Get ready for an otherworldly trip with our latest free Add-on for Quake! Inspired by Quake's fourth episode, step into the imaginative Spiritworld today!

SPIRITWORLD

Download and play Spiritworld by visiting the in-game Add-ons menu for Quake, available on PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch, with backwards compatibility on Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5.

Want to know more about this Copper mod-infused community creation? Read our exclusive Nods to Mods interview below as we go behind-the-scenes with this new Add-on and give a warm welcome to its authors joining us all the way from Finland: Newhouse & zigi!

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SLAYERS CLUB: Congratulations on the release of the Spiritworld! We’re excited to have you join the roster of Quake Add-ons. How long have you both been making levels?

NEWHOUSE: I found my passion for Quake mapping in early 2015, but started actively creating since 2016, so about eight years.

ZIGI: Although I've been playing Quake since 1996, I only started mapping for it in 2019. I was mostly a multiplayer guy for a long time but played some community content every now and then. Nowadays, I barely have time to play anything because all my free time goes into various mapping projects.

SC: We’re excited to feature such a modern Add-on, originally released earlier this year! What can you tell us about the modern Quake modding scene?

ZIGI: The modern Quake modding scene is doing pretty good, in my opinion. There's a lot of new faces popping up in the Quake mapping Discord (there's a lot of old ones, too) and there's a good amount of mapping events happening on a regular basis!

We also have a small but quite active Quake mapping community in Finland (where Newhouse and I are from), so far we have released two episodes and currently working on our third.

SC: How big was your team for this project?

ZIGI: We had quite a lot of people involved with code, textures, modeling, sound, music and playtesting. 10, if I remember correctly - I'll try to remember them all later on!

SC: How long did it take to complete?

ZIGI: It took us about ten months to make the episode, plus an additional two weeks to make the modifications for the re-release.

SC: What was your main inspiration?

ZIGI: The main inspiration was the fourth episode [of Quake], the Elder World. I actually started planning on doing an Elder World-themed episode in 2021 but it never really kicked off. Then, after organizing an Elder World-themed speedmapping event in May of 2022, I decided that it's time to start working on it.

I've always known that Newhouse is one of the few besides myself that likes Episode 4 the most from the original game, so I asked him if he'd be interested in collaborating on it. Here we are in 2023, with an episode full of weird layouts and nasty traps! Both of our maps from that speedmapping event got modified and ended up in Spiritworld. Let me add as a bonus that I got the name for the episode from the movie, "Predator 2."

NEWHOUSE: I always loved Sandy Petersen's levels in DOOM II and his work on Episode 4 in Quake inspired me right from the start. Many of my speedmapping and jam entries were learning the sense of more dreamy layout creation, with plenty of eeriness and horror. When zigi asked me to help map Spiritworld, I got lots of ideas in my head what the Spiritworld as a story would mean. I ended up telling some form of subtle, dark, twisted story within my contributions. During [its] creation, I shared lots of prefabs for traps and other elements for zigi.

SC: What are your approaches to level design?

ZIGI: My approach on designing a level usually starts with working on the middle part of the map. A lot of my maps have some kind of a centerpiece that the player will revisit at least once. It's easy to start building a map from that main room, designing new encounters every time the player comes back to it.

NEWHOUSE: My level creation process is based on multiple ideas like puzzle pieces that will find their place [...] as I keep mapping. I like to think the ideas are floating on this big empty canvas until all the colors have been found, then the painting starts to live. I enjoy figuring out how different emotions connect with each other in more ”dreamy” logic; none of my maps could be seen as trying to be realistic. There is something neat about dreams and Quake mapping overlapping.

SC: Why did you choose the Copper mod to supplement this project? Did you modify it if at all to accomplish your vision? (Editor’s Note: Check out our Nods to Mods interview with authors Lunaran and Scampie for more on Copper, the single-player supplement also featured in the Underdark Overbright Add-on.)

ZIGI: Copper feels [like ’vanilla’ Quake] with some small, but still excellent, changes and fixes.The five-second respawn lockout makes co-op really fun, too. And it's very mapper friendly!

NEWHOUSE: We chose Copper immediately. It just seemed like the cleanest of mods then and it provided lots of needed triggers and code to make encounters feel rich yet still very ’vanilla’ [Quake]. Copper feels very focused in a good way, allowing us to not get confused by too many options.

SC: What tools did you use to create this Add-on?

NEWHOUSE: We used Trenchbroom and ericw-tools for the maps, TexMex for taking out texture WADs from maps or add textures, QME Quake Model Editor to add skins for the new boss and FTEQC Code Converter for compiling new progs, as we did add a few new lines of code.

SC: Do you have any favorite modders in the Quake community? Any noteworthy maps or mods you’d recommend?

NEWHOUSE: I grew up the most during creation of SMEJ 1 & 2 with Finnish mappers, but my inspiration was always to create levels like Sandy Petersen did and evolve. Other than that, I just enjoy collaborating with many of talented Quake mappers and learn together. I can't highlight just one, as there are so many that have influenced me during these years. For other episodes, I enjoy playing Dimension of the Past quite a lot.

ZIGI: I really hate to pick one modder or team from so many good releases throughout the years of Quake modding, but my all-time favorite pack is "Travail - A Quake Journey.” Episode 2 is something I especially like.

SC: Wanna give any other shout-outs? No time like the present…

ZIGI: I'd like to start by thanking the 10 people I mentioned earlier that helped us with the episode:

Immorpher, dumptruck and BouncyTEM for making the music tracks we used.

bmFbr and VuRkka for helping with coding, danz for textures.

Kebby, ptoing, Fairweather and sock for models, code and skins for the boss and the Rune of Spirits.

Thanks to the additional playtesters: alexUnder, Henry Ambrose, Mazu, riktoi and pqp.

Thanks to id Software for making Quake and especially Sandy Petersen for making the Elder World. Thanks to Lunaran for the Copper mod. Thanks to the Quake community for making awesome stuff for 27 years! Finally, thank YOU for playing Spiritworld.

NEWHOUSE: Shoutout to the Spiritworld team as whole, also the SMEJ Team for all the good memories of making SMEJ 1 & 2. Special thanks for zigi standing me, as I can be quite chaotic sometimes. Shoutout to all the great people hosting all kinds of neat mapping events and creation of projects to come.