Thanks for the playthru on your stream, Ionous!

Was fun watching someone play it with some commentary.

PS: I made a few Quake maps back in about 1996, which were all rubbish. This is the first Quake map I've done in 20 years.

I've done a Thief 2 map some time ago... (actually released it in 2001, then revisited it and made it better in 2014).

Lady Lomat's Flute
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icOHzjIvtM8

I'm now starting to work on my own FPS / Immersive Sim sorta game in Unity. :)

I did the Quake map jam as a sorta practice to get mapping for my game dev. :)

Here's the game I'm currently prototyping / experimenting with... a few random tidbits of gameplay here. It's lovingly code-named "Romero" at the moment, and features a few Quake sounds, and my very Quake inspired Grenade Launcher. ;D

ROMERO - Dev Vid #9 - Glowy Lights, Slow mo, Drones
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCknQ7ti8Hs

I don't have that much idea of exactly what the game will be yet! I'm thinking of doing procedural level generation... not sure. I want to lean a lot more into stealth options (as I love Thief), but you can go all out when you need to as well. 

Just watched the demos people have done. Great stuff.

Dmitry
- Love the way you were farming the enemies shooting-one-another in the locker room.
- I saw you get hurt on the lift and die there! I saw that happen to Ionous as well when they played. I've never seen it on one of my playthrus! Weird. Hmmm... not really sure what caused that.

JCR
- You got into some really ballet-like moments, smashing the enforcers and grunts, weaving around.

Bal
- Wow, nice playing! :) You got it in one, on hard? Jeeees. :D 

features a few Quake sounds
Those are copyrighted. You might want to consider them only as placeholders until you find free replacements. Similarly, your weapon looks like a reskin of the Quake shotty. Use an original, or at least free, model instead.

procedural level generation
Be wary of that. Procedural generation usually produces uninspired, shitty maps that eventually tend to all look the same. You'd better go with lovingly crafted maps containing unique set pieces.

Best of luck on your project anyway. Nice slomo.

Weird. Hmmm... not really sure what caused that.
I think you can set a flag preventing the player from getting squished in such cases. More experienced mappers could provide a more complete answer. Maybe ask in mapping help thread? 

Played through the maps by Muk, Giftmacher, and JCR so far. Skill 1 demos of the first two, my demo for JCR's map unfortunately broke somehow: https://www.dropbox.com/s/9018podjng05i8k/uwjam_demos_yoder_1.zip?dl=1

uwjam_muk
- The first half felt like if American McGee had made an underwater level, lots of tight reuse of space in clever ways. The second half, I was very confused. There was the mechanic with the gate opening and closing, but I couldn't even tell where I was trying to go after that, what my long-term goal was. Eventually after circling around the map enough times I stumbled into the solution. I think this is a case where it would've been better to put a gold key or such on the far side of the grate, and have a gold door somewhere previous so it'd be obvious why I want to get across? The underwater section with the zombies reminded me of Breezeep's map from Mayan Jam, in a good way but also in a very stressful way... it's amazing how a few zombies makes underwater sections scary!

uwjam_gift
- Loved the atmosphere of the space. The first section felt like delving into an old temple in Uncharted or something, especially the room with the broken stairs. The difficulty also increased in a nice way, and the "trash compactor" trap fooled me and had me shooting everywhere looking for a button. Only notes are that the distance between that first gold door and the gold key are so far off that I'd forgotten about the door by the time that I found the key, but the shortcut route makes that not really matter anyhow. There was also one particular ambush with some knights and an ogre, and a few other fights in that area where I kept tripping up on lamp geo, but I think that's more on me and that I have a nasty glare on my screen today. The ammo and health distribution seemed just right for me; I was a little wasteful, so I ran short a few times, but that kept me moving and scared.

uwjam_jcr
- The whole map has a kind of Dark Forces vibe to it that I enjoyed, a sort of semi-representational architecture with a sense of purpose like a water-treatment facility. There are some aesthetic things that don't work so well, mostly because leaning into more realistic styles isn't Quake's strength. Specifically, the texture scaling feels off, especially on some of the massive grates. The waterfalls and VFX are also a bit clunky, but again that comes with pushing Quake in directions where it's weak. On the gameplay side, pacing was good, especially the back-and-forth between combat and exploration. One note is that a couple of your encounters toward the end spawn in 8 or so of the same enemy type in a mob, and then funnel them down a hallway where they're easy to frag. Or a few cases where I was fighting scrags on narrow platforms where there wasn't much room to strafe their shots without tripping on geo. More room for combat to breathe would be nice. The room with the silver key was maybe the strongest in this way, even though it was mostly underwater combat. Oh also loved the messages throughout and the ending's multi-exit! They add a lot to the mood of the level! 

I experienced a few bugs on this one. I couldn't finish my first playthrough because the doors leading back to the SK door had somehow closed and wouldn't open again, so the demo included here is my second playthrough, in which I witnessed a knight suddenly zoom to the side of the screen never to be found again! In total, 4 of these assholes went M.I.A., preventing me from 100%ing the level... I suspect they ended up falling somewhere outside the map.

Anyway, this map could have used some more work. There's a lot of texture tiling on some large surfaces that would've benefited from a bit of detailing. I noticed a nasty texture misalignment on one of the crates in the start area. Waterfalls would look better using thinner brushes and transparency (no idea if the latter is possible in Extras, though), and the round sprite you used to simulate foam looks a little crappy IMHO - the drop sprite that others used instead looks better. In the room beyond the GK door, the MH stacked over a regular medkit causes z-fighting glitches. The catwalks across the canal are a little tricky to navigate due to their narrowness and unevenness. Making walkways breakable can be game-breaking - I'm thinking notably of the GK access that was partially destroyed by an ogre grenade. I was able to jump over the gap and didn't think about checking if the rest of this walkway was also breakable, but it's something to keep in mind.

Combat-wise, skill 2 was challenging but not too much. I liked that you didn't shy away from some nasty ambushes with eels and hydras, contrary to some other mappers who didn't use them enough. The exit room filled with a handful of puny knights was a bit anticlimactic. The setting was perfect for a very much in-your-face shambler dance. And yes, I agree with Mclogenog about some encounters feeling like a shooting gallery.

Note: 3/5. Skill 2 demo, 119/123 kills, 3/3 secrets. 

Forgot to mention! The wall between the correct exit portal and the yellow armor is flagged as water... you can swim through it, which means you can probably speedrun the map in 30 seconds. 

Demos are skill 1, and include the maps by Bloodshot, Muzboz, Nyo, and Pritchard: https://www.dropbox.com/s/cex9o0uuvzwcf5h/uwjam_demos_yoder_2.zip?dl=1

uwjam_bloodshot
- incredible aesthetic work to sell the environment. At times felt like Bioshock, and the environmental puzzles felt like something out of the Half-Life series, not easy to do with Quake! My only note of criticism is that the combat was a little flat. In some spots, enemy placement made them easy to cheese. The room with two hell knights and a shalrath specifically comes to mind, since the hell knights were moving "toward" me by going under the stairs where they weren't a threat. The arena space was also pretty easy with all of the grenades and rockets I had saved up, even without the lightning gun I didn't find. A shambler in that arena space would have been properly scary!

uwjam_muzboz
- Some very Half-Life vibes, especially with the focus on the story through voice recording. The elevator fight at the end was nice, had me jumping on and off of the platforms to the side trying to keep up. Some of the other areas felt a bit boxy and over-scaled, like the locker room and armory. This large scale made the combat less difficult, even when there were larger numbers of enemies. Breaking those spaces down into smaller chunks and relying less on narrow catwalks for your verticality would go a long way to improving the experience.

uwjam_nyo
- The cavern space at the beginning feels huge, and I'm glad that by the end of the map we get to explore all around it. The geo in that space is also some of the most visually striking. A lot of the interiors felt a bit boxy, but the scale was pretty good for most of the combat encounters. One thing you'll notice in the demo is that my first life I missed some pretty crucial "secrets", which made a huge difference. And then in my second life, trying to get back to where I'd left off, I managed to skip a lot of the enemies without fighting them. Maybe that's all good and by design, but it struck me as a little odd.

uwjam_pritchard
- Lots of solid gameplay space in this map, and just enough theme to sell the environment! I especially liked the little encounter where the stairs crumble away and then a button in the corner raises the water; simple, but forced me to engage in the fight instead of cheesing it safely from a doorway. One of the main notes was that the ceiling height was a little squat, and more variety there could help similar areas feel distinct. There are some other notes in the demo itself that I'm forgetting now. 

Played the final two, so some short notes on those before sleeping:

Pinchy: Interesting sci-fi base sprawl going on here; helped it feel more epic but also disconnected/random at times. The big room near the end uses a very familiar videogame water-manipulation trope, but it was fun to see it in Quake. I got lost for a while after finding the gold key FWIW. Oh yeah also: a couple of very punishing deployments of mass grunts, which for some reason was funny to me.

Pritchard: Felt like a fun bite-sized adventure. Just enough revisiting of locations & just enough "required swimming". Good use of the mod's features. The intro was a nice touch and the exit was a REALLY nice touch. 

Cheers Mclogenog (yoder) for the feedback! Good comments. :) I watched your Demo and some good extra feedback in there too. :D

I actually didn't specifically recognise the logo on that big red cargo crate. Is that the Black Mesa logo?

I did like the idea that the character you play, Simmons, is somehow in the world that Black Mesa exists, but I didn't want to make it specifically true. So I was kinda hoping that Cargo Crate logo was just something generic. I wasn't sure! :) 

Ah yes, I did an image search, and I see it is a version of the Black Mesa logo. Funny, I never actually remember seeing that logo in the Half Life games... :] 

Thank you all for the feedback- lessons learned for sure!

@mclogenog

Thanks for finding this bug, I have no idea how that happened, obviously, it was not a design choice.

@mugwump

I agree that the ending was a bit underwhelming, I suppose I was running out of steam by the end there! Looking back, I realize I spent a ton of time learning to use the emitters and watertrains and was a bit burned out by the end. I ran into many problems getting my emitters to work properly without crapping out the game, so I used a larger sprite to help fill in the area with less particles emitted. As far as the uneven bridges, that was a design choice as I wanted played to accidentally fall in the water, likewise with the destructible sections of the upper gold walkway. I haven't watched your demo yet but I will tonight. By the way, which source port did you use? I only tested with quakespasm this time around.

Thanks again! 

 

Thanks for the feedback. Hard skill actually has a shambler in that arena. It's still a little on the easy side, but my map was balanced more around hard as that's what I usually play on.

I made normal balanced around my brother since he was a tester but I probably shouldn't have used him as a baseline, as he would waste ammo for things like the SNG on breaking crates and weaker enemies and then complain there wasn't enough ammo.

He's more of a doom player though 

he would waste ammo for things like the SNG on breaking crates
He's aware that he has a non-ammo-wasting axe in his arsenal, right? 

I never really got into Doom. Something about Quake, the full 3D, the lighting just blew me away! It was like night and day.

It's cool watching everyone play these Quake maps, and playing Quake in general, and it really reminds me why, when the Nintendo 64 came out, I was just basically disgusted by it. (I've kinda of come to appreciate it in the context of computer games, later).

But, Quake was this edge-of-your-seat intense experience in real 3D. The gameplay could be super fast, super hard, with these real 3D projectiles and grenades popping around, fast challenging enemies.

And everything else coming out on consoles and things just seemed so kidsy and kinda behind the times.

Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked! I just love how intense Quake is. 

Some of these demos wound up truly massive (probably due to particles- JCR's in particular came in at over half a gig!) so in the interest of filesize and best compression they're packed in .7z format requiring 7zip to open rather than normal .zip.

Bloodshot: Boy, I'm happy I didn't finish my own map in time because you included every setpiece I could think of but better. Looks fantastic, plays great, the submarine was most excellent as was the switch-up in theme halfway through. Water currents were a little bit janky but did an excellent job at disorientating and causing panic. Not sure about the rocket launcher being necessary in such a cramped map other than as a trap for using it over the GL? 19:58, 2/4 secrets, 135/136 kills. Also, am I going nuts or did this map have slightly lower gravity than usual? sv_gravity read normal but something still felt strange.

Giftmacher: Vores in water are terrifying and the janky current doesn't help, definitely feels like it's a crapshoot on if you'll live if you don't know to run to the corners first (specifically the Pent corner). Breddy gud otherwise even if the underwater escort switch hunt at the start was down to the wire air wise. Feel like a doof for missing secrets as usual. 13:30, 3/6, 57/57.

Ish: Your map raised my blood pressure to levels classified as hypertension at minimum. I will say nothing else, other than at one point I was attacked by a horde of black fish that clipped through a wall from somewhere far above the water. 13:35, 1/3, 98/100.

JCR: Accidentally jumped through a nonsolid (??) wall and finished the map in a minute thirty with 0 kills. Whoops! Second demo is a normal playthrough. Some interesting visual choices, lots of odd angles but it works well. Restarted once or twice after thinking I sequence broke and it turns out I didn't but died multiple times to eels anyway. Those suckers are hard to see in the dark. Unfortunate visual bug (texture shearing) on the floating slipgates- in the future using Valve 220 texture mode will let you correct that. 15:24, 3/3, 119/123.

muk: Please let me out of this watery hellhole. Metal and water and zombies and water and water and timed switches and EVERY WATER PASSAGE LOOKS THE SAME. Took a break and went to sleep because it was frustrating me so much. Looped back on myself about a dozen times due to that damn double-button switch to unlock the underwater blood gate, spent half the map trying to get into those 'corner teleporters' and was extremely disappointed when I finally made it and they only teleported to each other (unless I missed a secret there). Found a few buttons that I never found what they actually did, and doubt I ever will without being told given they're timed. The inclusion of multiple brushwork traps was surprising given how rare they seem to be in custom maps. 24:02, 2/3, 89/96.

MUZBOZ: Who the heck is Simmons? Am I Simmons? Should that voice be calling me Smithers instead? Not bad, most arduous part was waiting for the lift and having to wait for it again if you don't realize it's already started going back up. Was disappointed there weren't any goodies behind any of the destroyable tech props. 18:57, 2/2, 113/124.

Nyo: Interesting texture choices, seems like it should clash but works better than expected, maybe due to the lighting? Semi-nonlinear nature is neat letting the player pick which half of the map they want to tackle first. Brushwork is a bit rough in places and the death pit could've been marked a bit better? Also: noise! Some more noise would have certainly helped- a number of doors were lacking movement sounds, no soundtrack was selected and there wasn't much in the way of ambient effects. Not bad, though. 13:44, 7/7, 74/74.

Pinchy: Big! Also deadly. Died a few times to death-traps-without-the-trigger-hurt, like surfacing in a room of thirty Grunts with a Spawn in my face and nowhere to go but death. Don't even know if my demos start and end in the same places. Severe ammo shortage at points even when doing the map 'in order,' and a couple secrets/paths that I'm not sure if I did the correct method to get to. Not sure if the demos line up. 23:05, 4/6, 183/186. 

Prtichard: Cool blue, like a breath mint. Also a breath of fresh air after getting turned into mincemeat in a few of the previous maps. Tight but not cramped. Was really hoping to venture outside after getting a glimpse of that most excellent sky/rain/tree combo through a skylight and was unbelievably disappointed to only reach it at the level exit. 16:01, 0/2, 108/108.

Overall thoughts: Fun, but less fun than I was expecting, probably personal bias from hating water in Quake, fighting in it, drowning in it, or even just trying to leave it at the edge of a land mass. Hydras make me urinate blood. As Johnny Law said, also a surprising number of xbox-hueg staircases without clip brushes to smooth them out, even from experienced mapmakers. That was kind of weird. 

Pain Monopoly, the aptly-named... Indeed, I suffered quite a bit on this one, starting with... the start (!) where you throw the player into the arms of a tough guy and his buddies with zero armor, just a shotty and barely any room to manoeuver. Brutal. I only knew to rush for the SSG+ammo once I turned around and saw them on, what, my 2nd or 3rd life?

Some parts of this map are very (too?) confusing: it took me a good while to get a hang of the zombie maze and how to reach that biosuit - BTW, it would've been nice to have another one near the button activating the red gate...

Still, it is a very enjoyable map:
• First it's a real beauty to look at. You'll notice in the demo that I spend a good chunk of time just gazing at the architecture. Well to be fair, some (a lot?) of this time was spent secret-hunting, but yeah... that's quite great architecture you got here, as usual. Plus runic/metal is my favorite id1 theme, so seeing you tackling it is a real treat for sure! I'd only have a couple of minor "complaints": 1) non-flickering flames! 2) is purely a matter of personal taste: colored lighting is a little too subdued...
• Gameplay-wise, skill 2 keeps you on your toes (those f**kin' eels!) but remains manageable. I love the possibility in the second room to [SPOILER] ambush the enemies by coming in through the door in their back. I don't know if you designed that corner on purpose but I'm quite proud of achieving this trick jump... :D [/SPOILER] I'm usually really sucky at it but it took me only what, 4 tries I think? 4 guys evaded my wrath, I have absolutely no idea where they might have been... Secrets are nice, I found only 2 but I think I located the 3rd one while watching my demo. I'll have to check this out.

PS: I love the reference in the title... \m/

Note: 4/5. Skill 2 demos, 92/96 kills, 2/3 secrets. 

First time I play what is essentially a Half-Life map in my Quake! The result is quite interesting. But hard. But interesting. But haaaaarrrdd!! Seriously, I'm an all-time skill 2 player and even if I occasionally struggle with today's "skill 2" difficulty, this is the first time that I had to start over on skill 1... And even then I had a tough time with all these enforcers and so little supplies!

Apart from that, this is a very nice experience. Hardly feels like Quake anymore but the change of scenery is cool for one map. Architecture is a bit on the blocky and undetailed side, but fine for a first map - oh, and of course there's this matter of scale... I like the bits of storytelling you put in there. This map would be interesting in AD with all the new base monsters. A couple of these huge robots in the big hallways instead of the fiends would've been nasty!

Note: 3.5/5. Demos, first 3 are me getting my ass gang-raped on skill 2, the rest is my humbled 2nd attempt on skill 1. 93/103 kills, 1/2 secrets.

PS: Instructions are wrong in your readme: the commandline parameter should be -game uwjam, not -game extras. Also, Extras are not engine-dependent, so the mod should run in any modern engine. And about "Where to get the file", you should've put a link to the jam thread @ Func_, not just to your map on your personal site. 

This is not one to be judged by today's standards. It's very, very much oldschool in all aspects. And when I say oldschool, I don't mean id1 oldschool, I mean 1996 custom map oldschool. Architecture is blocky, layout is basic, secrets are obvious, combat is, ummm... the enemies just feel like they happen to be there, there's no real threat - in a word it's predictable. The world lacks a discernable theme, a coherence. It's a bit all over the place.

However, despite this lacklustre appearance, there's a certain charm to this map. The unusual textures coupled with this blockiness give it that special alien quakiness like I haven't seen in a long time, especially in the outdoors section. I'd wager this is a first map, yes? You should persevere, I'm sure there's a future great mapper hiding in there somewhere.

One final word: water is very anecdotic in this map. I've just played it and I don't even remember any water besides the little bit at the start... Sorry but this counts for the note. I mean, we're borderline off-topic here. Oh, and also, there's no music!

Note: 2.5/5 Skill 2 demos, 74/74 kills, 7/7 secrets. 

Interesting choice and usage of textures. I like this mix of mostly ikblue/ikwhite, and the fact that you found a way to use these wads with an architectural style that doesn't evoke Asia at all & in which base enemies don't feel out of place. Well done!

Like MUZBOZ's map, this one is much too hard on skill 2: too many monsters for not nearly enough supplies! Even skill 1 is tougher than the usual skill 2, but at least it's playable if still a bit short on supplies... Also, some more biosuits would have come in handy for underwater exploration, especially in the big elevator room. I don't see the purpose of putting one in the final shambler room since you can breathe in the small pockets of air in the nearby corridor.

Secrets are also quite hard. I couldn't figure out how to access the LG without noclipping. I only could grab the MH and the nearby rocket ammo & health sitting on an overhead ledge via rocket/grenade-jumping (which is a major no-go in my book). And the last one I couldn't locate at all. Maybe include a secrets guide in your next map's readme?

Oh BTW, in the GK room, I noticed that your waterfalls are solid...

Note: 3.5/5. A whole bunch of demos, because I kept on dying. First 4 are me being rekt on skill 2, the rest is my full skill 1 playthrough. 144/145 kills, 4/6 secrets. 

Really great maps all around, each doing a great job with the water theme. First run demos for each map, hard skill: http://www.quaketastic.com/files/demos/orl_uwjam.rar

Unfortunately I had to omit JCR's demo from the .rar because its a quarter of a gigabyte large. JCR, if you would still like to see the demo, I can arrange for download from another location. 

It's 1/4 Gb compressed? Try 7zip (in ultra setting) instead of WinRAR, it was able to approximately half the size of the archive for me. 

Trying it with 7zip at its ultra setting brings it down to 160MB, still too big for Quaketastic though. 

at least it's still better than a quarter Gb...

I've been using WinRAR too up until now for its recovery record option but I had to install 7zip for this demo. It's so much more efficient, it's crazy! Adopted.