You haven’t made many single player quake levels, have you? I think I remember you saying that was a recent addition to your curriculum. How are you finding making these kinds of levels after working on multiplayer ones?
i’ve never made any single-player shooter levs. i’ve found it much harder to scope for than multiplayer because the goals of the space aren’t as clear from the start. i’m used to building levels as a cool place i’d wanna hang out in first and foremost, and as gameplay environments second. for this specific lev i started from a drawing and allowed the space to build up naturalistically around each new addition, which meant that i ended up with a much larger level than i first intended, because spaces beget spaces. i also love hiding secrets in plain sight, so i tend to build a lot of infrastructure around secrets in order to integrate them into the level as seamlessly as possible.
but yeah i’m enjoying the learning experience and hopefully it’ll help me preempt behaviours in my students and redirect them constructively.
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gave this a go this morning and it’s pretty cool! levels are too large and circuitous for my taste, but they’re beautiful, and the gunplay is excellent. shame they didn’t release the def/fgd files to allow others to make their own maps (or maybe they did and it’s just not part of the general release).
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dang I’ve slept on this thread, very cool to see you all making Quake stuff
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MachineGames doing Quake 6 (after presumably counting Call of the Machine as Quake 5)?
Be still my heart.
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Wow, that is a bold tease!
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how could they resist writing QUAKE$ up there
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i actually liked this so much that after i beat it i went back and played it through on nightmare. it’s stupid! but i had a pretty good time, and it’s not so bad to play after you beat it once and unlock the wings.
honestly still the most impressive thing to me is how good the guns feel. they really did a lot with quake’s limitations.
i’m still pretty sad that they released this as a .pak instead of a regular mod with a map folder and source files and whatever (especially cos it means i can’t easily switch between levels! which resulted in a few problems when i reloaded a save that turned out to be in the wrong level) but i guess there’s probably a good reason for it, especially since a lot of these assets look like they’re pulled straight from slave zero x proper (their levels are built in trenchbroom and imported into game maker if i remember correctly), so maybe there’s like a copyright concern or idk what.
anyway yeah really cool. maybe the only bit of marketing i’ve ever liked.
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.pak files are just package files, you can open them up and extract whatever you want in wally
no source files included but all the maps and mdls are there
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have you played chex quest
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Woah! Found this cool web-based tool for creating prefab things like curves, circles, particular angles in Trenchbroom. Just select the shape, tweak the texture settings, and copy it to your clipboard then you can paste the brush into Trenchbroom.
thank you BSP technology! TrenchBroom Prefabs
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QDOOM
a mod that puts the first episode of doom into the quake engine. you can have just quake monsters, doom monsters, or a mix of both which is what i chose. this is cute at first but it’s pretty poorly designed with little thought put into the placement of quake enemies and overall it’s poorly balanced. also it’s ugly as hell, the levels all have those full bright neons like old versions of doom legacy. didn’t bother finishing this one.
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All the old doom to quake map conversions would have fullbright colors dotting all the wall textures because they didn’t pay any heed to the quake palette (or were hoping that everyone was using glquake and it’s broken fullbrights).
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THE SPIRITWORLD
i think i’m on the last level of this, but i had to post about it now before i go to sleep because it is a masterpiece!! best trad mod i’ve ever played. absolutely phenomenal.
the levels are these massive, surreal worlds where different universes seamlessly blend into each other (well, more so as the episode progresses) and it’s amazing how as you slowly open doors and locks, the world clicks together into place, like solving a giant mechanical puzzle from the inside. the levels really remind me of the more surreal levels of thief, like the mad man’s mansion and the pagan world. just so full of mystery and brilliantly designed.
the atmosphere is incredibly oppressive thanks to the dark, brooding environments and the soundtrack which is top dark ambient stuff
whoever made it also obviously knows quake because it keeps catching me by surprise. even if i spot an obvious trap, the way the trap is executed catches me out. and i’ll try to use old tricks to deal with enemies but it’s all “ha ha nice try” and throws spanners in my works.
it’s a beautiful nightmare. it’s the first time playing quake has made me feel uneasy for a long long time and i love that about it.
some notes:
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i’m playing it on hard and finding it quite tough. a VERY GOOD tough, it always feels fair BUT some folk may want to play it on easier difficulties if they’re more interested in seeing the level design
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it feels inspired by the fourth episode the most so spawns are here, but they are used in spaces where you can deal without without too much fuss. don’t be put off by them!!
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it can be quite dark. i had to turn the brightness pretty high because of my vision impairment, some of you may need to too.
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some of the levels are massive, which isnt a bad thing in my book but may be for others
BUT YEAH i think it’s fucking fantastic. absolutely love it, highly recommend it. random screens:
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playing this rn, you’re right that the levels are slightly longer than i’d personally like, but i so far none of them have suffered from AD’s over-saturation problem. i just finished map 4 and hoo boy what a range of emotions; spectacular and spectacularly difficult. the final sequence is really great, especially after how grounded the first half is.
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i think i’m right about it being inspired by thief because there is this area which feels directly from a bit in thief gold
anyway turns out i was NOT on the last level, it just felt that way because the level was huge and had gravitarse! most of the levels after were also huge surreal labyrinths that i adored, though the penultimate is a real disappointment. it’s a well designed map but it’s just… a quake castle. i wanted it to get more bat shit insane, not less! then there is an old school FPS boss fight that is also an anti-climax. i still think it’s worth playing for the other maps though, i had a fantastic time with this
more random screens
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map 5 (the family tree) might be my favourite map of all time.
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Liquid Labotomy from that map pack is so good. holy crap!
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