Such a nice work, cant wait to see his entire death brigade in action! Wow!

Incredible architecture! Reminds me of Gremlins Keep, but in a more epic castley way! I ate up every arch and corner. The texturing was superb!

I didn't care for the stealth too much (kinda the point but just my preference really), but playing through both ways was equally impressive. The secrets were well hidden yet consistently so. The only thing I didn't really like was the red fog of "stealthed". I feel that it should be the other way around...red fog when visible! (or maybe just black fog when stealthed?) Either way, the ai additions were intriguing. The monsters follow you! No not like usual, not straight towards your location but around objects that are in the way. Pretty sweet!

Most impressive though were the new models for the knights and ogre, adding more detail but not too much more, and also the special effects! Particle effects on powerups, teleports, summoning circles, letters floating out of books! Oh I'm still geeking out about it!

Try it try it!!! 10/5 hearts for me!

Epic

It competes with any game designed for stealth in gameplay, and it adds a whole new dimension of atmosphere to quake

I keep coming back to this mod/map pack and seem to find something new to like about it every time.

Initially I was not convinced by the stealth mechanic, but once I figured out that running and hiding after you've been spotted reactivates cloaking and that your regular arrow supply is unlimited (which could perhaps have been indicated more clearly -- although there is already an extensive built-in tutorial section, so maybe I am just slow on the uptake), I fell in love with it.

The replayability of this pack is amazing, as each of the maps (including the start map, once you finish one of the other two maps) can be played from start to finish in either mode. I only recently played through the start map in stealth mode, and I love how even the "Well of Bones" section has been designed to accommodate this gameplay mode.

The monster modifications are great. I love the death animations where knights drop their swords, and how nearly all of the monsters look slightly different, yet stay very true to the Quake aesthetic -- although some of them do end up looking a little hunched (not sure if it's because of the shoulder spikes or simply because of where their shoulders sit). The improved path-finding AI is of course remarkable (and scary, when you first experience it!).

As for the maps themselves: the plentiful secrets are a lot of fun, and I love the remix/homage aspect of the two "main" maps, but I think it is above all the architecture in the start map that impresses me every time I see it. There are a few Quake maps where I just cannot wrap my head around how the authors managed to bend and curve Quake geometry to their will (The Marcher Fortress being the prime example), and this is one of them. The fog seems perhaps overly thick, but then again, it does make sense as it serves as an immediate visual indicator of whether you are or are not cloaked.

I really hope this project has not been abandoned for good (these things sometimes get "un-abandoned", so here's hoping). I would love to see more ITS-type stealth maps.

Just a thought, but if sock is not planning to continue work on the mod, perhaps at some point the rest of the mapping community could create additional maps for it? It would perhaps be too intricate a project for a map jam, but perhaps a longer-term collaborative effort, similar to the Rubicon Rumble Pack?

Look here:

<p>http://www.moddb.com/mods/arcane-dimensions</p>

currently under development, coming soon.. (we hope).

Markdown is hating me..

Not Sock was trying to link to Arcane Dimensions. (Now let's hope I got the MarkDown right!)

Thanks for the link, not sock and MikeTaylor. I am aware of Arcane Dimensions and am very excited about it, but to the best of my knowledge it is (despite some similarities, such as the very Quake-y modified and new monsters) an entirely separate project from In The Shadows. Most importantly, the stealth gameplay which is central to ITS will not, as far as I know, be part of AD -- but someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

AD has nothing to do with ITS, there are some shared assets, but nothing else. AD is a different code base and a more frantic gameplay setup.

The ITS mod was born from my passion of stealth games and wanting to creating my own system. All of the maps are designed to be played 3 ways; vanilla quake, stealth and ghost run and this is ultimately the problem (and likely the number one reason) that no one in the right mind would make any maps for ITS!

I do have another version of ITS with more assets, maps and stealth features and some day I will finish it, but for now it is a backburner project only.

You'd be surprised! (re: no one in the right mind would make any maps for ITS!)

Absolutely floored by the quality of this map pack/conversion. Just experimenting with the different play-styles and approaches, learning and unlocking areas of the maps is a treat and a pleasure to play.

It gets that risk/reward balance so right between hunting an enemy down, distracting and rushing them and looking for ways around.

I kinda of always considered this to be a prototype for Arcane Dimensions. Lots of the same assets, some similar themes. The maps are "just" remakes of id maps to test out the architecture and textures, etc.

But yeah, I'm not really digging the stealth gameplay. Ditched it pretty quickly, even though I'm a pretty big fan of Thief, Deus Ex, Hitman, Splinter Cell etc. Just can't imagine playing "stealth Quake". Why bother, when you rather just shotgun everyone to death and be awesome.

However, I quite liked the extended story. Quake could work well in a fantasy setting with a hub and minor item puzzles, a bit like Hexen 2, but not as pronounced. E.g. you start in a village and need to find a bomb to blow up a hole in the castle wall, so you go to the mines, kill people, find the components, go back to the village, make a bomb at the blacksmith's, then blow up the wall and enter the castle etc. I'd love something like that.

Well, after 5 years... Did Sock ever did a full ITS mod?

How to play stealth mode? Do I need to wait 100500 seconds when enemy will move out? Do I need it before entering every room? In classic mode I can kill all enemies and after that I can explore level without eny stress. Can I explore level in stealth mode?

I'm coming to this very late for some reason -- brought here by the relatively recent release of Deufel's Barracks. I'm with the faction here that is uncomfortable with stealth mechanics in Quake, find the match an unnatural one. BUT the actual levels still play excellently as regular Quake levels (who would expect anything less from Sock?), and I do very much admire the work that went into stealth even if I don't hugely enjoy the result.

I did a quick check and it seems to work under Quakespasm 0.94.7 and QuakeSpasmSpiked 0.92.3.