I'm still playing CTSJ2, but Bal's map, "Dehydration Station" was absolutely delightful in the way it fit CTSJ2's theme!

This jam was fantastic, as expected, and every map shines (including the sunny start map). While I had a ton of fun with all of them, I did want to comment on two in particular. Fairweather's map is one of the best Quake maps I've ever played: it has stunning oldschool architecture and lighting that highlight the best elements of the runic theme, a wonderfully oppressive atmosphere and inventive quad mechanic that guides you and keeps you moving forward, and a sort of combat-puzzle encounter design that I've always wanted to see in more Quake maps. Fans of Sunlust will have a ton of fun with it. Don't forget the hidden final fight! It's the hardest one, and is very satisfying to complete.

Mazu's map was an evolution of (what I consider) one of the greatest strengths of Mazu maps, in that he does exploration like nobody else, except this time you're taking the supplies you find back to crafting/market areas in order to have enough supplies to progress through the map, like a step up from his key market in Chamber of Forbidden Runes. Mechanics like this really add to replayability, since you can approach the level in whatever way you'd like. If only there was a way to see what supplies you had, though! The secrets are plentiful, and are a ton of fun to find, following a difficulty curve from easy to very hard, so there's something for people of all skill levels. I always liken Mazu secrets to munching on a plate of cookies, they're just really satisfying, plentiful, and almost always have tells that let you recognize them if you pay attention. This map is probably the largest I've ever played, and is basically another game in itself. The best part is, it's only the beta version, so I'm really looking forward to playing the final release.

Superb release. "Weeping shades of indigo" was my favourite of the pack, kind of a mix between an ancient sith temple and that place with the snake women in "Arx fatalis", sinister, mysterious and scary.

Yet again... an absolutely wonderful map pack!

The maps vary, as in all communal projects, from excellent to... not quite. But each and every one shows good mapping, good details, great ideas and quite a bit of thinking-out-of-the-box.

The one single map that made this rise to a five-star rating (not to belittle any of the others) is Mazu's "McGyver" map. I have a secret suspicion that this map may not entirely have been concieved within the time limit...

Exploring. New ideas. A new way of doing quake... that includes all the old ones. Bloody marvellous. It took me bloody 2½ days to finish this map, and im still a handful of monsters and 14 secrets down...

All of you: really well done. Mazu: exceptional! Thanks for your time and efforts, and thanks for sharing, everyone.

On the office building level some hissing starts when using QSS. I wanted to enjoy it but that kinda ruins it.

Map of Mazu is really great, true adventure! Anyway, I wanna ask the question: what's the trouble with the fog on 1yago's map? Different rooms has diffetrent fog, but why it changes so discrete?

The text file says that this pack uses the modification "copper 1.20". But it has not appeared on the developer's website yet. Is this a modification of version 1.20 just for this mappack?

I opened the file "pak0.pak" and saw that several sounds and menu images for this mappack were added to it. If I want to use version 1.20 with fixed bugs, do I only need to replace the "progs.dat" file in the existing version 1.19?

How do I use the grappling hook in the Minecraft themed level please?

Disregard that, ahem

I haven't played the other maps yet, but Mazu's is definitely a must-play. He took exploration to a whole new level and I'm blown away by the result.

Oh, by the way: when Mazu warns you that "Hard" might be too hard, you listen.

I guess I am doing a dumb here, but I can't figure out how to open the door into the base in Rifts to Abhorrence (ctsj2_hrnekbezucha). What am I missing? And oddly-textured button?

Pac (ctsj2_riktoi) is clever — I won't say how, because I don't want to spoil the surprise. But is it actually fun? Not really, not for me. Sorry. I'll award a generous two stars because the moment of realisation is nice.

I like Sun King's Passage (ctsj2_mfk) much more: a pleasant palace with sufficiently interesting combat and an easy-to-grasp structure. Nothing especially unusual, but fun. A award a rather mean three stars. (This is nearly stars better than Pac, but I rounded that one up from about 1.6 and this one down from about 3.4)

Lethe's temple is a nice experience of well-judged combats in a bland but beautiful temple with mostly pleasant and clear progression. It falls down a little right at the end, in a few ways: * The silver-key door isn't marked, and I spent a while looking for it — partly my fault as I took a break at a crucial moment and lost my context. * The ending is anticlimactic, which nothing behind the final door. * The only secret can only be found at the very end, and it doesn't contain anything.

But I like this a lot, nevertheless. Four stars in the context of a jam.

TIL that Quaddicted's Markdown renderer doesn't support bullet lists. Oh well.

It should!

With

• stars

• and

• with

• lines

but the parser might require a leading and/or trailing empty line, like many. I hope soon we will have a different commenting setup.

Ah, I'd not come across that convention — I'm used to GitHub-flavoured Markdown. Thanks for the tip!

• This is
• A test of
• A leading blank line before the whole list
• But no blanks between entries.

And this is what comes after the list.

Meanwhile, I really enjoyed Greenwood's Seti in Stone, a egyptian/alien temple with enjoyable progression and a good blend of tactical and hectic combats. Pleasant to look at, too. A very solid four stars.

A quarter of the way through A Blaze in the Northern Sky (ctsj2_stickflip) I was worried that I was going to get lost, as all the areas look much the same, constructed from the same grey rock walls. But I needn't have worried. The map is so carefully constructed that the right path is always apparent despite the visual homogeneity.

The choice of which silver-key door to take first adds a nice element of replayability, and combat balance is pretty good. Early in the first sub-quest (the silver door on the right) I just ran out of ammo, and had to run past an ogre ledge to reach resupplies. That was a satisfying moment.

Apart from the unexciting (but effective) visuals, I have two other quibbles. First, the lack of secrets; and second, the lack of points where we re-emerge above an area visited earlier. This kind of verticality always helps to establish the geometry of the space the player is exploring, as well giving the inherently satisfying feeling of looking down on a familiar area from an unfamiliar perspective.

Despite these imperfections, I rate this map a solid four stars.

The Satisfyer 2 : Holiday in Finland (ctsj2_zigi) is not really my cup of tea: I like to play Quake slowly and thoughtfully on the whole, with occasional frantic interludes; a map that is frantic from start to finish might be brilliant, but just won't work for me.

So I won't award a score for this one at all.

I will say this, though: I turned on notarget and lawnmowered may through the hordes of unresponding enemies in a way that required absolutely no skill at all ... and I really enjoyed it. It's not what the the map was intended for, but I guess if it's fun then that's success.

I like Inner Sea Ruins (ctsj_pinchy) for its self-contained quality. I found it difficult early on, with ammo running out. But while sometimes that can be frustrating, I felt it was well judged in this map, so I was able to rescue myself by causing enough infighting to rush inside and grab some more ammo. My only real criticism is that the ending is anticlimactic: having taken out the monsters that appear on the top of the temple when you pick up the gold key, I was surprised to find nothing more than a few regular knights up there waiting for me when I took the teleporter. I think a shambler surprise would have been warranted. Anyway, this is nice. Four stars.

Rotten Rivet (ctsj2_sze) is nice, linear progression through a slimy base with an aesthetic somewhere between Insomnia and Rubicon (without being as atmospheric as either). It could be argued that the repeating pattern of enter-a-room, pick-off-the-enemies, press-the-button is unimaginative, but in fact I found it pleasantly soothing. And the different layouts of those rooms meant that each stage was a distinct challenge. Very nice. Four stars.

Well, I reluctantly gave up on Scvmfvck II: Fvcked Harder (ctsj2_fairweather).

It started out feeling like it was going to by my favourite map of this jam, with its lovely architecture and novel qud-based progression mechanic, and I did really enjoy the first 100 or so kills.

But then I came to the room where after you grab the quad you're dropped into a tiny circular room surrounded by insta-death lava, and get spammed by dozens of ogres, death knights and vores with no room to manoeuvre. I died over and over and over. Could I have beaten it? Maaaybe, but I wasn't having fun trying. So I god-moded through and moved on to the next section.

Where I was almost immediately confronted by a choice of two teleporters, both of which took me to equally impossible constrained combats. At that point I had to ask myself why I was putting myself through this. I considered god-moding those two sections, too, but really, what would be the point?

Worse, I realised that having been stuck in this map for so long had meant I wasn't playing any of the other CTJS2 maps, which was silly. In fact I wasn't playing any Quake, because I had somehow got it into my head that I needed to beat this one first.

I know, I know. It's my own fault. But I concluded that the best thing to do was put myself out of my own misery, and declare this map a WONTCOMPLETE. Which is a real shame, as it felt like it was going to be a five-star map.

Tried two maps running in Quake Remastered and both crashed.