DarkFall Quake Campaign
About the project
DarkFall is a Quake single player campaign I made as a student project. It follows a protagonist with a strong internal dialogue as you make your way around a monster infested medieval town. Using invisible walls, triggers, and text pop-ups I was able to create a kind of RPG quest system that leads the player around the town. The focus of this project was getting experience with level design and combat encounter design.
highlights
First contact
One of the buildings the player encounters after leaving the safe area at the start of the level contains trash mobs for the player to warm up against and set expectations for encounters going forward. One the player defeats these early mobs they may be down a few shells of ammo or points of health. With this in mind the player is enticed by a fresh armor pack and some ammo sitting unattended in a market stall, this is hard to miss as the armor is a bright contrasting color and has a spinning model. If the player is not cautious and approaches the armor without watching their back a Dog type enemy will spring from an alley and attack the player. This encounter does two things. It teaches the player to watch for blind corners and also directs the players eye in the direction the Dog came from and towards more areas to explore before moving out into the larger level space.
know your enemy
Using different enemies in different ways based on their strengths was a big focus for this design. For example as you saw in the first encounter Dog type enemies are good for surprising players coming from unexpected places because they bark on trigger and approach quickly. Wide open areas are the domain of stronger monsters as the player has the ability to run away from them and slowly draw down their health using obstacles as cover. In one encounter I intentionally used a enemy type that leaps at the player in a tight space so that the mob would actually leap past the player and trigger another enemy and starting a larger fight. Quake is a great tool set in that the enemy archetypes are so distinct and predictable that you can use them almost like puzzle pieces.
reward your player but keep them focused
One of the best parts of quake based games is the secret hunting. Another really enjoyable experience is trying to sequence break or climb over or on top of some obstacle your not supposed to get to. Going into this project I knew I wanted the map to have secrets for the player to find however I also knew I didn’t want them to take away from the core experience. Too many times I’ve been playing a game and in fiction it’s supposed to be some urgent situation where my life is on the line… but I’m not acting very urgent as I’m busy performing a breadth first search of the dungeon or level wandering around looking for secrets or loot. With that in mind I tried to make all of the secrets or hidden loot in the game work seamlessly into the action, in ways that encourage the player to get back to slaying monsters. One of the ways I did this was by making the “hidden item“ a combat power up, thus encouraging the player to flee from the secret zone and
find enemies to kill with their boosted weapon. Another way I did this was by keeping secret
tangents short or burying them in combat zones such as alleys filled with dogs.
direct the eye
For this style of game there is no map system, so it is important that players find their bearings quickly and can navigate the space by clear landmarks or signposts. One way I used this was as the player is leaving the starting area they exit through a gate that is elevated above the rest of the map, this gives them an opportunity to see the primary 3 landmarks in the map and orient themselves to them. When a quest tells the player “go to the cathedral“ the player should be able to recall leaving the starting zone and seeing a massive ornate building to their left which is visible from most points in the map. Enemies, Loot, and interesting Architecture are also good ways to draw the players eye towards areas you want them to go to. In the above post you can see I used Dog type mobs to draw players towards the alley where secret armor can be found or per the first encounter towards a new area to explore before leaving the starter zone. In my quake based game the fun comes primarily from combat and exploration. The quest system is used in this map as a kind of vehicle to move the player around the map experiencing different fights in new environments. The player actively seeks out enemies and armor so using them as bait to draw them into fights and quests is extremely effective.
I had so much fun making this level quake engine rules
Inspiration(KingdomComeDeliverance) Rough draft of map “Grey” box Final Map
Download the map here
Tools
Engine: Quake Engine and DarkPlaces(patched version of quake engine) https://icculus.org/twilight/darkplaces/
Version Control: GitHub
Level Editor and Compiler: TrenchBroom https://trenchbroom.github.io/
Special Thanks: dumptruck_ds for the high quality tutorial series