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--- quake_advent_calendar_2013:7-12 [2013/12/08 16:11]
Spirit [8th December - Preach]
+++ quake_advent_calendar_2013:7-12 [2013/12/22 22:03] (current)
Spirit
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-====== Quake Advent Calendar 2013 ======
+====== Quake Advent Calendar 2013 - Part 2 ======
 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 [[https://www.quaddicted.com/|frontpage]] to see new posts every day. This is part 2 for the 7th to 12th December. See [[quake_advent_calendar_2013:1-6]] for the previous posts.
+===== 12th December - Johnny Law =====
+{{ :quake_advent_calendar_2013:qphone.png?nolink|}}
+\\
+\\
+I often don't pay enough attention to a game's sound design while playing
+it. But particular sound effects can really stick with me... showing up as
+surprise nostalgia years later when I hear an HEV suit charging, the chunk
+of an 8-ball launcher, or even "wort wort wort".
+Of course the classic Quake sound effects from McGee/Romero/Reznor are high
+on that list. So for a while now I'd thought it would be nerdycool to set a
+few Quake sound effects as phone alert sounds. When I actually bit the
+bullet though, it was a surprising amount of work to find good alert-sound
+candidates and then extract, rename, noise-reduce, format-convert, and
+gain-normalize them.
+I decided it would be neat, in a small way, if I could make a shortcut for
+that process -- a utility that you could throw your pak files at, and have
+processed sounds pop out the other end. Having a Quake Advent Calendar slot
+to fill seemed like a good excuse to get off my butt and do it, so:
+**Downloads:** [[
+https://github.com/neogeographica/quakesounds/releases|From GitHub]]
+Docs:
+    * [[
+https://github.com/neogeographica/quakesounds/blob/master/README.md|The README]]
+    * [[
+https://github.com/neogeographica/quakesounds/blob/master/LAUNCHING.md|More details about launching the application]]
+    * [[
+https://github.com/neogeographica/quakesounds/blob/master/CONFIGURING.md|More details about customizing/configuring things]]
+===== 11th December - Tronyn =====
+==== No Vertigo ====
+{{ :quake_advent_calendar_2013:tronyn_nyarlathotep.jpg?direct&500|}}
+As one of the last truly "arcade"-style FPS games, before that style of game was self-consciously and somewhat ironically resurrected a decade later by games like Serious Sam and Painkiller, Quake has some relatively unique features. For example, no matter how far you fall, you can only ever lose 5% health. Vertically, there's nothing to be scared of - and this total lack of realism has always opened up creative possibilities. In the comments after the article [[http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/03/06/gaming-made-me-quake/|Gaming Made Me Quake]], one "BobsLawnService" wrote: "The one thing that always blew me away about Quake was the architecture. Looking back I think it is because the level designers thought 'Hey, we can do full 3D now so we’ll overdo it.' A lot of modern level design seems flat and uninspired in comparison." This reminded me of how much Quake exploited 3d in its level design from the very start. The classic example is "Ziggurat Vertigo," probably the single weirdest and most impressive original Quake map. In fact, my dream map is probably if a modern mapper made a gargantuan level inspired by Ziggurat Vertigo. Years later, some mappers came up with the idea for a "Vertical Map Pack" in which they would only be allowed to build up. Later still, others followed up on this theme with great results such as negke's [[/reviews/768_negke.html|Skinny Norris]] and necros' [[/reviews/ne_tower.html|Moldy Tower]]. I should also mention the id map "The Wind Tunnels," and some of the great maps it has inspired including at least one remake, Backspace's [[/reviews/tfl2.html|The Fierce Livid]], Digs' [[/reviews/digs03.html|Digs03]], metlslime's maps [[/reviews/chaos.html|Crawling Chaos]] and [[/reviews/ant.html|Antediluvian]], most recently sock's [[/reviews/backstein1e.html|Backsteingotik]]. Vertical design is one of the strengths of Quake's level design legacy, something that more "realistic" or "place-based" games have really neglected in their level design.
+Today I'm releasing my own vertical-style Quake map, [[/reviews/nyarlathotep.html|Nyarlathotep]].
+-----
+===== 10th December - Neozeed & [HCI]Mara'akate =====
+{{:quake_advent_calendar_2013:qdos_quake01.png?nolink |}}
+{{:quake_advent_calendar_2013:qdos_quake02.png?nolink |}}
+QDOS is a modernized Quake and QW port for DOS.  The aim of this port
+is to keep the same feel as stock Quake, but have support for some of the
+larger mods out there as well as online play!  Some of my favourite features
+that I've added include: V_CONTENTBLEND (disables colormap changing
+like gl_polyblend), support for the CHAT SETINFO extension, on-screen
+time and FPS counters, players emitting a dynamic light and spinning quad symbol
+if they are typing, Fitzquake protocol support, Warpspasm support(!),
+external *.ent file loading, and entity dumping.
+{{:quake_advent_calendar_2013:qdos_warpqdos.jpg?direct&370|}}
+Original WATTCP injection done by [[http://virtuallyfun.superglobalmegacorp.com|NeoZeed]]. Here is his words:
+Originally I was playing with djgpp and re-building dosdoom, the first
+source port of doom.  sadly all the original ms-dos support code for
+doom had been stripped out.  But then I remembered that quake had been
+released in its entirety!   I was able to quickly and easily build quake
+for ms-dos.  Then I found this old library,  wattcp a tcpip stack for
+ms-dos, and I built that too!  It was very exciting.  Looking at the
+wattcp examples, I noticed that they looked kind of normal from a bsd
+tcpip wise, so I thought,  what the heck I'll try to see if I can
+combine quake and wattcp.  I still remember setting up this elaborate
+debug setup with sniffers and a server with as much debug stuff I could
+throw in the socket code, but it wasn't needed; it connected and worked
+on the first shot!
+After I announced what I'd done, I got a request for quakeworld.   So I
+setup the compile, and connected to [[http://games.xs4all.nl|quake.xs4all.nl]]
+and proceeded to get destroyed.   I'm not very
+good at quake,  but my client was working!
+So I zipped it all up and thought that would be that... then
+[[http://dk.toastednet.org/|[HCI]Mara'akate]] found it :)
+Credits: Neozeed, [HCI]Mara'akate with advice from Sezero, Taniwha, Deek,
+leilei and other respected members of the Quake Engine community.
+[[http://dk.toastednet.org/QDOS|Experience Quake like it's 1996 on original hardware!]]
+-----
+===== 9th December - ijed =====
+Tech Evans stood, stretched, then sat back down in the creaking office
+chair.
+Overhead, the fluorescent lighting buzzed and outside, through the thirty
+centimeter thick window, a radioactive dust storm scoured the black sands
+of N411-b of anything that could be considered life in even the broadest
+interpretation of the the concept.
+What was done here was electronic espionage through the slip gate network.
+The company wanted to steal the secrets of the weird and violent societies
+living out here, beyond the slip gates, in the dimensions unknown.  And so
+they set up these research stations, micro-drones spying on the cultures
+and stealing their knowledge while techs like Evans filtered through the
+dross for a paycheck.
+Evans knew why they were out here, not even in the same dimension as those
+they were spying on. Isolation from everyone, eighteen months at a time
+with strict reintegration protocols for infection before they could go back
+through the gate, to earth.  Basically, if something went bad, if they were
+compromised or invaded, the station could be destroyed at a remove. It was
+rumored a remote triggered nuke was housed beneath the main reactor for
+just this purpose.
+{{:quake_advent_calendar_2013:ijed_advent.png?direct&500 |}}
+But, the pay was good. He turned back to his terminal. This was an
+interesting group in any case. Not quite as crazy or monstrous as most of
+the others. Not crazy. Incredibly, Ruthlessly sane. A cold, calculating
+instinct for survival born from their knowledge of cloning technology.
+Probably why the company was so interested.
+The individuals that made up the group couldn't even be called as such.
+They were grown in vats, more than half their brains being composed of
+circuitry. They communicated by short wave radio, but not with anything as
+primitive as speech.  Instead it seemed to be directly by thought. So far
+human technology was yet to properly crack open either telepathy or
+cloning. Interesting stuff indeed.
+Apparently there were some individuals in the group with free will, though
+Evans had yet to see any. All the micro-drones that had come into contact
+with them had been destroyed by some sort of unknown attack. It seemed that
+these guys called the shots in any case, and had access to even more
+advanced technologies.
+There was something mildly crazy about them though. They seemed to worship
+a deity.  One of the drones had come across a large hall full of the lower
+warrior class of cyborgs, all chanting in unison, repeating a phrase or
+name endlessly.  Their technology also seemed based around this entity.
+Evans had found the idea fascinating; technology as a religion. It also
+appeared that this deity was an actual conscious entity as well. Something
+out there was talking back to this group of lobotomised killers.
+What was the name he'd gleaned from the servers? Nyar... Nyarlathotep, that
+was it. He adjusted his glasses and leaned closer to the terminal.
+By his foot, something black and oily leaked from the terminal casing. Then
+it seemed to twist in a breeze that wasn't there, taking on a smoke like
+quality before coiling back into the terminal. The fluorescent lighting
+buzzed and the storm howled.
+-----
 ===== 8th December - Preach =====
 {{ :quake_advent_calendar_2013:preach_12days.jpg?direct&480|}}
@@ Line 28: / Line 172: @@
 Please be nice and respectful. Happy fragging!
+-----
+  * [[quake_advent_calendar_2013:1-6#st_december_-_spirit|1st til 6th December]]
+  * [[quake_advent_calendar_2013:7-12#th_december_-_emergency_spirit|7th til 12th December]] <- You are here
+  * [[quake_advent_calendar_2013:13-18#th_december_-_cocot|13th til 18th December]]
+  * [[quake_advent_calendar_2013:19-24#th_december_-_sock|19th til 24th December]]