Nods to Mods Interview: Terra for Quake

Welcome back to another Quake edition of Nods to Mods, where we sit down with community creators to get a closer look at their process!

We’re so excited to be featuring another amazing Add-on from returning veteran CZG, aka Christian Grawert, Terra. Terra is a free eight-level Add-on for the re-release of Quake, available now.

For those out there who may have missed it, check out our previous Nods to Mods interview with Christian for the amazing Honey Add-on. (Fun Fact: Christian is also currently the Lead Level Designer for MachineGames!)

SLAYERS CLUB: A warm welcome back, Christian! Feels like only yesterday we had you on here to talk about Honey, but today we get to talk about an earlier creation in your prolific portfolio. In our last interview, you cited your muse for Honey as the unique architecture seen in your travels to Italy and London. What was your main inspiration for Terra?

CHRISTIAN GRAWERT: I don’t think I had any real-life inspirations for Terra. Rather, I was trying to emulate the feeling you get from old-school DOOM and Quake levels. DOOM (1993) was a big inspiration in general, both with the choice of themes and how the combat is set up. Most of the levels are fairly simple small spaces set up with primarily gameplay in mind.

For me, though, the project was really a way to get out of a level design rut because I had dozens of small, disjointed map pieces in various themes that I was struggling with what to do with. I had convinced myself that making big and impressive levels was the only way to go and I just didn’t have the energy or inspiration for doing that at the time. So I decided, “you know what, what if I just slap an exit onto this scrap and call it done? I can do that with all of these,” and then suddenly it’s like a small episode like the original DOOM and Quake games had. It was a way of taking all these small pieces that I knew had something good about them and just presenting that as-is.

SC: Since Terra predates Honey by many years, were they any major differences in how you approached the level design in Terra when compared to Honey, be it tools or any other major factors?

CG: I think Terra originally was built with only the WorldCraft shareware. The tools back then were a bit limiting but in the end, I think that helped rather than hindered. Kept it small and compact. For this re-release, though, I put them into TrenchBroom and did some passes setting up details and some colored lighting now that the tools easily support that.

SC: How long did it take to complete the eight-level Add-on, Terra?

CG: It’s a bit difficult to say for sure. The original scraps they were based on had slowly accumulated up over the years since I started mapping but they sat there gestating for a long time. Then, when I decided to wrap them up and release them, it all went really quick. Just a few months for the entire thing, I believe.

For this release, I think I spent a few evenings on each level, though some took more time than others.
I made a new start level, because the original didn’t have one, but that was a quick job - just a day or two. I didn’t add a Nightmare skill select though, so don’t go looking for it.

One thing I did do was reshuffle the order of the levels because the difficulty progression felt a bit off. Torture Department, which is pretty easy and straightforward, used to be the last level while Shotgun Experiment II, which came before, is actually rather tricky with all the platforming over lava.

I also reworked the ending of Shotgun Experiment II. It used to be so abrupt, it was just “Jump to this platform. Done.” You can see that it’s the exit now, plus you get to mess around with Chthon some more, which is fun.

I also added in the level Witch House Mixtape, which I had made in 2021 while learning TrenchBroom. I added that one because I don’t think a lot of people played it and it would be nice to reach a wider audience. It has a nice theme that matches with the rest of Terra and when I first released it, everyone kept ragging on me because it was so dark. (It’s brighter now.)

Finally, I always felt that Terra had no real finale, so I decided to add a whole new level to cap it off properly with an emphasis on brutal gameplay. I decided on the theme for Sentinel Rave pretty early, but it went through a lot of iterations before it became what it is now. It started as a take on DOOM E4M6, which became a Sen’s Fortress kind of thing before I settled on this weird void stronghold guarding against something unknown. After you beat it, imagine you go home to your house and have a good time with your pet pig.

SC: What’s up with the sweet wizard theme?

CG: Wizards are just strange. They love to build impractical castles in the weirdest places and their sense of interior design is dated at best. But they do have sweet robes and hats, though.

SC: In your original text file bundled alongside Terra, you signed off with “BLEHINGS FROM MARS”. Out of curiosity, if space travel were possible (with current issues of time, resources and survivability magically solved), where would you like to travel to for your next Quake Add-on inspiration?

CG: I think we’re long overdue for a revisit to Phobos!

SC: Thanks for your many contributions to Quake over the years, Christian! Before we go, do you have any new shoutouts you’d like to give?

CG: Again, shoutouts to my friends and colleagues at MachineGames who helped me playtest and make things better. Shoutouts to Lunaran and Scampie who made the lovely Underdark Overbright which was featured as the previous Quake Add-on. Shoutout to Asaki, who made a mod where you have to herd kitties through Quake using a laser pointer.