I'm happy to see more attention and "content" on MP maps! You're a good source for this sort of thing given your history.

I know you're still feeling out the balance for how much to talk before doing the example botmatch, and how much to talk while playing. Your most recent video is pretty good in that respect. Just my own personal taste would be even a bit more talking about poking around before playing, both for the benefit of the viewer and also so your talk-while-playing can just be spur-of-the-moment stuff rather than trying to hit important points.

Now there are a couple of obvious things in the videos that might be criticism lightning-rods so lemme get to that:

* Using a blinged-out Quake client. It's not too extreme though; I think the look of the map itself does still come through. And MP players usually mutilate their client in all sorts of ways in any case -- for review-type purposes I'd rather see this than the no-textures/hidden-viewweap/sprites-everywhere look. It's not my preference but it doesn't bother me except for some of the particle effects that are a bit out of place IMO.

* Using a rebalanced DM mod with runes and grappling hook and etc. IMO this is pretty much exactly in the spirit of Quake DM servers. :-) The only thing I would potentially gripe about is that I think a grappling hook kind of ruins DM, or at least obviates a lot of the distinctive characteristics of the different DM maps. But you're not using the grappling hook so OK!

I don't have much constructive criticism to add at the moment. I did wonder a bit if you could/should show an overhead view graphic -- for some maps this would be pretty instructive, for others maybe not so much.

Keep it up, I've popped you into the subscription list! 

BTW, "Joel B" is the artist formerly known as "Johnny Law". Moving some of my forum/chat accounts over to my real name and dropping that old nick. 

You' dropping the Law, Johnny! The 

^ 

so, insideqc is really dead uh? 

Let's talk when you are ready... 

seems like it, last posts were from 2019 

Well... InsideQC forum was down from November 2019 for few good months. It was back recently. It will take a while for people to realize it's back and start posting again. 

Last edit I could make was transferring all tutorials to quaketastic. That was quiet a job from my mobile to screen shots, but I feel these tuts are treasure ware.
Now the front page is back, but all info is scrambled after that. 

The InsideQC tutorials are still online here: http://www.insideqc.com/qctut/#Misc

I've also grabbed that part of the site and the AI Cafe tutorials. Download them here. 

AI Cafe is so amazing. Sometimes I read it just for the nostalgia. 

Thanks for the Ai Cafe files. Some I had already saved, but the site went offline faster than I expected. Just like that of Inside3d. The last months in 2019 I have been trying to get back my password, but there were too many spam bots. Too bad because there was a lot of useful information in the posts. At first it seemed that it was better? because I could get back to the start pages
and login again.
The tutorials I no longer got on the screen of my computer but on my mobile. So that's why I sent everything to quaktastic. 

Guys, just wanted to step in and have a word. Recently saw four videos on YouTube (working the Roku stick FTW) about my last map Fort Ratsack. One I knew of, since Daz let me know about it, and I was obviously thrilled to see it. But I just recently saw three others and was truly flattered. One guy (recommended by Sock btw -- cheers, Simon) couldn't find one of the secrets, and I found that thoroughly entertaining. Anyways, late to the party I am, but thanks in any case. Moar to come... 

Thanks for checking out the videos! I haven't done much streaming or recording so trying to get a handle on how to best do it. I did figure out settings to improve the YouTube image quality - so that's better already.

I like your suggestions regarding taking more time to talk about the map at the start and covering more of the details, layout, etc. I have an alias for noclip fly mode so I can zoom out of the level an show the overall layout. That's a good idea too.

For the bot match, I can configure my mod to turn off all the extras and just keep it as standard DM mode. You're right that runes, hook, etc. will mess with the balance of the map.

I also made a new little video about some DM compilation packs I'm putting together:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55teHDGWmfE 

So, Quake turns 24 on Monday... 

 

Wondering how everyone is holding up and interested in hearing about the good things in your lives.

I've spent the quarantine doing engine coding. Now I've lost 6Kg and am helping my wife make chocolates for selling.

A coworker was diagnosed with covid19 and ran away from the hospital. He also told me he isn't wearing masks when taking the bus because he can't breathe with the mask on. I'm staying away from him, and thankfully I have a car to avoid mass transportation. 

So I just watched a video of Romero's Quake post mortem from last year (?) and there were two slides of a scanned document, containing the map order and general game progression from around January 1996.

Here they are (annotations mine, also sorry for bad resolution):

Shareware episode

Full version

Amongst many other really weird things in there, why is there mention of an ICBM launch site in E4M8? 

nice find.

Link to the timestamp where those images appear: https://youtu.be/aWREOgyPLt4?t=964

There are also a third image which is basically the final or near final episode order, though without end.bsp 

The third image comes after this intermediary step, but before the reshuffling of E3 happened in mid-to-late June 1996. 

also interesting that the record company forced them to use audio CD instead of mp3 format for the soundtrack.

While I appreciate that I have a lossless copy of the soundtrack, that would have made a big difference for modders if mp3 support was in vanilla quake. (Though, it might have been ripped out for the open source release? not sure how that could have gone.) 

the reshuffling of E3

This was the map order 11 days before release:

E3M1
E3M2
E3M3
E3M7
E3M4
E3M6
(Secret) E3M5 

It was for the best. There would be no way for a 100Mhz 486 or Pentium to simultaneously decode a MP3 soundtrack and render the game.