But looking forward to playing it!!!! I think Jams and Speed Mapping should have strict parameters. Perhaps some of the mods here could weigh in and give some guidance? 

These maps look nice. Will start playing. 

It turned out that we waited until Naitelveni as the sm181 event organizer will made the pack. 

played newhouse's and savagex's so far, liking them gameplay-wise a lot more than the last 1024^3 thingy map-pack. basic/simple geometry looked surprisingly well too, great job! 

nait's: just WOW! the nicest lighting I have seen in a loooong time. some extremely cool architecture too, multiple ways to go around, perfect 

 

coce1: dark, nice, brutal, lots of enemies 

I've been very tired this week and couldnt get my self to finish the pack, Special thanks to the people who helped out and made maps! <3 <3 <3 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1V3cVYjsyoU2emcCkKElZPw8ltVyTY8dr/view?usp=sharing

Noticed this when people more played my sm181 map, it was just so annoying to watch people cheating by pressing 3 times the start button. So here is small fix for those start area buttons, now having wait -1 like they should have been. 

All these maps were played on nightmare.

Feedback to all the mappers, I feel like the maps would have been more interesting if the copper textures had been used to highlight / augment other textures. The restricted use of textures made some of the maps feel a little monotonous. Having said that, the maps are very good for having used so few.


Cocerello:

Map 1 was brutal, in the truest sense of nightmare skill. I didn't quite care for the geometry in this one, but the concept was fantastic and the gameplay kept me on my toes. It was a very dark map. Some of the secrets were spoiled by having fullbright health / ammo models that were "hidden" in shadows.

Map 2 was easier in terms of gameplay, which was actually a welcome change after map one XD. I really liked the curves, the lighting was excellent and the theme was solid. As I mentioned in my opening paragraph the map could have done with some varying textures. This probably contributed to me constantly getting lost. A smaller map would have helped with this too. In my opinion your time could have been better spent making a smaller scale, more polished map.

I enjoyed both of these maps, well done.


Doomer:

A large scale map for a short time, well done. As I mentioned above, I played on nightmare. I felt like this map was a normal to hard skill level, so gameplay wise it was easy, but fun. Excellent use of the theme. Interesting use of coloured lighting. I normally don't like the coloured lights to be so saturated, but these worked ok. The geometry could have been a little more detailed, but given the time constraints what you've done is pretty good.


Nait:

A visually excellent map. Good, large scale geometry. It could have been varied a touch more in places, but that would be a final detail parse and is more me nitpicking than anything else. Pretty fun to play too. Skill was pretty good, could have been a tiny bit more challenging. I felt that slightly more scripted encounters could have helped this. I still have no idea how you're able to map so quickly. I find that pretty amazing. The theme was consistent and the lighting excellent.


Newhouse:

A very interesting map. Good solid theme, excellent brushwork. Perhaps a little more rudimentary in terms of brushwork than we've seen from you lately, but that is to be expected from a speedmap. As always you've made some very interesting encounters and traps. I loved the laser enforcer and the inclusion of jump-pads was great. One thing that I don't quite care for is diagonal travelling platforms. They just feel odd to me. Your big laser trap could have done with a couple of diagonal lasers, just to make it a little more tricky for the player :)

Other than those small things, I really liked the map. Good stuff.


Savagex:

Prize for the best / worst map name =P
Instantly very visually striking with the sky / fog colour. Pink / fuchsia isn't used often in quake, and you've made it work quite well here.

Like cocerello's map, you've made some nice curves in this map, well done. The gameplay was too easy for nightmare, I would have like a bigger challenge. The lift was excellent, in both ascent and descent.

Like a few of the other maps in this pack they could have done with a final detail parse, in this map the outdoor walls were quite plain in terms of depth, I think a change here would have added quite a bit to the map. Having said that I do understand time constraints and all.


Finally:

The elephant in the room... If you're going to miss the deadline, let the guys know and release the map as an independent release. Your map will be better quality as it won't be as rushed (you'll have more time to work on it), and the speed map pack won't miss its deadline.

Thanks for another great pack guys :) 

Thanks for playing and offering your thoughts! 

Been playing this. Newhouse's map is insane, great stuff. 

There's some weird default/square texture in the sky when i play sm181_nait2 with FTE engine.

What am i doing wrong? :/ 

oh, i just found out that gfx/env/violent180 (sm181_nait2's skymap) is missing. So i just rename another skymap to "violent180" and now everything is working =D 

Ok, there's this room full of dogs... i think they're supposed to jump to the floor, but only two or three actually jump and attack the player, the others keep jumping in the same place and barking. I tested with FTE and Quakespasm and both engines show the same "bug" 

And one thousand times FUCK!

It's not an engine bug but a Wordcraft/Hammer/JACK bug, which deletes keys not in the .fgd when using the Ignore Groups option.

Worst part is that i know well of it and thought i had under control but i dropped my guard as that part was finished, tested and working fine long before i released, which makes me angrier, as that encounter is the one i like the most in that map and the one i wanted the most commented.

I keep in mind that bugs are a normal part of speedmaps every time i release but i can't still get accustomed to it. 

So... should there be a bugfix-release of SM181 with fixes from Newhouse and Cocerello and including the missing skybox? 

I got a bit intolerant of some of the gameplay so didn't finish all maps but there was definitely some interesting stuff going on and some nice styles. I particularly like Naits and Savages for the spot-on execution of the theme and fun gameplay.

http://quaketastic.com/files/demos/sham181_demos.zip 

I don't know if this is a bug or not, but in the sm181_nait2 map there's 10 pillars to touch so you can open the exit door... but if you touch 8 pillars the door will open (no matter the order you touch, 2 pillars will always be irrelevant). is this a bug? 

...I assumed the over supply of pillars was to facilitate multiple route choices. 

Yep. I thought it might be that too, but I just wanted to be sure =D 

* Shambler: Thanks for the demos. That type of play-style is something i have seen from several players along the years in my maps but i struggle to understand and predict, and your demos helped with it.

I thought that i had prepared the fist map for that play style but it seems that i failed big at that and even all the work and planning i made to help turned against that play-style: you played very cautiously when i expected a more aggressive play and played aggressive when i expected a conservative play. Due to this the map became easier due to the first fourth part of your choices and harder due to the rest of the map's choices. For example you never got to fight some guys and on the other hand triggered three and almost four encounters before dealing with the first one thrice, and got to fight the Shambler which wasn't something intended at all, as if you played differently you'll just see it from afar and not get to fight it.

Unfortunately, i don't think i could have arranged this map to make it fun for that play-style: while i see some parts where i could do it with some tweaks, to make it for most of it i would need to change the layout, combats and even brushwork, concept of the map and lighting style. That takes me back to a doubt i have been having for the last years: continue to make maps i like in my style, do that while continuing to tweak the maps for that play-style even more or directly try to only make maps that suit other play-styles they currently don't.

To finish, just in case i'll say this to any one reading: i am NOT TALKING here about player skill or skill choices, so don't change the talks in that direction. This would happen in half of my maps no matter how easy or hard i would have made them.


* Tribal: thanks for reporting the dog's bug. I hope you liked the maps.


* SavageX and Tribal: speedmaps are about what can be done with very limited time and that's the fun of it both for the player and mapper as it leads to very different maps, and also makes very common for bugs to appear due to this and no beta testers. Also the maps in this pack seem to already deviate from speedmaps enough. To finish, a bugfix pack would also increase the number of versions out there and problems with demos arise, which is why extra versions are only for when betatesting.

Due to all of this there was never a need of a bugfix patch/pack ever on speedmaps, but that doesn't stop any to work on it to make a normal map and release it alone later.


* Shamblernaut: i give you my thanks for the comments and have to say i am glad you enjoyed the map. I am also surprised that you say the the first map is harder and darker than the first, as i expected it to be the opposite, even more in our case as you played on skill 2, and pleased that there was no ammunition problems on the second map as i took extra attention on that. I suppose that in regards of the difficulty it was due to the encounters being different based on the play-style of the player that i used on the first map.

Apart from that, It is interesting that even with all the ways i put into leading the players around the map you still got lost several times. I have to suppose that it is a normal consequence of using open layouts in Quake and only ridiculous amounts of leading mechanics would remove that. Will keep it in mind. Thank you for the information.


* Jaromir83: glad you liked the first map. What about the second? 

I took the liberty of recording some demos of SM181:

https://maikmerten.de/maps/sm181-demos.zip

I didn't record my own map because... well, I know that one. And I'd spoil all the secrets.

Coce: I certainly like the sophistication of your map geometry, taking into consideration how incredibly little time you needed to come up with these maps. However, I tried several times to complete them, but I usually get into an unwinnable "too many monsters too handle" or "too short on ammo" situation. That's a pity :-(

(Of course, I'm a horrible player, so keep that in mind)

Doomer: I really enjoyed your map. I'm very into "run and gun" gameplay and your map just suits me fine! Of course, in this particular map there's plenty of room for more enemies - nonetheless I had a good time :-)

Newhouse: I initially made it through that map in one try, but now, a few days later, I had somewhat rough start and needed several attempts to do it this time. The starting area is sophisticated, but brutal. Really liked the atmosphere and overall layout - I got a real impression of exploration. There's one area with steep ramps with ogres below and above that I found hard to navigate while fighting.

Nait: Wonderful architecture, great style! This is the kind of detail that I cannot ever hope to achieve! Had a lot of fun in this map, too. Got stuck here and there which cost me dearly - given I'm overall bad on jumping (the first demo ends with me in lava) I decided to just ignore that corridor with the two lava jumps on second playthrough. I also chose to mostly ignore the ogres raining down grenades as I find sniping those down rather tedious. 

It seems that the files for both my second map and Dommer's are bad. They are just a few Kbytes intead of Mbytes, so there is nothing to see on them. 

Oh, sorry for that. I noticed that something went wrong with Doomer's recording and recorded a new demo. I missed that your demo was broken, too. I will record another session and update the archive.