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Even though Rich is currently working on modern games, he is still a loyal visitor of the #qc chatroom and has again contributed to the community, not very long ago, through the release of the Quake Royale engine.
Enjoy the read!
Head Soccer! (mod for Quake)
Avalanche (game)
- Could you, for the new members here, briefly introduce yourself (age, location...) and tell us when you were most active in the Q1 community?
I'm 25, living in Madison, Wisconsin. I moved here to work at Raven Software, then went to Human Head, then out to Maryland for a bit, then back here to Human Head again. I recently left Human Head again, and am now living off of my massive savings while forming an independent startup that consists of just me and 1 or 2 other game industry guys.
- How did you get involved in the community?
It's actually kind of hard to pinpoint when it was. I had been working on Quake mods since I was maybe 13 or 14, whenever the Quake demo first came out. I spent months working on some crazy QuakeC compilation mods with new weapons and stuff that never got released. I don't think I was exposed to the public eye until Quake 2, when I released the Famkebot for Quake 2. It was really a horrible buggy piece of junk, but it was the first Quake 2 bot, so it got a relatively large amount of publicity. I kept on working on it for subsequent months/years and eventually turned it into something pretty nice.
- What Q1 contributions are you best-known for?
In the realm of Q1, I think Head Soccer was probably my most popular project. It was a QuakeWorld mod. It had a lot of servers and a couple clans devoted to it. I recently did Quake Royale as well, which was a pretty big project with its own engine, inspired by the Battle Royale movies in terms of theme and gameplay. It was relatively short-lived, though.
- Do you still have a website/links where we could check out/rediscover your stuff?
Yeah, my TeleFragged site has been pretty active for over 10 years now actually. It's pretty crazy when I look back and think about how long I've been doing this stuff. You can check it out at:
http://www.telefragged.com/thefatal/
I've moved on to developing my own technology and working on some totally game-independant projects, but there's a backlog of all of my mods for Quake, Half-Life, and some other stuff there as well.
- Is there any unfinished (secret?) Q1 project in which you were involved and which you now wish you had completed? Describe it to us and tell us why!
I've dabbled in a lot of things that never took off. I've had quite a few people approach me about one in particular, which was a dynamic gore experiment I did in the GLQuake engine. The only thing that ever materialized from that was a batch of screenshots on my web site. But I had some dynamic re-tesselation stuff going on so that you could take the shotgun or any other bullet weapon and blow chunks out of any of the Quake monsters (or other players for that matter). It was pretty interesting, but it was also pretty hacked together. I sort of wish I'd completed it, since it would be pretty novel, but I can think of some much nicer ways to pull it off now. I may still go back and implement something there if I find myself with some free time lately, although I'm more interested these days in dynamic subdivision and capping of pointweighted models (I've been tossing ideas around in my head for that for a few months now).
- What are you best memories about this community?
It's pretty hard to say. I have fond memories of Cube and Ze0 and all the Bot Epidemic guys from back in the day. Ze0 randomly referred to my web site as my "project warehouse" at some point and that's how my web site actually got its current name. Which has been the same for however many years now. There's a lot of nostalgia tied into this community for me. I eventually disappeared for some number of years, while I was working at Raven and Human Head, and just randomly came back one day. I ended up getting FrikaC a job at Human Head, and we had the opportunity to work together for a year or so before I left Human Head again. I'm still in the area, so I try to get him to go out drinking with me whenever possible, but for some reason he doesn't seem to enjoy watching me get drunk and hit on random women while acting like a retard. I'm sure he'll come around one day.
- When and why did you decide to slow down your contribution to the community (if you did)?
It wasn't much of an active decision, it was initially mainly due to starting at Raven Software. They really frowned on allowing us to work on game-related stuff outside of work, even if it was just free modding work. I may have done a few things during that time under pseudonyms which I would never fess up to doing if I did indeed do them, but I also really lacked energy and motivation to keep modding in the middle of a full-blown commercial game project. However, after all of that, I did start the Quake Royale project a year or two ago when I moved out to Maryland. And there is probably stuff to come from me in the Quake community in the coming years, unless I'm unexpectedly hit by a bus or something. So I'll probably never stop contributing entirely. It's just a big balancing act in deciding what to do amongst all of the options in front of me for projects and business ventures.
- How has Real Life © treated you so far?
Oh, man, I could answer this in so many ways. I've been through a lot of incredibly horrible and incredibly awesome things. I think I was at my all-time low when I first started at Raven. My fiancee (and girlfriend of something like 2.5-3 years) had decided to break up with me the week before I moved up, and I was a mess, and I had all kinds of screwed up crippling anxiety and depression issues going on. I was only 18 years old at the time. So that was a fun way for a kid to start a new job. My all-time high is really hard to pinpoint. It might actually be right now. Being jobless and more or less financially free, and working on whatever I want really feels amazingly good. I'm planning some travel vacations (even though my life is effectively a vacation) in the coming months, and for the past month or so I've just been working out and stuff regularly and getting in really good shape.
- Are you still playing Quake? Are you still trying out mods, maps and engines?
I eye stuff on occasion, but I have to confess that I'm usually not motivated enough to download it and start Quake up to check it out. Once in a while I'll get a craving for some good old QuakeWorld Rocket Arena or something, but it's been years now since I played that. I've had an urge for some Doom coop lately, though, actually. I might try to organize a game here sometime in the near future.
- Has there been other games you have been playing a lot since you left the community (if you did)?
Well, I'm a big console guy now. It's mainly the convenience of being able to pop a disc in and sit back on the couch and play. Ninja Gaiden 2, Devil May Cry 4, games of that genre have really been getting a lot of my time lately. My most recent independent game (AVALANCHE) follows that style of play very closely, as well. Nothing has grabbed quite so much of a persistent hold on me as Quake has, though. I owe the very origins of my career to Doom and Quake, as Doom mapping is what first got me into game development when I was just a little kid working on my parents' shiny new 486. And Quake marked my entry into real game-side logic programming. I suppose you can't really count Dehacked for that, although I did entertain myself a great deal with it.
- How would you describe the Q1 community right now? Is there any contribution that really impressed you in the last couple of years?
It's impressive that it's still going after all of these years. One criticism I've had, which I've stated before, is that a lot of people seem to be very introverted in terms of project development, though. There are a lot of one-man projects and mods. I would love to see more mappers and coders pooling together to make stuff of epic magnitude. It just requires people to give a little ground in terms of overall project vision and planning. I think it's definitely worth it for the kind of stuff we could see coming out of massive community collaborations. That said, though, there is still a whole lot of cool stuff coming out. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens with QExpo 2008.
- How do you picture the future of the community? Do you (objectively) think that people will still be modding/mapping for it in, say, 10 years from now?
That is really hard to predict, but I think there's a chance that a few die-hards will still be kicking stuff around in another 10 years. It really depends on the direction of game development and user content creation, and whether or not a better platform comes along that can give us all of the same things Quake can. Quake and modding of Quake holds a certain nostalgia for many of us, and at least for me, a lot of what drives my desire to still create stuff around Quake is just a desire to pay tribute to something with such a solid foundation, something that effectively started so many new trends in gaming and game development single-handedly. But in addition to that, what makes Quake appealing for modders, I think, is the ease of use. You're working in a very simplistic interpreted language, the asset tree and the creation of assets is incredibly easy, and the demands that come along with creating content for it don't come anywhere near the demands that come with content creation for the current generation of games. That really works out hugely in its favor.
- Is there the slightest chance you would consider be an active part of the community again? Or/and put up a booth for the next QExpo?
Yeah, scar3crow actually wrote up a design document for a joint project for QExpo 2008. I've obligated myself with other projects, though (I'm mapping for a Half-Life 2 project, and I've got to get started on some iPhone prototype stuff), so I'm not sure when I'll have time to actually crank that out. But hopefully it will be making an appearance. We'll see.
- Are you excited about QExpo 2008? Are there features (of any kind) that haven't been part of former QExpo's and which you would like to see in this one?
I'm definitely looking forward to seeing what people come up with for it. From what I've heard, since a Q2 mapper is hosting it this time, things are a bit more Q2-centric. I'm curious about how that's going to turn out. I can't say I have any particular feature wishes, though. Although, in terms of exposure, it would be pretty awesome to get together with id and maybe get some exclusive media for one of their new projects (like Rage or Doom 4) to release as part of QExpo. A lot of people don't know QExpo exists, because it doesn't get any mainstream news coverage, so that could actually get some new talent back in the pool.
- What is the question you would have like to be asked (but weren't), how would you have answered it and how pissed are you for me not thinking about it?
I can't really think of anything. I guess you probably should have asked "How does it feel to be the most awesome programmer in the world in addition to being an International Sex God and the envy of every man?" and I probably would have answered "Well it feels right fine, Coco." But I'm not too pissed that you didn't ask it. I just think it was a little insensitive of you.
So to wrap it up, if you're interested in seeing what I've been up to lately, you can check out my web site (linked up above there). Fans of Final Fantasy VII and/or Devil May Cry should really give AVALANCHE a shot. And I've got a bunch of stuff in the queue for the coming months, and hopefully something for QExpo, so keep an eye out. Thanks for the interview, these are always a lot of fun to answer.
