otp: @Spud be sure to leave a glowing review to each and every one of the hw2 jam maps

Okay.

Spoilers and the usual blind skill 2 demos abound (recorded with QS's protocol 666 so probably won't work in Winquake), along with some truly terrible and rusty attempts at bunny hopping. The zips are small but some of the demos are pretty big; you can blame AD's inflated demo size for that.

Start map: I had the most awful feeling of deja vu until I loaded up last year's HWjam and realized that yes, the start map is largely the same. Whew. Getting psyched out before even playing any of the spooky maps.
Artistical (Oblivion): Knew something was up when the start map loaded with a blue sky instead of a purple one. No combat (maybe why the map is 'hidden' in the start map? I played through them in alphabetical order through the console), but a mind screw of a map. Wasn't sure where it was gonna go after the first-level-but-empty setup but seeing the huge slice through the map was a cool moment. Unfortunately the whole fumbling-in-the-dark thing gets old after about two segments.
Burnham (Where Evil is Exalted): A bit blocky. Almost felt like a 'rats' map at times due to the oversized furniture. Unfortunately, a fair amount of the British literature shout-outs were lost on me, because I'm a dumb burger who don't read no books. Sorry!
Captaincam: Dug the style of this map from the get-go. It made me think of old PS1-era action/platformer/dungeon crawlers, a feeling that only intensified once the buzzsaws showed up. I did manage to get totally stuck only to find there was a newer version available to download, so the demo is of a second playthrough. Maybe a bit too many armor backpacks around? I wound up over the normal cap for yellow armor multiple times even without the YA secret (and the half dozen other secrets I missed, as usual).
Chedap (Worship Condensate): Deliciously grimy and filthy and gorgeous. So grimy in fact that I had to change my gamma at a few points. Claustrophobic in the best way, cramped, gritty, but doesn't overstay its welcome due to the smaller size of the map. Despite the paths branching, there definitely seems to be a correct order to take them in unless one wishes to come face to face with a Spawn horde while underequipped.
Chris Holden (In the Walls of the Ziggurat): This map feels tighter than it actually is, largely due to the sheer height of the walls, which is a great bit of visual effect. I kept wanting to crank my field of view up. Texture work is a bit bland at times, but the runes and lava definitely call to mind Ziggurat Vertigo. The secret progression near the start was a nice bit of kit, and I wound up stumbling into the secret exit because I had no idea where to progress normally.
Comrade Beep (Candles of the Damned): Took just a minute to notice it was an E1M2 remix given the visuals were so Comrade Beep-y. The secrets all being 'special thanks' is a neat theme, along with the common method of actually finding them all (which I still managed to not do because I'm an idiot). Great fun and I'd say it was over too soon but really, expand too much and a map ends up less of a remix and more of a Sepulcher. Not the first time a map has driven me nearly insane from an ambient crying baby. Vore titties!
Greenwood (Misadventure Valley): Immediately reminded of an old Unreal assault map with the same theme- Galleon or something similar? Items and enemies backspawning while you trek through the ship is fun but there really could be a bit more health pickups. In a stunning display of incompetence, I managed to find the Dopefish but not a single actual secret, and missed the Shadow Axe for the majority of the map so I was on the run the entire time. So it probably would have been easier if I didn't suck. Also: hated electric eels in Underwater Jam, still hate them here. 

Heresy (Honey I Shrunk the Ranger!): One of the snazziest transitions from 'oh, it's a hallway' to 'holy crap.' Secrets taunt the player from a distance and jumping the gun gets you instagibbed. I was sort of disappointed to find clip brushes blocking me from breaking the map in various ways. One secret (the small backpack) didn't seem to have a way to get back to the main area and was more of a 'gotcha, sucker!' than an actual secret.
JCR (The Black Reincarnation): Thought it was just last year's map played in reverse at first, but turned out to be expanded quite a bit, at least so far as I could tell. Enjoyed it last time and enjoyed it enough this time, too. Didn't figure out the trick with the 'merciful' door- something for a certain pacifist speedrunner, maybe?
Kayne (Husks of the Past): Liked the aesthetic, I was sold from the moment the player spawns in with their head against a dashboard and bought seconds when I found a Quad in the corn. Think I did the map in the wrong order due to cowarding out from the cellars at first, though. Absolutely frantic towards the end especially if you didn't ration your health pickups. Wound up barely making it out by the skin of my teeth and it was totally worth it. Really interested in how the heck to get up on that tower for the Widowmaker secret. Being able to smash every window in sight put the silliest grin on my face.
MortalMaxx (Outhouse): Looking at the enemy count for a small clearing and an outhouse was a giveaway that something was gonna happen. Was not expecting it to escalate so quickly and fantastically. Marvelous special effects with skybox swaps and holes in reality and the map rearranging itself every time the player turns their back on it. Describing it as anything less than stunning would be an injustice. Unfortunately I felt it all sort of fell apart towards the end, where a combination of lack of health and ammo led to my death while parked between Chthon and one of those bullshit flying fucks who light you on fire without even having to launch a projectile and do a billion damage. The rest was great, though.
Pinchy (The School of Dark Magic): Nonlinear, the custom music added a lot. I may have done half the map in reverse, though. Wandered for an hour because I managed to miss the gold key and couldn't find my way back to it. Parts of the map between the setpiece rooms end up looking too similar and the tiny hallways and stairway railings make it a pain to fight projectile enemies.
Thulsa (Trick or Treat): I did not finish this map.
Yoder (Into the Hall of Stolen Faces): It is green. Zombie knights out the wazoo. A less limited arsenal might or might not have made it easier; a lot of hassle came from their tendency to scurry around and block the conveniently placed walking bombs with their own oversized hitboxes. 

The twins story was awesome, but I noticed that the moving blades in the crypt stoped moving after I exit and re-entered the crypt. That was a pity because I made a bunch of ennemies to follow me down there, and wanted them to slice'em all. No luck, the blades weren't moving anymore. What gives?

I believe that (generally, for any Quake map) the pictures on walls are under used. The twins story of Yoder's map made me to want more of that trick in Quake.

Interaction with objetcs (pictures on walls, windows, books, ...) could be exploited more. 

but I have to say that Chedap's map shows the best use of ogro texture set that I've ever seen. Great job on the atmosphere! 

Demos for all maps!:

http://www.quaketastic.com/files/demos/hwjam2_red.7z

Had fun. Some really unique maps, and some really beautiful ones too. A few rough around edges, but good to see new mappers trying it out. 

was a highlight for me. 

- [x] Quake Halloween Jam 2 Finished on: 2019.11.07 Score: 4 out of 5
- [x] Artistical - Oblivion 5 out of 5
- [x] Burnham - When Evil Is Exalted 4 out of 5
- [x] Captain - The Trail Of Blood 3 out of 5
- [x] Chedap - The Worship Condensate 4 out of 5
- [x] Chris Holden - In The Walls Of The Ziggurat 4 out of 5
- [x] Comrade Beep - Candles Of The Damned 4 out of 5
- [x] Greenwood - Misadventure Galley 4 out of 5
- [x] Here - Honey I Shrank The Ranger ! 4 out of 5
- [x] JCR - The Black Reincarnation 5 out of 5
- [x] Kayne - Husks Of The Past 4 out of 5
- [x] Mortal Maxx - Outhouse 3 out of 5
- [x] Pinchy - The School Of Dark Magic 3 out of 5
- [x] Thulsa - Trick Or Treat 1 out of 5
- [x] Andrew Yoder - Into The Hall Of Stolen Faces 3 out of 5 

 

I still can't get Thulsa's map to run at all under Debian GNU/Linux with Quakespasm 0.93: "QUAKE ERROR: Mod_LoadModel: progs/pumpkin.mdl not found", even though the file is right there.

While we're at it, I had to rename hangman.MDL to hangman.mdl, otherwise Mortalmaxx's map would crash in a similar fashion. All other maps run smoothly. 

At least you're saved from experiencing my map. I'll give it a try on Ubuntu. 

Thulsa, I can confirm I run into the same issue when trying to load the map. It looks like the cause is that the misc_model entities which use progs/pumpkin.mdl have a trailing space at the end of the path. In the .map and .bsp files, the path is stored as:

"mdl" "progs/pumpkin.mdl "

If I remove the space from the end of each path (nine occurences), the map loads fine.

I haven't actually played through this pack yet, looking forward to doing so when I have time! 

Good catch, this sounds very much like what I would mess up. 

Hm. For some reason your map still fails to launch after those modifications, but with a new error:

QUAKE ERROR: Texture (... gibberish ...) is not 16 aligned

Hopefully Andrew or Thulsa will release a fixed and tested version eventually. I'll just wait for it. 

Hmmm. Can you paste that gibberish? 

Sure, here's what appears right after typing "map hwjam2_thulsa" when the program crashes:

ERROR-OUT BEGIN

Shutting down SDL sound

QUAKE ERROR: Texture �����ttttssstt`r�a��������������������e`r�e���``a��w�����������̎���``̎rrrr����������rr`rrrrrrrrrrrrr������r�rrrr���������r��������`e`�`�����������������������er��re��r�� �̎��������������rr�� r�̎��`333`�33333��``````````````````````````````33�3333��3333��`�`b�`ra```333`3`33333333�```�``��3`33��3333r�```b`�`a`�a���r```r�``````��r��a�a�`a```` is not 16 aligned 

Lol, looks like memory garbage. Either another buffer overrun or incorrect texture field is dumped. This is QS on Linux, correct? 

Yes, version 0.93.1. No other map has ever behaved that way on my machine. 

Gioyo3aa, when you changed the pumpkin paths, what approach did you use (what tool(s) etc.)? I'm wondering whether the BSP file somehow got corrupted? 

You might have corrupted the bsp with your modifications; I tried doing it the following way and the map loaded successfully on Linux 64-bit + quakespasm-0.93.1 (no memory corruption, confirmed with valgrind):

bsputil --extract-entities hwjam2_thulsa.bsp
// rename hwjam2_thulsa.ent to hwjam2_thulsa.map
// replace ".mdl " with ".mdl" in hwjam2_thulsa.map
qbsp -onlyents hwjam2_thulsa.map


I think what's happening with the "progs/pumpkin.mdl " is this: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7603420/why-does-stdfopen-and-stdfilebufopen-trim-trailing-space-characters-on-win

Hadn't realized this before, another annoying plaform difference like case-sensitive filesystems. This is one point in favour of packing up jams in .pak files, though it does make it a bit more annoying to look inside at the mod/map pack's files. 

Reading #47, I assumed I could just edit the file using a regular text editor like nano and replace the nine offending occurrences. Apparently I was wrong, I'll try it ericw's way when I have some time.

This kind of error is a first for me, but I regularly play maps or episodes that have case-sensitivity issues which Windows users cannot notice. Most of the time, renaming everything to lowercase works, but not always. It shouldn't be hard to write a small script that checks and fixes these errors for mappers (or the jam organiser). 

Finished this one! I need to go back and remind myself who did which individual maps to see if I have any other specific comments to make. I really enjoyed the "journey" of some of these; off the top of my head:

* The giant pirate-ship setpiece looked great and provided a fun route around and onto and into and out of it. That was Greenwood's map I think?

* Yoder's map was just pitch-perfect in tone. The ride in, the "title card" popping up (great map name BTW), the use of juiced-up colored lighting, everything about the architecture and routes... it wasn't a ball-busting combat map but I enjoyed it from start to finish.

* Pinchy's "wizard school" map was an epic adventure. I had moments of scrounging for ammo or getting a little lost, but it never lasted for long and in the end that just made it more memorable.

* The variety of environments in Maxx's "outhouse" map was really something else! Breaking through from the "dreamland" into the medieval area was a great moment.

* I'm a sucker for remix maps so Artistical's was a treat. The big cuts appearing through the world were a really strong visual twist.

I'm out of town for a bit but hopefully I'll remember to come back and add more in a few days. Congrats to everyone involved, the above bits are just the ones off the top of my head. 

Just gave a try to all maps on nightmare difficulty, here's my feedback. Maps in the list placed just as in my playthrough order:

Into the Hall of Stolen Faces (hwjam2_yoder): Map theme is beautiful, put poorly executed. Good color palette, bad map layout: there are many neat places that can be accessed by the player through jumps and tricks, but without any secrets so when you jump to some poorly hidden map's deadends you wanna find there at least something. Overall 7/10.

Husks Of The Past (hwjam2_kayne): We DUSK now. Good amount of enemies, bad amount of optimisation. 8/10

When Evil Is Exalted (hwjam2_burnham): Very simple, even basic map. Not very much to say. 6/10

The Trail of Blood (hwjam2_captaincam): Good theme, good secrets placements, good idea with ruined map. Bad pacing, too much walking. Also, during my playthrough some map trigger failed, so I've got to use noclip to find my next destination. Looks like some slipgate or lift didn't work, don't know if map is broken. 5/10

Oblivion (hwjam2_artistical): Very good horror idea, but can be broken really easy by not going in the episodes natural order, also by jumping through gaps to the final slipgate too early. In both cases you can softlock yourself, ruin your playthrough. And the "shoot to light your way through" gimmick isn't really good. So 8/10

In The Walls Of The Ziggurath (hwjam2_chrisholden): Very satisfying map. Good design, good amount of enemies and arsenal, awesome art direction. One of the best in the entire pack. 10/10

Misadventure Galley (hwjam2_greenwood): Art stuff is just gorgeous, pirate theme is kinda rare in quake. I could use some more breakable props in the lower decks to make more space and probably more early access to quad and other goods. 9/10

The Black Reincarnation (hwjam2_jcr): Map theme is great. Good exploration, good secrets placement. Good idea with walkable webs, good idea with using wizard as zombie scorcher. One of the best maps overall. 10/10

Candles of the Damned (hwjam2_comradebeep): So this is the e1m2 repack, but very cool. Underwater exploration is great, and the secrets placement insired by ad_sepulcher. 9 backshooting gargoyles out of 10

The School Of Dark Magic (hwjam2_pinchy): Art direction with overall white stone & wood theme is good, nonlinear exploration is good. Lack of ammo is bad and makes enemies placement/ambushes even more frustrating than they already are. Map layout is bad, all these chandeliers and other stuff on the floor aren't making fights easier, especially these which damage player. 6/10

The Worship Condensate (hwjam2_chedap): Map layout is awesome, colors and the balance between dark and pitch black is excellent, traps and arenas are very good. Did I said that level's art direction is magnificent? 9/10

Outhouse (hwjam2_maxx): Map idea is pretty cool, nothing gives you more horror as destroyed toilet in the woods, art direction is great. Ammo is very scarce, to the point of being more bad than good. This makes it pretty hardcore in the medieval section. Otherwise cool level so 8/10

Trick or Treat (hwjam2_thulsa): This one is a dissappointment. I've collected dogs book, vore's book, wooden planc book, wooden crates' book, silver key and the trap ceiling's book, and the lava platforming book, and I STILL can't finish level despite having 3/3 secrets and 21/22 kills. Lots of missed oportunities for secrets and interconnections between puzzles. 3/10

Honey I Shrank The Ranger! (hwjam2_here): What a ride! Good amount of fighting and jumping, whole arsenal of weapons, map theme and level layout are the top notch. Just one note, if the knights at the end fall into the lift shaft it makes impossible to finish level without killing them. Also it could be even more fun with less invisible walls here and there. So that's 9/10 

Spud (#38): hint about the merciful door: the book at the beginning tells you that "He will judge the living **and the dead**". 

But all the same, now that I've unravelled most of the map (all kills, 9/10 secrets) and seen quite a few options for shortcuts, it seems like speedrunners could have a blast with this map. I haven't tried it, but it doesn't seem hard to bypass the gold key as well as the whole area containing the "merciful door", and go directly for the silver key.