It’s time for me to pass the torch to another huge Quake fan – Spirit from Quaddicted.com.
I’ve been the keeper of QuakeWiki for 14+ years and, right now, I see it as:
- The original home of ~180 Quake mods, partial or total conversions
- QuakeExpo 2011
- The now defunct PlanetQuake archives
- My attempt to build a simplified Quake engine (QRe)
- My attempt to build OpenQuartz 2
Most, if not all the content is there, all the mods are there, there are a bunch of Quake-related interviews, Darkplaces documentation, Quake engines, bots, and a lot more.
Over time, I contributed with articles, links, an image-of-the-day gallery (powered by my ImagePress plugin for WordPress) and I even took over a closing-down forum. There is not much activity these days, and the real Quake fans are few and far between. At some point, years ago, QuakeWiki almost merged with QuakeOne.com, but there was not much motivation there, so I took it back and tried to keep it alive.
I ran out of motivation now, and I’m not playing Quake these days. I had an attempt to play it on a mobile device, successfully I’d say, using QuakeDroid. It brought back some of the original Quake feeling, but it’s not the same. I grew out of it.
I remember the race to save as many mods as possible and to archive as many pages as we could back when PlanetQuake was closing. There was a lot of HTTrack-ing and wget-ing and cURL-ing back then. I spent a lot of time tending and organizing the Mods section.
QuakeExpo 2011 was another big event. Built initially as a standalone content management system, the Expo was later integrated into the main QuakeWiki WordPress CMS. I had to build it fast, I think I had 2 or 3 days until it started, but everyone was happy in the end.
QuakeExpo was a community event for developers, players, and enthusiasts of Quake 1, 2 and 3, held to celebrate the games, present projects to the public, organize multiplayer events, speed modding contests or writing fan fiction.
QuakeExpo 2011 was held during June 19-25, 2011.
Quake 1 was released on June 22, 1996!
QuakeExpo 2011. An interesting experience for me, the first QExpo I’ve organized and the first QExpo to have a booth. An incomplete one, showcasing my tiny project. I did it because I cared. I did it because I love Quake. Not for exposure – I’m quite a shy person – not for advertisement.
I never took part in a QExpo before, so I didn’t know much about the involvement of the community. In this case, in the months and weeks prior to the opening, support was a bit weak, and everyone wanted to do something, like a movie, or a logo or some marketing materials.
Myself
Before that, and after reading MHQuake’s articles on his DirectQ Blogspot website, I started working on 2 projects: QRe, a simplified engine based on Darkplaces, with lots of features removed. It was supposed to be a Quake engine working with Q3Map2 compiled maps. The original author was gone, and Q3Map2 was not maintained any more. I had a collection of tutorials (offline now, unfortunately) and I spent days compiling maps with shadow maps, ambient occlusion, dirt maps, real-time lighting and more. My editor of choice was QuArK (and I would still use it today, if I went back to Quake mapping and modding). Used carefully, it is the best editor out there.
Whatever happened to MHQuake? He disappeared and took his blog with him…
The second project mentioned above was an up-to-date OpenQuartz, aptly named OpenQuartz 2, a so-called open-source version of Quake and an intro map. Everything was custom, the map, the textures, the weapons, the models, the monsters, and the players. The Quake engine was also a simplified version. I don’t remember all the details, but this was a fun project to work on.
I do remember my QRe test map, where I had several mirrors in a room half-filled with water. I also had some custom 3D models (.obj if I remember correctly), cube maps, reflections, normal mapping, dust motes (I loved those) and “ambient” monsters (they would roam the map, but not attack) such as spiders and some weird dogs.
Anyway, I grew up with Quake. I played Quake on a modem connection, I played Quake on a 480×320 screen resolution, and I took part in some early local competitions. There are lots of stories there, just like every other Quake fan: lost nights, multiplayer sessions, speed mapping, cooperative run-throughs and many more.
I’ll end with Lewis Denby’s Quake retrospective:
“It’s a 16-year-old shooter, yet I remember it as if it were just last week. I remember the pre-release buzz. Here was id Software’s follow-up to Doom, a spiritual successor that rendered the entire world and all its contents in an astonishing three dimensions. I remember the demo, a stunning three-hour chunk of the game that no modern publisher would consider giving away for free. I remember the rumours of what would follow in the full product. Was there really a level that took place almost entirely underwater? Would there honestly be a lightning gun that electrocuted you if you fired it in liquid? Was it true that those collectible runes unlocked a secret fifth segment, accessible from the episode selection room? Did the full game really devour an unprecedented 64 megabytes of hard drive space?”
Lewis Denby
It’s what we’ve all been through a long time ago, and some of us are still experiencing today. A great game, great atmosphere, and inspiring architecture. I, for one, will never rid my mind of the Quake halls and corridors.
“What else? Oh, so, so much. The boss fights, for one. Quake knew not to have its bosses just hammer you for five minutes in a sort of horrendous, fist-eating difficulty spike. No, Quake had you use your wits. When the fiery Chthon arose in E1M7, launching rockets into his molten chest did nothing. Solving an electricity-based puzzle on the walkways above was your road to success. And what about Shub-Niggurath? A big, dopey, seemingly docile tentacle beast in the middle of a pool of lava, she initially seemed like a rather uninspiring way to end the game. Except, how did you kill her? Bullets, again, did nothing. But what was that floating spike ball that occasionally passed through her belly? And what happened if you jumped in that teleporter at exactly the right moment?
And Wind Tunnels. Oh, man, Wind Tunnels. A sprawling, epic level of interconnecting areas, with enormous tubes that sucked you up and hurled you majestically into the next room. And what about the secret low-gravity mission? And all the other secret bits, for that matter. There’s just so much. So many glorious memories.”
Lewis Denby
