General Information

You live in (city & country)?

Bristol, UK

Your birthdate (or age)?

27/08/1983 (a Saturday)

Your occupation/job/studies?

Currently none of the above.

Your hobbies?

Playing board games, modding for Quake, writing stories, and (almost) anything to do with computers.

Your email/icq/mirc/homepage?

E-mail: shrapnel.city@gmail.com IRC: I can usually be found in #darkplaces and #qc on Anynet, #xhale on ETG, and #qdq on QuakeNet

Your music taste?

Very varied. I've been known to admit liking Linkin Park, but that's as much as I'll say...

Anything you want to add here (about yourself)?

I'm not built to be a speedrunner, as you can see from my photo...

Quake-related Information

Your nickname (story behind it)?

[]Lardarse While trying to decide on a name for my friend's forum about 6 years ago, I mentioned Fatty, which he changed to Lardass, and then I changed to Lardarse. It's been hanging around me for that long... The [] was added about a year and a half ago because I was clanless at the time. Since then, I've jonied a clan, but I still prefer to wear the [] instead of my clan tag. When I am doing any official clan stuff, I can be seen wearing the name <X>it-Wound - because that's what I'm usually full of after a match.

Your Quake config (key bindings, etc.)?

I try to make my controls the same for all FPS games that I play: Moving: WASD Mouse buttons: Fire / Swim Up (Alt-Fire for games that have it, Zoom in Quake 3, Air jets in Tribes) / Jump Mouse wheel: cycle Shift: Walk (not that I need to do this much while speedrunning...)

Size of Quake directory on your HD?

Which one? I have Quake installed 4 times, because often need to test things with different engines. In order, they are 103MB, 204MB, 264MB, and 2.39GB

Your computer (processor/videocard etc.)?

P4 2.8GHz, 1GB Ram (PC3200), XFX 6600GT (128MB Ram), Micro$oft Wheel Mouse Optical, and a shitty 19" monitor that keeps fritzing on me...

Quake settings (resolution, version etc.)?

JoeQuake 0.15 (Build 1146), 1024x768, graphics settings very high, fov 95, sv_aim 0.99, r_wateralpha 0.4

First contact to speedrunning (when, how etc.)?

Seeing QdQwav and tRR on own-age.com

First speedrunning demo?

ant_355 ER. Looking back at it, it's almost har to believe that I managed to do it in under 4 minutes. My first submitted demo was ant_319 ER, and that was almost as shit.

Favorite speedrunning demo(s) from yourself (the one(s) that you're most proud of)?

Probably sm82_625 EH, because I finally don't have any urgent need to improve it any further. And it's a .9 :-)

Favorite speedrunning demo(s) from others?

Peter Horvath's e2m4 route-reversal for QdQwav2

Favorite player (overall/runs/100%/marathon/coop)?

Runs: Connor, dispite his reputation for stealing other people's records... 100%: Stubby. His e1m3 NH is a masterclass of how to do things quickly. Marathons: Optic. His id1_6933 says it all... Coop: The whole de Mestre clan. shaf_1022 NH4 is "Exhibit A" Comedy factor: LagDotCom. I still have his failed demo on e1m7 if you want to know just how lame he is...

Favorite trick in a demo?

"The best seat in the house" as featured in runs of e2m4

Favorite QdQ release?

Dimension of the Gibbed. Gotta love the comedy factor... I'm looking forward to QdQwav2 and QdC when they eventually get released. tIDr was good as well.

Favorite original Quake map?

I'm not sure I have a favourite...

Favorite custom map?

Apart from sm82? I like long base levels most of the time.

Most annoying monster/map?

Fiends, because I'm often not fast enough at moving backwards while shooting them :-(

Do you like Doom/Quake2/Q3A?

Doom was cool, but I don't play it any more. Q2test put me off Q2 for life. I stopped playing Q3 when I started playing Q1 again.

What do you think of Quake now?

Given that I only started playing it again about 4 months ago, I'd say that it still has a lot of potential for innovation. Much more than Quake 4, anyway :-)

Quake Purity Test score? link

You answered "yes" to 17 of 132 questions, with a total value of 17 points out of 141, making you 87.9% quake pure (12.1% quake corrupt). I agree with Lag on this - too much about conventions, not enough about modding...