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Map Jam 6 : Fire And Brimstone Released!
Screenshot Collage : http://www.quaketastic.com/files/jam6collage.jpg
Download (75mb) : http://quaketastic.com/files/single_player/mapjam6.zip
Shout out in PC Gamer mag:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/33279452/pcgamer.jpg

Note : I heavily recommend the Quakespasm engine for this particular release. A level in the pack uses the 2BSP map format and another level will crash Fitzquake . Quakespasm is the only engine that had zero issues during testing!
Download Quakespasm : http://quakespasm.sourceforge.net/download.htm

Map jam 6 : Fire and Brimstone is a single player Quake level pack featuring 13 new fiendish single player levels for your enjoyment!

Thank you very much to all the mappers who took part in this event :

Adib Murad
Breezeep
Daz
EricW & Tronyn
Exhelzar
Ionous
Matecha
Necros
Rick
Scampie
ShoTro
ItEndsWithTens
WarrenM

Good luck and have fun! Remember to record a demo of yourself playing each level for the first time to help the mappers learn what worked and where people got stuck in their maps! (Optional of course)

Important Notice: <Daz> you should start a new game if you still have all your weapons and ammo when going back to the start map <3 ,3 sorry
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Zip Them, Works Wonders 
 
Dang You Are Right... :-p 
All four of the above for 18mb as a rar file:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/32xbjg5hdu8zks2/mapjam6_demos1.rar?dl=0 
 
"Kreathor : Wow you had a rough time! Looks like you didn't notice picking up the Silver Key after the roof top fight either, that definitely needed picking out much better! Hope you enjoyed it though :)"

Map is good, problem is I'm a noob, lol ;D Still... I have finished it on Hard! *flexing muscles*
Yeah I've totally missed I got a key. This teleportation after battle was kinda confusing, and when realized I have a key I couldn't find the door ;D 
First Impressions: 
Adib: Nice little map. I found all 2 secrets!

Breezeed: Solid knave map. I enjoyed both the visuals and the gameplay. Found only 1 secret=(

Daz: Great! There were minor visual glitches mentioned before, but all the rest was very solid and stylish. I managed to accidently get the quad right after I killed all the monsters in the final battle=)

Ericw/Tronyn: Very impressive! Such a grand scale. I felt like a was playing an ant in the realm of giants.

Exhalzar: Pretty nice for a first map. Keep on mapping!

Matecha: Small but nice. There were some places where it was hard to maneuver tho.

Necros: Looks amazing but feels too empty for its scale to me. I would have places a lot more different monsters there, especially in outdoor area.

Rick: I love castle maps! Very good! But one question: There are nails, but where is the nailgun?

Scampie: omg that was awesome! Looks great, plays great and it's rubilavacon! 2/6 secrets found. 
Tronyn & Ericw 
Spirit 
If this ledge is one I'm thinking of, it will be deleted in a next version. It's a design flaw, you're not supposed to go there. Scampie did that too, because it actually draws attention.

Or maybe I change a few things to make it playable, part of the fiend fight nearby. Mmmm...

The only thing I did last night was playing Breezeep's and watching Scampie's demo. Need more time to watch everything, give feedback and torture you all with demos of me playing worse than a 10 year old.

@Scampie, thanks for the demo and feedback. It was a blast to see you try to figure what to do. You had the right amount of "dunno what to do" I was expecting for this level. The whole point here is to puzzle the player.

@Breezeep: Yours is a great solid Quake level. If it was in the original iD pak, would be praised as a classic. The original tr00 Quake done right. 
@Scampie 
Also, I see you thought a floor button near a vore was a seal and tried to break it. It's my design fault, this level should never have a floor button (to be confused with something else), specially one that you accidentally push after teleport. 
 
Some of the secrets in my map require you to look closely at the walls or one of the bookshelves for anything that sticks out. 
 
The classic loose brick, sticky out book secrets, eh? How oldschool :D 
Multiday Affair 
Thanks to Daz for organizing this jam and all mappers who took part. I considered taking part too, but since I have some computer issues, I had to pass. (My laptop is in for repairs at the moment. Another computer I am using doesn't have enough GL support for the editors I might have wanted to use.)

So far I've played Adib's, Breezeep's, Daz's and Eric & Tronyn's maps, in alphabetical order. The last one took only about 37 minutes to cpmlete on my third demo, so I think this is enough for today. I have demos for all my playthroughs or attempts, but I will upload them in one batch later.

So, I shall continue tomorrow with Exhelzar's map. I'm avoiding spoilers until then. I've only watched Daz's earlier mapping streams and a tiny bit of Ionous's so I essentially am playing them mostly blindly too.

Fortunately this computer is at least good enough to run Quakespasm and E&T's huge map at decent speed. I might look at those editor issues too, if I have the time. Or I might get my laptop back and not have to worry about this anymore.

Amazing work everyone! I've enjoyed every map so far. 
Thoughts And Demos 1... More To Come. 
Demos for those mentioned below: https://www.dropbox.com/s/edwgvgix2ufdqlm/jam6-demos1.zip?dl=0


Exhelzar:

Nice oldskool map design. Brushwork could be a bit more detailed, but considering the amount of time you had it's an awesome job.

Where the ogre bridge is, you could have closed the gate behind the player for extra challenge. The part after was frustrating, because it leads the player to waste all his ammo (like I did) on the hell-knights. It also nullifies their melee attacks. If you want to use them as snipers they're better close. A solution to this could be to make the lava pillars larger, so you don't encounter the hellknights until you're on top of them.

Of the maps that I played so far, this is the only map I didn't die in (at normal skill). I felt you could have teleported some more mobs in at various places in the map after collection of the blue key. Even without any changes it's a really really solid map. Great job.


Breezeep:

Really really nice style. Hellish without tonnes of lava.

Really good difficulty balance on normal (didn't play other difficulties). I felt the underwater button should have been shootable, that's just me nitpicky. The zombies don't pose much of a challenge in that area either as they don't target you whilst you're underwater.

I don't know how I derped an missed the door after killing the vore. The ogre room was perfect, I wasn't expecting it and led to my subsequent death. I didn't play beyond this because I didn't really feel like anything else needed to be said, great map man.


Ericw & Tronyn:

What can I say other than this map is really really unforgiving. I really don't know whether I'm supposed to pick off the map room by room or just speed run it. This map isn't really to my taste, I think my old man skills aren't up to scratch either. I gave it a go. I included a demo of one of my many attempts.


Ionous:

What an amazing map. Really good diffoculty on normal. I felt sufficiently challenged. Ammo pickups were just enough, I would have hated to have had any less. Visually this map was quite stunning. Excellent lighting. Great architecture, nice touches in th floors and ceiling (although I kind of thought that the yellow armour pit somehow didn't fit the style, maybe it was a touch cramped). Really good execution. Suprise shambler was... Difficult, but I always felt like I could "win", up until I died :)

Great job.


Daz:

Great styling, and really well lit. I love the columnar bassalt styled rocks. Difficulty was pretty spot on for this one. I'm really glad you added the shortcut buttons. Saved quite a bit of travel time. Nothing really to say other than, enjoy watching me fail :)


Adib:

Excellent job, visually excellent. Such a shame you can't have falling lava. I felt that ammo was a touch scarce, which was the reason for my demise in one of my attempts as I couldn't shoot the rock shard required to progress :(

Mob placement was perfect, the scrags at the start, vores were perfectly frustrating, as were the zombies (I wore a grenade to the face thanks to these bastards). The shambler makes you panic if you jump to the RL before aggroing him. One criticism would be the falling rocks are frustrating to jump off / land in a stable manner. I felt that a flat top or some kind of clip texture (not sure if this is possible) would help with this. Unless this was planned to frustrate the player in which case, great job =P

I really want to play this map with a mod that allows sinking lava now. 
@Matecha 
In your first level you already got visual consistency. Feels like you're comfortable with the theme. Still looks very boxy, but promising: pretty path thru lava in the first room, good texture choices overall, and the masterpiece: that graveyard's fence and gate. I see you didn't force the player to visit the graveyard, you can finish the level without even see it, which is a shame. A design decision up for debate. By all means, keep it up. 
@enliten 
Thanks, man :)

You're right about the rocks. If you noticed, the one at scrags' room has a little step to make it easy to climb. I should work on the other ones too. There's no gameplay reason to keep them unstable.

I didn't give up on raising lava filling one last room yet. But you said "sinking lava" and that's a good idea as well. A room that raises, simulating the lava sinking, revealing enemies and passages. 
Oh 
I thought you wanted the main room to have sinking lava as you progressed over the jumps and shot the rocks. 
 
"I thought you wanted the main room to have sinking lava as you progressed over the jumps and shot the rocks. "

Ohhh that would be cool! 
Haven't Played Yet 
But is it safe to say this jam is the best jam since Mrs Beeton's strawberry jam? 
@itEndsWithTens 
I owe you apologies. When I saw your first screenshots, specially that freaky... traffic light device (??) it was too much for my square mind. I didn't get it. But what do I know? You created unique gameplay (like or not) and a very very bold move on the layout and looks. "Very Bold Move" could be the name of the level, but even its name is neat the way it is.

Reminds me Zeno Clash looks.

Beautiful lava effect in the end.

The only thing I'd change is that golden key + button. 
Detour Possible Spoiler 
You will notice there is one secret in the map, but so far it seems no one is taking the time to find it. Coincidently, no one seems to reach the upper level with a nailgun.

I thought I was making it easy to find the secret by using one of the most common tricks ever to trigger it. You know, like a red, blinking, shootable button on the ceiling, or something like that.

I guess I failed. I blame running out of time to test. Yeah, that's it.

Not finding the secret isn't a problem on skill 1, but it can make skill 2 pretty difficult. 
Demos, Part 2 
OK, I went to the end of the list working backwards to those guys some attention before the end of today.

Demos part 2:
Fallen.dem - WarrenM - The map turned out looking great! I was coasting through it without problems until near the end. Beat it, but it caught me off guard.

Untitled.dem - Necros - Huge and incredible looking map. On the easier side of things but I enjoyed it.

Daysinthefire.dem - Scampie - I knew this had the fire, but I questioned the brimstone... oh how I should have never questioned the brimstone!!! Watch me fail at platforming in this demo. Great all around... even has a geometry based creature like I wanted:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/fwn961rccn0bsb6/Quake_MapJam666_WIP_10.jpg?dl=0

Detour.dem - Rick - The dripping ceiling had me cheering when I noticed it. Very atmospheric and great execution. Beat it with no ammo left. Short but very tense.

Igneous.dem - Matecha - This map may be small but it freaking nails the atmosphere of the theme. I am jealous of your map edges. :-p

Princess.dem - ItEndsWithTens - O_o* I started the map and lost my shit for a second then realized I didn't start a demo for your map after the shock subsided. Those totems man... I knew once I saw those we were in for a treat. On the critical side, after the first totem I knew all I had to do is run away to turn the tide of each encounter. You will see that a lot in my demo.

Download as a RAR here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/xrmpa0o948kie96/mapjam6_demos2.rar?dl=0 
@Rick 
Seriously? I looked for one, but I guess not hard enough. I will have to go through one more time once I get the last two maps down. 
 
Well, it's not blatantly obvious. You do have to be in the general vicinity before it can be seen.

It's too bad I didn't think to give either shells or spikes at the end, depending on whether the secret had been found. Well, I did think of it, but not until after it was released :) 
 
Someone quoted a Valve guy here in the forums, saying the biggest level design challenge is to make the player look up. It's happening here. 
 
I think that's true. Maybe part of the problem is not giving the player a reason to look up...in the right spot.

You can't really see that there's a secret until it's triggered. Instead of hiding the rising walkway under the lava, I should have positioned it so that it was just out of the lava enough to see, but not high enough to get back up. Then the player might be motivated to look for a way to raise the walkway. Ah well, better next time. 
 
adib:
Lovely tight map, I enjoyed the stalactite use. My only annoyance was with items being placed in such a way that you had to pick them up. For example the teleporter at the bottom brings you back up on top of the 25 health by the exit, so it is easily wasted if you took a bit of fall damage. The yellow armor doesn't seem to be optional, and I had just picked up a green armor which was yet to receive any scratches. Found one secret. Hope to see more from you.

Breezeep:
Not exactly in keeping with the incendiary aesthetic of the village, but it has its charm. Some very good fights here (the underwater Scrag fight in particular). The level looked great, but it had some awkward texture transitions: the arch with the dagger, the dagger point seemed to be floating out there, as the underside didn't match at all, numerous arches used a very stylized trim with no transition brush for when it encountered a differently textured wall, there were a lot of texture changes where the surface was exactly aligned with a different textured surface (the bookshelves for example). Offsetting things can help a lot with textures that depict geometry deeper than an inch or so. Obviously such things are the first (and best) thing to suffer in a map jam.

The area you fall into with the wind tunnel seemed a little too direct mechanically. "Push these buttons on opposite walls, now go in here and push this button, now cross the room and leave." It felt videogamey in a way that drew me out.

I did not find a single secret, and I spent another map's worth of play time hunting for them after exiting the level. I ran through numerous times bumping against and shooting every surface that looked like a potential trigger. I bounced grenades into places I couldn't reach. Nothing. I did see one area I couldn't get into, the library above the flooded section, but other than that I had no inkling as to where the secrets were or what they contained.

I'm not sure why you put clip brushes on the alcoves to the right of the stairs up to the drop to the silver key, but it really threw me off (I was secret hunting and was really surprised when I couldn't get through there).

I'm not trying to nitpick, just hopefully giving you action items, because I'd love to see more from you based on this :) 
Mini Reviews, Part 1 
Thanks to everyone who contributed to the jam. I enjoyed all the maps. You all did better than me because you made the deadline (my map will come out, sometime...) Here are some thoughts and demos.

jam6_adib
https://www.dropbox.com/s/tad03s1eg3y1ybr/adib.zip?dl=0

A nice idea with the seals being not just a button to press but stepping-stones to reach new areas. I liked the vertical layout and the tight spaces with lava. Falling in is an ever-present hazard but not annoyingly so (I did fall in lava on my demo in the last room). Good rocky areas, good lighting and
texturing and a nice end battle. My main complaint is that it could have all tied together more rather than just being separate rooms reached from a hub full
of doors.

jam6_daz
https://www.dropbox.com/s/lu161l54gfcbk5z/daz.zip?dl=0

A wonderful insane lava castle and the most pure interpretation of the fire and brimstone theme. The cylinder-based rock detail in the main area is unique in style, it must have taken ages and looks great but it might have been better to spend a little less time there and more detailing the fairly boxy corridors
on the approach to the gold key. The main area gave my computer indigestion on which I'm going to blame my performance in the big rooftop battle where my demo ends... I'm going to spend a bit of time exploring this map properly to find more of the secrets, it's the sort of map that is worth a good look around.

The start map was also cool, a cheeky lava takeover of the original.

jam6_exhelzar
https://www.dropbox.com/s/c1y3ay1mwm99h97/exhelzar.zip?dl=0

An enjoyable little map. Although quite basic in detail and texturing it keeps your interest with varied gameplay. There are cramped corridor fights, the large vertical space of the main room, a bit of lava jumping and the beginnings of a set-piece with the large bridge. It might have been better if, after pressing the button to lower the bridge, the player was led to it by a trail of fresh monsters, and the same at the end to get to the silver door. The map
was too small to get lost in but if it had been larger I might have had trouble remembering how to get to those places (and I hope you do make more and larger maps). I appreciated the lighting on this map, it added a lot of sombre atmosphere without ever being too dark to see.

jam6_ericwtronyn

Like most of the bsp2 maps (or whatever format it is) I'm going to have to wait for a computer upgrade before I can enjoy this. Judging from the first area it looks fantastic though, like a molten lava blend of A Roman Wilderness of Pain and The Masque of the Red Death...

Actually I might try it at the weekend with the RMQ engine, since that worked for me with "Something Wicked This Way Comes." Since it's Tronyn you can assume I will like it.

jam6_ionous
https://www.dropbox.com/s/d1b5yjc6th8sqbs/ionous.zip?dl=0

A lot of samey corridors but at least they're huge weird corridors with masses of detail on the walls and ceilings. A strange alien temple type vibe. Another map
like jam6_adib which adds something to the basic button pushing with some kind of weird lava field thing. Perhaps I would have liked to see that connect somehow to the pyramids in the large outdoor area. Found 2 secrets.

jam6_rick
https://www.dropbox.com/s/d1zoj1ptmvmegmo/rick.zip?dl=0

Nice sense of exploration and mystery here. I missed the nailgun and had to run past the last monsters to the exit. Not necessarily a bad thing, it creates a nice sense of panic, so long as you can complete the map...

jam6_matecha
https://www.dropbox.com/s/n9pderurunnwav5/matecha.zip?dl=0

This map really follows the theme of "fire and brimstone" well with its corrupted graveyard theme. Nice lighting and texturing. Short but sweet. An advantage of small maps is you can build a fully 3d fence! The end of the map was quite abrupt, I think I missed exploring an area although I still had all the kills. It was strange, after commenting on daz's cylindrical rock style, to see it again here, is this the new trend? 
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