So it's fair to say that as far as reference for easy/medium skill balance goes these maps are golden then? :) 

I really enjoyed these maps. Usually I'm not a fan of base/industrial style (though I prefer industrial) but these I liked. Nice moody, dark, quakey atmosphere. I really have no complaints except that maybe it could be a bit harder. (I was playing on Hard). And its devoid of fiends/shamblers! I know it's a base map, but its still fun to throw in the occasional elder world monster. Base experiments gone wrong! :P

Here are my demos (I played in Darkplaces latest autobuild, used sv_protocolname QUAKE before playing to ensure the demos are compatible with other engines):

http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/demos/monster_rubicon2demos.zip

rub2m1 was my 3rd or so time playing, rub2m2 my 2nd time playing, and rub2m3 was my first playthrough! :D Suprised I survived... Congratulations czg and metlslime! 

I missed the Nailgun I think, which lead to an amusing and truncated demise. Found a couple of secrets. Here demo:-

http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/demos/rickyrub2_m1.zip

Please watch it and pledge never to hide the nailgun in such a place ever again!!!

Full review comin later. Metl/czg(?) do you mind if I put some streaming footage of me playing the map on my site? Will just be an NH demo probably. 

I found the nailgun in the first map to be a problem, too. I died due to lack of shells. Had a feeling though that I should have had the nailgun when I reached the dam section, but it took me a while to find and get it. 

Nice detail and excellent construction. The texture theme is sweet, except for the blue sky. Proper industrial vibe, very atmospheric. The additional steam, spark and sound effects added nicely to that. Crates and pipes ftw. (goes without saying). The new monsters are nice, not over the top or anything, though I expected Floyd to be smaller. And I always caught at least one of his shots...

Played on Hard and it was very bearable. Died twice on the third map, but it was okay overall - only the end battle is tough when one doesn't know what to expect. I suck at finding secrets, though... only 2-3 on each map.

I don't mind the maps being individual like that, but it might have been good if they all had some kind of story or something to bind them together ("retrieve object X" from each facility) and some sort of concluding event like a boss fight. Guess you'll have to make Rubicon 3 after all. Maybe by 2016.

Demos 

Guess you'll have to make Rubicon 3 after all.

Rubicon 2 turtlemap pack?

A Lost Chapters-like event?

Rubicondom 2? 

The maps are awesome all around. I finished all three on Normal and enjoyed them all, I already feel like replaying them. The highlights are the e1m1 homages, the "new" slipgates brushwork, the dam, and the chasms in czg's map. (czg: finish honey.bsp please) In fact there were many more highlights but I don't even know where to start listing them.

Minuscule, pedantic gripes:
- Centurions should drop more nails to be rewarding, I'm thinking 10-20? I also felt they could use better weapons, like grenades.

- Once a Centurion dies, the hoverboard verts could be hidden inside the body and a separate model could be spawned as a gib - right now, it looks a little weird when they die.

- As been said before, it was a slight letdown to see that the maps didn't exit into eachother. I wouldn't mind seeing them connected at the cost of losing my weapons (Quoth style).


10/10 stuff, this was very well worth the wait! 

I'll go into more detail about how the other 2 maps were for me later, but this is worth saying now:

Floyds should be DAMAGETYPE_YES instead of DAMAGETYPE_AIM, so that grenades bounce off them. 

I wanted to play this weekend, but the new Spartacus episode took me the time I had available sunday�
:(
Need one hour of peace, to proper play and record this jewel with no interruptions(hate to make pause in demos)... 

This was originally intended to be a 4-map episode long ago with a real plot and ending, but as time dragged on I decided to cut the scope down to just two maps (map1 and map3 were the only maps that really existed at that point -- and some random fragments.) The dam was originally intended for another level, plus there was a half-finished e1m1 remake. So I started merging things together -- the dam and the e1m1 start got shoved into map1, the outdoor part of e1m1, plus some other scraps, became start.bsp, which would lead to the two maps. And the dam was built before i saw the dam in Travail! I think the travail one is bigger.

Then as the new map1 got close to completion, it turned out to be way over the marksurfaces limit. So chopped off the entire last section (which was some concrete tunnels with steam traps, and a large outdoor area) and started to build a new map around it, which became map2. The steam tunnels now appear in the early part of map2, and the outdoor area that was the end of map1 is now the end of map2. And i added the third slipgate to start.bsp.

As for the lack of connection between the maps, this was part of "reduce scope and ship it already", it seemed easier to tune 3 separate maps than one big episode. Plus then i would need a boss or something to finish it off.

As for timelines, map1 was mostly built in 2002 and polished afterwards, map2 was mostly built in 2009. Development actually began in 2001 i think, but none of the brushwork from that era was good enough to keep.

Another note about my maps; map1 was largely grown organically with no real plan, other than the basic idea of spiraling up to the top of a tower (inspired by apsp1.) As a result the tower is somewhat confusing, but also interesting. map2 was designed on paper and built section by section in a planned way. I basically had a flowchart with a bunch of bubbles with text labels like "teleport hub", "robot lab", "turret lab", "helicopter pad", "4-story freight elevator", etc, (for each of these bubbles i had the basic gameplay concept in my head) and then built those sections in seperate map files and put them together. In the end i used about half of the original planned areas because marksurfaces built up fast.

The teleport hub was originally going to be a "teleport lab" where you had to repair each teleporter with electrical components collected from the previous area. I changed this to colored lasers because the "repair" idea seemed too complicated to tutorialize.

You'll have to ask czg for details about his map, but i know he discarded away a couple of partly-finished maps before creating the final version of map3. There was one or two from 2002, then there was one around 2005, i think, and then final one which he mostly made in 2010.

The monsters are also interesting. Floyd was the first; he was (obviously) based on the robot from Super Metroid, which is where his idle/pain sound come from. Floyd didn't change much at all after 2002 until last year, when I doubled his skin resolution.

The dreadnaught also was made really early (around 2002 probably) and at that time there were no flamethrower enemies in quake (quoth was not out yet, and neither was pbrsp1.) The dreadnaught was actually a standard enforcer model until sometime last year when i finally made and animated the new backpack and hose, and retextured him. There was actually a really old model i made of sort of a fat, linebacker-looking dude with a flamethrower, but i realized i do not have the patience to animate a human in qme.

The centurion didn't exist until 2010; I had for a long time wanted to make a quake enemy based on the "air centurion" from the Masters of the Universe movie, and when I finally had some momentum going again I realized it would be pretty easy to create a platform and modify the enforcer model to stand on it. 

Holy F**k!

This felt great.

These are Quake maps. These have the Quake atmosphere. These have the Quake Gameplay.

These show the very reasons why we're here, squeezing life from a 15 years old game.

Thanks guys.

(I'm on my 3rd playthrough, trying to find all secrets, gonna write something more about the experience later on) 

the outdoor area that was the end of map1 is now the end of map2.

"This feels like it would fit the first map well" was exactly what I was thinking at the end of map2 :D

When playing, I did wonder how much of these maps come from the beginning of the development, so this was a nice read. 

I thought this bit in map2 was funny:

No animals were harmed in the making of this 10 second demo 

I like the separate-map nature of the pack, actually, so one can play them in whatever order. I think I played the Subterranean one last. Felt OK to me.

I still think that there is a ... noticeable difference in feel between the czg map and the metlslime ones, which mainly comes from the use of heavy fog and Quake 3 style bottomless pits of death, which doesn't exist in all of the pack.

Having noticeable fog in the metl maps as well would have helped to visually pull the entire thing together. czg's fog is also very default grey.

Quake needs volumetric fog so doing the bottomless fog of death pit thing doesn't require the entire map (area at least) to be fogged.

This is the main criticism I would level at the visuals (plus ladders could have been less blocky, ne_tower has good ladders) - it could be overall more coherent.

Main criticism at the gameplay is the lack of heavy weapons in rub2m1, but this is a matter of taste. The only other thing is the turrets - it can take a while until one notices the buttons.

I don't have more to criticize :) 

Rivals and beats up Quoth in more than a few ways. The ambience of the two mods is quite obviously different, and it's nice to have some variety. 

it seems nonsensical comparing it to quoth; one is a map-orientated mod with a few extras and one is a generic expansion pack 

to compare this to Contract Revoked. 

0.27 0.21 0.229 you filthy heathen. 

... AWESOME !!! 

quake?
For mac?
-bambuz 

Awesome maps. liked the new enemies, especially the flying enforcer. he probably could have had cells though, at that same speed but similar damage to nails. Hated the turrets though... hope I never see those again.

The first map I liked... tight and a little confusing but looked good. The second map was bigger, but didn't look quite as good on a detail level, especially the central arena.

CZG's map was obviously the most epic. Great design and spot on ammo/health. I had plenty going into the 1st end battle but it was still quite hard and took a few tries. Final battle was too easy but at that point you didn't really need a second battle. Only gripes with this map were FAR too many tin cans (floyd?), they got old real quick, and the map was way too dark in darkplaces. Even in a dark room it was hard to see in places you didn't need to see, so it felt like the darkness was hiding the less-detailed areas. Still, i'm the only one that complained about that, so maybe it was more dp or my settings.

Overall great maps! 

0.27 0.21 0.229 you filthy heathen.

Haha. OK. 

I finished Rubicon 2 on Skill 2 and got all kills but more importantly, I found all 22 secrets in Rubicon 2 without cheating. If you like clever and interesting secrets with lots of variety and new spaces to see, this is a great map set. Some drove me crazy and took many revists to ferret out but they all were fair game.

Overall, I loved this map set and it stays true to the grimy industrial feel that is Rubicon. Layouts were complex and quite maze-like for two of the maps but that gave a stronger sense of being trapped in this hostile regime. I loved the dam in the Hydro map. Crates and pipes abound and fog creates a mood of menace.

Supply balance was good for the most part but I do recall on one of the maps getting thin on ammo. Health was good and on skill 2, no battles were impossible - some got intense but I didn't feel they were too hard.

The one thing I did notice was that on my PC (it is about 9 years old), the shoot function either didn't respond or lagged and often didn't sustain fire when pressed while fighting the defense bots and the disk men. Shooting was fairly normal otherwise.

Fantastic map set and I'd play it again. It's stuff like this that keeps Quake going and going and going... 

This is the best map pack in years, and I'm not just being polite.

Still missing a secret in each map. 

What's the recommended engine for this ?