It's funny going to an event like QuakeCon.  Unlike E3, which is filled with hoards and hoards of nobodies and press, QuakeCon is comprised largely of hardcore gamers who are actively involved in the communities.  Half the time you'll meet somebody and actually recognize their handle.  When the check-in lines finally opened up, somebody looked at my Digital Paint shirt, looked at me inquisitively, and asked, "Who are you?"  "jitspoe."  "Oh yeah?  I'm carcoal.  I paid some guy $20 so I could cut in line."  I'll have to remember that next time.  Certainly a better alternative to waiting overnight.  It was just odd that I happened to run into basically the only other DP community member able to make it right there at the front of the line.

The Happy Friar, from PlanetQuake, informed me that while he was in charge of the computer network at school, he installed Digital Paint: Paintball 2 on the computers there and they played it all the time, since it was free.  I also ran into Kedhrin of the Quake 10 year project and played a few rounds with R1CH who developed R1Q2.  Even Jehar was actively involved with Doom editing and recently moved up to Quake 2 mapping (along with being a part of the Tasty Spleen community).

The best moment, though, was when Jehar and I were wandering out of the BYOC section for something.  I paused and said, "Look who's behind you."  Jehar turned around and looked off in the distance, confused.  "No RIGHT behind you.  Like 2 inches away."  "Holy @#%$!"   John Carmack was just chilling there, talking with somebody.  Sadly I didn't have my camera handy at the moment, but I'm sure you all know what he looks like anyway (and I'll have pictures of him later).  But that's just par for the course at QuakeCon.  The id guys are just hanging around, talking with people, hosting tournaments, etc.

Ok, enough writing.  Time for more pictures.

Here we see the public's first chance to play Enemy Territory: Quake Wars.  The "problem" with QuakeCon is that there's just so much to do that you inevitably end up missing out on things.  This is one of the things I never got around to checking out.

Lots of crazy case mods there.  I thought this nVidia chair mod was pretty clever, and it could prove useful on cold days.  Not that Dallas has many.

I'm guessing this was the guy who had 3+ TB shared on DC++.  8 drives on one side and 4 or 6 on the other.  Mostly anime, I'm sure.

Here's mine.  Not super fancy, but I like to think it looks decent.

Some people get pretty creative with their attire.  I'm guessing he was dressing up as a Strogg, complete with stilt "enhancements."

On the topic of attire, Jehar volunteered to get wrapped up in duct tape for the "Creative Use of nVidia Swag" contest.

I guess I didn't get a shot of the final product, but this is pretty close.  We added some more stickers and stuff later.

He was certainly easy to spot, even from the opposite side of the BYOC.

And it just so happened that he bore a strong resemblance to the player model he used in Quake2.

Sadly, we both managed to miss the actual competition.  They stated that it would be held at the nVidia booth.  I assumed they were going to hold it over at the nVidia stage area, where all the other competitions were held, and they were currently holding the Bawls chugging contest.  I figured they'd wrap up the Bawls contest and move on to the nVidia swag contest.  They didn't.  Jehar was actually in the line for the chugging contest (despite our advice).  Later nVidia caught up with him and gave him a jacket, though, which was pretty cool.  I wish I would have seen who won and gotten pictures.  Here's a picture of what another guy worked on, though:

I don't think he won, either, but it was a nice attempt.

     Bawls Chugging Contest

So I missed the creative nVidia swag contest, but I did get a few good shots of the Bawls chugging contest.

This one was worth sharing just because of the shirt.

Here's a couple videos:

[Bawls chugging 1] - I think he scored like 10.2 seconds.
[Bawls chugging 2] - Even girls can chug!

Not everybody was so successful, though.

I turned around and noticed the stage made for a pretty good shot of the BYOC area.  Lots of pretty, glowing lights.

[continue to page 3 - Hypnosis]