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.

id Software is currently dabbling in web-based online gaming with its upcoming Quake III Arena port Quake Live. In an interview with Shacknews last month, Carmack said development of the game required a "significant effort" for id due to the company's relative inexperience with internet databases.

"We did not have the experience in website development, database management, and all of that web world type stuff," said Carmack on developing Quake Live. "And honestly, we underestimated the challenge involved in that."

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.

The Mushroom continues with the Where Are They now series of Quake 1 mod author interviews. This week there's an interview with Richard Cheung of the Future Vs. Fantasy mod. He answers questions about how he got into the mod scene, how he came up with the FvF mod, and what he's doing now.

The "Where Are They Now" series of articles on The Mushroom quizzing old Quake 1 mod authors continues. This week, the guys from Alien Quake answer some questions about what they have been up to.

The "Where are they now" feature article on The Mushroom continues. This time Iikka Keranen of Air Quake is tracked down for an interview. Iikka is working at Valve right now.

The "Where Are They Now" feature article on The Mushroom continues with an interview with Nick Bousman. He created Slide Quake for Quake 1 among other things.

If you missed out on QuakeCon 2001 then you didnt get to see the little "History of Quake" video that was shown there. The video is now also available on the Ultimate Quake Collection or, (drumroll...) FilePlanet!

Glock from AVPNews managed to dig up this link on Amazon which pretty much confirms what was suspected. The Quake BFG title that was confirmed a few days ago is also being called "Final Quake: BFG" which would lead one to believe It'll be something along the lines of Final DOOM.

As for the "new id games" to be announced at QuakeCon, considering id and their PR company refused to acknowledge anything before but did acknowledge the Quake BFG title, I would say it's a safe bet that something else will be announced at QuakeCon. We'll know in a few days eh?

John Carmack made a post on Slashdot in reply to Five years of Quake. He says some people have been giving id too much credit when it comes to technology "firsts", and Carmack isn't very concerned with id's place in history. Thanks Blues News.

A lot of people like to think of creativity and innovation as something that springs from the void, but the truth is that everything is traceable to its origins.
[...]
.. you will rarely find me touting anything as a "first", because I could always say it is "sort of like this thing over here, but with the principle demonstrated by this over there added to allow it to give the feature we wanted back then" and so on.
There are the occasional "eureka!" moments, but they tend to be in twitchy little technical things, not the larger ideas like "3D environment" or "multiplayer gaming". [...]

John Romero updated his person website with a new Quake 1 level that was produced for the original game but never included. It's called Lost Entrance of the Dismal Oubliette, and it's a small .zip download at 284kb. Thanks Blues News.

Today is a big anniverary for Quake 1. It has been 5 years already since the shareware version of the game was released by id Software. Over at Methos Quake they have a pretty good overview of what all happened in 1996 and they also have interviews with John Romero and Tim Willits.

Methos: Since games tend to evolve as they are being designed. What was the Quake team's original thoughts on what Quake should or would be like when it was finished? How close was it to the final product?

Romero: Quake's design was VERY different from the game that was released. It was much more of a D&D-based game with a main character named Quake who had an awesome hammer that would grow in power as the game progressed. At one point in November 1995, we decided to change the design to something we were more comfortable creating -- FPS weapons with a few twists. After the major redesign, the game underwent a few more smaller redesigns (to cut down development time) and we released the Quake that everyone knows today.

Willits: The original game started out more fantasy based, less science fiction. There was going to be no gun type weapons. The player would have had a mighty hammer that they could enchant with powers as they progressed in the game. The game's intention was to be a real slugfest with the player bashing their foes to death. Luckily we changed that and went with more Doom style weaponry. ...