Welcome to the second edition of Quake Corner. It is here that you can gain some searing insights on this kick-ass game known by many and mastered by many less. If you are a llama, click on the button on your browser labeled back now.

Opinions expressed here used to be of two individuals (now only one) and may not and likely do not reflect the opinions of others in the company. If the web page seems jacked up any given moment, I'm probably working on it as you read this. Now begone. - Time Traveler

Burbank LAN Party
Red Annihilation sponsees
LGD Thresh wins Ferrari at E3

Last Update:
07.04.97AD
02:41:10pst


05/30/97: Slam Site Burbank LAN party
Tonight, Slam.Site Burbank played host to a veritable smorgasbord of quality quakers. The roster of attendants included the likes of Reptile, Club, Hardcode and other members of Clan Postal, Unholy and Kiljoy from Xtreme Prejudice, and Sturtz from Evil Geniuses. Numerous other Quakers were in attendance and several demos/screenshots were recorded. Two clan on clan matches were Clan Postal vs. Xtreme Prejudice as well as Postal vs. Evil Geniuses headed up by their notorious frontman, Mikej. Check back to the page soon and hopefully the screenshots and demos will be available for download.

05/31/97: 30 minutes and counting... At 4 pm today, Time Traveler enters the Mplayer Red Annihilation lobby. Good luck to him...


05/31/97: The tournament bid is over for me now. After playing some vicious matches against skilled opponents, I was eliminated in the 3rd round of competition. The semifinals. Drat.

Round one was fairly routine and I don't mind playing on E1M1.




After that, it was off to Round 2 and E1M2, where the competition was significantly tougher. In fact, at one point I was in fourth place with a single frag while the leader was in the double digits.




I should have realized that this was a premonition of things to come. It was also after round 2 that I found out that CGIB-h0nus had been eliminated. I share his disappointment as I also fell victim to one of the people who edged out the Clan Gib LPB. I don't have a screenshot because I was too dazed by disappointment to hit the F12. The Final score was 29, 22, 19, 3, with SpankUVeryMuch coming in first followed by AzureRain (who played round 2 with h0nus) and myself, with OverTime trailing behind. Not to mention the level was my most hated of hated shareware levels, E1M6. I hate that map. Mind you that's no excuse for losing (if anything, that should have been the map I practiced the most if I disliked it so much). All in all it was still an excellent tournament and although I know that something like this isn't likely to happen again (indeed, how many programmers decide to give away their exotic Italian sports cars away) I hope that future tournaments are held with large audiences. Until the next Red Annihilation, see you all on the battlefield.


06/02/97: Ok, here are the details on the first ever Slam.Site Invite LAN Pah-tay at our Burbank location on Friday night. To avoid taking up too much space on the 'Corner, click on this link to read all about it and check out the demos and screenshots.


06/03/97: Due to the problems with the Slam.Site web site yesterday, yesterday's update didn't make it until today. Next Time I'll make sure to make updates a day before I need to so they always make it onto the page the day they're supposed to.

Sh'yeah.


06/05/97: The LAN Party link has been updated with the demos from the Burbank LAN party. Check 'em out.

It should also be mentioned that Slam.Site is sponsoring three players in the Red Annihilation tournament at E3. Congrats go out to Kiljoy and Unholy from Clan Xtreme Prejudice and Reptile from Clan Postal. As mentioned before, Reptile is now an employee at Slam.Site so prepare to see the Slam.Site name proliferate the Quake community like a nefariously vile fungoid that consumes all as it expands and dominates. Muahahahahah! *ahem* Stay tuned for the ultimate in cheeseball unities as Slam.Site prepares to create its own "all star" clan of epic proportions and even more epic egos. Lock up yer wife and little 'uns. Right on.

Warm greets and wet gleets go out to Jarlaxle. You know who you are. - Time Traveler

Make sure to check Slam.Site's Quake servers at 207.217.34.158. port 26001 for a ClanRing style server and 26002 for CTF. Who knows, I may be hanging out and about to be fragged by those with better connections than my 28.8. - Time Traveler


06/12/97: Alrighty then. Been busy. That's all. Here's a link to Time Traveler's personal homepage. Why? Well, maybe there will be a point to it someTime. - Time Traveler

Today we shall discuss an incident that occurred a number of months ago. QuakeWorld was just released and the idea of getting ranked on a wide scale was greatly appealing. Of course, some people saw it as more than that. In an effort to gain recognition beyond what would normally be possible, some people resorted to less than honorable ways of getting some notoriety... (slideshow, please)




Without revealing too much, suffice to say that the individual with their name blotted out is a notable player from a notable clan. Indeed, if we study the above pic, one can see that one Quaker clearly outclasses his opponents by several orders of magnitude. But why indeed is a superior player hanging out with a bunch of miserable scrotes and picking on them? Perhaps because he cannot stand up to true competition? I doubt it. Because he's a coward? Maybe. Whatever his reasoning, it's obvious that picking on lesser players gives him a greater chance of raising his rating and not having to deal with those who are truly at his level. Understand, that I am not accusing him of wrongdoing. Indeed, the connections are all similar, therefore they are all playing with a relatively level playing field. But is it ethically reasonable for a "pro" player to pick on a bunch of amateur rookies? Probably not. But nobody is forcing the scrubs to compete against this shark. Do they even realize what is happening to them? I think not.

In this issue of Quake ethics, where some people intentionally misrepresent themselves to appear "less" than what they are, there are very few people to cry foul because the choice still lies with the victim(s) to leave before utter humiliation. Would Tony Nusall have been underestimated as a "llama" if people knew that "TonyNusall" was the real name of Hijinks? (check the MPlayer Red Annihilation link below to find out the story) But then there's always a desire (or maybe a hope) that a come from behind victory is still possible. Is it? Not always. This isn't baseball, where a badly underdog team can still pull a come-from-behind victory. This game is much more related to overall skill than a serious dose of luck (which is ALWAYS a factor, of course). In any case, an incident such as the one depicted above will reoccur over and over in the future. It can't be helped. The strong will someTimes over-victimize the weak. I must admit, it is fun someTimes.


06/17/97: In an attempt to be the 10000th guest at our own slam.site web page, I reloaded the frame when I was number 9999. Figuring that nobody else would check the page in the 4 seconds in between, I was definately surprised to find out that I was number 10002. Bah.

In preparation for e3, I have decided to take along a present for a particular individual of id software. Nothing special, but we'll see how it goes. Stay tuned for future player skill ratings.


06/16/97: Spent the weekend at a friend's place in San Luis Obispo. She graduated with a major in Graphical Communications and already has a good job lined up. Congrats to her. (I know. Nothing to do with Quake..)

Snow White is gone now. He has accepted a position at Net Daemon Associates. Basically they're a hard core group of network experts who maintain, administer, etc... Good luck to him in his endeavors and may his aim be true and ammo be plenty. Besides, who wants to take someone's backpack if it ain't got any goodies.

I will be heading off to E3 tomorrow evening. (That's tuesday night, for those who don't care to know) It is a great opportunity to meet some of the Quaking greats as well as cheer on Reptile in his bid for the car. I guess it's too late to kiss up to him now and hit him up for a couple grand. In any case, stay tuned for a big E3 update when I return.

For now I'm gonna get myself something to eat. And then I'll go throw myself off of a bridge.


06/23/97: Red Annihilation is over. The Ferrari has been given away. Congratulations to the winner of the car, Thresh of Clan Legends. Due to the sheer volumes of material that will be posted regarding the whole E3 experience by others, I will limit my own writing to people met at E3 and quick impressions of some upcoming games. Check this link to get the whole story, when it's done. Check back later today, fer the whole scoop.

To hold you over until I can finish my eloquent prose, check out these links as they become updated to get some quick info:

Redwood's
Blue's News
Quake ClanRing
Mplayer Red Annihilation


06/23/97: In yesterday's Classified section of a local newspaper, I saw the following ad...

Llama. Male. Neutered.
$450. 909-342-XXXX

For any of you true Quake fanatics.... (or Quake lunatics...) This one's for you!


06/23/97: Ok, the link is pretty much complete now, so scope it out and decide whether it was worth waiting with baited breath or not. Click here to be amazed, amused, and perhaps a little disturbed. (No, this is not a reference to spontaneous human combustion. That's a whole 'nother story. To be told later.)


06/24/97: Due to a request made by someone more level headed than myself, I have taken off the last 4 digits of the phone number to the person selling the Llama. But, any interested parties can contact me and I'll provide the phone # as well as showering you with taunts and jeers about being too much into a computer game.


06/25/97: I received word from MikeJ that his clan (Evil Geniuses) is currently recruiting. If you think you got the guts (and the skill) to be an Evil Genius, then click on the image below. Good Luck... Rahahahah!!!



If you're wondering who the heck they are or how good they are, check out this link and decide for yourself.


06/27/97: Allow me the opportunity to stand on the soapbox for a second and talk about lpbs, hpbs, and whatnot. I have experience in the whole range of playing, from LAN to T1 to ISDN to 26.4k connections. Now, I know that the differences in latency can be pretty dramatic, but at some point people have to stop complaining so much about it. Everyone knows that someone with a 50 ping has a serious advantage over a modemer with a 250 ping. Nobody likes hearing constant complaints. Of course, there are always moments of pointlessness (I was playing NetQuake last night, which prompted this update) like when I drowned underwater because I had a 4000+ ping for over 20 seconds. Immediately after that I did a respawn telefrag, jumped through a teleporter, telefragged another person and got their launcher, and then shot rockets into the wall until I died. All that without any input from myself other than sitting there totally frustrated. My final score in that team game was -1, BTW. Ping is definately not the only factor affecting playability. But despite all this, I know I'm going to have those problems. My ISP used to be fairly stable, giving me 270 ping consistently. Lately in the past several months I haven't seen anything lower than about 320 and I get very frequent spikes into the thousands which last, well, long enough to drown underwater in DM3. I guess since I do have access to a T1 line I don't complain as much about my modem connections. But there are those who have overcome their ping deficiencies and still kick serious butt, like Malic (formerly of Evil Geniuses, now of Legends) with his 190-230 ping. A low ping high ping bastard (lphpb? mpb?). In any case, it's important to remind yourself that ping does make a difference and everyone knows it. So next Time you lose to a 60 pinger with a 300 ping, don't sweat it too much. But if you beat him, well, maybe he was just a lousy player anyway. Not all LPBs are created equal.


07/04/97: Lots of exciting events are unfolding soon. Of course, you may have already noticed that slam.site is involved in the big All Female Quake Tournament. But that isn't as important as Time Traveler getting a cablemodem modem (WooHoo!). Actually, I suppose both events are equally significant. Stay tuned as both events unfold.


Happy Quaking
Time Traveler
Snow White



Older news stuff:
May 1997AD

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions about the Quake Corner, or if you wanna step up to the plate and play (we're always on the lookout for a good mugging) please feel free to email:

Time Traveler