QuakeCon 2025 Part 4: QuakeCon Days 1 and 2

Last year we managed to get an early start on Day 1 of QuakeCon 2024, but this year … not so much. We slept in like the most professional bosses in existence, so it wasn’t until after noon that we got to the BYOC. The lights were already off so we technically missed that little ceremony, but we didn’t miss anything on the official schedule. We arrived bearing a substantial amount of snackage and other supplies to sustain us through the 4-day weekend. For our meals it’s about an even split between frequently restaurants (mostly off-site) and the food trucks in the Gaylord convention center driveway. But after depositing our unhealthy stomach fuel at our seats we got in line at the Bethesda Gear Store, as is tradition, to make sure we got to purchase anything that was exclusive to the event and not sold online. Last year the exclusives were a QuakeCon Quby tee and hoodie, but this year there didn’t appear to be an exclusives. Fine by me, especially when it comes to the hoodies. The less we have to cram into our suitcases for the return trip the better. Can’t go over that 50-lb weight limit at the airport!

Our main priority with the Bethesda Gear Store was to get anything that was either substantially cheaper than online (not having to pay shipping is always a nice factor) or, in the case of apparel, be worn during QuakeCon. Other things like larger plushies and fragile items we ordered online so as to minimize the risk that luggage handlers at the airport wouldn’t break anything. Smaller things like keychain plushies we happily picked up though.

This year we got super lucky during seat selection and got into the AMD fan row. To the large group that was originally there I just have to say I don’t know what prompted you to lose out on the seats (I did see them reserved originally), but your sacrifice did not go in vain.

I 3D printed some QuakeCon Q’s along with a base that friction fits to a small section of the vent slots in our LAN rig cases. These worked beautifully!

AMD gave us all some cool branded swag on Friday, but I’ll save that for later since I like going about things chronologically. On the subject of AMD I was really hoping to see their giant robot again, but alas that was not to be again this year. Oh well, it’s not a bucket list item, I just want some more photos with it and to capture a video of it demonstrating its wireless dial-up internet connection. There was also an AMD giveaway in the BYOC, though sadly we didn’t win anything. They were only raffling CPUs and GPUs, no motherboards or bundles, so it’s really just as well. I’m really only in the market for a CPU upgrade right now, and again without income (side note: the CTO from that job prospect from a few months ago ghosted me, grrr), that’s on the backburner until further notice because I’d need a motherboard and DDR5 RAM to go with it. But like I said, it’s no biggie. An outdated system that still powers through almost everything is better than no system at all. I’m content with the current status quo.

Before launching into some games my wife and I decided to do our first round of walking the BYOC to see some of the custom rigs and art creations that were already set up. Among these included the Cacodemon from Doom: The Dark Ages (which I still haven’t played yet, yay again for no income), a tabletop arcade version of Super Turbo Turkey Puncher, the odd retro rig (I’m pretty sure these were sleepers), a Tron Ares themed case, and a beautiful collection of monsters from Doom and Quake.

Around 3PM was when the QuakeCon Kickoff took place. It was nice seeing things being done live instead of through a stream like the last two years, even if the event itself was quite brief (I don’t think Bethesda’s got anything in the pipeline worth announcing yet), and seeing Hugo and Marty do it right on the BYOC floor instead of on stage was a nice touch. Hugo and Marty even said they like this format better, though I will concede this could just as easily be marketing not having a stage, after all (fast forwarding) Master Pancake was in a giant room that was comparable to keynote stage seating of the past. But getting into the key announcements, chief among them was that Doom Eternal mods were coming out of beta and going public, which no doubt means there will be a giant surge of contributors to the classic Doom levels. This might just convince me to break my 133.7 hours on record for the game and get lost in it again. Right after that was the big reveal for this year: Nightdive Studios gave Heretic and Hexen the same update treatment as Doom 1 and 2 from last year, including updated soundtracks by Andrew Hulshult. I knew of these games but never got to play them, however I did play the demo for Hexen II back in the day since it came on the disc for the Win95 release of Wolfenstein 3D (which also included a Quake II demo). Finally they announced updates to Doom: The Dark Ages which included the Ripatorium for custom challenges, various quality-of-life improvements (they mentioned increasing weapon swap speed so this feels similar to when fans said the beta of Doom 2016 felt a little too slow), and a QuakeCon skin for the Slayer. Sadly I think I’ll be missing out on that because I’ve been saving Doom: TDA as a gift to myself for getting a new job. Well, not unless I get one in the next few weeks.

This was as close as I could get because of the sheer number of people crowding around Hugo and Marty

With the kickoff complete I decided to give Super Turbo Turkey Puncher a go since it was coincidentally on the way back to my seat. This game in its simplicity made me look like a total goofball for a good fifteen minutes. Now, mind you, I’d never puch a turkey in real life but the person or people behind this at id Software that decided to make this part of Doom 3 (I found out about while looking it up for writing this) and again in Doom 2016 might have been on to something.

For dinner our group voted to venture out to Rainforest Cafe while we still had the opportunity before things got into full swing. This was originally planned for Tuesday evening, but literally all of us in the group that were flying in experienced insane delays. Once again, looking at you with disdain American Airlines.

On my return to the BYOC I encountered a random person with a Tron light-up jacket. That alone is worth the random photo here.

Another random note is that someone had a projector going with Star Trek: DS9. DS9 is a staple for us Trekkies, and there are plenty of Trekkies at QuakeCon.

I’ve been wanting to do something like this for some time, but things just haven’t fallen into place (not just talking about the recent job loss) for me to do that. Maybe if I do a banner in the future we could have a screen below it on the frame and project something onto that. Ideas for the future. It would be interesting if Section 31 made an appearance in the QuakeCon BYOC. At least that’s what I’d call the clan. It’s Star Trek, sue me.

Getting back to gaming the price for Hexen + Heretic on Steam was a price I could justify, so I snatched it up and started playing Hexen. It definitely had some serious Doom vibes, being adapted from that, but it was still very much its own game. It was an interesting change of pace from Doom where it’s always about speed because Hexen, at least the bits that I’ve played so far, were more about timing your hits since there was a lot more melee combat. Could this be the basis for other games’ systems that rely on timed hits and strategy? I’d be surprised if it didn’t at least have some kind of impact. But I’m pretty far from an expert on those genres.

My wife was also playing Hexen alongside me and we sunk a few hours into the game until around 9:30PM we decided to get up and stretch our legs, get the borderline coagulated blood in our veins moving again. We ventured out of the BYOC and wandered upstairs to get away from the noise for a few minutes. Nothing was going on at this time but there were a few staff doing some late night checks. The tables and backdrop for the next day’s Meet and Greet with the id Software devs was, by my guess, mostly done.

That backdrop would actually make a pretty sweet wallpaper

We also took some pics next to a giant standee of the Doom Slayer from Doom: TDA.

We were about to head back downstairs when I peeked into one of the medium-sized rooms and saw Andrew Hulshult … OH HELLZ YES!!

Some people say “don’t meet your heroes” … well they never met Andrew Hulshult: a true gentleman through and through, humble but equally badass. I’ve said many times to people that what usually makes a good production (movie, TV show, video game, etc) come together is that the people making it have a great time making it, and from what I’ve heard of Andrew’s music, and I’ve listened to a LOT of it, he thoroughly enjoys the hell out of it. Yes that was a pun. Taking it even further since Andrew has been brought on to create remixes of existing soundtracks, something Mel Brooks said in a documentary about Spaceballs comes to mind: if you’re gonna spoof something well you can really only pull that off if you absolutely love the source material (I couldn’t find the exact line so I’m paraphrasing here). While Andrew doesn’t spoof the music, the same logic applies: you’re really only going to create something that truly resonates with your audience if you love the source material. Once again, Andrew’s got that box firmly checked. OK enough fan-girling.

I had coincidentally showed up at the end of a panel that he was a part of (how I missed this is unknown to me), so we only got to talk for a minute or so because he had to get to the next thing on his schedule. I didn’t get any pictures after this point, but right after Andrew and I parted ways Marty Stratton showed up with Hugo Martin arriving a minute later. The three of us got to talking for a few minutes while they had some free time before a Doom: TDA gameplay stream that was part of the Slayers’ Club lineup. We were talking about classic Doom and I mentioned Project Brutality, which apparently neither of them had heard of before (they were very familiar with Brutal Doom though), so I showed some footage from a random YouTube video I found. Hugo then whipped out a bag of Buc-ee’s and offered some before heading up to the stage to begin the stream. We stayed for a while because it got to be quite entertaining watching him rage at the game, and have Bethesda stream fixture Joshua Boyle reminding him not to drop F-bombs when he got his ass kicked. The whole event lasted about forty five minutes longer than scheduled, but it was time well spent. The photo with Andrew Hulshult alone was worth it in my book.

Our midnight return to the BYOC included checking out a few more LAN rigs, which I included above as part of that photo batch.

We gamed until about 2:30AM and then called it a night and ordered an Uber back to our hotel. Good company, good food, good games, and I met another one of my heroes. Yep, Day 1 was a very good day. I didn’t get quite as much gaming in as I wanted to, but I tend to think of Day 1 as a warm-up, we’ve more or less just arrived. Sure there are some events scheduled, people to meet, and new sights to take in, but no need to rush getting lost in something for 12 straight hours … yet. So with that in mind we slept in again the next morning.

The next day I tried to make it a point to get some serious gaming in while I basically had a full day to myself since Master Pancake was scheduled for Saturday this time around. But first I needed to pay a visit to RanChan and his 3D printed keychains. This year he went all out with iconic weapons from Quake and Doom that included the Chainsaw, Super Shotgun, and Slayer Crucible from Doom, and the rocket launcher and Super Shotgun from Quake Live and the best part is he gave all of these away for free. I took a picture of them on the last day, but I think the picture below from a Discord post of his is better. But he also had, this time for sale, some 3D printed cats playing with their spinning balls. Yep, you get both Bawls and balls at QuakeCon. Noxis enjoyed the hell out of the cat, lol.

My wife and I have enjoyed casually playing Quake Champions so we fired that up and … queued? Wat? We sat there for over TWENTY MINUTES in a queue with nothing happening! And of course we tried multiple game modes and made sure we had all of the North America servers selected. Nothing. WTF?! I hate to say it, but I’m of the opinion that this game might be dead. So on that disappointment we switched to good ‘ol tried and true: Quake Live. In truth as much as I enjoy the modern engine of Champions, Live still reigns supreme in my heart because it doesn’t have the limitations that Champions does, namely a server browser and much larger player count limits on the servers. I know Champions has been maintained by a single developer for a very long time now, but why Champions never got the dedicated server treatment is beyond me. If you’re gonna make Quake Live 2.0 (or Quake III Arena 3.0) at least give it similar limits. 8-10 players depending on the game mode is nowhere near chaotic enough for me. But I digress.

A little after 3PM my wife and I headed upstairs to get in line for the id Software Developer Meet and Greet. I had a good time meeting all of them last year, and I think there’s something to be said for being able to personally convey to someone (or many someones in this case) that you enjoyed what they all worked very hard to create. Last year the meet and greet took forrrrrrever so they made some changes to manage the crowd a bit this year, which means I got super lucky I got to the line when I did because they capped the end of it literally one person behind us. The panel itself ran from 1PM to 5PM and believe me, that wasn’t enough time, lol. It was at least a solid hour before we got to the beginning where Marty Stratton was sitting, which was at like 4:45. All of us got Doom: TDA posters to get signed by the devs and I intended to get every signature possible. If they worked on it, they deserve to put their mark on it. Plain and simple. After getting Marty’s signature it was on to the devs themselves and I wish for the life of me I could remember them all. With the sheer number of them there, it would have been nice to have some kind of list for posterity. But that’s just nitpicking really.

My conversations with the programmers and other technical positions were the longest, while my wife connected with her fellow artists. I was of course asked if I’d played The Dark Ages yet to which I had to reply that I was saving it as a gift to myself if I got a new job. They all wished me well and hoped I landed something soon, one of them commenting “you have remarkable restraint, sir”. A number of the programmers asked what field I was in and after replying software QA two of them said “we need QA, we need more people like you!”. Sadly id doesn’t hire remote workers. Probably just as well, I know the video game industry is about as cut-throat as it gets in this world. Kudos to those that hop around living off of contracts, but I need job stability. I can’t go learning brand new systems every year. But I’m getting off-topic as usual.

The devs’ fields ranged from programmers to artists and effects specialists and they all had widely ranging backgrounds and work histories as well. I’m serious when I say they should each write a memoir and go crazy how many stories they tell. Taking this idea to a totally fictional realm, if I could pull a Matt Frewer when he guest starred as a “time-traveling historian” in Star Trek: TNG and interview every single person throughout history that has worked and ever will work on a Doom game and make an entire book series like Memories of Doom, that would be something. Well we don’t have time travel yet, let alone warp drive, or even anything that runs on Argent energy for that matter. Oh well, back to reality I guess.

At the end of the long line of tables sat Hugo Martin who looked ready for a nap. Dude, if I were in his shoes I would probably have passed out right at the table, every one of these people were here for five straight hours with effectively no break. But he still gave us his winning smile for one last photo at 5:42PM.

With conversations had, photos taken, and signatures acquired on posters, LadyOmega and I returned to the BYOC to get some more games in. Since we were already Quaked out from earlier, we switched back to Hexen for a while. When I had my fill I switched over to Rocket League for a bit just to take a break from FPS gaming. I think I played that for maybe thirty minutes. I don’t know why but despite enjoying Rocket League I just can’t play it for hours on end. Weird. My wife and I also tried to get a game of Dice Kingdoms going with the teen, but she was lost in her own world and showed no signs of coming back. Oh well, teens are gonna teen I guess. After that I booted up Doom: Project Brutality because that on the other hand just never gets old for me. I really hope someone manages to make this compatible with a multiplayer source port like Zandronum. It used to work on that back in the day, but not since v3.0 (that I’ve seen). I mentioned last year that I estimated it would be a few days at most before someone released a PK3 of Andrew Hulshult’s new soundtrack for use with modded Doom, well I was wrong. It was maybe a few hours. How I forgot to mention that in last year’s posts is a mystery. I hereby endeavor to do better! But first: RIP. AND. TEAR!

Around 7:30PM it was time to get up and move around again, so Clementine (Meltingwax’s wife) opted to join us as we ventured over to Artist Alley and the vendor area. A nice little tradition that QuakeCon has had for a while now is free buttons where you can write down which QuakeCon this was. For me this was my 11th, 8th for LadyOmega, and 7th for our teen Noxis. One thing that was definitely cool was a nice large couch area set up with a QuakeCon backdrop for group photos. We made use of this on our final day together so I’ll put that pic in the next post. The community art submissions were set up in the same area as the buttons, so we took a look at what was posted. A small part of me misses the sculpture submissions from pre-COVID. My art, if you can call it that, is completely limited to the digital realm, so I’d never have anything to contribute to Artist Alley, but I’ll just say that having multiple mediums led to a nice little bit of variety that I wish would come back. The art vendors were also set up in this room, but they closed at 6PM, and I don’t think I made it back to that area until we did the group photo op two days later. I was intrigued by Delicious Doom though. I’m a foodie, sue me.

Moving around reminded us that we were hungry, and some of us were in the mood for barbecue, so we took an Uber to Hard Eight BBQ, another growing tradition among our group. Reviews of the establishment during the COVID days indicated that its quality had gone downhill during COVID, but it seems to be coming back from my experience. If you want to go absolute bare minimum, none of us got sick or were in any way dissatisfied with our selections. Though that said next time I gotta remember to try the ribs. I have those all too infrequently in life, let alone here. Also sausage. Yes, I must try their sausage. Go ahead and make your lewd jokes if you wish, I’ll be over here enjoying good food.

With bellies stuffed we were eager to get back to gaming before the food coma hit too hard. If you can get distracted enough you won’t notice it, don’t question me! Though Noxis had a different gaming plan in mind since we got back to the Gaylord and the BYOC just in time for Werewolf to start in Tabletop Village. Werewolf isn’t really my thing, and I’ll indulge at home, but in Tabletop where there are between ten and twenty players, I’ll happily defer to those that are both better skilled and more interested than myself, and Noxis certainly qualifies because she is disturbingly good at it. I don’t think they came back downstairs until sometime after 1AM when its time slot was done. But while she and LadyOmega were doing that I was playing a mix of Quake Live because somehow I can both warm up and wind down with that, and Star Trek Online to keep up with my dailies. But that brought us to the close of QuakeCon 2025 Day 2, halfway done … sigh/groan. Given the events of this year so far, I feel like most of it has been leading up to this and now it’s already half over?! FML.

Anyway, go read the next post for the second half of QuakeCon 2025.