As 10th Anniversary of Quake Wars is approaching, it would be nice to have some events and even a tournament to celebrate the game. Unfortunatelly, the game is digitally unavailable for purchase and getting phsical copies is a hassle that most newcomers wouldn’t care. As I have just discovered, demo of Quake Wars is completely playable and even available on Steam.
Yeah, it is a single map demo but it is also probably the best known map of the game. How about setting servers for demo for 10th Anniversary events. Considering that most of the available servers are empty; it wouldn’t be a big burden to setting some of them for the demo.
I hardly think Bethesda would set any servers for ETQW. What I meant was to call for temporarily converting some empty servers into demo servers in order to introduce the game to a wider audience during 10th anniversary. I could try to contact with some server admins, but organising events is out of my capabilities.
I’d love to play a game of this… infact I just set up a dedicated server for it (demo). Only problem is, its listening on some odd ports for getting listed by the master server (which aren’t specified in the documentation) so I haven’t got a proper firewall rule for it… none-the-less my server is running at the moment, and i’ll try and figure out the port issue…
I see. Actually, as I pointed out before, I am looking forward to have some online events for the demo version since the full version is no longer available digitally. I have the full version and playing daily basis but demo version seems to be the only way to keep the game alive for the time being. Here is the Discord server we set few weeks ago; I am hoping get some interest for the demo version.
REA our TAW servers can easely hold up 144 players spreaded over 6 EU server intenties. Setting up a campaign that only rotates 1 map should not be so hard to do. We can also reach them by IP (LAN.) If I am correct we still also have an American server.
Dear tronath set two demo servers; EU and NA. I asked him that how long can he keep those alive, he stated that as long as people are interested. So, my proposal is to stick with tronath’s servers for the time being. I am hoping to have some online tournament-like demo events on the 10th anniversary of ETQW in Autumn 2017; we might require TAW’s assistance in that period I guess. I appreciate the offer, thank you very much!
[QUOTE=REA987;561266]Besides, a noticeable download data for the game on Steam would make Bethesda/ZeniMax to re-release the game. How about that?
Thanks, regards. [/QUOTE]
well, i would prefer to see the source code to be released as opensource (would be awesome to see it release under MIT license), but it won’t happen. re-release? Bethesda? i doubt they would consider it, after the last wolfenstein game they kinda became dead to me, fallout 4 was fun but not that fun.
Bethesda’s attitude towards source code releases is quite strict; the last source code release that community could get was Doom 3: BFG Edition which happened prior to John Carmack’s departure. Since then any source code release for id Tech 4 games such as Quake 4, Prey (2006), Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Wolfenstein, Brink is highly unlikely.
Especially ETQW is in a tricky position for technical and legal standpoints. Unlike some of titles I have just mentioned, ETQW uses MegaTexture technology of successor engine id Tech 5 which is still proprietary. Moreover, ETQW does not have traditional DRM system; instead it uses an online authentication server to match game key with user accounts. It would be way more complicated to open source ETQW due to online authentication system.
Lastly, Bethesda/ZeniMax is horrendous when it comes to trademarks and brand recognition. When I submitted this thread hoping the resurrection of ETQW, I was a bit naive. Then I investigated Bethesda’s trademark history; sadly re-release or open source release is not possibility that we would hope… Here are the titles that Bethesda buried for brand recognition and other trademark issues:
[li]Wolfenstein[/li]The game originally published by Activision in 2009. Low sales numbers led Activision laid off employees from developer studio Raven Software. When the rights of the title were transferred to Bethesda/ZeniMax, the game was pulled from Steam for the sake of brand recognition of upcoming Wolfenstein titles such as Wolfenstein: The New Order.
[li]Prey (2006)[/li]The game was published by 2K Games after more than a decade of development hell. The title was moved to Steam after bankruptcy of Triton. The rights of the game was acquired by Bethesda/ZeniMax in 2009; Prey 2 which was under development was also cancelled by Bethesda. Original Prey was pulled from Steam when the store ran out of keys. Recently released Prey has nothing to do with original Prey; as developers stated during the production of the title, Bethesda approached them by asking if Prey name is fine for them. Apparently, the IP Prey means nothing than band recognition for Bethesda…
[li]Prey for the Gods[/li]An upcoming title which has nothing to do with Bethesda/ZeniMax. However, ZeniMax thought otherwise and threaten developer No Matter Studios with a trademark dispute. No Matter Studios was nowhere near capable enough to repel such nonsense, so they were obliged to change the name of their upcoming title into Praey for the Gods.
[li]Enemy Territory: Quake Wars[/li]Now we reached the most important title for us. Developed by Splash Damage and published by Activision in 2007; the game was pulled from Steam in 2011 after Bethesda/ZeniMax acquired its rights in 2011. At the beginning of this year I was expecting 10th year anniversary events or even re-release from Bethesda. However, Pr’a’ey for the Gods incident showed that Bethesda/ZeniMax never, ever allows any product to remind its intellectual property in an unintended way. As Quake Champions is in open beta now and Bethesda is serious about to make the title as a competitive e-sports game, I hardly expect Bethesda to allow somewhat similar named Quake Wars to publicly exist…
So, that’s it. It seems like we should be thankful for having master server and authentication server alive…
Nope, ETQW had two public beta releases which featured Sewer and Valley maps respectively. Then Beta 2 becomes the public demo version.
nice post Rea987, for once I enjoy an argument that i’ve read instead usual BS I’ve seen on this forum. Yeah Bethesda sucks for release stuff they managed to destroy Prey’s intellectual propriety (i own the original game). E-sport? really? can they pull it out?
ET:QW as you said is a bit more complex to be released for the game key authentication system, (i thought it was ID soft’s system)! and yeah Mega texture tech might be too invasive in the rendering engine. Though it could be made open source because a Mega texture version for ETQW was a prototype version of IDtech5’s version. also there was an game engine that had a similar system but i’m unsure of what engine it was.
what would be nice to see happening is a big update to the game such as:
bug fixes
ability to add custom map into normal rotation (with the official status)
I would love to have open sourced and/or updated ETQW but John Carmack’s departure from id Software/Bethesda to Facebook with alleged VR (Oculus Rift) code and information has made Bethesda/ZeniMax furious. I highly doubt if we wii ever see a source code release from Bethesda and its subsidiaries…
I am really not sure if MegaTexture can be open sourced or even already open sourced. I checked original Doom 3’s source code on GitHub; there are some references for MegaTexture but I have no coding skill to understand those. The Dark Mode forums had similar discussion but they refer MegaTexture as an unused feature. If it hasn’t been open sourced yet, then there is no chance for ETQW due to reliance of proprietary technology…
Your list:
The game does need some bug fixing. In fact it would be better if it is recompiled with modern OS, cause it has compatibility issues with Windows 10 and modern Linux distros. It depends on legacy libraries which cause tons crashes on modern OS.
Well, as far as I know mods like Pro Competition Mod and Tactical Assault allows such rotation.
Again, Tactical Assault adds plenty of new features to existing weapons and vehicles. TAW has plenty of new maps which requires some polish in my opinion.
hope this helps!