The Glade 4.0

Over a decade ago I played a lot of online Quake and Quake 2. A lot. Especially team-based games like Capture the Flag. It actually took playing WoW for several years to catch up to the amount of time I put into Quake/Q2. I played them often because I really liked seeing my skill improve and improve, becoming almost as sharp as a razor. It was difficult, yet very satisfying, because I played with a *trackball* (Trackman Marble, to be precise... didn't even have a scrollwheel at the time).

Around springtime of 1998, I decided I was content with where my skills where at and knew that the only way to improve upon them further would be to start playing with a mouse. I didn't really want to do that, and I was feeling like I would rather stop playing while at the top of my game so I went into, what I would consider, retirement. About a year later, I realized that I may want to one-day look back at my glory days so I decided to record some matches. At this point, my skill had diminished somewhat (like anything, the better you get the more you need to practice to maintain that level of performance). But I knew that it hadn't diminished completely yet.

I stumbled upon these "demo" files I had hidden and tucked away just recently and found and dusted off my old Quake 2 disc and went and saw if they were still viewable. They were. As I watch them now, my "twitch" game was certainly much better than it is now (I have since forsaken the trackball and began using a high dpi mouse, in my elder years) and there are quite a few kills that even I am impressed to see again.

I decided I wanted to make a video compilation so I could share them with a lot of my friends from back in the day. I have never really done any sort of video editing/converting/recording before so I am just getting into it. But, I thought someone on here might be interested in seeing the first video I've converted and uploaded. It's in it's raw, unedited format so you get to see the good and the bad.

Things to note about this video:
1. It was a type of deathmatch called "Instagib." You are given only one weapon, unlimited ammo, and it's a one shot-one kill scenario. Everyone also had an off-hand grappling hook (the red laser beam) so you can get to anywhere in the map as well as use momentum to propel you forward/upward.

2. I was actually worse at instagib than the other deathmatch/CTF games I played. I played it because it forced me to develop better aiming/twitch skills, which was my handicap while using a trackball.

3. The video might seem like it's sped-up at first. It's not. My sensitivity was just VERY high. I liked (and still do like) an extreme sensitivity.

4. I used a trackball. So, trackballers of the world, don't ever let anyone tell you that you can never compete with other great players of the world because of your hardware of choice!

5. And again, I recorded this at a time after I had hit my peak and my skills were beginning to wane somewhat.

Anyway, if your'e still reading and are interested, here's the video. It's about 300 megs, because it's a full (6 minute) match and I did not want to lower the resolution much, else you not be able to see what is going on.

http://www.xmission.com/~rjomero/Ron_Jomero_rail.wmv

I have 26 more recordings to go through now and then my quest of editing them will begin.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

Downloading now... I will check it out later. I love Quake (well, UT, really) and I used to be pretty good at instagib in the UT2003 days. I would love to get back into it with UT3

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Ron Paul 2012

Well, back then I would never consider Quake and UT to be similar games at all.

But today, yeah, I do. But this is because they are nothing like the Battlefields and Modern Warfares of today. They are in the same type of fast-paced class where knowing the level intimately and stocking up on weapons and armor was key. Team Fortress 2 is kind of like this.... but not really. Team Fortress 2 is still kind of slow compared to oldschool Quake/UT.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

Oh wow, I didn't realize Quake had a grapple hook... I always liked Unreal Tournaments translocator. Not as fast paced and straight forward as that grapple laser thing, but you could do more with it...like hide and disappear around corners

Man, you kinda play like I do, though. I mean, I've only played Quake a few times, I'm more into Unreal 2003/2004 style gameplay...instagib and about 130% gamespeed...sometimes low gravity if the map terrain supports that. Come to think of it, I wish there was a way to adjust the gravity rather than just have a switch between low and regular....also also adjust different aspects of the gamespeed. Maybe UT3 has that, I haven't played much of that either.

You definitely play like I do, though. Very smart and tactical and fast movement. But shitty aim. Haha, I see videos like this that don't move as good as you do but they have killer aim. And these are the people that dominate me. No matter how well I move. Sometimes I can focus and get in the zone, though. Man, if you had good aim, you'd be godlike. I gotta say, maybe I'm wrong, but it seemed like a lot of your opponents weren't that great...you pretty much wiped the floor with 'em. I love games like that, and it always pisses me off when some insanely skilled dude comes in and starts dominating.

There was this Half Life 1 mod called "The Specialists"

It's actually still around, but ever since they updated from version 1.2 to 1.3 my friends and I never play it anymore.

It plays like a fast paced half-life with a large selection of very realistic weapons. And let me tell you...the weapons in this game are balanced nearly as well as the 3 Starcraft races are balanced. The 1.2 version of this game was perfection in terms of weapon realism and balance. This games weapons are the anti-thesis to counterstrikes weapons. Oh man, I could go on and on about how much I hate counterstrike, but I don't care cause I didn't waste my time on that game.

I wish they would make a HL2: Source modification and remake "The Specialists" with the same gameplay and weapons as the original, preferably the 1.2 version. Or remake it, in Unreal 3 engine or something newer even. Unreal is such a great engine, though...

What really set this game apart, though, and the reason I'm mentioning it in this thread, is the movement. This mod was largely inspired by the first Matrix film. You could run, jump, dive, flip, flip off walls, kick, punch, jumping kick, dive through windows, jumping punch, disarm kick. The moves were controlled by how fast you were moving, and how much you weigh...you see...the armor and weapons have weights in that game.

A lot of newer games have similar mechanics, maybe, nowadays...those are usually 3rd person console shooters, though!!!

Speaking of 3rd person, the game has an option to play in 3rd person. Usually people set it up so that when you drop your weapon or want to do kung fu...it switches to 3rd person, and back when you pick up a firearm.

And it has Katanas. And throwing knives. You can even throw your Katana if you want!

There are power-ups for that super jump (the one that Morpheus does in the dojo training Neo in the first movie and on top of that semi-truck in the car chase in Reloaded)....slow-motion, and slow-pause. Slow motion lasts 5 seconds, there is a cool wooshing sound going in and coming out of it...and all players in the radius are effected equally. Slow pause is the same...except it's shorter, and it doesn't slow down the person to activated it as much. So basically, if I hit slow pause, I'm in slow motion, and everyone else is in SUPER SUPER slow motion. It's cool as hell.....and....get this...bullet time effects.

This game does the kung fu and Matrix-like movement so well, it sounds complicated but it's all pretty intuitive once you overcome a small learning curve.

This game is so far ahead of it's time and there has been nothing like it. If you play Quake and Unreal Tournament games and hate the Battlefield and Modern Warfare games, and don't mind playing on the Half Life 1 engine....then "The Specialists" is for you. Damn, now I'm starting to sound like an ad campaign.


Anyways...another reason which made me think of that game is when I started talking about skill. It was one of those games that was so skill based, and it favored people that wanted to be able to move in crazy ways...crazier than those seen in Quake and UT....but still allows people who are good at aiming to not suffer too much. It's really my favorite FPS of all time, and I stopped playing it because they ruined a few cool things and the new version has serious balance issues with kung fu and a few of the new guns, and it ruined one of the maps by making the lighting brighter. The only good thing the new version brought to the table was a cool new map, similar to the car chase scene in the Matrix Reloaded....the map moved and you got to jump between cars, flatbed trailers and half open trailers, etc...amazing game.

So that's why I quit playing. Sometimes...I miss it. Sometimes, I click the little Steam icon, and IM a friend to see if they wanna play...but no. Version 1.3 sucks. Ugh. I'm gonna stop talking about it. Not just in this post, but altogether. I have to leave it behind. It's in the past now.

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Ron Paul 2012

Heh. I didn't think my aim was THAT bad, I had some pretty decent snap-fire-while-flying-through-the-air kills there. And they had some equally decent kills too.

But, yes, pinpoint and immediate accuracy was my weak-link because of the trackball. And it's why I played instagib as it forced me to learn from my mistakes and get better. With TF2, and the little punks who thought they were God's gift to sniping, made me decide to get a really nice mouse. I don't play TF2 as much as I did quake... I probably play it a couple hours every 5 months or so. But I did get pretty decent at holding my own against other good snipers.

I'm glad you noticed my movement though. That was one of my biggest advantages over other players, was trying to stay ahead of them as well as attempt to ambush them unexpectedly. What you would see in my other videos is that I know when to retreat, and when to press-hard.

I did have a code of honor though, too.

1. I never camped (though I didn't mind campers... they were easy kills as far as I was concerned).

2. If I began dominating far too much, I would tone it down. If my great sense of staying "stocked up" was pushing me too much over the edge, I would pass by several nice power-ups. If my team was dominating and I was on top (as usually was the case) I would switch teams. This sometimes lead to one or two players instantly following me over, so I'd switch back and forth until the teams were evened out and I was on the team that needed help.

3. I disliked dominating new players. When I noticed players that were new to the game, instead of stomping them into the ground I would take the time out to give them several good tips and pointers. I preferred fighting against players that challenged me, so I figured this would put them on the path to do so.

Funny thing is, during this period of playing again after I had retired, I was playing a CTF game and a couple players on the other team mentioned "Hey, that's Ron Jomero!" And these players were kicking my *** left and right. They kept saying things like "Ron Jomero is awesome!" and "He's a really good player!" I thought they were mocking me and rubbing it in that they were completely pwning me. It turns out, they weren't. The two players were people I had taken aside a long while before when they were new, and set them on the path to greatness. Once I learned that, it made me feel really good to see how far they had come.

4. I never talked smack. Because I would generally be at the top of the charts, I felt it was very unsportsmanlike to do so. Plus, I didn't want players to leave the game and make the teams more unbalanced. But I went out of my way to completely destroy smack-talking guys who thought they were the sh_t. And I never said anything bad to them, just a "=]" after every other kill or so (which really did infuriate them more than smack talking would). One of the greatest pleasures in my life was to infuriate a smack-talker (who was also a very good player) to the point that he would ragequit.




I never did play a ton of Unreal. I did play it a bit, but I really don't know the difference between UT2K or UT2K3. Those modes/games do sound awesome though. There have been some awesome mods made throughout the years.

My favorite (but one that did not catch on) was called Midnight CTF. It was for Quake 1. It was exactly the same maps and goals as CTF.... except each level was pitch black. Each player had a flashlight that they could turn on and off at will. It was a completely different experience. And when you had the flag, you lit up everything around you so you were like a great beacon with a bullseye painted on you moreso than ever before.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

Oh, see, I didn't mean to make it sound like you had bad aim, in fact you had a lot of great shots in that game, more than me on most of my days. And I kinda watched the video and responded before I read that you had accuracy issues with using your trackball. I knew that you were using a trackball from a past thread and I remembered trying to talk you into trying a mouse because it's easier to be accurate with it, since you have all of your fingers to control it rather than just a few or a thumb.

EDIT: just rewatched your vid, and I can definitely tell you were using a trackball. My favorite part of that video is 2:05 when you shoot that dude between those 2 boxes..nice.

Aiming was definitely my weak link, though, even with a mouse, so maybe that's why I noticed it in you. I dunno, the way you play reminds me of how I would play...I'm also kinda surprised that nobody else was jumping around and using that tether / grapple feature as much as you did. Maybe they're just not used to playing instagib that often.

I guess one of the reasons I like instagib is the fact that it takes weapon balance out of the equation. The weapon balance is great in UT but there are some issues I think...however that's what makes the game fun...it's not as exacting of a game as "The Specialists" So while there were dominating people in instagib....when people dominated in The Specialists, it was really something!

I don't have anything against camping unless someone is doing it is extremely good, which is fun for a while but when they start wiping the floor with everyone, they should go find a better server. A few minutes is fine, but if you're on a server and plan to be for a few hours to have some fun you don't want these type of people in there. You may say, "nah, you should learn to put up with it and learn to play", well...consider this: Nobody learned how to walk with a 300 lb man trying to keep them down.




That sounds awesome.

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Ron Paul 2012

I never really got into the Quakes (well, vanilla Quakes, at least). Deathmatching was pretty blase for me by that point, and other games/mods were way better CTF platforms. UT was a great CTF game, and had assault, to boot. TF, and then later TFC were far superior as CTF games, too, because the class dynamic turned the focus away from item hunting and toward the goals of the map.

UT2k/2k3 were fantastic games, though. Double Dom and the enhancements made in map direction (the signage and UI elements that made assault more approachable cold for somebody who wasn't intimately familiar with the map) for Assault were phenomenal. I still haven't forgiven UT3 for dropping assault. Fortunately, TF2 took up the mantle there.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

There is nothing quite like a good game of fast-paced instagib CTF on a 2v2 or 3v3 sized map


I really need to get into UT3 a bit more, and play TF2. I bought the orange box when it came out, but I only really played Portal. Still haven't tried TF2.

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Ron Paul 2012

Quake was the original instigator of team-based deathmatch. After Quake, CTF began appearing everywhere and then more team-based mods spawned from it. Team Fortress was originally a Quake1 mod (and one I played as well). While there have been many improvements upon the idea of team/goal-based deathmatch, back then there wasn't anything else. And since I had been playing since practically day one, it was really all I needed. Having a grappling hook thrown into the mix also made things far more interesting and fun.

Quake1's CTF's only flaw was a flaw that existed in Quake in general: Every weapon but the rocket launcher was useless. This made matches come down to which team can control the rocket launcher spawn points. This is why I tended to favor Q2 CTF toward the end.

My clan actually practiced quite a bit, and we were communicating with each other long before teamspeak and the like were viable (most of us were still on dial-up). So we had a ton of chat macros to give everyone indications of what our status was, where the enemy is approaching from, when power-ups respawned, etc.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

Oh, I'm aware, Numbuk. I just had zero interest in Quake's brown graphics, so I passed it up and just kept playing Dark Forces, which was way more fun anyways ( ). By the time I came around to it, TF was in late beta stages.

Thus, XvT and JK:DF2 were my introduction to multiplayer over the internet, as that coincided with upgrading the 28.8 to cable internet at home. The barely tolerated pre-homeroom computer lab LAN matches at school never really made it past Descent and Doom because that's what was portable enough to easily dodge crackdown uninstalls.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

We used to love the grappling hook - you could gib someone and run around the corner while holding the hook so you didn't hafta deal with return fire.

Dark Forces or Dark Forces 2? DF didn't have any unique multiplayer options that I can recall (don't remember it having any at all, actually). And by the time DF2 came out, Quake made such a big wave with CTF that DF2 was one of the many games that followed to include a form of CTF and other team-based play. I can understand not wanting to play Quake CTF by this point, since the original probably looked a bit dated.

Lalaas, I am with you on the grappling hook. Quake 3 replaced it with jump pads, and it just wasn't the same. Having the freedom to access any part of the level, as well as creating unique ambush points, is what made the grappling hook so fun.

The reason why CTF included the grappling hook is kind of interesting. It goes back to the roots of CTF. David "Zoid" Kirsch decided to create a game based off of another game he used to play outdoors as a kid: Capture the Flag. The ability to easily customize Quake (another huge innovation at the time) allowed him to do this.

He took the first level of Quake and set it up so there were teams (based off of pants color) and that they spawned on opposite ends of the map. He set the gold and silver keys to be the red/blue flags. He took the "runes" in the game (that you collect from bosses) and made them power-ups to make the game more interesting. But then he also included a mod that he downloaded to allow the players to bypass some choke points, since the level was not really designed for balanced team-play. This was the grappling hook.

Zoid ran his CTF mod on his public server as a test to see if people would like it. It played the same level, over and over (since that was the only level he customized to work with it). Zoid went on vacation for a week and after he came back, he realized he had forgotten to disable his CTF mod and put it back into a regular deathmatch server. He quickly did so.

And then he was bombarded with angry players urging and begging him to go back to his CTF mod. Apparently, word of mouth travelled so quickly and the game so new, unique, and fun, that his server was constantly packed to capacity the whole time. Hundreds of other players were constantly trying to connect to it, hoping to get inside. The players were not sick of the same map, not by a longshot.

Zoid then realized there may be a lot more to the idea of CTF than he thought and so he formed a company to create an official CTF mod/map-pack. Threewave CTF was born and so too was team-based/goal-oriented deathmatch.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

Both. I skipped Quake to continue playing Dark Forces (single player). By the time I had an internet ping worth playing on, Jedi Knight was out, as was Team Fortress. Like I said, I never played any *vanilla* Quake. Doesn't mean I didn't play TF.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I think one of the geekiest things I still own is a framed certificate given out to every member of our clan, which won the LMCTF (Loki's Minions Capture the Flag) championship tournament called the Battle of the Ragnarok, back in 1999. If I had the means I'd take a pic and upload it but I don't at the moment.

I am very familiar with Loki's Minions CTF. That's awesome, Slythe! Retro-congrats!

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

I have played a LOT of FPS games, and a lot of multiplayer matched on each of them. But the ones I spent the most time on, by far, were Q1 and Q2. I think I've yet to find a weapon more satisfying than the Q2 railgun. Something about getting an impossible shot off with that gun really makes me smile. The railgun in Q3 just wasn't the same to me. It didn't have the same feel at all. That's probably a big part of why I didn't play Q3 as much.

Thanks for sharing the video, Numbuk. I really wish I still had some of my old demos/videos. Yours really brought back some fantastic memories.

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"I Live, I Love, I Slay, and I Am Content."
- Conan the Barbarian

I'm not really sure where this idea that using a mouse over a trackball is superior in FPS came from. My experiences has always been the opposite.

Close quarter combat/strafing (as in toe-to-toe and in each other's faces) gives trackballers the disadvantage. I always knew that. But I didn't have a problem with it.

Personally I like the feel and flow of a trackball.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

I really don't know how anyone would prefer a trackball over a mouse.

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Ron Paul 2012