I turned thirteen the day Quake Shareware was originally released [22nd of June]. :D I was going to release a Shareware Quake celebration map -- but then I didn't. 

i was like 12 when i first got quake... it barely ran on my 486 too. :P

at the time, i though sv_gravity was the best cheat code of all time. 

I never had the computer to run it when it first came out, and I actually got into Quake 2 first around 2000/2001. When I got sick of playing it I decided that I wanted to try and make some maps for it. This wasn't an easy thing for my feeble 14 year old mind, so I sent out a lot of pathetic e-mails asking for help and pretty much the only person who replied to me was a guy by the name of "Rush" who told me to check out both #terrafusion and Qmap.org

I was dismayed at first because most of #tf and Qmap were more into (and still mapping for) Quake, which I had never played before and knew nothing about. So in the interest of actually trying to get help with my maps instead of feedback like "Quake 2 sucks, map for Quake," I made the jump and started checking out the original Quake.

I'm very glad I did because there has been such a wealth of quality custom content compared to Quake 2 and even most non-Quake games. Also, I feel like I learned a lot about gameplay, balance, and what truly makes a game fun from Quake and all of the Quake enthusiasts who continued to play it and map for it.

Today I am making FPS levels for a living and I am happier than I've been in a long god damn time. I doubt I would be here if I hadn't met all of the great people I came to know through the Quake community, and I think that says more than anything else :) 

Played shareware Quake on 486 with the screen shrunk way down. Got to e1m7, and used impulse 9 followed by emptying all cells, nails, and half my rockets into Cthon and he still wasn't dead. He was one tough mofo. At that point I quit to try again later. I dunno when I figured out how to actually beat him. 

the first time I encountered the shambler in e1m5. I ran to the moat and dove in like a wee girl, and killed him by pecking shots at him from below. 

Yay!
First time I played the quake demo, I remember thinking: "this game is ugly, Duke Nukem 3D is so much better!"... Fortunatly, I stopped being a blind idiot somewhere around my second shambler... ;)

Hurrah for quake! \o/ 

I recall being confused that it didnt prompt me for a skill selection in the menu, and that I started with a shotgun.

I also recall being amazed at the explosions, that grenades bounced so well, and that the friggin ogres had chainsaws and grenade launchers!

I have more vivid of memories relating to registered Quake which I got on December 25th 1996, but I dont think that technically qualifies for this thread. 

I still remember my first Quake session sometime in 97(?) on a friend�s pc, he just turned on god mode and let me play while he was shopping or something, I nearly wet my pants lol

weirdest: just recently played sm82 aka rubicondom, there�s a short part with a platform above lava near the end, and there are NO fireballs coming out of it, yet "something" pushed me off to my doom, and I was not able to reproduce it... 

NO fireballs coming out of it, yet "something" pushed me off to my doom

Yeah, that was me. You were on a network in coop mode. I thought you knew, sorry. 

I remember way back when the shareware first came out, a friend showed it to me on his computer. I remember thinking it didn't look all that great, but I thought it was cool when he showed me how you could blow the marines to pieces (didn't know about gibs/jibs back then) with the double barrel shotgun.

Later (several months?), I found a copy on a magazine cover CD and tried it out - I think I was ready then, and it just clikced. This was just the game for me. I also remember that I had quite a bit of trouble finding a store which had a copy of the game locally. I think it was late '97 by then, so I guess the popularity at retail had worn off.

My favourite moment had to be finding Matt Sefton's SPQ level heaven. Not having played doom more than in passing, I wasn't aware of all the modding possibilities with these games and I totally was blown away.

I also remember very clearly an early deathmatch experience as a total noob, where I was in dm6 with just one other person getting my arse kicked. The cool thing was that after a few minutes he stopped killing me and started giving me lessons in how to move around, dodge better, etc. That's actually the first time I found out about the 'sensitivity' console command, among other things. Heh, fun times.

Oh, that reminds me - I have to give mention those few times all the people from qboard got together and deathmatched on the GGH server. I was playing with 700+ pings but I didn't care. Awesome fun - one of my fondest Quake memories.

Current and future plans? Well, of course I'm trying really hard to get a map ready for Quake Expo this year, which may or may not happen. Over 12k brushes now and it's probably going to take about two weeks to vis. If I don't make it in time then I'll be releasing it soon after, so no big deal. After that I'm going to do some more programming, working on the tools and engine. Not too sure about future maps yet, other than finishing the one other map I've started. I think it's probably going to be time to learn a new editor (Radiant I guess) before I start anything new.

It actually seems ridiculous to me to think that I'll still be playing and mapping for Quake in 10 years, but somehow I know it's true. Quake will always be there. 

i found out shareware quake in Fev. 1997 in a friend house since then i start playing Quakeworld almost everyday untill 2000 then i get maried and u guys now work, life, kid :\ and qw died a litle for me and in 2004 i found about Quake single player :) start playing untill now i love so much SP Quake that also start to map for it in november 2005, i still suck but i promiss i will not quit and will keep making maps! 

Before playing Quake, I was already addicted to Doom... so when I discovered Quake: it was obviously the best game ever... At this time, I spent all my university lunch time to play Quake (SP/DM) instead of eating !!! I also was in a satanic period (OMG I shouldn't say that here !!! ...) I was listening a lot of Black / Death Metal band (like Cannibal Corpse, Napalm Death, Death, Slayer, Sepultura, Massacre, etc.. etc.. ) even my pseudo at this time was evilish (slayer666).. I was fitting very well with the game ambiance right ? As you see: I lost it for a less "aggressive" one ;P... Anyway.. Mapping for Quake is now my tribute to the game...
Now I just can add that Quake is the best new experience I made, except sex.... that's it ;D 

I don�t remember it exactly but I think that I played quake in 1996 for the first time. It was a beta version of the game with bigger e2m6 and some other strange things (I own a legal copy of quake now if you are curious). That was my first pc (P120) and first computer game I played. We were playing together with my brother and a friend. We didn�t use the mouse and since this was the first fps we saw in our life we were dying a lot on e1m1, e1m2 and so on. The pleasure stopped on e4m6. In this beta the silver key was unreachable (the wall didn�t open). We spent many hours trying to find that key but since we didn�t know about any cheat codes (or even console commands) we had to give up :). I didn�t have access to internet in that time so we couldn�t find any help. Those were the beginnings. I never ever spent so much time on any computer game like in that time on quake.

After some years, I think it was in 2001, I got my interest on quake again. I found all the great custom maps and also the quake done quick runs which are still amazing for me. I also started mapping quietly for myself in that time. Since then I always was into quake more or less

I don�t know if I will still make maps (I have the layout and 2 rooms ready for the next one). I will sure stay in touch with quake related things as long as funcmsgboard and speed demos archive exist. And I will also play quake for a long time. I played beyond belief yesterday and what a fun it was! 

I remember when I first saw Quake... at the time the sexiest game I had seen was Duke3d, so you can imangine how far my jaw dropped when a friend loaded up the demo, I think my jaw dis-located and rolled down both flights of stairs in his house :)

Cheers to everyone who has made fun maps for Quake (too many to list..), and people I have played and mapped with over the years, its been fun!

Jesus christ 10 years, Im getting OLD :( 

I don't even remember when I first heard about Quake... I just remember it being the only thing on my Christmas list the year it came out, due to it being made by the guys who did Doom. I played NetQuake religiously on Mplayer for a year or so, even lead a clan on there (KAC, the Kick Ass Clan). I played using the keyboard only forever, until one day some kind sole on a random server stopped and told me all about mouselook and such. :)

I remember clearly how I got into mapping though. It was an article in PCGames magazine, written by LevelLord. I was so excited about getting more content for the game, and even the prospect of making my own maps. I've played video games forever, and had always dreamed of making my own, so level design seemed like such a natural fit.

I got onto PlanetQuake the day after reading that article, found an editor called Thead (or Theed, can't really remember), and went at it full force. Of course, the maps were just cube brushes mashed together, CSG cut, and filled with all the stupid gimmicks ever, but I thought they were good at the time :)

It wasn't until Quake2 came out that I was actually making decent maps. I started using Qoole, and actually released some maps onto the 'net. Some tutorial on Rust opened my eyes to the proper ways of making maps, and I was now actually downloading maps by Headshot (I actually refreshed his homepage a few times a day hoping a new map would come out :), and ZTN, and whatever seemed like quality on MPQ.

When Qboard hit the scene, I was there for day one. Since I hadn't really released anything worthwhile, I just lurked for almost a full year, learning what I could, downloading all the great new maps that were coming out all the time, and reliezing slowly that all the great mappers where still mapping for Quake, not Quake2.

Sometime around then, I went back to Quake, and made 2 more maps and released them. I first posted onto Qboard ("ANTI-CHEESY MAPPERS OF THE WORLD UNITE!", a silly rant against Mr. Fribbles' claim that cheese makes mappers better).

Also around then, I found out from a random news post on Blues that some Quake2 mod called HeadHunters 2 had included one of my maps into their new release! They had never asked me or anything, so I instantly downloaded the mod and checked it out, ready to send out angry emails... but as if fate had intended it, playing on my own map online for the first time, I happened to be on the same server as Monsto Brukes, one of the head honchos of the mod! After talking with him for awhile, a great friendship was formed, which lead me to make a map for Headhunters 2 CTF, and then later, work on HeadHunters 3 (which we started before Quake3 came out, and completely scrapped after it came out and started again :)

I got thousands of great stories and memories of all my time playing/mapping Quake over the years, and I don't think I have time to sit around and type them all out here. It's been the craziest, most lifechanging 10 years of my life playing this game. Thanks all for the great times, and I'll see you 10 years from now ;)

(Shout out to lost mapping community heroes: ZTN, Headshot, Danimal, Peej, Killjoy, Alcatraz, Preacher, Gonzo, Pingu, Killer, Kaneada, Cheshire, JuniorJr, ELEK, Damaul, Excessus, Hot Cakes, Paradies, Gandhi, Ninja, Retinal, stecki, Malevola, Escher, Kickin Ken, SleepwalkR, Fern, CardO, Yogi, and anyone else I forgot!) 

I remember even just being able to look up and down was the most unbelieveably amazing thing. The ceiling is coming down at you, and you're LOOKING UP AND SEEING IT. Holy cow.

It's now the most unbelievably amazing thing that it was ten years ago. 

I engaged in a coitus like dance known as Worldcraft/QW/and IPX network games at school with aliases set to tell everyone to alt-tab quickly when the lab prof. was seen in the distance through the glass windows.

Somehow I even managed to make quake maps as part of class projects. One being a design for a 'public building' where I designed an underground office and printed out all the x,y,z views to demonstrate this to the teacher.

As most people here I religiously followed updates at MPQ related to DM map releases and would feverously download anything with an above average review. Eventually I grew a pair and submitted my own map. Blackpope's mountain getaway. or pope1.bsp

Paul reviewed it, favourably. I still swear he must of been extremely drunk because even for the time it was released ('98) the build quality was poor and had some issues. Maybe he just liked the unique feel of it? I forget how the review went.

I slipped back into hiding after that. I was still on dial-up and had no concept of irc or message boards yet. Then one day downloaded one of Bal's maps and was reinspired to map again. Seriously.

Somehow in this i found qmap, qboard was gone by then. I was surprisingly welcomed into the community happily something that today just doesn't... happen without a decent map to introduce yourself with you seem to get written off as a twit.

my hands hurt, i'm not typing anymore... 

I ain't lost, dude =). Still reading this board every day. But you're right, most of the guys you listed are kind of lost now. Lots of good friends there whom I wouldn't mind to have a chat with every once in a while. 

Get your butt into #terrafusion then.

I can't remember the first time I played Quake, it's lost in a blur of mapping and online dm. :(

My first contact with mapping myself was coming across one of Fribs maps and recognizing his name from Red Dwarf promptly jumped onto his messageboard to ask him if he realised that he had spelt it wrong. After that I just hung around there and moved with the times as we went through the qboard and it's various subsequent incarnations.

I have a feeling that the first map I ever showed to anyone (but far from the first one I had made) was a multilevel atriumed map that I sent to SleepwalkR on irc. (could be wrong on whether it was him though).

I never released anything at this point, being, as I still am, a helpless hoarder of 99% completed levels and was devastated when a few months later the computers harddrive was accidentally wiped clean and I lost everything I had built upto that point.

So I started over, the first map I built after that eventually became Trondm1 after I sent it to Frib and he told me to finish and release it.

Since that first release in 1999 I have made a living out of releasing screenshots of promising projects which eventually fade into the dark recesses of my harddrive...I'm ashamed to say that I haven't done any mapping for Quake since I last speedmapped as I am trying to break this pattern by actually finishing and releasing my D3SP. 

Getting shareware quake on a pile of disks from some schoolmate, maybe 1996 or 1997. I played with a keyboard, but I upped the resolution from standard since I had a newish p-150.

I first liked duke better, although I didn't bother playing the episodes much. A friend had gotten a huge amount of custom duke maps from somewhere (a bbs?) and we played duel with him on a crossover serial cable. I also did some maps there, it was so easy. Pre-internet we played other games too.

But later friends got me into getting internet and playing quakeworld team fortress. It was such a newbie-friendly game and there were a huge amount of people playing it around 1998. I got to know many, played in a clan. Oh those 10v10 matches. I only "seriously" started dm and then finally sp later in 2000something, so it's been a kinda bassackwards thingy.

So I can say, I've been intending to do a decent map for soon ten years. First dm duel maps for friends and reapers, then team fortress, then dm and then sp. Maybe someday I'll finish something.

I've used far too much time and produced far too little results. I've stopped all quake related multiple times and resumed later again. I've met quake acquaintances abroad. Sometimes fun discussions, sometimes fun, sometimes insulting.

Dunno, it's a mixed feeling.

I guess this is a quakers apology. 

... damnit! of course you're still around... maybe I was trying to forget you? 

I was really into playing Doom 2 in the high school computer lab. We had mostly 386s with one 486 in the corner, so I always tried to get to the 486. The funny thing is, when I eventually saw Quake, I thought it looked pretty much the same graphically. (It had been 6 months since playing doom 2, however.)

I got Quake for Christmas '96, and it ran fairly well on my brand-new college computer: a Pentium 166 with 32 megs of RAM. For the first few months, I played it exclusively with the joystick and keyboard. I remember being frightened of shamblers -- especially being lost in Azure Agony and running like hell whenever I saw one.

I guess in like January or February '97 was when I discovered SPQ Level Heaven and Crash's Quake Pages, and started downloading levels. Around the same time I discovered that you could edit the levels and I downloaded Thred and started trying to map. It took days before I could get a working door. I also remember thinking it was stupid that the water was bright even in dark rooms. I guess I've gotten over it, though :)

I eventually started a level that became The Crawling Chaos, which took like 9 months and I released in December, just after Q2 was released and everyone stopped caring about Quake. However, I was already making good progress on Rubicon and didn't want to abandon it, so I worked on that while the Q2 mapping scene exploded.

After Rubicon I switched to Q2 and made multiplayer maps, as I was a frequent player on satan.idsoftware.com and my dorm-room T1 gave me a pretty decent ping. I thought that Q1 was pretty much dead for good, with all the old review sites on hiatus, until 2000 or so when I discovered Shambler's review of Rubicon and shortly after discovered Qmap and #terrafusion.

P.S. Scampie, I now work with Yogi on an MMORPG. He sits in the cube 5 feet away from me. 

i still remember the first time i loaded up the game and was in the start map.

i walked over to the normal skill hallway and almost freaked when i noticed that there was an area below the bars that i was walking on.

i went on the internet and got qoole right then and there, before i even played more than a handful of levels. (at the time, i had really been annoyed about the 2d restriction of doom level editing).

of course, at that time, i didn't actually have the internet connection at my home, and had to go to school. i used to bring a whole butt load of floppys to the computer lab and try to download as many maps and mods as i could so i could try them out at home... lol :P 

Yep, A zipped full version of Quake was equicalent to 17 floppy... I guess I still have them somewhere at home ! 

I started with Quake during the QTest era, almost 11 years ago (holy crap I feel old). Back then I was still living in Moscow and being the little computer-addicted child that I was, I often frequented my dad's workplace where they had a bunch of programmers working on computers on a big LAN. These guys introduced me to QTest and multiplayer deathmatch the week it was released :)

Sometime later I moved to Finland with my family and the son of my dad's coworker introduced me to Quake shareware and I became interested in level design pretty much a few weeks of playing the full game on my 486 dx/33 laptop :)

I released my first Quake map titled "Dark, Blue, Scary..." using IKBlue textures sometime in 1997 (I think) and this was also around the time I found this community although by now I can't remember what name it went by at that point in time (Peej 'n Frib's, QBoard, Qmap are all mixed up in my mind) and I also got hooked on #terrafusion. The map was crap, had a leak (so it was not VISed) but I got totally hooked on creating my own virtual worlds.

I made 3 Quake 2 maps and at that point, my interest was stolen by Unreal, so I spent a long time mapping for that (5 SP maps and 5 DM maps released). I had a serious mappers block for a rather long period and when it was gone, I got back into Quake because no new FPS games could keep my interest for a long time, this was around early 2003.

I started playing QuakeWorld every day and got back into mapping. Contributed to the 1000brush DKT-themed map pack, released "Apinaraivo / Monkey Rage" Q1SP in early 2005 and a DM version of that same map ("Enraged") with some help from Bambuz in early 2006.

Wow, my fingers hurt after all this typing :D