About Lord Argleton’s Manor

Lord Argleton’s Manor is a custom level made for Quake 1 Remastered using the software tool Trenchbroom. It was made as a solo university project over an 8 week period. It features the same enemies and player character used in the source material, but the setting is an English Manor House that has been infested by monsters and ghosts. It’s your job to venture into the mansion to find the Gold Key so that you may cleanse the source of this evil, gunning down enemies along the way.

My Role

As this was a solo project made to teach us about level design, it was my job to concept and create the whole level by myself. This process involved playing and researching Quake to acquire an understanding of its gameplay, to create level design beats that facilitate that gameplay. I researched and documented enemy behaviour, weapon attributes, and physics interactions which left me with an idea of what makes Quake fun, and what to be aware of when creating a level. For instance, there is a part in my level where the player falls down a big slide, and my final enemy encounter involves unloading rapid-fire ammo into hoards of enemies with a quad-damage powerup, both fun interactions which I discovered from experimenting in my gym. Also, there is Rocket Launcher weapon available anywhere in my level due to its ability to break intended level progression with rocket jumps. Combat encounters were designed with verticality in mind, as it was one of the unique selling points of Quake upon release.

Architectural Research was another important aspect of this role, as all of the whiteboxing and modelling would be done alone, without any help from artists. This meant having an understanding of architectural features that would reinforce the English Manor setting, along with the more functional aspects of architecture – such as how doorframes can be used to signal entry and exit points to players – was entirely my job. I employed the use of techniques like Paintovers to concept how interior layouts of English Manors could be blended with Quake gameplay to create fun and interesting level design beats. This research was also helpful to better learn aspects of level design like edge-of-world, framing, and leashing

Additional Responsibilities

In addition to the main responsibility of designing the level, all texturing, lighting, and logic fell to me. Texture libraries were used to fully decorate the whole level, and I worked hard to ensure each room felt distinctive and memorable, as my level revolved around revisiting the same settings in new states, so ensuring that players would recognise where they were was important. I split the textures on the walls into segments to help with this, which also kept surfaces from feeling bland. This was also the first project that I had to implement lighting in, and I used lights to help focus player vision by illuminating areas of importance like doors.

Implementing the logic of the Trenchbroom engine was another responsibility, and was done to ensure enemy spawns, elevators, and other trigger volumes functioned properly. Learning the logic of a new engine was challenging, but rewarding, as it allowed me to pull off the tricks of my level, such as orchestrating the spawn patterns of the ‘ghosts’ in my final encounter, or obfuscating the player’s elevation, which allowed me to create the illusion of rooms changing, when in reality there were multiple iterations of rooms layered on top of eachother.