SPEEDMAPS |

"Fluoroantimonic"

The Inspiration

I was feeling itchy about my lack of complete maps after, like, a year working on Quake, so I decided to do some speedmapping. This one was to be a take on the 24 Hour Jam, because I was autistically bothered about the word "speedmap" at the time and felt it'd lost all meaning. I didn't expect other people to hop in on it, so soon after the fourth 100 Brush Competition, but I got some interested, we decided on a base theme, and I set the parameters of the event. One day to build a level.

Too bad I announced the theme early. Everyone got the weekend to work on it instead, though mine was still done in one day (unintentionally, for reasons I'll get into in a moment).

The Construction

Because I like playing around with weird, old level editors and making things more difficult for myself, I did my level while trying to learn the BSP Quake Editor, a very very old level editor originally developed by Valve alumni Yahn Bernier that's been revived a couple times over the years by an anonymous fellow. (BSP was used alongside Worldcraft in developing the first Half-Life.) The new versions of BSP are a lot speedier and nicer to use, though it's still very hotkey-based, so it takes some getting used to.

My level was originally going to be based around unlocking parts of the military base through powering sectors up, but after I got stuck on a useful layout, I instead decided to homage "Deadly Slimes", NewHouse's map from 24 Hour Jam. Fluoroantimonic acid is known for being the strongest acid known to man, eating through anything it touches, and I built the level around a shaft of the stuff (don't ask the logic). From there, I wanted to do a lot of layering, building each layer with a different shape, with a few keycards and buttons to prevent players from just hopping down to the end immediately.

The Retrospective

Meh. This one looks alright (more due to the nice Rubicon textures I used than my own brushwork), but the combat is a nightmare since enemies all aggro at you at nearly the same time. The easiest way to beat the level is to use the Ring of Shadows to skip everything, but that's not my idea of a good time in Quake, not really sure what I was thinking there. The other maps in SM183 turned out a lot better and more imaginative than mine, but there's still some nice looking bits, like that spinning generator thing near the end I made using a map hack.

"Vinegar"

The Inspiration

Kind of the forgotten Cammy map, and not without good reason. ericw and I got discussing how "Honey" implemented its weapon gate system, where you have to shoot a specific kind of ammo into a space to act as keys, in the TrenchBroom mapping Discord, and I figured I could do something similar in id1 using a button you can't directly reach if I could set it up right. (I could not.)

The Construction

I built this one in five hours overnight using TrenchBroom. While I don't particularly like "Honey", I do like its cavernous spin on the DM5 "cistern" brick look, and it was fun lighting this gigantic open room thing with lots of fog and lots of water. That said, because I had no idea how to structure a Honey sorta level, this became just two gigantic shapeless rooms and there's really not much in the way of progression to speak of.

The Retrospective

I wound up not even submitting this one places. It was an experiment, not one that panned out terribly well (you can open the end door by hopping into the key box and blasting it with your shotgun a few times), and again, I think it's more aesthetics than construction that makes it look any good. The combat is also terrible, since you don't have nearly enough ammo to make it through. It sucks, yo. With a better layout, better encounters, actual gameplay, and more to do beyond the five minutes you'll get out of it, it might be a good level. Still, I finished it, so here's the download.

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