The Inspiration

Temple of the Strange was the first level I'd ever built for Quake--after some test levels that were mostly me playing with the game's awesome-looking shadows. According to the readme, I'd intended this one to be very id-like, but I was also 17 and didn't know what texture themes were. This resulted in a very strange, but kinda cute, mixtex nightmare of a level with some fun ideas for progression and secret placement that I didn't really capitalize on.

The level title was a reference to "Summer of the Strange" by the Toadies, one of their later-era singles. It has nothing much at all to do with the level.

The Construction

I used J.A.C.K., which is a 64-bit Worldcraft clone with some nice quality-of-life upgrades. I was coming from the Garry's Mod (read: Hammer, as in post-Valve Worldcraft) world, so it felt good to go with what I knew. As I said, I didn't know what texture themes were yet, and I used the generic quake101.wad people usually hand out online with all the game's textures mixed together, so terracotta textures go next to runic textures and idbase trims sit on top of staircases using Elder World textures. I was going more off color than theme, but it's very schizophrenic if you're at all familiar with the game.

I was also thinking in terms of the limits of the original engine, paying attention to wpolys and r_speeds and the like. This is where I learned about visblockers and warping the already-wonky layout all that much more to reduce what geometry was being rendered. It's funny because I remember a whole lot of people I interacted with back then thinking it was such a fool's errand, yet now we have jams for original-limit levels. I'd call myself a visionary, but it's probably just as accurate to call me a sperg. (Despite my desire for purism, I'd give this one colored lights after my discovery of ericw-tools towards the end of development. Both versions are included in the ZIP.)

The Retrospective

Honestly, looking back on it, it's a pretty meek and naive level. I built in this fork right at the start that gave people a "choice", but it mostly amounted to an extra hallway and two extra guns. I imagined this big run up a staircase and over a lava cavern at the end, and yet the lava cavern is literally just a corner you re-enter the (randomly built) top level of the temple through. The scale is pretty modest too, and (owing to my lack of knowledge of the engine), several of the enemies in the water cavern and in the final rooms are stuck in the floor and can't move.

I'm not sure what the hell possessed me (a need for attention), but I wrote an entire VDU guide after I finished Temple of the Strange that made it sound like it was this gigantic unearthing of arcane knowledge instead of someone's first level, and I submitted it to Quaddicted and watched the 2/5s and 3/5s roll in. I'd make much better levels, but this one still makes me happy. I wasn't in the community yet, I barely understood playing Quake, let alone modding it, but I wanted to make capital-C capital-L Custom Levels, and here I was doing exactly that.

Also, everything else be damned, I'm still proud of that key cage.