The Donnington Project
Recreating 14th-Century Berkshire Ruins in a 1996 Engine.
A Quick Note on File Naming
(or Versioning for Sanity: The "Donny" Chronology)
In the professional world, we call this pretty rubbish Version Control, but for me it's called "Sanity Preservation" - To track the castle's evolution without losing hours of work on a far-fetched "idea" that went wrong, I established a strict yet slightly eccentric naming convention using the nickname "Donny"
Each iteration is a literal 'timeshot' of the project. If an edge looked incorrect and through a compiler leak, or the lighting compiler threw a tantrum, I could simply retreat to an earlier version of history and try again.
Why has this helped in the long run?
This system allowed me to map the complete history of the project using the file creation dates on the file. When I refer to Donny6, you are looking at a specific moment in time during the build. As the project grew, so did the complexity of my filing system:
By keeping every single one of these files which has grown to about 4GB in size, I've created a digital archaeological record of the build. I’ll be using these specific "Donny-points" throughout these pages to illustrate exactly how a 600-year-old Berkshire gatehouse was slowly translated into 1996 pixels.
Donny
Snapshot Date: 29 December 2020
The twin-towered gatehouse has been successfully translated into the 3D space at this early point. While the environment remains in a "blockout" stage (particularly the use of a cylinder as the background, the primary stonework textures have been applied to the gatehouse, and initial detailing like the recessed windows and decorative banners are already in place. The additional outline of the remains are being put into place
Donny2
Snapshot Date: 12 January 2021
The additional outline of the remains are in place, and I'm starting to experiment with adding some of the additional slopes. There is still work to do on the back of the gatehouse elements but the inital look and feel is coming along.
Replicating the hill
With the majority of the earthworks completed and the shape of the ruins now mostly completed, the next challenge was adding in the illusion of height and unevennesss to the ground, as Donnington Castle sits on top of a large slope on one of the highest points in the Newbury area.
Donny5
Snapshot Dates: 29 February 2021 to 28 May 2024
Version 5 saw some huge jumps, it saw a period of more relaxed yet structured building, one of the main, and probably biggest, factors for this build was the defining of the slope the castle sat on and the texture of the ruins themselves. In Quake, a "clean" wall is one brush. A "ruined" wall is dozens of tiny, intersecting shards. This section of the project was a literal lesson in patience and a reminder that sometimes the most interesting parts of a build are the ones that serve no purpose except for cosmetics. Donny3 and 4 were experimental in nature, and the descision to use a rock prefab to generate the hill was taken in Donny5 which superseded the work done in v3 and v4. This was a version of the map that had a number of sub versions, which were saved and included the beginning of landscaping the surrounding area.
Grass and Limits
This version saw the beginning of the trouble with adding two much grass. You see, grass is added using the func_illusionary class, and requires an Quake engine that supports transparency that works.
Deathmatch anyone?
A quick multiplayer detour in the middle of a grand build.
While the main project focuses on recreating the gatehouse, I found myself "side-tracked" by the idea of a deathmatch map. Around the time of the Donny5 build, when the foundations were set but the full scale of the map was still in its infancy, I decided to spin up a quick, dedicated deathmatch version. It was a short side-mission - a bit of pure fun to break up the intense, forensic focus of the main project.
Because the layout was still relatively simple at this stage, we hadn't hit any severe engine limitations or model thresholds yet. It was the perfect playground to test sightlines, player movement, and the general flow of the space under the raw chaos of old-school multiplayer.
Pete's Retro Playback Tip
If you are going to spin up this early build solo, I highly recommend loading it up with Omicron Bots. Back in the late 90s and early 2000s, these were my absolute go-to Quake bots. Dropping them into the unrefined ruins of Donnington brings back that chaotic, authentic golden-era deathmatch feel perfectly.