IMPORTANT!

This pack requires the altered Quoth 2.2 upgrade which is not found on Quaddicted.

Click here to download it.

Thanks, onetruepurple. I changed the map description above and added a link to the correct version of Quoth 2.2.

Cheers!

Onetruepurple, I'm a bit confused by your notice. Quoth 2.2 IS here on Quaddicted, both a patch and full install, if you search for quoth2pt2. Is that not the same version as you linked to?

I'd rather avoid messing up my installs by installing patches from outside QI unless it's absolutely necessary.

Ah, lol! Icantthinkofanickname snuck in a reply while I was typing :)

Map Jam 9 Part 1 on The Quake Grave

Part 1 houses the first 5 maps by alphabetical order, not a bad one so far! Nice job everyone!

Cloudy With a Chance of Gibs by Bloughsburgh: You've so far made the craziest map with all of the grinders and gibs all over the place! I felt gross just walking through all the falling body parts and swimming through all the blood. Really visceral! This one felt a little cramped to me at times, almost making it feel more like a map made in the 90's at times but I don't think that's bad thing. You do a lot with the small space available and somehow there are 10 secrets crammed in here? Crazy! This is definitely the grossest Contract map, nice work buddy!

Mensis Keep by Breezeep: I loved the flow of this map Breezeep and wow was it challenging for me! This feels like a pretty epic adventure, how it starts in the caves and winds you through all these difficult fights through the castle. This one felt like almost a prequel or sequel to Contract Revoked, in that it fits in with the episode but also tells its own story. Really nice work!

DelusionalBear's Map: I'm pretty sure this is your first map Dbear (I apologize if I'm wrong on that), but for a first effort this is really good! This has been the shortest map so far, but i love a good short map myself. I think your map tells a great story in and of itself, with you starting in a dungeon and finally making your way to a gladiator style arena, suggesting that prisoners were used here as fodder...that is, until you showed up! Great visual storytelling! My only real critique is with the big middle room where like 20 skrags try to come at you all at once. It made for a silly fun fight, but there is always something a bit off about a ton of enemies agroing at once in a huge room. Check out my playthrough for more details. Nice work on this one, looking forward to more from you in the future!

Knight Gaunts by dumptruck_ds: Wow, Dumptruck, this map was wild! Huge rooms, lots of variety to the combat throughout and a really, really tough fight at the end. I really liked the center courtyard area as it was a ton of fun running back and forth from enemies. While I was playing that fight at the end, I wasn't really having a ton of fun with it because it was kicking my ass, but I will say that it was REALLY satisfying finishing it. On the other hand, it may have taken a few years off me. =P Excellent work man!

The Brimstone Mine by Giftmacher: My favorite of the pack so far, I love the space in this map as it feels like everything fits and flows perfectly. The beginning was perfect where you see this dirty mine shaft and then turn around to see a beautiful skybox. I loved how further into the map, you could look down in the skybox and see a town below. Really nice touch! The amount of variety in the gameplay of this map is outstanding. It contains small horde fights, crazy boss introductions witht he shamblers, elevator fighting...there is a lot and really helps this map stay fresh around every corner! This is definitely something new mappers should play to understand spacing and pacing of a Quake map as this was just my speed and still had a good challenge to it!

Part 2 coming soon!

Map Jam 9 Part 2 on The Quake Grave

Part 2 houses the next 5 maps in alphabetical order. All ten maps I've played so far have been super high quality, again, still not a bad map in the bunch!

Haunter's Map: First off, welcome to the community (if you are indeed new?) and I really liked your map! I have a very special place in my heart for short maps and your map here is short but it not only offers up a good amount of variety in the gameplay and combat but it also just looks beautiful! If I had to nit pick anything, it might be that the first room with the 2 buttons is a little uneventful but not a big issue really. Absolutely love that last area with the 2 Vores. Based on the presentation alone, the stone tablet, the broken stone floors, the spinning monolith and all the dead bodies... This one room tells such a frightening story and it rocks! Really looking forward to seeing your next release!

Ionous's Map: I'm going to echo a few of the same sentiments I had for Haunter's map, which is that it's also awesome to have a short map and it's really well crafted! The flow of this map was great! It felt very organic and natural the way the enemies were spawned in and introduced. I also really liked the idea that this castle was on top of or surrounded by lava and I would've loved to see a bit more of that used in the map. Really not sure how to get to any of those secret areas I saw. I was able to get to one, but I had no clue about the others. Awesome job on this one Ionous!

Kell's Map: I really enjoyed this one as it was so different from the rest! I wasn't expecting a map with low gravity and I really wasn't expecting a void map at all from the man who brought us the original episode! This one did well to stand out from the other maps so far and it's actually really good too! Good flow, lots of fun jumping form platform to platform. The custom pieces made for this map rock. The prisoner in the weird floating contraption... I had a hard time not looking at it when I walked passed it. I will also echo what most others have already said and that is that the stargate in the middle of the map is amazing looking! The way it's introduced is even better though. You jump to the first floating dock and turn to your left to see some pointy spikes and you wonder what the hell it might be. Then once you get in front of it, you see it in all of its glory and it's stupendous! This map feels like the beginning of a brand new episode or the end of one. Like the Quake guy has defeated a demon in a castle and created a rift in time, revealing the stargate and ripping the castle apart. You jump from platform to platform, castle brick to castle brick to reach the stargate, but where does the Stargate lead? I love how some of these maps suggest stories like that and yours really allows for some of that creativity. Great job on the map and thanks for Contract Revoked!

Mukor's Map: This map was very interesting in its approach. The first half of it is a normal Quake map, with several rooms and enemies leading to the silver key. I actually really enjoyed the pacing of this part. Then the last half you're thrown into a wave-based/horde fight and this fight is tough! I was able to cheese the boss monsters to take them out at each interval, but had I not been able to do that, I'm not sure that I would have finished it. I love the skybox used on this one too, but there are very few times you actually get to see it. All around, great map, love the atmosphere and pacing of the first part of it but that last fight was pretty damn challenging, you sadistic man you! =P Great job nonetheless, there were some great moments in this playthrough!

Nailelveni's Map: Nait, I've played through a few of your maps for jams over the time I've been doing the show and I have to say that I think you really out did yourself with this map! You've never made a bad map in the past but this one, I feel, puts you into a new bracket of talent. This map starts off in a base, a very Quake 2 feeling base... I wasn't expecting that at all! Then while I'm thinking, is this just a base map? You have the player walk through a portal into the hell of the Contract series. Nicely done introduction! The rest of the map is really well done as well, as it flows you through MANY different areas. You go through courtyards, castle halls, the underground, the moated area, the library which all leads you to this immense horde fight at the end! It's all very well paced, well put together and an all around great map! Excellent job on this one Nait!

The final part coming soon!

Most impressive Jam to date, all maps are 4.5-5 in my book. Great job guys!

Favs are Skackys 3 entries, followed by Pulsars and Ionous, as is tradition.

6/5. Go map!

Map Jam Part 3 on The Quake Grave

Here are the final 5 maps of the pack!

Newhouse: This map had a really awesome looking beginning area and the main courtyard that is revealed to you right after looks very demonic, dark and hellish. The map itself sort of feels like an old school custom DOOM wad. The unfortunate part of it is that I just couldn't find my way around well enough to actually finish the map. Confusing corridors and buttons sort of kept me from progressing much in this one. I really like the look of it though!

onetruepurple: This is a great example of how to do a lot with a little. OTP was able to take a smaller sized level and add quite a lot of variety to the visual story and gameplay here. This map is sort of the sewers of Contract Revoked. I love the flow and pacing of this map, but my only really gripe is the use of spawns. I can't stand them! Other than that, this is an excellent map!

Pulsar: This is definitively in the running for favorite of the pack. It's in the same line as onetruepurple, where a lot is done with a little. The flow and pacing of this map is perfectly my speed, as it offers a fun challenge but also offers nice little breaks in the action. I'm glad that the tongue and teeth make a return here and little bits of flesh are used throughout to keep the theme going. I also LOVE the orange skybox on this one! That end fight was brutal and I expected to beef it when I saw all those big guys but surprisingly I made it out alright. Really nice work on this one Pulsar!

ShoTro: I wasn't expecting what I got with Shotro's map here, as it's basically a whole episode! A very cleverly built episode. There are around 5 stages to how his map works, where each one uses a well known Quake trope and makes a separate level out of each. So in one you will fight Chthon, in another you will fight in an arena, in another you will fight another boss and so on and you collect a rune for each one and then finish the map with that rune. Once you restart, it automatically puts you right at the start of the same map. So the first time you play it, you learn the map and where to go. Then when you finish, the second time you play it, other areas have opened up to reveal the next step or task. It's like the Groundhog's Day movie but in Quake. I wish I knew going into this that the map would be sort of its own thing because I would've given this one it's own episode!

Anyway, I thought this was very clever and I'm not sure how you had the time to do this within the time for the map jam, so congrats on that! There was a lot of variety in what you were offering here in this map (or should I say map pack?) and I think a lot of people will be inspired by what was created here. The library comes to mind as one of my favorite areas, because different things happen as you touch different book shelves. The arena fight with all the grunts was also a good way to blow off some steam. This map had so many sections though, it's worth watching my playthrough for more thoughts as they happen. Nice work on this!

Skacky: Great map here Skacky! This probably felt the most like Contract Revoked of the 5 here, as the whole level is a gigantic library! That's sort of a blessing and a curse because much of it looks the same and I felt like I got turned around a little looking for the next thing to do, thankfully those teleporters were there. Lots of books! I would've liked a little more variety in the gameplay for such a long map too. Maybe have it so you have to solve a puzzle for the 2nd pillar or something to that effect just to change it up? It's nit picky though because the map is a really good, straight forward Quake map. I did not expect to survive with the odds stacked against me at the end there, but somehow I pulled through.

Also wanted to do a special mention for the start map for you as I think this might be one of the best start maps I've seen so far!

I love how everyone sort of brought a different approach to CR here and it really made the map jam unique. it felt like everyone had a separate adventure they wanted to show off in the CR universe and they were all very cool. Great job everyone!

I want to play this so bad, those maps look really cool. Too bad I download 2 GBs of Unreal maps instead.

*already downloaded

Otp, how can I open first secret? I broken all red glasses, but there is no effect.

A hidden button opens the first secret.

It look pretty good :) Are there no way this mappack works with quakespasm?

Slydk:

It also requires an engine port with increased limits, BSP2 support and support for the -quoth command line switch.

Quakespasm fits all of these requirements, at least the versions of the last one year or two, so you can use it with no worries. Only the second requirement is somewhat recent, the other two have gotten common for several years so almost every engine supports those them both.

Thank you :)

Very well done map pack. Great design and challenges. I do not think Quoth is necessary as I played it perfectly fine with QuakeSpasm.

@AnthonyS - Quoth is the mod the maps are meant to played under not the engine. Quakespasm is the engine, among other engines that may run it.

The level designers made these maps to play under the Quoth 2.2 MOD, which has new enemies and weapons. You must install these maps into the Quoth 2.2 maps folder and launch them under -game quoth according to the instructions, or you will not see any new enemies or monsters.

I always dread going into a Quoth map pack, and this pack is definitely on the harder side of Quoth.

I don't know, the maps are finely designed, with impeccable attention to detail, textures, architecture and lighting, but I'm afraid as the Quake community is growing smaller, it's also becoming exclusively hardcore.

Tried mukor's map first. No way I can beat the second half with all the powerful monsters and a huge boss shooting explosives everywhere all at once. OK, let's try something else. Kell's map was surpringsingly easy, so there's still hope for me, or so I thought. Then I went into dumptruck's map. Even more ridiculous. How about you get locked into a small room with 2 death lords that have shambler's lightining attacks on top of a protective aura? Or how about fighting 3 shambler in a row right after that accompanied by a hoard of vorelings that are very fast and take several hits to die each? It's clever in a way, once you kill the vorelings and shift your sight to the shambler, the game spawns some more damn vorelings and you realize that only as they start clawing at you.

Finally, I just fed up with quick saving and reloading all the time. This is not a challenge, this is tedium, not unlike scraping a concrete wall with a rusty spoon.

For the record, I always play on skill 1 (normal), since at least in theory this is supposed to be the baseline and all the other difficulty modes are derived from it. I won't leave a negative review out of spite, but this rabbit hole is definitely getting deeper.

Yeah my map can be quite a bit punishing in that last section.

I should have made the health respawn infinitely on lower skills and had more of it on higher difficulties.

I also hid the SNG in a secret when I should have made it part of the normal weapon progression.

DBear's untitled map is lovely -- so far as it goes. It's a real shame that it wasn't more fully populated, so that gameplay came closer to matching the architecture. It was particularly disappointing to pick up the RL and all those rockets at the end, then have absolutely nothing to use them on. The same would go for the quad secret, if I could have found a legitimate (= non-rocket-jump) way of reaching it.

There's the foundation here for a very fine level, but it's just not complete. I hope DBear keeps working on it and brings it to the point of a full release.

In its present form 3/5

For some reason, I enjoyed Night Gaunts (jam9_dumptruck) much more the second time through. There's a lot to explore, but the level falls down a little in that there is little sense of actual progression: it is, so to speak, just one damned thing after another. Still, there are are some very nicely constructed combats that are tricky to puzzled out -- like the one where you run into two Death Lords together in an enclosed space. All in all, this is pretty rewarding.

4/5.

Mensis Keep (jam9_breezeep) has a sort of Sockish feel to it, and I mean that as a compliment. Design-wise it's a hit from start to finish. Where it falls down a little is that too much of the scenery really is just scenery -- the most satisfying levels for my money are the ones where, later on, you get to climb on all the stuff that earlier you only saw from afar. Still, it's a fun progression with some nice combats and well-judged supplies: I like a game that sometimes takes me down to 10-30 health.

4/5.

The Brimstone Mine (jam9_giftmacher) is a delight. Lots of lovely, chunky machinery, quite a bit of it moving, and lots of set-piece combats in beauriful areas. My favourite so far, though the very ending (behind the gold-key door) was a tad anticlimactic: I'd really hoped it would finish by the lift taking me all the way to the top of the big shaft.

I missed a few secrets, including the last of the white demon faces that would have unlocked the (I assume) super secret. Rats.

4.5/5.

The Tugging (jam9_haunter) is another level that is beautiful to look at, but feels unfinished. Even for the small physical size of the level, it's underpopulated, and could have done with a bit more thought going into the combats. Still, it's satisfying to push on through, and it's an extremely impressive debut. Hopefully a harbinger of more substantial things to come.

3/5.

Amputated Extremities (jam9_ionous) is short, and unfortunately is another level that seems unfinished. There is a lot more architecture than there is gameplay. At least that is how it felt to me -- but I finished with only three quarters of the 48 available kills, and only one of the six secrets. So I guess I was missing a lot.

But as Ionous himself says in his readme, "So this map was supposed to be huge. A palace constructed to honor the grace of Moloch, nestled within brimstone cliffs. There was going to be interconnectivity abound, secrets beyond count. Three days before the end, it was 9500 brushes. And was, sadly, not even close to completion. With a heavy heart I isolated one part of the orignal map, and closed it off. This is an extension of a small portion of the original map. It's tiny, but should be a decent way to kill five minutes."

But the good news: "The full version of the map will see release (Ceaseless Jaws of Moloch), most likely as ion02, at some point." And in fact that is more than good, it's great news. I'm really looking forward to this.

But for the present excerpt: just 2.5.5.

I admired Conspiracy of Cartographers a great deal without necessarily enjoying it very much. I don't object in the least to void maps, but I do feel that low gravity is a bit played out now. And when do nail traps get fun? Has anyone ever played a Quake level, stumbled across a nail trap, and responded "Oh, good, this is going to make the level more fun"? Still, the level is beautiful, and the small number of secrets that I found (including the pentagram at the end) were all satisfying.

3.5/5.

Stress-Induced Coprophagia (jam9_mukor) scores highly for its truly revolting name, its escalating progression, and its (I am getting tired of writing this) beautiful architecture. In fact, I may as well mention here that this is, overall, the best-looking jam-pack so far.

If I were to criticise SIC, it would be on the basis that the early stages feel a bit underpopulated, and too many of the combats feel like undifferentiated waves of various kinds of knights. I'd have liked a bit more variety to the fighting. But I quibble. A solid 4/5 (as testified by the fact that I've played through it three times now.)

BTW., Mukor, if you're reading this: there is an elevated platform containing a pile of crates. Behind the crates are half a dozen or so vorelings. I've searched and searched but can't find any reward up there -- health, ammo, armour. Is there a secret that I'm missing?

@Greed: with some of the combats you're describing, the trick is, well, a trick. It's not about running around with your guns blazing, it's about finding the right way to beat a particular set-piece. For example, dealing with the Vermis at the end of Mukor's map, (rot13) jung lbh arrq gb qb vf trg sne rabhtu njnl fb vgf rkcybqvat zvffvyrf pna'g ernpu lbh, ohg lbh pna frr vg: gurz chzzry vg jvgu ebpxrgf. Guvf vf npghnyyl abg uneq gb qb bapr lbh svther bhg gur nccebnpu. Bar jnl vf gb teno gur ebpxrg ynhapure, gura vzzrqvngryl eha onpx qbja gur cnffntr jurer lbh pnzr sebz, onpx gbjneqf gur fgneg. Gur irezvf vf ovt rabhtu gung lbh pna frr vg, naq uvg vg, sebz zvyrf njnl. Ebpxrg nsgre ebpxrg, fjvgpuvat gb erthyne jrncbaf vs naq jura bar bs gur zvabe zbafgref svaqf vg jnl gbjneqf lbh. Ubcr guvf urycf!

Cloudy with a Chance of Gibs (jam9_mjb) is by some distance the most disgusting Quake level I've ever played -- and I meant that, I suppose, as a compliment. It's very atmospheric, but loses points for the crucial reason that the actual gameplay is mostly not that much fun. The map feels awkward to navigate around, both in the small-scale sense that individual exits and elevators are sometimes hard to use, andi n the large-scale sense that you often have to go a long way around to get back to somewhere you've previously been. The whole thing feels a bit cramped and (as ArrCee remarked above) sort of 90s-ish. So not MJB's best work, for me.

That said, there's a bonus point for the classic MJB secrets guide, which opened up quite a bit more of the game than I'd have found otherwise. So all in all, 4/5.

Eurotophobia (jam9_ naitelveni) is a real oddity. There's enough space for this to be almost an entire episode, but it's weirdly underpopulated, so that the 158 kills (on Hard) feels miserly -- apart from the properly chaotic final battle, which is satisfyingly difficult. oddest of all is a prologue in a cavernous base, which has only four kills (all grunts) in a space that could happily host 50 or 60 enemies and sequence of challenging combats.

5/5 for the map, 3/5 for the gameplay, so 4/5 in total. I'd like to see this one reworked (i.e. finished) and given its own release.

Mouth of Yraal (jam9_newhouse) is huge and chaotic. There's a ton of landscape to explore, and several very satisfying horde combats, often boosted by a quad, a trinity or even both. Those are excellent aspects of this map. Where it falls down is in attention to detail. A lot of the map, especially indoor areas, feels crudely constructed in a 1990s wsy. Much of the lighting is bland and flat. Some parts of the progression feel arbitrary in the extreme.

Still, putting it all together, it's a blast to play (in both literal and figurative senses). I finished with 275 of 287 kills, and 6 of 9 secrets -- and that was on my second playthrough, having enjoyed the first enough to want to return to it.

4/5.

The Book of Disconnect (jam9_otp) is fun, but marred by two of my most hated Quake features: spawns and nail-traps. Still, it's enjoyable poking around in the sewers, even if the progression is a little contrived and too much of the combat is of the sniping variety.

The gold-key secret was very nice, though, and the payoff was great: what's more satisfying that quadding wave after wave of those disgusting little vorelings?

I couldn't figure out the significance of the two different level exits (one blue, one yellow). Did anyone get that?

Anyway, putting it all together, I rate this on 3.5/5.

"I've searched and searched but can't find any reward up there -- health, ammo, armour. Is there a secret that I'm missing?"

Search the bookshelves in that room.

btw, thanks for the kind words. :)

Consciousness Outpost(jam9_pulsar) is just sensationally beautiful, and does a great job of showing you the whole map's area in a way that makes you really want to reach all those places you can see. There are some nice secrets here, too -- I am always fond of secrets that involve falling off ledges in careful ways -- though I am infuriated with myself that, having solved the four-crosses secret that yields the SNG on my first play through. I've now forgotten where the last cross is. As a result, I got only seven of the ten secrets this time, though did finish with all the kills.

Is the gameplay up there with the architecture? Perhaps not quite. Not all of the combats are entirely delightful: getting pushed off a platform to my death by one of those sometimes-invisible green things was a lowlight. Still, the three-gug climax is, uh, climactic. All in all, well worth 4.5/5.

Mukor: thanks, got it! But that is a weird book-button. Pressing it did nothing. Whacking it from in front with the hammer did nothing. Shooting it from the side with a shotgun did open it. I'm not sure that's quite fair. (Still: excellent reward!)

I was hugely impressed by Ruins of the Elder God (jam9_shotro) without actually enjoying it very much. I admire its clever re-use of the same basic area appearing differently in three run-throughs. But in the end it just wasn't that much fun to keep hacking through pretty much the same areas. Sorry, Shotro, but 2/5 for me -- which I know is not really fair, but it's what I feel.

Its just odd because of how skinny of a trigger brush it is, so hitting it from the front it hard. I should of just made it a button.

Chasing Promises (jam9_skacky) is huge and beautiful and consistently interesting. It also finishes up with two brutal mass combats: since I never found a way to either of the two rocket-launcher secrets I saw, nor to the quad that overlooks the final arena, I really had my work cut out to finish up; but I did, getting 257 of 266 kills, but only 8 of 20 secrets. I also left without the contract -- on-screen messages left me thinking I'd missed a way to reach a better ending. So there's some replayability there, too. All in all, possibly my favourite map of the pack so far, and a solid 5/5.

I just wish Skacky (and everyone else!) would follow MJB's excellent example, and provide a secrets guide!

Thanks Mike for the review. Most disgusting is what I was aiming for this time around. I wanted a little shock value accompanied with the strange title to produce a "What on Earth?" moment. I also wanted to make a more difficult map this time around with the theme and Quoth in mind.

Hopefully you put a stop to the death machine with the help of the guide! ;)

Oh, should have mentioned, Bloughsberg: loved your title! And, yes, with the aid of the guide, I was able to reach the good ending.

I finally finished A Dream of Dead Stars (jam9_secret) -- though I had to cheat to get to this level, and I'd love to know what the official way in is.

I mostly enjoyed this a lot -- very explorey, lots of multi-level-ness. I have to admit, though, that the final combat was a bit too extreme for my tastes. I had a few goes, then shelved it for a couple of weeks before returning now to finally beat it. I wonder if anyone has ever successfully done it (on Hard) without finding the crucial secret?

Because in the end the final combat felt like work instead of play, i am marking this down to a rather harsh 3/5.

But needless to say, the score for the pack as a whole is a very comfortable five stars!

Still haven't finished all maps:

Breezeep: Wonderful environemnt with great choice of skybox and lighting. Lovely rock curves make me go "mmmm" all night long baby. Fun ledge jumping secrets and nice difficulty as well. Wasn't a fan of the fiend cluttered room but we made it!

DelusionalBear: Nice map offering here, is this your first I think? Either way I really enjoyed the first secret for the GL (I think it was GL, been a while now.) Ammo was pretty tight but since the map was small enough it wasn't a big deal.

Dumptruck_ds: First of all, fantastic music you made for this. Really created the correct atmosphere you were trying to convey. I loved the choice of skybox here and the closed room Shambler fight with other critters. The final fight room with the water ceiling was just spiffy as well!

Giftmacher: Best of pack for me personally. So much fun discoveries and oozing with unique atmosphere. The challenge of using no music but not missing it is something else! Well done man.

Haunter: First offering and a nice one. Very simple but clear goals in mind. Lovely last fight area...go map some more!

Ionous: Lovely vertical eye candy as usual from you. Nice flow to the fights and fun secrets to discover!

Muk: Wonderful flow and interconnection. I got a bit of a samey feel with all of the book case alcoves. Since one secret was tied to those alcoves/books I felt compelled to check every one. Best use of Vermis for me.

Nait: Cool atmosphere and wicked brush work. The starting base place was nice to build tension but I wonder if some of that could have been omitted to flesh out the core map some more.

Newhouse: Sometimes you just want to take a SNG or RL and just blast hordes upon hordes of baddies. NH answers this call with his offering but if one looks deeper they will find some really well thought out secrets!

OTP: I love wet damp levels and this one delivers in that. A nice mix of retro and knave here with some fun secrets. A little easy to get lost and trying to remember how to access certain areas. Some medium reliance on centerprint messages but the best "Lovecraft" secret of the pack (Or at least of what I played.)

ShoTro: Hands down the most ambitious of the pack...holy cow. It's hard to describe the map but I would say it is at fault more than in the right for me. Perhaps a bit too ambitious but I am not one to repeat the same place over and over again with only subtle differences. Still, I can't imagine the time spent to craft this beast!

That's all I have played, I will play the rest some day...I will!

However I can easily slap a 5 star rating for the sum of its parts.

I replayed The Brimstone Mine (jam9_giftmacher) after reading in Icantthinkofanickname's comment on The Forgotten Sepulcher that it was his favourite map of this pack, contrasted favourably with Sepulcher. I did enjoy it, but again found the ending terribly anticlimactic, with only 82 of the 114 kills. It's annoying to know that somewhere in there are 32 more kills, and correspondingly big reaches of as-yet undiscovered map. Partly that will be because I only got two of the seven secrets; but more importantly I suppose, I didn't find all the demon-face buttons, which I am guessing might unlock all those barred teleporters. If ever a map needed a secrets guide, it's this one!

Mukor's map was actually one of the easiest ones. The Gug can be easily taken out with the grenade launcher, his projectiles follow a specific pattern and if he's cornered near his starting point, he can be easily maneuvred in a way that allows for only a loss of 10+ health due to his quake attack.

The final combat with a worm is also very easy - you get a rocket launcher earlier, which has an infinite range and there are very long corridors allowing for an unblockable series of shots without any fear of retaliation. Same for the storm of vorelings and knights - go in, aggro them all, retreat and lay down a barrage of rocket fire from a safe distance.

I always play dirty, I know.

In Skacky's map Chasing Promises (jam9_skacky), there is a rocket launcher sitting on a wooden beam over a void, in the middle of the Libris Suspensus area. I've tried and tried, and can't find a way to get to it. Does anyone know the secret?

G1ftmacher's "The Brimstone Mine" won the "Best Map Gameplay" category at the Quake Awards 2018.

Hey! Who's the anon idjit who rated this gem of a jam only a 3?! This is possibly the best jam ever and it fully deserves a 5!

PS: remember to play the secret map with music turned on... What? A little self-promotion never hurts... ;)

@MikeTaylor

Get the RL like this :) https://youtu.be/tP2sR7GqKQ8

Great maps. The ones I could play anyway, artisistal's map kept crashing Quakespasm

Sorry, that's breezeep's map that crashes,

One of the best mappacks ever made for Quake. Eurotophobia is the top, for me.

What a treat. I am uncertain, what it was, what I played, though - under the title of "Func Map Jam 9 - Contract Revoked". It run on 'Quake' engine, it looked like 'Quake' - okay - but it felt like something different. It was a good game; no, it was one of the best games I have played thusfar - 'Quake' style, 'Quake' engine, modernized. It also did have a fair share of 'Doom' inspiration in it.

"Func Map Jam 9", is a visceral, picturesque - in own way - as well as a challenging venture, bringing new toys and locally innovative solutions to the old table.

The landscape of "Func Map Jam 9", has style and identity - that is important; very important.

In terms of quantity, what we have here, are between 15 and 20 maps - depending on how to count - including few "logistical" maps and a secret level; yes, I found all the buttons for this one in the mainhub start map!

The mainhub start map itself, is the most impressive, but simultaneously the most useless level of this kind, I have ever seen thusar in the 'Quake' world. The start map in question, fails at the basic premise of what it is meant to do. The start maps, the way I understand it, are meant to guide the player into further playable stages - not to get the player lost in confusion. The start maps, are meant to promote the work of other, related mappers - not to conceal it by obscurity of spatial design.

Therefore, having done a fair bit of exploration and admiring, I simply switched to the engine console - in collaboration with the "readme" file intel - for the gameplay succession.

The artistic consistency throughout the entire pack, is maintained to a very satisfactory degree; bestowing the quality of an episode or a campaign, rather than that of a typical jam.

Definitive majority of the maps - aesthetically speaking - are professional level; the experience of "Func Map Jam 9", is surprisingly even in the realm discussed. In terms of architecture, there are roughly no "unconvincing" entries in the set; even though, that is for certain a matter of taste.

The theme of the event, in my opinion, is: knowledge; the symbol of which, is a book or a library - a common visual asset, featured in almost every map.

For the difficulty balance, resources availability, enemy plentitude and environmental terms of combat; that, is a different category of measure and I did simply "god-mode" through some of the places. Forgive me the leisure-mindedness; but - what did you expect? If to think about it, perhaps I did use the "god-mode" a few times too often for it to be good for the map pack.

I was amazed how seamlessly the maps worked - on a technological level - especially for the size and the intricacy of some of these; but to credit the mapmakers only for the effect, would be to underappreciate the effort of many others, indirectly involved in the final result.

For the 'Quoth' mod itself, I like the novelties proposed in it, even if they are not all perfect. For the particular merits: limited monster infighting, for example, feels intuitive, natural - the original 'Quake' setup, was abusing the quirk, in my opinion. For the note, the famous 'Arcane Dimensions' mod, owes a lot to the 'Quoth', having either embraced or retroengineered it, to a significant degree.

All things considered, someone has said that "Func Map Jam 9", is the best the 'Quoth' mod has to offer. But I say: "Func Map Jam 9", is one of the best the contemporary 'Quake' world has to offer. It is a must-play.

THANKS. It was cool. Best map jam I've played so far (I think Insomnia is the only left unplayed by my preciousness). I love big scaled maps. It was a very moody maps collection. THANKS again. *And I loved that Lovecraft photo in a secret with 666 invulnurability :)

i found 6 out 7 secrets in the brimstone mine (including the one with the rune). i can't find the last one anywhere, any help would be appreciated.

nevermind. of course i find it right after i post. let's see here, the secrets in the brimstone mine, if anyone still wants to know: -there's an elevator in front of a wall with glowing runes on it. opposite that there's some bars and you can see a gold armor over there. the button to open it is below the elevator once it rises. careful going in there. -there's a courtyard with vegetation. drop below to the rotating things. -there's some bookshelves. ok, there's lots of bookshelves, looks like polyp miners are also bookworms. anyway, there's 3 books that stick out, in an area next to the courtyard where the door that "opens above" is. the ball of light inside is a teleporter. -once all face buttons are pressed the same courtyard from the above secret will have a portal leading to a secret. be ready to swim. -in the secret area you swim to, there's three elevators. you can drop below the last (highest) one once it rises. this is the one that was giving me fits just earlier -you might notice an elevator above you that does not want to come down. that's what i noticed first. alternatively, you might notice a megahealth above you in the previous room. the button to lower the elevator is in a nearby barrel. you have to jump on top of it to see. -in the room with the blue glass on the ceiling and the cylindrical floating things you might notice that you can drop down. careful, there's a moving platform you need to land on. wooo thunderbolt sorry i can't give better landmarks. i just played the map once and i don't remember where the keys or the doors that needed them are. or any big fights

These maps are on average a little unpolished, which is normal for a jam, but also quite ambitious. Shotro's map is very technically impressive, I'd love to see that idea expanded to a multi-episode pak hub.

Fantastic