I did have a good amount of help throughout the process.

Bal made a bunch of nice textures, did the JamX TB def file, assisted with the level select portion of the start map, and saved said map from eight hour compile times with his wizardry.

Dumptruck made a nice preview video and developed the progs used for the event. I really wanted to use the gib fountains and forcefields, but my good ideas all fell through. You ended up getting the dregs.

OTP generated a nice wad with CZG07C adjacent textures, along with convincing me to not call this Jam10. He was ultimately right.

Mugwump expanded OTP's wad with some nice variations of his own.

Strangework did the initial run through the maps, and helped make sure everything worked as intended.

WW made a lovely teaser poster for me to plaster everywhere.

And, lastly, thirteen mappers put their free moments into this time-vampire of a project. That means a lot. 

Thanks for organizing the jam, Ionous!

Also congratulations to everybody who released map. The few I've played through so far were excellent and very different flavors from other recent jams and speedmaps :) 

Great start map ! Fantastic Insomnia vibe. So much more than a skill and map selector ! The scale is even bigger than meets the eye. What lies beyond these closed doors ? Now I need to find time to play this pack.

I was wondering why start maps are usually empty. Is there a rule to keep them monsterless ? A couple of bad guys could spawn in various places each time you revisit. Some scarce ammo and a single SSG in various spots too. Just to spice up the comeback… Ah. Maybe it’s not such a good idea after all. 

There's no rule for it but since you return to the start map time after time, it may get repetitious. It's also good to reward the player with a breather IMO.

That said, Arcane Dimensions does have monsters in the 1.6 patch I believe. 

Start maps should contain some ass holes that are there to annoy you in selecting the skill and the map gate. 

There’s ways it could be done correctly. It’s probably more suited to start maps that are purely skill select, as Tronyn did in Coven of Ebony.
Would have been ill-suited for jamX, though the upper skill select are would probably lend itself well to a SP remix. 

The Jam X start map would be a great DM level too. I may attempt a conversion at some point. 

would be great if every time you return there it's a bit different.

If the monsters are the same all the time it would suck and feel tacky. 

You are welcome to give it a go. I’d be interested in your take on it. 

Congrats to everyone- I'll have to find some time to play through these. It'll be on my mind until then. As for monsters in start map, I think Halloween jam's start map was great in this regard. Newhouse handled having monsters in a start map tastefully. 

Contratulations to all the mappers! Saturday I'll play all these beautiful maps 

Sorry, I posted this in the wrong thread.

Alternative download for Jam X here on moddb
https://www.moddb.com/mods/quake-map-jam-x-insomnia 

You guys are heroes

This work need an article in many modern games reviews on the net! (fuck off, Borderlands!) 

DOH! The file needs to be approved by admins of moddb before it is live. Sorry for the confusion. I'll post an update when it's up. 

Mainstream games reviewers are all sponsored by the big games companies, and they certainly don't want a bunch of free content making their AAA stuff look like the insipid shite that it is. 

Played it all, almost all enjoyable. Favourites were ones with a strong design theme and focus. Personal highlights were Bloodshot for some genuinely great Quake-suitable story-telling (is BS the Quake 0.0015 guy?? If so this is a quite a surprise and shows you don't need a bunch of superfluous bells and whistles, it's more about being creative with less), Nait for the great organic style especially in the main room, Mazu for a very big but properly playable and interesting map. Pinchys with the "different difficulty paradigm" (lol) was the only one that I couldn't complete, but the design at least was very cool.

I've recorded videos, I will get them up sometime. Unfortunately I think Mazu's failed to record due to disk space issues. 

The moddb link is live now.

https://www.moddb.com/downloads/quake-map-jam-x-insomnia 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFDyOrcqU98 apologies to Mazu, suffice to say his one was really good, I only died once due to carelessness. Also I forget to mention in my other post that Ukko's was a nice design but completely unplayable, not sure how that slipped through. 

It has been brought to my attention that Ukko's map apparently relies on the very familiar and time-honoured Quake tradition of retreating to earlier in the map to re-collect re-spawning supplies. Based on that information I will re-attempt it. 

challenging gameplay != unfair gameplay 

When i back into the keys on dumptrucks map, i can grab them. 

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DDb4eLiZOGU/XNXHgKtnsOI/AAAAAAAAAxM/kPb9JhU4yIwf0uXxUFnue1weD7qatCJywCLcBGAs/s1600/unknown.png

Pinchy: 1. Get worked up by peoples maps earlier in the set
2. Rush mine by running into the deepest and most defended part of the map
3. Die, skip
Ing-ing: 0. Play on higher difficulties even though clearly doesn't like challenge
Mclogenog: eh it's shambler

This apparently is directed at me, regarding my playthrough of this pack, and thus needs to be dealt with:

1. If anyone has a problem with someone giving criticism of a map, it's best to discuss it with them and talk about it. Something useful might actually come out of that. You know that I'm online on discord (and on here), feel free to do so.

2. Pinchy, if you watched my playthrough, you'd see that you are wrong on all counts:
A. I played through the entire set and did not get worked up by ANY maps, especially not gameplaywise, apart from UKKO's. So being well warmed up by mostly enjoying 10 or so maps actually put me in a positive mood for playing Quake.
B. Firstly I clearly did NOT rush into yours, I tried different tactics, explored carefully to avoid vores, hunted for secrets etc etc.
Secondly "the deepest and most defended part of map", where that is is NOT obvious to the player. You know it as the mapper, the first time player will not know it (although dropping down to the Shambler/water area looked the worst so I carefully avoided that).
C. I died repeatedly due to the excessive difficulty, lack of supplies, and lack of clarity about best options for the first time player, but I reloaded several times to try to progress with the map. That was NOT, despite the temptation, an insta-skip, I put the effort into persisting.

3. Ing-ing: I play on skill 2 BECAUSE I CLEARLY LIKE THE CHALLENGE, and because 95% of the time with non-speedmaps, that is the right level of challenge for my optimum enjoyment. As you will notice I played the entire pack on skill 2 and enjoyed almost all the maps - whether they were long or short, snipey or arenay, or whatever, in fact I mentioned that at least one was too easy for me. The only 2 I didn't manage were ones with weird gameplay mechanisms or ones that were highly unbalanced. If 95% of maps average out at spot on on skill 2, and 5% don't, then it's the 5% that are a problem, not the skill 2.

4. Mclonelong: Yes, it's Shambler. I play Quake for enjoyment, fun, challenge, appreciation of cool environments and atmospheres, exploring architecture etc etc. If those are good in a map, I'm going to praise it - like I do repeatedly. If some those aren't to my personal taste (like your toybox), I'm going to hold my hands up and say "It might be good but it ain't my taste". If some of those are just really badly done or dsyfunctional, I'm not going to avoid criticism, pretend it's all fine, and deceive mappers into thinking their map doesn't have flaws, I'm going to say as much. And if a map is too unpleasant to play in whatever way (whether it's a beautiful map with bad gameplay or the best Quake action in a fullbright box), I'm not going to keep going with it. That's it.


TL,DR: If someone is criticising your map, discuss it, consider it, refute it, instead of slagging off their gameplay. 

UKKO, I replayed your map with the prior knowledge that the nails at the start infinitely respawn. Like this it was fine, fun and easy to get through although constantly returning to the start was tedious. Very nice design but an unnecessary gameplay mechanism. 

I actually don't have a map in the pack.