Would make a player get stuck with 4 spawns in a small room...sheesh.

Anyway, in terms of a one on one fight the Shambler would always be the more dangerous foe.

Spawns are dangerous because you are forced to time your attacks so the explosion doesn't affect you. The problem is that waiting for the right time usually means getting bopped by the sporadic jumping patterns. Arcane Dimensions has a spawn flag to make spawns less jumpy which then makes them a valid shallow water lurking enemy! 

The shambler dance is pretty easy once you learn it. The harder thing is when there are other enemies with the shambler at the same time. OR if there is no cover and you need to fight said shambler beyond melee range. 

... Spawn Shambler aka exploding Shambler. You can't dance with him and he jumps all over the place. 

What about bouncing shambler between two wind pipes* 

But he must be purple! 

Actually not bad idea* more like lava golem shambler or something like that. But I guess in this topic we should discuss how to use push_trigger and trigger_monsterjump in order to create jumping shambler. I also tested placing spawn monster inside weak push_trigger and it get stuck.. actually really satisfying when it can't move. New puzzle elements try to make spawns jump to wind tunnels. 

Who In The World ...Would make a player get stuck with 4 spawns in a small room...sheesh.

LOL ;).

Also worth noting that according to Kinn, Spawn are NOT unpredictable and actually easily controllable and fightable even with the lowest weapons.

LOL ;)

TBH they are pretty damn cool monsters, just gotta be used carefully. 

If there is some way to predict those buggers' jumps, I'd very much like to know. 

Just analyze this, add some math calculations in your brain during the fight and you are immune to spawns.

Easy! 

Yeah, thanks but I don't speak QC. Got the same in english? 

Quickly looking it seems to be randomized, so in theory you can't predict.. but when spawn is on air.. you can shoot it.. but when it lands, te next direction it jumps is random which you can't predict.. am I right or not? 

Z velocity seems to be randomized. Other than that it probably just steers towards the target like any other monster would.

And ricochets off walls. 

Is z axel in this case "up" velocity? 

First run demos of each map, hard skill.

http://qrf.servequake.com/~orl/misc/orl_retrojam5_demos.rar

Will write descriptions for each map later. But to sum it up shortly, great work everyone! 

I think you're the only person so far who has triggered the shambler in my nail room. 

I guess most people play it safe when confronted by dozens of spikeshooters in one room. Whereas I'm foolish and will jump right in the middle of it.

And the way you said it, I just can't help but think that I "triggered" the shambler by assuming his gender was male, whereas in actually was a bipolar junction transistor Australian demigirl, and teleported to destroy me and my nailgun privilege. 

Thank you all for demos, people seems to be really into these retro jams! Btw, why my intermission camera sucks on these demos, but works just fine for example in that ionous stream? 

Intermissions don't work properly on demo playback. 

Is z axel in this case "up" velocity?

Most likely. Seems logical. But I don't know QC very well. 

Looks like Spirit is back in business...

Question: does the Quaddicted version include NewHouse's update or only the first version of his map? 

I officially love Orl <3 

Found a moment to sit down the other day and play this pack! No demos, unfortunately, since I usually die and reload quicksaves too often to keep restarting. I'm terrible. I did record videos with commentary, though, and I'm uploading them to Youtube to be available over the course of this week. Watch the playlist for updates: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoGPuWBXfT0fTgZmrgp6hXk4UFoWNQo_X

An apology up front to Breezeep, Bloughsburgh and NewHouse, whose maps' visuals were slightly glitched thanks to new Nvidia drivers (375.95) that apparently don't like me Alt+Tabbing in and out of fullscreen Quakespasm. I did briefly revisit all three maps at the start of Qmaster's video, just to make sure I knew what they were supposed to look like.


Breezeep:

The aforementioned glitch meant I couldn't see your flames, but I still had a ton of fun dealing with your monsters. This map was tough; I'm not sure if that's rusty skills on my part, or the seemingly high density of in your face close combat. The difficulty made it satisfying to fight through, ultimately, so no points off in my book.


Bloughsburgh:

Again I missed out on the flames, and this time upside-down! I feel so embarrassed, my apologies again for not noticing my graphics issues until after the fact. Like Breezeep's entry, though, none of it detracted from the playability of the map.

What I loved most about this was the constant feeling of being watched, the "fishbowl" approach so to speak. Always being on edge and looking over my shoulder is the best way to play Quake.

I think maybe the flashing lights were a little hard on the eyes, but then again so was E3M5, and you even included the classic secret from that same hallway, so hats off to you! Is that secret a reference to something I'm missing out on? I'm not up on the latest dank memes and such.


NewHouse:

Swimming up out of what I've decided to call a toilet is never a bad thing! Better out than in, after all. Loved your floating obelisk, and the slow wind lift is even better. I do have to say I was surprised to find grenades are also affected, and I almost blew myself up trying to kill that zombie. If there were a way to introduce that mechanic earlier I think it might be less "oh my god what have I done", but maybe that was on purpose? I certainly understand the joy of messing with players.

A curious thing, my graphics problem led to really funky looking blue flames here, which I thought fit the map pretty well. I even stumbled over some invisible enforcers, too, but there were only a handful, and they made for an unexpected challenge. Sorry for screwing up your map's presentation, but as with the previous two I don't believe I sacrificed any fun.


Qmaster:

If I'm not mistaken you said you'd made this fit in some sort of size restriction? It worked out beautifully! Tight confines, with tall, narrow walls and windows makes for a standout look that's a change of pace from the other entries.

The map is a warren of enemy nests, folded back and forth on each other, it's cozy as all hell. Having the wind pads changing their destinations based on progression through the map is even better: just disorienting enough to shake me up, but not so much as to leave me totally lost. Makes it feel like there are hidden nooks and crannies I'm walking right past but managing to miss every time.

You could use more health and ammo, maybe? I might just be a terrible Quake player, but at least the final fight with the Shambler/zombie combo was a bit touchy for me. I think I lost most of my health to Skrags, of all things, so again, I might just be out of practice.


"Shambler":

Sucking up to the Jam organizer, I know, but this was a fantastic map! Spaces just tight enough, and hordes just big enough, to make for tremendously gratifying quad-powered gibfests. And the infighting; they were tearing at each other like nobody's business, this is a perfect example of how fun it can be when a map gets chaotic. I wanted to offer more chances for gibs in my own map, but ended up going so retro as to worry about packet overflows in WinQuake, so I dropped most of that. Glad to see someone went for it.

All in all a great map, thanks for giving it to us! I was more than happy to receive.


Shamblernaut:

Oh, sure, everybody's got something to say about my textures but not a peep about BLINK BLINK BLINK BLINK with the lights. :P

This one's chambers were a bit oversized, yes, but I must admit part of my nostalgia for 90s shooters includes giant empty spaces made from simple geometry; Turok, for example. Something about huge flat walls, big rooms with few enemies, it speaks to me. Like arcane, eldritch things are secreted away behind those walls, or that the map is anticipating a need for such volumes of space, but we never get to find out why.

That rotating brush hack is incredible, I'll be looking for places to use that every chance I get. 

Tens:

As far as my own map: yes it was on purpose, but man does it suck to learn that I achieved what I set out to. It's crazy the kind of tunnel vision one can develop during a project like this, because it was still a bit of a shock to hear reactions as negative as they were, despite having initially made my texture choices based on "wow, that looks like a late 90s custom Quake level!" The whole point was to go for something identifiably tacky, but I somehow lost sight of that. I already take tons of excessively detailed notes as I design my maps, but I still need to more carefully document my design motivations going forward so I don't start feeling too good about myself before the inevitable reality check.

I go into much more detail in my own post-mortem video, so to avoid letting this post drag on as long as that does, the only other thing I'll comment on here is the name of the map. In designing this thing I thought about halfway through that it'd be helpful to define what it was. I know part of what makes Quake maps feel genuinely alien, and like you're exploring another dimension, is not being able to clearly identify the purpose of the place (familiarity feels safe, and all), but I was struggling to design a layout and needed what help I could get.

I figured some generic place of worship would be alright, not requiring any particular collection or arrangement of rooms, and therefore be easiest to build. The goal then was a non-denominational name for that, and while "temple" and "shrine" are nice, they're too common in Quake map titles. "Monastery" is too long and too many syllables. "Bethel", on the other hand, is a word I'd never heard before (thanks thesaurus.com!) but that fits the bill, so that was that.

For the second part I just wanted something that sounded like a nondescript alien deity or historical figure. Thinking back to the original Unreal, there's a level "The Temple of Vandora". My map's not based on it, and I haven't played that game or level in years, but I liked the name. In a strange bit of free association, I know the American car company GMC had a line of full sized vans in the 80s/90s branded "Vandura", so I made a lateral move to Ford, with its "Econoline" series, and reversed the process to get a name that sounded weird and vaguely mysterious.

Yes, I know I'm the only one who finds that the slightest bit interesting or fun.



Thanks again for running this event, otp, I had a lot of fun! My textures are awful but I'm rather proud of the layout and progression of the level, if I may say so, so I'm glad I participated. Superb entries from everyone, I had a blast playing all of these.

Now everybody go map! 

Great feedback here and looks like I found another youtuber to subscribe to!

If you are referring to the yellow frog secret it is more or less something similar to having the author's name spelled out in the void. I'm making it my trademark that ideally appears in all of my official releases.

Don't feel like your naming convention isn't interesting...I appreciate a good map name as I find it to be an integral part of the experience. I get less involved in a map if it is called untitled or jam9_fucknut. Considering my title was a Seinfeld reference I don't think you should worry. ;) 

Will probably be up here for a week or two before it gets pulled -

https://www.twitch.tv/fifthelephant