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Baker Joined: 14 Mar 2006 Posts: 1538 |

Posted: Thu Jul 06, 2006 1:58 pm Post subject: Crossing the divide more - 4 scar3crow mostly (re: ProQuake) |

Scarecrow, this is more or less an extension of our discussion. Here are some of the things ProQuake does [Qrack does all of these as well -- so does a special Brazilianized JoeQuake 0.30x which had a number of cool things ported into JoeQuake 0.14.
These are all typical in QuakeWorld as well, except for IPLOG which is a NetQuake thing.]
1. The easiest. The bestweapon command.
A typical experienced player will have 3 keys bound. They will have "impulse 7" bound to a key, they will have a quick grenade key and a "bestweapon" key.
The bestweapon key would be BIND ALT "bestweapon 8 5 4 3 2 1" to select the best available weapon in the following order ... 8 5 4 3 2 1 which is obviously LG, SNG, NG, SSG, SG, AXE.
Players don't like reaching for keys and no experienced player presses the 1 thru 8 keys.
"bestweapon 8 5 4 3 2 1" = "impulse 8 5 4 3 2 1" where impulse is the QuakeWorld equivalent of bestweapon.
Usage of bestweapon and impulse in the above format is prevalent in Quake and QuakeWorld among everyone except newbies.
2. IPLOG
It is a common situation in Quake to run into someone who is rude and sometimes even into someone using a bot -- or maybe someone you THINK is using a bot (crappy players for some reason tend to think anyone elite is cheating --- it's been like that forever).
In ProQuake, you must have -iplog in the command line for this feature to be enabled.
Here is how to use iplog in ProQuake (or Qrack):
3. Demos ... been there, done that. No need to get into that. Players love to record demos of their play, or sometimes to record a match or someone cheating.
4. Game Clock always visible
ProQuake has always had this, and just above every NQ player at least has ProQuake. Maybe they prefer and use something else, but all of them have ProQuake.
FuhQuake
5. Ping in Scoreboard
ProQuake
JoeQuake
JoeQuake 0.14 didn't have this, it was added in JoeQuake 0.15 and I was like "Thank God!" when that feature was finally in JoeQuake.
It is so annoying not having ping in scoreboard. Every player wants to know their own ping and that of their opponents.
You also want to know if some player is losing because of their ping or losing because of their skill.
For example, in Rocket Arena it is considered cruel and cheap to attack players with 200 ping with lightning gun so you just use rockets on them.
6. A screenshot explaining how IPLOG works:
IPLOG is just a little binary database file of IP addresses and names. It is about 99% accurate, very few players have overlapping IP addresses.
Example:

IPLOG wrote:
2.76.173.xxx -]FragNazty[- 12.77.2.xxx OwNAgED 12.77.40.xxx OwNaGeD 12.77.40.xxx el bobina 12.77.40.xxx OwNAgED
12.83.148.xxx Bam
12.83.149.xxx Bam
12.83.150.xxx Bam
12.83.151.xxx Bam obs
12.83.151.xxx Bam
12.83.154.xxx Bam
12.158.106.xxx Booberry
12.160.68.xxx hutch
12.160.68.xxx .]rs[. xan
12.163.67.xxx 40 oz
12.168.178.xxx #G99#.SH4D0W
12.183.52.xxx #G99#.SH4D0W
12.202.154.xxx Fungus
12.202.223.xxx [eSx].Wrath
12.205.137.xxx drunkij
12.205.151.xxx necrob0t v.01
12.207.1.xxx frenzy
12.207.1.xxx sns.frenzy
12.207.1.xxx best sniper
12.207.88.xxx frenzy
12.209.229.xxx DR. DOOKIE
12.210.20.xxx ISMO
12.210.20.xxx 2by4
12.210.67.xxx player
12.210.151.xxx inc
12.212.35.xxx XaerMonkey
12.213.183.xxx test
12.214.179.xxx Moon...[io]
12.214.184.xxx lunar
12.214.184.xxx lunario
12.214.184.xxx reidf
12.215.126.xxx phr0zn.....fuse
12.215.126.xxx player
12.215.172.xxx Aft3r5h0cK
12.216.83.xxx bryan
12.216.83.xxx Herb Bootsmith
12.216.83.xxx b rabbit
12.216.121.xxx opie-won-kanobi
12.216.121.xxx jr
12.216.121.xxx obs
12.216.121.xxx (UrDEAD)
12.216.121.xxx AFUKNSPANKDOWN!

It isn't stored as text for the engine, but you can do ipdump and output it.
IPLOG isn't a small thing in NetQuake either, just check:
http://home.comcast.net/~comcastsuxs/
That's just some player that plays a lot and used to be an admin.
7. Say_team variables.
Say_team has variables that allow a player to indicate their position, their health and armor.
The NetQuake variables are pretty straightforward and simple. %H = health, %A = armor, %L = location. There are other ones, but those are the primary ones that get used.
The ProQuake loc files are stored more or less like this for ProQuake.

Quote:
// Schloss.loc mostly perfect Baker 7/6/2006 // x,y,z 1077.8,-2221.2,475.2,560.7,-2848.2,143.7,"Chandelier Room" 494.9,-2868.8,,35.9,387.3,-2600.8,206.9,"Woodpile Stairs" 506.8,-2954.3,223.1,,13.5,-2532.1,390.1,"Mega near Woodpile"
193.2,-2514.9,228.9,507.2,-2097.9,786,"Woodpile/Pent Area"
1108.5,-2253.0,785,1414.7,-2995.9,150.1,"Graveyard"
1144.7,-2944.1,535.6,510.8,-2276.4,796.6,"Chandelier Roof"
-378.5,-2219.4,731.2,321.8,-1644,423.9,"Hitler Room"
-407.6,-2354.6,786,2.4,-3027.2,253.9,"Outside Deck"
20.3,-1971.7,472.5,213.2,-2551.0,659.1,"Yellow Armor Deck"
534.6,-2309.4,700.8,-377.8,-1654.1,1152.0,"Hitler Room Roof"
198.7,-2395.0,224.1,-178.3,-2478.3,376.8,"Woodpile to Outside Deck"
-466,-3397,634,443,-2897,588,"Trapdoor to Quad"
-281.3,-2920.4,582.4,383.8,-3010.0,839.4,"Trap Door to Quad"
713,-4010,567,-16,-3379,771,"Emblem Room Upper"
9,-4005,368,172,-3843,521,"Emblem Room Behind Stairs"
188,-3991,574,-35,-3374,344,"Emblem Room Stairs"
713,-3397,366,26,-4002,537,"Emblem Room Lower"
713,-3776,601,1157,-3364,170,"Emblem Rm Graveyard Stairs"
713,-3388,571,281,-2965,834,"Emblem Rm To TrapDoor"
244.8,-3005.2,395.5,476.9,-3393,558.5,"Swastika Nails Rm"
257.5,-3026.5,410.5,-284,-3432,536.5,"Quad Room"
712,-3360.1,140.6,1464.9,-2981.1,775.4,"Graveyard Entrance"
-290.0,-3425.7,550.7,215.8,-2987.9,504.4,"Quad Room"
703.7,-4009.3,781.4,,,7.5,-3374.6,377.7,"Flags Hall w/stairs"
743.1,-3380.1,390.2,756.4,-3401.8,610.4,"Graveyard Stairs to Flags Room"
507.8,-2082,404.5,210.4,-2958.1,209.3,"Woodpile/Pent Area"
2.4,-2522.5,-31,185.6,-2834.2,785,"Megahealth/Woodpile"
989.2,-2905.3,59,386.6,-2623.3,199.4,"Chandlier Tunnel"
1417.8,-2241.3,298,1065.9,-1868.3,608,"GraveYard Tele"
7.5,-2076.6,392,174.1,-2563.6,555.7,"Hitler Entrance to Deck"
1400.0,-1489.1,785.7,-361.4,-4063.5,-30.6,"map"

All this is: A series of boxes indicated by XYZ1 to XYZ2. First box that your position falls in, that is what %L will be when you hit it.
The final number is typically a catch-all that encompasses the entirety of the map.
ProQuake locs are different from QuakeWorld locs. QuakeWorld locs are real easy to make. ProQuake locs are very hard to make, but super precise.
A few weeks ago I was knocking ProQuake locs in favor of the QW format, but I found a real easy way to do this recently.
8. I used DarkPlaces non-stop for about 3 weeks and I loved it except for the above stuff that it doesn't have, but one thing REALLY got on my nerves.
There should be a cvar in DarkPlaces --- if there isn't already -- to make tilde both open and close the console. In game, sometimes you want to see what something that just scrolled up said.
And any player that has played more than a few months will want to "double tap" the tilde. But in DarkPlaces this doesn't open and close the console and you are left vulernable with an open console obscuring half the screen.
That would be such an improvement. I understand the coolness of being able to type a "tilde" in the console, but a cvar to revert to the standard function of tilde would be so much appreciated.
----
Anyway, cheat-free being the reason that ProQuake is still dominant in NetQuake isn't true! Only 3 or 4 cheat-free servers really get any action and most players only occasionally play on them (like once a month or so) except for CA+ players, which while a signficant community onto themselves, comprise a smaller percentage of the players and those guys only play DM3 and needless to say, that appeals to a minority of players.
The truth is, no engine has so far offered all of these things to a player and was easy to configure into high performance.
Qrack may have many of these features, but the truth is, there are a number of players that have tried Qrack or JoeQuake and switched back to ProQuake simply because Qrack and JoeQuake have a lot of settings or because a player had difficulty getting good performance out of the client.
That being said, a large number of players use JoeQuake or Qrack on servers. And JoeQuake and Qrack can't do cheat-free either, those players just switch to ProQuake to play cheat-free (the few times this actually happens).
Cheat-free just exists to more or less check out another player to see if they are "for real" or have a hacked client. Needless to say, most players are "for real".
The reason CA+ uses cheat-free is because they play DM3, a map particularly vulnerable to cheating because DM3 is all about "the corners".
And hopefully that sheds some more light on why, so far, ProQuake still gets so much use.
I know just as well as everyone else that ProQuake is an old client that is increasingly antiquated. Players are willing to do a switch from Coke to Pepsi, but the clients have to have equivalent functionality and no amount of extra features can make up for lacking functionality.
I'd love for the community to move beyond ProQuake, it isn't all that user friendly and can't even adjust brightness -- or like you observed, doesn't even have vid_reset.
But players aren't willing to lose 2/3 of their favorite features just to switch to another client.
I myself wait for the day where ProQuake is no longer the most well-rounded client, because while it was outstanding back in 2001, we aren't in 2001 anymore and it just isn't modern -- not even in a FitzQuake kind of way.

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FrikaC Site Admin Joined: 08 Oct 2004 Posts: 947 |

Posted: Thu Jul 06, 2006 2:18 pm Post subject: |

"experienced player" = lazy bastard

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leileilol Joined: 15 Oct 2004 Posts: 1321 |

Posted: Thu Jul 06, 2006 2:39 pm Post subject: |

FrikaC wrote:
"experienced player" = lazy bastard

agreed
fov150 with flat flourescent colors and rocket jumping keys is not what i call "experienced"
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Baker Joined: 14 Mar 2006 Posts: 1538 |

Posted: Thu Jul 06, 2006 2:40 pm Post subject: |

FrikaC wrote:
"experienced player" = lazy bastard

Hehe
Ah, not really. It's more of a speed thing. Really old skool players use impulse 10/impulse 12, which are weapon rotators binds in original Quake.
In Rocket Arena or Clan Arena you are always alternating your attacks between LG and RL because the defenses against those attacks are different. But, the ammo is limited and when cells are out, you want it to be SNG instead, and that is what bestweapon "8 5 4 3 2 1"/impulse "8 5 4 3 2 1" do.

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leileilol Joined: 15 Oct 2004 Posts: 1321 |

Posted: Thu Jul 06, 2006 2:42 pm Post subject: |

Baker wrote:
Real players use impulse 10/impulse 12, which are weapon rotators binds in original Quake.

fixed
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Baker Joined: 14 Mar 2006 Posts: 1538 |

Posted: Thu Jul 06, 2006 2:42 pm Post subject: |

CheapAlert wrote:

FrikaC wrote:
"experienced player" = lazy bastard

flat flourescent colors and rocket jumping keys is not what i call "experienced"

Solid color background = QuakeWorld, we don't do that in NetQuake and it impossible for the most part on a ProQuake cheat-free server.
And Rocket jumping keys are for noobies. No experienced player would be caught dead using a rocket jumping script, he would be the butt of jokes and made fun of.

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Baker Joined: 14 Mar 2006 Posts: 1538 |

Posted: Thu Jul 06, 2006 2:46 pm Post subject: |

CheapAlert wrote:

Baker wrote:
Real players use impulse 10/impulse 12, which are weapon rotators binds in original Quake.

fixed

Hehe, aren't you the guy who cries that not everyone uses DarkPlaces and then makes fun of players who complain DarkPlaces doesn't have certain features.
Someday you need to make up your mind, heh

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scar3crow Inside3D Staff Joined: 18 Jan 2005 Posts: 837 Location: Las Vegas, NV

Posted: Thu Jul 06, 2006 2:57 pm Post subject: |

I will give a more full response later on, though probably back on quakeone.com in a PM But bestweapon... I bind q to impulse 7, e to impulse 8, r to impulse 6. I can now select any weapon with a quick motion of my index or ring finger without moving my middle finger off of +forward.
My point is, a well thought out keyboard layout trumps any alias. For example, if I have weapons 1 2 5 7 8 and am in the water, bestweapon wont help me if I have the rl selected, which isnt that great for the water, because I dont want to discharge, I want the SNG (or normal sg).
A good keyboard layout makes a big difference, especially if it makes use of all fingers, for example in games with crouch, left CTRL is best for it, and one of the calls HL made that I actually agree with, because the pinky already rests there and you still have 3 fingers free for other things (and it makes crouch-jumping, not that Im a fan of it, much more natural of a motion).
IPlog seems handy, though I play under various aliases because... Im shy? Embarassed at my playing level sometimes, and feel like I can just play more casually when using some nonsense name.
The mention of the solid color backgrounds and such comes from the fact that for a while, we were all monitoring the "How does your QW look?" thread on quakeworld.nu and were just astounded with how people make their Quake look (though I feel the same about joequake and qrack, I look at the screenshots for that, and cringe or shake my head, respectively). Obviously, Quakeone is not a QW community, but the QW NQ classification I feel is trumped by the impression of "new generation" Quake players, an impression we get from many of them.
This is a gross generalization, but I can definitely agree on some instances, as it was said on irc "They dont love Quake, they just want to beat other people in a game", and I do get that impression often - especially amongst the people who see Quake as abandonware (which I know quakeone does not endorse, but many players seem to have no qualms with it).

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FrikaC Site Admin Joined: 08 Oct 2004 Posts: 947 |

Posted: Thu Jul 06, 2006 3:56 pm Post subject: |

From a modder perspective changing the entire presentation of the game as seen in the QW community is basically doing two things: it's destroying the presentation the original game that the makers worked so hard toward and it's making an uneven playing field.
Now obviously they (id) intended binds and minimal scripting, as they worked hard to add those features to the console. Other things in the console like d_mipscale are low level tweaks not meant for 'performance enhancing', to abuse them not only looks horrible, but definitely borders on cheating.
Removing dead bodies and gibs and many such features found in Qrack are definitely treading on sacred ground. On the other hand, things like loc files, menu features and MAYBE some hud changes aren't really all that annoying from a modder point-of-view as they're not exactly part of the game but are periphery.
I keep saying from a modder perspective, because I believe that when a modder creates a mod or a programmer creates a game, the default setup bundled with it is often fairly close to what they intended the play experience to be like. To deviate too far from that is contrary to the way the game was meant to be played and is, to put it bluntly, cheating.
I suppose some of these things can be seen as a matter of ergonomics and 'modern conveinances', but at the point it becomes a battle of configurations and not player skill, when the game screen I play with looks totally unlike yours, that's where the line in the sand has been crossed.
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Baker Joined: 14 Mar 2006 Posts: 1538 |

Posted: Thu Jul 06, 2006 5:02 pm Post subject: |

FrikaC wrote:
From a modder perspective changing the entire presentation of the game as seen in the QW community is basically doing two things: it's destroying the presentation the original game that the makers worked so hard toward and it's making an uneven playing field.

I don't tread into this terrority often because I don't want to be seen as critiquing QuakeWorld because for whatever reason it seems like QWers are sensitive to that, but I agree.
3 years ago the NetQuake community put pressure on developers to keep fullbrights, solid textures, quads/pents glowing thru walls and powerful scripting out of NetQuake.

Quote:
Now obviously they (id) intended binds and minimal scripting, as they worked hard to add those features to the console. Other things in the console like d_mipscale are low level tweaks not meant for 'performance enhancing', to abuse them not only looks horrible, but definitely borders on cheating.

The say_team variables are as complicated as the binds get in NetQuake. The bestweapon command is the only non-standard weapon command in NetQuake.
We are conservative.

Quote:
Removing dead bodies and gibs and many such features found in Qrack are definitely treading on sacred ground.

Agreed!
When the time comes to push for some universal method to allow ProQuake, JoeQuake, Qrack and DarkPlaces (and maybe FitzQuake) to connect to some sort of "cheatfree-ish" server, this stuff will get figured out.
There has been a lot of brainstorming on this issue in the past on how to ensure that clients don't have uneven advantages. JoeQuake and Qrack would be forced to -no24bit to disable textures and other ideas have been tossed around.
But even DarkPlaces has the ability to turn off rocket trails, so none of the newer multiplayer capable clients are 100% pure.
One big advantage in JoeQuake 0.14 was seeing shadows of players.

Quote:
On the other hand, things like loc files, menu features and MAYBE some hud changes aren't really all that annoying from a modder point-of-view as they're not exactly part of the game but are periphery.

Yeah, but once a feature has been widespread for several years it sort of becomes part of the game.
The game clock thing could be a cvar.

Quote:
I keep saying from a modder perspective, because I believe that when a modder creates a mod or a programmer creates a game, the default setup bundled with it is often fairly close to what they intended the play experience to be like. To deviate too far from that is contrary to the way the game was meant to be played and is, to put it bluntly, cheating.

I understand where you are coming from.

Quote:
I suppose some of these things can be seen as a matter of ergonomics and 'modern conveinances', but at the point it becomes a battle of configurations and not player skill, when the game screen I play with looks totally unlike yours, that's where the line in the sand has been crossed.

I am trying to get things to the point where newbies can do the same things as experts. You see, I *can* write a best weapon script that works with 1996 Quake.
Not having bestweapon is what puts new players at a disadvantage.

Quote:
// Best Weapon Equivalence Script // For DarkPlaces alias bestweapon854321 "impulse 1; wait; impulse 2; wait; impulse 3; wait; impulse 4; wait; impulse 5; wait; impulse 8" bind ALT bestweapon854321

As you can see, bestweapon is merely providing non-experts access to what can already be done. Bestweapon does not provide an advantage to experienced players, it takes that advantage away.
One example, is that in JoeQuake 0.15 there is a "MP Optimzed" in settings that sets cl_bob to 0 and a few other annoying settings off. This makes it so new players can just flip it on and be properly setup for multiplayer.
I want new players to be equally able to compete in Quake and I want the play to be experience vs. experience, not experience vs. configuration capability.
Most of the us in our community are very conservative about Quake.

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scar3crow Inside3D Staff Joined: 18 Jan 2005 Posts: 837 Location: Las Vegas, NV

Posted: Thu Jul 06, 2006 5:10 pm Post subject: |

I avoid scripts really, I guess I just associate them with things like the quick grenade bind, to which I respond "it doesnt take me much longer to hit r and click mouse1 than it does to hit r", that and I usually use 2 grenades to buy time.
I can see level playing field, but I find that is found naturally in Quake and is removed by this strong emphasis on scripts and configs. The only time something outside of skill has came into my game is the fact that 2 nights ago I died multiple times on the shmack practice server because my (4 year old) mouse start getting jitters on the laser and I couldnt turn my view for about 2 seconds, which is a fight when youre engaged with shafts.

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Sajt Joined: 16 Oct 2004 Posts: 1026 |

Posted: Fri Jul 07, 2006 5:06 am Post subject: |

bestweapon is dumb, and if anything should be a (client-side) QC thing or alias or script like you showed, not an engine hack. There is no reason to hack it into the engine if you can just type out that impulse wait etc. bind. IPlog I can understand and sounds like a good feature.
Demos... yeah.
Game clock visible - understandable. Putting it on the scoreboard though, where the top 4 frags are supposed to be - that's retarded.
Ping in scoreboard - DarkPlaces does do this when connected to QW servers. It doesn't in NQ because it keeps consistent with a standard NQ client (apparently unlike some other engines). But adding ping to the scoreboard is understandable here.
edit - forgot about loc files. These are retarded as well. They should NOT BE AN ENGINE HACK! If you really like it, add it as server-side qc to your mods that you love so much.
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F. A. Špork, an enlightened nobleman and a great patron of art, had a stately Baroque spa complex built on the banks of the River Labe.

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Baker Joined: 14 Mar 2006 Posts: 1538 |

Posted: Fri Jul 07, 2006 8:37 am Post subject: |

Sajt, I'm just trying to explain the status quo from a player perspective and describe the current environment. Bestweapon may be a little dumb, JPG only added it to ProQuake after someone else added it to a "glpro+" which became popular, partially due to the feature.
However, QuakeWorld's multi-impulse command does the same thing and I believe debutted in the More QuakeWorld client back around a similar time I would imagine.
Go to QuakeWorld.Nu and you would see that loc file support and multi-impulse are just as much a part of QuakeWorld as they are NetQuake. These aren't new, they've been the status quo since 1999 or 2000 or thereabouts.
I'm just trying to explain from a player perspective what makes a client accept vs. not accepted.
As the mantra of this site is "Knowledge is Power", something I very much believe in as well, I wanted to try to help explain how a client is viewed from the eyes of a player and benefit from that understanding.

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FrikaC Site Admin Joined: 08 Oct 2004 Posts: 947 |

Posted: Fri Jul 07, 2006 8:51 am Post subject: |

Baker wrote:
These aren't new, they've been the status quo since 1999 or 2000 or thereabouts.

I'd say somewhat earlier than that. Qizmo 2.0 came out in june of 1998, and I think by then loc support had become a standard feature of proxies as evidenced by so many proxies supporting them. Proxies were pretty standard in the QW community, I don't know about NQ. For Christmas of 2000 the engine source came out and the non-cheaty aspects of proxies quickly found their way into the new engine ports.

Baker wrote:
As the mantra of this site is "Knowledge is Power", something I very much believe in as well, I wanted to try to help explain how a client is viewed from the eyes of a player and benefit from that understanding.

Speaking of which, I've never quite been sure why the mantra 'Knowledge is power' has pretty much always been on the logo (going back to the days on PlanetQuake even). I wonder who put it there and what they really meant by it.

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Baker Joined: 14 Mar 2006 Posts: 1538 |

Posted: Fri Jul 07, 2006 9:09 am Post subject: |

FrikaC wrote:
I'd say somewhat earlier than that. Qizmo 2.0 came out in june of 1998, and I think by then loc support had become a standard feature of proxies as evidenced by so many proxies supporting them. Proxies were pretty standard in the QW community, I don't know about NQ. For Christmas of 2000 the engine source came out and the non-cheaty aspects of proxies quickly found their way into the new engine ports.

I do my best to research the history of the game, but I myself didn't really play Quake until 1999. Back in 1996, I played the Quake demo and ask for Quake for Christmas, but was a keyboarder and found the 3D environment awkward, and went back to playing Doom II against friends on a LAN.
And I didn't really start "paying attention" until 2002.

Quote:
Speaking of which, I've never quite been sure why the mantra 'Knowledge is power' has pretty much always been on the logo (going back to the days on PlanetQuake even). I wonder who put it there and what they really meant by it.

Hehe, well -- it's a good mantra.

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