Survival guide: Quake resources on the Internet

This document is a short guide to the Quake-related resources on the Internet: newsgroups, mailing lists, FTP and WWW sites. It gives some useful starting points for people who are new to Quake or to the Internet. It is not an exhaustive list of WWW sites or other resources. Instead, it just gives some starting points such as Slipgate Central, from which you will be able to find all other sites.

Newsgroups

rec.games.computer.quake.announce Info/FAQ/announcements about Quake. (Mod.)
rec.games.computer.quake.editing  Editing and hacking Quake-related files.
rec.games.computer.quake.misc     General discussion about Quake.
rec.games.computer.quake.playing  Playing Quake and user-created levels.
rec.games.computer.quake.quake-c  Modifying Quake with Quake-C.
rec.games.computer.quake.servers  Setup and maintainance of servers.
alt.binaries.games.quake          Levels and utilities for the game Quake.

Before posting to any of these newsgroups, you should read the message "() Welcome to the Quake Newsgroups ()" which is posted weekly in these groups. An HTML version of this message is available from: http://www.cdrom.com/pub/idgames2/docs/faqs/Welcome.html. It will tell you what topics are appropriate for which group, and what kind of articles are or are not welcome. Please take the time to read it carefully, because posting in the right place will make the groups more useful and more enjoyable for you and all other readers.

Mailing lists

quake@samurai.com: For any discussion related to Quake. You can subscribe by sending a message containing "subscribe quake" to majordomo@samurai.com.
quake-list@instinct.org: Also for any discussion related to Quake. You can get more info about it by sending a blank message to quake-list-info@instinct.org.
quake-clans@gamers.org: Discussion about the organization of Quake clans and Quake team warfare. Note that general gameplay issues are not covered here. For more info and posting guidelines, send a message containing "info quake-clans" to majordomo@gamers.org.
quake-servers@planetquake.com: How to set up and configure Quake servers on the Internet. You can subscribe by sending a message containing "join quake-servers" to listmaster@planetquake.com.
quake-editing@gamers.org: Quake-editing is dedicated to all aspects of editing id's computer game, Quake. If you are modifying this game in any way, (provided it is in accordance with id's licence agreement) this is the place to discuss it. For more info and posting guidelines, send a message containing "info quake-editing" to majordomo@gamers.org.
quake-c@seal-industries.com: Quake-C programming, tutorials, examples, algorithms, and development of same. This list is moderated, and is not for general discussion topics. For more info and posting guidelines, send a message containing "info quake-c" to majordomo@seal-industries.com.
quake-dev@gamers.org: For developers of Quake utilities who want to exchange technical ideas and discuss programming issues. Note that map editing issues are off-topic for this list. For more info and posting guidelines, send a message containing "info quake-dev" to majordomo@gamers.org.
rgcq-support@gamers.org: The "rgcq-support" mailing list is a forum for discussing issues affecting the rec.games.computer.quake.* newsgroups. This forum is useful for exchanging ideas about FAQs and informational postings such as this one. For more info and posting guidelines, send a message containing "info rgcq-support" to majordomo@gamers.org.

Most lists hosted at gamers.org have an online archive, updated hourly:
http://www.gamers.org/forums/hypermail/

Like the newsgroups, these mailing lists have charters describing what is appropriate for the list and what is not. Please respect them.

FTP sites

The main archive of Quake-related files is at:

There you will find all add-ons, patches, documents and other files related to Quake. Several FTP sites mirror the main Quake archive on a daily basis; please use the mirror closest to you for getting files (new submissions, however, should be uploaded in the "incoming" directory on ftp.cdrom.com, not on a mirror). An up-to-date list of mirrors can be found in the file "README".

WWW sites

For locating WWW sites related to Quake, go to Slipgate Central:

http://www.slipgatecentral.com/

This contains a comprehensive list of hundreds of sites dedicated to Quake. It also has a nice search engine, so this should be enough for you to find anything you are looking for.

You will find all interesting Quake-related sites from Slipgate Central, but I will also mention here some sites which are very popular because they contain daily news about Quake:

http://www.bluesnews.com/q-news.shtml (Blue's Quake News)
http://www.hipnotic.com/news.htm (Scary's Sugar Shack)
http://redwood.gatsbyhouse.com/news.html (Redwood's Quake Page)
http://www.organism.com/void/main.shtml (The Void)

These sites and others are monitored by the Quake Automated News Server (http://www.itis.com/IT/quakenews/cgi-bin/show_newnews.pl)

And of course, one site that you probably know already:

http://www.idsoftware.com/ (id Software)

Text and HTML versions of this document can be found in:

Copyright © 1997 by Raphaël Quinet <quinet@gamers.org>. You are allowed (and encouraged) to distribute verbatim copies of the text or HTML versions of this article, on FTP or WWW sites. If you want to distribute a modified copy, please get in touch with me first. Last update: 1 April 1997.