After almost three months of development and rigorous playtesting, Map-Center has officially released their massive Quake 30th Anniversary Jam.
While Map-Center is known for their Retro, Traps, and Xmas jams, this event marks the first time they are celebrating a major Quake anniversary. The project began on February 27th and concluded its mapping phase on March 29th, followed by what organizers describe as their most extensive public playtesting period ever to ensure the release was as polished as possible.
Following a very positive community response, an updated version of the mod was deployed on June 7th to address bugs spotted during livestreams.
The Project: 30 Maps for 30 Years
The jam organizers secretly hoped to end up with 30 maps for the 30th anniversary, and the community delivered exactly that number.
AlexUnder built a brand-new hub map that divides 28 standard maps into 5 distinct Level Themes, mimicking the episode setup of the original game.
Caffeine Freak delivered an epic finale with the map "Deicidal Descent", providing a brand-new take on the original boss fight where players face Shub-Niggurath from a different perspective.
Shoutouts were also given to LeChum for creating an incredible hype trailer, and to the massive team of community playtesters.
Honoring Classic Quake & Modding Pioneers
To ensure the project felt like a genuine tribute, Map-Center established strict design rules. The jam honored not only the original gameplay but also early modding pioneers like Fingers, Kell, and Metslime.
Aesthetics & Engine:
Mappers were restricted to specific texture wads: vanilla (id1, SOA, DOE), IKBLUE, IKBASE, Rubicon, and Knave. No custom models or skymaps were allowed.
Despite texture limits, mappers were encouraged to push details to the max without 1996 hardware restrictions, utilizing advanced compiling parameters, lit water, colored lights, and fog.
Maps were built for the id1 (vanilla Quake) progs and designed to be compatible with both Quakespasm and the Quake Remastered (KEX) engines.
No custom sound effects or music were used; mappers assigned standard CD track numbers (5 to 11) via the worldspawn.
Gameplay Design:
Slaughter and wave-based arena maps were strictly forbidden.
Mappers focused on smaller combat spaces with strategically placed monsters and a heavy emphasis on verticality. The core theme was surviving the journey through abstract places and Eldritch horrors.
Map lengths were capped at 15 to 20 minutes maximum.
Submissions had to be entirely brand-new (no ports, remakes, or retextures), include co-op and deathmatch spawns, and adjust gameplay for different skill levels via spawnflags.
Chnucki Erdbeer - Port Insomnius: Fixed object error crashing issue with Kex engine. Cleaned up map sources for empty keys.
Eltangente - The Twisted Tabernacle: Fixed issue where exit door from 'room 1' to the hub would not open on some engine ports.
Grue - The Danse Macabre: Fixed the issue that caused the LG to fall out of the map. Added a sound to the quad stairs. Fixed the overhang issue that was causing player damage on the stairs. Fixed the death pit bugs in the final map scene.
Jerry - Aleister's Lockbox: Added distinct barrier to Chamber of Diving, flipped bridge. Added steps to the bottom of the Chamber of Agony for an easier time getting out. Changed textures to show progression across spike jumps. Added colour-changing arrows to show which Chambers have been completed already. Changed Chamber of Bolts message slightly. Made hub doors more distinct.
Konig - The Final Sun: Fixed func_train related objError. Moved super shotgun location slightly.
Moko - Forsaken Monastery: Added door sound on silver and gold key doors. Added openings from bath & church into the courtyard. Adjusted tombstone and added clip brush near mausoleum. Added secondary teleport location for monsters hidden behind secret. Added water connection between bath and gallery.
Simon Novak - Tomb of the Barbarian King: Fixed the bug with the doors not opening in certain cases. Fixed a misaligned texture.
Static Fiend - The Halls of Misanthropy: Added a little extra ammo and health for all difficulties, more shells for hard/nightmare.
Thunder Goose - Updated progs.dat: Fixed rare vanilla rune bug (and subsequent map progress loss). Kex will now display Completed! in white in front of finished maps. Fixed the occasional vanilla misc_teleporttrain crash.
