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When I cannot sleep I often spend the small hours of the night creating
brushwork concepts. These are not about game play, layout or design but
about mashing, twisting and warping shapes together and seeing what
cool things happen.
Brushwork concepts are like sketching or doodling on paper but instead
of creating something from one view point it is a 3D object that
can look and feel different from many sides. It is about trying to find
harmony in shapes and creating new style directions.
One of my favourite maps of Quake is E3M6 "Chambers of Torment". A map
at the end of Episode 3 "The Netherworld" featuring a strong blue palette
and a lovely mixture of harsh metal angles and interesting shapes.
The original map has many core architectural components and most are
linked to a certain textures and patterns. The walls were split
by tall blue panels of merging faces, rooms were divided by harsh metal
trellis patterns and pools of lava were bubbling below Mayan metal snakes
weaving across the floors.
The initial idea was to take the core components and deconstruct them
to see what their basic shapes look like. Once the right shape is found
then to extend the design using iteration's to find more variants
of the same style and finally glue it all together again.
Using only the existing textures (added two, changed one and left out six)
the map is about the essence of E3M6 but warped into a new direction. Luckily
the textures are not designed for specific shapes and are perfect for
wrapping around any brush shape and still look good.
The lighting was designed to be strong upward beams with the source hidden
from direct sight. Instead of the usual bright at feet and dark ceiling
I wanted the blue ceilings to glow and shimmer making the map feel
different from the traditional green/brown. Each room was setup to have
one central light focus (strong light) and small highlights with
various pulsate/flicker styles to focus the players attention.
The map was originally just a concept but the initial layout was a lot
of fun with plenty of "up and over" routes that it developed into a proper
map. The layout is about the monsters being in positions of strength
and the player having to adapt to each new situation.
There are ten secrets in the map and they vary between button finding
and player movement (jumping) skills. Most of the weapons can be found early
in secret locations and all skill levels were completed successfully
without the use of any secret stash.
The front of the map features a skill selection system like the start map
with three hallways for easy, normal, hard skill and a nightmare skill
entrance for players who want a challenge. Once the skill has been selected
the map will restart and everything should be setup correctly.
Each skill level has different monsters types, in different positions
and can be played progressively for a different experience of the map.
All weapons, ammo and health are the same on all skill levels. It is
assumed the player will be more frugal with ammo/health consumption
on higher difficulty settings.
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| - | Create a new folder called "mstalk" in your Quake folder |
| - | Copy the Zip file into the new folder |
| - | Extract the contents of the zip file |
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| - | Create a shortcut to your preferred Quake engine |
| - | Add the following to the command line: |
| | -heapsize 64000 -game mstalk +map mstalk |
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| - | Run shortcut and make sure map loads |
| - | The first part of the map is a skill selection area |
| - | Remember to record a demo once you start the map! |
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| - | The map was designed and tested to work with the following engines: |
| | Mark V - http://www.celephais.net/board/view_thread.php?id=60831 |
| | FitzQuake 0.85 - http://www.celephais.net/fitzquake/ |
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| Map Type | SP (Single Player) only |
| Difficult | Easy 60, Normal 84, Hard 101 - Monsters |
| Development | midnight+ hours for two weeks |
| Textures | Mostly by ID Software, with a couple by Lunaran / Kell |
| Skybox | Default ID Purple Sky |
| Source | Map and texture WAD included in the PAK file |
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| - | ID software for creating Quake |
| - | Additional map feedback and testing by negke and necros |
| - | BSP Compilers (txqbsp,vis,light) by Bengt Jardrup |
| - | Coloured light and LIT support by MH |
| - | newskip by John Fitzgibbons (hides skip textures) |
| - | TexMex 3.4 by Mike Jackman (good for organizing textures) |
| - | AdQuedit 1.3 by Hicks Goldrush (perfect for pak files) |
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