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. 

 

diggin up some classics hahaha 

Daz's map still knocks my socks off.