Jump to content
  • 9_Banner.png?_cb=1604614168


  • Espi Award - For lifetime achievement


     

    6_espi.png?_cb=1544228975James "@Quasar" Haley

     

    Checking my email archive, the oldest conversation I could find with Quasar dates back to 1999. He had just made the decision to adopt SMMU as the foundation for Eternity TC. That was to become the Eternity Engine, an often-overlooked source port that maintains a small but dedicated fanbase. I watched over the next few years as Quasar diligently and patiently ironed out all my sloppy coding mistakes from the SMMU codebase, and I learned to appreciate the value of that kind of diligence and patience for myself.

     

    1402983017_9_strifeve.jpg?_cb=1607567978Sometimes it seems like fate keeps bringing me and Quasar back together. In 2010 he started work on Chocolate Strife (along with previous Espi award winner Samuel “Kaiser” Villareal) and I was able to watch that same diligence applied again, this time to the challenge of reconstructing the Strife source code. Unlike all the other Doom engine games, you see, Strife’s source code has never been released. It’s suspected that it has been lost, perhaps forever.

     

    It’s difficult to explain the challenge of a reverse engineering project like this in a way that non-programmers can appreciate. Imagine thousands and thousands of pages of bare CPU instructions, with no names or comments to explain their purpose, what they do or how they all fit together. In the end it took Quasar and Kaiser three years to fully complete the work. While we don’t have a copy of the original Strife source code, thanks to them we now have the next best thing, recreating it in exacting detail.

     

    The work didn’t go unnoticed. I9_calico_invuln.png?_cb=1607567978n 2014 Nightdive Studios quickly hired the pair to produce Strife: Veteran Edition based on their work, and it’s hard to imagine a more loving tribute to the original game. Veteran Edition is a port that oozes quality baked through it, with an attention to detail that shows its authors truly cared about what they were doing. Clearly Nightdive were impressed too, because the pair have been working for them ever since. When Doom 64 saw a multi-platform re-release earlier this year, some familiar names appeared in the press.

     

    Meanwhile, Quasar has continued to contribute off-the-clock and it’s clear that his experiences have given him a taste for tricky reverse engineering work. Calico is his ongoing port of Jaguar Doom (probably the definitive console version of Doom) that again has involved painstaking conversion of assembly language routines into C so that it can be made to run on modern systems.

     

    728166747_9_quasarkaiser.jpg?_cb=1607567

    These technical feats would be impressive enough but over the past 20 years I’ve come to know Quasar as a man who always stands up for what’s right, mobilising the community when necessary to fix wrongs. Back in 2006 he organised an open letter and petition that gained over 800 signatures to solve the Raven source code licensing issue; it’s thanks to him that today the Heretic and Hexen source codes are true free software. Then in 2011 he organised the Doom Wiki to become independent; almost 10 years later as so many websites become unusable due to ad bloat, having this important resource standing free as an independent site seems like such an important and forward-thinking move. And of course it’s Quasar who today works to keep the site running and the lights on. 

     

    Above all, I know Quasar as a person who loves Doom in all its variants and spinoffs and has done a tremendous amount to keep it and the community alive for all these years. It gives me great pleasure to see him appropriately recognised for it.


    - @fraggle


  • 2020 Cacowards


     

    Espi Award for Lifetime Achievement

    • James "Quasar" Haley

     

    Top Ten - Page 1

    • Antaresian Reliquary
    • Abandon
    • Rowdy Rudy 2: Powertrip

     

    Top Ten - Page 2

    • Ar Luminae
    • Running Late 2
    • Bastion of Chaos
    • Mutabor

     

    Top Ten - Page 3

    • Three is a Crowd
    • Syringe
    • Faithless Trilogy

     

    Special Features

     

    Multiplayer Awards

    • DoomWare
    • Progressive Duel 3

     

    Gameplay Mod Awards

    • Nobody Told Me About id
    • Treasure Tech
    • SWWM GZ

     

    Other Awards

    • Mordeth Award
      • Pacifist speedrunning
    • Codeaward
      • The Unity port
    • Machaward
      • Arbitrary code execution
    • Dootaward
      • Bastion of Chaos OST
    • Creator of the Year
      • Bridgeburner

  • THE SKY MAY BE


     

    Slax was an amazing guy, I can't think of any other artist who could capture the personality of a person or a character so well and make it seem so easy. His contributions to the community were widespread, he helped @Jimmy and the BigBrik team shape Square into the character we know today with his concept art. Along with loaning his voice in the excellent Laundry 2. He also helped push me in becoming a better artist as well.

    But more than anything, I feel like his greatest contribution was his heart. He had a way of making people laugh or getting them to think in creative and fun ways. I can't begin to tell you how many hours I've spent with that man just talking about absurd things, only for him to turn around and bring it to life with a drawing. I know he touched the lives of others this way as well: Yholl, Skelegant, Kurashiki, and TerminusEst13 to name just a few.

    He may no longer be with us, but I know for certain he won't be leaving their hearts, or mine. Rest in peace, Slax.

     

    - Combine_Kegan

     

    Roy "Slax" Rosengård

    1986 - 2020

     


     

    An essential element to the Doom modding scene of the 2000s and the creator of @doom_txt on Twitter – @MasterOFDeath (known to his closest friends as MoD, Alex, or Patchy) – passed away this September. MoD was a longtime member of the Doom community, and was highly influential in the budding days of ZDoom weapon modding. MoD’s creativity with early 2000s ZDoom limitations gave the port the jump start it needed for modders like @Chronoteeth and @wildweasel to carry the torch into the 21st century – which is why you can play mods like Russian Overkill (and, yes, even Brutal Doom) today.

     

    Beyond Doom, Alex was known for his love of cars, motorcycles, cosplay, and raves, and had a wonderfully bizarre sense of humor that that made every conversation a joy (and led to some of the funniest damn moments in Doom history... even if most of it remains obscure or unreleased). Though his presence in the community waned over the following decade, he left a lasting impact and made many lifelong friends along the way.

     

    MoD leaves behind a complicated legacy. To some, he was a close friend, and to others, a ruthless, bored prankster. But we will always remember him for his nonstop creativity, academic genius, and selfless personality. The majority of his later works was uncredited and released under various aliases (some of which we don’t even know about!). He is the primary reason we stayed in the Doom Community, and he was one of our best friends.

     

    MoD’s 30+ known contributions to the Doom community were dwarfed by the mods he would create just for his friends to play. An effort is underway to collect all of his works, and hopefully these will be released at a later date so that everyone can enjoy them.

     

    Rest in Peace, Alex. You will never be forgotten.

     

    - @Csonicgo & @Xaser

     

    Sharif Alexander Mowery-Batnij

    February 7, 1989 - September 28, 2020

×
×
  • Create New...