When I first became a video game tester in 1997, I wanted become a video game designer.  That never happened since I never quite finished my first Quake II deathmatch map, "Aquaphobia," which grew and grew to accommodate 32/64-players.  (I think this might be the second map of this size created from scratch; the large maps from id Software are three separate maps tied together.)  After fiddling around with "Aquaphobia" on-and-off for the last 12 years, I decided to finish this map once and for all.  Here are the pictures from region one of the forthcoming third preview.

Region one was what "Drop Zone," a smaller deathmatch map that can be found here, was based on, and, after consulting with feedback on that map, I decided to redo this region from top to bottom when I set the first design rule to be "no sacred cows" (i.e., if it doesn't work, take it out).  The main complaint with "Drop Zone" was the room-corridor-room design, which is considered to be old school.  Players today expect plenty of z-action when attacking from above in wide open spaces.

The second design rule was to be looser with the design constraints.  No one will be playing Quake 2 on a system with a Pentium 233MHz processor, 32MB RAM, and a Voodoo 2 video card (the original system specs when the game first came out).  The nice thing about today's hardware is that a map this large compiles in 15 minutes instead of eight hours.

The third design rule is to respect the "run and gun" game play that John Carmack mentioned in the design notes when releasing the source code for Wolfenstein 3D on the iPhone.  Sometimes designers forget that the game still has to be fun to play no matter how pretty everything is.

I was able to finish redesigning this region in a few weeks.  One region down, five regions to go.