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Articles
Q1 SP views and articles: 22/07/01:

Q1 SP mappers talk about the modding / coding scene.

Introduction:
Despite both scenes thriving, with many people still making innovative releases, the Quake single player mapping, and Quake modding / coding scenes are quite seperate from each other. Sometimes there can be a bit of friction between the two scenes, and sometimes it can seem that neither scene understands the desires nor values of the other scene. So to encourage some communication and positive discussion, I've done some interviews to find out what the more established people in each scene think of the other scene.

Secondly, what Q1 SP mappers think of the modding / coding scene: I tried to choose people who were well established in the Q1 SP mapping scene, and who didn't regularly use mods in their maps. However, coincidentally, this ended up with me choosing 3 people all of whom contributed to Nehahra. Oh well. ELEK has released more good Q1 SP maps than most people comprehend, see Tertiary Concepts. CZG has released several Q1 SP maps, in particular the ultra-classic CZG07 "Insomnia", see Grey Void. Vondur has released two famous Q1 SP maps, including the highly acclaimed Koohoo, see War Supply.

Shambler: 1. What is your favourite Quake mod and/or custom engine, and why?

ELEK: I really do not have a favorite engine. But if I had to choose one I would prefer the engine that comes with Nehahra. (Nehahra.exe) That choice is a bit biased as I worked on the project, but to be completely honest it has filled all my mapping needs, and I haven't taken too much time looking at other engines. As for favorite mod I have enjoyed some parts of Zerstorer and since it came with it's own pak file I will name CZG's map pack CZG07/Insomnia as my favorite mod I didn't take part in. I really don't get much time to play alot of mods that are getting released. But if I think back one of my favorite old mods was called cujo. When the players would spawn in DM if you picked up the yellow armour a doggie would appear and he would be your mate. It also worked in SP which was fun as well.

CZG: My favourite mod has to be Zerstörer, not only for the great maps that it delivered, but also because it added something quite rare in mods: Good new weapons and monsters.

Vondur: Mod: Nehahra. Not because I worked on it here and there, just because its a solid mod. It has everything that must be in a proper mod: quality maps, good story, movie, documentation, devkit....
Engine: I don't like custom engines, they destroys Quake FEEL in most cases. You know what I mean, don't you? Only engines I liked are ones that have only old Quake's bugs fixes.

Shambler: 2. What Quake mod and/or custom engine have you been most disappointed with, and why?

ELEK: Unfortunately again I haven't gotten much of a chance to play a ton of mods/new engines. I have heard things about alot of the newer engines coming out, but most of the comments haven't been positive. It seems most of the engine coders and modders are concerned with creating more flashy eye candy, and less with getting great gameplay. I tried the Dark Places engine, and while it runs pretty smoothly I found that the lighting seemed to get rather washed out as the brightness seemed to be cranked up all the way.

CZG: I can't honestly say I have been downright disappointed with any mod, since I basicly have no real expectations when I download something from the web. I could name you the most awful mod I've ever touched upon, though it's a close fight between Borg Quake and After the fall.

Vondur: I've seen lots of ugly mods, there are many. And I estimate them equally. If mod is bad - its bad. There are no excuses. Even if it has some good ideas. Why? Well, number of reasons of course, from banal lack of proper readme to loads of bugs and overall poorness of design. It's not possible for mod to be good if it has awesome maps ang ugly custom monsters and stuff, and vice versa. EVERYTHING must be balanced at least. Yes, balance and whole style are the right words. Mod could be average, but stylish. In this case it will win. Its most hard task to obtain *solid* style of the game. Not everyone understand that. Everything depends on a lead designer and team. Lead designer must have solid view of what he want to make, team must work and solve problems *together*.

As for the engines. As I said i don't like any custom Quake engines even Nehahra.exe. For me, most dissapointed are ones that have loads of useless eyecandies which makes Quake looks like Quake three, I really hate that. It't like desecration, you know. I can't stand that.

Shambler: 3. What do you think is the most important contribution Quake mods / engines have made to the Quake scene?

ELEK: Again I am rather biased, but I think that Nehahra has made the largerst contribution recently. If I had to look back and think about past mods CTF stands out in my mind as the best multiplayer mod. I am not referring to the full blown Threewave mod, but the standard CTF mod which allowed players to login to servers and play w/out having to download alot of extra stuff. SP wise I would be a fool to state anything other than Zerstorer. Up until Nehahra it was tops for me SP mod wise. In terms of contributions to the mapping scene I would have to say that both Zerstorer and Nehahra opened up many new avenues of single player gameplay for mappers to explore. The documentation in the Nehahra devkit is fabulous, and the possibilities with that entity set are limitless. More people should really read the documentation and get an idea of what Nehahra offers. It is staggering. The other mods which are soon to come OUM, SOE, DMSP only offer more variation and it will be interesting to see what these mods bring to the table.

CZG: I can't really think of anything in particular that would have made a lot of things different if it didn't excist. In any case it would have to be bsp compilers. If nothing had changed withe them, most of the maps released today wouldn't have been as grand as they are.

Vondur: They glued people together. For scene people internet isn't just a can filled with garbage like flash, pr0n and spam. They do know that there are true mates there, with whom they worked and chatted together. And this is great!

Shambler: 4. What do you perceive as the strengths and weaknesses of the Quake modding/coding community?

ELEK: Strengths: There are tons of tutorials, and loads of information out there for Quake. In terms of nailing down problems and finding solutions I have found that Quake is documented extremely well. There are also some individuals who are willing to assist newer mappers with their problems. There are also plenty of good mappers and coders out there working hard on several projects. I think alot of the recent SP releases stem from the fact that there is such a large group of good mappers still working with Q1 and these people are not necessarily obsessed with download numbers.

Weaknesses: Very little *new* conceptual material has surfaced lately. It seems most mod makers are doing similar things which have been done previously, whether it be DM or SP. I would like to see quality work with people taking more risks. Unfortunately many people do not like any variation from Quake's original form, therefore people who do take risks face some degree of negative feedback. It is very easy for the end user to sit back and whine about specifics and ignore the overall picture/not consider the amount of work that is in a modification. It takes guts to release something that breaks some rules and diverges from the common path.

It also seems very difficult to find engine coders who are able to listen to a mappers point of view. Coding and mapping are extremely different animals, and alot of times mappers are not knowledgeable of the code that renders the game, I know I will take flack for this, but I feel that engine coders *should* have a working knowledge of what it takes to create a map. Simply pasting in some code which renders fog isn't enough. We need engine coders who understand the bsp process, and who know about advancements other game technologies like Q2 Q3 and HL have made. I have found it very difficult to communicate with engine coders regarding specifics which would be good to have in an engine. It seems many of the engine guys are too busy worrying about eye candy, and less about fps.

CZG: I think it's strenght is the same as it's weakness; it's simplicity. The whole Quake "format" is really simple to mess around with. All in terms of maps, models and coding, it's really simple to create something from it, but it's also quite hard to expand beyond the limits that you are given. Though when you manage to break those limits, it's even more rewarding...

Vondur: Strengths: proper webboards, irc, community sites - they helps people to communicate and get feedback. Weaknesses: irc - this is the evil. It distracts people from making things :)

Shambler: 5. How do you feel the modding/coding scene has progressed and evolved since it started?

ELEK: The modding/coding scene of course started out with a bang and flash when Quake was released. In the last couple years modding seems to be more limited to people who are very devoted to Quake, and mappers who really want to do new things with their maps, Fat Controller and LTH for instance. I am not sure of Fatty's background, but from what I have seen of OUM he has progressed into a mapper who codes to get specifics into his maps. LTH is another good example of this trend. I think most of the more advanced coders are moving in other directions with other games. There are always exceptions however.

As for independant coders and modders, I am not really sure. Most coders come up with alot of great ideas and post a list of things on their website which they *intend to do* yet rarely do we mappers ever see the actual code in action. Mindcrime really broke alot of standard mod moulds by having 90% of the game code prepared when I signed on to map for Nehahra. I didn't have to build maps and take entities which did not yet exist into consideration. When I started work, the ents were there a working progs.dat was there, we were able to experiment with the monsters and view their behavior in maps that Mindcrime had already created. Mind you these maps will go down in history as having some of the greatest names ever, especially poop.bsp. :)

CZG: When I first stumbled upon the online Quake community, most "mods" were mostly just patches for tiny bits and bobs in the game. Like the patch that removed all the satanic textures in Quake, or the infamous snakeman or mangababe monsters. Nowadays though, when people produce a mod they go all they way out, covering most aspects of the game and supplying maps to go with it all. So you could say that people have gotten more ambitious and aware of quality I guess.

Vondur: Most people learned how to organize things from others examples. Mods became more professional and in some cases they even better than game itself. In these cases people who made such professional mods have huge experience playing and customising games. Call them oldskool people. It's very hard for newbie to make something worthwile, only if he has a talent, which is rarity.

Shambler: 6. What would you personally like to see most in a Quake mod / engine?

ELEK: I would like to see some basic enhancements that do not slow down fps. Colored light, skyboxes, detail brushes, hint brushes, func_areaportal entites, monsterclip brushes, surface parms for texes emiting light ala Q2, and Q2 stlye rotating doors(i.e.origin brushes). I am not very interested in TGA textures and scrolling consoles as they seem to slow the game to a crawl. During the development of Neharha I saw many engine features come and go. I am convinced that Quake only needs a slight upgrade, it does not need ten million added eye candy features to make it more like Quake 3 Arena. The engine needs more of a foundational upgrade to give mappers more flexibility when creating levels. Of course many of these enhancements would need new compilers, but we already have the models which we can build upon for Q2. Unfortunately being a mapper, I am not familiar with coding, but to me all of these elements are more important than any amount of eyecandy, be it enhanced sprites, tga explosions, smoke trails, fog, high res textures, blood pools, reflective surfaces etc. etc.

CZG: New monsters and weapons that are good and fun to use. Most of the 'mappers aids' (like explosions, rotating stuff, effects and simplyfied triggers) have already been done, and most engine mods are either enhancments to online play, (which I don't really give a rats ass about,) and silly eyecandy like 32 bit sprites and textures, fogging and colored lights. (Don't really care about those either.) Good additions to gameplay are very rare though. Last time some good stuff came out was with Nehahra, and hopefully OUM will deliver something good too, but other than that it's barely anything...

Vondur: I'm really satisfied by native Quake already, I don't need more actually. Maybe just few things: skybox, mp3 support, disabled waterwarp, possibility to use custom sounds in the map.

Shambler: 7. What sort of Quake mod / engine do you think would be most beneficial for the Quake community in general?

ELEK: As I stated in question 6 Quake needs an upgrade, you are not going to be able to toss a P4 chip into a motherboard designed for use with a pentium chip. But if you are running at 90mhz you can upgrade to 200mhz and toss in some more ram.

CZG:Anything that gives the people that make the media for mods (maps, sounds and models) more power, instead of providing readymade stuff that people will easily recognise and go "Hah! That's the old effect Y from mod X! That's so lame!" Mods like spx sounds promising, though I'm not too keen on things like being able to give already set and established monsters as grunts and ogres new characteristics. All the other stuff sounds nice though.

Vondur: Uhm, never thought about that. But I think that mod that could interest people as game itself. Professional made, possibility to add your things there, etc....

Shambler: 8. What do you think the modding/coding scene could learn from the mapping scene, and vice versa?

ELEK: I am so wrapped up in the mapping scene I cannot truly say. There was a time when I was an outsider and I felt that the entire Quake scene was not very open to newer mappers. I see this in general across the entire community. I think more people should be open to helping others who may not quite understand some things. SPoG is an example of a mapper who will sit down and really go out of his way to explain basic mapping techniques to a newer mapper. Sometimes his descriptions are a bit difficult for someone who is unfamiliar with mapping to understand, but it is the time he puts into the discussion that counts. I did not start off mapping knowing everything. It hasn't been until recently that I have gained a better understanding of the bsp process, and I still see flaws in my work which I strive to make better.

As for commenting on the separate modding/coding scene, I am not really very active in the coding scene, so I really do not know how to comment on what they could do better to make their code more attractive to mappers, other than open some new lines of communication with mappers and LISTEN to what the mappers have to say. After all unless you are a mapper/coder you need mappers to get your entities in a good map, and out to the masses. It is rather difficult as a mapper to ask a coder for something only to have him tell you why you wouldn't possibly want that in your map.

CZG: Coders seem to be very narrow-thinking whith what they do, and seem to need to be able to code something straightforwardly, instead of attacking problems from a diffrent point of view. Mappers have to hack up illusions of seemingly impossible things all the time. As for mappers learning from coders, hmm, I'm not sure. Perhaps we could be neater and cleaner?

Vondur: Mmm....for me these two things (modding and mapping) always were absolutely different things. And i'm not sure what modder could learn from mapper and vice versa. Only thing they must learn together is how to make mod and map work as a single whole.

Shambler: 9. Where do you think the modding/coding scene will head to and achieve in the future? And how long do you think it can last?

ELEK: I am not sure. Currently Aardappel is polishing up DMSP and Fat Controller is working on OUM Tronyn is working on SoE so there is a bit to lookforward to. There are always other people talking about projects, but most of them fail to show anything in the end. In the future perhaps someone will totally defy the standard Quake gameplay scenario and come up with something fresh. How long can it last? There is something very special about Quake. All those little niggles and rough edges that have been polished out of Q2 and Q3. All those gameplay issues, and the visceral feel of the monsters and weapons. The explosion sounds are still by far better than aynthing in Q2 or Q3, so I would have to say that people will continue to produce content for Quake as long as they are still enjoying themselves. I have high hopes for Doom3 perhaps that will be enough to force me to move away from Quake.

CZG: All I can imagine is that what's already done will continue to be optimised and simplyfied. And every once in a while, someone will come up with something new that noone has thought about before, and there will be much rejoicing. Lather, rinse, repeat. I think it will last quite some time still, seeing as there still is a strong Doom community. I don't see any reason for why quake won't live at least out this generation...

Vondur: Well, I'm not sure at the moment. But looking at modern games, at their vast possibility to customize their code, future looks promising. But there is problem: last time there are no such games like Quake. That have same magnetism and inspireable atmosphere. Yes, these new games are eyecandy and all, but there is not enough interested people who'd liked to add there their things. This happens just because they don't LOVE these new games as they loved Quake. Yes, they'll play it, but there won't be enough energy to ignite a desire to map/mod/code for these games. In most cases modern games are soulless. And if it will continue, there won't be new communities organized. There are examples, I won't name them, you should know by yourself.

Shambler: 10. Any further comments?

ELEK: To Quote LT. Ph1l: B00M! If you haven't seen the Nehahra movie, go get it, if you are reading this you are a die-hard Quake fanatic, and the movie is a must see for any Quake fan!

CZG: Not really. I guess I could always throw in a "Keep on modding!", but that would sound cheesy in many ways.

Vondur: Sing while you may!