Calling him a "veteran" might be a little unfair, though, since, as you will see, Electro still has a good amount of Quake1 goodies waiting to be released and might even participate in QEXpo!
Enjoy!
Q1 Arena!
Pro-X!
- Could you, for the new members here, briefly introduce yourself (age, location...) and tell us when you were most active in the Q1 community?
Hey, I'm Benjamin "Electro" Darling. I'm 24 years old and situated in Brisbane Australia. I spent most of my life (~20 years) in Melbourne Australia. Seems like I will still be on this big island for some time yet!
I was probably most active around the late 90's, and breaking into the millenium. I sort of did a disappearing act around 2004 or so I believe.
- How did you get involved in the community?
Duke3D was my first ever PC game, did some silly little single player levels for that. Shortly after that I managed to get my hands on a Quake demo that guys were talking about at school. It just simply stuck. I was and still am hooked! I had no idea how moddable Quake was at the time and was happy playing single player on my Pentium 166. Then I got my hands on a CD that had hundreds of mods on it, sure they were mostly copies of each other and slightly varying skins etc. But there was definitely some really cool stuff on there, and started to get my own creativity going. I had this great idea for a mod so I set out to learn all the bits and pieces just by looking at other peoples code and changings bits and pieces here and there. Then I stumbled onto I3D, the rest is a blur.
- What Q1 contributions are you best-known for?
Quake 1 Arena, Pro-X, Cubic Combat (some people have seen it but I have no idea how!), Shockbot (ok not so well known.. yet hehe)
- Do you still have a website/links where we could check out/rediscover your stuff?
Oh awesome a self pimpage question. I'm currently hiding at my own little domain at http://bendarling.net/ . None of my stuff is actually available there at the moment, but after pointing people there I should probably do something about it.
- 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!
Oh boy, there's so many.
- Powerball : Was kind of like UT2k3's bombing run, but with mostly original classes, not like TF ones - stopped work on this when bombing run was released)
- Q1 Catch the Chicken : (it's playable and probably done! but no idea where I put it)
- Pro-X : the released QW version is so riddled with bugs it's madness. I have a version sitting on my machine that is practically releasable though.
- Frikbot CTF : don't remember where this is or what happened to it. You were able to issue orders to your teammates to attack/defend/escort/camp etc.
- ... an RTS, but you haven't seen that... yet
- What are you best memories about this community?
Everyone growing and sharing knowledge and laughs in IRC. There's so many little tricks and things in Quake that if these things weren't shared, mods wouldn't be where they are today (well ok, prior to engine releases anyway). I'm thinking specifically of bot development and scoreboard stuff in this case.
I like when people actually form little teams and do fun mods, not necessarily things that require insane amounts of work.. but just something that they all enjoy working on.
- When and why did you decide to slow down your contribution to the community (if you did)?
I probably slowed down after 2004 I'd say. Real life played a big part in that, but you can read about that later!
- How has Real Life © treated you so far?
Oh, ok I guess I can't dodge that question any longer.
Pretty good! After being at Uni for about 1 year I managed to leave and get a job in the games industry in around early 2004 I think (thanks to Mr Fribbles for helping out there!) doing Level Design. I then started to dabble more in modeling/texturing, which has really helped expand my usefulness in modding I think. Nobody should ever get stuck in 1 field, go and learn multiple things and just be a knowledge sponge. It's great fun and all the areas compliment each other. It can be a bit like shampoo and conditioner (2-in-1's SUCK) spreading yourself thin, but it's all about grabbing what you need out of each, and your mods definitely benefit from it!
Anyway getting sidetracked.. again.. So then I met my lovely girlfriend Romi (we met up at work, she's into games too!) and have just recently (5.5 weeks ago now) been blessed with our baby daughter Jasmine (http://www.romijade.com/Jasmine/080606_HappyJaz.jpg - 3 weeks young here!).
Now I'm up in Brisbane Australia in the high humidity weather working mostly as an Environment Artist, but really doing whatever is required for Technology demos and things like that at Krome Studios.
- Are you still playing Quake? Are you still trying out mods, maps and engines?
Every day, sometimes twice. And yet I still can't seem to find enough time to actually try everything released. I still check out peoples stuff as much as I can, but sometimes unfortunately it's easier just to check out videos and imagine what fun could be had if I got to play it myself.
- Has there been other games you have been playing a lot since you left the community (if you did)?
Quake (all of them, yes even 4.. but not single player), Unreal (all of them), WoW (got addicted, coded a bot for it.. most fun I had in WoW, got bored, quit), HL2, TF2 (this rocks and Valve has done amazing work here). I generally play lots of games, especially on console too, but those are probably the ones that got most of my attention.
- How would you describe the Q1 community right now? Is there any contribution that really impressed you in the last couple of years?
I think it's amazing that the Q1 community is still going! With new engine stuff like CSQC (which needs documentation, cmon seriously) and Q3BSP support (which EVERYONE SHOULD MAP FOR NOW, AND EVERY ENGINE SHOULD SUPPORT), it's really going to push the community on for years to come. There's really not the technical limitations as much anymore so people can really get the creativity going so much more.
There has been so many mods that have been inspiring and had the "ohh I want to help on that project so bad but I don't have the time!" effect on me.
I check I3D forums every day, also stumble over to func and quakedev forums too and spy on things mostly, I only tend to post on I3D
- 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?
Yeah, like I said above, the tech for Q1 has really been pushed where it can potentially look as good as newly released games. It's got a bit to go yet, but there's more than enough in place for people to continue to make great mods and maps. Hopefully I'm still around in 10 years time too!
- 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?
Definitely
- 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?
Yeah totally pumped about QExpo. It's been a while since the last one and I just KNOW people will have lots of cool stuff to show off. It's going to be hard to keep up with it all!
The biggest things I'd probably like from QExpo is more interviews (haha) and archives of all the previous QExpo's that don't disappear and get swallowed by portal sites.
- 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?
Maybe for a photo? I know it's not generally something that's done with interviews, especially as interviews can be copy/pasted over the net and images don't copy/paste so well. I'm definitely not saying that I want to pimp my photo or anything like that, but I do think it'd be cool to see what others here actually look like and put a face/name to the alias. Makes thing more personal!
TOTALLY PISSED NOW, MAXIMUM FURIO!@#
Also just wanted to say thanks to everyone for making the community what it is and for teaching me QC (I still suck at lots of it, but hey at least I can share my knowledge with others!). It's good to be with people like you all and hopefully we can all collaborate into teams more often and work on fun mods together.
Also wtf is trolling, where can I get one or how can I be one?
