Yesterday tolled the fifteenth anniversary of the launch of Quake, id Software's seminal 3D first-person shooter. Celebrating the event, id's sister company Bethesda has dug up Quake treasures to share with the world.

John Carmack, id co-founder and technical wizard, offered a few thoughts on Quake. He recalls struggles with developing the 3D engine, the novelty of free mouse movement, online multiplayer, 3D acceleration, and the importance and impact of modding. Notably, one of his defining Quake memories is quite unexpected, approached with Carmack's characteristic criticism: Read more »

Fifteen years ago, the site which would become Shacknews was eagerly awaiting the June 22, 1996, launch of id Software's Quake. Now, fans of the seminal FPS around the world have joined together to celebrate its latest anniversary with a whole host of virtual festivities.

The fan-organised Quake Expo 2011 kicked off on Sunday and runs until June 25. At virtual 'booths' you'll find a 1v1 NetQuake deathmatch tournament, mod releases, a fan-made art book, Quake Live commentaries, contests for fanfic, speedmapping terrain speedmapping, and heaps more. Read more »

Our own Arctic Fox spotted Google Code-hosted port of id Software's legendary first-person shooter Quake 2 to HTML5, which contains numerous enhancements over HTML 4.01 and is largely regarded as the biggest competitor to Adobe's Flash platform.

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Version 1.1 of the QuakeRally mod has been released. The new version improves physics, a less punishing damage system, a change in the Wrong Way message and a bunch of other things.

A new version of the Quake 2 source mod BeefQuake, has been released. It has improved particles, motion blur and various other new features.

The first release of BeefQuake is up. BeefQuake is a Quake 2 source modification, adding such things like JPG screenshot support, cinematic files as textures, GeForce3 enhanced water-warp and several other things. Thanks for the reminder SlimJim.

The mrGLQuake page has news of a Quake 2 TV modification made possible thanks to the Quake 2 source code release. Though I don't see a download link anywhere yet, this allows people to use Quake 2 .cin video files as textures in the game.

A Quake2 source code release for the night too, Q2 v3.21 source code (The older source is in the /old/ dir) which you can grab here. Not much use for you unless you are a programmer, or an aspiring cheat hacker (aka scum).

With the release of the Quake2 source code John Carmack is getting spanked with the hate mail as you'd expect from people worried about cheating. He made a post on Slashdot last night saying the Mac code is coming, and also that "another old game's code" will be released soon. Also, Todd H at id Software has a .plan update about Q2 licensing for private use.

As a Christmas present (or whatever you wanna call it if you dont celebrate Christmas) John Carmack has decided to release the Quake2 source code to the net. You can grab the small little ZIP file from Fileshack or id's FTP . Have a look at the .plan update from The Carmack with the announcement:

The Quake 2 source code is now available for download, licensed under the GPL. As with previous source code releases, the game data remains under the original copyright and license, and cannot be freely distributed. If you create a true total conversion, you can give (or sell) a complete package away, as long as you abide by the GPL source code license. If your projects use the original Quake 2 media, the media must come from a normal, purchased copy of the game. I'm sure I will catch some flack about increased cheating after the source release, but there are plenty of Q2 cheats already out there, so you are already in the position of having to trust the other players to a degree. The problem is really only solvable by relying on the community to police itself, because it is a fundamentally unwinnable technical battle to make a completely cheat proof game of this type. Play with your friends.

If all these new games are too hip for you and you still dig Quake 2, you might like to know there's a new online Quake 2 tourney soon called Risen. The organizers hope to get some Quake 2 revival going on, although their league is currently invite only.

A new version of the Quake 3 log file analyser Q3 Log, has been released. The biggest change is the fact that it now supports Beta2 of Urban Terror, but there are some other changes too as seen here.

The Full Metal Jack site has been updated with a video showing off gameplay from this Quake 3 mod. It's a 24mb download, and in MPEG format. If you dont feel like downloading a movie there are 9 new screenshots too.

Whoah, there are actually people still working on Quake2 modifications? There is a trailer out for the 007 Quake2 mod on Fileplanet showing 6 minutes of DivX encoded footage.

The Quake2 revival tour! Here's a little piece hopefully discussing the 'return' of Quake2. I'm actually looking forward to the Quake1 CPL tournament speaking of this revival stuff.