Don't forget to upload this to Quaddicted, guys. 

http://quaketastic.com/files/demos/otp9_muk.zip

Too tired to write anything too coherent or meaningful:

- Nice little map
- Great use of revisiting older areas from above
- Hard as hell on Hard, possibly quite a bit unbalanced actually?? 

jam9_kell — A Conspiracy Of Cartographers
An excellent map throughout with great visual design. The stargate that's sitting in the middle of the map is probably one of the most (if not the most) impressive and coolest piece I've ever seen in Quake. I really like how you can tell something terrible happened there but you don't know what or why.

The map has a great flow, alternating between the low gravity exterior with a black void of doom and then a square indoor area revolving around a strange, spinning contraption with a levitating corpse. I had the chance to beta test this and it is a pretty devilish map that rewards exploration. Some of the secrets are rather hard to find but aren't needlessly difficult or unfair.

This is just a very, very good map by the master himself.

jam9_giftmacher — The Brimstone Mine
Pretty kickass level with a very peculiar aesthetic I had never see done with Knave before. I really dig the mix of copper-heavy runic decorations, the warm orange light seeping through the barred windows, the rotating fans keeping that strange structure from plummeting down to the surface, the quiet gardens, the heavy machinery everywhere, the orb teleporters, etc... It's just very very well done and particularly original.

Gameplay is well balanced and never unfair, though with the possible exception of a Night Gaunt backspawning and two Polyps spawning as you are on a platform above the void in a secret. The arena fights are well thought out and ammo is plentiful. Secrets are fun to find and rewarding. While the ending is anticlimactic, the final secret really makes up for it.

jam9_newhouse — Mouth Of Yraal
This has next to nothing to do with Contract/Knave but this is a pretty damn great map in its own right, particularly if you enjoy pure carnage. And boy you have about 280 monsters to massacre in this one on skills 2 and 3. I think NewHouse just wanted to make a Doom 2-like slaughtermap and found his perfect playground with Quoth.

The layout was pretty weird and the map is rough around the edges, but it is still a whole lot of fun and I never got lost. I also really dig the style, this sort of corroded factory thing over pools of noxious slime. Ammo is plentiful, there is just enough health to survive comfortably and a few secrets are pretty devious and offer great rewards. No idea how to get to the third silver keycard though, the one that's ironically behind a silver keycard door. 

There are two maps that I cannot play: naitelveni and shotro. The former sometimes loads (about 50% of the time) but crashes almost immediately - no messages, just a freeze and I have to use windows to exit. The latter just crashes on loading, whether via the start map or via the console. Oh well, I enjoyed the rest. 

Starting with dumptruck_ds' map.

Starts in thirty minutes.

https://www.twitch.tv/ionous 

Thank you for giving feedback. This end up being just weird piece of map, but at least I had fun mapping it. There was intended to be story where player starts in a cage in black void and talks with the old one, player must found the contract that is held in giant building (some twisted business man)... But that never happened, it was too risky for this time frame.

Then I started an another red brick castle map, with nasty traps and darkness.. had a bit of feeling of American McGee Alice castle maps.. but I think it is better appreciation comes later in a different form, I wouldn't release this one ever otherwise if mjb wouldn't have motivated me to finish it. 

Well I'm glad you finished it because it's a great map, probably my favorite of yours. Strikes a good balance between difficulty and fun. 

 

I was playing around on Kell's map and found several possible quick routes to the exit! This one seems fastest (7 seconds):

http://www.quaketastic.com/files/demos/jam9_kell_mandel_er.zip 

That's awesome !

Kell's now pissed ! 

Kell right now 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7jMlXtKrRFbxsBnhdgCH844GVlUWK4ZC

Let me know if there are any problems viewing the playlist. 

http://www.quaketastic.com/files/demos/otp9_pulsar.zip

Another gorgeous map. Rather amazing how much the big copper ring/stargate adds to the atmosphere by simply rotating. Very imposing architecture. Loving the classic gothic openings in the walls - if I had the time to explore the outside of my map I would have gone for a very similar look.

The aesthetic reminded me of Q3A quite a lot, with the focus on spires, spikes, and flesh (and the orange skybox of course).

Found the beginning of the map somewhat frustrating but the gameplay improved past that by a fair bit. I messed up and completely wasted the RA so had the cheese the final fight on my second attempt. It was also pretty dark on gamma 1 somehow.

All in all a highly enjoyable map! 

 

I had crashes on a couple maps until I updated to the latest Quakespasm, .92 I think. 

You may want to look around the start map carefully though.

#134: Do you have the latest versions of Quakespasm/Mark V? If not, update. 

This may have been reported already, but I have encountered a glitch, seemingly with the change level trigger on Shotros map. It seems the player is supposed to gather a series of runes in order to progress. I collect the first rune from the Chthon battle and jump in the void and the map ends, 14/200 some odd kills.

My demos are here. Note: I found the Chthon battle impossible, endlessly killed or knocked into the lava, so the 2nd demo picks up after the fight and then the map ends almost right after.

http://www.quaketastic.com/files/demos/redfield_shotrodems.zip

There also seems to be a lot of unfortunate bleeding of rooms through the skybox but I'm not sure if that is fixable. Otherwise the really trippy vibes and crazy Austin Powers teleporter were cool. 

I have Preach's Quoth 2.2 full release. I have the latest QS. I am missing several CD tracks apparently, but I do have the .ogg music files installed in id1. I'm pretty sure .ogg should work with QS. I'm also not able to load Mandel's demo due to a host_error when I load it: missing model *203. 

That last message is because Mandel's demo was recorded on the old version of the map bundled with the first release. 

Good thinking. What's up with the CD tracks then? I've noticed CD tracks missing on a lot of maps I play, but I can still hear global ambient noise. I guess that's built into whatever theme is set for the map in worldspawn? I forget how that works in Quake. 

I'm not too sure. The tracks should be placed inside id1/music and named trackXX.ogg (or mp3), from 02 to 11. Jam 9 features two new tracks inside quoth/music, named track13 and track128 respectively. 

Starts in twenty minutes. Continuing forward, with Mukor's map on deck.

https://www.twitch.tv/ionous 

Yup, that's how my files look. Maybe the message is wrong and it does actually read them? Not sure. 

The particular maps that don't play a track, delusional bears comes to mind, are because the author did not specify a track. It defaults to track 0 and nothing plays as track 0 is data and does not exist. You see this in the console. You can simply command it to play a track of your own at this point. 

Gonna go through the maps real quick and see which maps give me CD errors. To clarify, this is the error message I get: "CDAudio_Play: Bad track number xx".