In 2020 I made a Quake deathmatch map titled Khthonic for my friends to play at a lan party. This is a postmortem of my map creation process.
Concept
There were a lot of inspirations that lead to this map. The retro shooter revival was just starting, I was wanting to develop something with proven tech and within constraints, and I really wanted to try out the TrenchBroom level editor for a small project. The theme and name 'Khthonic' came from some books on Ancient Greek religion I was reading at the time.
I started the map with some sketches in a notebook. At this stage I knew a few things. First, I wanted to make a Greek temple. I also wanted my map to have ‘verticality’ or an emphasis on elevation in the map. And finally, I limited myself to using TrenchBroom and Quake to make it. I also quickly decided on a Deathmatch map because I felt I could develop that faster (and I think there was a job posting for mp level designer at the time but I'm not quite sure).
Sketches
In this first sketch I started to use lines to map out some of the routes and volumes of the map. I think a good map has a mixture of spaces and ranges for fights to occur. I also knew that I wanted to let it break rules and conventions of just pure balanced design. It would be really easy to make this a cave complex with a perfect balance of corridors and open areas… but there are a thousand maps like that. A little bit of unbalance in the spaces in a map can reward players who know to avoid those areas.
Verticality was also a big theme for me when I was making the map. What always struck me about Blood Gulch (Halo) was that it broke up spaces with hills. So I went with a lava pool at the bottom of the map and a hill sloping off the temple mount. I also started thinking of ways to add verticality to the temple and in the cave complex around it. It was around this time I started to get the concept going in my head about a capitalistic mining corporation burrowing into an ancient hidden temple to the underworld.
Early Mapping
Early in the process I just tried to block everything out and get it lit. I mostly spent time getting a feel for the space I was building and how it felt to move around. I also started to better understand the scale of my map. I didn't want to change too much about the temple initially because I wanted it to start from a relatively historically accurate place. But I had a lot of cave space to play with. While I did play with some other ideas with this map, later I found myself going back to a few of the ideas here.
With a large map my corridors were kinda boring. I started playing with the idea of adding some more cover to the corridors but I wasn't really thinking about it right. As caves around the map got more and more complex and as I refined things I really started to play with the idea of the caves not as corridors but just as long spaces. This is when they started to get better and I started adding more ways to vertically interact with those spaces.
The picture below shows some of the verticality in the map which was important to get in during these early stages because this would’ve been really hard to change later on. This verticality was also important for controlling sight-lines in such a long area. Quake doesn’t really give the player a sniper rifle or a long ranged weapon. Making the sight-lines shorter kinda helps keep the player from wasting ammo on things they can’t possibly hit.
I spent a lot of time trying to find the right way for players to get to the upper level of the temple. While not technically historically accurate, I didn’t just want there to be a cool place the players couldn’t get to. So I settled on this little jumping puzzle. It also let me open up more space into the caves.
About the lighting; during play-testing people noted that some of the areas in the map were just too dark! I really had to learn a lot about how quake lights worked and the lighting tools I was using (which have changed a fair bit since the retail version of quake, see EricWtools). Also using an lcd screen sometimes made it hard to judge if it was just really moody or impossible to see anything.
Also in regards to lighting I’m a fan of the film directors Michael Mann and Nicholas Winding Refn and their distinctly colorful lighting. I tried to pull this through in my map by showing the more technology driven caves as blue and the more ancient areas as being warmly lit. This create a contrast around the cave entrances in the map that helped them pop out.
Feedback:
I sent my map out to be played by some friends at this point trying to get some feedback on if I was meeting my design goals. I also had a LAN party with some friends showing off a little of the map. Ultimately there were some issues and bugs server-side that eventually got ironed out.
Initially people reported that the map was too dark (as mentioned earlier). Players also noted a lot of navigation issues that took a while to iron out. Also while the caves and temple were distinctly different, players sometimes noted they weren’t sure what part of the caves or temples they were in.
Changing the lighting was pretty easy (mostly just changing the light baking settings). But the navigation issues were a little harder. And I also wanted players to get in and out of the temple area more. If it's the temple map and you aren’t hanging around the temple it's not a good temple map! I made some holes in the temple walls and made the area much easier to jump on and around. Getting into the temple also afforded players more cover so it started to become a more attractive area.
So to fix the caves I added some set pieces to make the different areas a little more distinct. Now the caves near the pool of water have some computers by them and no metal beams, where the other side has more metal beams and some machine devices.
It was also around this time I made a version of the map that could be played with Reaper bots which was helpful for getting feedback from individuals. However one of the issues was that they would not navigate through the jumping puzzle to the top of the temple. I ended up keeping this since it gave a clear advantage to human players and made the area feel more special.
Final:
Beyond the general enjoyment I had making this map; it felt really good to get back into map making (something I felt I had been doing less and less of). After this map I really found myself trying to do more maps and game jams to keep myself creating.
I will say though there are a lot of things to improve on in this map; especially on the technical aspects of the map making. Quake and BSP maps have their own quirks that need to be taken into account and while I had a lot of fun; I'm not sure I would consider my map 'optimal'. Although it runs great with a modern source port and a high-end PC made 20 years after the games initial release.
I'm not planning on releasing this map but I may do so in the future. If anyone I give it to 'leaks' the map or it is otherwise distributed I want to go on record that it doesn't offend me in any way. Sharing something you like (or even dislike) as long as it is done with earnest and good intention is ok by me. But for now I kind of want to keep it close to me as it is the map that reminded me how much I enjoy level design.
