I suppose I could end this with a rallying cry that Quake isn't dead yet. That she still has a bit of life left in her, a few more miles of gas. A little kick in the old shoe.

But that's not true, if Quake only had that, this expo would not be. Quake has more left in it than recently released games. Quake thrives, not in a popularity contest, but in the earnest passion, creativity, and fanaticism of its fans. We are not constrained by sells, by some Gamespy player count, reviews in PCGAMER, competition with other games, or even by the very technology, art, and game logic we interface with every time we play.

Quake as a community is an evolution, and Quake as a game is a revolution. The community ebbs and flows, and is somewhat scattered unfortunately. But the expo always shows that we can share common ground and get along just fine, and in some cases even create great things together.

In the Host Interview I did for the Chthon booth, I cited one instance of when I knew QExpo was a success this year, but another comes to mind. Speaking with Sajt in private, he told me that at one point "I came for the QuakeC, I stayed for Quake" to roughly quote. This game is something special. Its open source status and modifiability breathe into it a wide variety of life, flailing spokes of creativity. Lovecraftian tentacles that writhe and ensnare other genres within its grasp. But there is something special about it, something that can convert a coder who saw a programming opportunity, and in wielding such a chance, became a lover of the game itself.

And that is what we are, we gather at the Elder God Shrine, for numerous reasons, but ultimately for that malignant yet sadistic intangible we delight in that makes Quake a game unto itself.

Quake is ten years old. It has been a part of nearly half of my life, and it has enriched the half it has been within. I have met numerous people through it, and longstanding friendships have been established going back almost 9 years in length.

Quake breathes, it pulses and the slipgates within us tremble at its power. It has launched careers, inspired minds, captivated the eyes, and deprived all of countless hours of sleep. It has been an honor to be involved in the previous expos, and in hosting this one. It was a privelige to speak so candidly with John Romero, and wonderful to meet people whom I had never heard of before. But still, my fondest memories of this expo will be playing cooperative RuneQuake with people I've never heard of... Prydon Gate with FrikaC, LordHavoc and Sajt... and randomly encountering a Brazilian Quake fan who came onto irc to thank me for the Romero interview. It has been a memorable experience.

Quake is not dead, Quake has never died - merely in our isolation many of us have at times despaired. The expo illustrates that such thoughts are baseless, and thus I leave you with a plea to look at the Links section of the site under Community. We are out there, we need to communicate more. Quake is ready to be ravaged by the minds of the content creators and the rockets of the players. This acrid field is fertile yet still, and I daresay will outlast a few more generations of games.

Go play Quake.

Chthon is a busy boss. Between his disposing of the odd annoying intruder, he studies Latin poetry and ponders the meaning of living in a giant deathtrap. However, for the very special occasion of QExpo 2006, he has agreed to conduct an interview with the hosts of QExpos past.

The victims were FrikaC, MauveBib, and scar3crow. The topic was the Quake Expo, its meaning, worth, and success. Click here to indulge in the nightmarish nether realms of Chthon's mind, and partake in a meaty interview of much enlightenment.

If you haven't strolled by already, make sure you do. It ain't QExpo until RPG's got a booth runnin'. Or something. RPG's booth sports many a trout-tickling adventure in reading. Check out his Reviews page for reviews of the QExpo map releases - than's DM3RMX, the Travail preview, and Dr. Shadowborg's 'Vertically Disinclined'.

Or, if you're tired of just reading the articles, check out his Booth Babes page. He insists that you do. If you stare for over an hour you may begin to notice Quake-related tattoos.

However, what I believe is the pick of the pork is his interview with Mindcrime - yes, that very creator of the famous Nehahra. Mindcrime discusses what happened to Obscurus, and the upcoming (yes, soon!) final chapter to Nehahra. He also dispels rumours of a Nehahra DVD release, and reveals that the end of Nehahra will mean his end in Quake. Truly a great man, one of the seminal acts in Quake modding history. Stand vigilant and look ye forward to the Nehahra finale.

FrikaC has released a brand spanking new version of Qake, his DJQuake-influenced sidescroller game. This version is known as Qake beta version Pi, and includes more stuff than last time, including a new bonus map. Check out the Qake page at FrikaC's booth, or download it now!

Meanwhile, at Dr. Shadowborg's Cube, we have a new deathmatch map release. Dr. Shadowborg's inaugural serious map, Vertically Disinclined, has hit the shelves with a splash, if that means anything. Also available is a waypoint file for use with the FrikBot, donated generously by FrikaC himself.

And finally for this most exquisite and genuine news post, we have MauveBib's new mod - Defeat in Detail 2 - Anti Terrorist Allied Coalition. It's a first-person shooter spinoff of his famous Defeat in Detail 2 mod, featuring counter-terrorist action, complete with slower movement speed, and an Osama Bin Laden lookalike waiting in a closet for you to press the button. Can you stop the terrorists from deploying a nuclear warhead to a targetted location? Can you indeed!

The 24 Hour Speedmodding event has ended and the winner has been decided!

Entries were received from Asaki, FrikaC, and LordHavoc. All three were superb speedmods and truly unique, but unfortunately we had to pick a winner, and that winner is FrikaC, for his mod 'Booga Booga Ha!', with Asaki's 'The Beast in the Cave' coming in second place by a hair, and LordHavoc's 'Ghostly' a very honourable mention.



Click here to see my review of each entry, and click here to download the entries and try 'em out!

FrikaC has updated his report booth with an interview with Quest and LordHavoc about Quake, engines, development, indie game developers, Torque, and just what is DarkWar anyways? A fun and informative read, and thankfully LordHavoc is a bit more shortwinded on this one (if you have spare time, ask him about the history of tank armor and projectile munitions). Go read it, it is good.

Entar has updated his booth with some fanfiction of his own which may be familiar to you.

As a parting note, the Alien Arena booth has been updated with a video for your viewing pleasure showing off new maps, effects, and gameplay. I watched it just a moment ago and it certainly does look fun, with some cool effects on the guns as well.

QuadRaptor has launched his booth of Quake stories with a story composed of five chapters covering Quake and Quake2.

Inspired by this booth post, I decided to share with the expo some of my own Quake writing, much less episodic in nature and more of short fictional musings on the world of Quake, these were written last February and posted in a thread on the Inside3d forums. I have also posted a story by MauveBib and his brother Harb, with permission from MauveBib. Forgive the titles if you find them silly or offputting, I made them up really quick by demand of Sajt before leaving for work this morning! They can be found here.

Excuse the typos in my two stories, they were both written at work and in a bit of a hurry without any doublechecking. Looking back, I can find plenty of simple elementary errors, but hopefully you can overlook them and enjoy the work the ELF brothers and I have put forward here.

Zalon updated booth today with numerous screenshots of his trick/freestyle/race mod titled BunnyRun. Unfortunately there is no download, but his booth does contain info on a test server that he has launched for those who want a go at it earlier!

Asaki shelled out some media at his turtle farm with the release of a deathmatch mod mostly composed of deathmatch tweaks he has enjoyed over the years. Also at the booth you can find screenshots of a vomitus he began work on and has returned to after being inspired by the Romero interview.

The Turtlemap release has been delayed, but the speedmaps are up, five of them in fact, from bambuz, generic, lurker, neg!ke, and Zwiffle!

Baker has opened his oven to reveal far too many projects to list here, but they have quite a wide variety and some very different stuff from what we have seen at the expo thus far, go give it a look and see what the madman in a chef's hat is cooking!

Starbuck has posted many drool inducing screenshots of his base retexture project, which look quite good. A 30meg download for 300 textures with guaranteed quality on any id base map along with aerowalk and e1m1rmx.

Dr. Shadowborg has updated his booth with the release of his map Vertically Disinclined. It is a base themed deathmatch map that focuses on horizontal gameplay for a change, with a central hub and multiple spokes of combat, linked by slipgate complexes, this map should provide a distinct sense of location yet also slight confusion from the player, hopefully breeding more of that twitch paranoia found in deathmatch.

Our favorite Gyro physics coder, QuakeMatt has updated his booth with the release of Panzer!

Panzer is a team-based mild strategy game. Although your deathmatching skills remain as important as ever, you'll be joining battle with monsters - lots of them! Take and hold a series of floating runes to ramp up your power reserves, then build an army of the damned to help you crush your foes! Only demon blood can seal their summoning portal, so ensure you always have minions at hand to make the final sacrifice.

Over at Hell's Kitchen, Vic has launched release 8 of the QFusion engine. The main goal of the project is to create a Quake III Arena-like (and even better) engine, usable for open-source games, films, demos, etc. Recently released sources of Quake2 (GPL) are used as a codebase.

The booth also contains, along with the downloads, numerous screenshots, and a brief history of Vic's involvement with code and how it all got started years ago. Give it a look and a download!

avirox has updated his MegaTF booth once more, this time with screenshots of MTF using gyro physics, causing all shells to rain down upon us, along with something a bit more questionable in its content. Fun stuff, I really hope to see Gyro implemented into more mods like this.

Preach pulls a Phil Collins and informs us how to make a monster walk in today's tutorial.

TimeServ has released a version of what looks to be a very promising mod, Counter-Op features 2 teams attempting to coop run a map, only they are in competition. A timelimit factors in, and some of the monsters are player controlled! This could be great indeed.

CheapAlert has updated CheapLand with video of the mod he is working on, which looks to play like a first person fighting game against the Quake monsters. Nothing like a wave of swords stabbing out of the ground to convince some ogres to leave you in peace!

Preach once again continues to educate the unquadded masses with his series of tutorials on all things models, this time covering animation. It also delves into a little bit of the qc work involved in defining frames of animation which should be useful to many of you.

Pat AfterMoon updated the Coop Or Die booth, announcing that zorg and Gonzo completed Quake2 coop the way it was meant to be done - with absolutely 0 deaths on either side. This is validated via a PHP/MySQL site he calls the WorldServer. Pat teases us with the promise of a cool little bonus at the end of QExpo. And if you liked this expo, be sure to thank Pat, as Echon informed me that he actually paid for this month's bill for quakedev.com! Hats off, rockets fired, and quads stolen for Pat Aftermoon!

RenegadeC has updated his booth for The Ascension of Vigil, informing us that he has come a long way on the new map featuring an epic bridge battle, utilizing some new camera work, and in celebration posted a few new screenshots worth taking a look at.

LordHavoc, as punctual as always has updated the DarkPlaces booth with a normal and SDL download, and notes for each, along with several screenshots using it in real time lighting mode with high dynamic range bloom. I'll let him speak for it himself:

DarkPlaces features a much more advanced graphics engine (including per pixel lighting and shadowing) which tries to make the most of the existing Quake content, an updated networking system supporting NAT routers/firewalls and smoother play, as well as many features for mod/game developers to use (as demonstrated by Nexuiz for example).

I personally do vouch for DarkPlaces, as anyone whos heard my name but a single time can attest to, and use it as my default engine for all mods, maps, and online play - switching to other things only when specifically told in the readme. Definitely my engine of choice (and Im sure Sajt as well, or he's a dirty traitor as he contributes code to DP). Go give it a download, and make sure to try out Prydon Gate and The Ascension of Vigil with it as well!

DrLabman, professor of gibbentology, has updated his dungeon with an alpha release of an upcoming mod of his for those who are interested in the style of gameplay he is shooting for and perhaps helping to weed out some of the bugs in the current code:

The basic idea is of a coop mod which requires tactics and is a challange. There are two classes but there are still some weapon changes to go and the medic cant do any healing yet. Most of the monsters are yet to be tweaked, and the ogres are too strong. Feel free to send me back some feed back on where you think the mod should go, my email address is on my QMB site.

And than has departed QExpo early due to external plans already in motion, but leaves us with one last booth post, giving his thoughts on the expo, the work other people have done in this time, and a little bit of info on what we can expect from him in the ways of maps in the future, with a couple of screenshots to boot!