Community Profile:
Skid

By Stephanie "Bobbi" Bergman

First, let me state, for the record, LOONYGAMES DOES NOT PROFILE MOD AUTHORS (Happy loony?) [Editor's note: quite]. That said, I decided this one was worth a second look. Generations is one of the most original mods I’ve seen in ages, and is turning into ‘the little mod that could.’ So, I decided to break loony’s heart and interview the man behind Generations, Skid.

Name/rank/serial number? Skid/aspiring programmer guy/yet to be assigned

For people who don't know, what is it you do? I'm the programmer guy for the Quake2: Generations mod. Working on some other projects too but most of them are learning oriented :)

Can you describe what the Generations mod is? Sure, this nearly a complete rip from the webpage, heh. "Generations is a 'tribute to id software'. We combine the greatest shooters of all times into a Quake 2 mod. We currently have Quake 2 (wasn't much work ;) and Quake 1 classes done. Doom and Wolf [3d] are like 90% done now. All they are waiting for are some models and skins. We try to bring back everything we can from the old classics. The aim is to offer you the feeling that you really are in the game of the your player class. Generations supports DM, CTF, Teamplay and Single player. Hopefully should have Bot support soon too :D

Where did the idea for the mod come from? Ooo, well I was in college, and was heavily into Quake and Quake 2. All I did was play Quake, study and go to classes. My dreams consisted of Shamblers and Fiends and I lived in DM6 heh. Quake 2 DM was, well kinda slow for me, and I was also trying to improve my coding skillz and doing a Quake 2 mod seemed to be a good idea. The actual idea of "Generations" probably came one late night while quaking, I don't even remember anymore

How did you put your idea together? (Did you have a staff, etc) Well I asked some ICQ buddies to help out, but we were/are still pretty horribly unorganized. It is the first project for nearly everyone so I guess that's an excuse. But we had a lot of people join up and do nothing except play god in the IRC channel. I ended up doing a lot of screaming around heh. But I have to say a huge thanks for the people that did stick with the idea and gave the project their best. Cheers go out to DaTa, Dnite, Hawkmoon, and Cricket who did most of the work. Apart from that a lot of people contributed stuff but couldn't stay on cause of Real Life.

Did you expect reaction to the mod to be as big as it's been? Hell no. We were totally blown away. I mean, I really was doing it for the fun of it. I would have been more than happy with just one "This is awesome" email. But its really been amazing. It did put a LOT of pressure on us though. I hate the long wait its been for the Doom and Wolf3d stuff, but its really not in my hands. We're doing the most we can.

A number of mod authors have ended up being hired by developers. Is that a dream of yours? Definitely. I totally love doing this . All I need is a good PC and food and shelter heh. No ambitions apart from learning the most I can and creating something that's really fun to play.

Was that possibility something you considered when deciding to do the mod in the first place? Not really. It was really meant to be a personal project of sorts. But then as more people joined in, and the amount of publicity the mod got, I was bound get dreamy ;-).

Like I started it as a programming exercise. I really hadn't seen any "real" code when I started on it, just regular college stuff, so here was the opportunity to learn some more and have something fun to play.

Do you play a lot of mods? Not right now :(. I played a lot of CTF when it came out...then it kinda started to become boring.

The elitism totally took the fun out of it too, nearly everyone seemed to be in a big clan with a big ego. I dunno, I play for fun and when it wasn't fun anymore I stopped. Right now, I really only play Rocket Arena 2, its totally intense and loads of fun :D

What's your favorite: Doom, Doom2, Wolfenstein, Quake, Quake2? hehe, different for different stuff.

Doom2 for Single player

Quake for DM

and Quake 2's graphics

What's the future for Generations? Well, its really ready to go in a couple of weeks, if we had the models that is. Lack of models really is the biggest problem right now. I can do programming and maps myself, but I really really suck at models, (don't have patience for it, heh). But well hopefully stuff will work out and we'll make it soon enough.

So you're looking for staff? Well, more like volunteers heh. Everything in life should be free :D We really need a good 3D modeller and a skin artist. The coding needs like 3,4 days of work. Maps are ready to go too, its the models that's holding everything else up :(

What are your favorite games? Quake,Doom 2,Quake 2, Panzer General 2 and well lots of others but these are probably the ones I've spent most time on.

What game/s are you most looking forward to? Quake 3:Arena. Half-Life too, but I hope its not too realistic. If I can't rocket jump I ain't playing.

Will it be added to Generations? its more like will Generations be ported to Q3:Arena heh, but hopefully The thing with Q3 is that, since there is no single player, I don't know if it will have an identifiable "player" character with it. I read that it'll ship with 10-15 player models so will there actually be a "Q3 Marine", if not, then I guess we'll just end up converting all the old guys again.

OKie..last question...what are your favorite websites? Blues, VoodooExtreme, PQ, and loonygames :D

Thanks! Check out the Generations mod for Quake2 at http://www.planetquake.com/generations

- Stephanie "Bobbi" Bergman is an associate editor for loonygames.