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And I look forward to relieving it by playing the pack later. It's like a later and significantly more exciting Christmas morning!
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/213205321
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/213225959 to be honest most of the maps felt crowded probably becasue of the limitations. hard felt hard. i can recommend, gonna add a link to moddb and try to promote it tomorrow. host_error: mod_loadmodel:
progs\xmasjam\pritchard_chair.mdl not found I checked, it's there. Running QS 0.93.0 on linux The general result seems to be the themes - and variety of themes - are amazing, the layouts and intricacy are superb for the size, and the cool thematic designs are great - the vibes of some of these places and their surroundings are spot on.
The gameplay however gives the impression that the maps weren't tested for *first time* playthroughs especially with some of the AD monsters in very tight places. I'd rather be having more time pressing the fire button than F6/F9. Not that surprising considering how finnicky the paths get in Quake. Maybe try -onlyents with the slashes flipped?
5th: Really well done map considering how late you started. I played on nightmare, it was tricky but felt pretty well balanced. I kinda felt like it would have been more fun with more boils. Awesome job :)
Bal: Dude, this was probably my favourite map along with ionous' beast. Wonderful detailing. I noticed a bug with quickloads and quicksaves with a wind sound not precached error, weird. Anyway. Nightmare was the skill and the gameplay was indeed a nightmare XD. But in a good way. Ammo was low, but I didn't really conserve it early on, so the fault was my own. Loved the hint of blue you added to the bottom of the pipes and rocks going into the white light, a nice touch. Also, cute mailbox. Breezeep: Beautiful brushwork. I want this to be a bigger map :( The spaces felt a lot bigger than 1024. Some good encounters there too. Well balanced. Secret finding was fun and tricky too, although I may have had some help from my viewers XD Dumptruck: Probably the most disappointing map of the bunch, not because of what it was. But because of what it could have been. There were hints of the quality we're used to from you, but they didn't carry throughout the whole map. A big shame. The geometry was fairly basic, and the layout was a little strange. The encounters in places felt untested or unrefined. I wish you had more time to polish this map up. Redfield: What a pretty map. Interesting encounters, nice scripting and fun concept. The crystals and the castle were really gorgeous. Not much else to say really, thanks :) Ionous: You are like a scripting god. It was amazing that you were able to fit that much stuff in that tiny amount of space and still have it look so pretty. Great theme, great brushwork and texture choices. Encounters were a little on the tricky side (but not outright unfair), I did play on nightmare after all. A good story to boot. While I thought other maps played a little better, your map is waaay up there in terms of aesthetics and execution, well done man. Muk0r: Like Ionous, good job on getting so much stuff in such a little space. Great job on the theme and the brushwork. Sorry about missing those shootable shelves. Gameplay was tricky with the amount of ammo you gave. The backpacks were a cool idea, I think you just needed to stuff them fuller XD. There was a lot to love about this map, I kind of thought that the limitations of the size hindered it though. I would have liked to have seen this same map, with the same style geometry spread a little more, it would have felt more city-like and less maze-like. Naitelveni: This map had really really strong gameplay. The geometry was good, so was the theme, but it was simple and seemed to be more a device for good gamplay than as something to ogle at. Thank you for the fun frag-fest. Those early shamblers were mighty hard on nightmare btw =P Negke: Great brushwork. Interesting theme. The textures you used are very different from what I probably would have done myself (that isn't to say they're bad). How many textures did you use in this map? I feel like I could count them on two hands. Getting such an interesting theme with so few textures... Crazy. The map had some interesting encounters, probably not the best in the pack, but solid none the less. The exit mechanic was excellent, and took me a little while to work out. One tiny criticism, plz don't stretch textures like that with the windows :( Pritchard: At the moment your map isnt working for me, I'll get back to you with some feedback once it is. Tens: What an interesting theme! A fun map too considering how few monsters. Good job getting the crate and snow / caves areas to work with the ornate magical area. well set up boss fight too, especially considering that lack of playable area. was fun :) Very cool maps and I really like how varied the styles are. It's like every map is completely different from the previous one. Good job everyone and thanks for participating.
Gameplay-wise, many of the maps are quite crowded and harder than usual due to the restricted space but also the specific use of AD enemies. Bal: Very pleasant surprise return, hopefully the first of many maps. Impressive brushwork and details. Not too dark for me. Cool secrets. Breezeep: Always amazes me how well the textures work in Quake despite being the opposite of dark brown. Nice-looking map. Gameplay tough but manageable with plenty of ammo. Would have wished for a more powerful weapon. Well, there's the widow maker secret, but I didn't find it until afterwards - the key can be grabbed through the bars by the way. dumptruck_ds: Bit of a dungeon crawler. It's nice how at some point the map opens up into the big lava cave and the roof area. I would have wished for just a little more texture variety - some strong detail texture to be used throughout the level on the bigger walls perhaps. The tortured baby sounds (I hope you didn't record them yourself) are creepy as hell. The crib part.. you must really hate the Christmas miracle! :) FifthElephant: This turned out rather cool, not what I expected from your blockout, even though I do recognize it. It was good fun. Didn't get the SSG, but there are at least two Shambler-style speed tricks to reach it that I spotted but didn't attempt or failed to pull off. ionous: The style is great and I like the layout and how you progress through it. Maybe a bit over the top on monster density. I didn't check the books, though it seems you have a good story going on there? Visual novel and all... ItEndsWithTens: Cheers for finishing it. Nice little map on a big scale, or small map with a big scale? Essentially a boss map. Wasn't hard due to LG OPness and respawning ammo, but a good finale to the pack. mukor: It looks very nice and cozy, and I'm talking about the map, not the statues butt. Very consistent. Gameplay is another thing though, because I found it to be extremely hard and unforgiving due to a high monster count and quite insufficient supplies. I made the mistake of playing hard skill and died like seven times (actually, that's the reason there are no demos - I thought it would have been too painful to watch). Lol intermission. Naitelveni: A rather intresting-looking level, the color combinations in particular. I didn't enjoy the gameplay much, because it was overly crowded and hard, mostly tight arena fights with obstacles. negke: Bit of an alibi submission based on an old retrojam2 scrap and rushed to finish. I had started another map originally which was supposed to have an intricate mini layout like ionous' map, but it took too long and I realized I wouldn't be able to finish it in time, so instead I finished this one. Pritchard: Very atmospheric 'cabin in the woods' realism map, nicely pulled off and good details. Layout feels good and how you deal with each floor. The levers could have been highlighted better. The end fight was too extreme for me and I cheated. Does one get a reward for breaking all crates? Redfield: Cute and nicely done diorama of Vondur's iceberg Disney's movie. Totally unquakey visuals creating a unique experience. Not sure it's an apt comparison, but it left a Xen-like impression. Yay for the super secret. Joke failed: it should read
Pritchard/Shamblernaut: upon checking the map file, the path to the chair model is all wrong - it uses double backslashes. I did change it so the chair model would be in progs\xmasjam. But I have no idea how the \\ could have happened or if it had been there before. I'm very sorry if it was indeed my fault. I would have supplied a quick Double-backslashes was a bug/problem in an older TrenchBroom build (rc3 I think?). The map was probably saved in that TB version at one point.
tyrann's and my bsputil has "--extract-entities" which saves out a I'm still playing through all the maps, will post more extensively when I'm done, but what I've played so far is great. Good mix of themes!
It turns out my map is a bit too hard (play on skill 1!), and a bit too dark (increase brightness!) Thanks to all the people sending demos, streams and videos, it's very educational and entertaining! If anyone is interested, I've uploaded the additional cr8 textures I made for the map: http://born-robotic.net/content/maps/cr8_bal.zip Nothing major, a few new ones, and lots of tweaks of existing textures to make them more versatile, or to remove the dark borders that are annoying when using them on convex edges (mostly with the trims). Double backslashes were still affecting me in RC4 but I thought I went back and manually edited them out in notepad...
I'm probably going to upload a new version with some much-needed improvements in about a week and a bit, once I get home from this vacation... Thanks for all the feedback so far, everyone! Thanks for the feedback. I don't hate the Christmas miracle for the record. No babies were harmed in the making of this map! But very glad it was effective. It was the first idea I had for the map but the latest thing I added.
As far as detail and polish. Guilty as charged. I simply ran out of time on the detail pass but referenced ad_mountain quite often. That map uses very few textures but does a much better job with detailing than I could hope to. Thanks for playing. Having played mostly id1 stuff for a while now, it took a bit to remember the quirks of AD's bestiary and entities, plus the eye-openers (i.e. "Holy fucking shit there's zombie knights now oh god"). Comments in alphabetical map order, typed up while playing, all on skill 2:
5th: Short and sweet, not sure if I found the super shotgun secret properly though (used a ramp jump off the tiny lip of the stairs by the axe, then did a midair 180 to air strafe to the platform). Was expecting to get something extra for getting the Vore to kill all the zombies, but so far as I could tell it was just extra kills. The four pillar fight at the end is frantic but the third pillar didn't actually spawn anything- possibly related to the order I touched them or maybe just a crossed trigger someplace? Enjoyed the visuals throughout (despite the noticeable dithering on the stained glass textures, argh!) and gibbing the bunch of zombies at the end with the Widowmaker was extremely satisfying. 7:26, 2/2 secrets, 61/61 kills. Bal: #1 thing I loved about this map was watching it fall apart as stuff blew up while progressing- platforms breaking, water pipes spewing, lights flickering and buzzing. #2 was finally getting the 'A-ha!' moment for the red armor and plasmagun, although I still missed a chockload of secrets. Some parts of the map seemed darker than they should be, or maybe it was just the detailing making everything more visually noisy than I'm used to- a worthwhile trade, then, the visual style is great. Industrial pipe-mazes are my favorite sort of base map. 22-ish minutes, 5/9 secrets, 134/137 kills, think a few Fiends jumped off the roof before I could kill them. Breezeep: Died the first try due to corner-induced Knight rape, second playthrough went much smoother. Only found the second secret once I'd killed everything so it was less than helpful, but that's 100% my bad- had to double back for it for 100% completion anyway. Books are fun. I was expecting to venture into a few more of the barred-off rooms, and was surprised when I was free to go after getting just the silver key, thinking the gold one was required. ikwhite textures are always eye-pleasing. 10:06, 2/2 secrets, 42/42 kills. Dumptruck: The bit with the lava isn't too fun, mostly because it's easy to take a bit of knockback from either the Lost Soul exploding or the crossbow grunt in the window and going careening off to your death. Visually the level is okay, much better in the lava areas, the interior felt somewhat like AD's own Lavatop Mountain except more monotonous. The crying was creepy as fuck, and shooting its source at the end was cheesy but fitting. I liked the base enemies breaking in towards the end, but due to my lack of health at the time I hid and let them fight the Shamblers until they were dead (apparently the Shamblers didn't fight back at all, or they would have wiped the flying grunts and Bobs easily). 12:47, 2/2 secrets, 45/45 kills, 1 pair of new pants required after the crying. Redfield (icequeen): Wow, that's a design for a map I wasn't expecting. Short and sweet-ish, still died twice from jumping to my death, first trying to find secrets, then trying to sequence break. Oops. Fighting is tight underground and short up above, thought the map was going to be way longer and I think I might've missed something- I saw the Thunderbolt secret in the caves, figured out to shoot the snowflake in front of it, shot the other four throughout the map, but by the time that secret is unlocked, the level exit (a sprite cutout of Ilsa? Orsa? Blazka? Whatever her name is) is directly in front of me so there's no reason to go all the way back down. 6:08, 1/3 secrets, 21/32 kills (!); another short playthrough after reading the Readme led to the Super Secret Secret, which was... interesting, and led to 2/3 secrets, 30/32 kills. Still never got that Thunderbolt. Ionous: Excellent use of the limited map dimensions, felt like it was a lot bigger than it actually is. Snazzy visuals, loved trying to find the secrets and was honestly disappointed that I didn't find all of them despite my best efforts, reminded me of following the story in AD's ad_mountain- what happened to Johnston? Another playthrough might reveal more without giving up and looking at the readme, poor bastard has the worst luck. One of the secrets was also apparently grabbed out of order, not sure how that happened. Tight combat, but the underwater bit was annoying (or maybe I'm just an idiot) due to taking damage and not being sure where it was coming from (above the player, it turns out), and at one point I completely ran out of ammo and had to go mano y mano with some Death Knights with just the shadow axe until I managed to scrounge up some shells and nails- not sure if that was on accident or intentional as the axe seemed to do a damn good job at stunlocking the Knights. 26:16, 7/10 secrets, 118/122 kills. Accidentally wrote 10,000 characters. Second post below. Mukor: Your map made me incredibly angry, and the thicc statue ass unfortunately did not make up for it, nor did the erection from the shitpost-worthy intermission screen that I only saw after changing routes in one last save and realizing the exit was right behind the gold key door, and that I could have rushed right by the enemies to the exit instead of fiddling about going rooftop-jumping to find secrets and ending up with even less health and ammo than if I had just gone straight through the door. Ammo in general was ridiculously scarce, lots of axe-swinging between backpack finds and that wasn't much fun at all. Similar to Redfield's map in that there's secrets to be had but no point in getting them when the exit is so close. Multiple staircases in the map are really easy to get caught up on when climbing them and for the love of God, in the future please make the tiny doorways a bit wider; I'm far from the best Quake player in the world but it feels pretty lame to suffer multiple deaths because I approached the doorway angled slightly wrong while backpedaling and became Knight shish kebab. Also somewhat annoying: a fair amount of nails but lots of stone enemies who are 50% resistant to them. Did not actually finish in one run period; found 2/4 secrets (as the Quad under the lift doesn't count as one?).
Naitelveni: The single map I died the most on. Not sure if it's because of playing on Hard instead of Normal or what, but holy cow, infuriating. Especially the dual Shambler fight with the Vore up on the platform and nowhere to hide because a dozen other enemies just spawned in, including the goddamn weeaboo samurai Knights in that fight and the next one. Also annoying as all hell: having to wait around on tiny, slow lifts while multiple Z-aware Ogres lob grenades at you that you can't always dodge by jumping, and are almost guaranteed to eat one or two to the face and get sent all the way back down unless you spent five minutes pecking away at them from below. Don't know how the hell it's even possible to win without the hidden Plasmagun's firepower. 4:43, 1/1 secrets, 38/41 kills (not sure what happened here, I think someone spawned into a wall or something because I still heard grunts and the final "Only X left to go..." text might've counted wrong somehow). Negke: First part of the map is very dark and dingy, almost too brown and pretty same-looking, basically just unfinished looking. After that it looks a lot better, and the spattering of wall lights give just enough light to see what's going on. Another ammo-scarce map, albeit not on the level of previous ones, so no axe-swinging here. Not much to say I guess other than there were a few spots I was surprised to find clip brushes preventing me from shooting between bits of bridge or floor, surprising as a number of other maps seemed to enjoy giving the player inch-wide gaps to try to hit Scrags and Ogres through while being pelted by vomit and grenades. 11:57, 3/4 secrets, 46/46 kills. Pritchard: This was an interesting one. The setting was nice and cozy, although the bright orange lights for most of the map could've been toned back a bit or made a bit more neutral, the red glow on everything kind of gets eye-watering after a while. On the third and final attempt, the entrance to the final arena glitched: Somehow the sequence was started while I was still in the button area, so when I actually hit the button the door closed instead of opened and I had to noclip through. Also got an accidental telefrag on the final boss, who from the gibs I'm not even sure was supposed to be but I do know it made things a lot easier. Found the Quad after already killing everything, of course- actually grabbing it in the fight seems like it would be schmuck bait given it's tucked away in the corner. 12:35, 4/5 secrets, 69/74 kills. I broke every damn box in the map and not a single one had anything inside and that was disappointing. Tens: Over in a flash, but fun and a great cool-down map after getting repeatedly destroyed. I managed to die anyway because I'm an idiot (or sleep-deprived), but the teleport back for players who decide to get risky with their jumps is nice. Wish it had been longer, the art style was cool and I wasn't expecting the cave to open up to an icy abyss at all. Wasn't sure which secret is unveiled by finding all the breakable crates, still wasn't sure but found the third secret after finishing the map. 6:40, 2/3 secrets, 13/13 kills. All in all, a fun map pack and good work by everyone showcasing just how much you can do in a 1024u³ play area with some creativity and elbow grease. Way more than I thought possible, that's for sure! No demos unfortunately because even zipped they're over a quarter gig and that's more upload bandwidth than I've got in any reasonable amount of time, not that it matters because I just vomited text all over the page like a dork. I appreciate everybody's notes, thanks! I recorded videos for all the other entries, and they're in the process of going up on Youtube, with a little as-yet-unrecorded post mortem for my own at the end. Keep an eye on this playlist if you're interested in learning why I did things.
In the meantime, though, I thought it was important to point out to Pritchard that I encountered the same bug as Spud. Poking around shows you ran into the same issue I did in Retro Jam 4, that touching the corner of a space opposite the corner of a trigger will still activate it. Hard to explain, but in your map, face the button that's meant to open the slanted door leading to the final room. Turn left, look at the small set of stairs, and go down underneath. There's a trigger brush whose nearest corner touches the edge formed by the lowest step of that small staircase and the floor. If a player's collision touches that edge, the trigger is fired. Unfortunate, but shrinking the trigger's brush by 8 or 16 units on each side to get it away from the walls and ceiling should do the trick; keeps the bug from happening, but still prevents players from walking through without activating it. if butts dont make up for bad maps im a dead man.
sorry about the ammo count. balancing resources between backpacks was pretty hard. as far as the final secret, yeah i fucked up. :( i didnt give the player extra+ ammo for it. Hey, you gave it yer best. To be fair it was a very fine butt, even with the intermission's extra sound effect.
Speaking of secrets though, what exactly is the correct player route to get to the last two secrets (the rooftop path that goes through the skylight to the super nailgun and has the secret-within-a-secret area)? I saw the brick stairs on top of the bookcase, but couldn't figure out how to get up there other than an explosive jump (which I had no weapons capable of) so I wound up doing some Tony Hawk ramp jump and backwards air control shit off one of the curved bits of wall in front of it, but that felt super janky so there's no way that was the correct method. Its a bit of a small circle jump from the broken section of wall over to the window. It does seem to be a bit harder than I recall in my playtests.
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