Is the Quake1 community slowly dying away ? (by CocoT) Hopefully I'm just being paranoïd. Hopefully I'm just misunderstanding the situation. Hopefully the Quake1 community is not slowly dying away. The main problem is, however, that, unlike a couple of months ago, the very fact that I'm not so sure that it doesn't is a bad sign.

I guess it all started with the almost simultaneous release of Quake's source and of Quake3. I remember hot talks in Coffee's message board about how the release of the code would change the way in which we were going to work on our mods. The community was divided. On the one hand, some people (I was one of them) believed that the release of the code could only be positive and, with the technological novelties it would bring along, it would push the mod community forward and give it a second life. On the other hand, there were also people worried about the multiplication of engines and how, in the long term, the release of the source might kill QuakeC. Months later, it is still hard to get a definite picture of how this release really changed the way people design mods for Quake1. But it can be said that, more and more, mod and engine development tend to go along. Examples are mods such as Fiend Hunter, Nehahra, Natas, Swat ... and some more. One of the problems right now is that, little by little, it looks as if a mod without its own engine doesn't really have a future and that, as Merl1n pointed out, most people are now spending as much time on engine coding as on mod coding. While I was first happy to see a couple of hybrid engines come out, I must admit I'm now getting a bit tired of them. There are now more engines coming out than mods.

The release of Quake3 definitely labelled Quake2 as an "old" game and Quake1 as a "classic" game. Unfortunately, this meant relegating Quake1, in the eyes of most members of the Quake community at large, in the position of "that great game which gave us some much joy, but which we'd rather not play right now". Time passes. New generations of gamers appear and these gamers want the fashionable stuff, they want bells and whistles, they have a brand-new computer and want to run the latest games on it, thus not Quake1. It's understandable. The only problem is that it means for us, Quake1 coders, that the potential number of people interested in our mods decreases dramatically.

One of the good points is that this steady decrease should force us all to develop very original ideas for our mods so that, hopefully, some people might want to re-install Quake1 just for it. (I'm pretty sure some people did that for Neharha, for example) Nowadays it looks as if there is no point in developping average-looking mods anymore. It seems that, for everybody (including me), developing some sort of "last-chance TC" is the only thing to do if we want to remain competitive in the mod community at large. There are of course some exceptions (see, for instance, the very positive response to Akuma's mini-mod Hurried Descent, released a little while ago), but they are rare. On the one hand, this is pretty positive, since it brings forth the development of some new large projects, often mixing, as I have hinted at above, QuakeC coding and engine novelties. On the other hand, though, it raises many questions. Developing a large mod means spending a lot of time on it. Not everybody is able to do that. Furthermore, while it looks as if Quake1 is getting older and older every day, is it reasonable to start working on a mod that might take a year (or more) to finish ? I don't know. You tell me.

What first started almost like a joke (I remember these numerous threads at MDQNet starting with the words "I'm leaving") unfortunately turned out to be true: the core of the Quake1 mod community is not as big and as self-confident as it used to be and many people have jumped ship. I don't blame them. I think it's better to move on than feeling frustrated working on a game you don't really enjoy anymore. I myself still like working on Quake1, but I can't say for sure how long it's gonna last. The problem though, is that many people who suddenly left the scene don't seem to be working on anything else. I had thought about how cool it could have been if we, Quake1 coders, had all together started discussing coding on other platforms in the forums. We would all have been "newbies" again and helped each other coding simple stuff for, let's say Quake3. We would all have exchanged ideas as we used to do in Coffee's board and some new mods might have come into being ... (sigh) ... This didn't happen and is unlikely to happen. I guess it's too late for that. Most people who left either found some other boards to stick to or simply aren't interested in coding anymore. Either way, they're unlikely to come back.

So instead of that, the forums are getting dramatically empty. There isn't much going on anymore on both MDQNet or Inside3D's forums, particularly when we compare their current activities to what we found, say, six or seven months ago. It's a kind of vicious circle, I suppose. The less people post, the less people are likely to be interested in checking the forums out ... etc. One of the most striking differences between "now" and "then" is that the number of people suggesting ideas for Quake1 mods is now almost inexistant. I remember a time when there was at least one new idea every day. This time is past. To notice is also that, after having hosted a bunch of modifications, MDQNet seems to have slowed down lately. Many hosted sites didn't update their pages and, as a result, there are now only a handful of truly active homepages left. Inside3D's mainpage might appear at times more active than MDQNet's, but it is now filled with a lot of news unrelated to Quake and sometimes even gaming. Quite frankly, I don't know what's best.

The Quake1 mod community is in pretty bad shape. I think it's a fact. I don't know if it's just a lack of enthousiasm, a wish to keep development plans "secret" or simply a lack of time, but the fact that forums get empty and almost no new mod has come out lately (with the exception of Nehahra) really gives the impression that we are experiencing the beginning of the end. Should it really be so ? Of course not. I often refer to the Doom2 community as an example of how people can still have, with an "old" game, reasons to be enthousiastic and develop new stuff. The Doom2 community is an example which we should follow. Then we should also have a look at some communities attached to newer games but which never seemed to gain much recognition. Check the Hexen2, Blood2, Kingpin, Heretic2 communities, for example. There are still (some) people in these communities working on mods or maps. Very telling are also communities which, despite their game being brand-new, already seem to have "lost the war" against Quake3, Half-Life and Unreal. Examples for these are the Soldier of Fortune community and the Aliens vs Predator community.

I think the main problem right now is that there is a very strong concentration of modders around three games (Half-Life, Quake3 and Unreal) and that most modders from other communities are drawn to them. I believe that our almost "secret" envy to join them is a bit like peasants wanting to move to the city, where the action is going, but not really knowing what they'll do there and if they'll be able to compete. One of the issues is also to be found on that level: some of us remained for a little while in the Quake1 community because they thought they wouldn't be able to code anything else but QuakeC. Since, as I have mentionned, QuakeC-only mods are going to be rarer and rarer, these people are now in a difficult situation, because they cannot move to newer games and feel a bit powerless in front of the Quake source. Others, despite of their C++ coding abilities are persuaded that coding something for an "old" game such as Quake1 is useless and simply move or don't code anything.

What should we all do ? First learn C++, probably. Act as newbies again, whether it is for the coding of the Quake1 engine or the coding of mods for newer games. If we decide to stick to Quake1, then we should try to see how we could inteligently mix our knowledge of QuakeC coding and novelties in the engine. I believe that's where the future of the Quake1 community lies. What I also believe is that, whatever we do, we should keep on using MDQNet's and Inside3D's forums to share our experiences. I wouldn't mind having people asking questions on UT,Q3 or HL coding or giving ideas for mods on these games (even though this might also depend on the sites' policy, I guess). The fact that development for Quake1 is not as active as before doesn't mean, I think, that the forums should be deserted.

Quake1 is not dead, but it's slowly dying away ... or to put it right : the Quake1 community is not dead, but the way in which it is developing makes me fear the worst. Of course, there are some elements out there that prove me wrong. Neharha, for instance, seems to be stirring things up. If its release could bring some people back to Quake1 and give some modders more enthousiasm, I'd be more than happy. There are also some very promising mods out there (DogFighting, Starship Troopers done in the DiD style, Operation Urth Majik, Natas ... and some others ...) which, once they come out, might spur the community on. Personaly, I'm not so sure they will ... but who knows, they have indeed a lot of potential ... This is of course just an article. I don't have prophetic visions. I wish I'm wrong. The main goal of these written thoughts is to stir up some reactions. Go ahead and tell me what you think on the forum(s).

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