The flickering lighting patterns in Quake were defined by a string of letters, with ‘a’ to ‘z’ representing no light to full brightness, respectively. A string like “azazaz” would make the lights appear to turn completely on and off, while in Quake, the string looked more like “‘mmamammmmammamamaaamammma” with ‘m’ being a given light’s default brightness setting.
Feliciano was able to easily bring that same code to an Arduino Pro Mini, which he wired to a hacked emergency light featuring an array of white LEDs that could quickly flicker and dim on command. The result is a flickering lamp that looks like it was purchased from whatever the creepy Quake world version of Ikea would be. Syncing it up with the actual game should be equally trivial, but I can remember many late-night gaming sessions in the late ‘90s where Quake was already creepy enough on its own—the last thing I wanted was my entire room to feel like it was full of creepy monsters hiding behind every corner.