There has been a change in how we're organising current projects here at QdQ. Previously we've been trying to use pages here to monitor the progress of our projects (currently, re-recording Episode 4) and give people enough details that they can help out by making recordings themselves. However, the Web isn't the best medium for co-ordinating something like this where things change fast and only a relatively small number of people are involved, so we're trying to switch to doing things by e-mail. If you are the least bit interested, please check the project page.

If you haven't already read all about it at Skillz, check the work in progress on the neat new prize that the winner of Skillz Test #4 (which started life here) will be getting in additional to the normal hardware. I want one too.

The best time we have so far for this level is now 0:46.

The original version of our statistics mod did not work on versions of Quake after v1.06. Apologies. I believe I have now fixed the incompatibility and that version 1.1 of the mod should work fine.

We had a hard decision to make this week. It turns out that the E4M1_036 run recorded by Berj used a non-standard value of sv_accelerate. The default value for this console variable is 10, and Berj happened to have his set to 500. Of course, he didn't know he was doing anything wrong - it only affects the game play a little bit, and we almost didn't notice. However, it does have an effect on the standard physics of the game, and QdQ means nothing without ensuring certain standards, so regretfully we decided we couldn't use Berj's demo.

This was my (Anthony's) fault really, and I apologise for the communication problem. I didn't make all this as explicit as I should have done. The exact details of what is and what isn't allowable have now been written out carefully. Read it if you think you may have some non-standard settings in your configuration and are considering recording demos for QdQ.

However, Berj also improved our route and style and using his demo as a blueprint, Yonatan managed to re-record the demo in the same time with the standard setting for sv_accelerate. So we owe Berj our thanks - we were willing to stick at 0:40 until he came along and made our jaws drop.

We now move to recording E4M2 - and those who want to help out should see the project page.

Son Gokou and Silvermask are going to be putting together a QdQ-style run through the Dissolution Of Eternity mission-pack. If anyone wants to help them with this, they should check out the project page and get in contact. (If this address gives you DNS problems, try 24.108.4.5 directly instead.)

The results for the terraFORMA Vigil contest have now been confirmed, and Nolan has indeed won by killing everything on this great but difficult level in less than seven minutes.

We have received a fantastic demo from Berj Doudian, who has run E4M1 in the astounding time of 0:36 using our latest trick for this level. (He first mistakenly sent a demo in this time recorded on Medium skill, which was impressive enough but unfortunately no good for QdQ, and then amazed us by repeating the feat on Nightmare when we asked him to.)

Yes, Yonatan won the second round of the Accelerator contest by a wide margin as well, despite having not been entirely happy with his entry (it still contained a couple of small but very obvious slip-ups.) I guess that means the rest of the run was pretty bloody good, then. We can concentrate on the new Episode 4 run now.

The QdQ team have been busy with various flavours of competitions and challenges over the past couple of weeks. Yonatan won Time 2 quakE's Race To Oblivion challenge by a comfortable margin (several seconds ahead of the competition.) Much respect to the other competitors though, who inspired him to look for route improvements by beating the times he had previously thought were optimal. He has also gone through to round two of the ongoing Accelerator contest with the fastest time on the qualifying Critters round.

Matthias and Nolan have been recording the missing from scratch Nightmare runs, and Nolan has probably won another contest, although we are still awaiting confirmation of that one.

All this leads inevitably to Skillz, the central point for Quake contests and challenges. And we are very pleased to be able to announce that hs! has agreed to use the contest formerly known as our QdQ E1M3 challenge for his own latest contest, Skillz Test #4. We say: the Ion Storm challenges? Llama-bait. (-: Let's see what the gods of speed-running can do with a real challenge...

We have a new zippy secret... you'll find out about it eventually, but it is under wraps right now. ("What sort of news page is this?" you grumble. Sorry, but everyone will hear about this one in the fullness of time, honestly...)

Yonatan has written a useful FAQ about that damn tricky E1M3 grenade-jump which you may find useful if you are trying out the challenge.