Analyzing how textures are used in Quake

While working on my ongoing Quake map, I reached the texturing phase and realized it was a lot less straightforward than I assumed it would be.

I was struggling to understand what textures to get, how to use them in a believable way, and how to make the most out of them, especially seeing how simple they were.

I wanted to have an aesthetic, believable, and functional space, and the textures had to enhance and serve that function. They were meant to improve readability, guide players, and be used in a way that improves and highlights the modeling work I had done to create a coherent, immersive, and beautiful level.

So I started investigating...

In the source game

I examined the vanilla game to understand how id Software designed levels and used textures. I used cheats to fly through levels and took screenshots of memorable gameplay moments to study their texture and lighting use, creating a small reference library or game screenshots.

A console command also let me view levels without textures, revealing the simplicity of the geometry and how much the level relied on textures for visual details.

One thing that was also striking was that a lot of these memorable moments were still looking great even without texture, and the lighting was often what was making those spaces really stand out.

In other similar games [DOOM]

I was interested in looking also at how doom did texturing, especially given their more harsh technical limitation, I felt it really forced level designers to make the most out of the least, especially with textures.

I was lucky to find a really helpful video which looked exactly into that.

In this video, a several of John Romero's level design rules are about texturing, and were actually of great help: 1- Use different floor textures for different floor height. This really helps with orientation and readability. This is also something that can be used for varying ceiling heights. It helps segment areas in a quick and visual way for the players.

2- Using border, or transition, textures between two wall segments/doorways. Once again this helps with readability a lot.

3- Being strict with texture alignment, especially around windows and doors, to help make them feel seamless. Spending time aligning and positioning textures is key to get the most out of them.

In more recent community-made Quake levels

With a better understanding of the fundamentals and base of texturing, which were used originally for Quake and Doom, I decided to look at a more recent level, made by Bal.

Bal is an exceptional mapper and quite well know within the community for his high quality levels, both design and art-wise, one of his maps in particular has been a continuous inspiration for me to create 'The Return Of The King'.

The map is called "A Sip of Alkahest"

I was able to, once again, do a fly-through of the level using console commands, taking a LOT of screenshots to create a bit of a library of references.

I then spent some time compiling those references into categories, to understand how Bal used and adapted those textures to make his geometry stand out as much as it does.

After getting a solid grasp on how Bal used his textures, I decided to actually re-use the same textures from his map, which would help me also save time, since I had already compiled a little guide on how to used those exact textures.

In conclusion...

My process started with investigating how level designers made the most out of their textures in original maps from Quake and Doom, and finding some tips and rules they used to create such memorable levels, despite technological restrictions.

I was then able to combine these fundamentals with a more up to date approach to texturing, by looking at recent levels from recognized mappers of the Quake community.

I ended up deciding to use the same texture pack as one of the maps I had been using as inspiration, which I also analyzed and compiled a small guide on how the original mapper used those textures, so that I could set it as a guideline for myself when texturing my own level with the same texture pack.

Here's The result: