Bal's Classic Deathmatch Maps

Using Slipgate Sightseer as a final resting place for my collection of Quake deathmatch maps, that I made in the late 90s, when Quake was still at the height of it's popularity.

I had mapped for Rise of the Triad and Duke Nukem 3D before, but never released anything, Quake is really the game that impressed me the most and got me to consider games as a real career choice. Without it, I have no idea what I would be doing today.

I'll go over all 9 of my released DM maps here, as well as 2 maps that were unreleased until today!
All these maps are in the downloadable zip file.

• Baldm1 - Horror at Red Hook (1998)
• Baldm2 - In the Vault (1998)

These are my first released maps, and at the time I thought I would name all my maps after Lovecraft stories. They aren't very good, but they got the ball rolling for me.

• Baldm3 - Tainted Meat (1999)

This was the map that got me some community attention, a big free-for-all base/cave brawl map. I was super happy with the visuals at the time, a fun mix of Quake 2 and ikbase textures.
Moving away from the Lovecraft titles, this one was a reference to a character in a Neal Stephenson novel, Zodiac.

• Baldm4 - Eternal Life (1999)
• Baldm5 - When the Beast Prevails (1999)

These two next maps were fairly standard, similar to what many mappers were doing at the time.
Baldm4 was really inspired by Headshot's classic atrium style maps (like his great dead.bsp), title was a Jeff Buckley (rip) reference.
Baldm5 was meant to be part of a pack organized by Killjoy, all the maps were using these white textures, which was quite unseen for Quake at the time. The title here is me in my Vampire phase, was playing a lot of the pen&paper RPG, was a reference to losing your last shreds of humanity (revisted this theme later with my Quake3 map, Bal3dm2 "Golconda", but I don't care about vampires anymore ).

• Baldm6 - Scrap Metal (1999)

This next one was built with 1v1 in mind, using new textures from Pox. Was quite happy with it at the time, so much that I later converted it to Quake 3 (using textures by Lunaran!) as Bal3dm4 - Scrap Metal ][, and it was even included in CPMA.

• Baldm7 - Black Feathered Wings (1999)
• Reinc5 - Somewhere in the Vast (2000)

I was not very proud of Baldm7, as I absent-mindlessly released it without realizing I was using a yet-unreleased texture set that one of my favorite mappers, GeN, had shared with me.
Fortunately he forgave me, and Reinc5 is actually part of the Reincarnation map pack, made with him and Gonzo. This map was my first foray into void maps, which were becoming popular at the time.
More music references for the titles here, Jeff Buckley again for the first, and Vast for the latter.

• Baldm8 - Dying Embers (2000)

My last official Quake DM map, with a not so subtle title proclaiming it would be so (little did I know I'd fall victim to Quake-addiction again 17 years later).
I didn't release this map when I finished it, as the open layout wasn't great for performance, and actually converted to Quake 3, as my first map for that game, Bal3dm1 - Ash Rain. It's only a while later that I was convinced to also release this original version. The textures here are from the game Kingpin.

• Balscy - Dunno Yet (unreleased)
• Balcc - Carrion Comfort (unreleased)

These next two maps were actually never released until today despite being mostly complete. Balscy was made closely after Baldm7, and I think it's actually a better map, but somehow it never made it to release (didn't even get a proper map title!)
Balcc was some weird attempt at another large free-for-all map, using some Unreal textures. It's playable, but I could never get the layout to really work like I wanted. Title here was from a novel by Dan Simmons.

As a final farewell to my Quake deathmatch mapping days, I'm releasing both of them here now!