Quake I

Years ago—I think some two years after it was released—I bought me a copy of Quake. I found the original box in a shop that had just one left, and was selling it at a serious discount; I still have the box, with the original artwork.

I didn't have Internet at the time, though, so I never played it online. I did finish the game at one point, though I don't remember whether it was with or without cheatcodes. I'm certain I got very far, though I had a tendency to start using cheatcodes when the monsters I had to pass got too hard for me to actually be able to pass them.

When I did get an Internet connection, Quake III Arena had just been released, so not many people still played Quake I. However, my very own ISP then did have a QuakeWorld server still running, and I fondly remember playing a lot on that server. Since I hadn't heard of +mlook, which enables modern-style mouse-based movement in quake, I was still playing with doom-style controls, that is, keyboard only. At first I got fragged all the time, but it didn't take me long to master this method. I got so good at it that I've won some deathmatch games, with keyboard only. Seriously.

Eventually, however, I migrated to a state where I did not have any Microsoft operating systems installed on my system anymore; and while Debian had a 'quakeforge' package in potato, it was rather buggy; I remember it would reproducibly crash when you would load a particular level from the third episode. I did think about fixing the code, but then I didn't really have the time or expertise to do so, so that never got anywhere. Eventually, it was pulled from the archives; and after a while—around the time when my ISP shut down their quakeworld server—I stopped playing Quake; and though I was sad about it not being installed anymore, I just forgot about it.

Recently, however, I somehow stumbled upon this 'Linux Quake HOWTO' over at tldp, and noticed that apart from Quakeforge, there really are other engines, and there really still is a Quake I community around. With quakeworld servers and everything.

Oh boy.

So I installed this 'tyrquake' a few days ago, and I've now already reached episode 3. Some things are coming back, but others aren't really...

Of course, when I connect to one of those quakeworld servers, I get fragged all over. I'm lucky when I end up with a positive frag count. For reference: in Quake I, you only lose frag points when you kill yourself...

Hah.

To be continued, I guess...