Scourge done Slick ------------------ (0) Index (1) Introduction (1.1) The Plot (1.2) What is Scourge done Slick? (2) The Movie (2.0) Installation and running: quick overview (2.1) Installation (2.2) Running the movie (2.3) Solving playback problems (2.4) Making GLQuake work with Mission Pack #1 (3) More details about the movie (3.1) Timing (3.2) How the run was recorded (3.3) How the run was made into a movie (4) Statistics (5) Credits and contact info (5.1) Credits (5.2) Utilities used (5.3) Contact info -------------------------------------------------------------------------- (1) Introduction (1.1) The Plot Previously, our hero has saved first the entire planet, then his contact lens, and finally his daughter's pet shambler George from a horrible fate at the tentacles of Shub-Niggurath, despite her fiercely resisting by, er, wobbling quite menacingly at him. He is now enjoying some rest and relaxation at Command HQ, entertained by his old home videos. But a speed-runner is never allowed to rest or relax for long. A rift-gate exit has been detected near to the Earth, and word is that some friend of Shub's called Armagon intends to send something planet-destroying through it. It will only take 666 seconds for Armagon to prime and launch the weapon, so the military will need someone fleet-footed to take on the bad guys. Rocket-jumping too much and making bad puns en route is an entirely optional extra, but you can be sure our hero will give it a try. Perhaps he's even a little bit too keen to visit the nightmare realms once more? Well, on his head be it... (1.2) What is Scourge done Slick? Scourge done Slick (SdS) is a run through the Quake Mission Pack #1, Scourge of Armagon by Ritual Entertainment (formerly known as Hipnotic Interactive). Our goal was to finish the Mission Pack as fast as possible. To make things a bit more challenging, we ran the levels on the hardest possible skill level, on Nightmare. Having recorded a run we were happy with, we then set about refilming, adding production effects, and creating some special sequences to tie the demos together into a proper movie. Many people have contributed to this movie, and it took us a long while to make. But we are very satisfied with the final product, and we think the extra time was worthwile. We do not expect every demo to be completely optimised, some maps still have some room for improvements - the only certainty in speed-running is that you can always do it faster somehow. (-: If you think you can beat any of the demos in SdS, go ahead and try, and send us your demo if you succeed. Make sure you use SoAStats to start with the same stats we started with. You can also send in single level speed-runs to the Speed Demos Archive at PlanetQuake . (2) The movie (2.0) Installation and running: quick overview For more help and information, read the more detailed texts following in sections (2.1) through (2.4). Viewing requirements and recommendations: 1. Some version of registered Quake by id Software. Quake.exe - v1.08 recommended. Increase your -zone setting on earlier versions to avoid Z_Malloc crashes. WinQuake.exe - all versions should be fine GLQuake.exe - v0.97 recommended. Sprites will not display in version 0.96, and SdS uses some of these. Also you will want to patch your Mission Pack bugs by running SdSfixGL. 2. Mission Pack #1, "Scourge Of Armagon", by Hipnotic Interactive. The movie uses the data in the pack, so it won't run without it. Put all the PAKs you downloaded into a game sub-directory, called "SdS", and run Quake with command-line options "-hipnotic -game SdS". "-zone 512" is also recommended to avoid Z_Malloc crashes on earlier versions of Quake. Or use the included SdS.bat batch file. (2.1) Installation You need two things to run this movie: The registered version of Quake, and its Mission Pack #1, Scourge of Armagon. If you do not have Scourge of Armagon, you cannot run this movie (and you greatly missed out :-) If you want to run SdS under GLQuake, you will also have to patch your Mission Pack to fix a bug that makes it GLQuake-incompatible. See section (2.4) for details of how to do this. You should also avoid v0.96 since this version does not display sprites. In order to install SdS, you first need to find your main Quake directory. This probably has the name "Quake" and will contain such items as your Quake executable programs (such as quake.exe, or winquake.exe, or glquake.exe...) and your Id1 subdirectory. (Mac users may be more used to the term "folder" than directory.) You should make a subdirectory of this main directory. Give it the name "SdS". In DOS, you can do this by changing to your main Quake directory and then typing "md SdS" at the prompt. Five different .zip files are available for your download. (Also, SdSvox.zip is available as a smaller SdSvox.rar instead.) They each contain this text file and one or more PAK files. Put the PAK files in the SdS subdirectory. If you ever end up with more than one PAK file with the same number as a result of making several downloads, the bigger PAK is always the one you should use. Here is a description of the five downloads. For a general guide to which ones you want, you should use the SdS download page at PlanetQuake, , which contains an easy guide to help you decide what to download. This text file reviews the contents of the ZIPs and shows how you can handle any upgrades you make. 1) SdSfull.zip - This is everything in one bundle. (8.6Mb) It consists of a PAK0.PAK containing the movie and various extras, a PAK1.PAK containing vocals and music, and a PAK2.PAK containing the first-person demos. Unzip it into your SdS sub-directory. 2) SdS.zip - This is the main movie release. (3.25Mb) It consists of a PAK0.PAK containing the movie and various extras, and a tiny PAK1.PAK that contains placeholders for the vocals and music. To add vocals and music to this version, download SdSvox and unzip it into your SdS sub-directory, thus replacing your existing PAK1.PAK with a new larger one. To add first-person demos to this version, download SdSu and unzip it into your SdS sub-directory, thus placing the PAK2.PAK the upgrade contains alongside your existing files. 3) SdS_1102.zip - If you do not wish to download the movie version of (1.0Mb) SdS first and want to watch the first-person perspective version instead, then this file is for you. It consists of small PAK0 and PAK1.PAKs, and a PAK2.PAK that contains the first-person demos. To add the movie demos to this version, download SdS and unzip it into your SdS sub-directory, thus replacing your existing PAK0.PAK with a new larger one. (Having done this you can also add vocals just as before.) 4) SdSu.zip - After installing a movie version of SdS, you may wish (850Kb) to upgrade it by adding in the first-person perspective demos. This upgrade is the PAK2.PAK that contains the first-person demos. Download and unzip it into your SdS sub-directory. 5) SdSvox.zip - After installing a movie version of SdS, you may wish (4.6Mb) or to add vocals and music to it. (We recommend that you do!) SdSvox.rar This upgrade is the PAK1.PAK file that contains the extra (3.7Mb) material. It's available in the form of either a ZIP or a RAR archive. In either case, uncompress it into your SdS sub-directory over the small PAK1.PAK you already have. (2.2) Running the movie Now to run the movie, start Quake with the command-line options "-hipnotic -game sds". In DOS, you should change to the main Quake directory and then type "quake -hipnotic -game sds" (or "winquake", or "glquake" if appropriate.) You can also run the provided SdS.bat if you find all those command-line options a bit confusing; you may want to pass SdS.bat extra parameters like e.g. -winmem to reflect your normal set-up though. On a Mac, you should press the option key whilst starting Quake in order to be able to enter command-line options. The default 48Kb memory allocated for storing command aliases by versions of Quake previous to v1.08 is insufficient if you wish to display in-movie subtitles, eventually causing a crash with a "Z_Malloc" error. Most users will probably already be using a higher-than-default setting to avoid this error when they use their own fancy aliases. For running SdS, adding a command-line option like "-zone 512" should be sufficient to avoid any "Z_Malloc" crashes. The movie is played from a menu interface, so that you can choose to play the whole movie, or individual episodes, or individual levels. You can also read a short FAQ in the menu. When you start SdS for the very first time, you are presented with a menu of playback options. In that menu, you can select between the refilmed movie versions of the demos and the original first-person perspective demos (if you upgraded your movie, see above). Also we have provided some technical commentary on the demos that you may wish to switch on and read if you enjoy speed-running. You may elect to turn on subtitles (well, they display at the top of the screen, but anyway :) if you haven't downloaded the vocals for the movie, or if you have any trouble understanding them. Lastly, you can change the viewsize/crosshair settings used for demo playback. Don't worry if you don't know what to choose, you can alter your choices at any time by selecting the "Change view settings" item in the menu interface. SdS will take note of your choices and save them in your config.cfg, so they're still there when you quit and re-start the movie. Using the menus should be mostly self-explanatory! There are also two special keys you can use when a demo is playing. Pressing [F10] will stop playback and return to the menu, whilst if you are playing a sequence of levels, such as an episode run, then you can press [F9] to advance to the next level. Is there anything else you need to know? Well, we'll keep that a secret. (-; You can't simply explore the menu map this time; you'll need to use other diabolical means to uncover some hidden secrets. (2.3) Solving playback problems We are hoping that we have eliminated all bugs from this release during the testing phase. However, if you do experience any playback problems that we have not noticed, this section may be of some use to you. Firstly, we should note that although GLQuake renders far more beautifully, the people who did most of the editing of this movie couldn't run it and so most testing and patching for GLQuake was done from a distance. We've tried to test thoroughly and compensate for the various playback anomalies, and are sorry for any that remain. Some, like the absence of fade effects, are unavoidable. Also please note that version v0.96 of GLQuake does not display sprites. We use these for a few effects in the movie (such as the logo and TV screen) so if you want to run SdS under GLQuake we recommend you download the v0.97 patch. Try All versions of Quake have some problems playing back combinations of demos that together include many models and sprites; they may crash out with a "Cache_Alloc: allready allocated" error. This is now known to be due to a bug that will occur very infrequently in normal play, which is why it went undetected for so long. In previous releases we have used various guess-based tricks and hacks to avoid these crashes, but we know we never removed the problem completely. This time, thanks to an explanation of the circumstances behind the bug from Zoid, we hope that we have come up with a way to avoid it altogether, even if it does mean the demos take slightly longer to load. Cross your fingers. (For those interested, the bug involves the misallocation and freeing of space in the model cache with respect to sprites.) In the event that you do manage to produce a Cache_Alloc crash, please tell us about it, since the more we learn the better we can do to avoid the problems. But in any case, any errors shouldn't ruin your enjoyment of the movie. You can use the menu interface to play it one episode at a time, or to play any individual level. If you have a problem with the menu interface, you can try playing the individual demos from the console. The movie versions can be played with "playdemo movie/level" and the first-person ones with "playdemo firstper/level". (2.4) Making GLQuake work with the Mission Pack Mission Pack #1 as released has a small but crucial bug that will cause the game to crash under GLQuake if certain combinations of maps are loaded in the same session. For example, if you try to play both Hip2M1 and Hip2M4, or Hip2M1 and Hip3M3, then GLQuake will crash with a texture size error. This is due to a clash of names between textures of different sizes in the maps provided in the Mission Pack. The bug prevents you from playing through the Mission Pack under GLQuake in a single session, or from playing our movie all the way through. The problem is easily fixed by renaming a couple of textures. If you use Windows/DOS you need simply to run the SdSfixGL.exe program included in the download; this will patch your Hipnotic PAK0.PAK appropriately. (SdS.bat will do this for you, DOS and Windows users.) Linux users should make the SdSfixGL program included for them executable with "chmod a+x SdSfixGL", and then run it. An executable for Mac users should be available very soon after release - check the version history at the bottom of the SdS download page to see if it arrived since this text file was written. For other platforms (and for Macintosh users until we've the Mac version), C source for this program is available on the SdS download page if you wish to make the same fix yourself (either by compiling the patching program, or performing the same fix with a hex editor or with standard PAK and BSP manipulation utilities.) (3) More details about the movie (3.1) Timing Just a quick explanation of why we say we completed Scourge in 11:02. We recorded every demo separately and then connected them together, adding the times for the three episodes. The final map, Armagon's Lair, does not display an intermission screen, so we took the start of the final cutscene to time the level. (3.2) How the run was recorded We recorded each demo separately, on skill 3 (Nightmare), of course without any cheating. To start with the correct stats we ended the previous level with, we used a QuakeC patch that allowed us to select the statistics we started with. We recorded Scourge as one big run because Scourge was made to be played each episode in a row, and not as separate levels. There are no weapons in the higher levels, because you should have them already from previous ones. And we did it by connecting single demos together because the final product is a lot more interesting that way and entertaining, and we could include some very cool tricks that we couldn't do had we recorded it in one sitting. The demos resulting from these efforts are called "1st-person versions" elsewhere in this document. They are unaltered recordings, modulo the obvious editing needed to make them play inside the menu interface. (3.3) How the run was made into a movie When we were done with recording we tried to make things more enter- taining by turning the run into a movie. This involved quite a lot of post-processing on the demos although we've tried to keep to the spirit of the original recordings. (Of course, we also added entirely new scripted sequences that were not based on any real gameplay at the start and end of the movie.) The following list is intended to help the viewer differentiate between what was originally recorded, and what was added as a post-production effect for the movie version. If in doubt, you can always watch the first-person demos to see how the demos looked originally. These effects were added to most/all movie demos: Refilming using an external camera. Viewable weapons DME player models. Addition of and changes to existing pallette fades, printed messages. New sound effects and vocals. Onscreen countdown. Bleeding effects for player damage, etc. Special production changes on particular demos: Hip2M2, Hip3M1, Hip3M4: flashing of an important trigger. Hip2M2: Shaman shambler given new skin. Hip3M1: George shambler given new skin. Hip3M3: Player given a new wetsuit skin. HipDM1: Player model becomes a sheep. (c: Hip3M4: Larger eyes model and other fiddling used during RoS power-up. HipEnd: Various entities added to show launch of Armagon device. Player resurrection replaced with bouncing head gib. (4) Statistics -------------------------------------------------------------------- Level Map Time Running Filming -------------------------------------------------------------------- Command HQ START Anthony The Pumping Station HIP1M1 0:26 Gunnar Anthony Storage Facility HIP1M2 0:30 Gunnar Stefan The Lost Mine HIP1M3 1:19 Nolan Nolan Research Facility HIP1M4 1:05 Yonatan Anthony -------------------------------------------------------------------- Episode 1 - Fortress of the Sped 3:20 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Ancient Realms HIP2M1 0:33 Yonatan Stefan The Black Cathedral HIP2M2 0:37 Nolan Nolan The Catacombs HIP2M3 0:52 Nolan Nolan The Crypt HIP2M4 0:47 Yonatan Chris Mortum's Keep HIP2M5 0:39 Yonatan Yonatan -------------------------------------------------------------------- Episode 2 - Da mean run of Darkness 3:28 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Tur Torment HIP3M1 0:57 Yonatan Stefan Pandemonium HIP3M2 0:25 Yonatan Stefan Limbo HIP3M3 0:49 Stefan Stefan The Edge of Oblivion HIPDM1 0:20 Simon Evan The Gauntlet HIP3M4 1:27 Matthias Matthias -------------------------------------------------------------------- Episode 3 - The Swift 3:58 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Armagon's Lair HIPEND (0:28) Matthias Anthony faster ending HIPEND 0:16 Matthias Anthony -------------------------------------------------------------------- Scourge done Slick 11:02 -------------------------------------------------------------------- (5) Credits and contact info (5.1) Credits Scourge done Slick was in production for many months - it started out in September of 1997 and took us more than half a year to com- plete. During that time, a lot of people have contributed various amounts of work to it. Here we try to list them all: Anthony Bailey http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~baileya/ co-ordination, filming, programming+editing Matthias Belz running, filming Daemion Carr http://catnap.telefragged.com/ graphics, sounds Yonatan Donner http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/4704/ running, filming Joachim Feske Medic and Voiceover voices Michael Hildemann Commander voice Jason (McClane) Holtslander http://diehard.dukeworld.com/ (Creative Creations Makers of DIE HARD-TC for Duke Nukem 3D) Marine voice Chris Longden filming Peter Markstrom running Gunnar Andre Mo http://www.planetquake.com/sda/ running Simon Nordberg running Anthony Oetzmann http://www.scene.org/phd/ head sound engineer, Enforcer voice Nolan Pflug http://www.planetquake.com/sda/ running, filming, programming+editing Stefan Schwoon running, filming, programming+editing Martina Streibel Computer voice Gerald Tan http://www.planetquake.com/sda/ story contributions, sounds Evan Wagner http://www.planetunreal.com/nali/ filming Kenneth Yeung modelling Special thanks go out to: Fredrik Arvidsson for his ideas, especially the one of skipping the trigger in hip2m2 which saved a lot of time Chas and Jeffrey Clark for their help when the project started Patrick Cupka for the FTP server Mr Flewin for story ideas and puns Robert Forsythe for additional graphics work Jop for the console background Muse Kastanovich for some music Ilkka Kurkela and Justin Fleck for some special demos Levelord and ParadoX for some special vocals Will Marsh for compiling Stefan's SdSfixGL Brian Napier and Scott Kevill for help with MacQuake stuff Greg Olson for ideas and bits of refilming Istvan Pataki for the mailing list early on Thomas Pilger for contributing some sounds The PlanetQuake team for hosting and support Zoid for his help with in avoiding the dreaded Cache_Alloc bug Some of the sounds used in SdS are the copyright of other people, who we've briefly "sampled" in making this movie. Some of the graphics work is also based on previous public-domain stuff or material from other related games (hey, it's a free plug, people!) In an effort to give credit where credit is due, here's a list of the sources we used. (Sometimes the source was a fairly anonymous sample on the web, so the details may be lacking, but at least we've made an effort to credit the original artists.) The player-with-weapon models are all modifications of original excellent work by Razor Entertainment for their DeathMatch Essentials Quake modification. Their previous URL seems dead, and we haven't heard from them since they left that site, but you can still get their great Deathmatch Essentials mod from the Quake C Archives. The QdQ skin is a modification of one originally made for us by nop of Quake graphics art collective CO2. The wetsuit skins use that on the Hipnotic wetsuit. Looks like Hipnotic intended the player to actually wear the wetsuit in the game but never implemented it? The Commander skin was originally based on the "trooper.pcx" from a QW Skin pack. The Medic skin was based on that of the TeamFortress medic. The sheep model and skin are based on those found in Raven Software's "Hexen II", and the accompanying sound effect is also taken from that source. The Strogg skull emblem and sound effects that accompany it are of course taken from id Software's "Quake 2". The alarm sound effect used in Hip1M1 is also based on an id Software sound effect. The cheesy jingle music for the QdQ ad in HipStart is taken from the theme music to the BBC TV children's programme "Mr Ben". The "Raiders of the Lost Ark" music used in Hip1M3 of course comes from the theme to that film. George's theme music (Hip3M1) is based on a recording of "Colonel Bogey" by some obscure tuba quartet. The sound effects used to signal a rocket-jump and a grenade-jump are both based on samples from "Star Trek: TNG". The sound effect used to signal a grenade-explosion jump off of a nearby monster comes from the TV show "Mr Bean". The sound effect used when we collect cells in Episode 3 is a sample of "The Power" by Snap. The Commander's "Doh!" at the end of the movie intro is of course courtesy of Homer Simpson from "The Simpsons". (5.2) Utilities used The utilities we used included: LMPC by Uwe Girlich for decompiling & recompiling demos so we could use the convenient LS format. Also Uwe's DEM specs were very useful for us in creating our own tools. His other utility DemCut came in handy too. ReMaic by Anthony Bailey to refilm the demos from a third-person perspective. Some in-house utilities; SoAstats , DemTool , DemoRelise (unreleased) to make demos that fit into a continuous run, and Demix , Many more self-made scripts and small programs to create the special sequences and to perform editing jobs. Various other programs to create sprites, models, etc, such as PaintShop Pro for skinning, qME and MedDLe for checking out models, Windows Sound Recorder for the more primitive WAVs, AdQuEdit and QPed for PAKing, QuArK along with wqbsp, arghlite and rvis for making the sds_menu.map, plain old QCC and ProQCC for Quake-C compiling, Perl and Turbo Pascal for the aforementioned scripting and editing hacks. Tony Oetzmann used a lot of nice stuff for his sound processing... "For vocals - Mics - Neumann CMV 563 M7 & TLM 171s, AKG C414, Electrovoice RE-27 and Sennheiser MKH40 Consoles - NEVE 8102 console to record to a Tascam MK-30 DAT (Computer and parts of Medic and Voiceover) and a Focusright Preamp to Sony DAT recorder (Commander) Raw editing done on Protools24 4.1.1. All post-production done on Soundforge 4.0. I know only the result counts but I wanted to mention the good mics, preamps and DAT recorders, because it does make a difference, even at a terribly low sample rate such as 11kHz and measly 8 bit sample resolution. (We're sorry, Tony. We promise Q2 will treat you better! - Anthony) Soundcard AD converters just plain SUCK if it's not at least an Audiomedia III. The samples were recorded at 44.1 kHz without compression. The resulting vocals and other fx you hear are heavily edited to suit the loud sounds you find in Quake. NiN sure knew what they were doing. For these kind of audio services please contact us at aronchce@sp.zrz.tu-berlin.de or jfeske@metronet.de" (5.3) Contact info For QdQ news and future projects check our page at At the time of writing, the next should be: "Quake done 100% Quick lite" (Qd100Qlite), a version of the Qd100Q run on Skill 0, "Quake done double Quick" (QddQ), a two-player cooperative run through Quake on Skill 3, and eventually, once the physics finally stabilise, "Quake2 done Quick too" (Q2dQ2) To see more amazing single level speed runs of a wide variety of maps, visit the Speed Demos Archive at . For questions and comments (even if you just want to say you liked the demo), email . For general comments to QdQ, email . Enjoy Scourge done Slick! July 1998