Panel 1:
A blue screen with a number 18 in the lower right.

Panel 2:
A woman appears on the monitor: When can we expect communication with earth to be established again?

Panel 3:
Darzi appears: We haven’t established a firm timeframe; however, it shouldn’t take more than a year.

Panel 4:
Darzi (continued): The good news is that humanity now has a sustainable population on this side. In the meantime—

Heather, Triss, and Quizzik stand in a diner, in front of the same TV.

Quizzik: OUR work is done.
 

Center World 11.4

It's been too long! Schedules are still very difficult for me to keep, so I just plan to post pages in singles or batches as I finish them. I love you all!

Brutalist Jam III

For the past couple of months, I’ve been working on a map (or maps?) for Quake Brutalist Jam 3. The project includes exciting new weapons and monsters to play with! Because of this, I had to re-assess goals I wanted to accomplish for the project, since I had some ideas stewing in my brain for quite a while.

Playing with Blocks, a map that was released with Antigravity Jam (hosted by bmfbr), and which I didn’t get around to making a write-up for, was actually an early concept for what I originally wanted to do for the next Brutalist Jam. I had ideas for a tower that would wrap around on itself, that the player would have to climb from the inside.

Since that was already done & released, it was time to come up with something new. This is something that just kind of happens when you have scraps of ideas sitting around that end up getting used elsewhere. The new map would be titled Whisked in the Pan.

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Quake From Memory

Quake From Memory is a project started late last year (December 2024) and helmed by the user iLike80sRock, where the idea was to recreate all of Quake’s original maps from memory. Referencing the original maps or their sources wasn’t allowed. There was a “Shareware” version released in February, when all of the episode one maps were completed, while work on the rest of the maps was still on-going.

I took part in the project, building three maps and collaborating on a fourth. The full version released in August 2025, after 8 months of work from the mapping community.

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Light Construction

I wanted to make sure my site was kept up-to-date with the latest versions of PHP and WordPress, so I’ve chosen to migrate the site to Toocheke. I’m still working on the theme, as well as migrating over things like transcripts and chapter archives to the new system.

For those who missed the heads up on my socials, the web address has changed from Phoenixan.com to TheCenterWorld.com! I’ve kept the old address active for now, but it just didn’t quite feel fitting to what I was doing any longer. The previous URL should redirect to the new address, though most browsers will display a SSL certificate warning.

Things will be messy for a little bit. I’m hoping to clean things up more before posting the final pages of the story.

Floyd Factory Jam

Smoke and steam. Crates and warehouses. Machines whirring. Fans spinning.

Recently, I chose to host my first mapping jam for Quake on Slipseer & the Quake Mapping Discord. The direction was to build a map in the style of a factory using the Alkaline toolset. There were no restrictions on theme or texture set; however, every map was required to include at least one instance of Floyd.

Floyd is a cylindrical robot that walks around on 2 legs (and fires a volley of lasers, but don’t worry about that).

The console background for Floyd Factory Jam, inspired by Kraftwerk, featuring four instances of Floyd.
The console background for Floyd Factory Jam, inspired by Kraftwerk, featuring four instances of Floyd.
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Re:Mobilize & Malice

Re:Mobilize is a modification for Quake that adds in new features around advanced movement, such as a grapple hook, trampolines, and wire meshes. Version 1.2 was recently released, which includes some new tools, as well as a set of new maps. One of which is one I contributed, titled Reverse Polarity.

My aim with Reverse Polarity was to create something built more around exploration, similar to my Arcane Dimensions map, Grit Under the Eyelid. As a result, the layout is more vertically-oriented, with many layers on top of one another. I selected Rubicon 2 for the primary theme, choosing to also skin enemies accordingly. Re:Mobilize is built on top of Progs_Dump 3, which allows for more extensive monster customization, so I was able to apply models from the Rubicon 2 & Alkaline mods.

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Grit Under the Eyelid

Grit Under the Eyelid is a new map involving the exploration of crumbling tombs that I put together for Quake with Arcane Dimensions 1.8 Patch 1, and is my first solo release.

Originally, I intended to finish this for Rotting Jam last year, but I didn’t get around to completing it in time. So instead, I expanded upon it and focused a bit more on detailing. Makkon also updated their texture set between then and now, and so I also spent time updating it with the new stone textures. This is also one of those cases where I got caught up in detailing over anything else.

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Vanilla Quake

I have a new very small map that was made over the course of 2 days for the Vanilla speed mapping event, hosted by Zigi, titled Tangled Monopole. It contains simplified versions of a couple spots in the recent chapter of Center World.

Truth be told, this is actually a remake of a map that I made when I was first learning how to do anything for Quake. It’s been rebuilt from scratch, mostly to fit within the limitations of the event, and also to correct mistakes I made early on. I also compiled it without alpha keys on liquids, and with lower resolutions on light and shadow for an extra-chunky feel.

This has resulted in a lot of interesting maps, including one themed around Dune, complete with a view of the planet and a sandworm, lovingly rendered with Quake’s original texture set.

It is now available for download on Slipseer.

The Last and the Limbless

I have a new map out as part of Fairweather’s Remix Jam for Quake. The pack’s theme is to remix a multiplayer map from any game for Quake single player.

This was a weird one! I had several ideas for remixing a Counter-Strike map again (my first draft for the jam was a remake of de_prodigy), but then I had another idea: how about something from a game that isn’t even a first person shooter? What I ended up creating and taking inspiration from instead was a map from Rayman M/Arena, Zenith Harbour.

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Ground Fault

Ground Fault is a Quake map made in a timeframe of just under 48 hours, for SM227 – Thunderbolts and Lightning. It introduced a set of new power-ups: mini versions of the Quad Damage, Biosuit, and Pentagram, and was built around just one idea: the map needs to include a Thunderbolt (lightning gun).

I started by choosing the cr8 texture set for the map, since I felt it suited the Thunderbolt theme with its electric-themed switches and panels. It also features a lot of grimy metal, which I thought fit some ideas I had around gameplay with water, primarily coupling the lightning gun’s discharge with the mini-pentagram.

I also made some attempts to integrate a fair amount of verticality once more, with multiple walkways stacked on top of each other in the main hall. Overall, I think it came together nicely given the time involved. The only thing I wish I could have done more of was tighten up the combat, especially in the last room.

There are 9 maps in total in the pack, with my personal favorites being A Marshmallow Dream, The Lightning Lock, and Frankenstein or Supersham-bler.