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required program when using Makkon textures.

Mazu's map was fun as always and stickflip's Decerebration left me wanting much more. Beautiful architecture, nice lighting and smart combat setups. I liked Shades' map as well, but ran out of ammo as seemingly some others also did.

A nice treat to have a good amount of maps made in 2-3 days, and have pretty much all of them be solid. Thanks everyone for participating.

good stuff

I really feel sad because this enormous episode does not have the public consideration that it really deserves and is very unfairly underrated.

I myself admit that when I tried the first version some time ago, I thought it was too ambitious a project to be carried out by a single person, but now some time later, seeing the result of version 3.0, I can't believe it, but be amazed at the quality of final work.

Peril is truly a work of art in itself. It is an authentic, complete alternative Quake of a quality that, in the second half of the game, becomes completely professional.

The first introductory levels do have some weak points in design quality (I imagine due to the author's lack of mastery of the level editor) and too many references concentrated on the games of the late 90's, starting with the same initial scene of the protagonist taking a shower - shadow warrior -, (by the way: what kind of crazy person takes a shower with a shotgun carried in one hand? ). Then comes a continuous series of references to Unreal Tournament, Duke Nuke 3D, Half-Life and several others that, although the author does so with a desire to pay homage and as a justification for His reason for making this episode is still redundant, because many other people have already done it before in many other levels and video games. But from the end of the industrial level - Half-Life II -, where we precisely reveal the first mystery (with that nice reference to the bomb shelters of England during World War II) and we are given to choose the level of difficulty, it is where the game really begins (everything above was just the prologue) and from there on, things don't stop improving level by level...

The creativity, the fantasy, the meticulous detail of the environment, the immensity of the levels, the references to multiple other video games and movies (from the tree village of the Ewoks from Star Wars to Arnold Schwarzenegger walking through the jungles of South America, passing by the books of Tolkien and Lovecraft or the strange flying machines and underwater bases reminiscent of Jules Verne stories) make the entire episode a delight.

Obviously this version 3.0 cannot be the definitive version. Many details have to be polished (the player gets stuck too many times and can only get out of the jam using noclip), many invisible boundary barriers have to be placed to prevent the player from ending up outside the playable limits of the stage as is happening now, there are also to fill with objects and furniture many empty rooms scattered throughout all the levels (also including certain ships) and finally, honestly, it would also have to be changed the voice of the protagonist, which is actually an endearing display of love from a father towards his son... but it sounds very strange. Probably just re-recording the phrases with the natural voice that the kid has now, would do the trick.

But for everything else Peril 3.0 is one of the best amateur episodes that have ever been made for Quake in all its 25 years of existence. Scenes worthy of the best stop motion films of the 60's, such as the avalanche of zombie warriors descending enraged by the gigantic stairs (a great reminiscence of Jason and the Argonauts and the work of Ray Harryhausen) or a Kraken emerging from the sea (tribute to Clash of the Titans) or fall into the middle of a harrowing apocalypse in flames, with hundreds of skulls flying through the sky eagerly searching for the player (a very similar atmosphere to Keanu Reeves in Constantine) or a surprising, unexpected and massive pirate landing when everything seemed under control and you no longer have any ammunition or almost any life left, are truly memorable.

- If you want to know where and when these things happen, you will have no choice but to play the level -

(no more spoilers)

It is for all this that I say that I feel sad, since in my opinion, the many hundreds of hours of intense, totally altruistic work necessary to carry out this work have not been recognized by the community as I believe they deserve. Any creator who offers their work for free for the gaming community to enjoy deserves respect, but when you offer a package with over 40 high-quality levels and only get a slight show of acceptance by that same community, that is (in my personal opinion) somewhat disappointing...

Really fun stuff for speedmap pack. Replaying short challenging maps is fine, I personally found map by Solipsist pretty interesting.

Should replay Shades map again to see if axing correct monsters will make the ammo make more sense. It wasn't too bad for a blind run either to be honest.

For a speedmapping event this one is exceptionally solid. All maps are engaging to play and they all are inventive in some way or another

Very fun pack consisting of both tricky and more standard combat and exploration type maps that are creative reactions of E1M4. Nitpicks would be some ammo placements in Shades' map, the very precise timing of managing your suit in Solipsist's and perhaps the progression post gold key sequence in Lobotomy Lobster's.

I've never been a big alkaline fan and probably won't be anymore. But Holy Shit. It's breathtaking how much atmosphere and story there is in this map. The last big fight was a bit easy due to the size of the area, but apart from that a really impressive masterpiece for a first map.

Fantastic stuff.

Trapped Under Ice — gorgeous environment with some brilliant set pieces. Difficulty was pretty intense on normal skill! I adored the vast ice cavern but thought the ice pillars cut off into bottomless pit was a bit abrupt. +1e6 points for Scrag cloud quad rocket

Blue Velvet Underground — delightfully odd. The opening shoot switch puzzle was good fun & I loved the green-lit industrial crawl-space, reminded me of Event Horizon

Draconian Flesh Isles — nice to get the Gigery Makkon textures out. A lot fot hings felt just a bit off here: the white fog cut out against washed out red background just jarred, it was impossible to parse the skybox contents. A lot of architecture had suggestive lips and drop-down areas that occasionally produced goodies but more often dead-ended. The lip around the central area felt annoyingly precarious, the stairs down from the rightmost area made it difficult to jump back onto the platforms. The single teleport destination at the beginning compounded the frustrating walks. The downward slope after the yellow armour bridge occasionally blocks movement. Top marks for Xen revival though

Heretics Blood in the test chamber — great fun, I loved the eccentric texture usage. Kept me surprised throughout. Finished with 77/113 kills on medium though, maybe I missed something

A Walk In The Park — beautiful, I loved the little details of the city. The houses doors and the raised beams are particularly cute. The infinitesimally swaying platform screwed with enemy animation a fair bit — I often wonder if situations like that could be hacked so that the surrounding environment moves instead, negating the odd jolty movement effect.

Swim With The Fishes — brilliant, very scary, beautifully simple puzzler.

Yvorax — awesome, best castle in ages! I loved the little mausoleums at the top. Such a joy exploring the place. Missing one secret, can't figure out what the push button in the tower at the very end does.

Lobotomy Lobster — great journeying between 3 distinct themes, some lovely brushwork here and there. I adored the crazy pipes at the beginning, also the way you handled those slopes around the valley was extremely well done for sense of scale IMO — people often struggle with big open areas like that and end up with arbitrarily clunky geometric cut-offs, but this was a really artful approach. Also loved the sense of scale plumbing the depths of the crypt. Extra points for the nail traps, whose triggers I only noticed on the way back — ingenious. Did have a problem soft locking myself into the pits those Fiends emerged from

The Acid Vats — great nauseating bleak industrial vibe. Reminds me of an ancient Quoth-based episode that originally shipped with its own exe to remove limits

You Gotta Get The Rune — MY GOD these are the best atmospherics in YEARS! I can't remember seeing such fantastic lighting and the palette composition was just stellar. Screenshotting distracted me during combat. Also those particles emerging through the gaps in the central atrium … don't think I've seen that effect before, looks great.

Crushing Depths — so much to love about this. You really pulled off the looming cyclopean city. The hot start with almost certain infighting is a really nice touch — lots of opportunities for infighting and generally really fresh combat encounters throughout. There were some annoying water geometry artefacts: being able to see weird light coloured top planes from the rooftops was a shame because the vistas are otherwise extremely compelling. I think I would have done the waterfall walls as planes rather than volumes and ensured the top edges faded to pitch black. Everything under the major water surface looked a bit of a mess too but this is all made up for by the excellent dopefish.

Nergal Awakened — very punishing on medium difficulty! Loved the starting area and the house most. The pivot to Koohoo theme was unexpected!

Copper Factory — man I love a Mazu Q2-in-Q1 romp. So soothing… until it turns utterly frenetic!

Hellish Entertainment — short & sweet. Took me a long time to get through the first portal . The two knights either side of the first portal in the terminus room are immobilised somehow.

A Convocation Of Scions — loved the cavernous alien brutalism and rewarding secrets. Echoes of Lorns Lure. Unimpeachable platforming as always. Final showdown was fantastic. The teleporting in and out, the rumbling… Nice echoes of JCRs The Waters Below.

Rorybabory — great urban brushwork. Light fittings very cool, loved the train action.

Lovely start map Markie. Didn't expect to get lasered and tarred!

Extremely impressive for a first map! Really nailed that Alkaline urban aesthetic. Great scripting, engaging story, exciting encounters. Signposting was almost perfect IMO. My one significant criticism is that as seamless as most of the flow is — never got lost, directions clear, design intuitive — the environment suggested a bigger adventure, which had the effect of making the end anti-climactic despite the otherwise excellent narrative & combat culmination: the whole time I was in the second checkpoint I was expecting the third to be next.

My less significant criticism, which applies to pretty much all text-contingent Quake maps, is that the default message duration is not long enough to read the contents: I always have to bring down the console to catch them, which screws immersion a bit. I think it ought to be a matter of standard practice for progs_dump users to give 4 or so seconds for multi-line messages.

Excellent arsenal of toy weaponry to blast monsters with. It's actually more powerful than the vanilla arsenal, so be wary of setting the difficulty too low. My only complaint is that the bleed n' spell and the toy piano have too much overlap, but this is true in the base game as well (they override nailgun and super nailgun), so it's understandable. In any case this is the best pure weapon mod I've seen, granted the selection is small.

Very well done collection of vanilla flavored maps. Nothing too challenging, I would say difficulty is comparable to the original Quake. Maps were fairly short, great for an afternoon relaxing and blasting away monsters. The layouts were intuitive and nicely interconnected, which was great for backtracking and looking for secrets. Secrets were also well telegraphed but some solutions were a bit repetitive. Great job overall!

I'm a sucker for good base maps

I played this jam on Easy (skill 0), and I think most of the maps were balanced well at that skill level (one or two were a bit hard, and one had a progression bug which I suspect is only on skill 0).

In general, the quality here is very high - and the map theming and design is very wide; there's something for everyone.

I think highlights for me were the weirdness of Draconian Flesh Isles (although this also has the progression bug where the "final island"'s pillar doesn't seem to trigger on all the enemies being defeated, soft-locking the player), the beautifully constructed Trapped Under Ice, and Crushing Depths' multilayered watery challenge.
Points for opening theming for Nergal Awakened, and Yvorax's generally striking design as well.
I liked the rest too, (and I almost listed A Convocation of Scions here, but something about the teleporting around the map made the whole thing feel almost "scripted" at points - it was definitely a good experience, regardless), and I should shout out Copper Factory for being very fun on Easy despite having Mazu's usual "expansive" enemy count!

There's something for anyone here, and I find it hard to guess which of these will be picked out in Reload Magazine, as all of them have something or other to catch the eye.

Great opening map. Fights aren't anything to really write home about but they're competent. Aesthetic uses Alkaline well.

Had a little trouble in the middle figuring out where to go but I ultimately did find the plot.

great first map with a cool narrative/theme where you're rescuing civilians from axe murdering fascist raids

it's not a difficult or particularly innovative quake map from a combat perspective, but the vibes are incredible so you should give it a play anyway. just a great short map

I ran into a bug on my first run. After retrying I didn't have the same issue again.

Cool aesthetic, fun fights, the ending bit is unique. Top shelf.

Played through it on skill 1, using Ironwail. I have never beaten Arcane Dimensions, so I guess much of the custom content comes from there (I recognized the robots from Rubicon2, though).

Pretty cool jam made of 7 maps that follow the theme of Despair and Decay. Some authors opt for a more atmospheric ambiance while others understand it as places where men is not meant to be, or urban decay. Due to the different styles I will provide a little summary of the different maps in the order I played through them.

Crucible of Worlds: Mixed feelings about this one. It is gorgeous to look at and incredible atmospheric with the use of redfog and basic geometric forms (which end up actually being textured once you are close enough), but the navigation is a pain. I got lost several minutes trying to find where I was supposed to be heading, the short visual distance made it very hard to figure out the correct path.

Salrath`s Tomb: Interesting map set in a decayed tomb and its surroundings. It goes for a very blocky design that reminds of a PSX, or 90s game. The player explores a couple of hubs to recover the keys for the final confrontation. The early sections consists of ambushes and huge amount of rockets while the ending sections throws hordes of enemies on an open courtyard fight. Surprisingly, this is not hard as plenty of ammo, space and resources are provided to take care of the fight. Very fun map, kinds of reminds me of Serious Sam

Towers of Torment: Crazy level set in a flying castle being taken over by some tumorous flesh and monsters. I never received any weapon besides the axe (not sure if any is available on the secrets, but I doubt it). Nice exploration, platform level. Really a change of pace compared to the previous one and most Quake maps I have ever played.

Castrum In Inani: Gorgeous map set in a castle taken over from inter-dimensional beings. It is a mostly linear level with an increasing amount of enemies. Difficulty wise is not that bad, but the last fights goes out for way too long.

Cannibal Abandoned Meat Packers: Short map set in a meat processing plant. Fast and furious with a weird boss fight at the end against one of those Rubicon2 robots. Not bad, but feels a little overshadowed by some of the more ambitious maps.

Fish God Grotto Outpost: Short map set in a swamp tower. The level is mostly linear, but with a huge amount of secrets as the ranger climbs up a tower taken over my necromancers. Lovely details, and I had a good time exploring the secrets, but the map gets over really quick.

Mall Prison: Another short map set in a semi-modern structure full of zombies and humanoid creatures. Nice use of vertical space, and some tense moments against Shamblers. Was expecting a secret for destroying all the garbage around but could not find any effect on it. Looks like something out of Half-Life 1.

All in all, this map set is worth playing. It combines gorgeous levels with very good modern game play and a good balance of shortish – longish levels that goes from very linear to very exploratory in nature; plus some experimental ones.

a very good map, the lighting and the intense battles, I liked the unexpected moments and the enemies, very dynamic, I recommend it