I had the great pleasure of playtesting all of these maps for the release. It's important to note there are some first time Quake mappers involved with this pack who all did excellent work. The veteran mappers of course all stepped up their game as well. NewHouse created a themed start map that's just plain fun. Just some of the highlights in no particular order:

1. ww's labyrinthian cave system with the vanishing Shambler!
2. Skacky's beautiful massive "sunken" complex
3. OneTruePurple's vertical lava temples
4. wedge's entire map (his first for Quake - no spoilers!)
5. scar3crow's chaotic thrillride
6. Mukor's moody, mind-bending maze
7. Jazz's has something to tie the whole level together
8. Ionous' experiment with circular slaughter
9. GG TheMusic on your first ever Quake map
10. Breezeep's punishing paradise
11. Mariteaux's rocket jumping and lava dip
12. Artisical's two maps one huge, one tight
13. Bloodshot's is one of the most unique Quake environs I've ever seen
14. Danazadan's tricky sliver key
15. digs' map is a true dm4 remix with a ton of personality
16. DraQu & Promeus' ambitious and atmospheric first Quake map
17. Giftmacher's usual excellent gameplay and encounters
18. prengle's creative brushwork and environments
19. rj's map plays on an inspiring, massive scale
20. Shadesmaster first Quake map is an ode to DooM
21. Naiteveni a simply beautiful and challenging level.

This is a great pack.

DM4 Map Jam - Part 1 on The Quake Grave

So far, I've played through 6 maps from the pack and having a great time! It's great to see all of the different perspectives and approaches to Quake mapping, especially when trying to take on the theme of such a classic DM map!

The video features maps made by Ionous, Skacky, Bloodshot, Mariteaux and both of Artisicals. Part 2 coming soon!

"Aren't you missing something?", asks The Worst Place, as I try to pass an underwater grate. But what? I've pressed every button I've seen.

Here are the next 2 parts of the Jam:

DM4 Map Jam Part 2 on The Quake Grave Part 2 features the maps from Breezeep, Danzadan, Scar3crow, Digs and Draqu/Promeus.

DM4 Map Jam Part 3 on The Quake Grave Part 3 features the maps from Giftmacher, Mukor, Naitelveni, onetruepurple, Prengle and Queenjazz.

Too many maps here for me to do my usual, and comment on each individually. But lots of fun to be had in this pack, where none of the maps are stinkers and some are really good.

I ended all maps, little coments:

DraQu & Promeus, I founded 0|4 secrets, it is my worst score, they a hided very well. Scacky, very beautiful and big map, even with default Quake texture and white lighting! And rock loocks smooth, not a angular. Very many polygons in rock walls. How many time u spen to createthis map? Dig, it looks as remix... scaled remix O_O interesting idea. Ww, beautiful map too. what does mean "NOWT"?

DM4 Map Jam Part 4 on The Quake Grave

Part 4 is the final part and features the maps from RJ, Shades, TheMusic, Wedge_One and WW.

Great jam everyone, not a bad map in the bunch! I'm really glad to see so many new faces in this one too, please stick around and create more maps! =)

Playing on hard. 21 maps!? Damn impressive!

ionous: Yay, circular! ww: Loved the style and the secrets. scar3crow: YOUR CHOICE OF CDTRACK IS WORTHY OF WAR. Nice brutal slaughter. themusic: over too soon! nailtilieanlvinivn: Very cool style, fun secrets. deimos: Not quite dm4 and very brutal, but nice execution. Artistical: wow, my favourite so far. oldschool plus diablo 1 feeling, sphincter clenching moments. What about that secret top section though, lol? mukor's ogres were so annoying I quit. >:(((

giftmacher: Confusing as hell, because of the weird progression. Great style, reminded me of the good 2001/2002 times. Very fun gameplay.

I get the error: model progs/player.mdl not precached when trying to load the map dm4jam_skacky and the game crashes.I'm using quakespasm 0.93 on Windows XP.

Excellent pack guys! One small problem though: Ionous's map on save crashes QuakeSpasm 0.93.1 on OS X

Thanks for the great time.

Excellent pack guys! One small problem though: Ionous's map on save crashes QuakeSpasm 0.93.1 on OS X

Thanks for the great time.

Alright, I finally finished my year long project of playing through the jam, so here come the reviews! :D For the curious, I added dates, when I played the maps. You'll notice that there was a long hiatus, when I didn't touch the pack for many months until this month I finally decided to get it done with. xD All the maps were played on nightmare and with the DLC updates, unless otherwise stated. I'll review the DLC maps in the Quaddicted DLC entry. Demos were recorded on Quakespasm-spiked.

Before leaping into the individual map reviews, I calculated an overall rating for the pack as the average of the individual map ratings, weighted by the maps' completion times. The calculated rating (without the new DLC maps) is 4,26/5, but I think the pack really should be rated as more than just as the sum of its parts. Great effort was involved in the project and it was all nicely woven together by Newhouse's cool start map and Dumptruck, who came up with the idea and pulled it all together really well. So, as a whole, I think I'd rate the pack closer to 4,5/5.

27.5.2018

Fear and Trembling by Ionous
(dm4jam_ionous)

Quite relentless. Died (at least) four times before beating it. It felt like whenever I was trying to run for a safe spot, another ambush would activate somewhere, or a scrag or a death knight that I had left behind would circle around and take pot shots at me. Quite the nightmare on the corresponding difficulty, indeed, and worthy of the map's namesake. Very carefully constructed encounters and map geometry that allows the enemies plenty of chances to attack. Reminds me quite a lot of Der Wanderer über dem Säuremeer, actually.

The central circle combat encounter was kind of frustrating, though. I ended up sinking in the lava (at least) twice and it was hard to dispatch the monsters in the limited space without hurting myself, while more enemies kept spawning. I think it would have been nice to allow the player to jump up from the lava, at least. There's already enough to be mindful of during the chaos of that encounter, in my opinion.

Item balance was good. Whenever I was feeling I was running out of ammo or health, the map would trickle just the right amount to survive till the next batch.

The secrets were quite hard. I didn't find any of them in my first run. It was only during my second run on easy that I found them. Secrets 2 and 4 were pretty good. I especially liked secret 4, of which I had the right hunch in my first run, but had the wrong approach. (Didn't want to risk killing myself by changing my approach.) I guess that means I like secrets that have enough clues going for them, or that are more like hidden in plain sight. For that reason I didn't like secret 3 that much, although I guess increasing the gamma/brightness settings in my end would have helped me find the secret sooner. I did have a hunch on secret 1, too, but failed to keep looking around after seeing the first hint. I think maybe the first hint alone should have been enough to be the required trigger to activate the secret. It was the first secret, after all.

That said, the secrets were balanced well, since finding them isn't necessary to survive the map, but give players a little bit something extra to increase their survivability, not make them super overpowered.

The map looks great; especially the central circle room, the circle mechanism at the bottom being the obvious highlight, which makes it no wonder that the intermission screen was a nice view of the element. I also liked the moving stairs. They were really cool!

The relentless combat and limited supplies are sure to keep you on your toes in this map. Not sure if I was feeling like playing a map like it at the time of writing this review, but if you're feeling like a map of such sort, you likely won't be disappointed! 4,25/5

24.6.2018

Badly Placated by ww
(dm4jam_ww)

Had a blast! If we don't count my first run where I died pretty soon at the beginning by taking a stupid dip in the lava, I survived the map without dying (13:49 playtime, 4/5 secrets and 40/46 kills. On my second run I found the last secret and finished with just one monster remaining).

I liked the looks of the map, where natural formations blended really nicely with the building. The challenge in the enemy encounters and finding secrets was just right for my taste and there were just the right amount of supplies too.

Not much to complain here. There were a few things that left me wondering if they were unintentional, though, like having a knight telefrag a shambler, allowing the player to exit the final arena with monsters still spawning in and having one elusive monster remain at the end. However, these things didn't really detract from the overall experience for me. 5/5

30.6.2018

The Bad House (non-DLC version) by Scar3crow
(dm4jam_scar3crow)

9:51 completion time, 63/64 kills, 1 death (and no secrets). Scar3crow took dm4 imitation to the extreme in the sense that the map feels like a deathmatch map with single player elements just kind of slapped on top, which rubs me the wrong way a bit. High tier weapons are placed in plain sight in corridors, there are no secrets, and even the song's the same as in dm4 and there's a teleporter, the placement of which doesn't really work in SP.

The single player works quite nicely most of the time, though: Even if there is heavy firepower available, ammo isn't handed out too generously and there's a large number of enemies to counter the player's firepower. Especially the central lava room had some fiendish ogre placement and scrags to occupy the player. I think the addition of a certain monster in the same room later on was a nice addition and something more for the player to be mindful of. Sometimes the monster placement was kind of hit and miss, though, like this one time the player was simply just spammed a huge amount of scrags. Taking them out with the RL was kind of trivial, as there were no other monsters to keep the player occupied at the same time.

The architecture's rather simple but competent in the sense that it doesn't really detract from the experience. Bottom line, though: I had fun. Mowing through large groups of enemies with a quad-powered SNG, TB and RL is cathartic entertainment. I also replayed the DLC version on 31.12.2018 and didn't spot much difference; maybe more of a technical update than gameplay one? 3/5

2.7.2018

Heat by TheMusic
(dm4jam_themusic)

2:20 completion time, all kills, no deaths (and no secrets). A nice little map (with special emphasis on the word "little", because the map's really tiny). The orange coloured lights really conveyed the heat theme of the map, which was something different from the other mostly blue maps. Not sure if the colored lights were a bit over the top, though, because reddish light mixing with mostly blue textures makes for a pretty grey combination. Maybe the colors could have been toned down, especially in rooms with no lava, for example. That could have brought some color variation to the map and allow the blue stand out, which is one of the distinctive features of dm4.

But my real gripe for the map is definitely its short length. What we have in the map feels like the first 10-20 % of a full-size map. The map unfortunately ends at a point when it feels like it's just about to pick up the pace. Maybe time constraints of the jam were the cause of the short length, but what we do have is like a promising foundation for a full-lenght map. 2,75/5

3.8.2018

As Each End Looms and Subsides by Naitelveni
(dm4jam_nait)

20:39 completion time, all kills, 4/5 secrets and no deaths (if you don't count a silly misstep in the lava). Really took my time with this one. I spent a bit of time dawdling indecisively where to go next as I as admiring the cool scenery, probably the strongest point about the map!

Wanting to explore and see every nook and cranny really helped with finding the secrets, which were mostly similarly executed; maybe getting slightly repetitive. After having finished the map I could relax a bit and take a few risks with the last secret, so I took the risk and was rewarded. Gotta say, it was quite a cool and clever secret in plain sight!

Kinda repetitive with the mass scrag ambushes with relatively few other enemies in the mix. Sometimes the enemy placement allowed for some easy pickings for the player. I'd say combat was the least impressive part about the map. I did like the fact that the player was stocked pretty well with cells, though, so I could have a blast with the TB. >:D

I really liked the multiple keys mechanic, which at times brought some non-linearity to the map. Not something that I see that often.

All in all, I'd say the map's great for exploration, because the beautiful architecture makes it worth exploring. You might end up finding a few secrets while you're at it. c; 4/5

12.8.2018

Deimos Revisited by Shades
(dm4jam_shades)

6:51 completion time, 46/50 kills, 0/2 secrets and no deaths. I found the GL secret on my second easy playthrough, which wasn't very hard to find, since I knew the source Doom map. The other secret I found only after a little bit of noclipping. I'd still consider the secret fair and appropriate. Overall, good secrets.

Not saying that I've studied DM4 super thoroughly, but apart from the little decorative elements, I didn't see that much of DM4 in this map. I still liked the quakey take on E2M1, which was a suitable map choice, considering the upside-down cross in the original. Maybe the map was just a little bit too dark for my liking.

I'd say Shades took just the right amount of liberties with the map, making a good amount of changes to make the map more interesting but not too many either so the map didn't stray too far away from the original. 3/5

18.8.2018

A Profaned Place by Artistical
(dm4jam_artistical)

18:31 completion time, 67/68 kills and 4/6 secrets. Where this map really shines is its architecture and atmosphere. I especially liked the higher than usual scale of the rooms. After the first hub room, already the second room has a high ceiling, which hints of things to come. After a while the map truly opens up to reveal its size to the player. The huge empty spaces, albeit boxy at times, combined with the signs of decay and bleak story messages scattered throughout helped me get immersed with the place and evoked this feeling of smallness and loneliness. After completing the map the first time, I restarted the map on skill 0 to find the rest of the secrets. I just had to find the rest of the story messages, even if it took me an embarrassing amount of 38 minutes to find them. -_-

In terms of gameplay, the map's kind of hit and miss. Combat, for the most part, felt kind of uninspired, consisting mostly of spamming the player with just a bunch of enemies, without too much thought put on how to use them most effectively. There are encounters where the monsters have a huge disadvantage (ogres below the player or a large distance away) but then there are clever placements of death knights and ogres high above to allow them to take potshots at the player and being far away enough to render the players attack rather wasteful. But then I noticed that ammo is so abundant that wastefulness would've been ok.

Come to think of it, this map reminded me quite a bit of Naitelveni's, being quite proficient in the architectural side but leaving something to be desired in the combat side of things. 4/5

31.12.2018

A Final Place by Artistical
(dm4jam_artistical2)

7:56 completion time, 34/52 kills, all secrets, no deaths. I think this map really nailed the look and feel of DM4 pretty well. It was tight and had a central area with multiple layers of sorts. Combat was fun and the monster mixes were pretty good. There was this round tower where the ogres had quite the disadvantage, because I could just safely kill them from below. But all in all, it was good fun! 4,25/5

Funnel of Contempt by Mukor
(dm4jam_mukor)

16:07, all kills, 1/6 secrets, no deaths. A gorgeus looking map, probably the prettiest of them all! The combat was also really challenging and fun! I did manage to find the rest of the secrets on my second easy difficulty run. I especially liked the one where I had to seriously parkour my way to some cells! xD Definitely 5/5; Good job!

1.1.2019

Another Bad Place by Giftmacher
(dm4jam_giftmacher)

16:17 completion time, all kills, 2/5 secrets, no deaths. A beautiful intricately designed interwoven map with different kinds of fun encounters. I guess I don't have much bad to say about the map, except that at times I felt a little bit confused trying to get a grasp of the layout. I found the rest of the secrets on my second easy difficulty run; clever secrets with good rewards. I'll mention a few highlights: Nice beginning with the player scrambling for the GL. Nice use of zombies, in general, as this kind of a omnipresent nuisance/fodder and as "turrets". I also liked looks of the final arena especially and had fun juggling the vores! 4,75/5

The Drop by Mariteaux
(dm4jam_mariteaux)

13:43 completion time, all kills, 4/7 secrets, no deaths. Found the rest of the secrets on my second easy difficulty run, the ring of shadows one through rocket jumping. Not sure if there was a more "legit" way to get it, though. Quite a nice map with faithful emulation of dm4 and challenging fights. The architecture's a little simple, but so was in the original dm4, to be fair. There were a couple of in-your-face ambushes, that at times bordered on the cheap side, but nothing too bad. 3,75/5

Demon Fort by Jazz Mickle
(dm4jam_queenjazz)

8:38 completion time, all kills, 2/3 secrets, no deaths. I found the last secret on my second playthrough by grenade jumping and didn't quite get the joke. Nice and interesting visuals on this little map, like this one weird rug thingie under the silver key and the funny secret texts. Combat wasn't too special, with mostly throwing single enemy types at your face. A bit more mixing and coordination around could've been in order. 3,25/5

5.1.2019

An Unpleasant Alcazar by Danzadan
(dm4jam_danzadan)

5:22 completion time, all kills, 2/3 secrets, 1 death (due to silly lava dipping). Found the third secret on my subsequent secret hunting run. Took quite a while, but it was worth it. 3spoopy5me! OoO A really nice looking and flowing map. My favourite part was the central courtyard; extremely nice looking with the watchtowers up above under the starry night sky. Gameplay was the most exciting here, too, at least with the quad damage. Some of the other areas, while somewhat plain, had enough detailing in them to counter it. I'd give the map a solid 4/5.

The Worst Place by DraQu and PromEUs
(dm4jamdraqupromeus)

14:05 "completion" time (died just before the exit), 79/83 kills, 2/4 secrets, 2 deaths while on "try-hard" mode and some more sloppy deaths "off-camera". (I didn't record a third demo, because I died so close to the ending.) I found out how to get the red armor secret after a few minutes of being a dirty cheater and flying around the map. Figuring out how to open the final secret and the super secret took me an embarrassing 30-60 minutes. Some insanely well hidden secrets there, although I'm not the biggest fan of that kind of secrets. Well, at least the rewards matched the challenge. I don't know why I was so stubborn to find them this time. xD

Looks-wise the map reminds me quite a bit of Mukor's map, so it looked really good. Having the "base" song playing in the background and the flickering lights combined with grunts and dogs gave an interesting base map vibe. At the beginning supplies felt kind of scarce and getting to any weapon was quite challenging, but I'd say in a good way. Combat was challenging and fun. 4,5/5

9.8.2019

Your Happier Place by Prengle
(dm4jam_prengle)

14:00 completion time, all kills, 3/4 secrets on the first playthrough (found the last on my second try on easy difficulty), 1 silly lava death.

Quite a solid little map this is. It feels very vanilla in terms of gameplay/difficulty and item balance, so not too difficult even on nightmare and pretty forgiving in regards to sloppy playing, especially if one finds secrets.

Speaking of secrets, they are fairly easy to find, if one's even semi attentive of their surroundings. My favourites were the quad and ring secrets. (I don't wanna know what's going on in the secret quad room! xD) I would've liked a little bit of variation in terms of how to find/trigger the secrets, but that's a fairly minor nitpick.

The visuals are nice, faithful to DM4, with some nice ceiling setpieces in particular.

I guess monster placement is the area that could be improved on the most. You can read about my thoughts in the demos. Otherwise, the map provides some pretty solid tried and true no-frills vanilla Quake gameplay. :) 4/5

10.8.2019

The Dirge of Despair by Bloodshot
(dm4jam_bloodshot)

17:55 completion time, 126/134 kills, 2/5 secrets (but found them on the second easy playthrough), no deaths. What can I say; great visuals, great combat coupled with other gameplay like platforming, great and varied secrets, great item balance, great everything! All the elements had some really imaginative twists going along with them, and everything's extremely polished! Probably my favourite of the bunch; 5/5!

Lost Expedition by WEDGE_ONE
(dm4jam_wedge_one)

8:30 completion time, all kills and secrets, no deaths. I'd say the visuals were the strong point of this map. I liked the base intro, which transitioned to the DM4 style. I wasn't a very big fan of being limited mostly to the SG for about half of the map. At least some more nails would've been nice to complement the SG. Enemies could also often be surprised pretty easily due to how they were placed. Because of the nice presentation, I think I'll rate this 3,25/5.

The Bad Monster's Place by Digs
(dm4jam_digs)

6:54 completion time, all kills, no secrets (but on the other playthrough, after a lot of noclipping I was able to find the secret), 1 stupid lava death. I'd say the look and feel of DM4 was captured really well here. The spaces felt appropriately tight, especially when they were packed with enemies on higher difficulties. There was some doubling or tripling the same enemies in same spots, which doesn't increase difficulty much, but rather tedium. Otherwise the gameplay was alright. Hmm, which rating... maybe 3,25/5.

11.8.2019

Molten Flesh on a Sunday Night by Breezeep
(dm4jam_breezeep)

16:54 completion time, all kills, no secrets (on first playthrough), 1 death. Breathtakingly beautiful visuals, one of if not the best of the bunch, and cool non-linear gameplay.

The map is quite sprawling, but still small enough for me to keep tabs on where I was. Item balance is very good, with health being abundant enough for my clumsy playing, and ammo being not too generous to prevent nonstop use of SNG or RL. The balance works with different path choices, too.

I noticed that the map is more for the careful player, because if you go around guns blazing you'll be ambushed every second step of the way and space is limited for dodging. That doesn't bother me much, though, since I'm a slow careful player myself.

I forgot to quicksave, so I had to replay the level when I died, and it was when I was redoing the slow platform parts that I realized they kind of don't age that well for another playthrough. In part because I'm being shot at from whichever direction for a lot of the time with little room to dodge, but mostly when I have to wait for the platforms to come to me, which isn't fun.

I was kind of confused by the secrets. I got the RL, but couldn't find a way out without rocket jumping. Was I supposed to do that? And was I supposed to find the rest of the secrets by rocket jumping too? I have a feeling probably not, but that's how I ended up finding the secrets.

But overall, the map stands out of the bunch in a really pleasant way. 4,5/5

A Pact Beheld by Onetruepurple
(dm4jam_otp)

12:51 completion time, all kills, 1/2 secrets (but found the other on a secret hunt run), "no" deaths. Good map, not much bad to say about it... except the central pit that requires a bit too much precision with the jumps for my liking. (I did find out on my second run that diagonal running wasn't necessary, but even then.)

I was also kind of surprised to see the yellow armor so readily available, since in modern maps even yellow armor tends to be placed behind pretty well hidden secrets, let alone red armor (which in retrospect I'm kind of surprised I didn't find in my first playthrough).

The definite highlight of the map was the deliciously cathartic quad scene. The ending scene was quite unexpected as well and cool! 4,5/5

17.8.2019

Absolutego by Skacky
(dm4jam_skacky)

30:14 completion time, 148/165 kills, 2/12 secrets (took me like 1,5 hours to find/figure out the rest of them), 2 deaths (the other death wasn't recorded in a demo, since I died so quickly after the first death).

Masterfully crafted map of quite epic scale feeling like a place that has a story to tell; full of age and decay. Even though the map is rather large, it didn't feel exhausting to play through, thanks to its interesting and varying locations. The first area of the map had some nice non-linearity going along with it, too.

Combat was enjoyable and item balance was good. I especially liked the end fight, which forced me to constantly keep tabs on where I'm being attacked from and decide whether to move or take cover.

I was pretty stubborn to find/figure out the rest of the secrets after my dismal first run. I was pretty embarrassed how I hadn't found the second ring secret on my first run. Speaking of the ring secrets, the first ring close to the beginning of the map doesn't seem to appear when playing on easy. I'm guessing it's a bug? It also took me an embarrassing amount of time to find the trigger for the quad that was "sealed shut" behind bars. I think my favourite secret was the RL secret, which required quite a bit of acrobatics. One of the secrets I was only able to reach by rocket jumping. I wonder if that was intended.

Even though some of the secrets took me an unnecessarily long time to find, they felt fair, but there was ONE button for the super secret, that felt a bit too obscure for my liking. Spoiler alert, it's during an elevator ride. It sure was exhausting trying to find it while noclipping around the map. I guess that would be my one nitpick of this otherwise great map. 5/5

18.8.2019

Total Fucking Lies by RJ
(dm4jam_rj)

7:50 completion time, 46/74 kills (when replaying from my quicksave far away from my death point, I couldn't care less about killing my enemies, so I tried to rush), 1/4 secrets, 3 deaths. Aesthetically really pleasing and clean. Just the right amount of complex. And the final area looked just great; really creative.

The gameplay was pretty nice and challenging, and the secrets were nice, but I really don't like the final battle. There really is no proper cover to be had there, so you're pretty much doomed if you don't have enough health/armor when you enter. Unfortunately the battle left a really sore aftertaste for the otherwise really nice map. 3,5/5.

Whoops, I erroneusly stated that the demos were recorded on Quakespasm-spiked, when in actuality they were recorded on Vkquake, but I think you should be able to run the demos just fine in regular Quakespasm.

There are some show stealers of course but still, an all-around great jam that takes a good while to go through.

Badly scripted mod; from inability to recall a mission critical elevator to getting stuck in gabs between crates and sliding around corners when running around on clearly ice-free grounds.

This isn't a mod, it's a map pack.

One of the best jams-packs available. It's giant and most of maps are masterpieces. Skacky's map is surely a masterpiece; if you have not played it you have not played Quake at its top yet. Giftmachers map is stunningly mazey & complex too; layout is windy & tricky and you never know where will you end up. Nait's map is gorgeous. Artistical's... maaan, ALL MAPS are top-notch and worth playing. 100 out of 10 for the whole pack *Played with DLC

hey Skacky, i found it immensely irritating that after spending hours finding all the buttons, I didn't actually unlock a secret level. No, I just unlocked power ups for a boss fight i'd already beaten. I am so angry!

Such a huge pack with wonderfull maps. Had so much fun. Thank you very much.