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Just to further a bit on the part of my post where I talked about the Quake source being stolen from Crackdotcom, I managed to find a web page which discusses a bit about that:

Quake for OS/2 - article from 1997

As an added note, Crackdotcom is no longer in business.

How about Steve Polge, probably unknown to many. He created the Reaper Bot for Quake which got lead him to a job at Epic Games working on the A.I. for Unreal at the basics for Botmatch which in the end resulted in Unreal Tournament.

Or David "Zoid" Kirsch, who built the first CTF mod for Quake, which lead to his efforts on the Linux ports of Quake 1 and 2 and eventually landed him with Retro working on the Metroid Prime series.

Quake was a revolutionary time period in the history of games. It marked the first time enthusiasts could really create full-on games (Doom modding was pretty limited) based on a commercial engine, for free. As mentioned, the ubiquitous CTF game mode you find in everything these days was created by an individual modder. Squad-based strategy was pioneered by the guys who wrote TeamFortress. You could find just about anything, from racing games to flying games to future or fantasy games and just about anything in between. The modern FPS landscape owes its very existence to those original modders, and yet we barely even remember their names. How sad.

Here's the source code to it. It's still possible to finish if you can generate enough interest in the idea.

Unfortunately, Crack dot Com was a victim of poor project planning, and Golgatha showed it. It was always one of those "cool ideas" that was never quite fleshed out into something playable. While larger companies can manage to survive such poor planning through deep pockets, it's the kiss of death for smaller ventures like Crack dot Com.

It's too bad that companies always feel such pressure to follow up one success with others even when they're not ready. Had CdC taken more time to develop the technology and concepts they wanted before plunging into a 30K/mo burn rate, they might have become a big player in the industry. :-(

I found an article at http://www.loonygames.com/content/1.2/feat/.

It talks about something called simulator sickness, a condition similar to motion sickness that is caused by exposure to virtual environments.

This article seems interesting.

This sounds like it will be another case of Simulator Sickness on a grand scale for me. Anyone else who suffers from this knows that since the dawn of Doom, video gaming has been a nightmare for us. I used to play hours upon hours of video games when it was just nice side-scrolling or over-the-head aspects. Now after about 40 seconds of Unreal I'm ready to pass out. The majority of games that come out now that are worth anything are 3D, and I can only manage to play very few of them.

I'm wary of all these new 82-button controllers with orgasm mode. And here's why.

Romero is a fantastic public figure. That's about it. Romero is primarily a figurehead, I honestly doubt that he could run a project such as this well. Reason being? He simply goofs around too much. John Romero is the _only_ popular 3DFPS developer that insists on making the occasional IRC visit. He constantly shows up to press events and interviews. He loses to well publicized matches against other FPS 'celebrities' (anyone remember killcreek? I'm sure you do, she's in playboy this month).

"It was dreadfully apparent that neither Romero or Wilson had ever played Age of Empires outside of once or twice, and both were aptly defeated by Shelley, with Wilson resigning first.
The second tournament -- Gods, Mortals, and a Beta Tester - was a bit more exciting."
Tim Deen, a programmer from ES, finally won the second match.

(from here)


He faked his own death. His constant antics and shows only show us what kind of person he is; an actor, someone who enjoys being in the limelight. It comes as absolutely NO surprise that daikatana failed, I was telling people this years ago when he insisted on coming to IRC to 'gauge' what's going on in the community. John, don't you have some work to do or something?

Yes.

Unreal Tournament for PSX2

I just hope I can use my mouse.

If The Bench is going to become a daily spot for me like Real Life, PvP, or its father, I NEED some way to sort through the.. 30-80 odd submissions a day is it?

Open Source only really works when everyone is striving at a common good, yes? The most successful open source projects (/. included) always have a central cabal or something leading the way. Right now all The Bench has is Gabe, Tycho, and their weekly pick for Sunday.

So Gabe, Tycho, if you guys are reading this (damn well better be)... you need a voting/moderation system on The Bench.