Regarding my problem with Adib Murad’s Signati: he kindly emailed me. The “button” on the ground is not a button, it’s one of the seals referred to in the level’s opening message, “break the seals to open this door”. So you don’t need to press it, you need to break it … But how?
da3f79951fc4333645d11ddef82820b1aa1eefaecb4b9a42952cf19e05f9b9dd
overall_rating
4.606286748077792
67
I finished Adib Murad’s Signati (jam6_adib) on Hard with 22/23 kills and one of the two secrets. Although this is short, it has a distinct feel to it, and it’s satisfying to complete. It seems that this is another debut map, and another outstanding one. (Whatever pretensions I might have once had towards learning to map myself have been blown out of the water by seeing the new standard of debut maps!) I’d score this about 3.5* in isolation.
Mike – yes, there are quite a few debuts in this pack. Adib, Breezeep, Exhelzar, Matecha, ShoTro and ItEndsWithTens all released their first Quake maps here. I’m not sure about Rick: I know he’s not a newcomer to Quake mapping and has been working on another project for quite some time, but I’m not sure if he’s released anything (under a different alias) before this.
I finished ItEndsWithTens’ Princess of China (jam6_tens) – which, for those who don’t bother to read the documentation, was heavily inspired by yangxueguo’s artwork Tower Of Evil.
This seems to be yet another debut map – so much new talent in this jam! – and another beautiful first map. The scenery is absolutely beautiful, and the gameplay progression is pretty good. My main criticism would be that it all feels underpopulated – it could use about three times as many monsters and three times as much ammo. (The balance is good, though: I finished the level, on Hard, out of shells and nails, having had to grenade a shambler and a vore at the end.) For the record, I missed one of the 34 kills – a fiend that jumped into the opaque lava, and which I then couldn’t find to kill. Got three of the five secrets, though, including the pent/quad double.
Well worth 4* in its own right. What an amazing jam this is shaping up to be.
Or I should say “first Quake single player maps”. Adib has made at least one really pretty Quake DM map before (youtube).
Daz’s Magmapolis is truly beautiful, a winding, naturalistic castle set in a gigantic lava cavern. A delight to look at, and great to play through. It’s also significantly bigger than the other three levels I’ve played so far from this back. I finished with 102/103 kills on Hard – where on earth is the missing one?! – and 3/6 secrets, which is better that usual for me. This map taken alone would be very solidly into 5* territory. Love it, and will definitely replay.
Unregistered user “Adib” posted:
Thanks for the comments, guys. About Cepheus, you can get its latest version here:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/bcup3wftsocj0op/dm_cepheus_qw.zip
It’s a deathmatch level, so no monsters. If you want to play against the Reaperbot, here is a zip all set to it:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/7dscbi1pvo730in/dm_cepheus_markv.zip
I’m depleting my storage of unfinished / unreleased stuff. I’m working on a single player using these textures, but for jam 6 I committed myself to use the provided resources.
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I’m sorry to have finished Ionous’s Gehennae Perpetuae Cruciatus (jam6_ionous). Sorry because it was a beautiful place to be, with superb vaulted ceilings, and lovely glimpses of the lava world beneath the floors. I enjoyed this one greatly, as was disappointed only that it ended so abruptly, when I had only 80 of 99 kills. (I can only assume that once more, the monsters I missed were inside the secrets I didn’t find – I got only two of seven). The quality of Quake architecture just keeps improving, and this is a wonderful example of just how intricate and delightful modern Q1SP can be. (I sometimes wonder whether the creators of the original game are tracking what’s being done with it, and how impressed they are.)
This is a another map that is well worth four, or even 4.5, stars in isolation.
Unregistered user “Qmaster” posted:
About Breezep seeming a lot like a Contract Revoked style I agree from the little I’ve seen but it doesn’t even remotely surprise me. Breezep has also made maps for Doom and they will often owe quite a bit of inspiration to classic Doom add ons. Case in point a lot of his recent output for Doom owes its flavor to Valiant, an extremely popular Doom mod from earlier this year. However I always feels he picks a good base and makes good maps from it. I’d consider him one to look out for in both communities!
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Igneous Interment by matecha (jam6_matecha) seems to be yet another debut. On the positive side, it looks absolutely gorgeous. Matecha has hit the ground running so far as aesthetics are concerned. Gameplay is much less impressive, though: there are only sixteen monsters on Hard, and it’s easy to accidentally finish the level before even seeing four of them. There is only one secret, and it’s the kind that you find by accident (by hitting the wall when shooting at a monster) or not at all. So all in all, it’s a really tiny level, about one third the size of a typical ID level, and doesn’t offer much gameplay.
But I think it promises that there is much more to come from matecha, who clearly has the talent to go onto far bigger and better things. I can’t award this map more than two stars, but I think its author is capable of four or even five-star maps. I hope we’ll see them soon!
Rick’s Detour (jam6_rick) is, as far as I can tell, yet another debut map – it’s amazing how this jam has brought so many new players into the field. Once more, it’s just beautiful to look at. Not so long ago, it would have been outright the most lovely Q1SP level out there. That’s not true now, as the level has been raised starting with Honey, but it’s still in the top rank. The gameplay is also pretty good here, much better than in matecha’s map – although if I’m being critical, the map does feel a bit underpopulated. That, and the modest size of the whole thing, remove this map from among the very best.
Anyway, a magnificent debut, well worth 4 stars on its own, and the promise of great things to come.
As far as you can tell is apparently not very far. The author left his real name in the readme, you could have checked for past releases…
Unregistered user “Qmaster” posted:
I don’t see any name but Rick in the readme. Can you give me a hint on where to look? I’m curious now…
Unregistered user “Qmaster” posted:
Oh nevermind you mean the individual level readme. I got it. Returning old author!
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JUST AMAZING !!
Especially using Darkplaces
(with r_useportalculling set to 0)