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Glad to have participated. Looking forward to getting a chance to play everyone's maps - I hope you all enjoy mine :)
hoping that this jam provides the first underwater maps ever. As far as i know there has been only flooded ones and only a few in the void/space.
Original Deadline: July 31st
Extended Deadline: August 11th Released: August 17th Stream coming at some point! I had a lot of fun working on this one- learned quite a bit too. Can't wait to play everyone else's entries!
Thanks guys. A lot of beautiful, tough and unusual maps.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B3li06myS1r1S1djOVIzdnFpLUU Sorry ish, couldn't finish your map. Was drowning or getting killed over and over. Underwater focused levels sure do play different. Vor projectiles become a threat again for example. Ever since episode 1 I've loved me some water in a Quake map. Of course the trick is how to use it for a new challenge or movement mode or atmospheric element WITHOUT adding unfun levels of I-don't-want-to-drown urgency.
I yoinked this off of Quaketastic last night when I saw it had been uploaded, and got through the first few maps... Bloodshot's was a great start to the pack. Nice use of, and careful introduction of, several of the mod's features. A great sense of exploring and moving between distinct areas. Fun combat, spooky vibes, just nifty all around. Between this and his Egypt-jam map he's doing cool stuff. Maybe the only critique I have is about a biosuit that should have been marked or messaged in some way to point out that it was a respawning item. Giftmacher's map started to edge into requiring too much low-oxygen swimming IMO. And the last fight was either trivial or complete bullshit, depending on whether you happened to swim left or right when you're dropped into the room. On the upside though this map creates a great sense of drowned ruins, and of depths opening up beneath you. Like the anon post, I didn't finish ish's map. Too much drowning or eating underwater vore balls. It had an intriguing opening though. JCR's map has some nicely crazy climbing and falling. Just cool spaces in general, good use of height and angular constructions. I usually go through Quake maps like a roomba, carefully covering all paths before proceeding, but in this case I felt like I was kind of just tumbling ahead into whatever was next & that was fine! I did die at one point where I hadn't saved in a while, so I didn't finish it, but I'll come back to it. muk's map was a good contrast to follow JCR's: squarely compactly constructed and trimmed metal-map biz. Like other mukmaps it bends back in and over itself, so you get glimpses of places you've been or are about to be, something I like a lot. Mostly fun use of water, although there was one bit of extended underwater swimming to check out various passages looking for just the right one... that seemed too lengthy, and not helped by the passages being populated with sniping zombies. And I didn't find a GL until a later section. That did make it quite satisfying to come back and splort the zombies later though. That's as far as I got last night. Looking forward to the rest! The normal/retro divide stopped making sense after retrojam 6, so it made sense to abandon it. Also, I cannot divine dumptruck's motivations, but "Jam 10: DM4" would probably have been a major mouthful, and awkward looking. Naming them this way is more interesting IMO.
Though if I may be allowed to play the devil's advocate, numbers are good for collecting. If jams aren't numbered anymore, it can be easy for someone who doesn't keep his info up-to-date to miss a jam and he wouldn't even know it.
maybe letters of the alphabet?
This was Underwater Jam. Next one has to be Vertical Jam, then Wild West Jam, then X-men Jam (use only textures from X-men TC)... Only recurring, generic events should have a numbering system IMO. Also, there are no best practices posted anywhere. No guidelines etc. There are only ppl who pipe in once someone has made a misstep. ;)
dm4jam described what we were going for pretty well so I didn't even consider adding a number to it. It was a one off. And frankly, I didn't know any better! I'm not quite sure what the answer is but I don't see any reason to number unique, one-off type of events. Underwater Jam will most likely be the only one of its kind. One thing to consider, maybe numbered jams inhibit new participants somehow? Not sure, but I suspect there may be something to that. Like moviegoers skipping a sequel with a number because they didn't see the first installment? Numbered jams might be intimidating to both mappers and players alike, I agree.
I wouldn't call any of the previous jams "recurring events", they were hosted with a very great degree of irregularity. A couple more:
MUZBOZ - Terrific use of custom voice work and music choices. Fun little scenario! It's pretty boxy -- it's a challenge not to do that for indoor modern-ish maps -- but that's broken up somewhat with the vents/catwalks/stairwells (very Half-Lifey, unsurprisingly). Good fights in the big stairwell and big lift areas. I do think that the ammo is not quite sufficient for hard skill; I made it through, but even using infighting and scavenging for all packs/boxes I still ended up doing some axe-work. The map also probably waits too long to give the player a non-starter weapon (esp. with that many bullet-spongey monsters). Nyoei - This had some early-quake vibes. Blocky brushwork, no trim, and some out-of-the-usual texture choices and visual language... not bad in a jam and I could dig the retro feel. Fun secrets too. But almost no water! What's up with that my dude? BTW, something I noticed in Nyoei's map but also several of the others I've played so far: lots of folks using max-height stairs with no clipping. Makes for a very bumpy trip up the staircase. What a lovely map! Excellent architecture and detailing. All the "outdoors" inaccessible areas give it a sense of huge scale. Great lighting, except for most of the big flames not flickering. I love the mix of tech/industrial & ikblue and the environmental storytelling - special mentions to the intro with the glass tunnel and the Bioshock-like bit in the mini-sub.
I noticed what appears to be a bug with a biosuit constantly respawning (see demo). Skill 2 combat is good, not too hard, but could be a bit more surprising. The only thing I didn't enjoy was the impossibility of backtracking to hunt for secrets, but I understand that it wasn't really compatible with the story. Note: 4/5. Skill 2 demos, 136/136 kills, 1/4 secrets. Nice little Koohoo-style map. Good architecture as always, cool puzzles and challenging but fair combat. I've read some who complained about a lack of ammo, I thought the supplies given were enough.
Couldn't find half of the secrets but I'll need to play it again to know if it's because I sucked or because they were too well hidden. Not much criticism except that I noticed a couple flames that didn't flicker and the roof of the start cave could use a little less texture repetition. Note: 4/5. Skill 2 demos, 57/57 kills, 3/6 secrets. An interesting map, very respectful of the theme with very little above water combat.
Unfortunately too tough, with a shortage of ammo supplies - I had to spend a good chunk of the map with nothing but the axe & an unusable LG under penalty of instadeath and had no choice but to godmode my way out of the last couple of underwater fights. The shambler at the beginning might be a bit much, even though the player unusually starts with a very much welcome LG. Couldn't figure out how to open the last secret. A strange bug happened: At the end of the map, my kill counter displayed 96/100 but when I exited, the stat screen said 100/100... WTF? Note: 3/5. Skill 2 demos, 100/100 kills, 2/3 secrets. Just finished all the maps, cool work guys!
The theme was really tricky, I didn't always like the water gameplay so much and drowned quite a few times, in the end the maps that had less swimming seemed better. Skill 2 demos of all the maps (except Ish's cause he's a maniac, his map is brutal). http://born-robotic.net/stuff/qstuff/demos/uwjam_bloodshot_bal.7z http://born-robotic.net/stuff/qstuff/demos/uwjam_gift_bal.7z http://born-robotic.net/stuff/qstuff/demos/uwjam_ish_bal.7z http://born-robotic.net/stuff/qstuff/demos/uwjam_jcr_bal.7z http://born-robotic.net/stuff/qstuff/demos/uwjam_muk.7z http://born-robotic.net/stuff/qstuff/demos/uwjam_muzboz_bal.7z http://born-robotic.net/stuff/qstuff/demos/uwjam_nyo_bal.7z http://born-robotic.net/stuff/qstuff/demos/uwjam_pinchy_bal.7z http://born-robotic.net/stuff/qstuff/demos/uwjam_pritchard_bal.7z Just wondering if anyone else has experienced problems with the pack? Lock ups mainly. On Windows 10 and an Nvidia GTX 780. Played thru Bloodshot's map last night in Mark V with some severe frame rate issues in sections where there are a lot of emitters. Switched to QSS - locked up on 2 different maps. Tried QS and had the same thing. Trying to rule out anything with the mod.
Thanks Johnny Law,
Yeah, in the day or two after I was finished, I kept thinking, "Ahh, I should have put in EVEN MORE enemies, but also a lot more of the higher end guns and ammo." I think I started off thinking the map would be a bit longer (maybe 150% of what it is), and that the player would lead up to a Super Nailgun, and a Rocket Launcher, or something... but it never got that far! I had further thought on have Skill 0, 1 and 2 all being balanced utterly differently, like make it so... * Skill 0 a game with a nailgun at the start, heaps of ammo, and maybe a rocket launcher you get in the middle... (there IS a super shotgun in the very first secret at the start on Easy, but who plays on EASY????? Not us. :) * Skill 1 could be what it is now... a science guy having a bad day at work with not much in the way of guns and ammo. * Skill 2 could have quite a few more high-end tough enemies, but also several more weapons, and some more ammo. And even shift and change how some of the vents, rooms and keys are located, to change the way each Skill setting is played. But yeah! IT is what it is. :) I'd agree with your feedback. I wanted to go with a sorta "hanging on my a thread" vibe to the level. And I think that does work. But... it could have dished up some bigger weapons earlier, even if it meant adding some more enemies to balance that out. :D
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