Quake cartographers are killing it in celebration of Quake’s 30th birthday. The Quake community has been holding map jams of various themes all year long. In recent months there have been two ‘Quickies’ speed map traffic jamsto 1024 Jam where taxpayers had to build maps of 1024 cubed units, and a Jam limitswith the fun restriction that submitted maps had to use the same technical and design limitations as the original Quake campaign.
Now, the Quake community has brought another blood-stained birthday present to the Quake after-party with Q30 Deathmatch Watch. Hosted by Quake mappers Annihilazor and Infiniti, the map pack adds 22 new arenas designed specifically for old Quake play.
The maps run the gamut of Quake’s interdimensional settings, from gothic castles to sci-fi death zones to an industrial brown sewer called The Filth Pit. Numerous notable designers from the fan community have participated, including a collaborative map called Overflow by Mazu and Makkon. The latter was one of the organizers of the excellent Quake Brutalist Jam 3, while the former designed the spectacular Jam map: a five-hour mini-campaign with its own internal story.
If you want to try out the maps yourself, Q30 Deathmatch Jam is designed to work with numerous modern Quake source ports, including Ironwail, Netquake, or the Kex port of Nightdive, as seen in Quake Remaster. In each case, you can play it as a standalone mod by placing the folder directly in your Quake directory and using the game console to open it. However, if you want to play online via the Netquake or QuakeWorld servers, you will need to copy the map, location files and skybox data to the relevant folders in your competitive multiplayer installation.
None of this is to mention all the other earthquake-related events that have occurred this year. As mentioned, January had barely begun when the community released Quake Brutalist Jam 3, a massive concrete megastructure-themed mod that was essentially a new FPS in all but name.
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Then at QuakeCon id Software released a New episode of Quake, developed in collaboration with Machine Games to celebrate the shooter’s 30th anniversary. While Microsoft’s brutal layoffs cast a shadow over the proceedings, Dawn of the Machine is still a fantastic collection of maps and a worthy successor to Machine Games’ Dimension of the Machine coming in 2021.
