Custom Maps and the Cthulhu Mythos

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1

Hello everyone! :slight_smile:

I’m primarily into classic Doom and mods for it, but I’m also interested in classic Quake as well.

What really draws me into Quake 1 is that, instead of battling the forces of Hell in classic Doom, you battle the forces from the Cthulhu Mythos in Quake 1. Or, at least you seem to in some vague sense, since id Software was not concerned about integrating a clear plotline into Quake 1.

Because of this, I’m searching for some Quake 1 mods which really dig into the Cthulhu Mythos. By this, I mean:

[list=*]
]A general sense of dread, as in being in an environment in which the warmth of human civilization is being overtaken by a calm, cold, and dreadful darkness from the darkness beyond normal space./]
]Detailed, dark, scary, ancient, and alien environments, such as a very gothic, oddly shaped version of R’lyeh with mysterious, glowing, and ceremonial runes here and there. (I’m tired of empty hallways and rooms. I want detail which makes hallways feel like real hallways and rooms feel like real rooms. There are classic Doom wads which are giving their maps more detail, so I want the same from Quake 1 mods.)/]
]A taste of struggling against a horrific superior force, such as in struggling to somehow kill Cthulhu as he awakens or—even better yet—struggling to close a portal which some of the Great Old Ones opened over Earth./]
[/list]

Of course, these are my ideal expectations, so I keep them tempered with reasonable expectations. But, even then, all I’m finding, in general theme-wise, are custom classic Quake maps which dig into military bases, industrial complexes, medieval castles, and random caverns of some sort in random, disconnected, and generic ways. And without at least some form of focus on the Cthulhu Mythos, I feel that, in general theme-wise, Quake 1 mods feel directionless, confused, and arbitrary.

Anyways, I’m hoping that someone can help me find the kind of classic Quake 1 mods which I’m looking for or, perhaps, actually make them!

Thanks in advance for reading and replying.

BTW, this post represents just me offering my subjective, personal opinion in a passionate way. I mean no objective offense to anyone who has done mod work for Quake 1.

2

As you say, the Lovecraftian link is implicit in Quake - Shub-Niggurath is the bad guy at the end, but its not spelt out. The following mods are important in that they all expand on these themes. They are also the big ones, that occur immediately when mentioning Lovecraft in Quake.

Contract Revoked
Pure lovecraft. Quoth is the evolution of this, but goes into other territories.
https://www.quaddicted.com/reviews/contract.html

Nehahra
This includes a machinima film, is massive and expands on various elements of the Quake universe. More like the dream cycle of lovecraft in terms of story than the Cthulhu Mythos.
https://www.quaddicted.com/reviews/nehahra.html

Zerstorer
Not very Lovecraft, but high on dread and atmosphere.
https://www.quaddicted.com/reviews/zer.html

3

Thanks for your reply, ijed. :slight_smile:

[quote=ijed]Contract Revoked
Pure lovecraft. Quoth is the evolution of this, but goes into other territories.
https://www.quaddicted.com/reviews/contract.html[/quote]

I’ve watched a playthrough video for the first bit of it. It’s nice for what it does, but I’m not seeing the “pure Lovecraft” in it. Just generic, theme-wise, Quake levels.

[quote=ijed]Nehahra
This includes a machinima film, is massive and expands on various elements of the Quake universe. More like the dream cycle of lovecraft in terms of story than the Cthulhu Mythos.
https://www.quaddicted.com/reviews/nehahra.html

Zerstorer
Not very Lovecraft, but high on dread and atmosphere.
https://www.quaddicted.com/reviews/zer.html[/quote]

Yeah, I’ve watched some playthrough videos for these as well. Again, they do what they do well, but I’m not interested, especially with regards to Zerstorer’s ending (I can’t get into it in detail without spoiling anything for others).

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Hi CasualQuakeguy

Perhaps Vondur’s The Castle of Koohoo is the kind of thing you are looking for? https://www.quaddicted.com/reviews/koohoo.html
I have not played through all of it myself yet, but the beginning at least does seem to have a cold, alien and ancient feel to it.

This list of Tronyn’s top ten Elder World maps might also be helpful, as his description of a good Elder World map sounds a lot like your description of what you’re looking for above (he lists koohoo as number 1, by the way):
http://www.quakewiki.net/archives/underworld/tronynqexpo08a4.html

Hope this helps at least a little…

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Don’t miss https://www.quaddicted.com/webarchive/kell.quaddicted.com/ → Lovecraft in Quake!

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Hi, Icantthinkofanickname. Thanks for your reply! :slight_smile:

[quote=Icantthinkofanickname]Perhaps Vondur’s The Castle of Koohoo is the kind of thing you are looking for? https://www.quaddicted.com/reviews/koohoo.html
I have not played through all of it myself yet, but the beginning at least does seem to have a cold, alien and ancient feel to it.[/quote]

Yeah, after watching a playthrough of these maps, I definitely think that you’re on to something there! :-o I want the basic feel of those maps (one basic feel among many types, of course), but with more detail, more custom monsters, more lore, and more Lovecraftian horror in general.

[quote=Icantthinkofanickname]This list of Tronyn’s top ten Elder World maps might also be helpful, as his description of a good Elder World map sounds a lot like your description of what you’re looking for above (he lists koohoo as number 1, by the way):
http://www.quakewiki.net/archives/underworld/tronynqexpo08a4.html[/quote]

Ah, thanks. But, aside from item #1 being what it is, I don’t see those maps as “the Elder World”. When I think of “the Elder World”, I think of the darkness beyond space in which the Great Old Ones dwell, not stuff like castles or Hell.

But, I’m still looking into The Palace of Fear. I can’t find a playthrough of it anywhere. :-/

BTW, when I looked at the said list, I was annoyed that Lovecraftian imagery was being confused with traditional concepts and images of evil, such as Hell (i.e. 5Rivers: Five Rivers Land, a level which is a replication of Doom3’s version of Hell, is listed as “an Elder World map”). I don’t understand why people feel the need to do this. The Cthulhu Mythos has nothing to do with that stuff.

Yes, it did. It’s a step closer to my goal. :slight_smile:

7

Well to be fair, in that article I did explain:

In other words, if there were enough Lovecraftian maps, I wouldn’t have opened up the definition just to get 10 entries in the list. One other thing though, is that id themselves mixed gothic architecture such as spires and gargoyles etc with medieval “Dante Hell” associations, into their Lovecraftian material in their original Quake levels.

That said, if you’re looking for Lovecraftian, you should like Kell’s “He Falls like Lucifer” and “And Wear a Golden Sorrow” both from The Lost Chapters, or Necros “Are You Yet Living” originally designed for the same; if that texture set/style doesn’t strike you as Lovecraftian (though Kell’s “Library World” concept was openly inspired by Lovecraft, and if you put in “knave” you’ll get plenty of maps inspired by that set including my own Arcanum), then I’d suggest Koohoo (which I still think is #1 for this type of thing), or ijed’s “Warp Spasm,” which has some monolithic maps though there isn’t a lot of detail per area. The RMQ 2011 demo, which you can read my review of on this site, had a couple of brilliantly atmospheric expansions of id originals: Legacy of Zin (the original Vaults of Zin’s title taken from Lovecraft) and Sepulcher of Sorrows. I still regret what might have been with that project.

For maps with direct Lovecraft inspiration, there’s Necros “The Rats in the Walls,” Steve Rescoe’s “The Shadow Over Innsmouth,” or my own “Nyarlathotep.” One might also make an argument for certain Temple maps being Lovecraftian given Lovecraft’s tendency to involve ancient human civilizations with his extraterrestrials (which id themselves recognized with e4’s secret map The Nameless City).

Alas, we never got to play what might have ended up being the most Lovecraftian Q1SP of all: Glassman’s lost episode in which the player began in a 1920s American city/library and eventually went to dark Lovecraftian ruins in a swampy environment.

8

One more thing, if you like Koohoo, which uses converted Heretic 2 “Andoria” textures that look a lot grimier in Quake and are unfortunately underused, you will probably like “Shut Up RPG,” which has a similarly slimy, monolithic look:
https://www.quaddicted.com/reviews/sm32_pack.html

9

[quote=CasualQuakeguy]I’ve watched a playthrough video for the first bit of it. It’s nice for what it does, but I’m not seeing the “pure Lovecraft” in it. Just generic, theme-wise, Quake levels.[/quote]Play it, beat it, and then come again.

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I’m sorry, but are you implying that I have something to prove to you? Because I don’t.

My philosophy is that, if I check out a Quake map and it strikes me as “Wow, I’ve got to play that”, then I go ahead and play it. Otherwise, I don’t. And that general philosophy towards gaming in general has saved me a lot of time, money, and aggravation.

11

No, I’m implying that if somebody posts a recommendation, you could at least try and play it, especially since it suits what you’re looking for down to a tee, and not dismiss it after watching a bit of a playthrough…

12

This is quite an old discussion, but I thought I’d throw in my two cents anyway.

Lovecraft is more or less one of the writers I grew up reading (and one of the writers who inspired me to start writing, for better or worse). I think most people associate him with the “cosmic horror” concept and the pantheon/bestiary of the “Cthulhu Mythos” (which was, by the way, not codified or defined as such by Lovecraft himself), but there is a lot more variety to his work than that. Much of what he wrote is more similar to what we would today call fantasy (cf. The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath and many other so-called Dream Cycle stories) or science fiction (In the Walls of Eryx, The Silver Key/Through the Gates of the Silver Key), and was also influenced by his general anti-Enlightenment philosophy and racism, neither of which are unique to Lovecraft. I don’t think Quake’s gothic castles would be out-of-place in a Lovecraft story, quite the contrary; neither would an abstract sci-fi-ish facility from e.g. the recent Cataractnacon / Zeangala two-level pack (which was released about two years after the OP, unfortunately). It seems quite bizarre to me to call Contract Revoked/The Lost Chapters non-Lovecraftian when to me they fit in quite well with Lovecraft’s ideas. I think people get too focused on “cosmic horror” and moments when Lovecraft describes something as ‘too horrible/alien to be described’ and forget that his reference points for e.g. Old Ones architecture in a lot of stories is human architecture, with words like non-Euclidean thrown in. For every totally otherworldly moment in a Lovecraft story, there are dozens that are best described as disturbed familiarity; only one of those two can be easily captured in a video game level.

Put simply, there’s a lot more to Lovecraft than slime, tentacles, and bad seafood.

It’s also worth noting that Lovecraft was writing at a time before things like horror, sci-fi, and fantasy were more or less rigidly codified as distinct genres, so naturally his work, to modern readers, would seem to blend all three–assuming you’re reading a proper variety of his work and are open to its many variations. I also think that a lot of peoples’ perception of Lovecraft has been negatively influenced by people like August Derleth, who narrowed the scope of Lovecraft’s ideas and supposed influence at the same that he attempted to canonize him. (Enter the terrible “Cthulhu Mythos” concept.)

As a side note, it’s odd that someone would watch a video playthrough of a frikkin Quake level before actually playing it. I can see doing that for actual games, which can be expensive and a big time investment… but for free mods that rarely take as much time to play through as a stock Quake episode? Come on.

13

Why would it be odd? There’s so much crap/lame/not-so-good stuff out there that watching a vid allows for quality control beforehand. And like a film trailer, it could also whet the appetite by building up the anticipation. Currently I’m having a blast playing Something Wicked after watching the beginning of Custom Gamer’s playthrough.

14

I’d say its odd to watch a full video as well, as stuff like secrets and encounters are best experienced unspoiled. On the other hand doing as you do, bfg, is perfectly sensible to use a video as a taster so you decide what maps to play. Personally I plan on playing every release to completion so my only thing is to figure out what map to play.

15

Indeed, watching the whole video would spoil the thing. But playing EVERY release might be overkill. Not every map out there is interesting, some are boring and some are downright lame. I remember the mid-90’s, I didn’t have an internet connection back then so I had bought a CD chockful of literally thousands of unofficial maps and wads made by the Doom community and boy, was there a fair share of crap! There are so many great games to play that I really don’t have neither the time nor the will to play shitty stuff.