I've noticed people ask about the mod on Youtube and in the forums, but I think the .plan section is being completely overlooked.  Anyone that's not part of the internal beta test crew that's wanting to know what's going on in the development of Gen can do so by clicking on my .plan.  To get to it just go to the main website:  www.wireheadstudios.org then look at the .plan section on the left side of the page.  Click my name and you'll find a wealth of information on Gen's development progress.  If you have questions or concerns that Gen is not progressing or is somehow abandoned, please, read the .plan to see where we stand with things.

I have my Generations Arena server in the list on the site, but occasionally my IP address changes.  After some network hardware changes, this server is now visible on Qtracker, so anyone wishing to play .99f should be able to see it under the Internet Games section of Quake 3 Arena.  You'll want to play on The Phoenix Nest.  The Beta Test server is for internal beta testing only and is passworded to avoid connection issues.

In addition, I host the Clan MMA Quake 2 Rocket Arena 2 server.  The server is password protected to keep the games cheater free and friendly, and is also now visible on Qtracker.  The password is available on request to any forum members.  Just send me a PM if you're interested.

If you haven't seen it already, there's a new game announced at E3 called Quake Champions.  Video is here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sa-6fQyNkZo&feature=youtu.be

On the outside it's pretty obvious that it's going to be a high definition Quake 3 reboot of some sort, complete with Ranger and Visor already present.  I already know what some people are going to ask, and the answer at this time has to be "No".  Wirehead currently has no plans nor inclination to look at switching over to Quake Champions for Generations Arena.  Why?  There are several reasons.

First, not enough is known about the game.  We've seen some characters and a few weapons.  We have not seen all minimum characters necessary to round out the Generations set.  Doom, Sarge, and Grunt would have to be present, and our familiar characters so far are only Visor and a Quakeguy.  Due to intellectual property concerns, these characters would have to be present in able to create their character classes properly.

Second, there's no guarantee the game will even support mods or private servers.  If it can't be modded then it can't be modded.  Something like Snapmap wouldn't be enough.  It would require full mod support that's been present in previous Id titles.  Private server support would also be a must, as there's no guarantee Id or Bethesda would host mods.  There's no point in modding if people don't have servers to play on.

Third, Wirehead only has firm permission to create Generations Arena for Quake 3 Arena.  We do not know if such permission would extend to another game or if we would have to go through the entire contact process again with Id.  Besides that, it may be entirely possible that Quake Champions ends up with a Generations-ish weapon set for various characters, which would defeat the purpose of us trying such a thing anyway.

Lastly, our team has shrunk to pretty much myself and a few beta testers.  We would need to rebuild a full studio-sized team to undertake work on just the media assets alone, not to mention the amount of program code that would need to be rewritten assuming that everything else fell into place.  There's no way I could do this by myself, and assembling a new team would be difficult.

As it stands, Generations Arena will continue development for Q3A.  It will be completed for Q3A.  Beyond that I cannot say anything more than I already have until more is learned, though discussion, as always, is welcome.

The server is up and running again.  The power supply was failing and needed replacing after, oh, about a decade of constant use, and I decided to go ahead and transfer the rest of the guts to an updated and more efficient case.  It's quieter, cooler, and barring any more cranky old hardware issues, should be up and running for good.

The Wirehead Generations server is temporarily down again as it needs to have some hardware swapped out.  I should have it back up in a few days.

I've replaced the failing machine, and the server is back up and running on a faster computer.  Hopefully this is the last time for a while that I have to replace the server hardware.  I'd rather be coding! 

The machine I'm using for the Wirehead .99f server has become severely unstable.  I have it shut down temporarily as it keeps crashing at random.  I'll be replacing it with another machine fairly soon.  Please be patient until then.  I'll post when the new and improved server machine is up and running.

Sometimes a picture is worth more than any number of words, and while it's hard to show visually all the code changes going on we can show off a little bit of what we've been working on.  For 1.0, Generations will be offering full support for the Team Arena mission pack.  To run Generations Arena in Team Arena mode, it will require a legal copy of the Team Arena mission pack.  However, if you do not own the Team Arena mission pack you will still be able to play Generations Arena in its normal mode.  You do not need Team Arena to play Generations Arena as normal, only to play Generations Arena in Team Arena mode.  

That being said, here's a little taste of what's on the way.




There's more where that came from:
http://www.wireheadstudios.org/gallery/TeaserShots2

And how about some video to top it all off?  Keep in mind these are test footage - and the only gameplay video I've personally recorded to date.  I'm not a cinematographer.

Test Video 1
Test Video 2

The first video is a game play test of the Heavy Chaingun and 1-Flag CTF mode for Team Arena.  Note that the Tesla Mine is not yet in place in that video.  You'll notice that Persistent Techs are in use in this video, as well as some classic sounds and gib effects.  You'll also see some fully-animated weapons from first-person view, and to a lesser extent, third-person.

The second video highlights the visuals on the Heavy Chaingun and Ion Gun.  Once again, the Tesla Mine has not been introduced at this point.

Now as for the weapons, here's a description of each.

Heavy Chaingun:  Note that the classic Doom Chaingun was referred to as Heavy Chaingun in .99f and prior.  That weapon is now just referred to as "Chaingun" since that was the classic name, and while not fired in the first video, you can see the item is in place on the Railgun spawn.  The Heavy Chaingun is Doom's answer to the Team Arena Chaingun, and fires 3 pellets per shot, putting it on part damage-wise with the Team Arena weapon.  It also has that nice beefy shotgun sound to it.

Ion Gun:  It's basically a long-range ion shotgun.  It fires 3 unstable plasma balls that inflict moderate damage at close range.  After about half a second of flight, they explode into ion spikes that travel much faster and overall inflict much greater damage than they do in ball form.  This is Doom's answer to the Team Arena nailgun.

Tesla Mine:  Not shown in the video, but present in the image gallery, these are hand-thrown dynamos that adhere to any surface and lash out with a steady stream of electrical energy at any unfortunate foe that wanders too close to them.  They'll attack and keep attacking until whatever they're zapping moves out of range or is reduced to a pile of steaming gibs, or the mine itself is destroyed.  An individual Tesla Mine isn't much of a threat.  Several clustered together are absolutely lethal.  Mines can be shot and blown up, and will explode after a short time as with other proximity-based weapons.  They do not deal much explosive damage, but you can attach them to other players and like another electricity-based weapon in Generations, they don't mix well with water.

In addition to the Doom Warriors, the other three original Generations will be receiving new weapons for use in Team Arena.  What those will be I won't say right now, but they're in the works and some of them may be very familiar once you see them.  All game play modes for Team Arena will be supported - Capture the Flag, 1 Flag, Harvester, and Overload all work.  The Kamikaze and Invulnerability powerups function as expected, and the ability to enable either Persistent Powerups or Persistent CTF techs adds even more depth and chaos to the game play.

Take a peek and let us know what you think!

We appreciate that people like the work we've done on our weapon models.  Unfortunately, some people have been taking this a bit too far and exporting these models to other projects.  That's fine if someone does this for their personal use, but it is not fine to distribute our content in this manner.  We've encountered several examples of this happening with other projects for Quake 2 in the past.  We were just recently informed of a .pk3 file made for GZDoom using our Doom weapons.  We take pride in our work, and while we would like to share our work inside the games they were based around, the current models in the .99f build are in an incomplete format and are not ready to be shared in this manner.  Please do not use our models outside of our project without our explicit permission.  This is in the EULA, and unfortunately we do have to uphold our copyright to our creative works.

Normally we try to directly contact the person in question as most people are just like us - fans of the games that just want to do something cool with it - and ask them in a polite manner to not use our content and explain why.  For the most part, we've had a great deal of success doing this.  Most people don't understand how copyright works, or they're new to modding and don't understand that using someone else's material in your own project without asking is not the way to go, and this provides us an opportunity to educate the modder.  We don't want to see someone start a project just to get shut down as happened with the original Generations for Quake 2, the Reborn mod for Quake 3, and others that have run seriously afoul of copyright law.  Unfortunately, in the case of the Doom models as noted above, there was no way to contact the user, only the host provider, and that only through a DMCA form.  We do not like having to do this, but when someone misuses our creative works without our permission and without even giving us credit for having made the models, there's little alternative.  We work hard to make Generations what it is, and it is rather upsetting to see someone else take our hard work and pass it off as their own.  We try to be helpful to other modders as we're all gamers at heart, but we do have to watch out for our own stuff.

So please... if you want to see our weapon models in another game, be patient!.  We have animated versions of the weapons and improved versions of some that are far superior to what's been released in the .99f beta.  Some time after Generations 1.0 is final, we most likely will grant permission for general use.  Until that time comes, we must insist that our models and textures not be used for any purpose outside of playing Generations Arena.  We're not out to get anyone here, especially aspiring modders.  We've been on the wrong side of copyright and intellectual property law before, and learned a long time ago how it works and how to do things the right way.  If you have any questions about this, please do not hesitate to contact us.

It seems the computer I'm using for Wirehead's Generations server is unstable and keeps freezing up.  I'm not sure if this is from hardware or a software problem, but I'm working on fixing it.  I'll have the server back up once I know the computer is stable, or if it won't stay stable, after it's been replaced.  Thanks go to MadTux for bringing the problem to my attention.