PlanetQuake Report — Manhattan Memorial Day Marathon

“Well, here it is. It’s hard to believe! At least 85 machines, all running Quake — every square inch of table and floorspace is covered by computers and cables and technology. No, not a square inch is unused. Is there space between those subwoofers and 17” montiors? Hell, I’ve got a laptop. Let’s go!

It’s M3, and no other Quake event — not even the Quakeworld Launch event of September, ’96 — could match the adrenaline. Machine after machine is rumbling with the chaos of a deathmatch such that New York has never seen.

A LAN party is a LAN party … but when you add free beer, you transcend. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s staggering. Over $400 worth of extension cords alone helped to power the massive network of over 6 servers that supports the gorefest I’m witnessing here tonight. And the community is amazing–Blue, Bastard, Cal, Joost … everyone is here, killing and being killed … and ready for more.

It’s only Friday night, and there’s three days left to go. Nobody has even thought of going to sleep; as I type this update, there’s still beer left and only Bastard of Planetquake has succumed to slumber. (it’s been a rough day — Can you blame him?) I’ll be here all weekend reporting the madness, but in the meantime you can get a feel for the carnage with these screenshots.

Stay tuned to this page for M3 updates as soon as they become available.

Your man on the scene, Fargo (with some assistance of Joost, while Frago keeled over ;)

**“With only a few hours until people start showing up, Second Shift have the network all laid out for the upcoming fragfest.”**

“Here’s Bastard, to the left, and JudgeCal to the right. These two guys helped to put together this whole shin-dig. Doesn’t Bastard look like a proper young gentleman? Yeah, appearences sure are decieving.”

“This wasteland doesn’t look like much, but it’s the site as our boys from Cyberweb Cafe began their work. I haven’t tried to figure out how many feet of network cable and extension cords we’re talking about, but deep down inside I don’t want to know.”

“Yeah, that’s our very own (well, actually, (Slipgate Central’s) Joost Schuur helping to wire us up. He’s not afraid to get down on all fours for a higher cause. I hope you love him as I do.”

**“It wasn’t long before Pseudo was filled to capacity. Quake, Quake, and nothing but. If this was any more intoxicating, I’d be covered with blood.”**

**“…and then even more people turned up.”**

“Here’s the back of the head of one of the most influential of Quake personalities — It’s Blue himself. He’s busy brutalizing the competition … including me, Fargo. I couldn’t hold my own against the Rangers, but I was doing pretty well right behind them. You just wait until I get the pipe-bombs and a place to camp, Blueboy. Heh heh.”

**“I … I really don’t know. Perhaps this man has achieved the astounding feat of being drunker than me. Incredible.”**

**“Servers of all kinds are running at M3, and you can bet there’s more than a fair share of flag-capturin’ fraggin’.”**

“Here Joost poses with a few of the crew that helps to keep this magical moment running. It’s really great how people have pulled together here; anyone with netowkr (as a certain copyrighter spells it at 3 am) experience is more than happy to pitch in to help keep things running smoothly.”

**“Many an organizer was jealous of these guys. They were actually playing Quake!”**

**“A rare shot of a lazy bastard while he wasn’t bustling about, ‘overseeing’.”**

“May 24th … a new day dawns at M3. The movers and shakers pose for a quiet moment on the roof of the Pseudo building, gathering their strength for another day of madness. I’m not in this picture, I was off somewhere trying to drink water before the imminent hangover set in.”

“While everyone else posed on the roof, Basty was trying to get some shuteye. I’m downloading these pictures from a digital camera, and nearly a quarter of them are shots of Basty sleeping. I think someone has a crush. Nice shoes, Bastybaby.”

“See that? Even the sturdiest of players need their rest, as well. This picture really frightens me. It looks eerily like photos of the cult suicide. Remind me not to eat the pudding. I wish I’d been sober enough to snap a picture of it, but one guy was curled up in the hallway under a window with the curtain wrapped around him for warmth.”

“Power … must … have … more … power. Don’t show this to the fire marshall. Some of these wires are hot to the touch, but they should hold out so long as people cooperate and remember to disconnect the more power-hungry sound systems.”

“Here’s some of the fine people helping to run the tournament. That’s Radpipe, an administrative genius, and Mark (in the middle) has been lending a hand. Joost, of course, is to the right. He was kind enough to help me finish the update last night as I slowly collapsed into incoherence.”

**“That’s the Levelord himself! You’d be pleased to know that even Lords need to eat and drink. The way this guy kicks a keg puts me to shame.”**

**“This is the view outside the window. That’s Houston street, down there … taxis are scooting back and forth shuffling people to all the clubs and bars in the area. Speaking of bars…”**

“I can’t believe it. This is an open bar … anyone with a valid ID can stop by and treat themselves. And look! It’s practically empty. Bastard and I were amazed that Quakers are so into Quake that they hardly bother to drink. Perhaps they’re afraid of dulling that razor edge. Of course, as Blue and I pointed out, our best shot at winning against some of the talent here is to get them so plastered they don’t notice if you disconnect the mouse.”

**“Here the guys from Stomped (Robs, seated, and Esses) take a break to ham it up for the adoring public. Esses took five minutes to recover from the flash.”**

“Joost is in the foreground, memorizing URLs. That’s Basty behind him, on the phone. I’d love to tell you he’s doing important administrative stuff, but it sounded like he was putting the moves on some chick.”

loony’s M3 Wrapup

“The games begun friday @ 11AM or so when Lithium (o’ Preystation fame) showed up at my doorstep. Formalitities aside, we went out for some breakfast. We shot the s#%()t around my place for a bit, and then headed off to Pseudo for the festivities (which were still several hours away from officially starting). Upon arrival, we were greeted by the Blue-man himself, who already looked exhausted. Much to my suprise, we were not in fact, the first people there. Several nutcases from Ohio actually managed to show up before me.

We set up a little baby network, and started a few practice games o’ quake. I also got to meet Phoebus, who preceeded to whoop my ass for the first time (of many over the course of the weekend). Around 7 or so, the festivities officially began, as we setup computers. Buddy o’ the boi, Jordan who goes through nicknames like water (he decided on Huey for the weekend) showed up, and helped us lug in some crap (Voltas, you got one hell of a heavy computer, dude). Regardless, the network setup, the games began full force, and it didn’t take long for me to realize that in fact, as I previously suspected, I am really out of practice. After enduring a barrage of insults to my trackball (from everyone from Blue to Gandalf) I finally got a few decent frags in, and anyone within a ten foot radius can attest to the fact that my nickname is quite appropriate when I’m winning (I laugh like, well…a loon). After a spell, I met Kolinahr (quiet dude…), RadPipe (nice guy…too bad he was so dang busy) and I’m sure more people then I can possibly remember right now.

After a stretch of playing, someone walked by and said, ‘loonyboi?’ I nodded and this turned out to be none other than Drastic_Man of KeyGrip fame. We shot the piss for a bit, and I eventually met CRT, the other half, and believe me when I say that these guys are nuts. I thought I was loony…these guys are crazy. After a bit, I met Stormalong (of FA11 fame).

We all hit it off fairly quickly, and before long were talking about the future of demo editing/camera patches and what direction they were taking each of their respective projects. I think combined, me and Drastic must have increased Stormalong’s ego a thousand fold (I mean come on! Let’s face it, FA11 is the coolest thing since individually wrapped cheese).

And yes, I did remember to bitch about the fact that KeyGrip is designed for a minimum of 64 megs of ram every ten seconds. :) Feel like really pissing him off? Call it DicKeyGrip. :|

Anywho, the games friday night went into the wee, wee hours. Saturday morning, after barely 3 hours of sleep, I decided two things: 1) that I was going to go home that night and get some real sleep and 2) I was going to kill whoever it was that snored all night long.

Regardless, saturday I met none other than Wanker who is, let there be no doubt, the biggest QuakeCast/Janitor Bob fan who ever lived (at least, dear god, I hope so). Saturday brought about a conversation with ParadoX in which he admitted that the hipdm1 demo that comes with Scourge of Armagon was staged. Pheobus had to keep me from harming myself and others around me. In addition, Gandalf proved that the SpaceOrb really can be used to play a decent game of Quake (although my personal experience with it would suggest otherwise).

I used saturday as an excuse to prove to the world that a Monster 3D can even make a p100 with 16 meg of ram a great Quake machine. GlQuake turned more than a few heads, even on my crappy system. I had a few plesant words with the Klingon-Rebel himself, Joost (get back to Aftershock, dammit!) and Dweomer, the busiest man alive (next to Cal, of course, who must have been taking IV shots of Caffeine all weekend).

On saturday, I also got to show off Flying Basty and I even gave a special Quego sound effects preview to a few guys (including Tony Fabris of BFG 9k FAQ fame).

As Saturday winded down, I made Phoebus and Wanker schlep their crap downtown to my place, where we crashed for a night.

Unfortunately we missed 95% of MSNBC‘s presance on Sunday, due to the fact that Wanker refused to wake up :) Once we got his lazy butt out of bed, and took real showers, we headed back uptown to Psuedo for more of that wacky brand of crazyness that only M3 could bring. After pleading with Bastard (and promising him plenty of Sunny Doodles) I managed to get myself and Phoeb entered into the contest (we had slept through the registration). I had the pleasure of watching Gandalf and PMS_Phoenix have an amazing Orb vs. Orb battle, and then had a blast getting my ass beaten by Phoeb.

Later that night, I met Moebius.DR (who actually doesn’t get his name from the french artist Jean Giraud) who introduced himself by saying, “you’re loonyboi? cool!” I still have no idea what that means. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Regardless, the guy came all the way from Ohio to be there, so I let him use my computer for a bit (dispite his complaints about the Trackball). Another computer freed up, so he gave me back my computer, and I was itchin’ for some HipEnd action. I started up the server, and a legend was born (okay, so maybe i’m exaggerating, but it was fun…).

We started playing, and the server filled up rather quickly, and I started screaming my usual taunts, and Moebius’ girlfriend said, ‘you know, if you really want to annoy him, screw with the gravity’. And so I did. I set SV_Gravity to 50, and I don’t know if you’ve ever actually played hipend with wierd gravity, but it essentially becomes a giant fishbowl. :) CRT walked over, and started feeding me random server commands. We screwed with the SV_Friction (for that Ice Skating beauty!) HOSTFRAME (for crack-smoking action!) and I even bound three keys: one to SV_Gravity=500000 one to SV_GRavity=-50000 and one to SV_Gravity=50. Why? So at the touch of a single key, I could throw everyone to the ceiling, and then slam ’em back down again. Essentially everytime I got the hammer, I’d hurl everyone to the floor, and use the hammer on ’em. Bwahahahaha!

Other fun moments from that night, included the discovery of a great little deathmatch level called “Gibs Gallore” in which the point is to push everyone into the water which instantly gibs ’em. Whole kinds of fun (even if Lithium decided it was more fun to kill himself than bother to kill anyone else). Without a doubt, however, the coolest (or at least the most surreal) moment had to be when my boss from NBC showed up. He walked over, asked how I was doing, and then proceeded to hit the kegs. I think the fact that there were people there who played quake more than I do scared him off, because he only stayed for a few moments. :)

As the evening wound down, I watched a room full of quake players ooh and aah over Honus’ skill. A true prodigy, that honus. Probably the funniest thing I saw that night, was a very drunk, and very tired Blue, come stumbling out of the QuakeCast recording room, who said to me, “I don’t know who in their right mind is still listening to this thing” (it was about 2 am).

Monday brought fairwells (my goodbye to Drastic_Man? ‘Bite me, bitch!’) and I even donated two boxes of sunny doodles to the winners of the last fragfest (which a bunch of twits proceeded to hurl out the window on unsuspecting passersby). Aparently (I have yet to see the proof) Dipstick even challenged my claim that I do not show up on film, as he snapped endless photographs of my humble self.

Terminal nice-guy Phoebus helped me lug my computer back downtown, and he still had some time to kill, so we walked down to South Street Seaport to give him some pointless NYC tourism. :) After showing him that New York isn’t just crack alleys, we went off to drink (something we both actually forgot to do that weekend). We went into this little pub by my place, and just had a few relaxing drinks before he went off to catch his plane. I went back up to my room, reinstalled my computer, answered about 150 e-mails which read ‘Why are you checking your e-mail from m3?!?!?’ and went to sleep, dangit.”