negke

Could you briefly introduce yourself (age, location...) and tell us since when you are active in the Q1 community?

I'm negke (formerly with an exclamation mark which was dropped due to frequent misinterpretation), 26-year-old student procrastinator from northern Germany. I've been active in the community only since around 2005.

How did you get involved in the community?

For a long time, I only mapped in private and hardly ever released anything to the public (the maps I did release would've been better off remaining locked away forever) - almost exclusively deathmatch maps, by the way. Although I already knew some of the community sites, I visited them only occasionaly for news on new map releases, but didn't pay any attention to the forums where the real activity was. I remember checking out the Func_Msgboard forums a couple of times, but there was always some ugly flamewar going on (in which I'm sure either Shambler or Scampie or both were involved), so it didn't feel too appealing at first. At some point, however, I was intrigued by the idea of going back to singleplayer mapping and by the regularly occuring speedmapping events. That got me in.

What Q1 contributions are you best-known for? Which of your works is your personal favorite?

My speedmaps, I guess. Their quantity and wackiness seem to outweigh the few regular maps I've made so far. It's hard for me to pick a single favorite... spontaneous recommendations would include SM113, SM121, SM124, SM130 and SM131 as well as the Travail secrets maps (qte2m5 and qte2m6) which went by fairly unnoticed as many people simply didn't find the entrance or even knew about their existence in the first place. Rumor has it the 768/vertical map is kind of neat, too. ;)

What was your initial motivation to work for Quake?

Coming from DOOM mapping, it was only natural to also try it for Quake, especially considering all the possibilities the 3D environment offered. The main problem was the lack of internet access at the time, so we (efdat and I) had to rely for the most part on the tools and inspiration that came with the various crappy CD compilations people were being ripped off with in the games' early days. The initial inspiration, therefore, was trying to figure out the technical aspects by oneself and come up with less poor maps than many of those '96ers', but also be able to create something individual for occasional LANs.

Do you have a website/links where we could check out your stuff?

Sure, http://negke.quaddicted.com (the speedmaps can be found at http://www.quaddicted.com/speedmapping.html)

What are your best memories about this community?

Some interesting discussions in the forums, helpful people when it came to mapping related questions and technical support, the inexplicable socio-cultural phenomenon that is #tf...

Are you regularly playing Quake? Are you trying out mods, maps and engines?

I play all new map releases and sometimes new mods if they look interesting enough. I also enjoy some private QW matches every now and then. But I don't play Quake regularly in the sense of just playing it for the sake of the gameplay.

Have there been other games you have been playing a lot?

Sure, plenty. The entire palette of id games from DOOM onward as well as other FPS games up to recent ones. I also like RPGs - Gothic I and II are still my all-time favorite video games. There was a time when I was a Q3A nut, frequently playing FFA and RA3, but at some point the general interest faded and nowadays there're hardly and good servers left. I've rediscovered DOOM in recent years as a readily-accessible source of oldschoolish fun, much more than Quake. The DOOM community is larger and more active than Quake's (which is not least because the game is a lot easier to map for, despite all the technical innovations of ZDOOM and the like), so it's easier to play new stuff every time I feel the urge.

How would you describe the Q1 community right now? Is there any contribution that really impressed you in the last couple of years?

The developer community has greatly dwindled as compared to earlier years, with only a handful of determined active mappers and modders left. On the other hand, potentially great mappers still seem to crop up out of nowhere every once in a while, which is always good and necessary. It's a pity the mapping and modding departments are so divided, but then again, I think it can't be helped since the game's heyday is long over and there's no interest in great partical conversions anymore. Not sure about the player community. There appears to be a fair amount of people still interested in singleplayer maps/mods, but it's hard to tell for most of them just download the releases silently without giving feedback. Then there's the deathmatch crowd, most predominantly represented by the QW scene, who always stay in their enclave and don't seem to care about the rest. This fragmentation of the Quake community will facilitate its eventual death sooner or later.

As for releases that really impressed me, there were quite a few. Despite the numerous classics, I'm particularly stunned by than's DM3rmx map as well as his watery base map, czg/Vondur's E1M1rmx, and Biff's base map. Likewise, Travail and ijed's Warpspasm were important releases, too. Of course, there were also many others which exhibited great creativity and skill - in the end, pretty much every map released in recent years had at least one interesting and nice feature that I appreciated in one way or another. Cool and original recent mods include ajay's Lunkin's Journey, CocoT's Transloquake and Spacewalk, RenegadeC's The Ascension of Vigil, and, above all, Asaki's Grass mod.

How do you picture the future of the community? Do you (objectively) think that people will still be modding/mapping for it in, say, 10 years from now?

It'll definitely go on for some more time with releases and events. However, I doubt that there'll be much left in ten years other than a few nostalgists playing some old SP maps every now and then (in the same way that people still get a blast out of C64 games today). The part of the game likely to survive the longest will be QW.

Your #1 secret special ingredient to a good map (imagine a newbie asking for your advice)?

Be picky. :) Test the map in developer mode ("developer 1") to get rid of obvious entity issues, produce clean brushwork, do overtime on texture aligning and lighting, try to set up interesting gameplay situations, remember to add crates, get proper playtesters, eat cheese, look at cat pictures.

What is the question you would have liked to be asked (but weren't), how would you have answered it and how pissed are you for me not thinking about it?

Maybe the question about the awesome future projects I'm working on and when they're going to be finished. On second thought, though, I'm glad you didn't ask, so I don't have to lie. :)