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Interview with Nicerdicer (5 comments)
Posted by Cyn1c @ 12:14 CST, 9 January 2013 - iMsg
Admins are the unsung heroes at most of the major tournaments. They’re the people responsible for keeping a tournament free of drama and contribute the most towards the successful execution of anything ranging from an online league to a major LAN. I was lucky enough to have an online sit-down with one such guy who’s been really active in the Quake scene – Dmitriy “nicerdicer” Khoriev.

An excerpt:

I think FPS should be present at any good LAN tournament, no matter what, be it major or just a local one. The question though is which FPS game would be in the games list. Community wants a game like Quake, but sponsors want a game that will deliver some money in the end. So it's really hard to strike a balance between these two options. Reborn could be the next best thing for FPS if it manages to break in. But for now, we have Shootmania which is more about money and is less enjoyable compared to Quake, which is slowly dying every day.

Read the complete interview on ProGamingTours
Edited by Cyn1c at 21:39 CST, 9 January 2013 - 6143 Hits
Strenx « My Rise In E-Sports. » (144 comments)
Posted by ins @ 15:21 CST, 30 December 2012 - iMsg
By France Strenx:

What I am going to tell you right now is how I started and why it is important to never give up, no matter what happens to you. For the people who don't know me, my name is Kévin Baeza, and I am 21 years old playing for team fnatic (www.fnatic.com).

In-game, I'm known as strenx. I don't really know why I have chosen this name to begin with. It could have been derived from the word “strength” as I once said during an interview but I don't even remember exactly. However, I stuck to the name and I have played Quake and I'm willing to replay this game.
When I was nine years old, I started playing Quake and I did not know anything about professional gaming or tournaments. Playing and winning were my two motivations.
I started playing Quake 3 on the patch 1,11. I played 1v1 instagib (rail gun only) for 4 years on dm17. Though, at the same time I was told that a lot of people played Quake with a patch called 1.32 on OSP mod.
I joined some duel servers and the first days were a true nightmare. Indeed, I was being owned by a lot of people. I told them that I would own them with a 1v1 instagib.
I was young and what I did not realize is that in “real games” people used «all weapons». I played duel against some top French players at that time. Some people did not believe that I was a beginner with the rest of the weapons. They thought that I had good potential. Actually, I was really happy about that. When I started playing Quake at the age of 9 my whole life was devoted to that game.
I was told that there were tournaments, and of course, professional players who already had established themselves as “legends of quake”. When I watched eswc ESWC with Sweden fox, Sweden z4muz, Russia LeXeR, Russia polosiaty, Russia unKind, Russia cooller. All these players were untouchable in my eyes. From my standpoint, these guys were legends.
They were impossible to reach and to talk with. I have never managed to catch them and never been able to play them once. I told myself one thing from that moment on: «If I were pro, I would always be there for the others in-game. I would try to talk as much with players and give them advice if they needed”. Because at that time I was not able to talk to pros and play with them, I don't want others to experience the same problem.

After that, I started to discover pickups and started playing capturetheflag with people from the community. But people started to be suspicious about me and they accused me of aliasing. However, it was not really a problem. The real problem, which I at start thought was not a problem at all, was during the time I was started being called a cheater. I was really happy at the beginning because it proved that you are good and you could have a good aim, I was truely happy about it... Maybe I was too young.

Days after days and months after months, I started to react to their insults and to their unremitting kicks. I was young and I always wanted to reply to this. I remember that I started to be banned on pickup more and more often cause people said they did not want to play with/against a cheater. Though, I could not prove it because I was too young to go to a LAN. But thanks to that, I could at least play the top french players at that time. All these guys wanted me to play these pros and they wanted to prove that I cheated. But they never found any proofs. But, deep down in my heart, I was so happy to duel against the best frenchs players in that time. They made fun of me though, owning me +40. I was happy to duel them anyways. Years were gone and I had to stop quake for 1 year in order to end all of this suffering and false accusations. But the reason why I comeback at 14-15 years was because I watched eswc ESWC 2004, and I saw all theses pros. I didn't know their faces but when I saw their nickname, I could imagine them as god, as true gods, and I really wanted to play back. I started to alias their name so I could think I was like them. But things got worse years per years... People kept accusing me of cheating and they made fun of me because the more I was replying, the more it was getting worse, and it lasted 4 years. When you are young and you think only about the game, it is really hard to endure that (I know what I am talking about). And then, I was totally banned from all the french pickups and all french leagues, without any real proofs. From now, I would say it was jealousy. But I would thank them anyways.. why? Because without that I would not be what I am today in esports. Since that moment, I played duel only because it was the only thing I could do. I practiced day and night until I could attend a lan. I wanted to play Quake 4, still my computer was too bad. In 2008, they've put Quake 3 back at ESWC. You can't imagine how happy I was. All the actual duel french players at that time were there (France falcuma, France unity, France linkin). I said that I will win this cup and I will shut all the mouth of everybody that made my life a nightmare (99,99 % of people actually :D). You can guess that everybody was laughing at me, even these players. And the worse thing was that I couldn't have any team to send me on lans, because these people told to the organisations that I was a cheater and it is bad for reputation. My parents sent me on LANS, they paid themselves plus I managed to qualify to the French finals. Webone was the only team that trusted me at that time. I won't explain all this ESWC France tournament, still at the end, I won this cup.... I won it, and for myself, this cup was not only a win but also a win for all these 4 years of pain that I had in game. Thank to this victory, I started to get a name. At Dreamhack Dreamhack Winter 2008, I managed to win Sweden fox into the semi final. The player who was and still is my legend. And I won pretty hardly (+25 each maps). Albeit the organisation that I had did not even pay me the travel, a friend of mine, Sweden Spartie paid me this. But I slept on the floor and I managed to be 2nd afterall. The guys who insulted me started to respect me, but I don't know if it was ass licking and I didn't care. You know, I liked how ridiculous they were haha. The worst thing is that there were people who never admitted that they were wrong.. Sad story, eh? Where I really started to get a name was in ql Quake Live. I began to win almost all the online cups (I won 52 ZOTAC cups, and 18 g-data + a lot of differents online cups). I was called online hero, but it is better than cheater isn't it? I started to play lans again, and was owned during the first ones, then Russia Cooller gave me an important advice that changed all my esports career :
« You have to choose situations when to be aggressive »
I always try to mention it on a interview, not to make fun of him, but to thank him about this. A player that I watched a lot when I was a kid, and at this time I was in the sofa with him during an interview and said my nickname. When you played this game for years and followed theses players since you were a little boy, I can tell you that it was really important for me. He gave me an advice, even if he did not care after that. So to conclude, what I did to be where I am now is simple: Never give up, follow your dreams, never listen to fuckers, cause they will do everything to put you down. They did it for 4 years, I never gave up and here I am, a player from « fnatic »

Being pro gamer is not something easy because you have to face to a lot of insults, jealousy, and they will do everything to prevent you from having your dreams. Some people have luck... having a brother as pro gamer or as a devoted player is much easier.... But I was alone, without any help, and I managed to do it. At least I try to do most of all pro don't do, reply to their fans.

Ps : I will put more blogs in the future, my esports stories, troubles, when I missed the flight three times, or when I slept outside in Dallas!

Here are some videos if you don't know the videos I talked about (I was not angry, no worries):





Strenx 2010:
If you have any questions, you can ask on: Facebook, Twitter, Twitch.tv

Source: Strenx Facebook
Edited by Demiurge at 11:57 CST, 13 January 2013 - 70068 Hits
QL Buddy – extension for Google Chrome (6 comments)
Posted by Nakilon @ 16:55 CST, 22 December 2012 - iMsg
I'm glad to announce the first public release of the tool named QL Buddy.

It is for those, who don't want to miss cool QuakeLive servers, which are currently online, but also don't want to spend time at quakelive.com, keeping eye on serverlist or buddylist.


The tool is actually a Google Chrome Extension. It's not necessary to be logged into quakelive.com from Chrome, because it gets data anonymously (but actually, if you log in, the browser will provide cookies, which may influe results a bit).
While the QuakeLive site can display only one search filter at once, it allows you to keep eye on several searches simultaneously.
Also it can produce sound notification, if some of specified buddies are detected on any server, found in search results.

Manual

Open this webstore page in Chrome and install it. The extension's icon immediately appears, and you are ready to use the tool. It uses Chrome Local Storage to save your presets, and at first, they are obviously empty.
So now you have to open the quakelive.com (refresh the page if it was already opened in any tab), click "Play online" and do some server search (it would be better, if you do the search with non-empty results – it will be easier to learn, how this tool works). After that without going away from current page click the extension icon and then the button "Add current search filter to this list". Less than in 10 seconds you'll see results if click the icon again. You may add up to 10 searches, but keep in mind, that it may cause network lags each 10 seconds, if you have not enough wide connection.
You may "DELETE" any search – the last one will take its place instead. Also you may click the button "Details" which is similar to when you move mouse onto server at quakelive.com to see details. The extension icon displays a 'badge' – a number, saying, how many servers are currently found by all filters. If you want some search results to be excluded from the counter, check the checkbox "Don't count" next to search filter.
If you see some bug, try to reproduce it, to ensure, that it's not your fantasy (for example, search list changes need up to 10 seconds to take effect). Then click the button "debug", copy contents of the tab that just opened, and send it to cases@qlbuddy.fogbugz.com with nice explanation, what went wrong.
P.S.: try not to search with parameter "In your vicinity" – the extension works anonymously, so it's unable to determine your location, so you'll get USA servers, unless you are currently logged into quakelive.com in Chrome.

About authors

Idea and extension itself (JS) – Victor Maslov aka Nakilon
Design (HTML/CSS) – fraggedICE
Betatesting – URAZ, Enonatan

Links

Email for techsupport, thanks and feature requests – cases@qlbuddy.fogbugz.com
Webstore download/install link – plgmlnocppdoaolgkklhnomfbofjbepb
Wiki – https://qlbuddy.fogbugz.com/

UPDATE (17 Jan 2013)

Since first public release, there are new features in v.0.5.0:
– finally the 'buddy detection', which highlights servers and makes extension icon green;
– showing ip:port, team scores, each player score;
– nicknames are now clickable;
– each search filter is now titled with automatically generated description.
Screenshot has been updated.
Edited by Nakilon at 20:43 CST, 16 January 2013 - 8163 Hits
Setting up your QL mapping environment (33 comments)
Posted by cityy @ 16:51 CST, 8 November 2012 - iMsg
With this article I want to provide a quick guide to setting up GTKradiant and Wolfcam for mapping as many people were willing to try it out but had problems getting started.




Video Tutorial

Instructions:

1. Setting up Wolfcam
In order to be able to quickly test your maps without having to put together a .pk3 file after each compile you need to set up wolfcam. To do this, download and unzip the wolfcam archive linked above to any desired location on your harddrive (I suggest you make a special folder for all mapping related files) and copy all the .pk3 files from your quakelive\baseq3\ directory to wolfcam\baseq3\.
Can't find your QuakeLive folder? Click here.

2. Setting up GTKradiant 1.6.3
GTKradiant is the editor used to create maps for several id tech 3 engine games. To make it work with QuakeLive you need to download the archive linked above and unzip it to your new map creation folder from step 1 or any other desired location.
If you launch the radiant executeable now, a popup will appear and you will be asked to specify the game you are looking to work with and enter the path to the game's engine directory.
Select QuakeLive and point the path to your wolfcam directory containing the wolfcam.exe (DO NOT ENTER THE PATH TO WOLFCAM\BASEQ3; CHOOSE THE WOLFCAM ROOT DIRECTORY).
When you are done, confirm your choice clicking the OK button; radiant will now load the game's shaders, textures and entities.

3. Learning the editor
Learning how to make maps requires patience at the beginning but once you learned the basics and got comfortable with the editor it will be a really fluid and fast paces process.
GTKradiant 1.6.3 is still a very young version of GTKradiant so there aren't any tutorials working with it. However, tutorials using version 1.4 and Quake III translate almost 100% to 1.6.3 so you can read those without any concerns.

GTKradiant Tutorials:
- q3a.ath.cx tutorial
- Bubba's GTKradiant tutorial mirrored by Delirium
- Tutorials by Victor Karp (GERMAN)

4. Getting help
If you are getting stuck, feel free to ask more experienced map makers for help. Good places to ask are the Quake3World LEM forum, the #radiant Quakenet channel or this thread.




Hope this helps. If you got questions, post below or join #radiant on Quakenet.
Edited by cityy at 13:38 CST, 12 December 2012 - 21784 Hits
Spawns at Terminatria and how to (4 comments)
Posted by pecka_ @ 01:57 CDT, 2 November 2012 - iMsg
at first i saw this but imo more explicitly something like this:
[img1]

How i get it:
1. make cfg with one temp handy bind:
bind mouse5 "kick all; bot_pause 0; wait 10; addbot keel; addbot keel;addbot keel;addbot keel;addbot keel;addbot keel; addbot keel; addbot keel; addbot keel; addbot keel; addbot keel; addbot keel; wait 10; bot_pause 1"
2. start practice match against bots at any map with maximum total players
3. /devmap terminatria (devmap needs for bot_pause 1 - bot stays at spawn)
4. exec cfg
4. spectate (freecam) and press that bind.

Album with all the 13 spawn at Terminatria http://imgur.com/a/12Ha7
Edited by peckB at 01:58 CDT, 2 November 2012 - 4204 Hits
Gameinside.ua interview with Frozen (24 comments)
Posted by nicerdicer @ 17:20 CDT, 25 October 2012 - iMsg
Let’s welcome the old-school quake player Russia Frozen, who recently played Netherlands Adroits LAN TDM Tournament with Russia impulse7 team! In the interview he talks about the lead-up to the Androids LAN and his experiences at the tournament.
What was your goal for this LAN? To get any good position or just to have fun?
Our goal was to at least pass the group, and potentially get 4th place.

Why you didn’t even advance into the playoff then?
Obviously, one week of practice was just not enough. Our team has huge teamplay experience, but ...
Read More

Russia Yuriy "Foppa" Romanov can be found on Facebook.

Source: Ukraine Gameinside.ua translated for you by Ukraine nicerdicer and Switzerland Memento_Mori
Article Page: 1 || next page >>
Edited by Badb0y at 15:43 CDT, 1 November 2012 - 25506 Hits
Quake Duel Theory (41 comments)
Posted by Kapiter @ 17:48 CDT, 3 October 2012 - iMsg
The quake veteran United Kingdom ddk has put online a nice tutorial for duel beginners called "Quake Duel Theory".

Video: Quake Duel Theory

Notes used in this video can be read here.

Be sure to check his Youtube channel for more tutorials, analyses and quake matchs.
Edited by Kapiter at 16:01 CDT, 4 October 2012 - 24154 Hits
Netcode Comparisons (OSP, CPMA, QL) (308 comments)
Posted by Weird @ 16:43 CDT, 23 August 2012 - iMsg
Because I just can't stand it anymore how oblivious people are to netcode. And that someone tempted me to write a larger post about it... here we go.
Article Page: 1 || next page >>
Edited by Badb0y at 12:40 CDT, 24 August 2012 - 69613 Hits
Painkiller HD beta - a new hope? (68 comments)
Posted by mouse* @ 09:59 CDT, 6 August 2012 - iMsg
So i received the long awaited Painkiller Hell & Damnation Key. Props to Nordic Game they are quite generous with the keys. If you write them an email with some nice words you might get one pretty quick. Anyway I downloaded (700mb) the game and installed it. Before I could install it a rather easy steam bug appeared and i had to update my driver. I have read a lot about this error in the forums and it seems it is a common steam bug which nordic games is not to blame for. Also you can't change controls or mouse in the options menu yet but thats no problem, the config file is easy to find and easy to rewrite manually.
Article Page: 1 || next page >>
Edited by xou at 13:11 CDT, 11 August 2012 - 21275 Hits
2D Demo Viewer: making visualizations (5 comments)
Posted by Memento_Mori @ 07:11 CDT, 28 July 2012 - iMsg
Hello,

this article describes how to create visualizations for the recently released Uber 2D Demo Viewer.

Introduction

This is still an evolving process, and the current solution involves quite some manual work. You need to be a bit techie and be familiar with different tools (3D modeling/rendering, Photoshop, Radiant).

Process

1. The first step is to generate a 2D rendering or illustration of a map. On this article, I described a process to extract Quake Live maps.

Once you get the 3D model out, the tricky part starts. Ideally you would like to remove any surface whose normal is pointing downward. This is however not enough. Maps have tons of "hidden polygons" outside the reachable walls, and all those contribute in screwing up visualizations.


Once you created a 2D image, you need to save it as PNG with the name of the map, and place it in the "..\U2DDV_v0.1\data\maps" folder.

2. The second part is to create a simple text file that includes the boundaries of your visualizations in Quake coordinates.

This process requires you to have q3radiant (or gtk-, or net-) installed, as well as the .map file for the arena you are working on. You should have the converted .map if you did step 1 using the QL Map Converter, as proposed in the article above.

Done manually this process may be quite annoying, as it all depends on how much margin you have left around the map in your visualization. In the readme file in "..\U2DDV_v0.1\data\maps" you find a dirty hack on how do this.

To make the process simpler, I coded a simple Map Ruler (thanks Switzerland myT for hosting). The process on how to use this is below.


3. If you have done everything correctly, your "..\U2DDV_v0.1\data\maps" folder should now contain "yourmap.png" and "yourmap.txt". Whenever the demo viewer recognizes "yourmap" being played, it will load your visualizations. If you have made mistakes in the formatting of the .txt file, the log window should complain.

Good luck!
Edited by Memento_Mori at 02:55 CDT, 27 June 2016 - 11443 Hits
Interview with zoot from The Party LAN (31 comments)
Posted by nicerdicer @ 04:58 CDT, 7 April 2012 - iMsg
mousestar: You are one of the most famous shoutcasters in the Quake Live scene, how did you start your career?

zoot: I started in 2011 around May, someone offered me the opportunity to cast and i said "yeah sure I`ll give it a go".So I took the opportunity but I was casting on my own. I just sounded extremely monotonous and I could tell it was a lot harder than I thought it would be, so it gave me the motivation to improve.

Full article at JeeSports.com
12982 Hits
How to export QL maps to 3D format (41 comments)
Posted by Memento_Mori @ 10:40 CST, 11 February 2012 - iMsg
Since I got this question asked many times, I figured I would write an article instead and point people here.

This process describes how to convert Quake Live maps into 3D formats.

Tools
- Quake Live Decembler (quakelivedec.exe)
- An HEX editor (HHD HEX Editor Neo)
- Any version of radiant (GTK 1.4, 1.5, net, ...)
- q3map2.exe

Steps

Let assume you want to convert campgrounds (dm6).

1. Fetch 'campgrounds.pk3' inside '...\AppData\LocalLow\id Software\quakelive\baseq3'

2. In a command prompt windows do:
quakelivedec.exe campgrounds.pk3 campgrounds.zip

3. Extract the zip content and fetch 'campgrounds.bsp'

4. Open it with the HEX editor and change the fifth byte from '2f' to '2e'. This converts the BSP version back to Q3.



5. In a command prompt windows do:
q3map2.exe -convert -format map campgrounds.bsp
This will generate a 'campgrounds.map'

6. Open the map in radiant. Filter the geometry off (toggle with alt + 1) select all entities and delete them. Around the map, create a brush box with the shader 'caulk'. Hollow the brush and save.


7. Create an 'info_player_start' anywhere in the map. Save.

8. In a command prompt windows do:
q3map2.exe -game quake3 -meta -patchmeta -subdivisions 2 -v campgrounds.map
q3map2.exe -convert -format ase -v campgrounds.bsp
This will generate 'campgrounds.ase', which can be read in most 3D applications.

9. The textures are exported as relative path assuming that the map is located in the folder 'maps' of QL tree. Repeat step 2. for all pk3 files. You can use a batch file like this:
for %%i In (" ...\AppData\LocalLow\id Software\quakelive\baseq3\"*.pk3) do quakelivedec "...\AppData\LocalLow\id Software\quakelive\baseq3\%%~nxi" "destinationfolder\zzz-%%~nxi.zip"
Extract all the files, and put the generated 'campgrounds.ase' inside the folder. Your 3D application should now find the textures.

Edited by Memento_Mori at 06:53 CST, 15 February 2012 - 35836 Hits
Dual Interview of Higgs & DevastatioN (22 comments)
Posted by peterg @ 20:03 CST, 8 November 2011 - iMsg
Quakelive and Doom 2 players (ZDaemon), Canada Higgs and Canada DevastatioN give their insight into both games. They offer contrasting views on various elements of gameplay and the communities. They also give their opinions on topics relevant to the IDL, a 3v3 CTF ZDaemon league.

Check out the full interview on the next page!
Article Page: 1 || next page >>
Edited by Demiurge at 15:02 CST, 9 December 2011 - 24093 Hits
QuakeCon 2011 After Action Blog (48 comments)
Posted by GreasedScotsman @ 16:03 CDT, 19 August 2011 - iMsg
Hey folks. United States of America GreasedScotsman here. After the successful planning, management and production of QuakeCon 2011 coverage, I've decided to take a break from broadcasting for the next month or so, perhaps longer, though I may reappear for special events like 2GD's World Tour (described during OneMoreGame/LiveOnThree 08-03-11).

QuakeCon 2011 was an amazing adventure. Thirteen people were responsible for the production and coverage. After last year's clusterfuck where we stepped up to the plate after expecting to play a secondary role to LiveOnThree, lacking equipment and time to plan anything, we knew we had much to prove.

We made a conscious decision to not hype up what we had planned and we chose to not go as "QLTV" but as the "QuakeCon Coverage crew." In hindsight, I know a lot of people literally missed the live stream because of this lack of press. Thankfully, though, we have 720p VODs available on YouTube of all of our content.

Recapping the Cluster
Article Page: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 || next page >>
Edited by GreasedScotsman at 09:31 CDT, 20 August 2011 - 46060 Hits
ASTZ! @ DARE 2011 - Tournament Over (61 comments)
Posted by astz! @ 17:32 CDT, 9 August 2011 - iMsg
Scheduled: 03:00 CDT, 12 August 2011 to 13:00 CDT, 14 August 2011
Schedule: Passed

As the UT2004 LAN in Dundee, Scotland draws near, I have been collecting some information from the confirmed players to put together this coverage article. On the pages below you will find some information about the players themselves along with their personal predictions!

Netherlands Mathijs "NeMeS|s" Beemsterboer
France Florian "zelvZ" Malletier
France Thibault "ecko" Delaye
Denmark Jan "lo2dk" Hannibalsen
Norway Ivan Thomas "Forseti" Pietruszenk
Sweden Andreas "Kenchu" Ehnbom
Netherlands Wouter "ScrMz" Hinloopen
Norway Kim A. "rmzs" Lorentzen
Netherlands Frederiek "Frantic" van Gammeren
United Kingdom Matthew "savantguarde" Bett

United Kingdom Lovey, Switzerland eXen, United Kingdom Skullthrone, United Kingdom marauds, Scotland Rozzy

The tournament is sponsored by Intel, Bigfoot Networks and Artisan Gaming. The fantastic Jee Network are hosting the signups and bracket, you can find the link below to register your interest.

The tournament will take place alongside Dare ProtoPlay 2011 - a large games industry event where teams compete to design a game in just 6 weeks, with the winner being judged by the public and some industry VIPs for large prizes and potential jobs in the industry.

The Format, Seedings, Groups and so on will be added to the article tomorrow! :)

Update: Tournament results! Read on to page 13 for some player interviews. Gallery, demos and videos coming soon.

Links: Original Announcement, Tournament Page, mIRC #DARE.UT
Article Page: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 || next page >>
Edited by xou at 19:35 CDT, 16 August 2011 - 44792 Hits
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