Ah, it feels good to be busy again. I said I'd do this journal post two days ago, but then I got working on starting up the ACNES compatibility list project again, I'm streaming again tonight, I've been chatting with people and actually enjoying it again (protip, mute and hide all the channels you're not interested in in any public Discord you're a part of and your life will instantly feel less cluttered) and I've been going on walks again. Every period of being antisocial comes with a burst of being social afterwards. Swings and roundabouts.

Nevertheless, we have a Quake map to discuss! I've been itching to do some Quake mapping for a long time now. I used to be very active at it back when the place to be was Terrafusion instead of the Quake Mapping Discord (no, I am not in that), but life took me other places and I was still recovering from being a little shitflinger who got shit flung back at him. Honestly, it feels silly to even let it continue to be a topic of discussion. Looking at the names on the Quaddicted submissions now, I don't even recognize most of them. Everyone's moved on, I'm an adult now, I'm sure I could shoot the shit with the people who had issues with me now if we did cross paths and there'd be no problem, and most importantly, I don't get into fights anymore and I suck less at mapping.

I don't recall if I talked about this back when I started working on it (no mention of it on the journal from around then, so I suppose not), but back in Spring 2023, a month or two before the first Wales trip, I was playing a lot of Half-Life 2: Deathmatch and found myself drawn to what I've since learned is still a fairly popular custom map in that game's cult following, dm_lostvillage. It's a simple and fun two-level layout with some center hallways, but it's pretty apparent the person who built it wasn't much of a level designer. The texture work is one step above hideous, there's a lot of line-of-sight issues (I'm not sure it was even vis'ed), it doesn't make much sense as a place—but it's fun. The layout is good.

I wanted to take that layout and rebuild it in Quake as an idbase deathmatch level, making it make at least a little more sense as a place and also tailoring it to a game with a more fluid feel to combat. As much as I like Half-Life 2: Deathmatch, the Source engine was starting to tip heavily towards realism, the gunplay wasn't as fast and furious, and the thin catwalks and chunky, undetailed building facades that were the bread and butter of hardcore clan level design for Quake and GoldSrc were no longer cutting it visually. It's probably why the game has only had cult success despite my enjoyment of it—people who like fast and fluid gunplay a la arena shooters have no use for its limited sprint and weapon cooldown, and it's very classicist and limited as far as its modes go (basically entirely deathmatch, no CTF, no control points, no last man standing, no vehicles, etc).

I got roughly 30% into the level before the first trip to Wales knocked me out of it, and despite all the castles we visited on both trips inspiringly me great to map for Quake as soon as I got home, I just never returned to it. (In all honesty, I had to refactor one of the center hallways to make the layout work, and that was just, like, so much effort. That's why I dropped it for so long. When I got over it, it took about a half hour.) I guess during this recent bit of moping, going back to what I was doing as an angsty teenager felt comforting, so I finished it up in about a week. Have some screenshots at long last:

While I kept true to the overall layout, I did make a few changes in connecting some areas to others where they originally weren't, and I expanded out the dinky little combine metal hallway in the far east of the map into an additional little sewer bit with a lift. One thing I'm always hungry for in my levels is making them feel like believable places, places that sprawl beyond where you're actually able to go. I did that a little bit with this level, decorative doors, a slipgate area, catwalks high above the playable level area, and I think it looks terrific. idbase also feels like putting together Lego after a fashion—layering wall textures separated by chunky metal supports that occasionally act as key light sources, it all just makes sense to me.

As far as lighting goes, this is very ericw, all bounce, automatic skylights, basically no fill lights, colored lights to separate various areas (warmer in rooms, colder in the hallways, and pale blue from the sky, and red to mark special areas). Fog is so huge for atmosphere in both drawings and levels; a slight bit in the distance makes any level feel instantly colder (or stickier!). Especially with the software simulation in Ironwail cranked, I think it's gorgeous. Dimension of the Past is a perennial inspiration for me as far as base stuff goes, and I don't think I've fully mastered that episode's design language, but I think this is closer than I've ever gotten.

With regards to how it plays? I don't know yet. I gotta set up a little QuakeWorld server and get some tests going. It's nice having access to both seasoned deathmatch players and Somnolians who don't play these games as much as I do, because it means I can see how people from all skill levels handle it. I'll probably do a couple rounds with both, some with me playing and some with me just watching to see how it pans out. As an aside, while I didn't intend for this to be a singleplayer level, once I sent NewHouse the level to run around in, he immediately wanted to do a singleplayer remix of it. He's apparently very close to being done with it, and I asked him to not send me any screenshots so I could see what he did with my work blind.

Glad everyone's liked how it looks! I can only hope it plays nice as well—and either way, it's just nice to still have it, and really have it better than ever, with my level design abilities. Many games I'd like to map for in the future, some more complex, some less. (And I will return to the Source engine someday. Parts of it are a disaster, but it's a disaster that feels uniquely like home.)