Quake 1 – Monastery Gardens WIP video

Last Updated on 1. October 2025

Monastery Gardens is my very first single player level. I’ve created quite a few multi player maps for Quake 3 and Counter-Strike in my life, but not even one single player map, and no maps in general for Quake 1. Monastery Gardens is my attempt to finally rectify that.

The video shows a full playthrough on normal difficulty without revealing any secrets. Enemy placement, encounters and item placement are largely done, but a couple balancing iterations still remain.

The map’s layout might feel oddly familiar to you; that’s because it is based on a decompiled version of q3dm1, Quake 3’s first real level after the tutorial – Arena gate. Initially I wanted to make a small map just to get started with Quake 1 mapping, and Arena Gate felt fitting for that task. Well, things got a bit out of hand and I ended up creating a huge map that goes far beyond Arena gate’s original footprint.

The map is designed for the Copper Quake mod. Gameplay was recorded in the Quakespasm engine. I’m using Trenchbroom for editing.

If you do have gameplay or visual suggestions, let me know in the video’s comments or via mail.