Jam SM231 - Starts with a Bang

This jam is about getting an explosive weapon into the player's hands near the beginning of the map. Intended to be a 72-hour jam, maps were completed in a notably larger window -- in Quake Mapping Discord-hosted jam fashion!

In addition, this jam features a new ammo type: Drills! Drills are an alternate ammo for the rocket launcher. Drills deal continuous damage to targets they touch, veering towards their target's center when their target dies. If a drill fails to kill its target or strikes a hard surface it explodes, dealing the same damage as a regular rocket. When embedded in a shambler, it deals full damage to the shambler on explosion.

Requirements

RECOMMENDED: A Quake sourceport with CSQC (custom HUD) support (e.g. IronWail, vkQuake)

Tested in IronWail

Instructions

If you are holding the rocket launcher and posess both rockets and drills, toggle ammo type by selecting the rocket launcher again. Alternatively select by cycling weapons (i.e. use the scroll wheel).

Submissions

* Rocket Arena by Atom1k
* Demon Seed by CommonCold
* Zombies are my ranger by ChrisHolden
* Rocket Drilling in the Mystery City by Chuma
* Beta Forge by haikids
* Q-Style by Hardcore Mazu
* SWAB JM by JakubM
* they/them canyon by rabbit

Special Thanks

* Kebby_ for the sound effects, driller and drill models, and explosion sprite
* Lunaran for creating Copper
* Spootnik and CommonCold for playtesting the "driller/SWAB" modification
Submitted by
4LT
Downloads
998
Views
2,318
Release Date
Sep 18, 2025
First uploaded
Last update

Ratings

3.92 star(s) 12 ratings

Latest updates

  1. v1.1.0 Update

    Changelog: * Fixes softlock in `sm231_chuma` + misc. other fixes * Replaces track255 MP3 with...

Latest reviews

Played this one finally for myself and it is quite enjoyable pack. Pretty fun speed maps with different takes on how to use explosives and the new drill rocket weapon. Rocket jumping, slaughter arenas and other creative ways explored pretty well.

Hope this weapon gets used in more maps than just here because I think there is still more potential to explore with it.
Skill
Hard
Very nice small map pack!
General high quality, very competent - and very different - mapping,
Thanks for Your efforts, and thanks for sharing!
Short but great one.
Not all maps are the best, but it should be played.
Thank you.
Skill
Nightmare
We definitely need more packs / maps using the drill ammo type, it's very fun but as this was a speedmap pack only a handful of encounters and maps managed to make full use of it. A very bombastic and at times humorous pack. Loved Chris Holden's (that one wall lol), Mazu's, Rabbit's and haikids'. I liked the idea at the end of JakubM's with the different doors opening up a new enemy type but sometimes the choices were odd such as opening a door where ogres simply don't hit you etc. Chuma's and Atom1k's were fun romps. Wish we saw more maps like CommonCold's with impactful skips. Fun pack, not too annoying, I also fall in the "very bad at rocket jumps" camp.
Skill
Nightmare
As with Wiedo, I did noclip on some maps because of a lot of rocket jumping - but don't worry, people as bad at rocket jumping as me, most of the maps don't require it.

Some maps use the new drill a little better than others - and I'm not a huge fan of how hordemappy one or two maps are in general - but this is a lot of fun overall, and even most of the hordemaps are actually very fun.
Skill
Normal
Maps are varied between regular, rocket trick and horde maps.

Some of these get quite tricky! Especially if you're not great at grenade/rocket jumping at least 3 of these maps will be a challenge to complete. Especially JakubM's map leans on these tricks so if you can't do those either learn those, avoid the map or do some noclip here and there (like I did).

The new drill weapon is extremely fun to use especially in hordes of weak enemies. I loved that some mappers went the extra mile to add some custom music as well.

Overall a good fun map pack, however you still notice that it's a speed map jam of course and some maps could use some extension and refinement. I would like to see this new weapon return in maybe an episode, I bet you some mappers can get creative with it.

My playthrough:
Skill
Hard