We had a few problems with the timelimit on the Tribes.IGN.ie server last week, I added some new missions and deleted them again, but when an old mission ended, it would look for one of the new deleted missions and give an error. To players, it seemed like the game was continuing on beyond it’s timelimit, and they would have to vote for another mission in order to continue on.

Anyway, I sorted that problem out by rebuilding the mission list, and also I increased the timelimit to 30 minutes due to popular demand.

Poor_Monkey (4/2/99)

Now via satellite from the US we have an interview with Simon Tong, AKA Poor_Monkey. Greetings Simon and welcome to the interview chair of doom. A big Doom fan were you? I made a Doom level of our department here a few years ago, but you went one giant leap further and made one of your college in Oxford. Tell us about that…

Hehe, thanks for inviting me to the interview chair John. I remember being really impressed with Doom when it came out. I remember picking up the green armour on the first map and gazing out of the window to see the mountains. The atmosphere was great! And I thought that the music fitted the game perfectly… St. John’s Doom *plug plug* started out as being just a small idea. My friend and I thought it would be neat if we could model just the front entrance of the college. Afterall, deathmatching in the location that you live in really adds a lot more to the experience. The project then got quickly out of hand as we became more ambitious and decided to include the majority of the college. We managed to obtain the blueprints of the college and ended up taking photos of the many parts of the college to add as textures. I remember carefully setting up my camera so as to get a good shot of one of the bollards… I received such odd looks from the tourists that were taking photos of the ornate statues and stone buildings behind me! In the end it took nine months to create and most of our second year at university… but hey, what’s a degree worth if you don’t waste your time for a while

So how did you get into Quake and how come you knew about using the mouse before the rest of us lamers (/me remembers the struggles to get even one frag against the master, and the cries of “Yes!” when we did)? Your earliest Quake memory?

I used to play Doom deathmatch a little (too much time was spent actually building the map!) and tentatively started to use the mouse instead of a joystick when I realised that it just took too darn long to turn around and look at who was blasting me in the back with a double-barrelled shot gun I started playing Quake when I returned to college in October, a few months after the shareware version was released. I remember the first thing that I tried to do was figure out how get the view to move freely with the mouse, and once I had come across the mlook command I was hooked! The first memory I have about net Quake was when I first joined a server and there was this guy called “DC.Zoser” completely devastating the field… little did I know who he was at the time

It seems that Tribes may be the game to bring the previously divided Quake 1 and 2 communities together, with the armour classes idea sounding very similar to that outlined for Quake 3, is it possible that Dynamix have upstaged id and grabbed a vital market? Have you played Tribes much or at all?

Actually I’ve never played Tribes. I’ve been tempted but I’ve decided to hold off until I see how Quake 3 turns out. It seems that Tribes is also really popular over here in the States. There are fewer newcomers to the net Quake and QW servers nowadays. I think the beauty of Quake, and the reason that I still play it, is that I still feel that I’m steadily improving… unlike most games where a plateau of skill is reached well before two years of play. I really hope that Quake3 can capture that aspect of Quake. The online market is growing so fast, and looks so different to what it was like when Quake was released over two years ago that I think that there is enough space for both Tribes and Quake3 to be really successful although, of course, I know which one I’m hoping will dominated

How do they play Quake over that side of the Atlantic as regards deathmatch mode and teamplay settings? Did you find it weird when you first went over?

The first thing that I noticed was the number of very strong players dressed in white and called “player” or “unnamed”. I mean, they could have though of something imaginative such as “Pops” or “Moonbeam” or something. But what was most annoying was that they never, ever revealed who they really were even when asked. So at first it was hard to judge which players were good and how many of them there were! In Europe, QW completely dominates but when I first went over to the States both net quake and QW were popular with the top clans being spread over both. In net quake the settings were pretty similar to the UK. In QW most servers use dmm3 which was really strange at first (no more rl running and an annoying shortage of ammo ) In duels the style of play is more defensive which took some getting used to, especially with the quad never being used. The most popular level seems to be dm6 rather than dm4. Ah, I still miss the European way of playing.

I asked Spud in an earlier interview if he believed that Quake had passed out Roman Catholicism as a major world religion, do you think that cult sites like the Poor_Monkey Respect Page which portray you as some kind of religious icon are adding to the mass hysteria?

Hehe. *Blush*. I was so flattered by that page, and still think that I thoroughly didn’t deserve it. Imagine if the all of the globe worshipped Quake… the world would be such a more peaceful place… apart from all of the quibbling over league rules of course.

Any Quake tips for us lowly mortals? Binds, places to hide, even a few bloody cheats for the desperate out there (damn reporters always trying to dig up the dirt on the religious types!)?

Tips. From little ol’ me? Well…

• As John mentioned before use a mouse! I personally like the retail Microsoft Intellimouse (without the wheel… the wheeled version of the mouse is lower to the ground for some reason). The retail version is slightly heavier than the OEM version and together with a 3M precision mousepad it has just the right weight and is silky smooth. I know that some people swear by those Logitech contraptions. Whatever you do, just do not stray off the path of virtue and use one of those evil fabric or plastic mousemats
• Related to the first… if you are running Windows try using “qwcl -dinput” and use ps2rate or a USB version of the mouse to make it easier to aim.
• Know the maps, sounds and respawn points (even though respawns are in a random sequence). It’ll help you locate you enemy and get the first shot off. It’ll also help you know how to “control” a map; not allowing your enemy to get back into a strong position. Most importantly it’ll help you get to know your opponent’s “habits” on a map… and that is often the key to outsmarting them.
• Know how much health your enemies have. Listen to the sound that they make when they are hit and listen for any health packs being picked up.
• Cheats!? I don’t think monkeys (especially poor ones) are intelligent enough to cheat Well, I consider any “console” command fair game so I use v_kicktime 0, cl_bob 0, cl_bobup 0, cl_rollangle 0, fov 110, ambient_level 0. For most countries this is readily accepted as “fair” but in some, notably Australia, it isn’t.
• Plagiarize! An original trick is always hard to invent; especially now that Quake has been out for so long. The quickest way to pick up new ideas is to watch demos, or observe good players through the eye-cam view in Quake… if anything you can at least be satisfied in knowing that they are fallible when you see them miss the dm3 across-the-room red armor jump or see them spanner one of their quad rockets into the floor beneath them
• Above all enjoy Quake! There’s no need to take it really seriously, or study it as if you’ll have to take an exam on it at the end (now there’s a thought… BSc in Quake ) it’s just a game after all!

Who would be in your ideal Quake clan if you could pick from the players of the world?

Ooh. Now that is tough. One thing I’d love to see though would be a “vintage” UK vs US battle i.e., one made up of the “old school” members that have retired from Quake. How about a 2 vs 2 on dm4 with:

QL.Ettu: For being an incredible player and having by far the cleverest name QPD.Fragga: Remember him? Probably one of the most amicable Quake players around… and a dm4 monster. Remember the “Sujoy vs. Fragga” incident when Fragga used the (now defunct) respawn sequence for the first time.

against:

LGD.Thresh: I still haven’t seen him driving that Ferrari on highway 101 even though I live in the area…. LGD.B2: It’s funny how most of the well know US old school players have come from California. I wonder if they have electricity in the inland states yet?

What are your favourite Quake levels, be they for free for alls, duels or clan games? What makes a good level IYO?

Dm4 is one of my favourites for both free-for-alls and duels and I think dm5 is great for free-for-alls, although I know many people despise dm5 In the States most servers are dmm3 so there is less chance for a pitched tent in the rocket launcher room I like most maps that are tight and fast paced.

Played any Quake 2 at all? Did you like it, and what are your hopes for Quake 3?

I never got used to Quake 2; I always found it too slow paced for me. I remembered John Romero saying before Quake came out that they were intending on slowing the players down from Doom2 so as to make the game less frantic and more tactical. I think they pushed that idea just too far in Q2… Quake3 sounds like it’s shaping up really nicely. I’m still a little apprehensive about the weapon switching and slower rockets though. At least they are hopefully bringing back the lightning gun… I felt that that sort of weapon was really missing from Q2 although I guess given that the players were moving so much slower it really wouldn’t have worked out in Q2.

If you were stranded on a desert island with ten other angry Quakers (not the religious types), and could only bring one gun, what weapon would you choose?

Hehe, real quakers use a quaded axe

(Yeah, you’d need the axe anyway to get those damn coconuts.)

Thanks for taking the time for these questions PM and hope to frag you a second time some day!

Yeah you too! I’m hopefully getting cable modem soon (would you believe that I live in the town where the technology was developed and they still won’t have it available until a few months time!) so I’ll hopefully be able to pay you guys a visit for old times sake!

Ook,

Poor_Monkey.

Check out our new “IGN.ie - Tribes 1″ server, refresh the server list and look for the low ping!

IGN.ie - Tribes web site coming soon.

Slipping into the hot seat next we have Ronan Condon, AKA Zero from na Daghda, who I first played two years ago next month on the Guns Island server. So Zero, what’s it like to be in semi-retirement? Miss the old school players and all that (I haven’t played Quake in over a month!)?

Well, originally when we got Quake it was all for fun, and jesus we had some great crack. We had just got our first Pentiums in the house, and five of us in the house (me, Krusty, Tsunami, Sideshow and Gunner) played it mad, always just trying to beat each other. Wasn’t long before we topped UL and that’s why we ventured onto the net. Two and half years of Quake memories is a long time, back around Quakelords etc., we were fulltime players and all but, yeah, I miss the crack of the Fi-CT-GI rivalry and the days of muppet Quake where we all FFA-ed on IOL’s Vanilla Quake server, and played BB-Spud and SPG-Bobby2 on Ztea. Now it’s all too serious, back then there was no IRC wars, no politics, no ripping into each other on wwwboards (:P), just fun and frags.

You were the first coach for the Hibernians, who would you pick out of the current set of Irish Quake players for your ideal team against France?

Ideal team…..well as we all know, it’s a bitch picking 4 out of so many to play. The team is as good as we can have, I think. If Overlord came out of sleep/study and played again like before, he would be a definite on the team, Jay is another mental player, not tryin to polish up nD here, but those two are two class players. Others that would definitely be in there for the team would be Slaanesh and Mickah.

What are your hopes for Quake 3? So far it’s looking good for all us Quake 1 diehards, but will we have to meet the Quake 2 players on common ground?

Hmm….I dunno, the Q3 avi looked kewl, but I think it will be a Quake2 players game, I don’t think another game will capture the part of Q1 that gives us all enough of a buzz to play it for 2+ years. But you never know, I mean Q1 is getting a bit boring, the highlight of it these days is a big row on the wwwboard. Starcraft is a game that I am beginning to love, Me Beast Jay and Omar play a big mosh at least once a day. But I am hopeful that Q3 will pull us all together, it would be great to have another Quake.

How many UL Quake players does it take to kill one player from CT?

Hahaha. One. Overlord.

Who do you think will win season two of the IQCL (now that GI are out of it, haha!)? What are your favourite league levels, what makes a good war level, and would you be interested in creating a level yourself?

CW will win it. I don’t like to jump on the ” lets-worship-CW ” bandwagon, but lets face it, they are the best by far. They have the discipline, the skill and the camaraderie that no other Irish clan possesses, and are the type of team I would love to be a part of.

My favourite levels for wars would be Androm9(take it, CT), E4M3, UK2, and I’m even begining to like DM3 and E1M2.

As regards making a level, I have suddenly taken a big interest in it, and after these exams tomorrow, i.e. after the massive hangover I will have, I intend designing one, probably get Omar to build it, he’s a genius at Worldcraft. Jay made a level way back in his spare time, and looking back over it, I pointed out a few changes that might make it a good war level, so he’s trying that and it should be out by next week. My own level will definitely be on the cards soon though.

Who’s your Quake hero (/me slips a fiver under the table, I hear those Tipperary lads can be bought cheap…) and why?

Beast would come very close, being by FAR the best we have in Ireland at the moment, but my Quake hero has to be Overlord aka [Spice]Scary. The lad is a natural Quaker, comes back after months and NUKES everything he sees, plays with a natural skill I can’t grasp. He is the King, and should have won Quakelords, he was the one thing I was afraid of in Quake for so long.

Do Irish Quake players waste too much time chatting on IRC and the boards?

Definitely, IRC more than the boards. The board is one of the single best things ever introduced to Irish Quake, (/me pats John on back), it is somewhere that you can have your say and know that everyone will hear. Sure, there are some muppet threads, but they will be no more once the board admins are sorted out.

IRC on the other hand, is way overused. I think as regards Quakers, it should only be used for organisation of matches etc., not something where ppl sit all night talkin shite to each other, getting in rows which in turn get carried to servers, and from there to the boards. It’s something we don’t need.

What’s your favourite Quake demo, clan, duel or otherwise?

Well the one I watch most is a demo of Fianna and GI on E2M1, “Fianna Stronghold” I believe you christened it :). It is half of a war that you actually won, but we won that level well. Just looking back at it, it’s class seeing all the old names that would mean nothing to most Quakers today, [FI]Qwerty and [FI]Fischbach, I love watching it because it’s a war with NO tactics other than common sense in each player, no proxies, no teamtalk, teamplay 1, and to top it off 6 of the 8 players were on keys (all 4 of the Fianna). It’s just class, and if anyone is bored enough to watch it, its up at http://136.201.1.4/demos

(e2m1, e2m1, I hatessss you forever.)

Where’d you get your Quake alias from anyway, isn’t “Zero” a bit of an underachiever’s name, gives newbie opponents a false impression I guess (Cloud-Warrior changes his name to Axe_Me)?

Heh. My first game of Quake ever, I was on Gunners machine with Krusty, we hadn’t machines at the time, and I said ‘what will we call ourselves?’ coz there were loads of weird names on the LAN playing. So we stopped for a second, and on the radio the ever-cool song ‘Zero’ by smashing pumpkins was on, so we used that. When I got my own machine, I just carried on with the name, as Krusty had obviously started calling himself Krusty

Was winning QuakeLords _the_ Quake highlight for you or was it something else?

I suppose yeah it was. At the time, it was THE thing to win, and my name was made after that. Thinking about it now, it was at that point that I started my downhill slope to where I am today. What I mean is, I started off Quake just trying to beat my mates, then I wanted to win all LAN games in UL. Then me n krusty hit the net, and played like mad until we were of a pretty high status. When Quakelords was mentioned first, that was just it for me, the final prize if you know what I mean. I had started at the bottom, and if I won Quakelords it would mean I made it to the top. So after winning that, I kinda had nothing to prove, other ppl still strived to get better and better and passed me out, while I was content to slow down and just play for leisure. I might start playin again heavily if I find myself with more time on my hands, it would be good to be up there in the top 5 again.

Thank-you Zero, in your specialist subject, “The State of Quake in Ireland Today”, you scored 10 frags, I mean points. Be good

heh, thanx John, hope we can carry the nD-GI hate into Q3 too

We start off our series of interviews with Dave Wilson, AKA Bunny from Clan Trinity. To start off, what clan would you most like to be a member of (your wish may be granted if Kaile reads this!)?

SC, cos lakerman is in that clan! he is my god! no wait..Timber beat him? what clan is timber in? he is my god!

Who would be on your Quake dream team (me, me, me waves frantically…)?

Cloud-Warrior, his family and his tennis partners

What do you say to those Irish Quake players who seem to spend more time taking dirty swipes at each other on IRC / bulletin boards instead of playing the game?

If they were doing my roofing? I would say OIIII IT’S 12 AND AN AF INCH SLATED TILING NOT 14 INCH YOU TARTS! NOOO!

What’s the best Quake stimulant, Red Male Cattle or Glucose Aid (the names have been changed to protect the innocent)?

Spar pencil sharpenings coke

You say your Quake nick comes from “Platoon”, are you sure it’s not from that poow littel bunny wabbit that gets spiked at the end of Doom? Or have you played Doom that much (GLDoom on e1m1 rocks), I saw some mention of you getting started on Duke Nukem 3-D?

no way, Rise of the Triad, I mean 15 rockets at once! WALLOP!

Half-Life - is it the best single player game on the planet? What are your hopes for Quake 3 Arena?

Yes Half-life is.

Name your favourite clan and duel levels (two or three of each!)…

duel - dm4
clan - dm3

What’s the most useful Quake bind you have?

cl_scobespeed 8

(Players all around the country fire up QWCL to find out exactly what that does :-P)

Any tips for staying alive in duels, tell us how not to play stupid (I’m from the “rush out and die” school, but it doesn’t always seem to work that well)?

If you’re playing koopa just keep shooting the bottom of dm4…_all_ the time.

What was your greatest all-time Quake achievement?

Killing koopa at the bottom of dm4…_all_ the time.

Thanks for taking time out for the interview, Bunny! Maybe we can do part two sometime soon…

Cool…thanks.