is one masterpiece. An exceptional combination of impressive architecture, texturing and lighting combined with sweet gameplay...all on one massive scale. I've not finished it yet, but have had no problems using the Tremor engine and frames in the 30-60range for an "ancient" 1.4 gig celeron rig. Quite impressive. 

I tested this map during development and the layout and design were great. After several revisions, the lighting improved dramatically and the result is a very atmospheric and good-looking map. It's worth exploring all the areas as that paves the way to riches such as the SNG.

I finished on Hard and had lots of leftovers. I have played this map many times during development so it does get easy with familiarity. The end battle was fun and if you spread out the powerups, it's not difficult. Just don't grab those goodies too soon.

I found all 4 secrets - the 4th was an extra for me.

Congrats to JPL for crushing my record 512Hr vis on one of my unreleased maps. Um, I don't think I'll try and dethrone you on this one.

Thanks to aguiRe for his help on this map and the resumable vis - the SPQ1 scene is getting maps that blow way past old limits because of his advice and tools.

Congrats JPL and great work. Let me help test your next project. Perhaps you can have someone write you a Vis JPL's Map screensaver and your next map will be compiled in only days. 

There is such a thing as a small ammo box, you know :-)

Skill 1
29:49
2/4 secrets
All monsters (177 iirc)

Played through again on hard and got al monsters again but the same to secrets, but I made the mistake of throwing a quad grenade at a vore I was standing next to so I lost all of my armour and ended up with just 2 health.

What was the custom progs.dat needed for? 

PulSar: read #36 for SNG clue ;) And thanks for the feedback

ZBREAKER: I'm glad it ran fine on "old celeron 1.4GHz" some people experimented low FPS, but with slower PC.. I guess CPU running at 1GHz at least is able to support the map...

Scragbait: I reply your email.. ;P... And for sure I will ask you for a next map beta test :) Thanks a lot for your help on this project, you rock ! BTW, the screensaver idea is cool ;P

Lardarse: Custom progs.dat is based on the spawn64 progs.dat. When you progress in the map, you trig monsters, and then you avoid packet overflow/edicts count issues.
Having all the monsters present ingame from the start of the map (regardless of the additionnal teleporters need, etc...), was not usefull: the map would have contained too much entities and may also generate edicts count problems..
so, just try to play the map killing as less as possible monsters and you will experiment massive packet overflow with FitzQuake very soon.. That's the reason of the existence of this progs.dat.
BTW, thanks a lot to aguirRe who provided me the file ;)
I also know small ammo pack, but I clearly know that most of the player are for sure more experimented and good as I was expecting... so it will be much more diffcult next time... believe me... o_O... OTOH, replay the map in hard, missing the secret, and I guess it will be another story ;) Let me know if it's more challenging then... 

JPL: It was still a nice level, and I liked the SSG practice on the various different monsters.

aguirRe: Would it be possible for you to send me the spawn64 source code? Playing this level has gven me an idea, and I don't know exactly which parts of the Zerst�rer source I need. 

I've uploaded the files (based on the original QC 1.06) here: http://user.tninet.se/~xir870k/spawn64_src.7z .

Build with proqcc 1.60. Please let me know when you've grabbed it. 

This should be fun... 

*Cough* 30 fps is bloody fine.

30 fps is not fine... come on man, be serious. This is Quake. The game was released in 1996. I better get 72 solid, or I'm gonna have a dummy spit! :D

30 fps might be borderline acceptable if the game and map are both superawesome, but, for me at least, its certainly not 'fine'.

Having said that, as long as I get 72 fps on my PC, I don't really give a shit. I don't know what the poly count was on this map, and I didn't need to check, because it ran nice and smoothly in FQ... so I have no need to complain!

Last time I checked, knights and ogres don't bunnyhop around you whilst popping off 180-degree mid-air rockets.

No, they don't... but I do. :D

Part of why I really enjoyed this map is because I was able to do just that. The items provided, monster placement and space gave me the freedom to dance around and use my deathmatch skills to dispense my enemies in style.

Wouldn't have been nearly as much fun with a bad frame rate. I guess its worth noting though that 30fps constant actually might be ok for single player... the real problem is extreme fluctuation in the frame rate (i.e. if its jumping from 30 to 60 to 10 to 40 or whatever).

If you do have a bad framerate, perhaps you can try capping your max fps to your average frame rate... is this possible in FQ? 

The map has been built with 6857 brushes...
After TxQBSP process I had:
38044 faces
10439 planes
33815 vertexes
13782 nodes
27641 clipnodes
7878 leafs
35183 marksurfaces (exceed the 32767 max limit)
119544 surfedges
63331 edges
138 textures...

;P 

35183 marksurfaces (exceed the 32767 max limit)

It makes me want to add another one (final) area to my map. 

So, where were the other 2 secrets? 

Where is the fun if I give you the clues for the secrets ?
If you really want the clue for all secrets, send me an email ;P 

... no seriously, I was joking... here are the secrets location:

- 1st secret is hidden under in the first water part. You have to shot the side "stained-glass" light of the grey bridge wall, the light will switch off, and the underwater secret is open: you will find a MH

- 2nd secret is in the 2nd cemeterry: there is a "little house", shot the door, you will find a YA

- 3rd secret is located in the church, behind the huge blue stained-glass windows "rosace"... When you re-enter the church on the 1st floor, (there are some HK there), shot the left part of the wall in front of the entry, an hidden door will open, and you can enter in a small area hidden by the 2 blue stained-glass windows: you will find there healths and ammos.

- 4th secret, the entry is in the Castle, under the platform where the command button of stair bars is located. This entry (closed by 4 little metal bar) is opened when pushing the church button (on the first floor). You will find healths, ammos and RA.

Enjoy ! 

Now I have to remember to avoid reading your post, as I never found all secrets (1 to go). Will be looking harder on my next run through 

Wow. This is a really really well done map JPL! I've never been happier that someone didn't finish a map on time...what a waste it would have been to stop at 1000 brushes!

Pros:

Curvy, awesome architecture, with well done "castle feel"

Excellent rocks and terrain throughout

Lots of neat trick jumps with the buttresses and other angled parts

Big size, with tons of varied battles and enemies.

Good pace.

The blue fog was really well done...subtle...and certainly added to the feel of the map.

Cons:

Felt a bit too arena-ish...there was some verticality certainly, but the way that the castle was setup, you sort of don't feel the sense of interwoven z-axis. Kinn's map was like this too, and I guess you can't really avoid it considering the scale. So it's not really a "con" I guess, just a differint style of gameplay.

Overall:

Awesome map that everyone should play.

Too much ammo! I had like 20+ rockets left over at the end on hard...and was never close to being out of ammo. 

Too much ammo! I had like 20+ rockets left over at the end on hard...and was never close to being out of ammo.

Goes under cons, not under overall!

Also "a different style" 

a pity i didn't have a chance to do this earlier.

i hope i can somehow manage to get this thing to my pc at home - maybe i'll try one of these ancient little plastic squares people used to store their data on in the last century... ;)
(i hope i still have a drive somewhere around) 

buy a cheap usb stick. 

Well, as the zipped file is 3.34 MB, I guess you will have to split the files in several part and use 3 floppy disks at least...
OTOH, there are some old PCs (sorted before 1996... my parents have on elike this..) which have no USB plug...
So I really think you have to buy an new PC... though... ;P 

zipped it might be three disks, rarred it fits perfectly (on 1,5).
bambuz, i wanted to buy one a couple of weeks ago, but they are still too expensive compared to their memory size, so i think i'll go for a cheap mp3/usb 512mb solution soon... 

JPL, I am very impressed!
I enjoyed playing this map and I will definitely play it again a few times. The end battle was quite tough because I picked up the Quad too early (skill 2). The progress in the level was ok, I got lost after I found the GK. I felt quite lost a couple of times but it was ok. The architecture is wonderful, I loved that "notredame" thingies outside (ask if you're not sure what I mean). The monster placement and balance was great even though I often did not see a monster before it attacked me (see below). The flame/torch thingies (I should more architectural words) looked a bit artificial when there were few brushes/low polywork around them, but that's totally minor. The various buildings each had a total unique gameplay/feeling which I liked very much.

(I should write down things while I play, there was much more but I forgot it...)

What I did not like were the textures. Not for their overall look and atmosphere (which was great, even though I played without fog... Stupid me...). But for their washed out and totally "monster-hiding" colors! That's at least one point that made Daikatana a flop :D

I made a demo at the second try. First I died at the SK, then I tried with skill 2 again and recorded. About 25 minutes and a death at the end battle... Enjoy :)
http://www.quaddicted.com/stuff/spiritcda.dz

I'd give you about 7-8/10 stars. The textures and the very open layout were negative aspects for me. But a quality map overall! I'm looking forward for what comes next :) 

The flame/torch thingies (I should know more architectural words) looked . . .

As long as you don't make a habit of calling everything a buttress even when those things are not supporting any other structures, you will do fine. 

I wondered about your answer first, it sounded quite sarcastic to me until I looked up buttress in a dictionary. Mmmmhh, what a nice word :)