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QW Source vs. Q3A-Pro Debate
On this page I will gather some opinions concerning the developement of the QW source code. For now, it contains my column update concerning the subject and Hoonys reply which was the start of my work on the QW projects here at CH-W.

My View
Friday, 07 January 2000 -
When Hoony first announced his plans to make a 'Professional gamers Mod' for Q3 I was quite happy about the idea. His intentention is to make a version of Q3 suitable for competitive play as compared to the out-of-the-box gameplay which is according to many, more or less newbie-oriented and lacks depth. Hoony had been considering such a mod even before the official release of the game, from the point where it became evident that some gameplay aspects werenīt going to be altered by id (e.g. footsteps, weapon switch time, rocket speed, splash damage).
Q3 is now available and it seems the coordination of work for the mod is well underway. Meanwhile, the source code of the original quake and its derivatives (the ever popular QW in particular) has been released by id as well.

Now I am starting to have second thoughts about the necessity of the Pro-mod however.Let's look at the current situation again: on the one hand there is Q3 with quite a few gameplay issues many people arenīt too happy about and on the other hand there is a source code available of a game a great number of people are still enjoying after several years of intense play. And somehow, more by accident than anything else, the latter game doesīt suffer these gameplay problems.
Given this situation, and knowing we want to have a game that can be used for entertainment and competitive play, what seems to be the more sensible thing to do? Either reverse-design Q3A to put the gameplay on par with QW or take QW and add some new features?
I would opt for the second one for several reasons:

• The complex gameplay is present in QW already; if compatibility with QuakeC can be maintained, all the physics of the game will be preserved. That would include the hard to master quirks like air movement, strafejumping and so on.
• Weapon balancing, switch times, explosion ranges and such can be kept identical (see previous).
• The graphics are good. Not great by todays standards but good nonetheless. Sufficient for some imersion and to allow for rather complex level design anyway.
• The game runs fine on most īmodernī PCīs. A Pentium 166 will do, a PII 400 is great and anything over that is overkill. At this point in time a game based on the QW engine will not give great advantages to players with unlimited budgets anymore.
• Although most hardcore players by now have PII 450 + machines, casual players or spectators can still enjoy the game with much lesser specced systems.
• If FPS gaming is to evolve towards a real sport, I guess its better that there wonīt be any direct links to companies holding trademarks and the like. For the moment these companies donīt mind us using their registered names to advertise lans and other events, but what will happen once real money starts to get involved.
• Likewise, it seems more approriate for a non-profit organisation to set rules for official games and tournaments than for a company whose main intend is (and should be) changing these rules every so often just to sell newer software titles.

• Advanced teamplay options such as position and status reporting: they are already available through the use of proxies for QW but could be made cleaner and easier to use by integrating them in the gameclient. In game real-time voice communication would be a nice extra, for example.
• Some more maps: most people are growing tired of good old dm2/4/6 although great quality custom maps are available. If the release of the improved client could include some of these maps in the installation file, a whole new set of īstandardī environments could be introduced.

Just recently, one of the CHEU columnists, Jjonez, emailed me to say that he had updated his column with thoughts on this very theme.

A very good column update, which provokes a lot of thought.

Well, I see nothing whatsoever wrong with working on the Quake 1 source code as Jjonez suggests. Imagine if someone could make it into a competitive sporting platform for the 21st century. Wow! That would rock my world. Just as Jjonez says, Quake 1 is already a great game, some would say the "perfect" game. All it needs, perhaps, is to be upgraded so that the gfx no longer looks out-of-date, and to integrate state-of-the-art stuff so that it can stand next to the games of today.

I've had many thoughts along these lines. The only reason I haven't leapt up and said "let's support this as well" is because there are limits to what I can do in a day. I barely manage to deal with my current workload as it is - it's that simple. People yell at me already because I appear to be too slow at responding to their requests. I have a wife, a child, a dog, and a fridge, to attend to.

But I do definitely like this idea. It is a romantic idea - Quake 1 comes back from the 20th century to reclaim the 21st! The game they gave up for dead lives on forever, and so on. I love this idea - so much that I am hosting a site here at Challenge-World called QuakeWorld Forever.

So, if anyone would like to work on a project with Challenge-World along these lines that Jjonez suggests, well that's exactly what the "Projects" section is there for. Someobody out there could either develop a project for updating the Quake 1 source or perhaps just maintain a page in the Projects section to track other Quake 1 source projects (so we can be informed about the choices that are available). If this sounds like your gig - then and I'll set you up with whatever stuff we can provide right now. I offer my support and the support of the Challenge network.

If Challenge-World developed a Quake 1 project like this, do I think we should therefore abandon the Q3A-based "pro mode" project? No, not at all. I still think it would be a lot of fun to work with this Q3A platform. I support the project 100% and I am going to continue to support it. There are also plenty of reasons to work with Q3A - it will have a larger user base, it will be the platform used in competitive play, it is a more advanced game engine, and so on.

The question is - do we need to "make a choice" between either one or the other? Not at all. I keep hearing from people how important it is to "keep the communities together" and not "create confusion" by creating something new. To all these people I say, if you think you can get everyone to play the same game, good luck to you. But I believe in a world of diversity and choice.

The FPS genre is one of the most varied gaming genres there is. We started with Quake, and now we have Unreal Tournament, and Duke Nukem to come, and stuff like EverQuest (and lots more, like Half Life, and Tribes, but you get the idea). Even within Quake, we have Team Fortress, we have Capture the Flag, we have Clan Arena and Rocket Arena, we have 1 million modifications. There will always be variation and choice - it is a part of life. You can't stop it from happening.

Nor should you want to stop diverse projects from happening. Without experimentation, there is less opportunity for new discoveries. I believe the Quake world is big enough for many projects. Projects are fun, and half the enjoyment is in the path travelled and not just the destination. I also don't think you can pre-judge which one will be best.

Here's my philosophy - support the projects you want to support, and if you want, give the others an honest tryout when or if they get built. At the end of the day, if a mod is good, word will spread. Gamers will say - "have you tried this yet, it rocks".

Hoony