Quake Map Magazine - Matt Sefton

#### Level Author of such levels as "Infiltrate :: Subjugate :: Eliminate" for Quake2, and "Jawbreaker", "Arcane", "The Lost World" and "The Underworld" for Quake1. Matt consistently presents outstanding levels as well as maintaining the level review site SPQ2 Level Heaven.

I'm 31 (and three quarters :), married to Angela and protector of Larry the Quakedog. We live in a small village just outside Newcastle upon Tyne, a big city in the North East of England famous for shipbuilding, Newcastle Brown Ale, Sting, Mark Knopfler, The Animals, etc, etc. I'm communications manager for a design consultancy which involves a lot of long hours and hard work and I don't like to talk about work when I'm at home relaxing :)

Probably Jawbreaker and Arcane for Quake 1. Those 2 levels have the least 'compromises' of any of the maps I've built. What I mean by that is that when you have very little time to edit like I do (sometimes only 3 or 4 hours a week) you have to make a choice whether to spend months on a level and release very little stuff or scale down your aspirations so you get at least a few maps out there.

A r c a n e

I'm usually inspired by other maps I've played. Not necessarily single player maps - some of the deathmatch maps I've seen have much better architecture and play areas than a lot of single player maps. To be perfectly honest with you, I'm not really inspired at all at the moment to build Quake II maps. With Quake 1, I really had the feeling that the game levels in the official game could be bettered and that was a constant inspiration. With Quake II, to me the maps are almost perfect. So much so that I don't feel like I can compete. Plus my ass is being well and truly kicked by all the new authors that are appearing, so it's probably time for me to step aside.

I like lots of people's work (obviously through my sites, I get to play a *lot* of maps), but there are very few maps that make me want to go back and play them again once I've finished them. For Quake 1, I loved the work of Iikka Keranen, Matthias Worch, Dario Casali, Steve Rescoe, Marcus Dromowicz and more. I also was routinely blown away by anything that Adriano Lorenzini touched. For Quake II, YooShin Yang, Scott McNutt and James Parkman are the big three at the moment. Their stuff has that 'replay' factor I mentioned earlier.

Ah, don't get me started. I am heartily *sick* of all the people out there giving id a hard time over Quake II. "It's buggy, I can't use a stupid name in Deathmatch, the AI sucks, the licence agreement is terrible", etc, etc. I would estimate that at least 99% of these people are total hypocrites - they bought the game and they play it constantly and they complain because id didn't build a *custom* version of the game just for them. I *love* Quake II with a passion. It's the best, most exciting game I've ever played. I wanted it in my hands as soon as humanly possible so I accepted a few bugs in the first release. Big deal. It was £30 (about $45). What the hell do people expect for that kind of money? Quake II has given me hundreds of hours of enjoyment and id has made their code available so that we can extend the game to our heart's content. Anyone who complains about "id ripping them off" needs a Geordie handshake, imho...

M a t t S e f t o n
I used to use WorldCraft and swore by it for Quake 1 maps. By the time Quake II appeared and an updated WorldCraft didn't, I swore *at* it. Therefore WC got dumped and I started using very early versions of QERadiant. I've used it ever since and each release gets better and better. Robert is receptive to suggestions and criticisms and knows how to build a great tool. Mind you, Mr Carmack gave him a good start :) As far as hardware goes, I use a PII 266mhz, 64mb RAM, 19" monitor, Orchid Righteous 3D, etc, etc.

Free time? What's that? I have very little free time, unfortunately. I have a 2 hour drive to work and back and by the time I get home, eat, walk Larry and talk to Angela (I'm contractually obliged to :) there's very little time for anything else. I play a few other PC games like Doom (yea, still :), Moto Racer and Grand Theft Auto, I listen to *a lot* of music and have a pretty huge lp and cd collection, I read, watch a little TV (anything to do with dogs, vets, animals, oh and ER :). My main hobby outside Quake would have to be my guitar playing. I've played for nearly 20 years now and I have a small 4 track studio at home, several Marshalls, a Jackson, an ESP Vai-type and a '64 Strat.

I'm usually on and offline in a matter of minutes. My round trip usually consists of Blue's first, followed by the Planet Quake news and levels pages, cdrom.com newstuff, most of the level review sites - that's about it.

There's nothing new happening right now. In fact, I haven't touched an editor for about 2 months now. I just don't have the time anymore. I have a half finished Quake II deathmatch map that'll probably never see the light of day. As I mentioned on my site a few weeks ago, I have something very major on my mind right now and I can't really concentrate on anything else (and no, it has nothing at all to do with Quake or games :)

A n g e l a a n d M a t t

I just wish I had more time to build levels. I'm looking forward to the next few months as there are some potentially great games coming out like SiN, Half-Life, Unreal, Daikatana, etc. At the end of the day, I just want to have fun, y'know? :)

~Matt Sefton - March 29, 1998

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