Wirehead Studios

If you haven't seen it already, there's a new game announced at E3 called Quake Champions.  Video is here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sa-6fQyNkZo&feature=youtu.be

On the outside it's pretty obvious that it's going to be a high definition Quake 3 reboot of some sort, complete with Ranger and Visor already present.  I already know what some people are going to ask, and the answer at this time has to be "No".  Wirehead currently has no plans nor inclination to look at switching over to Quake Champions for Generations Arena.  Why?  There are several reasons.

First, not enough is known about the game.  We've seen some characters and a few weapons.  We have not seen all minimum characters necessary to round out the Generations set.  Doom, Sarge, and Grunt would have to be present, and our familiar characters so far are only Visor and a Quakeguy.  Due to intellectual property concerns, these characters would have to be present in able to create their character classes properly.

Second, there's no guarantee the game will even support mods or private servers.  If it can't be modded then it can't be modded.  Something like Snapmap wouldn't be enough.  It would require full mod support that's been present in previous Id titles.  Private server support would also be a must, as there's no guarantee Id or Bethesda would host mods.  There's no point in modding if people don't have servers to play on.

Third, Wirehead only has firm permission to create Generations Arena for Quake 3 Arena.  We do not know if such permission would extend to another game or if we would have to go through the entire contact process again with Id.  Besides that, it may be entirely possible that Quake Champions ends up with a Generations-ish weapon set for various characters, which would defeat the purpose of us trying such a thing anyway.

Lastly, our team has shrunk to pretty much myself and a few beta testers.  We would need to rebuild a full studio-sized team to undertake work on just the media assets alone, not to mention the amount of program code that would need to be rewritten assuming that everything else fell into place.  There's no way I could do this by myself, and assembling a new team would be difficult.

As it stands, Generations Arena will continue development for Q3A.  It will be completed for Q3A.  Beyond that I cannot say anything more than I already have until more is learned, though discussion, as always, is welcome.

Wasn't expecting such a preemptive strike so early on, but it's completely understandable.

That said, giving Mynx an optional blue-haired makeover in Gen couldn't hurt, could it? :doom_love:

The trailer had me absolutely pumped.

The catch is that Quake: Champions will not be an arena shooter, per say, but a hero-fps like Overwatch.

Thank goodness you nipped this in the bud.  The public demand for engine switching after some announcement or release is the worst thing.  I've had enough "use XreaL", "use darkplaces" and "use doom 3 engine!!!" demands myself.  Engine switching is hardly a good thing to do.

Not to mention that Visor appears to be a Strogg now...

@Scal:  I don't think reskinning Mynx would be too hard, especially if it's involving color changes.  Maybe down the line?

@J3E125:  Don't get me wrong, I love the visuals and seeing the characters in high definition.  What I was hoping for was a proper sequel to Quake 1.  If it's a "hero shooter" and not a true arena shooter then I suppose it will be its own game?  We'll find out more later I suppose.

@leilei:  Indeed.  Unless someone has done engine-side coding they have no idea what's involved in moving to a different engine - especially when the engine is not just a rendering environment, but includes bot logic, physics, network code, etc.  There's a reason that people like John Carmack are not common in the world.  People tend to forget that.

@Kain:  I didn't quite catch that, but a cyborg is a cyborg is a... cool gauntlet effect though.

@Pho: I was kidding, but hey, the more the merrier ...

I have to say though, the trailer really reminded me of that Arenas movie that was released a few years back. And, okay, technically it is fanfic, but Visor explicitly states that he is Strogg during one scene (it's also way better than the official Doom movie, check it out if you havent seen it, it's ace).

But hey, who cares? He's a Q3 character, so he'll always be Arena class in my eyes. Cyberntic doesn't necessarily mean Q2 after all (Keel, anyone?). I have Pi set as Arena in my personal Gen installation, purely because she just doesn't look haphazard enough to be a Strogg creation.

As for the whole "hero-FPS" thing, I'm not entirely turned off by it. As long as there is something to get my teeth into in terms of offline content, be it tiers against bots (Q3R or QAA style, preferably) or (gasp) a full-blown PvE campaign, and that it maintains what made Quake's combat so much fun in the first place (ie running, gunning, dodging and bonkers physics exploits) then I'll be waiting happily for the midnight hour in front of my Steam client. Quake needs more love, in whatever form it takes.

oh spork that, I want a wolfenstein the new order class

Before there was the New Order class, there was the Old Blood... namely Woodsman's, all over the floor.  :ninja:

but when? I was waiting this mod for years and the v1.0 doesn't release yet... even Doom 2016 already exist first...

How much time do you need to release this mod game?

I wonder what the best response to this would be... mostly cause I'm not sure mine would break forum rules.

When it's done.  That's the only answer I can honestly give.  As I've explained in the past, I have to do this in my spare time.  I have $0 budget, 1 active coder (me), 1 active texture artist (me), 1 active modeler (me), and 1 active sound designer (me).  I do have beta testers that are extremely helpful and that I go to for input, but at present none of them are able to contribute in these areas. I don't say any of this to brag or imply that it's "my mod", I say this because it's the truth.  I'm committed to finishing Gen, but those previously able to do these things are no longer able to do them so I am left alone to finish a very large project.

Now if someone can find me a model and texture artist that's willing to do what I tell them then I can shorten that time.  If someone can find me someone that can program new features into the UI, that will also shorten that time.  Until then, what more can I do?

Damn, that sucks. I'd imagined that Gen's development had slowed, but I had no idea that it has basically become a solo project. I'm having enough trouble finishing a mapset for Doom right now, I can't imagine trying to take on what is basically a total converion for Q3 on my own.

I never wanted to bring it up, really, as I already tend to draw too much attention to myself since I talk type too much as it is.  When we started out this was a real team effort, and I didn't want to make it seem like I was somehow the center of all of this and diminish the effort everyone has provided along the way.  To the contrary.  Without everyone else this would never have gotten off the ground - let alone this far.  That's why I almost always say "we" when I refer to the team's actions in the news posts, unless it's something I am specifically mentioning about myself - such as the server I run since it's my hardware.  There's still a "we".  I cannot stress enough the help of the people who are still doing beta testing.  We may not have as much feedback as with earlier builds, but I credit part of that to Gen being a lot more stable as well as progress going in the right direction.  When there is criticism we discuss it and work together to figure out what's good and what's not.  There still is a team there - it's just that the team we do have is centered more on the testing and concept side as opposed to content generation at this point.

I can also understand people not wanting to work on this as, frankly, it is a lot of work.  It's certainly a lot more than I initially expected, and it's not just making stuff.... it's making stuff look and feel and behave like something that already exists and has a huge number of critical eyes aimed at anything trying to be like it - doing that four times over, and then mixing all that together with something else that's entirely new, trying to not bollocks the whole thing up in the process and not disappoint those critical eyes.  That's a hard task by any measure.

As for the rest of the team disbanding over time... it's not that anyone's really on bad terms with anyone else either.  There was no ugly team breakup, no fights, just real life adding responsibilities to people to where they had to shift their attention elsewhere.  Everyone is still friends with everyone else, and regardless of whether someone's active or inactive in regards to Gen I hope for it to stay that way.

^^ This, life happened.

Life sucks, it's always getting in the way of stuff innit? 

But this seems a tad :offtopic:

I for one did not see a Q3 sequel coming, I mean... I suppose with the BS that is DLC it'd be perfect to milk people's money, Want more characters? spork you, pay me. Want more levels? spork you, pay me. Want to mod the game? spork you, that won't involve anyone paying me.

Seems like bethesda was the ones who wanted to monetize mods for skyrim or something like that after all...

I'm sure we all assumed that anyway

That's true for us Woods, but people outside the old Wirehead circle don't know.  I'm kind of speaking to the "world" here.  :)

You can now sign-up for the "closed beta"...

https://quake.bethesda.net/en/signup

I signed up.  I suppose now I wait.