Interesting how nearly every single mod in that list is from the mid/late 2010s or 2021... Not biased at all... 

Yeah, I noticed that bias towards recent stuff as well, I think it's to lend weight to the "Quake renaissance" theory that underpins the series of articles. 

Well, the visual standards have gone up compared to older maps. Newer maps are more likely to use more custom features like fog, colored light, skyboxes, expanded bsp limits, and other tools improvements that combine to make maps look better to newcomers.

But I agree with Text_fish, the whole premise of the article is "there is a quake renaissance that started in 2010" so it makes sense that they would choose maps from that time period to represent this. 

Bias to recent stuff.

Bashing of the established/old community.

Renaissance? Did it ever die?

By the way, interesting read, Yang's approach :
https://www.blog.radiator.debacle.us/2021/08/quake-renaissance-for-rock-paper-shotgun.html 

I don't see any bashing.

The link to the author's approach is interesting, the overall timeline laid out there is fairly accurate.

It compresses too much the 1996-2000 era though, there is at least a significant break when Quake 2 comes out at the end of 1997, that diverted most of the quake mapping/modding community attention and energy to that new game.

1996 and 1997 were the initial explosion of community activity, seemingly a dozen unique level editors were created and released in that time. In 1996, the mapping community went from the initial small experiments to full-fledged maps that matched and then exceeded id quality. To me Shadow Over Innsmouth represents the first great map, and it that kicked off 1997, which was an amazing year of good quality maps and packs.

The the period 1998-2000 was the slow recovery of SPQ from that near-death. All 3 major Q1SP review sites closed down in 1998 (Matt Sefton's, Crash's, and Talon's Strike.) Map releases per month went from like 30-40 per month down to like 3-5 per month. But then, starting with TeamShambler and Ethereal Hell, we had a new wave of review sites that started reviewing the new trickle of Q1SP releases. And even though the releases were relatively few, the quality was still there, and slowly improving. 

The TeamShambler stuff is my earliest memory. There were other PQ sites at the time but I've completely forgotten them, and TeamShambler is the only one I still remember.

I missed Q1 first time around, so I've nothing at all from 96/97. I do seem to have a vague recollection of being aware it existed. I came in with Q2 and then picked up on Q1 after, but I quickly recognised that Q1 had it's own set of strengths which were different to Q2, and to this day I still love both for different reasons.

At the time Q2 seemed to me to have a more formal, more controlled, more professional, but more limited modding scene, whereas Q1 was crazy people trying something to see what happened. It didn't always work. I remember the CD collections of QC patches and crap tools you used to be able to buy, the old cdrom.com FTP server where it seemed you could get absolutely everything, commercial level editors for sale in mainstream High street game shops, and absolutely lusting over screenshots.

I also remember the momentous day when the Q1 source code dropped. ID's FTP server could only support a very limited number of connections at a time, and you'd be constantly refreshing in the hope of getting in. I'd jumped on the code early and I'd my own list of things which annoyed me that I'd wanted to fix.

The significant thing about all of this is that Q1 was probably the perfect balance to make it all happen. It was big enough as a very high profile game to enable even the cheesiest mod to find an audience. But it was also small enough in terms of the tools being manageable and accessible (for the time) to enable even Joe Nobody to make that cheesy mod. And all of that was awesome.

I certainly was a Joe Nobody back then. No illusions. It's a sense of pride that significant stuff I created has even been taken up by the new official Quake 2021. That's awesome too, and it's amazing to be able to give back in that way. 

https://www.cbr.com/quake-trent-reznor-soundtrack-groundbreaking/ 

Nice non sequitur anon, very helpful. Presumably it's a very insightful response to one of the previous 31973 posts. Or maybe all of them? 

I don't see any bashing.

As with many online communities, some of the more hardened parts of the Quake community can be quite crusty, unpleasant, and downright abusive, often pushing away newcomers and even many regulars.

This is not necessary and one sided. He does not have the insight to proclaim this.
There's a whole bunch of personal beefs going both ways.
Its not like its some cesspit of pepe fren meme toting right wing racist and homophobic nutfuckjobs or something. There are a bunch of gaming communities like that. Q1s is far far from it.

A bunch of people are spinning the narrative of "crusty, unpleasant, and downright abusive," from their new clique position.
From some it is mosy likely an attempt to hypocritically distance themselves from their past for career reasons.

Just, why in gods name is that article taking a position there ? 

How does he "not have the insight to proclaim this"? Just because he's observed something that you haven't doesn't make that observation objectively wrong.

For my part as somebody who's lurked on the fringes of the Quake 1 community on various forums for 20-odd years I can see how a complete newcomer or somebody with "particular sensitivities" might find certain aspects a little intimidating or potentially unwelcoming. Your own conduct on func_ the past two weeks has been almost exclusively argumentative and unrelated to Quake. I know you're not representative of func_, but a first-timer might see your rant on the Beef thread and just think "ugh, another online community of grouchy old farts more interested in settling personal scores than talking about their common hobby".

First impressions matter. 

Its a beef thread, what interest other than rubbernecking drama could there be to go peruse that thread?
If someone is looking for first impressions there they will be no better served than in any other established community, should that community allow such a thread to exist for its own entertainment or whatever other reason.

Mapping advice, inspiration, map comments/reviews etc are the relevant hobby part of func.

I did apologize for misplacing my beef with Dumptruck in the wrong thread, am fine with someone deleting it in that thread as it was pretty irrelevant to the re-release. 

That's a fair point, and I don't want you to feel I've singled you out as the cause of Robert Yang's claim, I just think it's a bit rich to try and refute his experience when it's clear that there are elements of the community that could appear narcissistic or downright unpleasant to outsiders. It's also important to note that he didn't claim the Quake community is unique in this way. 

terrafusion, and by extension func, is</> curmudgeonly and unpleasant and abusive at places, it practically prides itself on that. This is not debatable, lol. Most other forums don't have "beef threads".

However, the individuals who made it that way are now the same ones distancing themselves from it, which I agree is hypocritical.

Some of those may or may not have been contacted for the RPS article. :---) 

 

 

This whole conversation has now veered into pointless personal attacks. I deleted some posts. 

Is the e-mail address in your profile still working?