Quake Advent Calendar 2013

Welcome to a Quake-themed Advent Calendar. On 24 days 24 people will showcase something about Quake. Something old, something new, something obscure, something you should check out. Monitor the list on the frontpage to see new posts every day.

3rd December - Vondur

The year is 1997. I don't have internet at home. I just recently bought pirated Quake CD and played it without +mlook and only with keyboard (yes, completed it in this mode first time because I didn't know you can use mouse). I liked game very much because of its atmosphere and of course gory brutal gameplay and wanted more.

Once, I stumbled upon a CD-ROM full of so called "Quake mods" on some warez point. Those dark times Russia was full of warez on every corner because interweb was seldom in peoples homes. The contents of CD-ROM showed me that I can explore more Quake dimensions because this CD-ROM was full of badly made levels. I didn't care then, I was just playing not knowing that custom made levels could be much much better. And, thanks to power of interweb that I had on my work and mighty Yahoo search engine, I typed 'quake levels' or something into the search box and the site that turned to be a cornerstone of my Quake adventure was found - SPQ Level Heaven.

This site gathered reviews of the finest levels at the time, tiny screenshots showed new unexplored realms. So I took pack of 3" diskettes and started bringing levels home. Those times it was rather hard. Silly diskettes could spontaneously stop reading. Most hardcore thing I remember was bringing Zerstorer mod home. It took 2-3 days! Because I had just 3 diskettes and mod is around 10Mbs. So, thanks to that first site I found I've got mighty inspiration to make levels myself. And it all happened one day but that's another story ;)

Browse an archived copy of SPQ Level Heaven.

2nd December - Daz

"Electric Sheep" by David Jewsbury is a Quake level spanning three maps and was released on 07/11/1996. Why do I bring this up? As far as I can remember this was the first custom level for Quake that I had ever played. I had absolutely no internet at the time and every month I would hop down to the local news agents to grab a copy of either PC Zone or PC Gamer, depending on which one had more Quake content on its cover cd that month!

So imagine my excitement one day as I rummaged through the magazine rack and came upon an issue of PC Zone which included "Over 100 quake mods!" on its cover cd. The initial excitement diminished slightly when I got home and read the contents of the Quake folder. Extra ammo mod! Ogre rocket mod! The list went on this way for a good ten lines before I found it. "Over 20 new levels!" Jackpot. I installed all the levels into my Quake directory and wrote down a list of all the map names on a piece of paper, then rebooted into msdos (more memory free! Ahh the old days) .

Elcshp.bsp was the first name on the list of course. I must have attempted the first level around 8 times and had been horribly murdered at each attempt! At the time I didn't even use the mouse to control the game. Keyboard all the way! Even though the level was cramped, difficult and frustrating I found it fascinating that someone had created this entire world for me to play in. David Jewsbury (among others) is responsible for me installing a Quake level editor and learning how to create worlds of my own.

Electric Sheep is available for download and play right here: https://www.quaddicted.com/reviews/elcshp.html

1st December - Spirit

QuakeWorld is the Internet-optimised multiplayer part of Quake. The European Quake League is a 4-on-4 team deathmatch league. Suddendeath (SD) from Sweden and The Viper Squad (tVS) from Finland are two clans which were both founded in the hey-days of Quake in 1997. Tonight, at 20:30 CET (that is 6 and a half hours from now), they will face each other in the grand final of the 17th season of the EQL in a best-of-five showdown. (Image by bps.)

If you own Quake, you can spectate the match in-game using QTV in the ezQuake engine. Monitor a QTV browser and when the game appears, click the Watch link and open it with ezQuake. nQuake offers an easy installer for ezQuake for beginners.

For everyone else there will be a livestream at the suddendeathTV channel at Twitch.tv, hopefully with live commentary.