Author Archives: scar3crow

Quake Map Jam 3 Post-Mortem

Note: This post was written before the pack was released, so I’m far more embarrassed as to the map’s quality now than I was when this was written.

I’ve been rather quiet for a number of reasons, but a big one was my participation in the Quake community map jam. This is the third like it, and it used a Zerstorer theme. Being so inexperienced in the ways of mapping, and a huge fan of the mod Zerstorer, this appealed to me as there is room for brutalist architecture in a Zerstorer theme.

quakespasm 2014-10-30 20-10-53-37

By brutalist architecture, I mean low skill. So I pounced on it. I am rather proud of the fact that despite its numerous problems, the small scale, the features cut, and having ~1/4th the detail level I would like, that I still completed it. It is a titled level which you can play from start to finish, with themes, traps, secrets, and little bits to it. So this is kind of a post-mortem, but since I mostly did things wrong, it functions more as a list of things I need to do next time. I probably won’t do another map jam because though the deadline kept me motivated, it also put some stress on my family life. Sure a Quake map was part of my “bucket list” (or backpack list for Quake), so we pushed through knowing the deadline, but in the future any mapping will be likely on my own timeline. I.e., over months, rather than weeks.

So all that being said, Continue reading →

Quake Live on Steam – Thoughts

So Quake Live is now on Steam. For whatever reason, some people insist on calling it Quake which is just silly. I won’t be doing that, but I will be abbreviating it to QL.

A lot of mechanic changes seem to be operating under the auspices of making the game more welcoming, an understandable goal for a Free To Play title. But friendly mechanics can only work if the user can appreciate them, and that involves a useful UI. I’m not a UI expert, but if I’m going for a quick game and choose Team, don’t put me in a full game. I didn’t click Play to Watch.

The real crux is in all of the fairly random game design changes. QL is a modified form of Q3A. Q3A was very friendly to new players. Weapons respawned quickly and set the ammo for that weapon to either a minimum, or current + 1, making camping weapons or timing them a low return effort. This solution unto itself had the potency of Weapon Stay without the visual incongruity. Pair this with the mentality that QL is “too hardcore” or something of the sort. This is inane. QL has a high skill ceiling, but five seconds with any gun and playing two rounds on a map is going to teach you the nuts and bolts. The only not quite observable mechanic is in the finer nuances of bunnyhopping. Rocket jumping and plasma climbing are things you can observe. Item timing is a case of noting the time when you see an item picked up, and noting it again when it reappears. The rest is the mental juggling you would want to do, on par with the precision you would want to practice to improve your aim. Continue reading →

Not All Quakes Are Alike

Recently the gaming journalism scene appears to have gone into over drive to display their lack of professionalism. That is concerning unto itself, but I’m not going to post on those hot topics. I would rather prefer to focus on the simple things that they get wrong, things which do not provoke a sense of scandal, but when noticed call into question their position as those who bring us gaming news.

As I have brought up previously, often game journalists have the same comprehension level of games, ludology, and the technology as the average consumer which results in them being as qualified as any commenter on YouTube or reddit. This is more grave through the simplicity of it. You need to understand the difference between a franchise name, and a game title.

The new changes to Quake Live were announced recently. They were controversial, and logically a lot of people had a variety of emphatic responses. This was covered at Kotaku by Nathan Grayson, and by covered I mean there was some copy and paste, screenshots of comments, and filler. In the original article Nathan spoke of “classic Quake” and how Quake Live was based off of “Quake III Gold”. The problem is Quake Live is an adjusted and free version of Quake III Arena, and has no bearing on the original Quake other than franchise name. The article also incorrectly cites nostalgia when referring to an active and current community. Nostalgia does not apply to the present, nor the recent. This set me off a bit and I commented on this a fair bit on Twitter: Continue reading →

Oh Buoy

I know it isn’t what I should be fixated on, but I can’t get past the simple fact that the buoys shown in the Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare multiplayer reveal trailer rotate and boy in exactly the same fashion. To the extent that I have to wonder if it is one rotating brush, that was copied… I guess it could be the exact same animation for a mesh… But it just really sticks out to me.

…and Everything Else

Apologies for my absence, I just completed a journey of 2500 miles from the northwest of the United States to the southeast by car, with a three month old baby. I am now temporarily residing in a very old house that seems like it would make a good Blood level, while I look for work in the area.

I’ve got a few new article ideas in the works, and it is more a matter of finding the time that I can type them up without waking our daughter. Hope to post again very soon.

…and Everything Else

The site has been quiet, but my life has not. Things have picked up in taking care of my daughter, I’ve had some personal illness problems, and a new project is starting up at work. On that same note, I have decided to leave my current job and return to the south so as to be closer to my family as we raise our own family. So now our home is a bluster of packing and paring down, in between diaper changes and bottle washing.

I’ve got a few articles in the works, but am stopping to do this general update one to freshen things up a bit. Today is my 30th birthday, and to mark that I got my first “flawless” Call of Duty game, with 10 kills and 0 deaths. I used quotes because I did not earn the medal, as I joined about 30 seconds after the game started. Oh well. I’ve taken pleasure in my increased ability to predict an opponent who has gone behind concealment and still hit them without line of sight. I’m still usually doing terribly, but I’m catching fleeing targets that I typically would not.

On the subject of multiplayer, though on a vastly higher skill level than my own, and in a higher skill game, there was an excellent Quake Live match between Evil and clawz. The first match isn’t much to behold, but the second was quite thrilling to watch. If you are unfamiliar with Quake Live, Evil is one of the champions, a feared player by most and a respected player by the best. clawz is a relative newcomer, younger than the average member of the competitive Quake community, so in some ways you don’t get more of an odd match up.

So enjoy that, the second match, which is the best, starts at 11:39.

Lots more has happened, but I should probably spend more of my birthday either having fun, or being productive.

How My Quake Looks

This was requested by onetruepurple in a thread about replacement textures and remakes of older game content with skacky and Daz. This is how Quake looks for me, 1680x1050x32 with the original textures, original lightmaps, realtime shadowmaps from dlights and the world, and a little bit of bloom. I am using a recent release of the DarkPlaces engine by my good friend LordHavoc.

I might do another post later on about the significance of art design, and how games age. You may have noticed that this post got its own category called Quake. Quake is an exception to me, it stands above all other games for a variety of reasons, and I do hope to showcase the game periodically on this blog.

…and Everything Else

First a thank you to those who read, and those who have clicked an ad. The revenue since I’ve put them up just cleared the monthly hosting cost. Having a hobby become revenue neutral, even if just for one month, is a wonderful thing. I guess I could try making the blog a little more optimized for search engines, but I don’t know how many people are even looking for things like “blog where the person games but expects more from games but doesn’t think it is cool to get angry about it and knows something about game development but isn’t a programmer and also thinks most game news sites are bad”. Maybe I could just make that a tag on every post?

I got a proper night’s sleep for the first time in a while, a rare thing with a baby, and so I’m feeling pretty energetic about the rest of this week. I am hoping to maintain this rhythm of three “Real Posts” a week, with one update post, but am also considering doing quick little Aside posts on off-days where I share links and videos I enjoy. I am still of mixed opinions on that, as I don’t have a desire to become an aggregate. I’d rather just opine and observe. That being said, here are some random links:

Continue reading →

Improve Call of Duty With This One Weird Trick

Call of Duty has quietly changed in a lot of ways since the release of the initial Modern Warfare. Namely, a lot of bad perks have been gutted, repurposed, or cut entirely. Stopping Power is largely gone, Juggernaut is now the much more interesting Ballistics Vest item, Martyrdom, Last Stand, Commando, and 3x Frag Grenades are gone. But one perk remains that holds the game back. Steady Aim.

An innocuous sounding perk, reduced hipfire spread, Steady Aim is a thorn in the side of Call of Duty’s primary gameplay loop. In Call of Duty the primary concerns of the player are shooting and not being shot. To liven up this dynamic, the game has the ability to aim down the sights of your weapon. Doing so greatly improves the accuracy of the weapon, at the cost of a slightly more narrow FOV, and reduced movement – sometimes drastically reduced. It always takes a moment to aim down sights, but the resulting accuracy is vastly superior to what you experience firing from the hip. Continue reading →

A Re-View on the New-U in Borderlands 2

Handsome Jack is a despicable and dastardly individual. He makes a great villain, but he has one major failing. He never went after the New-U stations. You are his nemesis, the great thorn in his side, and the only real threat to his plans. But you just won’t stay dead. Every time they put the boot down and scrape you off the tread, you just pop back out at a New-U station for a fee, and keep on.

The thing is, the game identifies the New-U stations as being a Hyperion product, they talk about it quite a lot even, and Handsome Jack is in charge of Hyperion. The system which is keeping the player alive is on his network and in his control. Furthermore, why isn’t he on the network? Or his lieutenants? Why are the vault hunters from the original Borderlands on the network for that story, but not this one? (And why isn’t That One using a shield? You know the moment). Continue reading →