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 »

"Strong factions internally" at id Software fancy returning the Quake series to its roots and the Lovecraftian-y stylings of the original Quake, id's technical wizard John Carmack has told Eurogamer. However, he makes quite clear, "Nothing is scheduled here, people are not building this."

"We went from the Quake II and the Quake 4 Strogg universe. We are at least tossing around the possibilities of going back to the bizarre, mixed up Cthulhu-ish Quake 1 world and rebooting that direction," Carmack said. "We think that would be a more interesting direction than doing more Strogg stuff after Quake 4." Read more »

Many of you may have seen this video, but there's nothing else going on today, so I'm posting this here because it is awesome. This is a stitched video of every level of Quake being completed at 100%, meaning all kills and all secrets on every level on Nightmare difficulty (via Reddit).

Now, each level was recorded separately and some hacking tools were used to start the next level with the previous level's inventory, but there was no hacking or cheating in the actual level runs. Ten players contributed runs to the project. Read more »

During an interview with Shacknews, id Software president John Carmack revealed that the company has previously turned down publisher proposals to develop a massive multiplayer version of its shooter series Quake.

Saying that id had passed on several offers of "good money" to develop a Quake MMO, Carmack added that the company would not be attempting a similar project anytime soon.

"id has no interest in MMO development," said Carmack, who added that while he is familiar with the technology, he is also "fully cognizant" of the challenges and risks of creating a game in the genre. Read more »

The Quake Expo site has posted part 1 and part 2 of a Q&A with John Romero, asking the designer about everything Quake 1. Thanks Blues News.

id Software fan sites QuakeMarine and DoomMarine have new Q&As, asking American McGee and Tom Hall about their period at id and what they are up to these days. In the case of Hall, he's now at the Austin, TX startup KingIsle Entertainment.

GameCloud talked with Pulse Interactive CEO Paul Trowe and gleaned a few details regarding the cell phone adaptation of Quake. A few details include that Quake Mobile will be the first OpenGL cellular game, it will be compatible with every mod created for the PC version, and it'll arrive in Korea first on a "game-oriented phone design."

Kotaku has some of the first screenshots for the cell phone port of Quake. This was revealed just days ago, so read up on it here. Looking pretty good so far, but framerate is king!

Another valuable id software series is finding its way onto the cell phone gaming scene: Quake! id software and Pulse Interactive announced the deal yesterday that will bring Quake to next-gen cell phones that feature dedicated 3D graphics hardware. In development by Bare Naked Productions, the port will be a "faithful conversion" of the original PC game. "Quake Mobile takes all of the action, game play, and atmosphere of the groundbreaking original and puts it right in the palm of your hands," says id CEO Todd Hollenshead. Pulse Interactive president Paul Trowe commented: "Forget miniature golf and puzzle games, Quake is going to take mobile gaming to a whole new level. [The game] will not only satisfy hardcore players, but also create a whole new generation of fans around the world." EuroGamer reports that this port will be an embedded program on a new handset launching in July.

A new Quake 1 mod has hit the streets, IF Quake. IF Quake is a port of id Software's Quake 1 engine to the Inform programming language. Screenshots can be found here. We have mirrored the Windows, Mac and *nix versions on FileShack.

A new version of the Quake 1 source modification Tenebrae (has real time lighting and bumpmapping among other features) has been released, you can get it from FileShack. The new version should be faster and support ATI's Radeon cards along with other changes.

New on HomeLAN Fed this morning is an interview with Charles Hollemeersch, programmer behind that nifty Tenebrae mod for Quake 1 (which adds real-time lighting and bumpmapping among other things). JCal asks Charles about his previous modding experience, how he came up with the idea for this souce mod, how difficult it was, if anyone at id Software has emailed him about the mod, future plans for the mod, plans for porting this to the Quake 2 source code, and more.

The guys at COR let us know they have released the first version of Alteria. What is Alteria? It's a free standalone game based on the Quake 1 engine. It features colored lighting, 24 bit textures, rotating brushes, over 20 enemies, real skyboxes, RPG style gameplay and "much..much more". The first episode is a 58.6mb download.

Another new installment in the "Where Are They Now" feature on The Mushroom talking to Quake 1 mod authors. This time they tracked down Scott Dalton, currently level designer at Unreal 2. His Quake 1 work of fame is the Zerstorer: Testament of the Destroyer mod, which is actually my favorite mod for the game.