QuakeCon 2001 Diary : Introduction When I wrote last years QuakeCon 2000 diary I remember thinking that there would probably be little else in life to top the experiences we had in Mesquite last year.

As game developers, and even though we're at the 'Modification' end of the industry, we have our mentors and protégés just like everyone else. Arguably our protégé's are the upcoming mod makers; programmers, artists and level designers who we try (sometimes poorly) to encourage and support, but the mentor for our work is clearly non-plural... id Software.

So as we'd already met them once, been to (what is arguably) the most important place on the face of the planet and attended (what is also arguably) the single most important FPS related event of the year, how could we possibly top that?

Well I'll tell you!

But you'll have to read the rest of this diary to find out :)

One point of note though is that we finally met David "Vorrik" Adams, Jared 'BirdDawg' Hefty, Brelan "3-Demon" Duff and Brian "BoBo the seal" Jones!

It's a weird thing meeting people that you've worked with for a long time, yet never seen or spoken too. In fact with the exception of Bobo, we weren't even at the pen-pal stage of sending each other photos :). It was obviously a relief to discover that (for example) BirdDawg wasn't a transvestite or Vorrik a circus animal of some kind :).

Now of course last year id told us that Quakecon would be an excellent opportunity to promote our mod, but we'd never actually thought of doing it! Oh no... too much beer to be drunk etc, but this year we took things a little more seriously. Not only did we manage to promote Q3F, it was actually well received, which is far better than people suggesting the class selection menu is too complex a way to start a game as they did last year :).

Of course we did our best to get drunk a lot too, and for the purposes of photographic evidence, I've detailed these attempts in depth in this diary. We also got to meet a whole bunch of great new people and take our lives in to our own hands riding in the back of an open-top pickup truck!

This then is our second diary of a trip to QuakeCon - this time for QuakeCon 2001 (wow where did the 1990's go?!)... A trip that never would have happened without id Software's incredible support.

We'd like to say a huge thank you to id Software, especially Robert Duffy, Graeme Devine, Jan Paul (MrElusive) and Timothy (TTimo) for the flawless support we've received for almost 2 years now.

In my defence I'd like to note that any swearing or adult references in this diary are entirely the fault of the Americans. I didn't name the cocktails! Still if you're under hmm... about 30, you probably shouldn't read this diary as I'm sure there's something here that'll offend you :)

Weasel_Girl: You especially shouldn't be reading this!

Paul 'Locki' Wedgwood
Project Leader
The Q3F Team