Update time! Over the past few months, I played a ton of Q2, upgraded my home computer to a Core 2 Duo 3.0ghz after a devastating mobo failure, tried to get some matches played for NAiL, expanded my instagib team a bit, and I worked on some little side projects for fun.
By projects, I mean that I have a new quake 2 map that I finished last week available on the Maps page, and a cool little .pak file with bright .tga skins for the stock q2 armor models that make spotting the item from a distance a no-brainer in deathmatch games.
Here's a couple shots of the Armor Skins, and you can get the pak file here.
The map that I made is called wddm05 - Vale of the Eldar, and it is a Quake 1 inspired gothic themed map with some textures from the original game and a weapon loadout for small deathmatch games and very difficult duels. You can check the details and screenshots on the maps page of the site, and you can also download it from there or from here. It is available to be played on Tastyspleen.net's Mutant and Railz servers, and my own IRTDM servers, and for a limitted time it is on the TS500 server 24/7 for testing.
In other news, Q2C clan founder LeRay is back from a year long sabbatical and getting back into Quake 2 and mapping for it! His return can be celebrated at the Q2 Cafe' with the rest of our ecstatic membership, here.
Welcome back bro! We've missed you!
- WhirlingDervish
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- Nov. 12,2008 -
Long time since an update, but better late than never. In the past months, I went hunting and fishing whenever I could, and I put some effort into furthering the Quake 2 community with the rest of my spare time. I have done a lot of work to streamline, expand and update the website I made for my Instagib team (the Immortal Reapers), I helped set up some ITDM servers to fill the vacuum caused by the untimely death of Monsterkill.org, and I've been posting around and attempting to gauge the level of interest in holding a second North American Insta League some time during this winter. Here's the skinny on that:
So far the proposed layout for NAiL Season 2 is similar to that of last year's with the exception that it will probably be a 2v2 tournament instead of a 3v3, for the sake of getting matches done quickly and making communication between and amongst the teams a lot easier.
Depending on the number of teams that enter, it will probably consist of multiple divisions playing round robin (best 2 of 3) games to determine division leaders. These leading teams will go on to the quarter/semi/finals brackets to play 3 out of 5 games for a win and advancement towards the title. Matches will probably be played on Tastyspleen's NAiL or Railz-tdm servers, and I will also be providing IRTDM2 with a config set up for the tournament matches.
If you have any suggestions or comments, or you'd like to express your interest in making a team for this league, you can leave me and the team a message at the Tastyspleen.net forums, contact |iR|Dervish one of many q2 related IRC channels, or leave a shout-out here.
I hope to hear from you, and that you'll have the time to join us to make this league as successful and even more enjoyable than the first North American Insta League that was held last winter.
- WhirlingDervish
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- May. 29,2008 -
Well, lately I've been really busy at work as the season moves towards
summer, but I've been quakin nonetheless, and fiddling with some little
projects on the side. The tournaments keep on rolling and I keep on
playing one of the best FPS games ever made.
The North American Insta League finished up about a month back, with
Team Devine taking 1st place in epic style with a last second, 1 frag win
over Team Smurf.
Currently, I am participating in a 1v1 Instagib Tournament hosted
by Monsterkill.org which will definitely help improve my game,
and build up the rest of the members of the community with practice and
experiences that they would not have had any other way.
You can check the scores out here, and if you happen to see Sinner.dC,
remind him that he has done a great job with the scheduling and with
designing the tournament's website.
- WhirlingDervish
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- Feb. 26,2008 -
Update time! Not much has gone down in the past couple months other
than my 25th birthday and a lot of quaking. My instagib team |iR| has
been playing in the North American Instagib League since January and
after most of the round robin/division play we're currently holding the
5th place position in the NAiL team stats.
I've also done a little bit of skinning for Quake 2's v_wep models, and
the .pak I made has drastically increased player visibility for me. I made
each weapon show up a different bright color, and grouped them according to the
colors to display the weapon's style of damage to ease the process of determining
my opponent's capabilities on the fly.. All of the explosive weapons are shades of
red/magenta, the single shot hitscan weapons are blues, the bullet spraying weapons
are orange/yellow and the energy weapons are a ridiculous shade of bright green.
In addition to these changes I made super bright skins for the rocket and grenade
models so you can't fail to avoid them.
You can download the bright weapons .pak here.
In other news, I've secured a hosted spot over at Tastyspleen.net for the new
Immortal Reapers website, that I'll be slowly putting together in the coming months.
There's not much there at the moment, but here's the link:
Immortal Reapers
- WhirlingDervish
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- Dec. 5,2007 -
Well, as the holidays have come around, I've been really busy, but
the Quaking continues unabated. My friends Railwolf{sYn} and |iR|Cygnus
have been working together, and with a bit of help on my part, and hosting
provided by the awesome folks over at Tastyspleen.net, to bring new
life to the Instagib Quake 2 community in North America, which had been
rather slow lately and needed a revival badly.
The results of these efforts have been a brand spankin new Instagib League,
that will be kicking off after the New Year, and the Insta500 Series: an
endurance competition that will be taking place over multiple events, during
which players will compete to see who hits 500 frags first, and be rewarded with
points towards the championship for their performance and dedication.
Feel free to join up or stop by the site to see what's going on.
Here's the links:
NAiL Website
NAiL Forum
You can also visit with us and contact league admins through IRC.
The Channel is #NAiL, and the server is irc.Enterthegame.com
- WhirlingDervish
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- Sept. 7,2007 -
Alright, as promised, I managed to get some work done mapping, and
the result is a fancy new map for everyone to play with! It's called
Wddm07 : Equilibrium, and it is intended for use in regular FFA deathmatch,
TDM, and Dueling mods. You can check it out, on the Maps page, and you can
play it on a few servers at Tastyspleen.net, as soon as the admins see fit
update the mymap listings.
Enjoy!
- WhirlingDervish
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- Aug 21,2007 -
Things at work are starting to lighten up a bit, and I've had a bit
more free time now that we're almost finished moving from one building
to another, so I've started work on a couple of small maps.
Hopefully I'll have something worth posting on the work in progress
page in a few days.
In other news, I'll be playing in the North American Duel League over the
course of the next month. It's a dueling tournament for Quake 2, with many
of the best TDM players left in the game. Although I have no chance of placing
or winning in this tournament, I feel that it will be very fun and that it will
help my game considerably.
You can check out the lineups and the current stats here.
I joined up to enjoy the rare opportunity to play so many awesome players and
learn from it. Hopefully other lesser skilled TDM players (like me) will see
that it really is a great chance to better themselves and find the time to
participate in future leagues and tournaments for Quake 2.
That's all for now. Happy Fragging!
- WhirlingDervish
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- June 29,2007 -
Well, I've been kinda swamped at work over this past month or so,
and the construction of a new patio in my backyard took quite a bit
of time, but I'm still around and playing Quake 2 as often as I can.
I figured it was about time for an update, so I added some of the custom
.pak files that I've been making lately to the "Other Projects" section
of the depository. They include a .pak full of custom weapon/item sounds,
and one that contains a custom model to replace the stock explosion model
that gets rendered every time a grenade or rocket goes off.
I have a few maps on the back burner right now, and I plan on getting them
closer to finished after my job gets a bit less busy in the months following
the 4th of July Holiday. These ones are entirely new creations and I haven't
had the chance to add them to the work in progress section yet, so keep your
eyes peeled for updates over the next couple of weeks. Hopefully I'll have time
to showcase them a bit, if I can't find the time to finish them outright.
Also, I've been playing recently, with the great bunch of guys in the insta-gib
clan: Immortal Reapers (|iR|) We've been recruiting and practicing a bit lately, and
the team is really coming together. If you see any of us around on the servers,
watch out for incoming slugs!
That's all for now, so go check out the new .pak files and go about your business.
- WhirlingDervish
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- April 30,2007 -
I managed to register an IRC channel for Clan Q2C late last week
so I thought that I should put the word out that it's up and running.
It's meant for general chatting and such, but you'll often find
at least one knowledgeable mapper in there.. I figured it would
help us communicate more effectively as a group if we could do so
reliably and in real-time.
If you don't have an IRC client already, I suggest one of these.
MIRC
IceChat
Once you're set up, you just need to enter the server and channel info:
The Server is "irc.enterthegame.com:6667"
The Channel is "#Q2C"
You can find me idling in there almost every day of the week, although
I may be a few minutes in responding when I'm away from my desk.
You can also find me in the channel: #tastyspleen
- WhirlingDervish
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- April 25,2007 -
Well, now that I'm back from my vacation, I've managed to find
some time to do another update on the website. Luckily,
the Quake 2 Cafe's 5th Mapping contest is now over, and I
can show you my entry, which received 2nd place.
The Map is called Wddm06: Down and Dirty, and I think it was
quite a success. It's intended for regular DM, and it uses
only stock textures and resources so the download is rather
small for one of my maps.
You can check out the screenshots and download it in the
Maps section of the website. Enjoy!
- WhirlingDervish
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- March 09,2007 -
I did some work updating the website today... I added some
links on the links page for Q2scene.net, Clan BTF, Backshooters,
R1CH.net, and the EGL homepage. In addition to these new links,
I put a few entries on the "Other Projects" page for some new .pak
files and other Quake 2 related stuff.
Peace.
- WhirlingDervish
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- March 01,2007 -
I made a new map this week after I was done with my entry
for the Quake 2 Cafe's 5th Mapping Contest. I was still
in the mood to see what I could do with the stock textures,
so I cranked out a simple insta-gib rail map, that uses
the original q2 textures and env, and looks really clean.
The map is called wdrail04: Insta Arena and you can check it
out in the maps section of the site. I took some screenshots,
and put up a download link for it this morning.
Hope you like it!
- WhirlingDervish
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- February 06,2007 -
Well, it's been a bit since my last update, and I'm sure
it looks like I've been lazy lately, but the truth is
I've been working on a map in secret! Oh Noes!
Actually, it's hush-hush because I'm going to enter it
into the Quake 2 Cafe's 5th Mapping Contest.
The contest is for Quake 2 mappers of all skill levels
to make some really nice tribute maps for Quake 2's
10th anniversary, using only the stock resources and textures
that came packaged with the game when it was released.
Were hoping to get a nice offering of multiplayer, deathmatch
maps that show off the nitty gritty goodness of Q2 as it was
meant to be played.
You can check out the contest info, peruse the maps from previous
contests and chat with the awesome guys in the Quake 2 mapping
community, at the Quake 2 Cafe':
Here
- WhirlingDervish
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- January 11,2007 -
I made a DM version of my latest map. You can find
a link to it on the "Maps" page, with the link for wdrail03.
It came out pretty cool, and it should work nicely for
small TDM games and such.
Enjoy!
- WhirlingDervish
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- January 9,2007 -
Well, I finished another map this week.. It's another rail
map, this time with a bit more to it. I spent some time
looking at traditional japanese architecture and accoutrements
on the internet and I made quite a few little sketches to insure
that I knew what I wanted when I started mapping in QuArK.
I think the effort paid off, since the map is very nice to look at,
and it seems to play fairly smoothly too.
You can check out the finished product in the maps section,
it's called wdrail03: Shinto Shrine.. Download it, try it out..
Frag your friends.. Send me any commments or bugs you come
up with.
Keep your eyes peeled for the DM version, which I'll be working
on this week.
- WhirlingDervish
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- January 4,2007 -
Lately, I've gotten requests for information on mapping from
people that I've talked to in-game, so I thought it might be
useful to post some links to the files and programs that
you would need to make a custom map for Quake 2.
You can find these in the Links section of my site,
near the bottom of the page.
Hopefully this should ease some of the difficulty of finding
working links to Quake 2 related files on the internet nowadays.
I also made a short tutorial for installing and setting up Quark
for use with Quake 2. It's very basic, but it will get you from
installing all the way through making your first test map.
...before I forget... Happy New Year!
- WhirlingDervish
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- December 14,2006 -
The other day, I finished my newest quake 2 map, so today
I added an entry in the maps section of the site.
The map is called Wdrail02: Odin's Altar, and it is
meant for Insta-Gib rails. I think it came out very
nicely for the short amount of time that I threw at it.
Check it out, and feel free to email me any comments.
- WhirlingDervish
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- December 8,2006 -
I've been putting in some time to learn how to effectively use
Nem's Terrain Generator to make some more natural looking
landscaping in a rail map that I've nearly completed.
You can check out this awesome utility at Nem's website
(along with many other very useful mapping utilities)
Terrain Generator Homepage
I put together an entry for the new map(Wdrail02), in with
the other maps I've got in the works, while I've been
waiting for the vis build to finish. The screenshots came
out pretty decent considering they are fullbright...
I'll be done with the map very soon, but until then,
you'll have to settle for the screenshots!
I've also added a couple links in the appropriate section,
including one to Monsterkill.org and one to my Xfire
Profile, that should give you a pretty good idea of when
I'm around and playing Q2.
Hope to see you in the game!
- WhirlingDervish
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- November 10,2006 -
Well, I've been working on Wddm04 a bit lately, and I think
I'm starting to really get a good feel for where this level
is going to end up. I've been trimming some pathways out and
experimenting with some architecture around the sides of the
tower. I really like the results I've been getting when I do
preliminary builds on this, so I thought I'd post some updated
screenshots for your viewing pleasure.
If you get a chance, drop by the works in progress page
and take a look! Enjoy!
- WhirlingDervish
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- October 30,2006 -
Been pretty busy at work lately, and even more so at home,
but I managed to find a bit of time and I've been working
away on my maps in progress, and I even started another after
a little brainstorming and sketching that I accomplished while
poised over the shitter about 2 weeks ago.
I added a little blurb and some screens for my most recent map
in progress to the appropriate section of the depository, and
I'm working on putting somethin together for one of my other maps
too. I just love showing them off, before they're even finished,
and I'll probably have it up in a day or two.
Anyways, Happy Halloween to all those pagan bastards out there who
celebrate it like I do! I hope you all have a safe and enjoyable
(and ghoulishly inebriated) time...
- WhirlingDervish
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- September 15,2006 -
I got an urge the other day, to make a new map, that was unlike
anything I'd tried to do before. I finished it up today, and
added a corresponding entry to the maps page for it. The new map,
called Wdrail01, was designed with railz-only insta-gib in mind
so it's nice and simple and easy on the old vid card. I am quite
pleased with this map, and I'm really glad for the opportunity
to make some jump pads, since few of my other map ideas meshed well
with them. Check it out, download it, tell me whatcha think!
Hopefully, it will find it's way onto some rails servers and it'll
get some good use. When/If this happens, I'll post the IP's of the
servers you can find it on... Cya around!
- WhirlingDervish
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- September 6,2006 -
Well, today I made up a new section of the Depository and added some
content. The Other Projects section will include any other stuff I
happen to make that goes with Quake 2, other than maps. This includes
skins, textures, prefabs, models, .pak files, and anything else
I can't think of at the moment. For now, I put up some pics and
a link to my newest HUD pak, which has gone over well with almost
everyone who's seen it. I hope you enjoy this new installment, and
I'd like to thank you for stopping by! Happy Fragging!
- WhirlingDervish
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- August 23,2006 -
This morning I slapped together some screenshots of my highest priority work
in progress and updated the "In Progress" page with descriptions and stats.
This project will probably be the third map that I'll be releasing to the
public and I'm hoping that it will really be as good as I planned.
Check out the updated section and see what you think!
To send me suggestions and constructive criticism on the new map that
I'm working on, or if you want to check out the map yourself, you
can email me here and I'll do my best to resond in a timely fashion.
Peace brothers!
- WhirlingDervish
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- August 14,2006 -
Today, I got the maps page uploaded and running, although it is far from finished.
It contains one entry so far, that represents WDDM01, my first map.
Hopefully, I'll have another one in there by the end of the day.
Before I get all carried away and forget, I'd like to thank Quadz, of TASTYSPLEEN.NET
for everything, from the awesome Quake 2 servers to the quirky comments that keep me
in my place on the forums. Thank you sir, for your years of service to this community,
for your willingness to host clan/player sites, and for your refreshing sense of humor
in this world of pushy, obnoxious people. You keep this game kicking with sheer force
of will and I wish you the best in life, for you deserve it, above all others.
- WhirlingDervish
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- August 11,2006 -
Well, I've had a tiny bit of time today at work, so I spent it working on collecting up some links
for the links page. I'm still resizing all the graphics but at least the links work so far.
I'll be making pages for the Maps and Works in Progress sections over the next week so
make sure you drop by every so often and check for updates. In the meantime, feel free to email
me any suggestions or comments here, and I might just get back to you...
ROFL! See you around the net!
- WhirlingDervish
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- August 10, 2006 -
Welcome to The Dervish Depository!
This site was created for the purpose of showcasing my maps and projects, and providing
information and links to anyone who's interested in mapping for Quake 2 or just being
involved in the ever thriving Quake 2 Community! I hope you find this little site to
your liking and that you come away from it with a greater understanding of the game,
and an appreciation for all of the time that the good people of the world-wide Quake
community put in, to maintain a level of interest and a steady influx of new content.
Our game will live strong as long as there are dedicated individuals left who are willing
to put forth their own blood, sweat and tears, to keep it novel and enjoyable.
I, for one, am entirely willing to give my all to this community and I must say that
after all these years, I'm still in love with Quake 2, so I'll be working 'round the
clock to keep her going!
- WhirlingDervish
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