An Interview with metlslime

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

30 years old, san jose, california, active since 1997

How did you get involved in the community?

I had quake on my brand new pentium PC, and discovered Matt Sefton's review site, and then downloaded Thred, and started mapping.

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

Best known for rubicon or fitzquake, probably. Personal favorite: Concrete Dreams (q2dm), or for Q1, I guess it would be Antediluvian since it's my most refined map for gameplay and flow.

What was your initial motivation to work for Quake?

I was into video game creation/modding since i was young, and anything creative such as drawing and building with Legos, so it was great to find a creative medium with a way to share your work with a community.

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

maps page, fitzquake

What are your best memories about this community?

The Cantaloupe Wars of 2002.

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

Yes, I do try to play each new SPQ map that gets released, though I don't always play all the way through them.

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

Last game I played a lot was TF2, but that's faded. I played Trism on the iPhone for a while a few days ago.

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

The mapping community seems to be recovering after a slump in 2006, with a solid stream of new maps starting in 2007. The last maps that really impressed me were Marcher and Warpspasm, partly because they seemed to be pushing the boundaries of what Quake maps could be.

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's hard to say. The 2007 mapping resurgence makes it seem like the community could just keep going, especially with some of the newer mappers picking up the slack. But if mapping doesn't progress in some direction, it might fade away just from stagnation. That direction might be into more limits-breaking maps, or maps that rely on mods such as quoth to keep their content fresh. We could also see more experimentation into gameplay tangents such as the stealth/puzzle map that speedy released recently.

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

One out of the hundreds: Quake has lots of gameplay features. Try to use them!

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

How about, "what's the first custom map you remember playing?" and the answer would be House of Desolution.