Jumpmaze

Jumpmaze
Author	James Esquibel
Ports	Skulltag, Zandronum
IWAD	Doom II
Year	2009
Link	Zandronum forum thread

Jumpmaze is a 32-level megawad for Doom II, created by a team led by James Esquibel (Cyber) for the Skulltag source port. The WAD features gameplay oriented around jumping challenges, making use of the abundant air control provided by the Skulltag physics to create increasingly challenging platforming-based maps. Jumpmaze has become one of the most popular mods for Skulltag and subsequently Zandronum, spawning multiple sequels and spiritual successors, including Jumpmaze II, Jumpmaze X, Jumpix, Jumpwad, and many others.

In 2024, Jumpmaze, as part of the Jumpmaze series, was included in the Missed Cacowards 2.

Content[edit]

Gameplay[edit]

The gameplay of Jumpmaze revolves around platforming-based challenges. As the name implies, the levels in Jumpmaze are not always a straightforward run to the exit, and involve mazes and puzzles. The focus of the project, however, is strongly tied to the maze in its name and a result of the project initially being more puzzle orientated, with the maps being somewhat 'maze-like'. Later, the series became much more focused on competitive racing, and the gameplay elements themselves evolved to reflect this aspect. Subsequent versions of the project thus come with an assortment of scripts that enhance the game experience for competitive play:

• A timer, containing the par time and current time for any level.
• A movement tracker to display the player speed at any given time.
• A robust ranking system that can rank up to 5 places for finishers on each map and record their times.
• A team score system for team maps to tally and report the score of each player that helped get to vital points or activate vital switches and the total time to complete the course.
• A server side record keeping system that stores the record fastest time (and date and name of the author) for each map on the server that persists even after server restart.
• A survival mode to further enhance the competitive aspect of the mod.

Most of these enhancements were first introduced by Jumpmaze II but then retroactively applied by its developers to the first Jumpmaze, as both projects tend to be hosted together on servers alongside several other sequels and mappacks.

External links[edit]

• Zandronum forum thread
• Jumpmaze at The Sentinel's Playground (original version)