I run EricW & Tronyn’s level at 70+ fps using DirectQ on my E8600 and Geforce 730. What kind of rigs are you guys using to get such bad fps’s?
da3f79951fc4333645d11ddef82820b1aa1eefaecb4b9a42952cf19e05f9b9dd
overall_rating
4.606286748077792
67
“Who is Vis?” Haha, funniest thing in quake ever. It did sound ambiguous in how tronyn spoke about vis.
Ah, Rick Lipsey – returning fifteen years after his last level!
https://www.quaddicted.com/reviews/?filtered=Lipsey
In Magmapolis map i can easily clip through some walls, and some monsters clip through edges of some walls.
It’s a great map, but it could use a bit of work to fix up the outstanding issues.
Unregistered user “Dave” posted:
The level of talent put into these maps is simply amazing. Keep up the phenomenal work guys.
Finished Scampie’s 10,000 Days in the Fire (jam6_scampie) with all 83 kills, and (unusually for me) with 4/6 secrets. I absolutely loved this Rubicon-flavoured base infiltration with its steadily escalating difficulty. Every single thing about it is outstanding: the architecture, the brushwork, the texturing, the lighting, the progression, the monster placement. My only regret is that there isn’t more of it. Yet its relatively approachable size makes it more digestible than more epic levels in the same theme, such as Telefragged. As a result, if a new mapper were to come to me asking what single level should they look at and learn from, 10,000 Days would probably be the one. Absolutely superb, and an obvious five stars.
The debut maps just keep on coming! This time, it’s the turn of ShoTro, who offers From Ashes (jam6_shotro). It’s another amazingly strong debut, despite its faults (which we’ll get onto in a minute). It seems that new Q1SP mappers are coming straight in at a much higher level than used to be the case. Is this because the tools are better now? Or just because the present Q1SP culture presents such a high bar?
Anyway, From Ashes is a very decent size – 139 kills on Hard, of which I was able to find and terminate only 127. But with only 2 of 5 secrets, I probably missed hidden areas where the other 12 monsters lived. There are quite a few good ideas in here, and I especially enjoyed the way I kept finding my way back to the start area with different ambushes each time. Against that, while the design of some areas pretty good, others felt very blocky, with a bit of a 1997 aesthetic. It’s a shame that they were allowed to drag down the overall quality, and I think it would have been better to omit the weaker areas in spend the time polishing the better stuff: a smaller but more consistent level would have been more satisfying. Still, a great start and I hope we’ll be seeing plenty more from ShoTro.
One of the secrets I found – it would be hard to miss – was the slime-suit that makes it possible to safely enter the lake around the rocky outcrop. But I could find nothing in the slime as a reward for entering it – only the teleport that takes you back up to the outcrop. Did I miss something?
(By the way, a minor packaging bug: ShoTro’s map is not included in the list in the top-level documentation file func_mapjam6_readme.txt)
Necros’s unititled map (jam6_necros) is truly beautiful – in purely cosmetic terms, probably the best in the back, with its gorgeous sprawling enemy base set in and around a lava lake. Unfortunately, it’s simply not finished. Not only is there no title and only about a fifth as many monsters as there should be, but much of the scenery simply can’t be reached, and there are plenty of places where you see flashes from behind the brushes. I missed one of the 38 kills, but since there are no secrets my guess is that it was merely a scrag that somewhere on the other side of the final tower from where I was.
I truly hope Necros finds the time to finish this. I could easily be a 5* map, and from naive perspective as a non-mapper, it looks like most of the hard work has been done. But in its present form, despite the stunning visuals, I can’t give it more than three stars.
(Oh, and I forgot to say in my previous comment: three stars also for ShoTro’s From Ashes.)
And so to WarrenM’s jam6_warrenm (it has no other name). Many of the same comments apply as for Necros’s offering: this is another truly lovely setting, a wrecked castle broken down into islands floating in lava, while lavafalls cascade down from floating rocks. But it feels like the first 90% of an outstanding level, with only maybe a half or a third as many monsters as should be in place – and no secrets at all. There are only 45 on Hard (I got them all), and room for plenty more. Fix that, and the progression will be a delight rather than (as now) a mere procession. For now, I waver between awarding 3 or 4 stars, but I think 4 is fair.
So it seems that these map jams are awesome at getting people to make something – but perhaps they lead too often to maps being released before they’re finished. I’ve now played every level in jam6 apart from Tronyn’s which I’ve held off from in the hope of a fully vised version being released. Now I find myself also hoping for re-releases of Necros’s and WarrenM’s maps. Perhaps the time will soon be right for jam6.1?
I just realised I’d not written anything about Exhelzar’s Fiery Abyss (jam6_exhelzar). It’s yet another debut – the last in the pack – and another that holds promise for the future. In itself, though, this is not a great map, and feels like it’s from maybe ten years ago. Many of the rooms are too blocky – some of them big and blocky – and progression feels arbitrary. Throw in the smallness of the level (just 22 monsters on Hard, and a single almost unmissable secret) and we have a map that won’t hold the attention for very long. Still, although I’d rate it only two stars by modern standards, I’m keen to see what else Exhelzar comes up with now that he’s in the game.
Hey, Tronyn – is there a vised version of your map yet? Super keen to play it, but my laptop isn’t really up to the job. Thanks!
Unregistered user “Tronyn” posted:
There isn’t yet, I guess we could release a version with some tweaks (vising, lighting and gameplay rebalancing); maybe we’ll just do that, but even if we don’t I’m planning to put out a significantly revised version of this and my other jam maps as an episode, hopefully by Christmas. Thanks for the interest.
Unregistered user “Qmaster” posted:
MikeTaylor - you can also try setting the heapsize really high (256000 for instance). Just like was necessary in Rubicon Rumble (at least for Telefragged).
Tronyn - when is an update likely to be released with vising on some of the other maps? And from what you know are any other authors updating their maps (for either future individual releases or for a revised release of this pack)?
Unregistered user “jakub” posted:
thank you all who participated in this great pack. just two quick notes:
i played all the levels except for daz’s one with darkplaces and everything was ok. even the monster level by ericw/tronyn was playable though fps was quite low and uneven. however, it is understandable for only fastvised level. daz’s level was the only exception with average fps around 5. that level really doesn’t like darkplaces. with warpspasm runs ok but there is quite a lot of homs and several brush collision errors. nevertheless, the level itself is beautiful.
rick lipsey is back? wooow… man… well of wishes is on of my all time favorite level ever. glad to see you back.
That Quaddicted screenshot aahhhh!!!
[User added a rating.]
It turned out that my humble 2009 MacBook Pro is, after all, capable of running EricW & Tronyn’s ludicrously epic Illusions Outnumber Changes in Fortune (jam6_ericwtronyn) when given enough heap memory. I just finished it, with 386 of 402 kills (on Hard) and 9 of the 15 secrets.
Wow.
Tronyn continues to produce astonishingly huge maps with an enormously immersive sense of place and time. This map is by far the most vertical I have ever played. Again and again, I found myself tottering vertiginously far above an area I had played earlier, only to find myself subsequently arriving yet higher. This is kind of visible progress is very satisfying.
It may seem silly to say it of a map with 402 monsters, but Illusions seems very underpopulated to me. Especially towards the end, large parts of the scenery were either devoid of anything to kill, or harboured only a few grunts or knights. As a result, the gameplay was very unbalanced, because there were far, for more supplies than I could have used, including maybe 15 megahealths in total. To me, it feels like the map is set up with provisions to handle maybe twice as many monsters. I really hope that when Tronyn releases the promised vis’ed version of this map, it’s also had a lot more bad guys added – especially for the combat at the end, which is terribly anticlimactic.
However, even with these gameplay flaws, this map is a very clear five out of five – in fact, it would be a five-star map even with literally no monsters, that’s how good the architecture and progression is. A fully populated version would be up there alongside Telefragged as my all-time favourite map.
[User added a rating.]
Having now played all thirteen maps, I suppose I should finish by saying of the pack as a whole that, once again, it sets a new standard – not only containing so many maps, and so many of them so good, but also be introducing so many new Q1SP mappers. It’s a delight to me that the community continues to flourish; as a result, Quake remains my favourite computer game even now, nearly 20 years after its release.
Oh, and five stars for the pack, of course!
Unregistered user “sarcofagy” posted:
I strongly want to play this on my beloved PENTIUM 2 450mhz + Voodoo3 !
Will it work ?