Indeed, it's the perfect theme for Halloween. 

I had gray fog set in my map, but looking at the screenshot, red really does look better and suits the theme better. So when you get into jam3_tronyn, pull down the console and set "fog" to "0.13 0.4 0.0 0.0" (or at least that looks pretty close to the screenshot settings).

I am so looking forward to playing the rest of the maps. Congratulations to all the authors, and to OTP for organizing it! Great work guys it is seriously hard to believe that this has been one of the most content-intensive years for Q1SP ever! 

That was brutal! I played all of these on Nightmare and stremed the thing. It will be uploaded on my Youtube channel soon I hope.

Daz: I love the atmosphere here, it's proper zer. Cool layout overall, good use of monsters and nifty secrets (especially the useless one that's true to its name). The architecture is great for the most part, especially the central part. I especially liked the blood elevator. The ending is rather abrupt though. Good balance.

Ericw: Interesting take on zer, I like it a lot. It was properly brutal in some areas, especially the ending which could have had one or two health kits just before entering the final room. Architecture wasn't anything crazy but it did the job correctly and I liked the verticality.

Ionous: The most zer of the maps, I gotta say. Architecture was really gorgeous and really evil. Loved all these spikes and arches everywhere with the red windows. The main room with the blood basin was especially impressive. Gameplay is rather well balanced overall. It's a tad linear but other than that I think that one is one of my favs.

MFX: The king strikes back. While not as true to zer as, say, Daz's or Ionous', it is still properly evil and brutal. The rockwork is amazing, progression is cool and the secrets are, as usual, clever and rewarding (I especially liked the quick moves one). The skybox is insanely good especially, and all these floating rocks and moving parts were awesome. Lots of monsters to fight overall. Great woodwork and scaffoldings as well. I managed to "break" the map at one point but it's nothing too bad (just have to noclip a bit). My favorite of the pack.

Scar3crow: This is obviously a beginner's map but it was still funny and evil. I loved all the zombies, hacking through them with the chainsaw was properly satisfying. I especially liked the bloody vent that produced gibs after it was activated, hah! The map was visually plain and didn't really convey the zer feel but it's not too bad. The final arena on the other hand was a pain and not really fun, though I did like it when I panicked for obvious reasons.

Tronyn: Holy shit dude, how do you manage to create maps this huge so quickly? While having next to no zer vibe that was evil as fuck in its own way. The architecture and vistas are amazing! It really feels like a Doom map in terms of scale, it's quite something. While not as big as Something Wicked it's still goddamn big. The textures are very heterogenous but it works quite well. Good use of colored lighting as well, especially in some indoor areas, such as the libraries or the spiral staircase behind the gold key door. I liked the freedom you gave to players. The map was overall rather balanced with huge fights (seriously, all these zombies and grunts in the main area were really fun to kill), but the end fight is just way too hard. Had to godmode through it after several tries. In retrospect I should have left the quad and pent in the main arena alone, but oh well.

Overall, that was really really cool. Two hours of pure carnage in very hostile environments. 

I played your map with red fog and it definitely felt more sinister and evil than with the regular fog I got when I reloaded after quitting the game by accident. :p 

The fog is red on map start for me. 

since I already used it in ARWOP, Nyarlathotep, and the last map of Something Wicked; it's like it's my go-to evil move to make the atmosphere full of blood. But I could justify it in this map, since there's supposed to be rain and a moist atmosphere, pouring into a floor made of flesh, skull and bones, out of which the trees grow (thus the canals).

If the fog is red on map start that's great; it's probably because I only set the intensity, not the colour, in the map worldspawn, so it just uses the colour from previous maps/settings, as opposed to "neutral" (0 0 0 ) colour. Sweet! 

thanks for the feedback; I'm sorry about the ending. For future sufferers (lol at the whole crufixion idea in the Zer context), I included a secret in the end temple that could make it more doable. 

jam3_tronyn has a fog setting of "0.01" which seems to pick up the fog colour of the last map played (at least in fitz/qs).

Fun watching your stream, Skacky :) The pack looks awesome, I can't wait to play everything.

Also, I forgot to credit Quoth for the stars skybox my map uses, which I tweaked slightly to remove some jpeg artifacts. 

jam3_tronyn has a fog setting of "0.01" which seems to pick up the fog colour of the last map played (at least in fitz/qs).

Interesting, this is technically a bug in how fitzquake reads worldspawn fog ... 

 

Thanks skacky, yeah I skimped on visuals to get the entities close to done. Pretty much everything you see there, I learned to do right then and there. The Screw Cannon can be a bit terrible, but I was trying to avoid having any id weapons as far as I could help it.

The ceiling crusher was meant to keep the arena from being a continual circle strafe with in-fighting, however the whole rhythm got fouled up by monsters getting into the blood pool. Also, I had some messages not printing, which was frustrating to witness on the stream... Anyways, I wrote a post-mortem on the map and my mapping experience in general: http://scar3crow.com/2014/10/quake-map-jam-3-post-mortem/ 

Congrats to all, no time to play now though, soon! 

... unless a zerstorer map collection is the ideal way of introducing my 2yo to computer games?? 

Here's the twitch VOD on youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhZ0T_3e7r4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ifo4T1-xwY 

 

 

Played ericw, scar3crow's, ionous and daz's. Leaving tronyn's until I have more time.

otp you didnt have a map? 

jam3_daz - Best overall imho. Great balance of visuals and gameplay. Plenty of room to maneuver. Ran well even though it had a large open area. Only got lost once. Felt the most Zerstorery to me.

jam3_ericw - Had a lot of fun despite the ugly floor texture. Couldn't figure out how to get the Quad damage, but otherwise it was a fine map - ran well, played well, never got lost.

jam3_ionous - Tons of detail and atmosphere, but suffered from some gameplay issues. Kept getting hung up on awkward detail on the floor, especially near the curvy stairs, same with some enemies. Got lost because of the button in the water was small and hard to see - didn't make much sense that it was there or what it did. Got hung up for ~5 minutes because of that button. The gold door teleport/ambush felt bad. Looked great, but I felt game play suffered.

jam3_mfx - Looked great, ran terrible for me. I'm not sure if there's some trick or setting that I have to set to get these huge maps to run well, or if it's just my old computer, but this map stuttered consistently for me, and usually in the worst places ie ambushes. Got lost a couple times, first time primarily to the 'dead-end' that opens up when you get near it.

Got hung up on some of the little details - took a couple of Vore blasts because I fell into a little pothole or got hung up on some edge of something. Didn't feel too good about that. Great map overall with heavy performance problems for me and some awkward geometry which hurt gameplay a bit.

jam3_scar3crow - Not a bad map, but I couldn't beat the level because of some weird bug involving one zombie becoming invincible. The final assault went something like this for me:

Got Quad, killed first wave, ran out on second wave, died.

Killed first wave, got quad, missed some monsters in the pool, quad ran out, third wave, died.

Killed first wave, quad, killed second wave, fell in pool, couldn't get out, died.

1st wave, quad, 2nd wave, 3rd wave, spike ceiling out of fucking no where, died.
1st wave, 2nd wave, quad, 3rd wave, jumped in pool to survive spike ceiling, invincible zombie bug so I couldn't finish the map.
Moved on in frustration.

jam3_tronyn - This is maybe my least favorite map of the bunch. It's not a bad map, but it ran so terribly for me and I was so lost that it just became a slog to play through. Found 9 secrets overall.

The middle area was completely overwhelming. I just ran around like a mad man killing everything I could until it became a bit quiet. Only found the quad/pent secret after I had killed most everything. Killed I think 2 ogres and 2 grunts with the quad/pent. Felt bad. Got stuck in the little blood rivers more than once. Felt bad.

I'm not going to go into detail about why I didn't like this map, because it's not a bad map, I just don't agree with the gameplay or the performance. To be fair the stuttering could totally be just me, my PC, or my settings. Also, even with the quad secret, the ending felt frustrating. Died 4-5 times at the end. 

Bad performance in Tronyn's map is understandable, since the epoly reaches 100k in some places (one of them being the very start). But bad performance in mfx's is very odd. What's your engine? 

I'm using QuakeSpasm 0.85.9 with the commandline copied right from the Readme

-heapsize 65536 -game jam3 +map start

Video Options
1920x1080
32bit
Fullscreen On
VSync Off 

I was going to say try mark v but quakespasm handles mfx's map fine too for me. Regular fitz has some framerate problems in mfx's map and quite a few in tronyn's map.

Tronyn, in the readme it says your map does not work in fitz but apart from slowdown, it seems to run ok without any other issues? 

I may not have set Fitz right, but I used the latest version (0.85). I couldn't get it to load, but since it was just before the deadline I had to just assume people would use QS.

Sorry you didn't like the map Zwiffle. I was trying to make something Doom-style, but that design does not work in Quake the same way it does in Doom. 

It should help with the slowdowns in mfx's map. 

0.85 is extremely outdated by now. 

Glad to see you back on func, Zwiffle!

Now go map. 

I played all maps, and all of them are running perfectly well on my system (Mac mini 2009, OS X Snow Leopard, 4GB ram). Frame rate is high (animation is extremely smooth).

The map I prefer is DaZ's.

There's a huge hole on a wall in ionous's map (bottom of a stair).

I hate the flying wizard model. This model is so lame ! I much prefer the Quoth monsters. 

MFX's map runs fine in .9. Tronyn's map still has some hiccups, but performance is much improved, it was nearly unplayable before but now it's just some minor stuttering. 

When does this hit the Quake Injector anyway? 

When Spirit is done removing my name from all centerprints and readmes. 

Great results. Some impressive visuals, and good fun gameplay. Here are some shitty demos where I play terribly and die a lot (protocol 666).

ericw: Cool little jammish map. Boxed as fuck, though. Proper Zer style, seemingly simplistic but effective. Some turrets would have fit well, though I believe the map is ID1.

scar3cunt: Hooray for your first map. It does look like one, but that's probably due to the time limit. Bit of exploration for gear, good. Though the base part is empty and looks out of place. Zombie part is kind of tricky, because screw the Screw cannon! End fight is nasty - was the crushes really necessary? You butte. Anyways, hope to see more from you!

Daz: I had my doubts as making a map that evolves around a large open area or tower-like structure can easily lead to failure, but this turned out surprisingly neat, and especially considering how much time you spent on it (including the crunch pressure) and the fact that it was all improvised. The last areas show your running out of time, but it's not a big deal. Wrong rock texture though! By and large, a proper little turtlemap... IF IT WASN'T FOR THE LACK OF AN UNDER-LIFT SECRET WHICH MAKES THIS MAP SHIT AND GTFO!!!!

ionous: Pure badass! Probably my favorite map from the pack. The style and architecture is 200% Zer, so evil and uncompromising. Loving it! Shame about the portal errors (invisible faces/HOM). The rising platforms should have been hidden or somehow barred (or inside the hurt trigger), I think, because it's easy to get stuck down there as the button to raise them is hidden.

mfx: Another original level by the terrain and woodwork dude, Trenchbroom booth babe no.1. It's pretty cool, though movement is awkward. Believable, interconnected terrain, bloodfalls and red fog, good style. Also so many secrets... of which I found hardly any (I did find two more secrets afterwards). Not sure if a bug or I just missed something, but I encountered a showstopper at some point: the part where the ceiling collapses after you enter the area with the three rune buttons. I fell down and couldn't get back up to get the sigil.

Tronyn: Holy shit. Another one out of your not-from-this-world scrap treasure chest. It looks great, truly impressive vistas, and lots of good exploration. Performance was kinda bad for me too - not surprising in such a huge open area. Not sure, but I could imagine the rain makes it even worse. [Zwiffle, perhaps try and see if this ent file improves it a little for you (rain entities spawnflagged out)]
Gameplay is typical Tronyn extreme. At first I found it to be quite overwhelming, with projectiles and especially hitscan attacks coming from all directions. But to my surprise it didn't take long for me to get into The Tronyn Zone and blast through the hordes - I very much enjoyed this map! Thanks for NOT keeping the rocket launcher from the player. Throwing more than two Nemesis at the player is evil, though.
Is there a black wings powerup hidden somewhere? Would have loved to fly around. 

https://www.quaddicted.com/filebase/func_mapjam3.zip 

Actually no, please repack it with lowercase filenames for Linux compatibility. progs.dat and pak0.pak are uppercase which will be unusable for engines that have no case-insensivity. 

It would have taken you less time to do that yourself than it did to write that post. 

By the way, how do you play Quake, I wonder? You never posted any demos or videos that I can recall, but judging by your maps, you must be quite hardcore. I'm curious to see you play your own levels, Drake or otherwise! 

Whoever does the repack, make sure to include the Zer 1.1 update. Currently, the jam pack uses the old one. 

Really? I was sure I had it installed. 

Hi guys, thanks for feedback so far. Strange nearly everybody falls off the checker secret and survives..
The following noclipping was terrible to see in your demos.
I decided to fix this, proper playtesting would have avoided this mishap i guess. Thats an excuse.
Sorry.

I dont know how we handle this in the final pak file.
I found the clipping error in Ionous map too, the map is too beautiful to not have this fixed. I say this having not spoken to Ionous by now.
So..

Anyway, heres the link to my fixed map, the crusher doors open now right after you passed them .

jam3_mfx_fix.7z 

Someone broke Quake Injector ... Database Parsing Error!

Line : 4936
Column : 37

The entity "ouml" was referenced but not declared.

Also, unicorns. 

When I release Drake I'll include some demos of playing my own maps; probably forest of flesh, nsoe3 and/or masque. I tend to play in a really chaotic and disorganized way, I like the freedom to just run around killing stuff. On the other hand, no map is too hard for PM, because he's patient and he actually thinks and strategizes while playing. 

jam3_daz:
Very enjoyable, atmospheric with the red fog and the central structure looming over the map. I enjoyed the fight by the silver key; the waves of enemies just kept on coming, to almost comical levels.

jam3_eric:
A fine entry. I found myself hopping all over the architecture to track down secrets that weren't there. I'm surprised you didn't you monster_ME here; he would have fit right in.

jam3_ionous:
This only scratched the surface of my original plans, but I'm pleased I at least produced something.
I had meant to 'hide' the platforms with a black func_illusionary, but by the time I remembered I wasn't up for working on it anymore.
The HOM is unfortunate, but I don't know how to fix those. The architecture is directly mirrored from the other side of the floor, which works perfectly fine, so I don't know man.

jam3_mfx:
The cream of the crop. I'm rather amazed you finished this in only, what, two weeks? Hugely atmospheric, great skybox, a unique beast. Truly you are a Quake carpenter. I did end up having to noclip past the moving wall...
Only found 3 secrets, but I'm sure a second playthrough would yield far more.

jam3_scar3crow:
Congratulations for finishing. There were some nice touches here (the teleporting at the spikes), but the finale made me gnash my teeth.

jam3_tronyn:
There are some fantastic designs here, doubtless, but the hugely open-ended nature of the map, and the monotony of the encounters grew thin quickly, turning it into a joyless slog. I don't know how you fit this within normal Quake limits without using BSP2.

I have demos, I just can't remember the Quaketastic login. Anyone? 

http://www.quaketastic.com/files/jam3_ionous_demos.zip 

My map originally looked like this:
http://i.imgur.com/NnsfpBy.jpg 

A good pack of maps, and a good reminder of the cool shit that was in the Zer mod. Everyone always talks about the Riot Controller, but the Chaingun I always loved because it made the 2 nailguns functionally different, and it was nice to play with it again.

I'll give some quick comments here and I have demos for them all except ericw because I forgot to start recording on his and ended up talking to myself the entire time :_(

jam3_daz
I liked the vibe of this map a lot, but the combat often felt a bit slow and standard and could've used a few more set piece scenarios, and especially a more bombastic ending. Still, the center tower was cool as hell and I enjoyed swimming in it :D

but, no elevator secret nor dogs, -1/10... but you did use a tarbaby in an evil way so I guess I am required by law to bump you up to a 11/10.

jam3_ericw (sorrry no demo :_(((((( )
I'm glad someone made a really evil 'brutal base' map, as those are what I remember most fondly of Zer. Fun map, but pretty straight forward, and ended a bit too abruptly (many of this jam's maps did that it felt like)

I discovered one of the elevators is magic and it's shaft floats to get the last several units of height!!! ...but since I forgot a demo you will never see it. Nor how I tried to avoid a vore ball jumping over a pit, got hit by it anyway, and then fell to the bottom floor.

jam3_ionous
I REALLY REALLY liked the look of this map, and I liked how you didn't screw around and got right down to combat. A real shame about your technical issues dragging down your enthusiasm, because this map was pretty cool. I'm glad you used the Head powerup, if only in a secret, that was fun to get to use :D

jam3_scar3crow
omg first map!!!! Did you teleport Romero from 1996 to make your map for you? The idbase areas felt a bit out of place, so I almost thought this was more 'classic id Quake' rather than 'zer', but oh well! I liked mowing down all the zombies with the chainsaw!

jam3_tronyn
Also a map that didn't feel 'zer', instead this was 'doom 2 city maps'. I really enjoyed this, though I am not usually am not into Tronyn's maps that much. Mowing down tons of grunts with the chaingun is the best feeling in the game.

I died my first two times starting the map not realizing the hornet's nest that would be awakened by running through the open area, but once I got going, it was fine. I think I would have preferred some more regular health pickups in the map and dropped one of the megahealths, because I often found myself low and with nothing to pick up after combat, but overall it was fine.

Oh, and I should also mention that the colored lighting use was excellent. It's very saturated, but it was used very well and in good combinations. Enjoyed it a lot!

jam3_mfx
Just awe-inspiring. The atmosphere, the layout, the gameplay... everything was excellent. Fantastic work, hurt only by the bug which I see you've since fixed. The biggest thing I saw in this map was how well planned your combat scenarios are, and it was very much a treat to play.

And honestly, this should be an inspiration for mappers, rather than a road block. Year and a half / 2 years ago, no one ever heard the name MFX... Each of his maps has been an improvement over the last, and you can tell he strives to overcome the bars set by others (namely sock) until here he is making some of the best Quake maps to date.

Great work! 5/5 pack! 

A good pack of maps, and a good reminder of the cool shit that was in the Zer mod. Everyone always talks about the Riot Controller, but the Chaingun I always loved because it made the 2 nailguns functionally different, and it was nice to play with it again.

I'll give some quick comments here and I have demos for them all except ericw because I forgot to start recording on his and ended up talking to myself the entire time :_(

jam3_daz
I liked the vibe of this map a lot, but the combat often felt a bit slow and standard and could've used a few more set piece scenarios, and especially a more bombastic ending. Still, the center tower was cool as hell and I enjoyed swimming in it :D

but, no elevator secret nor dogs, -1/10... but you did use a tarbaby in an evil way so I guess I am required by law to bump you up to a 11/10.

jam3_ericw (sorrry no demo :_(((((( )
I'm glad someone made a really evil 'brutal base' map, as those are what I remember most fondly of Zer. Fun map, but pretty straight forward, and ended a bit too abruptly (many of this jam's maps did that it felt like)

I discovered one of the elevators is magic and it's shaft floats to get the last several units of height!!! ...but since I forgot a demo you will never see it. Nor how I tried to avoid a vore ball jumping over a pit, got hit by it anyway, and then fell to the bottom floor.

jam3_ionous
I REALLY REALLY liked the look of this map, and I liked how you didn't screw around and got right down to combat. A real shame about your technical issues dragging down your enthusiasm, because this map was pretty cool. I'm glad you used the Head powerup, if only in a secret, that was fun to get to use :D

jam3_scar3crow
omg first map!!!! Did you teleport Romero from 1996 to make your map for you? The idbase areas felt a bit out of place, so I almost thought this was more 'classic id Quake' rather than 'zer', but oh well! I liked mowing down all the zombies with the chainsaw!

jam3_tronyn
Also a map that didn't feel 'zer', instead this was 'doom 2 city maps'. I really enjoyed this, though I am not usually am not into Tronyn's maps that much. Mowing down tons of grunts with the chaingun is the best feeling in the game.

I died my first two times starting the map not realizing the hornet's nest that would be awakened by running through the open area, but once I got going, it was fine. I think I would have preferred some more regular health pickups in the map and dropped one of the megahealths, because I often found myself low and with nothing to pick up after combat, but overall it was fine.

Oh, and I should also mention that the colored lighting use was excellent. It's very saturated, but it was used very well and in good combinations. Enjoyed it a lot!

jam3_mfx
Just awe-inspiring. The atmosphere, the layout, the gameplay... everything was excellent. Fantastic work, hurt only by the bug which I see you've since fixed. The biggest thing I saw in this map was how well planned your combat scenarios are, and it was very much a treat to play.

And honestly, this should be an inspiration for mappers, rather than a road block. Year and a half / 2 years ago, no one ever heard the name MFX... Each of his maps has been an improvement over the last, and you can tell he strives to overcome the bars set by others (namely sock) until here he is making some of the best Quake maps to date.

Great work! 5/5 pack! 

all bow down 

A great piece of work as always! Skill 1 demos are here: http://tinyurl.com/mjju33q 

Does it work now? 

negke - It does, thank you! 

Daz's favorite map from the bunch is "Dollar Non Collar" 

And he managed to even break the fixed version! 

And missed one of his own secrets in his map. 

Is the title of your map a Bloodbath reference? 

Yes it is. I was listening to them some while mapping. So it was that, or Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation, because I was also listening to Viremia. 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/33279452/jam3demos_daz.rar 

I can get all the maps but jam3_mfx to run. Using qbism super8 engine cause it runs the best on my pc and I like it the best in general.

Anyway, the map loads but then the second I move forward, it freezes and crashes. 

 

 

 

 

@legend:

My map executes the r_skyfog command via a hacky trigger right at the start. qbism doesnt know how to handle this i guess. sorry, please use QuakeSpasm.

@oldone:

Cool down. pentposting is funny, quadposting just sucks. 

He's right tho. 

 

I had much fun. Red fog and blood fountains FTW. 

Oldone might be a posting fucktard, but he has a good point about how good this year has been for Quake. 3 great map jams and 1 great rubicon pack, plus whatever else I've forgotten (surely some other sock stuff and mfx stuff at least?). Some seriously impressive and varied stuff in the releases too. 

Jam 1 = 12 Q1SPs
Jam 2 = 8 Q1SPs
Jam 3 = 6 Q1SPs
RRP = 3 Q1SPs

+ numerous standalone releases. That's more than we got in 2012 and 2013 combined! 

thanks for the info. unfortunately, my pc doesn't seem to wanna run quakespqsm for me. :( oh well. Running 5 outta 6 ain't bad.

It would be nice if these map jam packs had a central start/hub level to make it easier to play the levels instead of having to type the map names in the console. Or even a simple menu interface for selecting them. Even stringing them together as an episode. 

 

@Legend: For all the work these guys go through creating such awesome Quakery goodness... I think "we" can go through the "trouble" of typing in a console ;) 

Is there date for the next map jam?

I'd like to participate in one but I've missed two now because I check here so infrequently :( 

But I'd like the next jam to happen only after the Mapcore compo. 

Great maps by all, enjoyed them very much. mfx continues to amaze, and is the most zersorster of the pack. Tronyn's map I think did capture the fast paced Doom feel, theres hardly a moment to catch your breath, just the way I like it. Scar3crow's map reminds me a lot of the first maps I created, brings back good memories. I enjoyed the look of Ionous' map, the many red windows and lights, very moody.

I recorded first run demos but I don't think anyone is gonna watch them considering they were recorded in an engine that nobody likes.

Terrific maps by everyone, a real treat for Halloween. 

This is a test build to support r_skyfog.

http://super8.qbism.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/qbismS8-testC.zip

Not sure yet why it spams the value to centerprint, but seems to work. I'm not promoting that the super8 engine supports the pak... if you like the look and it works, count it as a blessing. I'm still looking forward to the chance to play through the pak beyond 'derp'. 

Very impressive! Would like to see the verdant green remix as well! 

http://www.quaketastic.com/files/jam3_daz_ijedemos.zip 

 

 

well that was an experience. i won't select certain maps. i just wanna say jam3 totally shifted my mind for several days so i return to it with the urge to replay no matter what map. all maps have their sweet spots.

i salute to jam3 authors and wish them well.

here's the track to support the map pack: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K3SBNdZCZk 

Dear holy crap mfx, am I even playing quake? Amazing map. I've also enjoyed daz's eric's and ionous's, I guess I mostly agree with the other comments. I also spent a long time hopping around on ledges that did not lead to secrets on jam3_ericw and swimming around in vertical blood on jam3_daz :) 

this album received the most amount of play during mapping (though far from exclusively).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgghSkLkviM 

proper musics! 

Fuck. 

no fuck. 

wololo 

I'm still playing around with Daz's map and grenade jumps. It is a fun map to play normally, but it's also kinda fun to try to speedrun. Though to be honest, by kinda fun I mean some of these grenade jumps are just too hard for me dammit.

What I wonder is can you make a grenade jump from the button that extends the bridge below the exit to the blood liquid next to the exit?

It feels to me that the bone bridge and the exit are too high to grenade jump to directly, but the blood groove could be reachable and I in fact managed to make one grenade jump so I touched it briefly, but not enough to actually swim into it. Most of the time I either don't get enough height to reach it, or get too much and collide with the bone bridge instead.

Can anyone make a little demo showing off their grenade jumping skills and reaching the exit from or near that button, or even from the bridge that you have to wait for a bit to extend? It would set my mind at ease to know that at least someone can do it :) 

I did it on my first lazy try but failed the next 10 times and gave up :P 

http://www.quaketastic.com/files/demos/speed_runs/jam3_daz-Nov-10-2014-184852-SpiritQuaddict.dz

Feels like one should be able to directly reach the exit if you are super good. 

 

Thanks for all the demos! I tried to keep speedrunners in mind when I designed the central area. It's left intentionally open so that people might find some cool routes.

I'm glad people enjoyed the level. I was super rusty with all the Quake entities so I wanted to keep the level fairly simple in order to finish it in time. A lot of you noticed that the quality really tails off at the end and you are correct. The final area with the sk lift -> bridge extension -> spine bridge to exit was made in about 40 minutes and it was about 2:30am at the time! I had to finish the level off and go to bed :)

All the demos have been really interesting to watch. A lot of you seemed to get a little confused after going into the gk door blood maze and opening access to the sk. I think the issue is that it feels a bit weird using the blood elevator a second time to get to the sk room. If I had repopulated the areas leading to the blood elevator I think that would have helped a lot, but I also think there should have been another shortcut that got activated once you reached the second floor of the main arena that allowed fast access back to the second floor. Perhaps barred stairs that become unbarred when the player hits the switch in the blood maze.

I wanted to do more with the swimmable blood as well in the central area but just ran out of time. It would have been cool to have areas coming off of that central structure that were accessable by swimming in the vertical blood gulleys and perhaps an overhead horizontal blood gulley as well.

Lots of ideas for the next map anyway ;) 

Since the wateralpha from quake.rc completely nullifies the surprise Shambler in the blood elevator.

Then again, Zer *does* have an entity that allows you to set it, so... ;-) 

Thank you for the demonstration. 

I should have looked at the documentation for zer in more detail. The Shambler still works in a way - the player gets to think about how to deal with it before they engage! 

i have so much to play! 

I didn't say enough first time around. But this is a great pack. Great theme, mostly great adherence to it, great variety, good contrast to the previous jam packs, and a few very fine maps in there too. Pity more people couldn't enter, but those who did, well done :).

Demos here:

Sorry no Tronyn as I only have 80 GB left on my HDD. Most demos are excessively casual and skin of teeth, apart from MFX's which is excessively slow and I still only got half the secrets.

Maps:

Ionous - very cool, luxurious detailing and design. Well balanced and good fun gameplay throughout the map. A bit dark in places, that's all.

EricW - crudish, but effective. Very nice to have a space floater, works well with the zer style. I quite like that it's mostly progressing through one big cube, perhaps this motif could have been taken further. Well balanced gameplay throughout.

Scarecrow - a bit too crude overall, the designs of the first bit and zombie section were nice tho, and the end arena was fun.

Daz - great stuff, probably the most Zer of the lot, the central structure is amazing and the red fog and industrial look is good. The side areas feel a bit bolted on in comparison. Fun gameplay but not as exciting as other maps.

MFX - quite incredible atmosphere and style. Another great map that pushes Quake into another dimension. Gameplay good and quite tricky, secrets trickier.

Tronyn - ridiculously epic. Chaotic mish-mash of textures and designs, but great fun overall. 

Are often better if you actually include them:

http://www.quaketastic.com/files/demos/shamjam3_demos.zip 

Great map Daz. Loved the shambler. 4/6 secrets i think. Eric's was huge! Entered Tronyn's... God. Am i ready for this !? 

havent played in ages so will take me a while to get some demo's done (got one so far). on that move on daz, yes you can easily reach the exit from there, basic rule of thumb if you can reach it with a rj you can do it on a gj to. Working on aroute for that map now. was hoping to snatch the 4rth secret from this thread :) 

http://members.upc.nl/verorber/demos/j3_orbs.rar

daz: slow lift start makes it frustrating to run a lot, especialy since i wanted to do 2 gj's on 100 hp (or better a double gj) and there isnt any health around at crucial point. gj 3 and 4 can be done in once, thats a pretty tough one
eric:was first trying to voreball jump from GA when i discovered this route, wich leaves health for a ogregj start, but they arent positioned nice enough for me to try.
Ionous did this one on normal skill to get a helping hand :)
Mfx forgot to change back skill setting, was screwing up the rocky stair part a lot!
Scar3: Geez i suck with that cannon couldnt get near as fast killing the zombies with it as goign al the way around getting the chainsaw and do them one by one
Tron: didnt change client nor settings for epic big maps, so played rather choppy. but could find a pretty easy route 

Cool run Orbs. Sorry about the lift :) 

Putting in secrets tagged useless is a great incensitive to proove the opposite. Did you realy think it was useless or did you try to "hide" it?

Improved tronyns by quit a bit, updated the download. 

It was very late and I wanted a secret in plain sight and thought it would be cool to put one on a support up there. There was no regard for game play in it at all hence the "useless" secret :)

So cool that you proved me wrong :D 

speedrunning always looks like magic to me.. especially those GJ's in Tronyn's and Daz's maps! nice skip through the teleporter on mine :-) 

After a break from Quake what a pack to be played...

thank you all for these fantastic map.
love then all but my favorit were mfx just didn't like to be stuck in 4 walls :| but the rocks are so dawn awesome...

demos...

Daz, played your map was with darkplaces so first demo got really bad lag :(

http://www.quaketastic.com/files/demos/tr_jam3.rar 

ericw- love it, closest to the zer feel IMHO. Felt mysterious and evil (more so than it actually was). Nice gameplay too.

scarecrow- sorry did not enjoy this at all.

daz - super cool design, especially the blood swim. Gameplay only okish, despite the cool looks.

tronyn - turned out not as difficult as I thought it would be, gameplay was definitly Doom like so success in that regard. I was not a fan of the visuals though, scale wise it was pretty grand but there were too many clashing and isolated themes that looked like they were just stuck together.

ionous - loved it, the most evil feeling of all the maps, great architecture and very solid gameplay.

mfx - holy hell. Does not fit the theme but that is basically the only criticism I have. Unbelievable mapping! 

Yah - first time i played mfx's map i was drooling too. Second play.. meh, just another great map. :)

Tronyn's map was awesome too. Tough at the beginning, and I didnt trigger the enclosed quad+pent until mid/late game; then used it and huge rocket jumps across the main amphitheater, to the finale. Got in some cheap shots, but still had trouble dispatching that frigging sorcer army. 

 

That was really awesome.

Daz's map was really very zer and oldskool both visual and gameplay-wise. Enjoyed it a lot. Very solid and fun.

Ericw - really hard at the start but turned out to be really fun a few minutes later. I can say that it stands out gameplay-wise for me here.

Ionous - great visuals! True bloody evil, but the map felt rather empty for me. I want a larger version of this map to become a proper release.

MFX - exciting visuals, omg. But the movement there was really awkward, got a lot of damage because of incommodious caves. Also I missed the jump back from a secret near the end and had to noclip back to continue the map.

scar3crow - go map! go make more maps, tho the zombie horde was a really nice touch=)

Tronyn - enjoyed this really a lot! Epic and fun. But it was also really hard at the start but a lot easier later on when I found grenade launched and killed all the zombies. Btw I hated grunts shooting hitscan weapons from a very long distance when you don't see them with all pation, but it's a great map any way. 

A full version of jam3_ionous is in development.