Twisted Christmas Jam 2022

Fairweather

func_sheep
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Feb 15, 2022
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Fairweather submitted a new resource:

Twisted Christmas Jam 2022 - 13 Arcane Dimensions maps filled with fright and delight!


The annual Arcane Dimensions powered Christmas Jam takes a turn for the spooky for it's 6th go-around. Dropping the 1024u^3 requirement, mappers were given the goal of creating anything from spooky Halloween-flavoured maps, Christmassy spectacles, a mix of both, or none of the above! Making for 13 varied, expansive maps showcasing what...

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Map reviews
Played all maps on Normal difficulty

I enjoyed this one a lot! Cool architecture, looks great, and intelligent encounter design. Not much to say, other than that the doorways only being 64 units wide got in the way of combat a lot.

I playtested this one and the final version is definitely better than what I played before. I did have some gripes: The first encounter is extremely chaotic due to the enemies completely surrounding the player and the terrain being difficult to navigate. The 3x3 grid puzzle was neat, though the lift at the end seemed out of place.

This one was challenging and kind of rough to play. I appreciate a good challenge, but it felt like a lot of my deaths were the result of the layout being underscaled with tons of edges to get caught on. Scale the map up like 25% and I think I would've had a much better time. Regardless, the encounter design was good and the detailing did a lot with stock textures.

Neat! Short and sweet, unsettling atmosphere. I had to turn my brightness up to navigate some parts. I'm new to Quake mapping and have no idea how you did any of the logic for this.

Some fun encounters and good commitment to using just base enemies, making good use of AD. I felt the first encounter was pretty annoying to navigate during combat and is a long stretch of fighting without a proper break, which is contrast to the rest of the map where you can continue mostly at your own pace. Felt like it belonged at the end of the map instead of the beginning, really.

I like this map, mostly for the overall goofiness of it. Most of the combat is open and spacious with not much cover or height variation, which leads to kind of boring gameplay that goes on for quite a long time due to the map's size. I also got lost for a while at the end, not realizing that the pillar in the center of the final encounter room was the end teleporter. Despite all these issues, the map sticks in my head for the good detailing and commitment to using the xmas enemies.

I enjoyed the combat for the most part and liked how the early encounters got reused after the player gets a few more weapons. I also like the interpretation of the theme and the "two endings." (I'm pretty sure they're the same?) The actual combat arenas weren't the most interesting to fight in, but aren't boring either. One particular gripe I have is in the first encounter, depending on what order you hit the buttons, you can end up having to deal with the shambler and the vore at the same time, which is pretty rough!

Really neat mechanic that I wish was explored a bit more - felt like there was a good opportunity for puzzles with switching things on and off rather than just pressing a button to unlock the next bit of the level. The combat was mostly fun. The final encounter was very messy and took a lot of tries before I managed to get the quad damage - felt like getting through was kind of a matter of luck because I was mostly dying from getting stuck on enemies while trying to dodge because enemy spawns were unpredictable and coming from all directions.

I had a miserable time on this. Cramped spaces, enemy types inappropriate for the weapons given (a vore with nothing but default shotgun? I assume I'm meant to just skip them?), constantly running out of ammo, too dark to see - I had to savescum everything on Normal difficulty to make any progress and eventually just gave up. Not my type of map.

Really got a lot of mileage out of that one room, huh? Fortunately its a pretty good room, though the encounters did start to feel same-y after a while and some of the fights were easy to cheese by sitting behind a doorway, which almost fel necessary at the beginning when I didn't have a good read on the room and there was an entire biodiverse ecosystem of grunts waiting to mulch me. The spaceship was beautifully detailed.

Probably my favorite gameplay of the jam. Lots of good encounters, remarkably well polished for the volume of content. Challenging, but felt fair. Really clever re-use of areas on the way returning on the silver route. Had a lot of fun hunting down all of the secrets (besides the one I couldn't find). Really impressive overall!

This was my first map and I learned a lot along the way. In future maps I think I plan to make shorter levels that are more interconnected, rather than having a layout that splits off in many directions and requires the player to remember where that one key door was. I think the encounter design actually turned out decent, with the geometry and enemy choices complimenting each other to some degree, though after playing the other maps in the jam I would like to take that further and make more rooms that the player has to push through and clear out rather than always relying on trapping the player in an area for each encounter.
 
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Map reviews (WIP)
Played all maps on Normal difficulty

I enjoyed this one a lot! Cool architecture, looks great, and intelligent encounter design. Not much to say, other than that the doorways only being 64 units wide got in the way of combat a lot.

I playtested this one and the final version is definitely better than what I played before. I did have some gripes: The first encounter is extremely chaotic due to the enemies completely surrounding the player and the terrain being difficult to navigate. The 3x3 grid puzzle was neat, though the lift at the end seemed out of place.

This one was challenging and kind of rough to play. I appreciate a good challenge, but it felt like a lot of my deaths were the result of the layout being underscaled with tons of edges to get caught on. Scale the map up like 25% and I think I would've had a much better time. Regardless, the encounter design was good and the detailing did a lot with stock textures.

Neat! Short and sweet, unsettling atmosphere. I had to turn my brightness up to navigate some parts. I'm new to Quake mapping and have no idea how you did any of the logic for this.

Some fun encounters and good commitment to using just base enemies, making good use of AD. I felt the first encounter was pretty annoying to navigate during combat and is a long stretch of fighting without a proper break, which is contrast to the rest of the map where you can continue mostly at your own pace. Felt like it belonged at the end of the map instead of the beginning, really.

I like this map, mostly for the overall goofiness of it. Most of the combat is open and spacious with not much cover or height variation, which leads to kind of boring gameplay that goes on for quite a long time due to the map's size. I also got lost for a while at the end, not realizing that the pillar in the center of the final encounter room was the end teleporter. Despite all these issues, the map sticks in my head for the good detailing and commitment to using the xmas enemies.

I enjoyed the combat for the most part and liked how the early encounters got reused after the player gets a few more weapons. I also like the interpretation of the theme and the "two endings." (I'm pretty sure they're the same?) The actual combat arenas weren't the most interesting to fight in, but aren't boring either. One particular gripe I have is in the first encounter, depending on what order you hit the buttons, you can end up having to deal with the shambler and the vore at the same time, which is pretty rough!

More reviews to come!
There's actual reviews tab!
 
Fairweather updated Twisted Christmas Jam 2022 with a new update entry:

Release 3

tcj_pinchy
- Fixed a small clipping overlap with a post and trim on the Courtyard upper wall
- One floating tree lowered to the ground
- Moved the teleporter that spawns in Santa's room to a platform to avoid accidental tripping
- Added a light to the exit portal that appears when Santa dies
- Extended the Workshop door trigger to help progression

tcj_spoot
- Fixed skill 0 softlock

Read the rest of this update entry...
 
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Reactions: aoanla
Is it alright to post bugs here? I am not sure what possessed me to try this, but on tcj_ish, when you acquire the permanent jump boots in the last room, if you turn around and go back to also pick up the timed jump boots, when the timer runs out you will lose both upgrades.
 
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Bug reports are totally alright to post- but that seems like a bug with AD itself, so it'll be particularly unlikely to be fixed since we'd have to crack open the QC.
This is indeed a bug within AD that affects all vania items (boots/belt/shield/tank)
Its something that should be fixed with an AD patch.
 
What is the recommended Source Port yall use? I use Quakespasm and when I get to Pinchy's map I get a CTD with the error AllocBloc: Full.

Troubleshooting Performed:
Got out of Quake Injector and downloaded from Slipseer. Then launched with Simple Quake Launcher
Lowered the resolution
Tried a fresh save.
Tried restarting computer

I am thinking it's Quakespasm somehow.