Boy was this worth waiting for!!
Thank you all! 

I didn't even notice that the pack was released. Thank you for your praise UWF. 

i submitted it as offical news but it hasnt appeared yet here or at planetquake. 

I shall pimp this @ Map-Center too. It's Q1 section is mostly a token gesture, but it's worth pimping the hell out of this pack.

Necros: you scare me; your maps have hardly anything right-angled in them. They're alive. They bite. 

ahh mine came last, not surprising :P

distrans map was wicked.. looked really original.. realistic. only problem was i kept falling off though! my own fault i guess!

the jesus map was kinda weird with the messages that came up.. difficult, but in a good way... had to keep running around to avoid the spawns and try & yse them to blow up the zombies. again looked cool and original

necros map i didn't really enjoy.. probably cos of my bad experiences with it :) its good though, had some nice architecture and layout, but i didn't really like the gameplay

pushplay.. holy shit this map looks good! i thought the others were cool but this is like twice as good looking. kinda reminded me of one of the space maps in q3 with the platforms, only alot better :) loved the vertical style too.. was fun to play

tyranns, i didn't like as much as pushplays.. was kinda cramped, i prefer maps where you can run around dodging enemies.. this was tricky. it was kinda small too? still it looked great, especially since it uses the stock textures.. very nice use of them :)

thanks all for helping make this pack what it is.. i very much enjoyed it as a whole :) 

I mirrored the download for all the FP haters out there.

http://www.cursesandepithets.com/quake1/pushcoag/agulacontest2.zip 

i know what you mean about necros maps...they have something special dont they?

Looking forward to reviewing nesp09 soon. =) 

Thanx one and all and kudos to UWF. 

some good stuff here. Individual comments :

pushcoag : very nice. Decent architecture and texturing and nifty lighting. The gameplay's pretty sweet and it's an original idea done well. Probably the best of the pack. Major gripe is stuttering framerate.

tyrcoag - I really wanted to like this but the tightness in some areas and the ease with which one can fall into the void brought it undone for me. The brushwork and texturing are fantastic, without much of a hit on the framerate. Lighting is excellent, very old skool in parts but excellent in general. The dark, moody lighting did make it a bitch to spot scrags though, since they disappear in the black background sky anyway. The tightness, as mentioned before, made the gameplay frustrating parts IMHO but maybe I'm just not good enough.

discoag2 - too easy. That's basically the only fault of the level. Texturing is fantastic, far from the chaotic look of distrans' first and only prior level. Lighting and architecture are decent enough too. Some decent gameplay ideas here but since you couldnt fall into the void that easily, maybe more enemies would have made the gameplay more challenging.

jesus - I didnt like this at all. Crude texturing and average lighting with some rather basic architecture. Framerates were low throughout and the gameplay didnt seem planned out at all.

nesp10 - Like his previous coagula map, this just doesnt work for me. The architecture has some inspired work with numerous angled, detailed wall and roofwork. But overall, the brushwork feels too chaotic and randomly put together. I thought the gameplay was too difficult given the tight layout and low framerates.

chain3 - I liked this probably second best along with tyrann's and distrans' levels. Gameplay is challenging but not unfair and I like the architecture and texturing. The lighting could have done with a lot more contrast. 

UWF: If you haven't fixed the download link, do so by removing "planetquake/" from it.

Second, in Win- and Tyr-Quake, Pushplay's map crashes with "Bad surface extents." Any idea what's causing this? 

Yes, the five other maps are all good. I really liked "The Vertical Mile" - good, original stuff.

Fatty: not sure - missing a texture maybe? 

what awesome maps!
they're all really great! what fun! whee!!! :)

i'm a little pissed off though, since the original stipulations were that the map was supposed to be good in both sp and dm. and i actually bothered doing dm mode, testing, adding extra shit, etc... don't get me wrong, i'm not pissed off because i didn't win, i'm pissed off because i made an effort where none was necessary. ;) 

read the original post... the 'Rules!?' section ;) 

it was changed i tell you!!!

:D

i think i'm just stupid. ;) 

i think i'm just stupid.

That's okay; we think you're just stupid too :) 

High quality stuff here. I liked ChAiNeR's, Distrans' and Pushplay's maps best as I prefer brighter maps with more space to move when fighting. All maps were great fun though.

ChAiNeR's had too much ammo/health (at least in Normal skill) but as a player you always have a choice of not using ammo/health or heavier weapons.

I had some problems with Distrans' map as I couldn't find a way to get pass the wooden bars at the top without trick jumping from the tower. Also, the last red button couldn't be pressed or shot, so I wonder what's the deal with that? Exiting could be done without any of these maneouvers, though. What gives?

Pushplay's was very original, as mentioned above almost a Q3A feeling (or possibly SiN for the textures). Very nice. It's however not playable in Win/TyrQuake which actually was one of the requirements of the contest.

The error message "Bad surface extents" usually means that there's a missing sky/liquid texture, but FitzQuake didn't have any problems with it, strange.

I tried to rebuild the map and then it was loadable in TyrQuake so I don't know what's up, maybe a sky/liquid texture with unusual proportions? I'd suggest Pushplay might try other build tools to see if there's any difference.

Both necros' and Tyrann's maps were very dark and pretty cramped at places which made combat overly difficult IMHO. Especially in necros' map there was a severe ammo shortage at times and the Deathknights/trigger_push area was awful.

However, both maps were certainly a challenge and looked very good. Tyrann's map had several great secrets.

All in all, a great effort and well worth waiting for. 

Could you toss me a copy of your rebuilt PUSHCOAG? I'd like to have a squiz at it. I opened the damn thing in Quark and it didn't puke at all. 

My quickly rebuilt version is not cleaned up at all, I don't know if there are gameplay issues with it. However, it does load in both Tyr/FitzQuake, has no leaks and is fastvised/lighted.

In any case, wouldn't it be better if Pushplay had a chance in fixing it up using the real source map? In any case I need his permission before distributing my rebuilt version. And I rather rebuild it using the real source map if he's willing to share it. For a fast rebuild, it's only a couple of minutes.

Pushplay, what do you think? I noticed in the map that you've used the sky texture also for the large trigger_hurts, I don't know if that could cause the error message in WinQuake. It's easy to fix anyway. 

that's what i get for not beta testing at all, eh? :D

sorry about the trigger pushes everyone!

btw, does anyone know why in some places the trigger_hurt i put along the ground doesn't actually hurt the player?
i had to split the one massive trigger_hurt into tons of smaller ones, but even then some of them don't hurt the player... (try falling down between the blue wall before the exit and the silverkey island) 

Yes, I had that problem with my map too. I just played around with the triggers till it worked. I'd like to find out what the bug is though... 

I'd like to be able to say these maps were worth the wait...

...so I will. These maps were worth the wait.

Top work from everyone.

Chainer : Wow. Your mapping is really improving. I can't wait to see your next effort.

Necros : Real hard, dirty fighting, just what I'd expect from you. :-) But (to repeat everyone else) why oh why oh why oh why the push_trigger bit??

Distrans : Loved the skill 0 = no monsters touch. Beautiful architecture too.

Tyrann : I still haven't exited yet. :-/

Jesus : wept.

Pushplay : I'd love to see this map. I hope it can be recompiled for regular Quake.

Thanks to UWF for organising this little shindig.

If anyone's interested the first speedruns of these maps are already in at SDA... 

I've investigated some more and I'm fairly certain now that this is basically a missing texture problem that Pushplay might have missed in the compiler log.

There are two bad miptex entries in the bsp file that are likely to be the cause of this error. This in turn might be caused by an older compiler not handling texture names correctly.

This is also why my rebuilt map works; my rebuild process automatically fixes missing textures thus eliminating this problem.

Pushplay, a simple rebuild of the original source map with better tools might do the trick. Otherwise I can take a look at the zipped map if you send it over. 

The map was built in GTKRadiant and a wad file that I pieced together myself. I may have broken some unwritten rule in how I named files in the wad, because I'm quite certain no textures are really missing.

I couldn't test with software quake because it simply refuses to run on my system. No one who beta tested had any problems with the map, but I didn't ask which flavour they use. So if you recommend what the better compilation tools are, I'll give it a go.

As for the triger hurt, I noticed that if you jumped into the hurt and died, it may not remember to hurt you next game. My guess is it's a bug in the code where the timer betweem hurts fails to reset. I got around it by simply stacking two trigger hurts on top of one another. 

Take a look at http://user.tninet.se/~xir870k and since you're using GtkRadiant, you might want to check out http://industri.sourceforge.net/howto.php?pg=9 as well.

Let me know if you need more info or want me to fix it up (just send me the zipped map). There are apparently a number of people that are eager to try your map out in Win/TyrQuake. Let's not shut them out. 

It just occurred to me; you haven't used texture names longer than 15 characters, have you? Some of the texture names that I found in the bsp are pretty long and some ends in a '_' character, which is unusual.

Older compilers don't check for that and if you exceed this length, there might be unexpected behaviour and data corruption.

Specifically, there could be texture name mismatches that might produce these exact symptoms.

Using the tools above will tell you if the names are too long.