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 

Enjoy -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKYWw5aB9wE 

Thank you Tens* And yes, everyone can do whatever they want to while playing these maps. I spotted two things this time. One related to this yellow window, which can be walk through after scrags attacked. That window changes to illusionary. I kind of knew that even if it is logical, it is still possible that player will not notice it, and I assume you trusted on that you hit it already. Maybe I make it shootable which will trigger the same event.

And surely I will introduce these wind tunnels earlier. Maybe under the Obelisk there is undeeground tech rooms that control these magic wind tunnels.

Also enforcers are there because they are guards yet transporters through the slitgate ports. They just make sure that Ogres(smitchs) will use them. They protect supplies that clearly aren't from medieval time. Since grunts are more into technical stuff, Enforcers are stronger and move and protect these "boxes" 

Smiths I mean, sorry typos. 

Oh sorry, I confused FifthElephant's stream to ItEndsWithTens's Review, he almost played the same way as you described or something* 

Thanks FifthElephant for playing the jam. I caught the after recording so sorry to miss it live. Glad you enjoyed my map (mjb) and I only have released three maps so far (2 being jams) so you probably haven't played anything else of mine! 

I watched it live but couldn't comment because of my keyboard. 

twitch.tv/koffikapp 

Yes, I know I'm the only one who finds that the slightest bit interesting or fun.
I happen to like learning where names come from - even when it's from something as trivial as an Econoline. It's a glimpse into the author's thought process, and in this case said thought process is more interesting than "let's name it after a song I like". 

 

 

Managed to catch the stream live but I couldn't comment since I was on my phone.

You have are some high octane stuff and I sat with a nervous twitch while seeing you jump to places I never intended haha. Nice job on getting the secrets and decimating my map! 

Yes, that's just the style I like to play and one of the main reasons I love Quake, fast and frantic gameplay and being able to do trickjumps etc. Thanks for making maps to play! 

Thanks for the comments, then, I don't feel quite as embarrassed to explain where my goofy map name came from. To be honest it usually is just song titles or lyrics, though I do try to make the levels suit them.

Agreed about Kaffikopp's stream! In a couple of the previous jams I've seen speedrunners play my levels, it's always a crazy ride. The dog/fiend gag I thought so highly of wasn't timed right for that speed of play, unfortunately, but it was still fun to watch. 

I've always run into that. Seems to be a balance that's hard to nail down. My sisters used to play my earlier maps frequently, one would rush, the other would be cautious. Fun challenge though to think about that sort of thing.