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

Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2006 3:10 am Post subject: Is the Quake1 Community slowly dying away? |

That was the question CocoT posed in this article posted on I3D a few years ago: http://www.inside3d.com/articles/death.shtml My question is, is it now dead?

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RenegadeC Joined: 15 Oct 2004 Posts: 370 Location: The freezing hell; Canada |

Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2006 3:22 am Post subject: |

Yep.

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

Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2006 3:52 am Post subject: |

Alrighty then, case closed.

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Error Inside3D Staff Joined: 05 Nov 2004 Posts: 558 Location: VA, USA

Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2006 4:27 am Post subject: |

seems that way _________________ Inside3D : Knowledge Is Power Darkplaces Documentation Wiki

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

Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2006 5:23 am Post subject: |

In short, no. In length, definitely not. Is it dead? No. Is it dying? Dying is an inappropriate word... Quake as we know it is a community. Communities do not die, members die, members retreat, members flee, or members move on. When you say Quake, particularly on Inside3d, it is easy to think of it as I3D and the quakec community... There havent been mods, most definitely as of late. There has however been a fairly strong level of activity in the engine scene, the mapping scene has remained consistent with the speed maps and individual releases over at Func_Msgboard. And then there are the players. They dont necessarily map or code in any way, but they do something very important - they play Quake. And they still play Quake. Load up DarkPlaces and query the server master list... Over 300 QW servers return. True that is a mere fraction of a number compared with Quake back in its heyday, but that was a different era for the internet as well.
Quake is not dead, and it is not dying. Some family members may drift away, but it is still being played, and someone is still modding for it in some way.
Just look at QuakeOne, Besmella and Func_Msgboard. QuakeOne has a very active forum filled with enthusiastic players. Though we may not always agree with them, they are always up for a good 1on1 or testing of a mod or map. Besmella saw it fit to interview you FrikaC (and it was a good interview) which received good reception there and at QuakeOne as well. Func_Msgboard is periodic in its updates at best, but when it is related to Quake, it receives comments, and often a great many.
Heres something thats gonna sound like it takes a great deal of gumption, but I am reminded of George Washington in his statement against political parties, fearing it would drive the nations into factions. And for a long time I have been living out Quake in a faction. For the past 7 or so years, Ive not ventured beyond the walls of Inside3d and #qc. Occasionally dropping by #terrafusion but not for long. I didnt seek out other Quake players... I wasnt aware of Besmella or the Singe community.
Yet I recall back into that golden era, when Blue and sCary uploaded their latest matches, when Dank and Scud explored the Nameless City... There were factions yes, but they still got together and celebrated Quake. If you wrote fanfics, did fan art, coded mods, crafted maps or models, or did custom skins for your clan, you still played Quake together. You still reveled in that twilight blood soaked wet dream that is Quake.
Quake is not dying or dead, Quake is divorced.
QExpo is coming, I myself am very excited about this, as is SantaClaws and Sajt, and I welcome others to become excited and chip in. Play Quake. Find a mod you havent played in a while and get people together (Im keen on trying GetRichQuake again). I want this QExpo to be a family reunion, a reunion of QuakeC, mappers, engine coders, total converters, and players, netQuake and QuakeWorld alike.
If you love Quake, this forum, QuakeOne, Func_Msgboard, Besmella, Quakeworld domains, are the places to share it. Meet with other players, play the game with them. On QuakeOne I was embarassed to see how well so many of them seem to know each other, and know of a variety of other players who arent necessarily on that forum, but play the game - yet I dont know any Quake players outside of my circle of friends in #qc and #darkplaces.
I admit to the guilt of many inconsiderate attitudes... I know I can be one hell of a stickler when it comes to re-texture and re-modelling projects. I know I can be almost viciously loyal to the works of FrikaC and LordHavoc, because I am fans of their work and consider myself their friend. But their works are their ways of loving Quake. Other engines, mods, and bots, are other ways of loving Quake, created by other Quake players. I want to know them. I want to know my family under this morada haze where fiends leap and soldiers rocketjump.
Quake is very much alive. We just dont visit as much as we want to admit. I know I dont. I rarely play these days... I cant think of the last time I played a stranger in Quake. Yet my first experience online with Quake was the rocket of an anonymous woman somewhere in QuakeWorld. I was welcomed. Let us welcome ourselves back.
Load Quake.
Join strange servers.
And frag yourself a new friend.

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lth Joined: 11 Nov 2004 Posts: 129 |

Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2006 12:50 pm Post subject: |

The problem for QC coders as I see it is that all of the 'easy' ground has been covered, in many cases re-covered, and so people have (largely) stopped modding because there's no point - there's a perception that everything mod-wise for quake has 'been done', which is true to a certain extent (there's only so much you can change about quake before you start losing the 'quakeness' of it imho), and because QuakeC is, let's face it, a fairly restrictive language, most of the coders have gone on to HL, Q3, HL2 and so on, where they can actually do more stuff.
That's not to say that Quake is dead - as scar said above, there are still loads of people playing the game, it's just that very few people seem to mod for it. What the 'solution' to that problem is, I'm not sure. Perhaps we should accept that Quake modding has changed, moved away from the 'quake done better', 'quake with more game modes', 'quake but with tanks/robots/fiends' style and into the more time-intensive stuff like lunkin's(?) journey and the RPG that FrikaC did. But even then, surely people should be modding the mods? Do func_msgboard even know about these mods? If they did, perhaps they would get into mapping for them.
That said, the rate of maps coming out of the mapping community is very small at the moment - it might be consistent and of very high quality, but again, I've reached the point where I'm not excited by new Q1SP maps coming out because I've seen it all before. There are only so many situations you can put the player in, only so many texture sets / colour combinations that I am, frankly, bored by them.
As scar says, maybe the way forward for us is to reconnect with the players out there and just have some fun playing quake for a bit. That the game was fun was what drew us to it in the first place, right?
_________________
randomviolence - tactical combat boardgame

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RenegadeC Joined: 15 Oct 2004 Posts: 370 Location: The freezing hell; Canada |

Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2006 2:25 pm Post subject: |

The Quake mapping community generally dislike Quake modders, don't ask why .. they started it.

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leileilol Joined: 15 Oct 2004 Posts: 1321 |

Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2006 6:50 pm Post subject: |

the community isn't dying just two active members (dr. shadowborg and wazat) are absent _________________

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SantaClaws Joined: 01 May 2005 Posts: 8 Location: Las Vegas, NV, USA |

Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2006 6:55 pm Post subject: |

I think LTH really hit the nail on the head. A lot of things have already been done for Quake, and so people are getting ideas that involve more than just Quake-done-better. The problem is, when they try to attempt projects like Prydon Gate, they get frustrated by the limitations applied to them by the tools they have to use.
QC is a great language because it makes it so easy to change the world... but as the ideas tend to get more and more complex, they get harder and harder to make, and more people start giving up and moving on to other things.
The big problem is that people are trying to save two things at the same time... the modding community, and the original content of Quake. People don't want to sacrifice backwards compatibility, so the tools become harder to use or more limited than they have to. But I think it's this same thing that's killing the modding community.

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Dr. Shadowborg Inside3D Staff Joined: 16 Oct 2004 Posts: 726 |

Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2006 7:44 pm Post subject: |

CheapAlert wrote:
the community isn't dying just two active members (dr. shadowborg and wazat) are absent

I'm not absent, I'm simply just busy. Mostly with real life, coupled with slacking off a bunch, but I'm not absent, I visit these forums regularly (at least once a day).
Trust me, my absence WILL bring something very NICE reasonably soon. (*cough* TAKOP Weapons Alpha: Eminent Threat *cough*)
As far as the whole been-done thing...I'd say that's true to a certain extent, but it's not the real problem. The large problem IMO is the current gap between Modder and Mapper. Mappers almost never add any quakec to their maps, and when they do, it's almost always of the Zerstorer-era level. (i.e. vanilla weapons, any new weapons are very much vanilla-esque, monsters are fairly plain, etc.) One particular recent example of this that is quite sucessful is Kell and Necro's Quoth package. Sure it's got some good maps, and textures, and even some great monsters. But it's still Zerstorer-era material. For example, when was the last time you saw anybody attempt something on the level of say, Malice or even Shrak? It's all right to make something that follows the set formula of find key, get key, open door to proceed whilst causing mass destruction wherever you go, what truely matters is how it's presented. Why do you think the original Doom / Doom2 communities are still thriving? Make your gameplay hard and challenging, whilst making it entertaining to play (as opposed to the chore that was Quake2 and even Unreal 1's gameplay) and making the reward at the end all the sweeter for the journey, and you have yourself a winner. This is something that the commercial developers seem to have forgotten in their pursuit of grandeose wads of cash. This is why communities like Quake will and must continue to survive. This is also one of the reasons why I continue to stay in the Quake Community. The bright future will not come from all those fancy shiney new games, but from older games like quake. Communities that haven't forgotten hectic action, the explosions, the strippers, all the basics that truely make a game fun.
Whew. Talk about random raving. I think I'd better stop now, before I explode or something else unpleasant.
Is the community dead or dying? I'd say no. And I'll bitch-slap anybody who says otherwise.
_________________
"Roboto suggests Plasma Bazooka."

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SantaClaws Joined: 01 May 2005 Posts: 8 Location: Las Vegas, NV, USA |

Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2006 8:28 pm Post subject: |

Dr. Shadowborg wrote:
Is the community dead or dying? I'd say no. And I'll bitch-slap anybody who says otherwise.

OH GOD IT STINGS!
I agree with your sentiments, but I have to disagree with the conclusions you make.
Let's forget about the concept of developers leaving because they find Quake tools too simplistic for more advanced efforts. Let's assume that everyone who likes modding for Quake will continue liking modding for Quake, regardless of what they're making with it.
The community would still die out because of the fact that people inevitably leave communities for one reason or another. Sure, there may be a tight core of hardcore members that never leave, but others will leave because their life has grown in other directions. Maybe school is keeping them too busy, or they have kids now, or they just don't want to be on the computer as much.
Any community slowly dwindles over time. The difference is that most communities also have a steady influx of new members.
The Quake community suffers in this respect because it has a very high initial learning curve. It's a difficult thing for new, interested people to get started with. It makes the game unapproachable. Most people start modding for a game because they play the game or mods that other people made for it, and love them so much they want to try it, too. It's very difficult for people to experience that initial stage for Quake, unless they have a friend who's sitting there next to them setting up everything and telling them what to do.
If this community as a whole could solve that problem, I believe it would flourish. It's really the only thing holding it back.

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leileilol Joined: 15 Oct 2004 Posts: 1321 |

Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2006 8:35 pm Post subject: |

one of the problems is i think, is most newbies to quake are often directed towards the quakeworld/netquake gamer scene instead, often not owning quake and using an illegal equake or stuck with the shareware, not aware of any good mods for the game other than the usual ctf/hooks/lol clan bots/jump lol/etc...
Even Nexuiz has a more active community than us ATM. One of the reasons behind that success is because the majority of the audience don't have Quake.
It's also hard to find Quake in stores nowadays, as the bundle it used to come in isn't around anymore. Perhaps it'll be reissued once again in a four-bundle pack.
Could always "decrapify" and release a new Open Quartz that's not "gay" as everyone makes it.
_________________

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Dr. Shadowborg Inside3D Staff Joined: 16 Oct 2004 Posts: 726 |

Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2006 8:50 pm Post subject: |

Both Santa and Cheapy raise some very good points. As far as Cheapie's point, I'm not too sure what can be done in this regard, short of what he mentioned. Maybe somebody should bug ID to kick out a Quake Gold edition containing the missionpacks? Or maybe do something along the lines of what they did over at fileplanet with Quake2?

SantaClaws wrote:
The Quake community suffers in this respect because it has a very high initial learning curve. It's a difficult thing for new, interested people to get started with. It makes the game unapproachable. Most people start modding for a game because they play the game or mods that other people made for it, and love them so much they want to try it, too. It's very difficult for people to experience that initial stage for Quake, unless they have a friend who's sitting there next to them setting up everything and telling them what to do.
If this community as a whole could solve that problem, I believe it would flourish. It's really the only thing holding it back.

This is very much a valid point.
Maybe It would help if we did a "getting started" series of tutorials and cram them into the tutorials section of Inside3d?
_________________
"Roboto suggests Plasma Bazooka."

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lth Joined: 11 Nov 2004 Posts: 129 |

Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2006 9:47 pm Post subject: |

Shadow: I think mappers map for Quake because it's Quake, and that's what they like. Modders mod for Quake because it's a fun tool to build things that aren't Quake on top of. That's why there's a divide. _________________ randomviolence - tactical combat boardgame

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Lardarse Joined: 05 Nov 2005 Posts: 243 Location: Bristol, UK |

Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2006 2:03 pm Post subject: |

lth wrote:
The problem for QC coders as I see it is that all of the 'easy' ground has been covered, in many cases re-covered, and so people have (largely) stopped modding because there's no point - there's a perception that everything mod-wise for quake has 'been done', which is true to a certain extent (there's only so much you can change about quake before you start losing the 'quakeness' of it imho), and because QuakeC is, let's face it, a fairly restrictive language, most of the coders have gone on to HL, Q3, HL2 and so on, where they can actually do more stuff.

Well... What the communtiy needs is more "experienced newbs" - by that I mean people who understand what it takes to spend time coding something into a computer game, just to see what it would be like, and go on from there, but are new to the environment that QuakeC provides. Very few people have moved into Q1 modding from other games. I don't know of any others, apart from myself...

Quote:
That's not to say that Quake is dead - as scar said above, there are still loads of people playing the game, it's just that very few people seem to mod for it. What the 'solution' to that problem is, I'm not sure. Perhaps we should accept that Quake modding has changed, moved away from the 'quake done better', 'quake with more game modes', 'quake but with tanks/robots/fiends' style and into the more time-intensive stuff like lunkin's(?) journey and the RPG that FrikaC did. But even then, surely people should be modding the mods? Do func_msgboard even know about these mods? If they did, perhaps they would get into mapping for them.

Modding has changed very much. It's the nature of modding, everyone wants to do something that hasn't been done before, pushing the boundaries to the extremes. That's why some of the largest mods (in terms of file size and complexity compared to the original game - and I'm including stand-alone games in this argument) are in existance. But there are still mods that people think about mapping for, loke SoA, DoE, Zerstörer, Nehahra, even Quoth.

Quote:
That said, the rate of maps coming out of the mapping community is very small at the moment - it might be consistent and of very high quality, but again, I've reached the point where I'm not excited by new Q1SP maps coming out because I've seen it all before. There are only so many situations you can put the player in, only so many texture sets / colour combinations that I am, frankly, bored by them.

There has been a recent trend away from the small 50-100 monster maps, and into the maps of epic proportions. The speed mapping provides a nice beak from that, but they tend to be on the smaller side of traditinal maps, and are less well thought out. That said, there have been 5 maps released in March, which is higher than average. Map releases are like buses...
---------------------------------
It's been nearly a year now since I rediscovered Quake. I didn't know that a chance encounter with Nexuiz on download.com whre I was looking for a free FPS game to play would take me to where I am now...
I found it at a time when I was becoming increasingly disillusioned with performing a maintenance update on a Q3 mod for a dying community that was close to breaking apart. When it was released, they didn't greet it with the respect that previous versions had enjoyed, saying that it felt worse than the old version. But by then, my heart was long gone. Discovering Nexuiz drew me slowly into modding for it. That, and finding a second-hand copy of Malice for £2, then led me to discover DarkPlaces, which in turn led to me rediscovering a game that I had played a long time ago. Finding a copy on eBay was hard, but well worth it, especially when I managed to get both mission packs as well.
And then the QExpo happened. It showed me that the community was thriving in the shadows of the newer games. It showed me that this community had the balls to have its biggest event go up against the biggest event that the current generation has. It showed me a diversity that I didn't think could exist, and yet it does...
The bottom line is: If Quake was dead or dying, then things like the QExpo wouldn't exist... I don't even think it's divorced. It's defnitely had a rough relationship over the last 10 years, but it's still going. And people are still playing it. They're playing it a lot better than they ever used to, as well. In the last 12 months, the entire game has been completed on east in just 13 minutes 46 seconds. On nightmare in under 20 minutes. On nightmare with all kills and all secrets in under 70 minutes.
So, Quake isn't dead. Not even close. It will be alive long after it's collecting its pension...

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