Love Labyrinth

I am not a mapper but I have the impression that the map uses progs_dump in a very good way. I really liked the visual change from many classic maps. I found the difficulty level on Hard very suitable. Always crunchy but never unfair. After the last fight I would have been happy about a possibility to go back to look for the last secret I didn't find on the first playthrough. Thank you very much.

Nice V-Day Map, with cool Secrets and Easter Eggs.

It's great! Has a gameplay feel akin to Sacrilege, and shows the strengths that Progs_Dump 3 has to offer. Plus, it's just nice to see a Valentines map for Quake

Had a blast with this map. Really awesome to see progs_dump being used the way it was intended. Not drastically different from original Quake gameplay, but allowing room for totally creative and original ideas.

Notes on the 2nd version:

I thought the combat was aggressive, in a good way. It suits my play style, and I didn't find it too hard, but I had to play smart. Ammo was just enough to have to manage it, but not struggle and be left high and dry.

The last battle still felt a bit too cramped for the boss type. If the area were expanded, the author could have thrown in more enemies and let the boss really shine.

The vore after getting the gold key was the only thing I disliked though. Its bounding box is way big, and even though the area around it is wide, the player still can't get up close and run a circle around it, which I tried. And I died because I couldn't fit to run around the vore. One might say that I should stay further back, but the problem is that the area around the vore is all water, which slows the player down. The only real option then is to peek-a-boo from the previous room, which I don't enjoy.

Apart from that, super solid map. Fun brushwork. Good combat for a quick fix of Quake.

I love your oversaturated synthwavey cosy gothic style Shadesmaster, it's such a distinct and consumate aesthetic. Harks back to that lurid millenial emo-goth vibe and it's so nice to experience a castle fantasy aesthetic in Quake that isn't one of the typical grimdark / lovecraftian / Blizzard-adjacent styles.

Absolutely adored the heart-shaped pick-ups — these work so well! The default progsdump models are IMO completely out of step with the resolution / detail scale of Quake, even with the most fine-brushed AD; these follow the extruded 2D glyph pattern set by standard runes and power-ups though. You can read them at a glance without them looking fiddly or artistically discordant with the surroundings. Nice!!

Think the whole thing could really become spectacular with a bit more finesse on lighting and colour though:

Some hearts are very pointedly turquoise: these stand out against the standard palette more than anything else… but they're standard health vials just like the red ones? By comparison, items like the silver key, pentagram, other significant pickups… are very difficult to differentiate from surroundings. Overall there's a lack of semantic (ie way-finding) and compositional contrast lighting. There currently seems to be just global lighting and a handful of very small localised lights — maybe some more of the latter in slight hue variations scattered about the indoor areas? I also felt this a bit with Sacrilege and Testament: very strong artistic vision with hue and saturation on a general level, but I end up with cognitive strain because eg the contrast between skybox and general brushwork completely overwhelms the visual distinctions between the various elements I need to discern in combat, geometry and path-finding. I'm convinced this could be corrected without cramping your style with a bit of vis work but I'm not technical enough to describe exactly how haha.

Anyway it's always a joy to see more of your work, you've got one of the strongest artistic visions in the community.

BTW I find this and Sacrilege play really well with Bandither, the extra crunchiness gels really well stylistically IMO and helps with visual contrast strain. Do you have a particular engine / video config preference?

This map is a tad excessive on the encounters. Having now been pitted against 4 Lieutenants in a mostly open arena, that might've been one too many.

The colours are a great touch although this map is too dark in the default brightness setting. It really shines with higher brightness and more contrast. It was a good idea to make heart-shaped health pick ups.

It's great to have custom enemies in progs_dump included in the map. Thanks for the healing pool BTW.

Easily faaar above average map. Encounters maybe a bit simplistic. But visual style is sooo unusial that it make you feel looove.