to think Zwiffle for his infinite patience while we worked out a few issues related to my map.

Now the run down,
Zwiffle's map was clean and pleasing to the eye, and a tough fight for the last two thirds of way through, starting with the Ogres on high ledges (as they were damn well meant to be).

On the ledge jumps I started having flashbacks of Xen. Trembling and shaking, and going a bit psychotic, only the sweet gibbing of Scags kept me sane.

With RPG's map, I could tell he fallowed all the rules of speed mapping, and I had some good moments there, especially running around the Hell Knights, getting some in fighting action with the scags.

Oh, the five HKnights jumping me there at the end -- not fair, I tell you, not fair (I did beat them on the second time, by grabbing some ammo, and jumping down to a lower level, so I'm not really complaining).

My personal favorite was Tron's -- because I could run around with a lot of ammo and the rocket launcher and blow shit up at a distance. It was like getting a chocolate candy bar for Supper instead of steamed broccoli.

Headthump's -- back to broccoli. The clip brush error on the stairs in front of the Silver Key door sucked big time. The architecture was just so garish -- what were you/I thinking? A castle on a junker?

popping fiends in the pit was fun, though. 

God, my dialect is terrible. 

Just downloading the pack now, haven't played anyone elses submission yet.

I just hope you all appreciate RPG making a map for this, I had to pay a terrible price to get him to take part this week. :( 

You do understand that what you said is a perfect opportunity for a witty retort, right?

Be careful, now. 

Go for it. :) 

none of us is that witty. 

Zwiffle wins for the best map IMO. Not huge by any standard, but definitely easy on the eyes. The jumping part could be a bit too difficult, though.

My map was definitely a hack job. I mapped very slowly, so it was lucky for me I only had to copy, paste, and rotate to finish almost half of the map. Oh, and Headthump, it was 6 HKnights, not five. A bit unfair maybe, but if you treat them all as a horde, it's a lot easier. Having the lightning gun from Zwiffle's map helps, too.

Headthump's made me cry because the key doors did not have key logos on them. Otherwise pretty decent, with unique texturing.

Tron's was pretty bright for lighting, and the gameplay seemed more like typical speedmap fair. Massive size, though. And the theme went along more with what I wanted to do but didn't have the time. 

Headthump - glitchy, but surprisingly good map for someone with a malfunctioning brain.

RPG - best quality countered by boringness ~(got bored and cheated)

Tron - interesting design and like the RL, but crude ~(got bored and cheated)

Zwiffle - good style and stuff, stupid gameplay ~(got bored and cheated)

One striking aspect was the different and equally valid interpretations of the theme - that aspect of the pack worked really well I think. 

Zwiffle was best map on this one!!! very fun maps :)

many thks again for this great small time of fun! 

But exactly how am I supposed to get past the "Have Faith. Sucker!" bit in Zwiffle's map? RJ? 

Personally, I think it's pretty obvious, but since ~4+ people couldn't figure it out, this is what you do:

You see the hole in the cieling above you? WALK off the ledge, and look up so that you're underneath the hole. You will jump towards to hole if you're placed correctly.

Apparently, this is a lot more subtle than I thought it was. 

Yes, that's what Zwiffle's map is all about. 

Headthump - glitchy, but surprisingly good map for someone with a malfunctioning brain.

With that I am in complete agreement. Dropped on me noggin as a baby and all of that. 

I started reading your post, but got bored and cheated (on my gf) 

Headthump's map had the most interesting visuals and good gameplay. However, it had big player movement problems, messy brushwork and texes were a bit wild. It was also not vised.

RPG's was more in oldskool style and had pretty brutal gameplay towards the end. And where was that LG I got cells for ...?

Tron's was great fun and with unusual lighting/texes. Challenge felt a bit odd though with lots of firepower but no armor. There were also massive HOMs looking down from the top area.

Zwiffle's had really great looks but was flawed with the jumping puzzles and overall level of difficulty. Too few weapons and too little armor for the tricky movements and some bad vore placements.

In these maps, I also learned that it's important to set a big tex scale (e.g. 99) on large trigger_hurt or other plain textured brushes. It reduces light processing time, light data amount and also # lightmaps in GL engines significantly. 

The LG was stored in Zwiffle's map. If you play his first, mine will follow directly. Note that there really aren't quite enough cells in my map to help all that much, and I never had the LG when I tested the map. 

for those comments,

I just got your e-mails a short while ago. I'll have some time tonight to answer back. 

i wonder if it would be helpful to have a compiler option to automatically scale the textures on any trigger_* model?

(It would have to be optional becuase there are some probably some perverse modders who make new entities with visible models and trigger_* classnames.) 

Played through in order, I had fun. Didn't think the jumping parts of Zwiffle's map were *that* bad, although the "have faith" bit was a bit mean (and the vore placement! Ouch). RPG's and Tron's were fun, good solid speedmaps. Headthump's was quite the psychadelic experience, though not as much as sm93...

Congrats to Zwiffle for keeping speedmapping alive! 

My first thought was to make Light ignore faces with trigger tex, as it does with sky. It's pretty easy and it seems to work, but it won't help engine lightmaps at all so I left it.

As an example, adding a big trigger_hurt with std 1:1 tex scale to Headthump's map increased light time with 80%, light data with 200% and lightmaps went from 21 to 57. Adjusting the scale to 99 cut all figures right back again.

As it also seems that many mappers already know this, I settled for adding this info to my ToolTips. 

My map wouldn't initially compile, originally had the black void texture at 1:1 scale, made the compilers sad. :( Realised I should scale it up heaps after being linked to a post from way back in the mapping help thread.