Well lets be honest. Speedmapping is pretty much no longer a 'get a map done in under 100 minutes' job.. but the longer time spent on them (about 5 hours in mine, scampie and starbuck's anyway) works a treat. I really enjoyed participating, taking the extra time to create a map I was actually totally happy with... and look forward to expanding on it in the future.

Scampies had loads of potential... the outside section was very atmospheric, and the small inside section was well made too for what was there... great trap also :-)

Starbuck's owned, had a great layout and theme, as well as some neat watery bits.

RPG's was a lil too short and easy for my liking but was very well made and looked great. Atmospheric too!


The e4 theme rocks when used properly.. it's the most quakey out of all the episodes imho; just had shabby architecture & gameplay. 

An explanation as to why sm58_rpg1 sucks a bit: I didn't have time to do most of the stuff I wanted to, and what I did have time to do is buggy and I couldn't fix it. Wait for the special edition for some l33t mappage.

An explanation as to why sm58_rpg2 sucks a bit: It was actually a 90 minute speedmap instead of 100. I would have gone longer and done better detailing, but I had to stop so I could get the maps to scampie by 4pm. The special edition should be grittier thanks to some slightly different textures. 

Xen's was nice. The green bricks seemed slightly more in theme with E2, though, and I don't think the lighting had enough contrast for an E4 map, but it was certainly good stuff and still had some dark atmosphere. The jokes and parodies of E4 messages were fun, too. :)

scampie's started off pretty good. The moving bit was f0nky (in a good way), but I wouldn't really call it a trap. Ending was blah--unless you sprint into the room and get all the goodies, you're as good as dead; and I normally don't make it a habit of sprinting into rooms with 5 shamblers and 16 spawn.

Starbuck's had huge proportion as usual, and nice 3D work for a speedmap, but the visuals were too simple for my taste. The constant use of the same brick wall texture was too much, as well. Gameplay was pretty good, but the ending could have been a little harder. 

there were only 4 spawns in that room... but I agree my ending sucked. Was well overtime and just wanted to finish it. I'll be expanding/rebalencing this map in the coming weeks. I'm very happy with the start and how the gold key 'trap' turned out, plus I want to implant the original end of e4 with the jumping vores.

I enjoyed all the maps this week, RPG's being a bit short, but otherwise well done. Xenon's was excellant and full of e4 referances, but the halls get a bit repetitive. Starbuck still has issues with scale, but it was a great tip of the hat to The Nameless City, despite the fact that the layout moved upwards instead of down into the depths. 

...should've been the cracked and old brown ones from early E4 and.. upper parts of DM1 also I think. I don't remember any of the other episodes having them anyway... If they were green then it's probably some kind of GL texture fuckup I guess? 

who *didn't* contribute to the pack..ahem

Great work. 1hour/5hours...I care not. Xen's rocked the most interms of overall completeness AND incorporating the most ( well, recognisable to me ) E4 references. The bricks used, as well as in dm1 were used in the Tower Of Hate alongside a few orange arches. Plus, that map and some of the other E4s were notoriously repetitive and labyrinthine in their layouts, so I think it's justifiable in this map.
Starbucks captured the feel of The Nameless City really well for such a small map ( in terms of brushcount ): gameplay was unsurprising mostly, could maybe have benefited from abrupter ambushing. But nice.
R.P.G.'s was confusingly short, but neat. The catacombs/arches had a cool vibe.
Scampie: whoa. dude. easy with the shamblas; if you're going to dump that hard on the player with both shamblers AND spawn, I would expect to be toting a perf or at least nailer by then. Otherwise, the Gloom Keep thang worked and the graveyard was a good way to start the map.

Having thought about the nature of the 'final release' of the megatheme quite a bit, I would now really like the chance to play through all the maps in a properly refined episodic structure. Most of the maps successfully evoke the episodes in question and the experience of Ye Olde Quake rough-hewn division of theme would be very, very cool to revisit.
A fair bit of extra work is involved, so it's up to you guys what you want to do, but I for one would appreciate it.

2/- 

Green, brown; what's the diff? 

SPEEDMAPPING is now UNPOLISHED TURD MAPPING.
Your maps are allowed to be ass with 100min, but not with 500min. Regardless I liked the pak, with scampie's(or someone else) little outdoor bit being the highlight, the fiends in the darkness were classy. Looking forward to all of these in the proper megapak of <3.

and also, FUCK SHAKESPEARE
he is a bad bad man 

since I think that E4 is the most underrated episode, I'm glad to see some mappers take on the challenge of using its themes. In general, there are a *hell* of a lot of runic and idbase maps, and a lot of medieval/E2 maps, but hardly any e4 styled maps.

My favourite was probably the bizarre bazaar. Nice nameless city style map, clean and open architecture. Rpg's elder world map also really captured the E4 atmosphere well.

Maybe the next megatheme could be themes from the official mission packs? scourge base, scourge medieval, scourge runic, rogue temple, rogue runic, rogue medieval? or not, hehe 

Your maps are allowed to be ass with 100min, but not with 500min.

Since when did 5 hours = 500 minutes? 

The next megatheme I was thinking of doing was 'old skool texture themes'. Ikbase, Rubicon, Ikblue (maybe), and... well anything else for older texture themes. Red Brick or Dapak styles sound good for this too.

Other plan I had for the future was a 'turtle chain map'. 1 week, I build a start area Sunday, pass it to the next person who gets all of Monday to work on the map, etc etc... until returning to me the next Sunday when I finish it off and clean it up. But this will be well down the road and I'll need to do some thinking as to getting the logistics of it to work out.


inertia: You mean 'Speedmapping is now INERTIA IS A FAGGOT WHO COULDN'T EVEN FINISH ANYTHING IN ANY TIMELIMIT BUT HE'LL WHINE THAT ALL THE OTHER MAPS AREN'T UP TO HIS SATISFACTION' mapping. 

Expanding this into branching themes could add a big helping of subtle variance to the eventual map pack. Also you could expand the weekly theme to include Ikbase, Rubicon, Quake 2, UnReal and Doomish themes. You can expand the theme of the week to include particular progs.dat builds (custent, Nehara, Zeroester, OUM) in the weekly speedmaps.

One way you could make the time factor relevant if limiting the pre-baking, so to speak, is an actual concern, is to have the participants download a set of prefabs* to use in their levels and not make the prefabs available until the day of the competition.
The addition of prefab sets could also boost the quality of the speedmaps significantly.

* Of course, let's not start stripping them from the maps of mappers who have expressed they would prefer their maps not to be decompiled. 

I owe Scampie a nod of acknowledgement as our postings have similar and even overlapping suggestions. It was definitely in the backgound noise inside me noggin when I composed mine.

Props, dadio. 

no. there will never be prefabs in speedmaps, the idea is for mappers to create, not peice together crap. but it may be a neat idea to run an event with a set of premade rooms, and the mappers need to connect them. I never run a speedmap with custom entities.

timelimit isn't heavily enforced becuase I'd rather a bunch of maps than a few rushed half cooked ideas. the point is to make maps quickly, not be exactly on 100 mins. q3 speedmapping eventually lost many of it's mappers because Akuma would never budge a moment on it's 60 min (or turtlemap's 1 week to the second) timelimit. If a map was late, it was not allowed. I will not run my events that way. 

and props to you dude :D 

timelimit isn't heavily enforced becuase I'd rather have a bunch of maps than a few rushed half cooked ideas.

And the entertainment I've had out of the last half-dozen or so speedmap packs is sufficient proof of this policy for me. 

if a mapper wants to spend substantial extra time, i always let them, because at the end of the day, it should be their choice what they want to get out of the session. Whether you want to test yourself under pressure and complete a map strictly under the 100 minute 'limit' or make something at a more leisurely pace, it doesn't matter. The whole point is to have fun, in making the pack and in playing it.
If we ran these events like nazis then no one would want to join in :) 

yeah. It's a good thing we don't run it like nazis, becuase I'd be the Hitler.

MWH!!! 

 

of using oldschool texture themes... that includes ikbase, rubicon, hipnotic, rogue, etc. I'd say wait until you've exhausted these possibilities before using other games' texture sets, though I really would like to see a doom-theme pack. 

ikbase, ikblue and rubicon are very distinct and internally consistent themes, so that would work fine.
But Armagon's textures really just supplement the id wads with some occassionally quite garish and aberrant stuff, like the bright gray bricks from the - ironically titled in this case - Black Cathedral ( the one with the clock ). There's some half-hearted attempts at celtic knotwork and a series of vivid blue skull motifs that wouldn't look out of place in Azure Agony. That's about it.
Can't really comment on DOE cos I've never played it, but I'm aware that they followed a cheesier 'travel through history' idea with more specific themes like the ubiquitous egyptian thing, so that might work.
I think the mish packs are defined more by their bonus weapons, monsters, entities etc. than by their textures. 

damn! You used around 5 hours too?
I made a E4 speedmap yesterday in abouth 5� hours but didn't mail it because I thought that people would find it to extreme to use 5 hours on a sm. Hmm looks like they don't mind so I will mail it to Scrampie to include it in the sm59 pack.

Other than that I got to say I really enjoyed all the maps this week. Very good work! 

yeah Hrimfaxi, email it to me, and call it sm59_hrim and we'll include it with sm59. Leviathan started a map, but was unable to finish before having to go somewhere and will be doing the same. I think Starbuck (shock! he's still alive and may accually run an event again! :D) is planning an unthemed event anyway as a break from the few weeks of themes. 

but if anyone has any ideas for a theme for this week's session, i'd be happy to hear them....

maybe something a bit more silly is in order, like another "bad speedmap" themed event. If people would prefer an unthemed session though, ill hold the silliness until sm61 :D 

Mission Pack 2 definately has some entirely new themes: ancient Egyptian and ancient Roman among them. Additionally, I think they've got their own variety of medieval, runic and wizard; the latter being most distinct, adding lightning, machinery, surgery tables and other pseudo-sci-fi/frankenstein style elements.

As for Mission Pack 1, I'd say that hipnotic base is rather different from idbase, and that that pack potentially deserves credit for variations on medieval and runic as well.

Mission Pack 2 is obviously much better suited to speedmapping sessions, but I think hipnotic base might also be suitable.