SM229 - Six Textures #3

Reviews 4.83 star(s) 8 reviews

This is good.
great pack of maps, lot of variety in what people did. love themes like this because they're so open ended and you get a ton of different and interests approaches to what mappers will do with the restriction. had a lot of fun playing these, thank you all for your work

sm229_4lt: nice looking texture combo, and several nice fights with stuff opening up. liked the end fighting shamblers with spawns bouncing around

sm229_avix: happy to report i completed all objectives in 'satanic weenie roast' by opening the hotdog room. the GL fight over lava was cool, good map

sm229_cc: really cool, just a fun time exploring a classic id1 castle and stumbling forward and walking into traps

sm229_chadquad: kind of a neat look with the rusty metal panels and that weird fire face texture ...the pentagram texture is sorta b0rked though. liked how things opened up at the start of the map, felt very doom

sm229_daviddg: lot of cool detail mapobjects made for this level, the paintings are really cleverly done. nice quick little roam around a 'realistic fantasy' sort of manor

sm229_haikids: great looking lighting here with the concrete textures and steel bar trims. lost it when the hell knight leaped over the enforcers at me lol

sm229_hcm: awesome look and i loved the waterslides those were fun. really well put together, and fun to explore

sm229_lob: great level! great use of texture theme and brushwork, you wouldn't even realize it was restricted. shout out to using the same texture for both lights and buttons!

sm229_markie: i only found one secret, and the only thing in it was a spawn. 10/10, no notes. nice AD styled honey brick map

sm229_milestone: wow this was a fun adventure of a map, nice theme going down an evil sandy cavern. enjoyed playing through this one

sm229_mrtaufner: cool look of a map, feels like a vr tactical stealth looking sort of theme almost. got a little lost at the end, but it was a fun map

sm229_rabbit: really unique colorful look to this, really got a lot of milage out of those wood textures and using rotations as 'different' floor textures. loved the end battle combat. nice map

sm229_recycledoj: fun blue brick map with spawns hidden behind illusory windows, you know i love it. good map

sm229_scampie: i realized after the end that liquids weren't counted, so technically this is 4 textures i guess lol

sm229_spoot: really good ep4 style map, the purple/orange lighting looked great here. got a little overeager during the quad run and died twice :)

sm229_warrenm: feels like a classic custom map from back in the day with some detailing. ended up sneaking in the backway to get the gold key before the silver key :) good map

sm229_zeta: good knave style map, another map that has a light texture pull double duty as a button. liked the shambler at the start behind a slowly opening door
Skill
Hard
Very fun maps overall. Varied if nothing else. Markie made a really well done honey tribute map and Zetabyt an amazing knave level with fun gameplay. Cool how much one can do with just 6 textures.

WarrenM's map gave me some good Dario Casali map vibes.

Glad to see some blue bricks and cr8 texture set getting some love too.

I went the lazy for just using prototype flat color textures because I wanted to make my Neon White inspired map. Perfect speedmapping event to put that up hehe.

Thanks to Spootnik for hosting the sm event. Great map as well, especially liked the quad run.
Skill
Hard
6 stars
Skill
Hard
A very polished set of maps considering the time & jam rule constraints, but honestly they stand up in their own right. Good layouts with fun progression and engaging combat accompanied by decent art. This was a great 3+ hour experience. Since these were all quite unique in one way or another I wanted to give some thoughts:

I like how clean some of the maps are, like 4LT's and Zeta's. They might appear uniform but there is some very nice use of trim and creative repurposing of light textures for decoration. I love the shapes a lot here, I kind of want to see 4LT's in particular with some other/additional textures just because the flow is so good even though I do like the "naturally lit" industrial brick vibe. Zeta's lighting is a lot moodier and the shadow contrasts are super strong. This is very much a big ascent with goodies hiding along edges that are mostly comfortable to spot without squinting. Really pretty Knave with fun, what I'm going to call "indentation details" (i'm no architect). I can see the scale causing some confusion but I thought it was fine. Combat here is also really fun.

On the other end of the more "uniform" texture spectrum I'll put RecycledOJ and Lobotomy Lobster. The loop in ROJ's helps with avoiding confusion and the button "hunt" in Lob's gives the player a clear goal. Really fun shapes allowing for great shadows in ROJ's and of course, plenty of camouflaging spawn shenanigans. In Lob's we get more "nautral" light goodness, but possibly some doors that blended in too well with the environment, it gave the map an almost claustrophobic submarine vibe (a very weirdly shaped submarine lol), it works though, it's harsh/oppressive. Combat here was once again quite fun.

Continuing on the trend of cohesive, Markie and Spootnik had quite a similar more classic Quake BROWN theme. Markie's more towards "Honey" and Spoot's leaning into E4M2 but with the outdoors creeping in. Both very chaotic in the combat department. I liked Markie's a lot, after you give yourself some breathing room (easier said than done) you can scout a lot of the map, a lot of places to peer into, it's gratifying. Then once you've scouted it's time to go loud again. A highlight of the pack. Spoot's is crazy from the get go and almost doesn't let up. While it feels more compact than Markie's there's still a lot of depth. Again another highlight of the pack.

A few classic swampy/castley maps also appeared and they were all coincidentally more bitesized which I appreciate, in particular DavidDG's (I love the cute props) and Avix's (nice interactivity and lava bit underground). They're more simple but still play out really well. Maybe a tad too claustrophobic but not the end of the world. CommonCold's is quite a bit more involved, an ascent like Zeta's. I liked the journey towards the end quite a fair bit, it's arted well and the same room gets repurposed which is neat. WarrenM's stood out in this theme choice. It feels like a real place, except withered/under construction. Arted really well and even has some tricksy combat. I really liked teetering along the edge of the... dock... house? to get to the silver key. It's a very small thing to comment on but it's charming.

Lastly the unique & miscellaneous maps, either in texture set or ideas in general. ChadQuad's is very unnerving, in no small part because of the fog. Texture set was a bit zany but it played fine. Very "cruel and unusual" megastructure vibe and also the acid surrounding some resources was a neat idea. Haikids' is a very clean and bitesized brutalist affair. I like the kind of "rail" detail trailing along the top. The light platforming section was neat, I kind of wanted the platforms to be slightly animated, both for aesthetics but also gameplay, was not entirely sure as far as perspective went which jump I could make and which I couldn't. Likewise Mr Taufner's was also a nice short & sweet prototype map but with tricksy encounters. For one reason or another, I actually kind of got lost in this, there's a lot of going up and down and the red and blue I guess got fatiguing on my eyes and brain but I got there in the end. It was fun regardless. I want to say it's a me problem. The messages after the button presses are definitely handy. I want to place Scampie's in the same universe as the remix jam entry (Maro Krate Bock Frot), visually this actually works really well and I kinda dig the weird tech-y metal blended in with the grass/nature. The synthetic goo structure is charming too and acts as a nice center piece which you can approach at kind of in a free form way. Nice mindless goofy fun.

The most striking maps next. Mazu's I treated as a puzzle map personally as I am very bad at jumping, upon seeing videos (which are inspiring to look at and very poorly attempt to imitate) I understand the layout a bit more. In the back of my mind I did kind of think "hey this route I'm taking could be more optimised" but I didn't have movement tech in mind. Regardless of that, this is still very good for casual play also. I love the "current" mechanic leading you to either somewhere you want or... punishing you by mildly inconveniencing you.

Rabbit's is striking on a few fronts, it's very bold with its coloured lighting while delivering a cozy vibrant mood. It's quite run and gun and it leads you to nice rooms with cool setups. I like the last room a lot in particular, a slow reveal on multiple sides leaving you second guessing as to what could spring into action. It feels arcade-y in the most positive sense of the word, very fun and accommodating.

Milestone's felt like a cool adventure with a nice theme in mind that has a very pretty texture set. Only nitpick that I have is a slight confusion towards the end of the map with the lack of a signpost, it's to be forgiven though, it's not like it's a labyrinthine maze and it's a weekend jam. The map is nice and pseudo open at the start with a couple of mini branching mazes with a satisfying loop across the obstacle you couldn't cross initially. Nice playful sand dunes and "organic" environment, it adds a lot to the atmosphere and experience (debris, caved in environments etc.), and it seems the excavation idea is realised which in 2 days I can imagine is not easy at all to go from idea to creation. As a suggestion for the gold key, rock crumbles (much like they were present for the door you have to bump into to start with) can probably be a "diegetic" signpost that doesn't take the player out of the experience with something more overt, but honestly it's also a slight me problem, possibly texture fatigue but it was simply a corner I missed. Either way great map.
Skill
Nightmare
Markie's map RULEZZZ (all you other guys too ;3)
Skill
Nightmare
Very good job!
Skill
Normal
Excellent set of maps.
Must play it.
Thank you.
Skill
Nightmare