Lurker:
Thankyou, it's about time somebody told me how great I am! Solid gameplay and solid visuals. Would have liked a grander finale though.

Negke:
Once again innovative and experimental, yet still surprisingly Quakey. Your head must be a cool place to live.

Omus:
Epic, both in scale and difficulty. Godmode was my friend on two occasions I'm sorry to say. Visually I found this to be the most accomplished of this session. It felt nice and damp.

Text_Fish:
Frustrating. Terrible vore. Die.

Zwiffle:
Good horde combat at the beginning with just enough space to manouver comfortably. I used all my 'nades on the deathknights and vore so I had to subdue the zombies with a shottie which was frustrating, but the grand finale made me happy again. GOod subtle implication of trees -- were they stalking me from the shadows? 

lurker: Buildings inside a giant tree is a neat idea. I rule at finding secrets? You probably meant "r_wateralpha 1."

Omus: Looks cool, textures/fog. Somewhat Alice-like, especially the stone bit. Running the gauntlet - I did it right instinctively. There was something odd with the elevators, though. They always blocked 3/4 on the way up and went back down.

Text_Fish: Not too frustrating for me. I jumped back over the trunks and finished the Vore through the window. Tip: don't let the tree brushes touch the sky volume to avoid unnecessary face splitting.

Zwiffle: You'll always be my hero!!11 Great ending. 

Right you are!


No comments on the other maps for now--I won't have time to play until the afternoon. 

Negke - wins on sheer imagination, once again.

Lurker - best moment has to be when you realise you were inside a huge tree from the beginning.

Text_fish - finished on about 5 health the first time through, fun while it lasted.

Zwiffle - most epic ending ever :p . Only the fiends caused much trouble until I realised they were too fat to follow me down the alleyway.

My map - never noticed the elevator bug, but I did catch (too late), a crack in a wall where WC has failed to export a floating point coordinate. Also serious greyflash in SW mode.

Side note: interesting that 3 of us went for a void map with trees layout, but I can't remember seeing a design like this in any map or game I've played before. 

Great pack! I liked them all, but I must admit Negke was also my favourite :)

I really thought I'd have time to enter this one with my DM map, but ended too swamped with work. Maybe I'll work more on it and release it some day.
Screenshot : http://qexpo.tastyspleen.net/uploaded/76/dp000002.jpg

Omus, what about my Transloquake map? (not released, I admit) Hehe ;)
Screenshot :
http://cocot.planetquake.gamespy.com/transloquake000037.jpg
When it comes to other games, the theme did make me think of some of the forest maps from UT2004, like the Tokara forest one (my personal inspiration for the Transloquake mao) : http://ut2004.gameamp.com/recorded_game/viewMaps/56.php!viewFull=1 

Zwiffle: this wasn't very good, lol. No trees anywhere, and you just copy/pasted the map a couple times. Loved the ending though.

Textfish: great beginning with the Fiends and the giant tree.

Omus: good looking level, I like the tree walkways. Not worth actually playing though, it's only good to look.

Negke: omg those Scrag-pods freak me out! Love the idea.

Lurker: best gameplay of the bunch. Didn't really have much detail though.

It would be awesome if someone made a proper full-sized map in this 'giant tree void' style! 

Very nice theme. Really.

Lurker: best of the pack. Do it full scale. And maybe mark the exit...

Negke: Biggest brains in the business. Always a ball to play your speedmaps.

Omus: A tad annoying at the very end, I godmoded. Death Knights instead of Shamblers would have been more appropriate and balanced.

Textfish: reeeally nice combat, very playable, once you think up a trick or two(the "spank-me-up" one being particularly handy ;P).

Zwiffle: Loved the forest. ;) 

The city is built on the TOP of the canopy. And these particular parts of the city were on very nearly the top parts of the city (it's a big city, and space is limited, so all the buildings are squished together.) So there. 

Speedmaps don't usually get firstplay demos, but I recorded them, anyway, in case someone wanted some:
http://shub-hub.com/files/demos_singleplayer/smqe08b_demos_lurker.dz (964 KB)
Any facetious comments were made with all due respect.


Text_Fish:
The opening encounter got me the first time. The vore stealing my jumping destination got me the second time. Third time, so they say, is the charm. I loved the stump-jumping, though I'm a bit jealous that I hadn't thought of it myself. Once I got the flavor of the combat in your map, I enjoyed it.

Omus:
There seemed to be a shortage of ammo and health in the beginning of your map (skill 1). I think I killed scrags with the ax in all three of my attempts. Was this intentional to make the player hurry up to the Ogre platform? However it goes, I enjoyed the combat while I had ammo. :) I tend to forget that most modern engines support fog, so the use of non-overpowering fog (especially with water+zombies) was probably my favorite visual element.

Zwiffle:
An interesting look at a minimal Quake space through the seasons. I particularly enjoyed arriving after the monsoon with the petrichor still lingering in the air. Most of the encounters felt a bit cramped, but I thought that was a good dissection of the modern man's desire to fill his life with things that he doesn't really need. The fiends' inability to complete their task and the suggestively impotent ending both hit me like a gutpunch.

negke:
Flying Scrags of the Dawn Patrol! Watch death-defying acts of high-flying aces in exhilarating dogfights! I made the mistake of playing through the map with the shotgun when it obviously called for a nailgun. I apologize. Playing with a nailgun, I only wish that the map were a little longer. I can always play it again, though.


On comments on my map:
Thanks for the kind words. Glad I could give you a few minutes of entertainment.

Text_Fish and the silent: the finale and end teleporter were both tacked on in the last few minutes of construction, so they could have been improved with more time. While I was making the town in the tree, I had wanted to have a more substantial outdoor component that would eventually double back to a higher section of the starting tree for a finale. Unfortunately, I ran out of time. 

Lunchtime well spent :)

Text_fish - nice. Clever use of the intermission.

Omus - No ammo? Interesting brush work throughout, but the Shambler ambush could have been replaced with a big lava pit.

Zwiffle - Seasons? Missed that. Annoying that the fiends couldn't move down the side of the building.

Negke - Good take on what type of city would be in a Quake forest. Would have liked to mess around with it more, but spose you were limited by the progs. Was a bit of a shame to get back into normal Quake; killing the fiends.

Lurker - Not alot to say. Liked the tree area, was more fun to fight for me. Shame you couldn't add the return into the insterior bit, would have tied it all together more. 

Thanks for the demos Lurker, those kept me well amused for a bit :)
Regarding the low ammo at the start of my map - I figured most players would rush forward to find the ammo stash, but perhaps the way up there wasn't really obvious enough. I could also have doubled up the megahealth since the shamblers kill you a bit too quickly. But I wouldn't get rid of them because of the panic factor, and their lightning also knocks you around a bit which makes it fun when your trying to stay on the walkway. 

Made me think that a Quoth cross or standard Quake Pentagram would have been fun - the real danger being fallin. 

http://shub-hub.com/files/configs/smqe08b_nm_silent.zip

Sorry,Spirit, I uploaded to the wrong folder... Could you please move it to the right one? 

moved to
http://shub-hub.com/files/demos_singleplayer/smqe08b_nm_silent.zip 

arghhh so many maps to play that i forget these... sorry :) there it goes my first demos!!! Omus record another becouse i was pissed off :p

http://trinca.quaddicted.com/temp/smqb.dz

like the most Omus and textfish
both negke and lurker were nice but to easy lurker map had a great layout just have to many amo and armors!!!

thks guys for these fun minutes!!! 

Have to say I would really like to see more from the likes of Omus, Lurker, Text_Fish.
I also agree with others that it'd be great to see more of this 'giant tree void' style as Kona put it.

Zwiffle: nice fortress style map (reminded me of Trinca's tcoa map somehow), and a very challenging finale.

http://shub-hub.com/files/demos_singleplayer/smqe08b_z.7z

Text_Fish: jumping from tree to tree weeheehee :) cool map

Omus: impossible ? even if I avoid taking damage at the start, arriving 100/200 at the megahealth, and spam some grenades onto the ledge, the shamblers nearly always kill me before the switch.
My demo shows some attempts and only once I reach the switch with 4 health.
Appreciate the challenge though, it's a nicely thought-out gameplay setpiece.

Negke: fun map, liked the scrag hives, but there could have been more fiends with that much room

3in1: http://shub-hub.com/files/demos_singleplayer/smqe08b_n_tx_o.7z

Lurker: best execution of the theme imo, plays like a full map. Only the gameplay towards end could be more varied. Too much ammo in general, but funny messages (I had wateralpha 1 btw :)

http://shub-hub.com/files/demos_singleplayer/smqe08b_l.7z

Thanks all. 

cool maps. All mappers did a good job. My first play demos:
http://shub-hub.com/files/demos_singleplayer/smqe08b_ankh_demos.dz 

zwiffle: fun enough
omus: too hard :(
negke: I completed it firing the DBS three times, I think :)
lurker: fun, very very easy though
textfish: also fun

Something like a larger more varied mash up of lurker's and testfish's maps would be cool.