Forum thread for func_mapjamx
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Highlights: Bloodshot, JCR, and Mazu’s maps. Pinchy’s was too hard for me. I’ll definitely replay some of these for secret hunting. Thanks for your great work!
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Working my way through these one at a time, and I have to say, I’m already really impressed with Artistical’s map. Deja Vu indeed!
Everyone please note that my entry is not actually in there despite the portal bearing my name. It’s just a placeholder that teleports you back to the start and will be replaced by a DLC. I plan to have the map finished by the end of this week.
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This jam was a BLAST. Twisted Strings is one of the best quake maps I’ve ever played just from sheer uniqueness. I don’t want to spoil anything, but it’s the first time I’ve been creeped out by a quake map.
Twisted Strings is indeed excellent. Bloodshot managed to make a proper survival horror level for Quake. Can’t wait to play the rest of the jam.
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I’ve been away from Quake for a while — I got into the BioShock games and then replayed Portal 2 and went through a bunch of community levels. I was delighted when I got back and found there’s a jam on one of my all-time favourite packs, Insomnia!
Unfortunately, the first map I played — Artistical’s Deja Vu — is a really terrible start. Huge, sprawling and empty, it involves a huge amount of running around, and running back from looong dead ends, but has almost nothing to actually do. It’s the one thing no Quake map can ever afford to be: boring.
I stuck it out to the end, relieved to get out even though, having killed everything that moved, I only had 124 of the 167 kills on Hard (and only two of ten secrets).
Let’s hope things improve rapidly!
… and sure enough, Bloodshot’s Twisted Strings is much better, a genuinely disquieting experience in a complex that is half base, half eldrich nightmare, and half non-Euclidean catastrogeddon. (Yeah, I know, that’s three halves. It’s that kind of map.) I must have played something like 600-700 Quake maps in my life, and it’s rare now that a map makes me think “Wow, I’ve never seen anything like this before.” Twisted Strings made me think that.
Fairweather’s The Chiron Conundrum is nicely constructed, but short and a little basic. I enjoyed it, but I won’t be telling all my friends about it.
Ionous’s enigmatically named Loum is a really fun blast, very much combat focussed but without ever descending into being merely an arena. Very satisfying, especially being reduced to two health (by the spawn ambush) and working back up. I missed one secret and two kills, but had a blast.
Unregistered user “JMP” posted:
I’ve played half of the map-pack, and I’m really enjoying it so far:
Artistical–While the map’s layout is somewhat confusing, its size is impressive, and the empty corridors and corpses strewn around the base give it a great foreboding atmosphere.
Bloodshot–I agree with the previous comments that Bloodshot’s map is fantastic. At the beginning, it reminded me of Half Life and the start map in Unreal, but it soon turned into something utterly surreal and unique.
Fairweather–A short, fun map. The texturing is faithful to Insomnia, but the size and straightforward progression make it feel radically different from czg’s maps.
Ionous–Not the kind of map I enjoy TBH, the layout too symmetrical and arena-like, but it’s technically impressive and looks great.
JCR–An impressive layout and lots of tense combat. The secrets are also pretty good.
Mafon–Progression is choppy and somewhat confusing, but I like the map’s mixed textures. In that respect it reminded of Mafon’s previous map Intrusion, which I also enjoyed.
Unregistered user “JMP” posted:
Forgot KalebClark’s map: another map with lots of arena combat, so not my favorite style of gameplay, but nonetheless it’s quite good for a debut. Visually it’s quite faithful to the first map of Insomnia.
The teleporter at the center of the map reminds me of both than’s “The Dark Portal” and the arena fight with fiends and shamblers in E4M8.
I enjoyed KalebClark’s Over Engineered Teleporter quite a bit in an uncomplicated way. It’s reminiscent of the earlier stages of Insomnia, but without aspiring to the depth of CZG’s levels. Still, a fine debut.
Mafon’s Quake Anomaly is the kind of map I find hard to get into, to be honest. A sequence of essentially unrelated areas joined by teleporters prevents me from getting any sense of the geography, and undermines the notion that this is a real place. With immersion broken, it comes down to sequence of combats, and those are not particularly satisying. Sorry to be negative about a debut map.