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......) 

Also a textbook case of using... textbooks 

I liked finding them tho.... 

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

Somewhat much easier on a second playthrough finding all the secrets, there's a lot of loot and tactics to manage it for the beefier ending. Although the super-secret was a bit of.....bundle of fun.