Wirehead Studios

Hello GenArena fans!  It's been a little while since I've posted here...

Anyway, I've been running a little YouTube gaming channel for the last 10 months or so.  I noticed there aren't very many videos about Generations Arena on YouTube, so I figured I'd add to the mix.  Specifically, I thought it would be useful to make a 5-part video series showcasing what each of the 5 factions Generations Arena has to offer.

Below is a link to my first video in the series, showcasing the Doom Warriors class  :doom_thumb:

http://youtu.be/9jBjUqe1yXQ (http://youtu.be/9jBjUqe1yXQ)

Very nifty video!  I love that bit about the Earth Soldiers' gatling gun.  :doom_thumb:

I like that you demonstrated the class on maps without heavy armor.  This shows off Doom's weak point - that lack of armor strength.  At 200/200, All classes are equally tough, but when stuck with Green armor it's hard for that Doomguy to stay alive.

Glad to hear you liked it!  I'll be putting up the rest of the episodes over the next few weeks.  I'll cover Slipgate next  :slippy_thumb:

That vid makes me miss the good old days of weekly games...

Good times, those...
I wouldn't be able to make them these days anyway, depending. :/

I would offer to try setting those up again, but I wouldn't be able to participate either. I don't even have vanilla Q3A on my gaming rig at this point because I can't find my @#$%ing disc.

The next video in my little Generations Arena series is now live, this time showcasing the Slipgate class  :slippy_thumb:

Check it out here:  http://youtu.be/4wKCk3ULYfY

Nice to see some more action!  I had a difficult time learning how to play the Slipgate class, so don't feel bad.

You've now shown off the best class. No need to continue, sir. ;)

Fix'd. :P

I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you over the sound of your rocket launcher being so awful. :doomed:

*waves from across the map*

Sorry, could you say that a little louder?  I can't hear you over the sound of my railgun's hum!

You cannot fight what you cannot see. :ninja:

There's no need to fight if we're on the same team.  :doom_thumb:

I'm delighted to see that the old rivalries (Quake vs. Quake 2) are still alive and well!    :ownage:  :bfg:

Strogg Troopers are up next - the vid should be live on Thursday.

The original Quake will forever be the greatest FPS of all time in my eyes, for numerous reasons, and my class preference reflects that. Though I was starting to get pretty decent with Earth back before my internet connection starting saying "no" and then work got in the way... :(

I must disagree with Makou.  Doom will always be my favorite, with Quake 2 a close second.  I never did like Quake 1 in the beginning, but it has grown on me since source ports have been released with model interpolation and my work on Gen has given me a better appreciation of the game.  I'd rather play Quake 1 than many so-called modern shooters.  I've even gotten to be pretty decent with the Slipgate class as time has progressed, but then, testing every class over and over does tend to bring a certain familiarity.  I'll never be a master at Quakeworld or a Q3 trick jumper though.  Rocket Arena 2 for Quake 2 was where my best gaming moments were.  200+ ping on crappy dialup against 70 ping railgunners.  They learned to respect my grenade launcher.

The best part of this debate is really, none of us can be wrong. :slippy_thumb:

I must admit, Quake 2 was a blast online for me when it was new... even if I was averaging 300+ ping and running the game at about 11FPS. The group I played with at the time would laugh on IRC about "LtYogi and his lucky-ass railgun" since the game would pause for 3 seconds any time I fired it, and I still managed to get kills with the stupid thing.

But with the exception of a BFG10k rampage one night, I was awful at Q2, even on a machine that was actually capable of running it properly.

And yes, my old handle was that of a Hanna-Barbera cartoon character, largely inspired by that of the guy who got me into playing games online whose handle was "CaptGumby." I've never claimed to be creative, and I was 13 at the time (lol). He's probably my oldest online friend, both in terms of how long I've known him and his actual age, and I feel lucky that I'm still in contact with him.

I'll have to side with Makou. Of course, I never really played vanilla Quake all that much.. but I did thoroughly enjoy the single player mode multiple times. However, I played the original TF mod for Q1 competitively for 5-ish years before it finally died out. Heck, I pretty much missed Q2 entirely because of TF.. not that it mattered all that much.
I played the Q2 demo, or shareware, or whatever it was, and wasn't all that impressed. The lighting looked off-ish and I wasn't all that big of a fan of the biomech thing going on for the enemies. However, it grew on me over the years.. much as Q1 did for Pho. The one thing about the game that I always did like though, was the chaingun. I remember that I even took the spinup and spindown sounds from the Q2 chaingun and put them into a .pak or something to replace the absolutely horrid default sounds that the original TF HWGuy had (which was also my primary class, so I heard them a LOT).

Aye, that's the beauty of it, and of Gen.  It's all our favorites, even if not all of them are our personal favorite, wrapped up in one big fragfest.  :doom_love:

I fixed the server list on the links page.  I didn't realize my IP address had changed.  Right now I'm running the only dedicated server I know of, but I'm on a 5Mbps upload so play should be smooth.

http://www.wireheadstudios.org/generations/servers.php?viewServer=75.186.88.228:27967

Feel free to use any time anyone wants to get a game going.

Edit:  You'll have to manually add the server into Qtracker for now if you're using that.  For some reason Qtracker's master server isn't listing it yet.  I just set up the master info and ports, and I'm not sure how long it takes to show up in the server list.  If it's not included by the weekend I'll bug Mercer about it and see if he can fix that.

I played a lot of Doom dial-up back in its prime, but Quake 2 was my first real experience with online multiplayer - as in, join a server with 20+ players and get to fraggin.  I have very fond memories playing CTF on McKinley Revival.  Suppose that's why Strogg is my second favorite class (the first being Doom).

Speaking of which, the Strogg Troopers video is now live: http://youtu.be/eoW6EE5xEC0

Nice work on Slimy Place.  Those were some pretty good shots with the grenade launcher, and a pretty epic run with the Chaingun.  :doom_thumb:

For what it's worth, I'm siding with the Strogg Troopers. They just feel right to me, due to the amount of time I spent in Quake 2 deathmatch compared to other games. If they have any downfall, it's that many of their weapons are rather specialized. Each great for the right situation, but none capable of properly handling all situations.

That said, I always thought Quake 1 had a much more interesting world. The Shambler is still my all-time favorite video game monster.

Nice to see the server is back up.  However, I tried to join it and it seems I'm missing a file - q3simple2.pk3.  I did some Googling to find the file and stumbled across a thread in the Wirehead forums (http://forums.wireheadstudios.org/index.php?topic=2182.0 (http://forums.wireheadstudios.org/index.php?topic=2182.0).  However, the link to the pk3 is no longer available.

You shouldn't need that file.  That map isn't in any of the rotations... I think we were testing it at some point.  All the needed files are on the downloads page.  Turn off autodownloading and you should be able to connect.

Got it to work.  Thanks for the help!  Also, thanks for introducing me to QTracker.  That program is a lifesaver.

Well for me q1 will always have a special place in my heart with qw and ctf really giving "multiplayer" a whole new view!
But i have some good memories with doom and my buddies playing LAN and on top of that using PC-speaker :P

The Arena Gladiators get some love too (especially that shiny new BFG they have!): http://youtu.be/PKhvgEWXfto

...Orbb got lucky on that last match.  :wall:

You're purposely dodging the Earth class, aren't you? :smirk:

Saving the most unique class for last!

EDIT:  Well, that's highly debatable... :doom_love:

Earth is overall the most limited class in terms of weapon variety and movement options. It's something of a risky class since it's the only class that can get a BFG-class weapon on every single map, but that also gives them the potential to be a BFG factory for Doom/Strogg/Arena. They have more weapons than any other class that share a single ammo type and the least straight-forward rocket launcher in the game, but mastering them and wise use of the flamethrower is extremely rewarding. More than any other, you're not going to get very far if you don't actually learn what the class can and can't do, but that knowledge makes a solid Earth player extremely dangerous.

"Most unique" is a more than fitting description.

I added a few notes after your video of some minor changes to the Arena class, as well as where the new HUD came from.  Orbb did indeed get lucky on that last match.  :surprise:

As for Earth... Earth is definitely tricky to use, but if mastered, can be absolutely devastating.  It's easy to get armor and easy to get gatling guns, but you have to learn how to use the mortar, flamethrower and rifle for when you run out of bullets or when things aren't within bullet range.  Running out of bullets is definitely bad.  As for mastery... ConfusedUs used to absolutely dominate with the Earth Soldiers class when he was still playing heavily.  I remember one CTF match on Heat where he was on defense with Dual Gatling Guns and the Autodoc CTF tech and was a one man army in the Blue flag room.  I was on the other team, and I'm pretty sure my team lost that one.  I don't remember if it was a shut out, but it was definitely lopsided.

Con is one of the reasons I hate, but respect, that class. O_o

I appreciate the notes!  I wasn't sure how much Q3 had changed with its inclusion in Generations Arena.  Good info to have.

I suppose Earth is the most unique class in the game  ^_^ But I would argue that every class is unique in some sense when comparing physics, armor types, etc.  It's part of what makes the mod so appealing to me (aside from nostalgia).

And, last but not least, The Earth Soldiers!  :biggun:

http://youtu.be/dzR42Qgjr-Y

Thus concludes my little Generations Arena series.

Based on some of the comments I've seen on the videos (and from Reddit, because apparently someone posted one of them there), many people had never seen the mod before.  Happy to see I brought some fresh eyeballs to the table.  :doom_thumb:

Good to know some people have seen it that hadn't before.  Many thanks for posting the videos!  :doom_thumb: