Is the Quake1 Community slowly dying away?

[FrikaC]

That was the question CocoT posed in this article posted on I3D a few years ago:



My question is, is it now dead?

[RenegadeC]

Yep.

[FrikaC]

Alrighty then, case closed.

[Error]

seems that way

[scar3crow]

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.

[lth]

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?

[RenegadeC]

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

[leileilol]

the community isn't dying

just two active members (dr. shadowborg and wazat) are absent

[SantaClaws]

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.

[Dr. Shadowborg]

[SantaClaws]

[leileilol]

[Dr. Shadowborg]

[lth]

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.

[Lardarse]