Upside-Down Cake

Each competitor builds a structure that's playable when flipped upside down. E.g. A room full of pipes and crates where you first navigate across the floor, then end up having to navigate the ceiling. Of course, one might end up walking on the walls as well...

(Spawned from an idea I had for a late SM47 entry, but gave up as it was taking too long. C/f the centerpiece of Marcus Klar's The Fly for the inspiration.) 

The Quake Blade ( SP )

the map must be based, in some way, on the Quake logo itself. It can take the form of a brush-built decorative feature, the floorplan of an area of the map, a funky doorway or some other ingenius incorporation of the 'nail through crescent' symbol. Textures using the Quake symbol are allowed but are not in themselves sufficient to qualify: the symbol must be created architecturally.
Examples are: the shadow clue in e1m5 - Gloom Keep http://www.signsofkoth.co.uk/stuff/ss-e1m5.jpg the arcane lightning conductor at the end of one of hip3m1 - Tur Torment in Scourge Of Armagon http://www.signsofkoth.co.uk/stuff/ss-hip3m1.jpg
the floor of the RL pit in q3tourney2 ( yeah, I know it's Q3A; it's just an example ) http://www.signsofkoth.co.uk/stuff/ss-q3tourney2.jpg

May have already been done, I don't know :/

My 2/- 

Dead Simple

How about a variation on the classic Doom map. Not a blatant copy, but maps following in the idea. 

Alice!

Speedmaps following an "Alice" theme, as per that little Q1SP map, Stamppot. [i think i got the name right] 

Chthon/Shub Theme
All maps must contain at least one chthon or shub

sm50: the next chainmap!
Speaks for itself i think, and would round off the first 50 speedmapping sessions nicely (though timeconsuming)

I can't fuckin move
Entire map must fit inside a 1024x1024 box, (or whatever size is chosen) meaning that gameplay will have to be more innovative (or more shit) and the map will be more detailed.

New pants please
The speedmaps should put a focus on pure scariness... the more it makes you jump, the better! Plus, 'moody' lighting covers shoddy architecture pretty well!

I'll get my boat
You guessed it, im thinking of maps that contain a boat-ride.... through a submerged temple perhaps, or on a modern hovercraft around a swampy base 

 

Another chainmap sounds quite appealing 

I like the idea of just having the mapper involve water in the gameplay somehow. Not as restrictive or time consuming. Some of the others sound good (primarily the Quake blade and having the map fit in a 1024x1024 box, IMHO). Some also sound they'd be way too complicated. 

were very good, it would certainly be a nice "milestone" with another one. 

water oriented maps sound good to me (a boat ride can be a part of it). Quake blade seems good too. 

Alice! [again] i know RPG [i think it was him?] said something before about wanting to get the textures from American Mcgees game but not being able too.

its just a wish of mine to see more alice/q1 maps.

"Uphill"
The whole map right from the start the player is going up a slope [it can be level sometimes] just never down.

"Fiend maps"
Maps containing only fiends.

"retracting maps"

Start off in a big area.

Then next part of map [teleport to?]
is the same area only smaller [outside cut off]
and so on, like a series of smaller and smaller circles/squares until you reach the core/center.

This allows you just to build one area the just cut bits off and off to make a series of new areas, each one linked by a hallway/teleport. 

What would the rules be for a speed-chainmap??

A set texture wad (agreed upon before), and twenty minutes per mapp0r, before they pass the map on to the next person? 

Got an idea that everyone will hate me for (probably too hard to do in a time limit, but at least it won't take code changes):
Perhaps a theme where the player continually revisits a single room, each time having completed some objective that moves brushes in/out/around the room and totally reorganizing it, making the room look quite different every time the player returns. Objectives could include killing monsters, visiting an area, hitting a button, grabbing a key, etc. Perhaps the player grabs a key, and the floor of that room moves down or iron bars raise from the floor, making the key door inaccessible (thus requiring another objective to be fulfilled before the door can be reached again).

That failing, I'm quite drawn to the idea of not having any theme, as mentioned above. Just let the mappers create whatever they want within the timelimit. It should produce a very interesting variety of results. 

you might want to check out sm28 or sm32 if you haven't already, they were made by speedmappers each making a small section in a pre-defined theme, in a time limit (usually more than a usual speedmap). Then someone has to join all the sections together to make a proper map, and then sort out the gameplay/lighting. Time-consuming, yes, but sm32 is good as a 'real' map, so its worth it 

mind like a sieve 

I like the "water" theme. It's broad enough for each mapper to do something different, but since water is generally underused in maps, we're likely to see a style of map that we rarely see.

Another theme that might work is similar to the boat ride idea: "train ride" -- the map has to have as its primary feature some kind of ride on a func_train. 

i agree.

Islands in water...etc...A "venice" type level?..sounds good... 

It'd be neat to make a level based on riding a train, moving from car to car killing monsters. You could even make use of func_monsterjump to send monsters flailing off the edges into a trigger hurt if they get too brave. :)
Or any QC method of alowing the player to shoot/push enemies off the edge. 

Islands in water...etc...A "venice" type level?..

In particular, I was thinking of some of the Super Mario Bros/World levels where you're in a sunken (or half-sunken) galleon. Some spots have air pockets where normal gravity applies, and other spots are filled with water where you can swim around. This idea was probably also used in other "classic" side scrollers (such as the DKC series) and I also seem to remember a Quake DM level that had a similar concept.

The train idea seems interesting, but it also seems like it would generate a lot of maps that were pretty similar. It might also take too long to rig up the func_train ents. But then maybe some malfunctioning func_trains could yield interesting and fun results. 

trains aren't really that much fun... basically just a ride, you know? and since quake doesn't do rotating brushes, it would be very limited in what you could do.

the water thing sounds like a really good idea, on the other hand. it looks like an opportunity for a lot of original stuff. 

the sewer level in Serious Sam (the 1st one). 

Titanic, by Hanz 

Not to be confused with Titanic, by James Cameron. 

natch 

I agree with UWF. What this world needs is more Alice maps!

Or, failing that, "dead simple" stylee maps.

But what do I know about anything...