Wanton Hubris

I’ve decided to try a new tactic for building Quake levels. I recognize that a large part of why my Quake levels often end up on the scrap heap is because I get too caught up in the details. You know, what textures should I use, adding more detail, tweaking lighting, etc. And those things are valuable, don’t get me wrong! But when the level itself isn’t complete, they are something of a waste of time.

When I was a younger man, this worked out alright regardless. I would have enough energy and focus that I could detail out a map as well as develop the layout and restructure things (aka throw away work) as I needed to. I didn’t care. These days, I care.

So here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to start with this WAD file that I created:

This is what I call my “blueprint” WAD. This contains the basic texture shapes that most Quake WAD files use (including the case where you rotate them 90 degrees, of course). My plan is as follows:

1. Lay out the level in it’s entirety using the blueprint textures, focusing on flow and monster gameplay.
2. Add a minlight and a sunlight. Tweak the sunlight until it gives the level the look that I want.
3. Add extra geometric detail and hot spot lighting sources. This will probably also be the stage where I start to apply real textures since lighting and it’s interaction with the textures becomes important.
4. Remove the minlight and add small fill lights where necessary.

This is the basic plan but things may change – we’ll see! For now, I’ll update fairly regularly with the status of the level and where I’m at with it. This is where we’re starting from:

Tags: Blueprint Experiment

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 at 6:42 pm and is filed under Misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.