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Text File | 2001-09-26 | 21.3 KB | 428 lines

Quake redone Quick Frequently Asked Questions ------------------ (0) Index (1) What for? (2) Why... ? (2.1) Why is the movie-version Win32-only? (2.2) Why is the run slower than QdQwav? (2.3) Why did you hide the easter-eggs? (3) How... ? (3.1) How did you time the run? (3.2) How did you record the run? (3.3) How did you turn it into a movie? (4) Which... ? (4.1) Which utilities did you use? (4.2) Which were your sound-sources? (5) Miscelaneous (5.1) Who helped you out with the run? (5.2) What's the history behind this project? (5.3) Will we see some more stuff from you in the future? (5) More Questions? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ (1) What for? You've answered that question by yourself already :) No, seriously - people usually get frightened by that huge QRDQ.TXT, so I decided to split the seemingly unneccessary stuff from the important stuff. That's why I've created this small FAQ. If you're rather refering to the run itself... well, call it destiny :) To get this far, it also requires a good amount of challenge, fun and spare-time :P (2) Why is... ? (2.1) Why is the movie-version Win32-only? Because I took advantage of the MP3 format, and the tool used to convert it to WAV is Win32-only. Simple as that :} (2.2) Why is the run slower than QdQwav? QdQwav is another Nightmare run by the QdQ team, which was released exactly one year ago and which was 48 seconds faster than QrdQ. The reason for this run beeing slower is that I did every major thing by myself; talk about running every single level and refilming them, plus producing, testing etc. the final product. I wanted to make sure that, apart from a few tech-help-bits by third-party-members, the entire thing was produced by one single person. This decision had it's disadvantage of course: I couldn't simply focus on the 4-5 maps I play best on, and polish them for weeks like as if working in a team. It's very hard to optimize such a lot of maps parallely, since once I improved some of them, I could've improved some of the others as well, due to the new skills I gained during that time, and so on. The same applies to recams: tweaking all of those way-too-hectic moves of some of my older ones would have delayed the (fairly too late) release-date of QrdQ more and more, and at some point I simply had to stop myself tweaking and improving, otherwise I would've probably never got done. Optimization is a curse. (2.3) Why did you hide the easter-eggs? Hehe - because people like that kind of hidden stuff. It's almost tradition at QdQ to include a secret code in the menu :) Oh and if you haven't figured it out yet... well, yea ok then you must be pretty dumb actually :P Anyways, think about the name or rather URL of the site you've dowloaded this movie from. Or simply check the PAK files. Or the CONFIG.CFG Quake generates, or... well you've got it by now, right? Btw if you search for the easter-eggs the lone-standing first-person version of QrdQ, you won't succeed. I've removed them in order to yield down the file- size. You will have to get either the movie- or the full-version in order to access them. So much about the disclaimer ;) (3) How... ? (3.1) How did you time the run? I should probably clarify exactly what I mean when I say that my run of Quake is performed in 13:11. There are several possible ambiguities to deal with when timing a demo, particularly one spread across the whole game. Today, speed-runners have settled on what they think are the most sensible ways of resolving them and all of them (including me) use QdQstats to record their demos. (3.1.1) Timing a regular level Of course, I use the Quake's built-in timer. In fact, this makes the times longer than they really are, since the timer starts at 1.39999998 seconds at the beginning of a demo, however there is a small trick I did NOT use to gain 0.2 seconds there. The times are taken from the intermission screen, i.e. fractions of seconds are discarded. Now it can happen, when Quake plays back a demo and the time is _very_ close to the next second, the timer may tick on to the next second before the engine reads the time following the start of the intermission, and Quake could display a time that is one second larger than the time shown when the demo was originally recorded. Whether or not it occurs depends on how close to the next whole number of seconds the demo time actually was, and it also depends on the speed of the computer you are playing the demo on. An example for this is E1M6, which time is 0:10.97 - close enough to 0:11 that some computers will display a time of 0:11 when they playback the demo, even if it really is a 0:10 demo. Fortunately, QdQstats always displays the correct time on the console, and to give you somewhat of a proof, I kept these messages so that you may have a look at them by pressing "toggleconsole" once the intermission screen appears. (3.1.2) Timing START I didn't make an effort to run the start map as fast as possible, because there's no intermission screen at the end of it, and you enter it more than just one time. (3.1.3) Timing the whole game Of course, the time for the whole game is the sum of the times for the individual levels. Note that you have to follow some rules when making a game run. One of them is collecting all four runes - this is a must if you want to reach the END level, and until today I know no trick of how to skip this unpleasant part of the game :P (3.2) How did you record the run? This run was created by recording a demo for each level individually, since this made me able to include more tricks and reduce the time. However, I was very careful to ensure that the finished product really IS a continuous run through the game. I start each new level with the correct statistics relative to the previous level, except that the Quake engine always grants you a minimum of 50 health and a maximum of 100 as well as a minimum of 25 shells, and disables all powerups whenever you start a new level. Continuity is very important - it adds a lot of strategy to the game, since items that one finds in earlier levels can be used in later ones, but those that one avoids to save time cannot. Many subtle interconnected decisions have to be taken, e.g. sacrificing 2 seconds at e4m6 to get the rocketlauncher in order to save even more time in e4m7. If you are interested in the routes of individual levels, or the history of individual tricks, check ROUTES.TXT included in QdQwav! If you find any continuity problems with this demo, *please* tell me. I think I've double-checked everything twice and triple, but I it's never 100% sure if a single nail hasn't probably been forgotten ;) Thanks! (3.3) How did you turn it into a movie? Since this run does not represent the latest state-of-the-art of speedrunning, I've decided to refilm the demos to be shown from an independent camera per- spective, in order to make the run more entertaining for the viewers. To do that, I used a utility called ReMaic. One writes a screenplay for the level and uses the tool with it to produce a remade version of the original demo. See section 4.1 for more information! Several other changes I made were adding a few additional sound-fx and one- liners, adapting a modified eyes-model from Scourge done Slick, which makes the position of an invisible player more obvious for the viewer, make the player lose various amounts of blood when badly hurt, and, finally, adapt some of the models from the DeathMatch Essentials mod as well, to show which weapon the player is currently holding. I didn't change anything to mislead you about the play in the demo, of course. You can always watch the first-person demos if you prefer the Quake experience you are more used to! (4) Which... ? (4.1) Which utilities did you use? These are the tools I required to produce this movie: Cool Edit <http://www.CoolEdit.com/> Commonly used sound-editor. Features quite a lot of options, and is also rather easy to use. DemoRelise (unreleased) Tiny hack that changes a demos starting-statistics relative to those the previous level ended with afterwards. DemTool <http://www.PlanetQuake.com/QdQ/> Fairly too much features to be listed here, especially since almost every single one became useful for me! LMPC and DemCut <http://www.PlanetQuake.com/DemoSpecs/> To turn a binary demo into an ASCII textfile and to merge demos that were recorded on different levels. QdQstats <http://www.PlanetQuake.com/QdQ/> The allmighty QdQstats, including features such as a more precise timer, a grenadecounter, cheat-protection and of course the possibility to change your starting statistics. Remaic <http://www.PlanetQuake.com/ReMaic/> "Refilm existing movie, altering it's camera" - used to recam the demos from an independent camera-perspective. StrangeUtility <http://www.StrangeCompany.org/> Supports MP3 conversion for Quake PAK files. Great help in squeezing the filesize! Ultra Edit <http://www.UltraEdit.com/> Cool text-editor which can be used for almost anything. Highly recommended! (4.2) Which were your sound-sources? Here's a list of the sounds I used in the movie-version, along with their source, in order of appearance. I hope there's nothing illegal with it - to quote Anthony: "Hey, it's a free plug, people!" MAP: DESCRIPTION - SOURCE (INTERPRET/ARTIST/COMPOSER) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ menu-map: ambient sound - "Come On Feet" (Quasimoto) intro: fanfare - "Carmina Burana - O Fortuna" (Carl Orff) theme - "Callin the shots" instrumental (Planet Asia) e1m7: intermission - "Get Down Baby" instrumental (Al Tariq) e2m6: jukebox - "Oops!... I Did It Again" (Britney Spears) - "The Real Slim Shady" (Eminem) - "Bad Touch" (Bloodhount Gang) - "Runnin'" (Pharcyde) e2m6: intermission - some beats from the "Mad Lib Remixes" EP (Mad Lib) e3m2: zombie-groaning - cut from "The Maggots" (Simon Boswell) e3m3: popping sound - www.SoundAmerica.com (unknown) e3m4: knocking sound - ICQ (ICQ Inc.) e3m5: windtunnel fx - www.SoundAmerica.com (unknown) - Worms 2 (Team 17) e3m6: jingle - "The Unseen" (Quasimoto) e3m6: intermission - "99.9%" instrumental (Jeru The Damaja) e4m2: advertisment - System Shock 2 (Looking Glass Interactive) e4m7: intermission - "Place Of Birth" instrumental (Planet Asia) end: Shub-telefrag - "Tale Of Five Cities" (Peanut Butter Wolf) credits: closing sound - "Defined By The Dollar" instrumental (Encore) egg5: e2m4 underwater - "Jaws Theme" (John Williams) (5) Miscelaneous (5.1) Who helped you out with the run? There are different people who helped me out by giving me hints, writing small helper-tools or just encouraging me. Almost everybody I know through speed- running scene would deserve mention, but I'll try to list only the most im- portant ones: Stefan Schwoon - he wrote the tool which created the (constant) slow-motion used at the end of, err, END. But not only that, he also was a great help ever since I started speedrunning by supporting me with all my projects, helping out with several tech issues, introducing me to new knowledge etc. Without exaggeration, none of my projects (QdQwav, QrdQ, CoT) would have been possible without Stefan's help, nor would my current site "Ill Mind Moves" be. Let it be spoken out officially at this point: Thanks, Stefan! Anthony Bailey - he was the one who got me aboard the QdQ family back in '99, and during his more active times also a great help con- cerning all that tech-stuff I was so new to. For example the the base-skeleton of the menu-code was originally written by him, and we both tried to find a way to have constant slow- motion in the original Quake release before Stefan came up with his idea. I also think that I wouln't have come very far without Anthony's help, as well as QdQ in general. Big respect, old man! Attila Csernyik - he built the menu-map, which does also contain some QuakeC, and wrote the patch which puts the missing loop-marker in the converted MENU.WAV. Due, he also worked as a tester and gave me some running-hints along my way, just as his (real-life) friend Peter Horvath. I would have probably never figured several tricks out without the help of these two guys (proper bunny-hopping, the e4m1 curl etc.), which makes their importance for the success of QrdQ obvious. Attila is one of the most talented persons I know, alone by the fact that his talents are so wide-spread: he's a coder, map-designer, kinda grafic-designer and music-composer, and one of the best speedrunners around! I guess there's loads more I just don't know yet ;) Anthony Oetzmann - he composed the banjo-tune used in e1m7 for me, and does virtually know everything about music and sound-formats or sound-tech in general. I couldn't take as much advantage of his skills as I would have liked, since all that sound- file-dealing over the net is quite bandwidth-expensive, but I can only recommend him judging from what I've recognized during the progress of tRR - very professional working guy. (5.2) What's the history behind this project? To be honest, I could write books about QrdQ's history nowadays, but I'll try to give you a short overview about the developement from the first idea until the finished product you're holding in your hands. It was at the end of 1996 when I first saw this awesome piece of software called "Quake". The first time I played through was on the 486 DX2 of my brother, and still using keyboard just as everyone else. One thing I remember really good was talking with a friend on the phone for hours, who played the game parallely, but on Normal skill - unlike me, as I found Normal skill just too hard to solve! However, although lacking a proper storyline or script, Quake somehow got me with it's moody athmosphere. Unfortunately, it ran very slow on my brothers comp, even under low resolutions. That's why I started focusing on Duke Nukem 3D instead, which gave me a great time for more than one year - first off Single Player wise, but later also in Multiplayer. It must've been in the beginning of 1998, when Quake 2 saw the light of the gaming-world, and with it also the first OpenGL card. This was the point when I started playing Quake again, at last with a halfway-acceptable framerate even on my poor K5 133! (note: I know the harcore-players among you also played NQ via the net with their 486 :) Now it became more and more part of my time I spent on the computer, and once I had found the neat recording- function, I was completely hooked! This was a feature I always missed in Duke Nukem 3D (and in virtually every other Single-Player game as well) be- fore, since this meant that I could not only claim that I had acchieved some- thing like one of my dozens of 100% runs through Duke Nukem 3D, but also proof it with a recording! The first thing I did straight away was trying to get a first Nightmare 100% attempt on tape, finishing off in three-hours-something, which was quite a bad time even for the standards of '98 already :P I soon noticed that it re- quires some more, new (or different) skills to master Quake - but this did only stir my motivation even more! Kinda point of frustration was reached however, once my brother had introduced me to QdQ and SDA. Not really, but I was (as everybody else out there) just totally stunned by the awesome play in Quake done Quick and Quake done Quicker, which he happened to show me for the very first time. During the next weeks I found my joy in downloading half of SDA from the flatrate at university, and receiving my daily dose of adrenaline by that way :) However, after the dust had cleared, I decided that I should do 'something like this' by my own as well! Even if not faster than QdQr, then at least improving the 19:49 time of the original QdQ run. This was wayyyy cooler than anything else I had seen beeing done within a computergame-game before! Everything started with e1m3. Yonathan's slope-grenadejump was the basic trick required to complete the first episode in an acceptable time.. It was the first trick I had to spend days, no, weeks until I managed it at a somewhat 'regular' base. As a start, I was able to yield the times on this map from >1:30 to 0:43, and supplemented the rest of the episode on the plain, very first route used in QdQ_1949. I finished in three and a half minutes, which was still quite slow but at least something! Still, I was far far away from anything worth showing. The point when I seriously got started was when I finally managed to do the slope-grenadejump in e1m4. I had chosen to improve Yonathan's run from QdQr since it was known since QdQlite, that the grenade could be thrown much faster than Yonathan did his demo - everybody just was too lazy to redo the run on Nightmare skill with only a small entry on the QdQ improvements page as a reward :P I sent several runs of e1m4 to QdQ, along with an explaination of my plans, and what I had done this run for. Soon I got reply from both Anthony and Stefan encouraging me to organize such a project in a 'general improvement- style' together with the help from the team! Of course I felt very honoured by that offer, and started mobilising some runners for that project. I didn't drop my idea of an own run of course - on the contrary, my skills (running- and tech-knowledge-wise) got better and better with that task, and I finally made the step over to run other episodes apart from only episode 1. About half a year later, at the end of 1999, I was finished with the first complete version of Quake redone Quick. Although I had some troubles with e2m5, I was very satisfied with the final result, beating my own estimations by lengths, and also imprving QdQr by two minutes. The education @ QdQ had shown it's effect, and due to the from-scratch Nightmare runs from SDA lacking wider popularity, and QdQwav still beeing in developement, QrdQ received very great attention from the gaming community, and loads of positive feedback from the viewers. It seemed to me as if the major part of peoples was already a fan of QdQ itself, but not that interested in all their other great projects apart from the 'classic' Nightmare runs. Such, QrdQ was with all it's claimed-to-be- new technics and tricks (compared to QdQr) a big success. The idea of re- filming it came up with the massive amount of requests for more! I didn't get off my feet until december 2000 though - and from there, it still took more than half a year to finish! Refilming 13 minutes of speedrunning- footage and improving the run parallely can be very very time-consuming, you bet! Besides, I was working on my new website "Ill Mind Moves" at the same time, which let the whole thing look like a full-time job to me sometimes, without getting paid of course! Luckily the timing was just right not to mess up too much with new REAL full-time education which started right now, while I'm typing these lines (visually, of course). Allright, that's a snippet of what comes to my mind at the moment. I won't probably double-check this section again, since it ought to be authentic and personal at the same time. I hope it was not too much - as I said, I could fill books if I wanted! Just don't mention QrdQ's history in my presence anymore ;) I won't stop talking for a while :P Even now I hope I don't have forget anything essential, but who cares. After all, this section was mostly created for myself anyway :) (5.3) Will we see some more stuff from you in the future? Since I'm starting my education and "real" real-life right now, I don't know how much time there will be left for Quake. I would have some neat ideas, and also the motivation (although QrdQ pushed my patience pretty much to its limits), but the problem, as always, is spare-time. First of all I'll try to keep my brand-new site running, and do something useful for tRR. Time will tell if I will ever put my hands on such a large project again. (5) More Questions? If you still got questions, send some e-mail to Nagasaki@PlanetQuake.com, and I'll try to answer as soon as possible. What I want to avoid is people claiming all I produced was some hacked-up cheat or something. It isn't. Rather contact me instantly instead of flaming around without any proof. *** -[AK]Nagasaki 2001/9/13 http://www.PlanetQuake.com/illmind