quake

... and so it begins

I have been playing Quake (in one form or another) now, since the test was originally released on 25.2.1996. Like many others I went through the agony of downloading the shareware version using a 28.8 modem on the day it was released by Id software: 23.6.1996. Playing the shareware version was brilliant and I eagerly looked forward to the release of the full game. I remember going with Cerberus to buy Quake from Virgin in Bristol on 23 August 1996, the day before it officially came out - and I still have the free T shirt to prove it! Quake undoubtedly changed my life, and I do not regret the time I have devoted to it, while failing miserably to achieve the status of Quake God. I have made many good friends over the years with quake, and have rubbed shoulders and even played alongside some who certainly deserve their status as Quake legends - players such as Fragga, Coerj and Dark Raven.

skin design

I first started designing quake skins in the Spring of 1997. I was very impressed by the work of Rorschach who had produced the first Quakelords skin and desperately wanted to emulate that individual look for my own clan - CIX. I continued to design skins for quakeworld until February 1999. By that stage Quake 2 was out and the "brown game" was loosing players.

There were clearly problems in using skins in Quakeworld. It didn't take people long to realise that if you had a black skin you were invisible in the shadows, while if you simply copied wall textures you could be camouflaged. Of course, other players took to ensuring that all enemy players defaulted to a specific high visibility skin.

The advent of GL with the 3DFX Vodoo card saw (for the time) fantastic 3D lighting added to quake - but it also meant the loss of the fullbright glow in the dark colours which added so much to those early skins. Seeing a player running down a corridor towards you - his suit glowing eerily in the dark - was a real high.