Thank you so much to Wazat for his very prompt response to my message to him. I personally really enjoyed reading his answers
It goes without saying that you are all invited to react to it in this thread and to ask Wazat any additional questions
BattleMech!
Galactix!
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- Could you, for the new members here, briefly introduce yourself (age, location...) and tell us when you were most active in the Q1 community?
Well, I'm a 25 year old nerdy guy living in Utah. It's quite hot outside today, so I'm glad to be inside in front of the computer.
I'm a gameplay programmer at a video game company called Sensory Sweep. For hobbies I'm mostly into video games and programming.
- How did you get involved in the community?
Honestly it was random, but almost fate I suppose. I wasn't into programming yet but I had developed a knack for computer stuff in the few years I'd had one. I wrote a lot of batch files for boot disks and created some very nice menus and such, so that I could reboot my computer with a disk and choose a game to play, and the boot disk would optimize the system for playing the game. For those of you who are younger than I am (and I consider myself pretty young), yes, years ago you had to do that just to run most games.
Day of the Tentacle is a big example.
Then my uncle came to live with us for a while and introduced me to Quake while he was there. The whole game was a mystery to me because I didn't play any first-person shooters (never got into doom etc). However, something sparked my interest -- you could make your own weapons and modify the game. People had made grappling hooks, air guns, and all kinds of stuff. cdrom.com and other sites were veritable treasure troves of new ideas and mods to discover. Something inside me clicked into place. I'd found something that *genuinely* interested me and that I wanted to learn how to do.
I got very deep into mod programming right then and there. In fact, Quake is what got me into programming at all. I didn't take a class until years later, instead learning purely by trial and error, imitating people's code, and following tutorials.
So, if I have any grievances and/or positive consequences of being a computer programmer and nerd, I suppose I could blame Quake.
- What Q1 contributions are you best-known for?
Oh, probably Galactix, Battle Mech, Jeht, Conquest. Way back in the day Wazat mod was unreasonably popular, too. The fact that the mod ran at all was very impressive to me at the time.
- Do you still have a website/links where we could check out/rediscover your stuff?
So long as http://static.condemned.com doesn't go down and/or get squatted by some advertising portal or porn site, then yea most of the downloads there work fine.
That said, it's unknown when that site will in fact go down, but Cheapalert has made it a point to archive a lot of my mods and make them available on his site, along with a bunch of other really cool mods people have made over the years.
- 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!
Countless such projects.
One was Quake Tactics, which was basically Final Fantasy Tactics in Quake. You could command various quake monsters to move around on a 3D square grid and use a bunch of attacks. There were different character classes and attacks (tarbabys were lancers, grunts were archers, etc).
It was a really cool idea and I actually got a functional grid system going, but I ran into limits in the quake engine (wasn't using DP at the time). Later when I picked it up again I was plagued by problems from my own sloppy programming, and concluded I'd have to more-or-less start over. I was hitting the time where I no longer had the energy or time to mod much any more, and at that point I just gave up.
Nexuiz TF was another project I wish I hadn't let die. Though it wasn't directly Quake1 related, it was based on ideas I had originally thought up for a Quake mod.
Vagrant Story Quake was another really cool idea that barely ever got seen. It was neat but I never got past a very basic start to battle mechanics.
There are countless others, but I've not the heart to enumerate them now.
- What are you best memories about this community?
Hanging out with FrikaC as he was developing Frikbot -- that's a big one. Another was sharing my mods with friends and getting feedback, especially the positive kind that sent my heart soaring (yay people like it!). I loved having someone appear out of nowhere and say "I loved Jeht" or "Rune Match in Nexuiz was cool!" or "Whoah, you're making a space shooter in Quake?".
I also really enjoyed exploring some of the really cool mods out there that inspired me, or simply kept me very entertained for a very long time. AirQuake, Frikbot, ShubFusion, Prydon Gate, Darkplaces... the list goes on and on. I feel pretty small sometimes on these forums because, despite my inflated ego, I'm still surrounded by giants.
- When and why did you decide to slow down your contribution to the community (if you did)?
Because I crashed. Hard.
Once I got a job working full-time on programming, I started coming home exhausted and mentally dead. I'd stare at the computer, browse through bits of code, and stare some more. The spark had left me. I'm just too busy and tired these days to keep a project alive. I still have short bouts of creativity and occasionally start a small project off of one of those cool ideas, but each time it's died because I get drawn away by other responsibilities or games.
Another problem was that despite the advancements being made in Darkplaces and other engines, I was very frustrated with limitations. Quake is intensely old, given how fast the game industry moves. I found I was no longer able to create the things I really wanted to create, at least not without a huge fight with such limitations that ended up consuming all my time and energy and killing whatever project I was working on. It just became too hard to work on anything ambitious.
Even though there are some really cool and improved Quake engines out there, they still share the same ancient foundation that just hasn't scaled well. Engines are also pressured to not change things that break compatibility or rock the boat too hard, so some things will never get easier. I mean no offense, I just think there's a limit to how far Quake can progress and match newer games in efficiency, features, and prettiness.
- How has Real Life © treated you so far?
Oh, you know. Life.
I own two homes, living in one in the north and renting the one that's 5 hours south of me. I had to evict the tenant in the other home because of months of non-payment (he owes me over $3,000 not counting damages), and now we're having to spend a lot of money on repairs while it sits idle. My dad and I are pouring all the money we have into the thrice-damned thing and it's still hemorrhaging money faster than we can feed it back in. O_o
Other than the house, I'm still too tired to mod when I get home, but I do get some good gaming in and I *often* write down ideas for games/mods and store them away for safe keeping. My mind is still active in the modding and game programming world, it's just not committed.
I've been getting into Dungeons and Dragons 4E lately and I'm trying to start up the wiki on wikia.com, which is a lot of work. As if I had time for more work.
Overall, I have troubles but life is good. I'm fairly happy with the things I'm working on and I like my job. I don't mod anymore but I still get to do lots of things in my free time that interest me.
- Are you still playing Quake? Are you still trying out mods, maps and engines?
I download things from time to time with intent to try them, but fail to get around to doing so. :/ On rare occasion I do load up Quake and breeze around in Conquest, Battle Mech, or some other DM mod with Frikbots. Can't get friends at work to play it with me though -- they're all in the game industry and it's a little hard for them to forgive quake's low-res models and other aging assets.
Too bad, a lan game could be a lot of fun.
- Has there been other games you have been playing a lot since you left the community (if you did)?
Tons. Too many, in fact. I've not the time for them all.
I play Warcraft III (DOTA), Neverwinter Nights 2, Metroid Prime 3, Super Smash Bros, Front Mission 4, Disgaia, Magic: The Gathering, Dungeons and Dragons, a bit of Halo, Half-Life 2 (still need to find time to get into TF2), the list goes on and on. Where has my free time gone??? Well, this explains a bit.
I also made a few Warcraft III maps that were pretty cool, none finished of course.
- How would you describe the Q1 community right now? Is there any contribution that really impressed you in the last couple of years?
Well, I'm pleased to see it's still active. I was very impressed to see CSQC incorporated into DP. As I remember, it was something I really wanted to have available in my mods for many reasons. Progress -- good progress -- is still being made in many areas, and I commend the folks who are still creating.
- 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?
Oh, I'm sure there will be people modding for it. Look at Doom! However, I'm not so sure how many people will stay another 10 years. I honestly can't predict.
I suspect many people will eventually find newer open source engines and leave for them. Eventually as more stuff falls off the technology curve, people may drift towards those. Quake 3 and others are becoming very viable options, and imagine when the source engine gets opened up.
That said, folks here have all surprised me thus far. Who am I to say? It's a surprisingly active community after all these years and I'll bet lots of people will stick around for a while yet.
- 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?
There is a slight chance. I started up a project named Monster Swarm a few weeks ago. I've fallen out of practice with working on it, but if I get back to it then it may be a viable candidate for opening a booth etc.
- 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?
Well, I'm honestly not all that excited. I touch on the community from time to time, but I'm just not into modding much anymore. I haven't been keeping up with the mods being created, and I barely work on anything. I occasionally respond to threads and help people, but it's not likely I'll be participating much beyond that.
- 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?
Very pissed.
But seriously, not much comes to mind as missing. I'm pleased to share the memories I have and talk about the old modding days. At the ripe old age of 25 I already like to reminisce about the "good old days" when I was active. lol!
I suppose the only question I didn't notice is if I'm developing any projects lately that aren't Quake1. Like I said, I occasionally make a Warcraft III map. I'm also heavy into DnD4 now though it's been a challenge to get a game going. In the mean time my friends and I are playing a DnD2 campaign. I'm working on creating dnd4.wikia.com but it's taking some work. Never done a wiki from scratch before.
And as always, I'm writing down ideas for games and mods (some for Quake1) that would be cool to make. If I had the time and resources.
Cheers!
-Wazat
