Thanks for the feedback. I don't hate the Christmas miracle for the record. No babies were harmed in the making of this map! But very glad it was effective. It was the first idea I had for the map but the latest thing I added.

As far as detail and polish. Guilty as charged. I simply ran out of time on the detail pass but referenced ad_mountain quite often. That map uses very few textures but does a much better job with detailing than I could hope to.

Thanks for playing. 

Having played mostly id1 stuff for a while now, it took a bit to remember the quirks of AD's bestiary and entities, plus the eye-openers (i.e. "Holy fucking shit there's zombie knights now oh god"). Comments in alphabetical map order, typed up while playing, all on skill 2:

5th: Short and sweet, not sure if I found the super shotgun secret properly though (used a ramp jump off the tiny lip of the stairs by the axe, then did a midair 180 to air strafe to the platform). Was expecting to get something extra for getting the Vore to kill all the zombies, but so far as I could tell it was just extra kills. The four pillar fight at the end is frantic but the third pillar didn't actually spawn anything- possibly related to the order I touched them or maybe just a crossed trigger someplace? Enjoyed the visuals throughout (despite the noticeable dithering on the stained glass textures, argh!) and gibbing the bunch of zombies at the end with the Widowmaker was extremely satisfying. 7:26, 2/2 secrets, 61/61 kills.

Bal: #1 thing I loved about this map was watching it fall apart as stuff blew up while progressing- platforms breaking, water pipes spewing, lights flickering and buzzing. #2 was finally getting the 'A-ha!' moment for the red armor and plasmagun, although I still missed a chockload of secrets. Some parts of the map seemed darker than they should be, or maybe it was just the detailing making everything more visually noisy than I'm used to- a worthwhile trade, then, the visual style is great. Industrial pipe-mazes are my favorite sort of base map. 22-ish minutes, 5/9 secrets, 134/137 kills, think a few Fiends jumped off the roof before I could kill them.

Breezeep: Died the first try due to corner-induced Knight rape, second playthrough went much smoother. Only found the second secret once I'd killed everything so it was less than helpful, but that's 100% my bad- had to double back for it for 100% completion anyway. Books are fun. I was expecting to venture into a few more of the barred-off rooms, and was surprised when I was free to go after getting just the silver key, thinking the gold one was required. ikwhite textures are always eye-pleasing. 10:06, 2/2 secrets, 42/42 kills.

Dumptruck: The bit with the lava isn't too fun, mostly because it's easy to take a bit of knockback from either the Lost Soul exploding or the crossbow grunt in the window and going careening off to your death. Visually the level is okay, much better in the lava areas, the interior felt somewhat like AD's own Lavatop Mountain except more monotonous. The crying was creepy as fuck, and shooting its source at the end was cheesy but fitting. I liked the base enemies breaking in towards the end, but due to my lack of health at the time I hid and let them fight the Shamblers until they were dead (apparently the Shamblers didn't fight back at all, or they would have wiped the flying grunts and Bobs easily). 12:47, 2/2 secrets, 45/45 kills, 1 pair of new pants required after the crying.

Redfield (icequeen): Wow, that's a design for a map I wasn't expecting. Short and sweet-ish, still died twice from jumping to my death, first trying to find secrets, then trying to sequence break. Oops. Fighting is tight underground and short up above, thought the map was going to be way longer and I think I might've missed something- I saw the Thunderbolt secret in the caves, figured out to shoot the snowflake in front of it, shot the other four throughout the map, but by the time that secret is unlocked, the level exit (a sprite cutout of Ilsa? Orsa? Blazka? Whatever her name is) is directly in front of me so there's no reason to go all the way back down. 6:08, 1/3 secrets, 21/32 kills (!); another short playthrough after reading the Readme led to the Super Secret Secret, which was... interesting, and led to 2/3 secrets, 30/32 kills. Still never got that Thunderbolt.

Ionous: Excellent use of the limited map dimensions, felt like it was a lot bigger than it actually is. Snazzy visuals, loved trying to find the secrets and was honestly disappointed that I didn't find all of them despite my best efforts, reminded me of following the story in AD's ad_mountain- what happened to Johnston? Another playthrough might reveal more without giving up and looking at the readme, poor bastard has the worst luck. One of the secrets was also apparently grabbed out of order, not sure how that happened. Tight combat, but the underwater bit was annoying (or maybe I'm just an idiot) due to taking damage and not being sure where it was coming from (above the player, it turns out), and at one point I completely ran out of ammo and had to go mano y mano with some Death Knights with just the shadow axe until I managed to scrounge up some shells and nails- not sure if that was on accident or intentional as the axe seemed to do a damn good job at stunlocking the Knights. 26:16, 7/10 secrets, 118/122 kills.

Accidentally wrote 10,000 characters. Second post below. 

Mukor: Your map made me incredibly angry, and the thicc statue ass unfortunately did not make up for it, nor did the erection from the shitpost-worthy intermission screen that I only saw after changing routes in one last save and realizing the exit was right behind the gold key door, and that I could have rushed right by the enemies to the exit instead of fiddling about going rooftop-jumping to find secrets and ending up with even less health and ammo than if I had just gone straight through the door. Ammo in general was ridiculously scarce, lots of axe-swinging between backpack finds and that wasn't much fun at all. Similar to Redfield's map in that there's secrets to be had but no point in getting them when the exit is so close. Multiple staircases in the map are really easy to get caught up on when climbing them and for the love of God, in the future please make the tiny doorways a bit wider; I'm far from the best Quake player in the world but it feels pretty lame to suffer multiple deaths because I approached the doorway angled slightly wrong while backpedaling and became Knight shish kebab. Also somewhat annoying: a fair amount of nails but lots of stone enemies who are 50% resistant to them. Did not actually finish in one run period; found 2/4 secrets (as the Quad under the lift doesn't count as one?).

Naitelveni: The single map I died the most on. Not sure if it's because of playing on Hard instead of Normal or what, but holy cow, infuriating. Especially the dual Shambler fight with the Vore up on the platform and nowhere to hide because a dozen other enemies just spawned in, including the goddamn weeaboo samurai Knights in that fight and the next one. Also annoying as all hell: having to wait around on tiny, slow lifts while multiple Z-aware Ogres lob grenades at you that you can't always dodge by jumping, and are almost guaranteed to eat one or two to the face and get sent all the way back down unless you spent five minutes pecking away at them from below. Don't know how the hell it's even possible to win without the hidden Plasmagun's firepower. 4:43, 1/1 secrets, 38/41 kills (not sure what happened here, I think someone spawned into a wall or something because I still heard grunts and the final "Only X left to go..." text might've counted wrong somehow).

Negke: First part of the map is very dark and dingy, almost too brown and pretty same-looking, basically just unfinished looking. After that it looks a lot better, and the spattering of wall lights give just enough light to see what's going on. Another ammo-scarce map, albeit not on the level of previous ones, so no axe-swinging here. Not much to say I guess other than there were a few spots I was surprised to find clip brushes preventing me from shooting between bits of bridge or floor, surprising as a number of other maps seemed to enjoy giving the player inch-wide gaps to try to hit Scrags and Ogres through while being pelted by vomit and grenades. 11:57, 3/4 secrets, 46/46 kills.

Pritchard: This was an interesting one. The setting was nice and cozy, although the bright orange lights for most of the map could've been toned back a bit or made a bit more neutral, the red glow on everything kind of gets eye-watering after a while. On the third and final attempt, the entrance to the final arena glitched: Somehow the sequence was started while I was still in the button area, so when I actually hit the button the door closed instead of opened and I had to noclip through. Also got an accidental telefrag on the final boss, who from the gibs I'm not even sure was supposed to be but I do know it made things a lot easier. Found the Quad after already killing everything, of course- actually grabbing it in the fight seems like it would be schmuck bait given it's tucked away in the corner. 12:35, 4/5 secrets, 69/74 kills. I broke every damn box in the map and not a single one had anything inside and that was disappointing.

Tens: Over in a flash, but fun and a great cool-down map after getting repeatedly destroyed. I managed to die anyway because I'm an idiot (or sleep-deprived), but the teleport back for players who decide to get risky with their jumps is nice. Wish it had been longer, the art style was cool and I wasn't expecting the cave to open up to an icy abyss at all. Wasn't sure which secret is unveiled by finding all the breakable crates, still wasn't sure but found the third secret after finishing the map. 6:40, 2/3 secrets, 13/13 kills.

All in all, a fun map pack and good work by everyone showcasing just how much you can do in a 1024u³ play area with some creativity and elbow grease. Way more than I thought possible, that's for sure! No demos unfortunately because even zipped they're over a quarter gig and that's more upload bandwidth than I've got in any reasonable amount of time, not that it matters because I just vomited text all over the page like a dork. 

I appreciate everybody's notes, thanks! I recorded videos for all the other entries, and they're in the process of going up on Youtube, with a little as-yet-unrecorded post mortem for my own at the end. Keep an eye on this playlist if you're interested in learning why I did things.

In the meantime, though, I thought it was important to point out to Pritchard that I encountered the same bug as Spud. Poking around shows you ran into the same issue I did in Retro Jam 4, that touching the corner of a space opposite the corner of a trigger will still activate it.

Hard to explain, but in your map, face the button that's meant to open the slanted door leading to the final room. Turn left, look at the small set of stairs, and go down underneath. There's a trigger brush whose nearest corner touches the edge formed by the lowest step of that small staircase and the floor. If a player's collision touches that edge, the trigger is fired. Unfortunate, but shrinking the trigger's brush by 8 or 16 units on each side to get it away from the walls and ceiling should do the trick; keeps the bug from happening, but still prevents players from walking through without activating it. 

So creative and aesthetic.. this still beats most modern games for me.. 

Most consistent feedback so far lmao 

if butts dont make up for bad maps im a dead man.

sorry about the ammo count. balancing resources between backpacks was pretty hard.

as far as the final secret, yeah i fucked up. :( i didnt give the player extra+ ammo for it. 

Hey, you gave it yer best. To be fair it was a very fine butt, even with the intermission's extra sound effect.

Speaking of secrets though, what exactly is the correct player route to get to the last two secrets (the rooftop path that goes through the skylight to the super nailgun and has the secret-within-a-secret area)? I saw the brick stairs on top of the bookcase, but couldn't figure out how to get up there other than an explosive jump (which I had no weapons capable of) so I wound up doing some Tony Hawk ramp jump and backwards air control shit off one of the curved bits of wall in front of it, but that felt super janky so there's no way that was the correct method. 

Its a bit of a small circle jump from the broken section of wall over to the window. It does seem to be a bit harder than I recall in my playtests. 

 

Well its finally here and I am loving it! Just finished all the maps in the jam, and I had a hell of a lot of fun. I've got a large .zip with demos for every map, so mappers and demo lovers take a look:
http://www.quaketastic.com/files/demos/redfield_xmasDEMOS.zip

Redfield's Reviews:

5th - A great map considering how much time you had. Loved the zombie trap, and the large arena at the end had me running for my life! A great knave style map.

Bal - What can I say? How many pipes are in this map and where do they go? A detailed masterpiece with great gameplay to boot. An amazing base map dripping with atmosphere. Take note demo watchers - if you want to see where EVERYTHING is watch this demo.

Breezeep - I love ikwhite so this map jumped out at me when I loaded it. It feels like an ever expanding arena, and I like the carpets and many arches. Had fun on this one - where can I order one of those rugs?

Dumptruckds - A good old Dissolution of Eternity/Firetop Mountain textured map. The baby was disturbing and I really liked the trippy battle sequence at the end. Without a doubt the cave and lava section was beautiful and the highlight but it was tricky to navigate. Also, in my mind I killed the baby ANTIchrist, cause I can't blaspheme:)

Ionous - Those Unreal textures! What an amazing layout and beautiful use of textures. This map also has a dark story hidden in the secrets and... EELS. 11/10 for that eel factor.

Mukor - Like a mini AD swampy this map is intricately detailed in the true AD style. Full of traps and surprises, the layout twists and turns you around right to the end. The statue is also a great centerpiece.

Naitelveni - The Tower of Terror! An intense assault from start to end, I was challenged by this. I love a good arena map as a change of pace, and that red floor was really atmospheric. A neat layout for an arena, but damn those z-aware ogres, I just can't stand them!

negke - This map really creeped me out at the start. Great way to keep the player confused and I liked the very old-school maze like vibes. A very dark map, and a unique puzzle based end. Good stuff!

Pritchard - This has stunning atmosphere! Loved the cottage and those trees! The coloured lighting worked really well as you descend and the combat was tight and brutal. I smashed EVERYTHING and wished the secrets incorporated more breakables. The outside part was so pretty I wanted to play out there more...

Tens - This was incredible! If you were delusional after staying up all night - man sanity is overrated. The vistas were fantastic, and I have never seen these textures before. Great use of a boss monster makes this short map a real challenge.

Redfield - Yes I have a 100% demo of this for those demo enthusiasts. I pointed out in the readme as well that I was really unhappy with the combat on this. I spent a lot of time on textures, trees and music(which I love) but I just couldn't do much with the monsters on this strange map. I'm glad some people have been having fun with it though.

Cheers! 

In regards to the gold key secret, I didn't really know that you could grab it through the bars. It's something I didn't think about at the time because I was scrambling to finish the map and send it out. In other words, glad you're all enjoying this! 

https://www.twitch.tv/ionous

Starts in about thirty minutes. 

In case anyone missed it, I have my jam playthrough up to watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVpqZUCREOU

Amazing job everyone! I think that everyone had a really unique take on the theme and it made playing through it pretty exciting because you didn't know what would happen next.

There isn't a bad map in the bunch, but I will agree with some of the other critiques that a couple do feel a bit cramped. Other than that, I didn't have any really big issues with any of them.

Great job all, really looking forward to what you all do in 2018! 

Here is a little .ent file that addresses two issues in Pritchard's map, namely the missing chair models on certain OS, and some monsters that previously refused to spawn.

http://quaketastic.com/files/single_player/maps/xmasjam_pritchard_fix.zip 

You can call me stupid, but did you guys try Bal's map in id1 Quake? Totally lives up to its name! You start the map and BOOM FIEND AND GRUNTS AND DOGS ALL JUMP AT YOU AT THE SAME TIME AND ALL YOU HAVE IS A BOOMSTICK POW THE NEXT ROOM IS EVEN A MORE OF A COMPLETE CLUSTERFUCK

A warm welcome home indeed.

Anyways, it's an amazing map if played as intended! 

Hah yeah I saw someone play on stream like that cause he'd forgotten to load AD, was really wondering what the hell he did to break my map so badly at first. 

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

The designs in this pack are awesome. Highlights:

1. Great variety of themes.

2. Strong themes in all maps. Like really strong.

3. Great atmosphere in many maps. Some of them are so creative they actually feel like little introductions to new games.

4. Use of the restrictions really effective for interesting, explorative, convoluted layouts on a smaller scale.

5. Use of the restrictions also good for interesting scenery surrounding the map, some really cool atmosphere-enhancing non-gameplay designs.

6. In short the vibes are spot on, the maps are often very cute and really engrossing. I think it's been a great exercise in just how good small maps can be.

7. Secrets good too.

(I haven't gone into specifics here as it's pretty obvious which bits have been so effective. The less creative maps have still be good and stylish in their own right too).

The gameplay is a bit more problematic overall, with a lot of maps being unduly hard, not in a "git gud" sort of way, but with some recurring and specific issues:

1. Maps are very difficult to get through first go due to a combination of "health-chipping" encounters mixed with fierce AD monster encounters that if you can't predict them or really save health for them are often insta-death.

2. The AD monsters in a cramped environment are harder than usual, I do think AD maps have been previously been used in larger scale maps with more player manouverability options, and this hasn't been taken into account here.

3. I'm guessing that due to the size of the maps, that mappers and playtesters have been able to play them repeatedly (unlike testing a 600 monster map) and thus have become very familiar with the play situations.

This has made several of the maps quite gruelling but the designs have been exciting enough to keep me persisting. Long live small scale maps! 

Awesome map man, Really solid theme. Thoroughly enjoyable.

I played on nightmare, I thought that the density of enemies and choices of enemies were really good. Maybe a tiny touch too easy, but this criticism would be nitpicking. The gameplay was probably one of the most balanced in the pack.

I missed a lot of secrets. I'm not sure if this is because I'm rubbish or because they could have been conveyed a little better.

Did I mention how much I liked the theme? The outdoor area was excellent, and I really liked the tip-of-the iceberg vibe to the building. Especially the descent from house to basement / storeroom to unfamiliar rooms / evil worship place.

Great map, thanks :) 

...one slight gameplay frustration with some of these was actually an effect of how nice the designs were - I kept getting entranced by the vibes (did I mention i like small convoluted strongly themed maps) and forgetting to quicksave.... 

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

Difficult to say anything that already hasn't been said about this gem of a map - such a highly polished, well built place. I played in normal QS, so no fancy volumetric fog-like particles, but I didn't mind. It looked really good even though thematically it was a fairly nondescript base.

My one niggle is the usual videogame-y progression felt a bit out of place: for example, there isn't much logic to pressing two pillar buttons to activate a small lift next room. Usually in Quake this matters practically never, but with this level of professionalism it was a little odd.

Very well done map, hope the next one comes soon! 

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

The trademark high difficulty is back. I managed to fit within just one demo this time, even though I still played very sloppily.

The map does kind of show that it was made quickly before the deadline, though it's rather well done. I think I would have preferred subtler lighting, as I'm not fully convinced the dark monster skins fit very well with the white stone.

The outside area kept teasing me.

I liked the books.

Nice map overall! 

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

Another map that could have done with some more time, and some moodier lighting.

This map somehow felt simultaneously small and too open at the same time. It was nice to have those tiny lifts everywhere, it reminded me of E4M8 in a way. It also makes me want to revisit my dm4 remix in this theme... :qthink:

I did like the revisiting of areas (though some more consistency would be nice, rather than making it sometimes a door opening, and sometimes a hole in the wall blowing open) and the twist on the ending.

Somehow I failed to connect the map together thematically (as seen in me tragically failing the ending).

A decent map, all things considered! 

well i played some of the maps and i must say that i'm impressed with ionous map, it's like a textbook case of reusing spaces. 

So well done. The starting bit was a gem with 32 monsters fitting in fine to one tiny area. I actually had dreams about this after trying it the first time (and, ahem, ragequitting the zombie trap after forgetting to quicksave......)