quake/articles/1996/art-335

Path: mantis!not-for-mail

From: Thomas H Valley

Newsgroups: rec.games.computer.quake.announce

Subject: Gen Con 96: Many Successes (QUAKE)

Date: 14 Aug 1996 10:30:11 +0100

Organization: TLN

Lines: 75

Sender: tony@mantis.co.uk

Approved: quake@mantis.co.uk

Message-ID: <32109471.6A6@itis.com>

Reply-To: mystery@itis.com

Gen Con has just finished in Milwaukee, and I thought to provide the

Quake newsgroups with an update on how things went with our network.

Here's the letter I recently sent to our supporters at id, Raven, and

Blizzard Software:

To begin, I'd like to profusely thank all of you that contributed to our

event at Gen Con this year. We were a smashing success, and we couldn't

have done it without you.

I sincerely believe that we held exclusive rights to the true darling of

the computer arena this year: Quake. I can safely say that the only

other game that received any requests for open play was Warcraft.

We had two major events that took place over the weekend: The Quake

tournament, and the Warcraft tournament. We had planned on Hexen and

Necrodome tournaments, and had continued to offer them through Friday

night, but no one signed up. We can attribute this problem to the fact

that SSI/Mindscape was offering free play on Necrodome throughout the

convention, and that the doom-style engine of Hexen paled against the

antics of the Quake players (...gotta get that Hexen 2 out...).

The Warcraft event was a success, and we continued to have requests for

open slots to that event long after the final was concluded. I don't

think that game will ever die, as it's constituents seem extremely

devoted to it.

Quake had a small amount of people waiting for the event, from 8am to

midnight, every day we ran it (well, it slowed down a bit at 11pm, I

think people got a little tired). I believe that there might be people

still at the convention center, right now, waiting for an open spot to

play. We let people play as a part of a 16 player continuous game for

15 minutes. When they were done, we plugged someone else in their

seat. We hosted the game off of a Dual P133 system, and jumped through

some minor thinnet hoops in order to get our 2 (or was it three) hublets

communicating with each other.

Unfortunately, all of this popularity had an adverse effect on our

judges. Some of the more vocal of us had difficulty moving through the

convention without being approached about the game at one time or

another. Also, due to the fact that the game was being played in front

of us for 16 hours a day, most of us began to have disturbing dreams

about the nature of the 3D world around us, and how that IRS agent would

look like with a rocket shot up his ass.

The final for the Quake tournament was played as a variable gravity

level (played on a level where we could find the most natural dangers:

lava and slime). We had the server set up as part of the game (listen

mode), and bound a number of gravity commands (including negative

gravity) to the keyboard. One of the judges would then randomly change

the gravity in the game, which gave no end to the amusement for that

judge: gravity -1, gravity 2000, gravity -1, gravity 2000, "Blaze falls

to his death", "Darlock falls to his death", etc.

In general, most of us received about 4 hours of sleep, on average, for

the last 4 days -- but it's a good exhaustion. I think the thing that

amused us the most about this convention was the common question related

to our employment at id/Blizzard/Raven software, and if the companies

happened to be hiring. By Sunday, the "giggle like little schoolgirls"

response to that had worn off, and the questioner was more apt to get a

glare from the judge, and a request to back away from the hardware.

At the end of the convention, we'd received a number of offers for

cooperative support for next year's convention, and indications from the

convention administration that the arena will be much larger next year.

Once again, thanks to everyone that participated -- we hope to make

similar arrangements for Gen Con 1997.

--------------------------------------------------------

Thomas Valley

Sales Manager, Publisher's Toolbox

1-800-390-0461, 608-243-5951

Fax 608-243-1253

mystery@itis.com

pubtool@pubtool.com