As with Q4DM10, DM11 began with a single idea, in this case the windowed corridor containing the grenade launcher and its surrounding jump pads and adjacent overlooking platform. From there, I moved inward to construct the large central platform and surrounding connections. A little over-the-shoulder design from Tremors cohort Matthew Breit helped flesh out what would become the south railgun corridor and a couple other lingering bits on the west side of the map, at which point we had a winner.

The level layout remained mostly unchanged, but the original item layout for this level was considerably different, featuring the rocket launcher atop the central platform, additional armor, and a complete lack of the railgun. In testing, however, the rocket launcher position (plus a couple extra jump pads - one from the lowest level near the final rocket launcher position, and one from the final shotgun position) turned the area into a bloodbath, leading to its replacement by a single armor piece. id appreciated the attempt to go rail-less, but requested that we re-add it. This was the right call, as the rail made for extra excitement in the long outer corridors, particularly with the overlook from the nailgun room down the rail corridor.

With the birth of my child imminent, I took the month of December off, leaving the final pass on the level to Mr. Breit. In the process, he also took care of a few lingering issues, including a visual pass to the nailgun room and an excellent layout tweak in removing the back jump pad up to the armor platform, replacing it with an open hole that dropped down into the shotgun hallway.

You can see more of this level at matthewbreit.com

As work wound down on Quake 4's single player, many of our designers started doodling various MP map ideas during downtime between bugs and new builds. One of my early fiddlings featured a long narrow accelerator pad to a floating quad damage overlooked by a railgun platform. When the call came for maps for the post-release map pack, that draft evolved into Q4DM10.

I was inspired thematically by the final lighting pass to the Medlabs level in the single player game. I loved the idea of a tighter interior level in that style, using the (relatively) clean and bright second-pass Medlabs textures to aid visibility.

The level's layout started as just two very simple ideas, the first being the rail/quad overlook, and the second being an outer loop that ramped up from the lowest level all the way to the top. With the first draft of the rail platform and accelerator pad in place, I began working on the loop that would link the two, and eventually become the grenade launcher area. While cramped, the area features great drop-down, over/under, and end-around ambush opportunities, and I consider it among my strongest deathmatch layout elements.

The opposite atrium, while still fun, lacks some of the excitement of its counterpart. I attempted to create a larger more open atrium, but the fun of the grenade launcher area came from its tight quarters and brutal weapon loadout. The nailgun and yellow armor are valuable assets, but the area would have benefited greatly from a set of tighter connections both in gameplay and visually, as the very horizontal Medlabs walls don't hold up as well stacked vertically.

Among the last additions to the level were the sets of blue pipes that curve into the ground. These were ramp-clipped to provide ramp-jump shortcut opportunities, but in hindsight their shape doesn't provide the expectation of that movement mechanic. The idea would have been better executed either as it was in Q4DM11 or by better integrating a slope instead of a curve into the surrounding geometry.

As Quake 4 map pack work got rolling, the call went out for an additional CTF level. Of the three designers on the map pack, Matthew Breit and I were both sitting at one contribution apiece (Q4DM9 and Q4DM10, respectively) with designer Mike Majernik having already put together two—Q4Tourney1 and Q4CTF6—it fell to Matt or myself to take on the new level. A battle to the death for final map rights seemed inefficient, so we settled on a tag-team effort.

CTF7 began with my midground, which I started by constructing the rail platform and main entrance structure for each base. From there, I pieced together brushwork to represent a series of tiered paths crossing through a large cavern space. As those connections developed, we decided to go with a double-atrium structure.

Matthew was particularly pleased with a CTF base he had built for a Raven speedmap exercise during some downtime in Q4's final days before launch, and we discovered it lined up very closely with the work I was doing in the midground. We had our flag bases! These set much of the visual tone for the map, and may well be some of the nicest looking spaces in the game.

We gained tremendous optimization knowledge in shipping the Xbox 360 SKU, but despite our best planning efforts, the first draft of Tremors still hit more performance issues than we had anticipated, particularly from light overdraw in the large atriums. While I was out on parental leave, Matt took on the final optimization pass. We had really wanted to avoid the flat ambient lighting used in most other MP maps, but getting performant required sacrificing a darker and more moody lighting style. The shipping version is mostly lit by a single massive light and uses fewer terrain blends to reduce the overall draw calls.

While it was disappointing losing some of the visual polish to the atriums, it was what the map needed to play smoothly. The final map held strong even at 8v8, with the large atriums and long overlapping straightaways offering some great flag runs and chases. Tremors was a joint effort from start to finish, but with Matt's heroic optimization pass I think it's only fair to give him first-billing in this map's credits.

Tremors was initially launched in the "Quakemas" map pack in December 2005, then included in the final Quake 4 1.1/1.2 patch. You can see more of Tremors at matthewbreit.com.