Quake Weenie Website - Glossary

Blast radius
Camping
Cheap kill
Cherry picking
Cross-dressing
CTF
Deathmatch
Frag
Gib
Grappling Hook
Ice skating

Llama
LPB
Muzzle flash
Ping
Quake Server
QuakeWorld
Respawn
Respawn spot
Sniping
Splash damage
Thork
Weenie

Blast radius | Someplace you don't want to be. Rocket launchers and grenades do huge damage in a radius around their point of detonation. This is referred to as a "blast radius". See also splash damage.

Camping

People vary in their definition of camping.

The most clear-cut form of camping is locating a respawn spot, finding a nice (preferably semi-hidden) spot right near it, training your sights on the respawn spot, and waiting for some poor newly reincarnated player to respawn right under your crosshairs. Most people also consider it camping if you stake out a spot near a particularly prime powerup, weapon, or ammo pack. Sniping is another form of camping.

Important to know:

- Most players agree that camping kills are cheap kills.
- Most players camp from time to time.
- Most players deny that they camp from time to time.

Depending on how honor-mad your opponents are, they may consider it camping if you run a tight pattern through a level.

Cheap kill

You have committed a Cheap Kill if you destroy your opponent in a way that anyone else would have been ashamed of. The Cowardice page has suggestions on committing cheap kills.

The best confirmation that you have committed a Cheap Kill will come from your opponent, in the form of an message just after the frag. Something like "That was really pathetic" or "I can't believe you did that" or simply "Cheap!"

You are a Weenie. Every frag is fair. There is no room for pride.

Cherry picking | Cherry picking is the lowest form of camping. Players respawn at a limited, predefined set of sites on any given level. Cherry picking is camping out near one of the respawn sites, and waiting for someone to pop into the world effectively naked. This is considered a cheap kill, bordering on the lame. You didn't read it here.
Cross-dressing | In team-vs-team play, cross-dressing is assigning yourself the shirt and pants color of the opposing team for "espionage" purposes. Extremely cheap, and if you get a reputation for it, it's the kind of thing that's likely to get you banned from a server. This "cheat" is circumvented by teams which play with custom "skin" textures.
CTF (Capture the Flag) | CTF is a variant of deathmatch where two teams play a messy game of Capture the Flag. CTF is a world unto itself. If you'd like to find out more about it, start with the following site. Xenocide Trinity
Deathmatch | A.K.A. multi-player mode. You'll know you're in a deathmatch when other people begin to humiliate you. You can enter a deathmatch against other players via a modem, network, or the Internet; see the `techinfo.txt` document that comes with Quake for details.

Frag

What you're supposed to do, i.e., destroy the computer-rendered image of your opponent. In deathmatch you gain one frag each time you kill someone else, and lose one each time you kill yourself. Frag is both a noun ("Whoaaa duuuude, way to wrack up those frags!") and a verb ("Oh man, you're toast now, I'm gonna frag you til your mouse melts!").

"Frag" was actually a military term before the 3D gaming world borrowed it. You can visit Tony Fabris' BFG FAQ on Doomgate for the "real" definition.

See also: Gib, Thork

Gib

Where Thork is a value judgement (how humiliated was your opponent?), and Frag is a matter of record (you get a frag or you don't), Gib is somewhere between.

There's a technical definition of Gib: when you cause enough damage to a player or monster, instead of merely dying they explode into a nasty pile of giblets. But some people also use "Gib" to mean they dominated another person or team.

See also: Frag, Thork

Grappling Hook | Some Quake Servers support a "grappling hook" extension. The grappling hook lets you fire a hook and chain at another surface, and then pulls you up to join the hook for as long as you hold down the fire key. To use the grappling hook, switch to your axe by pressing the 1 key, then press the 1 key again. Now firing will launch the grappling hook. Not only can the grappling hook pull you around, but it can do a good deal of damage to your opponents.

Ice skating

If you're deathmatching over a slow connection and your ping times start going up (over 300-400), you're going to experience Ice Skating.

The Quake server you're playing on keeps track of where you "really" are in the game, and shows that position to other players. Let's say you're running forward and you have the misfortune to start experiencing a network slowdown (high pings). The server knows exactly where you are, and keeps you moving at the same speed, but it takes a while for the information to get to your computer so that you can see where you are. What's more, it takes longer for the network to relay your commands to the server (like "hey, stop running").

Result? Embarrassment. Even when you try to stop moving, you keep moving. The server has actually had you moving at full speed the whole time, so when you stop moving it takes a moment for your screen to catch up with where the server knows you really are. You run into walls, fall of ledges, take a dip in lava. In short, you thork yourself.

Note that this applies to Quake more than to Quake World. Lag acts slightly differently on Quake World.

JiMBoNe

Llama | You. Synonynm: Weenie. Scott Dega

LPB

LPB stands for "Low Ping Buzzard" (hey, this CD's rated PG... you can substitute your own obscenity for Buzzard). Someone who intentionally victimizes people with higher pings is clearly a LPB. If someone's winning and they happen to have a lower ping than you, you can still call them an LPB if it makes you feel better.

Scott Dega

Muzzle Flash | When you use any weapon but the axe, and explosive flash will emit from the end of the weapon. This "muzzle flash" will illuminate an area of several feet around you. If you're in the dark and trying to figure out what's near you, this can be downright keen. If you're hiding, this can be downright tragic.

Ping

Originally a sonar term (a short "ping" of sound to determine the distance to an object), "ping" has been appropriated by the networking world. The meaning is very much the same: a ping sends a packet of information to a specified computer and measures the time for the packet to return from the target computer. It serves as a simple measure of how good/fast your connection to the target computer is.

This is an important concept in network Quake, since the quality of your connection to the Quake server you're using will determine how smoothly your game runs. A high ping value indicates a poor connection, and will lead to choppy performance. Net result: you'll probably get fragged more than you deserve to.

You can determine your (and other players') Ping times by going to the console (by pressing the ~ key) and typing the command "ping". And please, don't be an LPB.

Quake Server

Clearly, if you want to you can play Quake by yourself on your computer. But playing against others requires one computer to act as a "server". The Quake Server keeps track of where all people and things are at any igven point in the game, and communicates this information to any players who are using the server.

There are two types of servers: "dedicated servers", where the server is doing nothing but serving players; and "listen servers", where one of the players is playing directly on the server. A listen server is fine if you have a very fast connection (several people playing on a local area network), but it with slower connections it gives the person playing on it an extremely unfair advantage. Unfair even by Weenie terms.

The reason you can sometimes see the game "lag" when you have a slow network connection (high pings) is that the Quake Server is the ultimate authority of who is where, so if your connection slows down the server may have a much better idea of where you are than you do. See ice skating for details.

QuakeWorld | QuakeWorld is a new version of Quake which has been written to better support network play -- handling slow connections substantially better than Quake. Though it's essentially the same game as Quake, in some respects it's a different product. Quake servers run either Quake or QuakeWorld, so you need to connect to a server based on the software you have on your PC (Quake or QuakeWorld). For further information and downloads, visit Blue's News and click the QuakeWorld link.
Respawn | In deathmatch, when you pick up an object, after a specific time period it will reappear where you picked it up. This is called "respawning". After you die, when you reincarnate somewhere in the maze that's also referred to as "respawning". When you respawn, you will have no armor, a handful of shotgun shells, a single-barrelled shotgun, and your axe. And a lot of adrenalyn, unless you're too confused to know how bad a situation that is.
Respawn spot | On any given level there are a limited, predefined set of places where players respawn after dying. These are referred to as "respawn spots".
Sniping | Finding a hidden or semi-hidden spot, typically above other players, and taking pot shots at them as they run by.
Splash damage | Something you don't want to experience. Rocket launchers and grenades do huge damage in a radius around their point of detonation. This is referred to as a "splash damage". See also blast radius.

Thork

A fundamental concept in the Zen of Quake Weeniedom. To thork is to destroy another player, particularly in a humiliating way. Since you are reading this page, you are a confessed Quake Weenie and surely know what I mean, for you have been thorked many times, and often in parallel. Examples:

- Yikes. What a Thorkfest.
- I've been Thorked.
- You're in for some major Thorking.

Thanks to Scott Ostrander and Kyle Gasser, the thorkmeisters who architected this term.

See also: Gib, Frag

Weenie | A pathetic loser who can't really beat other Quake players in a deathmatch, but who can smack into walls or explode into a grisly pile of giblets with the best of them. Synonym: Llama.

Copyright © 1996, 1997 Andy Giesler. These pages appear on the Level Master V for Quake CD by permission of the author.
www.weenie.com