Several new videos became available at the Speed Demos Archive as of late, among which is also a brand-new first-person release of the long-awaited Rabbit Run that got somewhat stuck in developement. Have a quick look at SDA's video page where you can also find any previously released speedrunning-videos from QdQ and friends.

Over at the Speed Demos Archive, voting for the Nolans has started. The Nolans the speed-running equivalent of the Oscars; every year we choose the best Quake demos in various categories. Go to the Nolans voting page and see what the cream of the crop has been up to in 2002!

Quake redone Quick, QdQ's cute little baby-brother, went *cough* GOLD! For those of you who don't know what QrdQ is - it is a solo effort courtesy of Ingmar Pörner (that's me), trying to finish Quake on Nightmare skill in the fastest possible time. (13:11 minutes, for your interest :)
 
So far so good, we've seen that for a couple of times by now. The part which deserves mention is that unlike our latest Nightmare runs, this one was turned into a proper movie (in terms of machinima), featuring all the cute little things people love about our own productions: thrilling camera-moves, nasty surprises, cheap puns (performed by a shy geek trying to match the voice of a space-marine), and last but not least the occasional amount of speedrunning a release such as this one implies.
 
Several updates and patches have been popping up and floating around, but this is the final plug. Head on over to the QrdQ download page and enjoy the show!

The dzipped version of Quake done Backwards (released yesterday) turned out to be corrupt. We have now replaced it with a bugfixed version. Sincere apologies to all who were affected.

Quite a few people get a "retro" feeling when they play Quake these days - well, we give a new meaning to that. This year's Christmas present from QdQ, courtesy of Jozsef Szalontai, Rutger Baks, and others, is Quake done Backwards. This speedrun completes Quake (yet again) with a new twist - the levels are completed in reverse order, starting at end. This enables quite a few new tricks and routes. This project has been sitting on the backburner for quite a long time - we're glad we could complete it. Merry Christmas, and enjoy Quake done Backwards.

Thomas Stubgaard of SDA fame reports yet another third-party speed-running project: David Hocking has made an Easy skill speed-run of Quake all by himself in a time of 11:55, a very respectable result indeed. The run is called SnooP Shaft's Shub and is available here.

Thomas also provided us with a fresh copy of the QdQwav AVI released one year ago (the old link had gone dead). If you missed the AVI the last time around, here's another chance to watch our fastest nightmare run through Quake yet without having to re-install the game. The AVI is available from the QdQwav page.

Two Quake speedrunning projects have been released recently, both of which were completed by people outside of QdQ:

• Two Swedes, Oskar Calson and Magnus Olsson have released QKDSpeed, a run of Quake on Easy skill in 12:32. The time is one and a half minutes faster than our own (albeit outdated) Quake done Quick lite. QKDSpeed is available in Dzip format here and in Zip format here.
• A certain Phil has released a project named Quake done QUAD. The project differs from QdQ releases in the sense that it uses a certain set of "cheats" like Quad and Godmode to provide an entertainment with a difference (pretty much like the Windlash's Runs section over at SDA). At the moment, Quake done QUAD contains only the first three episodes of Quake, but to make up for that there is also a recammed version available.

Back in July 1998, we released Scourge done Slick, a "proper" machinima (lots of vocals, production FX, dubious backplots and bad puns) of a speed-run through Quake1 Mission Pack #1. We put a lot of work into it, and it was roundly praised by reviewers - but most people have never seen it, because they didn't have the Mission Pack #1 add-on for Quake1. (These days, most people probably don't even have Quake1 installed, shame on them!) Pretty dumb of us, huh?

But no longer! The kind folk at Machinima.com have encoded some AVIs of SdS, so now everyone can see it. I took advantage of the open source Quake1 renderer to add some cartoon outline effects, too. Despite the filesize (conventional video is huge compared to machinima that plays back in the engine, as well as being much more limited quality, and missing all the easter eggs - do get the original if you can) I'd recommend the 110MB highest framerate version; speed-running action is so fast that it needs those frames much more than most video does!

So go download your SdS AVI, hope you enjoy watching!

Although it may be old news to many people, it's worth pointing out that the Quake speedrunning community has its own IRC channel at Quakenet. It is mainly used by the QdQ and SDA regulars, but visitors are welcome. The name of the channel is #qdq; a list of Quakenet servers can be found here.

QdQ have never tried to speed-run Q3Arena, because it seemed such a different challenge to the usual Quake speed-running where you practice and practice to perfect a route. But there is a Russian-based Q3AdQ project (English page) that aims to make a movie of a complete dQ run through the game, and is holding a competition to make the demos. Co-ordinator Vyacheslav ("Logo") says (slightly paraphrased):

I'd like to present to you a new really amazing competition called "QUAKE 3 Arena Done Quick". You remember there was something like that in Quake1, Quake2. Now it is QUAKE3 and difference is TREMENDOUS. The result of the three month contest will be a great movie with 26 levels with the winners on each. Before playback of the level we will see the photo of the person who won, and during playback we will hear the national anthem of this country.

Sounds like fun!

At long last, we can release a new project: Speed Beyond Belief lite II. Produced by Jozsef Szalontai and Amrik Kochhar, this run blazes through the seven levels of the Beyond Belief mission pack from Matthias Worch in only 2:20 minutes (Easy skill). This may sound short, but then again, that's what speedruns are about... Anyway, the run has nice production value, including recams, features flawless running and should hold a surprise or two even for those who thought they knew all the tricks in these maps. Downloads are available in both Zip and Dzip formats.

Something funny (but not necessarily new) just caught our attention as it recently became "competitive": Fallout speedrunning. Yes, you've read right - speedruns through the Interplay RPG "Fallout", or even side-phenomenas just as "finish the game without killing anything", have been practised for quite some time already, as the game is backed by a huge fan-base which is producing even the weirdest stuff (take this as a compliment :). The guys at Fallout Wastelands now called for a contest code-named Fallout done Quicker to finish the game as fast as possible, in order to beat their very first "Quick Run" through Fallout 1 done by FWL owner Neelon Rokk. The contest page with all it's belonging informations can be found here. Although it would be doubtful if any of us "Quakers" will enter that contest, I thought it may be an interesting thing to post, at least because I'm a Fallout lover by myself. Keep that thing rolling!

Since our Scourge done Slick comes with various pak files, we provided MS-DOS users with a batch file to cope with the installation. We now have a similar installer for Amiga users, courtesy of Thomas Veress. The installer is available from the Scourge done Slick page, or from Aminet.