i’m posting this a bit after the episode because @DJ_HiP encouraged me to share my maps… so blame them for me posting here :OP
here they are, mostly as a part of jams (basically, a search on Quaddicted for “quasiotter”): https://www.quaddicted.com/db/v2/?&include=author=quasiotter&
might as well mention my history with Quake…
i’m sure my first exposure was my brother playing Quake 64, and i thought it was cool… we also played Quake II in an internet cafe… i don’t like competitive gaming, so i just remembered how pretty the railgun particle effects were.
but i saw some of a walkthrough of Quake at some point, and the aesthetics + music + sound effects seemed like the best thing ever made. i don’t know how to describe it other than it felt like it was made for my taste.
i tried the shareware episode a few times over a few years in the 2010s… but the water-zombie “maze” in e1m3 scared me so much i had to stop.
then in 2018, i finally committed to clearing the game. i played on normal difficulty, and although i had completed many FPS games at that point, this felt punishing. the atmosphere was so thick, hostile, and dark that i had to stop after every map i finished. i was exhausted after each session and i could not play more than one map per night.
it was easily the best/most intense experience i had with a game, and i’d seriously rate it 1,000/1,000: i think it’s absolutely perfect. even to this day, even though the main campaign is easy to me now, i cannot help but feel astounded by this masterpiece.
of course, i fell in love with the custom maps. i’ve played hundreds of hours and hundreds of maps, which is unusual for me because i prefer playing many games for a shorter time then one game forever.
in 2020, i decided to make maps. i ended up creating at least one per month. all of my maps are pacifist, experimental, and completely different from each other (i.e. walking sims, a poetry generator, one inspired by outer wilds). it was fun to challenge myself like this, but i definitely burnt myself out.
i stopped making maps, but i continued playing new and old releases to this day. the mapmaking scene is warm and inclusive, and i’m happy to have been a part of the community!
the DGC episode itself was fantastic – it helped me keep alert during a long trip i had. glad to see the love given to it, even though it’s had plenty of that for nearly thirty years!
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