Hindsight is always 20:20 - but how was I supposed to know to save the pent before getting in the lift on the first run? 

when I looked at the .map files at the lack of detail brushes! 

There's a lot of teleporter problems in the standard .bsp version of the map. Lots of baddies telefragging each other that don't in the proper .pak version. Especially the final room, ogres and vores telefragging each other, almost the entire first wave of baddies telefrag each other.
(this seems to be even worse if you run the map in RMQ) 

@ricky, my point is why would you jump off a lift with three shamblers below? You had plenty of ammo to kill them safely from above. Also the pent is in the lift room, you don't have to save it!

@FifthElephant, the map architecture is so simple there is no need for detail brushes. Also AI in quake is really bad (navigation) around complex brushwork, I learnt my lesson with my ITS mod. 

I could see the shamblers, but I was running out of ammo for the SNG and I saw the health next to the wall, and I thought 'if I get to the bottom and run out of ammo, im fucked, so I'll go for the health, hopefully Ill have enough time to find some cover and some moar ammo' and jumped.

Ended up being not much cover and the bugger tagged me. Oh well. It was fun though :) 

just puts the brushes into a separate part of the compiling process so the vis times are lowered, they're still just normal brushes added to the worldspawn. Having faster vis times is a real god send IMO and as far as I know it doesn't really affect AI.

I'm messing about with the map to see if I can figure out why all the mobs telefrag each other... (and to admire the lovely brushes) 

@RickyT23, I wanted the design for this map to vary the normal fight patterns for the payer. Some fights require caution, some aggression, it is my way of trying to vary combat pacing and stop the player being bored.

@Fifth, the map takes 6 minutes to full compile, the right amount of time to make a cup of coffee! I rarely do full compiles, I compiled the map once in the first week of construction. Once you get an idea for how the scale of things are, you don't need to compile much. The real time sink is lighting, I probably wasted hours trying to get that right.

I checked the optimized version (1D) with Fitz 0.85 and Mark V and got no problems with spawning on any skill level. What engines and configs are people using that are getting problems? 

Make sure Quoth is not active. With Around the U Bend map it caused telefragging. 

occurred for me on the latest version of fitz *whilst using quoth* (reduces monster in-fighting, makes the game harder)... RMQ you get telefrag problems even without using quoth. (I know it wasn't tested for this anyway)
Also in the first wizard spawn room (when you pick up the silver key) you get a sv_touchlinks error. Dunno why this could be. 

Both of those examples (fitz + quoth, RMQ) are not vanilla GL engine setups. You should be using the original 1C version. 

The telefragging occurs because Quoth v2 makes point-sized triggers have a 64^3 bounding box if not custom value is defined. This causes the monsters in the teleporter closets to touch more than one trigger. It will be changed in the upcoming patch.

Works fine in RMQ for me.

I don't see how playing normal maps in Quoth cab possibly make them harder. Infighting is only disabled for the Death brigade. 

is why it's harder ;)

Besides, who says I'm not toying around with making myself a quoth version? ;) 

For the time being, the trigger issue can be work around by giving each of them a "mangle" "1 1 1" field. 

@ricky, my point is why would you jump off a lift with three shamblers below? You had plenty of ammo to kill them safely from above. Also the pent is in the lift room, you don't have to save it!

I did this on my first play through and then the pent ran out before the shamblers ran out of health and I died. 

Here is a collection of 13 demos from various people posting in this thread. The zip file is roughly 24mb, not a quick download.

Midnight Demos 1c 

recounting the shambler lift area... went well for me - drained all my grenades while lowering, knowing it was kind of dumb... didn't see secret til after doing that then slowly nailgunnig the shambs to death. then got it, and it kind of expired at the start of the arena... Which was very easy for me. Didn't use the spike traps for a while - assumed they'd shoot me at 1st... just kept circling round the room til I figured that out, then used them sparingly.

Like I said, 2nd run demo soon! 

The Shambler lift was about making the player panic and wonder what to do. The secret in that room is for the Quad (sorry not the pent as I said earlier), but the player will be distracted with the Shambler situation.

The hardest thing about Quake or any old game is players expection of how things work. It does surprise me why anyone would jump into a pit of lava and expect to survive, but that is Quake, driving into a shit situation and coming out smelling of roses!

The spike traps in the final room were the hardest thing to get right. I had the spikes on the ceiling (you can still see the holes) for a long time and I was forever moving the button around. It was touch/shoot button, large/small sizes and in lots of different positions.

Eventually the light bulb came on and I realized that I was designing the button for the player not a trap. I knew the monsters were in the middle most of the time and then I realized the spikes should be shooting that direction. Once the angle was right and the button behind it all clicked into place and became really good fun to use, for the player! 

I dunno as soon as I heard/saw them, I just started shooting them from the lift. That was my gut reaction. 

Same. 

"look before you leap" things gamers can never be expected to do. 

20 minutes, 4 secrets, 58 kills.

Didn't die on Easy.

Unfortunately it seems my demo didn't record all the way through, because of the map change at the skill selection thingy. :-/ So that pretty much cost you my demo. (I know negke is gonna say something about how that can be accomplished, but tbh I don't play Quake so often anymore and thus I didn't even think about that.)

Thank you for having an acceptable Easy skill setting unlike everybody else. It meant I finished your map without getting frustrated and still had time to look at the pretty brushwork & lighting. Thanks for the consideration.

Good map, reminded me of playing vanilla Quake, which I mean as a compliment. (It was still more like id Hard instead of id Easy, but I'm not gonna complain.)

It didn't occur to me that the blue window things were teleporters, and so I got lost for a bit. I also found the Vore squisher button and afterwards couldn't access the button inside that alcove because the squisher never went back up.

Found 4 secrets.

Needed 5 tries or so for the hop skip and jump part. I tried jumping from the alcove to the right of the window and just bumped off the ceiling there, which I always find a tad annoying - if you want people to jump, give them vertical room.

Got stuck right in front of the LG which almost stupid-killed me. Playtesting??

Still not a fan of the visuals, but then again it added to the vanilla Quake feel. Some nice brushwork in places and also nice routing when I wondered where the GK door was and dropped down right in front of it.

Still slightly too easy to get lost in, and slightly too easy to get hung up on architecture while dodging monsters - same thing I said about your mod's start map.

I played version 1d in Quakespasm.

Final battle was a bit hectic, because I kept pressing the buttons and monsters just kept NOT walking through the spikes. It's probably EASIER to not press the buttons there at all. It was also pushing the upper limit for an Easy skill fight. 

Is the thing that players never do. If they did, your map would be boring tripe.

Haven't played this yet, will have a run tomorrow hopefully. 

to read others opinions on matters of skill and etc.
gb, were you able to get the GA secret? 

http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/demos/mstalk_drew2.zip

generally played like a doofus, much less cautious than in 1st round. Definitely wasn't "clever" -- and so didn't die. 

took full advantage of the set up in the finale this time!