30th Anniversary Events

[h4724]

Do you know what time it is?

We're less than 3 months away from Quake's 30th anniversary on the 22nd of June 2026. That's a big one, so we want to have a big celebration. For the Quake community, that means lots of mapping events.

So lets get an anniversary thread going! You can post here about whatever you're doing to mark the occasion. We're also formally putting out a call for mapping events, especially people to run them! Most of the organisation will be in the Quake Mapping Discord, but this thread will be updated with the details of each event too.

---

Here's how this is going to work

We're going to have as many jams as possible, organised and produced - as always - by the community. We'll be using a spreadsheet to keep track of the planned events and reduce overlap as much as possible. The start and end dates for the event lineup aren't set in stone yet, but we expect to go past the date itself (June 22nd, 2026) to have a period that nicely encompasses it.

Guidelines and restrictions

• Q30 events may have a submission deadline **no longer than 2 weeks** from the start date at *maximum*. We need to have a cutoff somewhere so we can fit as many events in as possible.
• Those 2 weeks include any extensions, which are discouraged for the same reason and to reduce potential overlap.
• It's up to organisers to release when they're ready to.
• Consider giving your event a theme that **celebrates the history and legacy of Quake**. That's what this is all about, after all!
• Speedmapping events are encouraged! Something lower-stakes and shorter will be a welcome reprieve from the madness.

---

Resources for event organisers

Devkits:

• Alkaline
• Arcane Dimensions (full mod download)
• Copper
• Monolith
• progs_dump
• Quoth

WADs:

• Quaddicted
• Slipseer

Other stuff:

• Countdown timer
• Mod Packager
• Pectin
• Trigger Text Converter

---

 

[ThatSpacePirate]

Q!Zone Jam

Timeline:

Start: March 26th, 2026
End: April 9th, 2026
(2 weeks)

Rules:

Read about the unique changes Q!Zone has here. You must implement at least two new features from the mod in your map.

Submissions:

Maps must be named qzj_[YOUR NAME HERE] and exit to start. Ping/DM me on the Quake Mapping discord or mention me via slipseer with your submission. Please include your BSP and LIT files, and a .map file if you want to.

Textures:

Textures are unrestricted. Custom skyboxes are allowed. No external textures otherwise. I recommend using the included Q!Zone wad file in addition to your own textures.

Music:

You can only have one music track per map. Check the tracking sheet for available tracks, or leave your map awkwardly silent.

Maps:

There are two categories of maps you can make:

Silly:

Maps in the style of the original Q!Zone levels. Make sure it compiles without leaks, but break some rules if you want to! Bad lighting, buttons that move the wrong direction, small enemy counts, mixed and matched and misaligned and missing textures, etc.

Serious:

Use this category to flex your mapping skills and make something up to par with modern Quake mods.

Mod Download
Tracking Sheet
Countdown

 

[spootnik]

Quake 30 Quickie
Quake 30th Anniversary "Quickie" Speedmapping Jam!

Start: April 11, 10:00 UTC
End: April 12, 16:00 UTC
Countdown: DONE
Progs: Vanilla
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Let's celebrate Quake's 30th with a "96-30-30"-rule speedmapping event.

Rules:
1. You may only use, at most, 96 brushes, including triggers, skybrushes, liquids, clip brushes, skip brushes, etc. ALL brushes, no more than 96 of them.
2. There must be 30 monsters in your map.
3. You have 30 hours (see countdown).

No custom music. Stick to tracks 02 - 11.
Scrolling sky brushes are okay, but no gfx skyboxes.
Any texture theme is allowed.

Your map must have its trigger_changelevel directed to start
Naming convention: 9630_authorname

Submissions:
Send your files to me directly on Discord at spootnik1, or reply to this post here.

 

[Scampie]

Quake 30 Quickie

here's my map!
"the wizard's floating island resort" 30/30/30 kills, 1 secret. radiant says there are exactly 96 brushes

 

[spootnik]

here's my map!
"the wizard's floating island resort" 30/30/30 kills, 1 secret. radiant says there are exactly 96 brushes

Received, nice!

 

[ChadQuadMaps]

Quake 30 Quickie
Quake 30th Anniversary "Quickie" Speedmapping Jam!

title "Concentric Recreation"

 

[h4724]

here's my map!
"the wizard's floating island resort" 30/30/30 kills, 1 secret. radiant says there are exactly 96 brushes

Stairs? How lavish. The rocks were cleverly placed to get more legwork out of the space, which I thought was neat. Fiends are still crazy and scary in vanilla, but they're also fun to trick into jumping off cliffs . I also liked how the tower turned into a shortcut after grabbing the key. Nice work!

 

[h4724]

radiant says there are exactly 96 brushes

btw, it should say the number of brushes at the start of the QBSP log. At least, ericwtools' QBSP does that.

 

[h4724]

Image by @ptoing​

Quake 30 Limits Jam

DEADLINE: 28/04/2026 @ 23:59 UTC - Countdown Timer
EXTENDED DEADLINE: 01/MAY/2026 @ 23:59 UTC - Countdown Timer
PROGS: id1
NAMING: q30limits_author
SUBMISSIONS: see promo image

---

It's once again time to map like it's 1996, for the second quinquennial Quake anniversary Limits Jam! Your goal is to make a singleplayer map within the same limits that id Software were constrained to for the original game:

Spoiler: Constraints:

• Your BSP file must be no bigger than 1,457,664 bytes (1.44MB)
• You may not use more than 64 textures per map
• Running r_speeds should not display world polygons greater than 350 on average, and 600 maximum (more details below)
• Your map must be fully compatible with the original executables for DOS and Windows: No coloured lighting, fog, lightmapped liquids, external skyboxes, fence textures, transparent liquids, alpha-transparent brushes, or any other engine features that weren't supported.

Spoiler: Other rules:

• No custom music, use tracks 4 - 11
• Compile QBSP with -notranswater and set _wateralpha, _lavaalpha, _slimealpha, and _telealpha to 1 on worldspawn.
• Use whatever textures you want as long as it runs in the engine
• Maps must be sealed and completable on all skill levels.
• Maps must have least 3 co-op starts, and be compatible with co-op
• Exit to start

Spoiler: Optional considerations:

There are several compiler features that did not exist at the time, but can still be displayed on the original engine, such as bounce lighting, sunlight, dirt, and wait and delay for lights. Skip and func_detail were also not recognised by the compiler. It's up to you whether you want to make a map without some or all these features for maximum authenticity, or to push the engine as far as it can go within the explicit constraints. The id maps were all designed to support deathmatch, so consider making this work if you have time.

---

Tips for staying in the limits

Spoiler: General

• Limit the initial scope and size of your map! It's much easier to build something that fits within the limits easily and then add to it than to map without a care and have to cut and fiddle to scrape it under.
• Try testing your map with some form of palletized rendering; It can change the way lighting looks quite dramatically, which may affect your decisions. Examples include Ironwail's 8-bit/softemu mode, QrustyQuake, and WinQuake itself.

Spoiler: File size

• Textures contribute significantly to file size. Try to keep the number and size of textures low.
• Making a custom wad can help you select a limited texture palette without lots of unnecessary similar textures. Tools like TexMex or Wally make it easy.
• Lightmap resolution is based on texture scale, so consider increasing texture scale on faces that won't be seen.
• Skipped faces don't have lightmap data at all, consider this for things that really can't be seen
• You can use clip to reduce the complexity of the collision hull in places like ceilings,
• There are other savings to be found, if you're willing to get creative and just the right amount of dirty. Please do share any particularly interesting tricks you come up with, and document them in your readme for after release too!

Spoiler: r_speeds

• Ironwail will not give you accurate results for the purposes of this event. Test in QuakeSpasm for a general idea and Winquake for accurate results.
• Average will not be precise, but try to get it in the ballpark.
• Look down long sightlines and towards high-detail areas to find places that might exceed the limit.
• Use r_showtris 1 to see what's actually being rendered - it may be more than you can see!
• Build hallways with corners between your larger areas, and try to build vertical progression around doorways and other choke points to avoid rendering multiple rooms at once - optimization starts at the layout!

Image by Rhoq

 

[h4724]

Whoops, I had that fully drafted and forgot to post.

 

[Scampie]

potential issue: i don't have a classic DOS machine to verify this, only did some testing via dosbox, but strict DOS compatibility i believe means using 8.3 filenames (8 characters for the name, 3 for the extension). "q30limits_" is 10 characters, without even the author names, and will trip up actual DOS quake because the filenames are too long

if some proper retro computer toucher could verify this is an issue, please speak up... but we might want to instead do a naming convention like "q30l####" where #### is up to 4 characters for the author name?

 

[h4724]

potential issue: i don't have a classic DOS machine to verify this, only did some testing via dosbox, but strict DOS compatibility i believe means using 8.3 filenames (8 characters for the name, 3 for the extension). "q30limits_" is 10 characters, without even the author names, and will trip up actual DOS quake because the filenames are too long

This is correct, I'll be changing them to q30l---- after submission. Maybe I should've explained this in the first place.

 

[ThatSpacePirate]

View attachment 7394

View attachment 7395

Q!Zone Jam

Timeline:

Start: March 26th, 2026
End: April 9th, 2026
(2 weeks)

Rules:

Read about the unique changes Q!Zone has here. You must implement at least two new features from the mod in your map.

Submissions:

Maps must be named qzj_[YOUR NAME HERE] and exit to start. Ping/DM me on the Quake Mapping discord or mention me via slipseer with your submission. Please include your BSP and LIT files, and a .map file if you want to.

Textures:

Textures are unrestricted. Custom skyboxes are allowed. No external textures otherwise. I recommend using the included Q!Zone wad file in addition to your own textures.

Music:

You can only have one music track per map. Check the tracking sheet for available tracks, or leave your map awkwardly silent.

Maps:

There are two categories of maps you can make:

Silly:

Maps in the style of the original Q!Zone levels. Make sure it compiles without leaks, but break some rules if you want to! Bad lighting, buttons that move the wrong direction, small enemy counts, mixed and matched and misaligned and missing textures, etc.

Serious:

Use this category to flex your mapping skills and make something up to par with modern Quake mods.

Mod Download
Tracking Sheet
Countdown

Q!Zone Jam

Apr 20, 2026

"think of it as a cooldown lap after qbj3 but everyone's legs are broken lol" -NovaFrost

• ThatSpacePirate
• jams madfox q!zone thatspacepirate wizardworks
• Mods

it's done!!!

 

[Scampie]

DEADLINE: 28/04/2026 @ 23:59 UTC - Countdown Timer

so... um... it would be real swell if there was an extra day or two

 

[h4724]

I've had a few requests, so I'm officially granting a 72 hour extension to Q30 Limits Jam. That's just starting to overlap with the next planned jam, so there will be no further extensions. If you've already submitted and want to make some changes that's fine, just submit before the new deadline. If you think you wouldn't need the extra time, please take advantage of it to get some extra playtesting.

NEW DEADLINE: 01/MAY/2026 @ 23:59 UTC - Countdown Timer

 

[h4724]

so... um... it would be real swell if there was an extra day or two

Best I can do is three.

 

[Scampie]

Quake 30 Limits Jam

here's my map; "i'd love to pull the wires from the wall". tested with dosbox and using using fov90, think i may be slightly above 350 average with the major rooms being in the 400s, but i can only find two corners where i hit the low 500s as a maximum. i did use skip and some func_detail_walls to help keep tris low, and did use delay2 and bounce lights. didn't use valve220 .map format, but i never do anyway

7.5ish minute map, 58/79/96 kills, 3 secrets. music track08

also supports deathmatch! 10 starts. 3-6 FFA or 2v2 i would imagine work best, but i didn't really playtest it
3 greens, 2 yellows, 1 red. 2DBS, 2NG, 1SNG, 1GL, 2RL, 1LG. quad, ring, MH

 

[h4724]

here's my map; "i'd love to pull the wires from the wall". tested with dosbox and using using fov90, think i may be slightly above 350 average with the major rooms being in the 400s, but i can only find two corners where i hit the low 500s as a maximum. i did use skip and some func_detail_walls to help keep tris low, and did use delay2 and bounce lights. didn't use valve220 .map format, but i never do anyway

7.5ish minute map, 58/79/96 kills, 3 secrets. music track08

also supports deathmatch! 10 starts. 3-6 FFA or 2v2 i would imagine work best, but i didn't really playtest it
3 greens, 2 yellows, 1 red. 2DBS, 2NG, 1SNG, 1GL, 2RL, 1LG. quad, ring, MH

Thanks!

 

[Clenow]

Quake 30 Quickie In name only

Submission for 'In name only', ty.