Just followed a link and it took me to a flash games site, and within about 20 seconds I was playing sonic the hedgehog in work..

I was just thinking, if only Quake could be that easy there would be thousands and thousands of players (simply cos the game is free)

It would be so nice and accessible if you could just..

Click on a link, and the little box comes up, save as/run, install a smallquake with 4/5 maps, open it, just click next about twice, it installs, start it up, (perhaps one simple choice could be offered BASIC GRAPHICS for pcs with no graphic cards or NORMAL GRAPHICS for gl. That would be it, there would be a very simple menu with a big PLAY button (and OPTIONS etc)

Just hit the PLAY button and straight away a little ingame browser automatically starts updating the servers that are available with big clear markings FFA 5/16 and ping, you could just click and join and there'd be an autodownload for the map.


Ezquake is relatively 'easy' but you get stuck when it comes to going for servers, thats the big prob, 99% of people just give up I am sure. The key is to be able to go from nothing, to playing Quake on a server with as few mouse clicks as possible.. and no hard desicions apart from Next Next. Everyone has broadband now anyway.

I used to play alot from cybercafes (which would auto delete on restart) and I was basically able to get Quake running, from scratch with a browser and cfg, in about 4 mins or less, but the problem was..
I knew how to do it..

My friend hasn't played QW for years and years, and if I said, okay get onto this server.. GO.. it would probably take him 20 or 30 mins just to download quake do all the crap and get onto the server (and he actually knows about quake).. think how complicated it is for someone whos never played and is just in an office..

Is this all crazy talk.. or is it actually possible?

FrikaC's Qake is awesome, but a little off topic. :/


Quake is _NOT_ free.
The quake engine is free, but the maps (the textures at least), the models, and the sounds are not free. They're not even abandonware.


Potentially this could be done with two browser clicks and a few questions in an installer.
The first click would be to download Empezar's fquake (followed by questions in an installer, which are only asked once per computer, of course).
The second click would be along the lines of what I did with fte and qtv. Some background: QTV provides an http server. This server lists the games currently in 'play' upon that qtv server. The QTV server hosts some runtime-generated *.qtv files. When a qtv file is opened with FTE, FTE will read it, find the ip, port, stream, etc, and connect to that qtv server and start playing the game the user clicked on. This could be extended to non-qtv stuff too.
If someone were to write an app that opened files with a specific format, and someone else were to provide an online (usable) server browser (or just a static file that directs users to a qw server from a url which could work from websites, irc, msn, etc), then you'd have a one-click system (if they already had quake installed+configured).
You can't have your one-click-install-and-play as sonic, for example uses a flash plugin which you already have installed, but you can have a click-to-play... Hrm... web based vbs? That ought to have the power to see if quake is installed, direct a browser to download, or start up quake.. Assuming it's in windows, of course.. :/

A browser plugin could additionally be used which would have the added advantage of being able to check if you actually have quake installed first (meaning the user doesn't explicitly have to install quake, just say yes when the browser asks to install the plugin). Alternativly microsoft have some online extension -> application database which might also have the capability to allow the user to download an app that can open it (linux users are expected to be able to read or ask for a url).

Writing a small app that opens one file for a command line, and one file named on it's own commandline for a server to connect to is fairly straight forward. Assosiating it with a file type is also easy enough.

Getting a version of quake which is usable, small, requires no lengthy configs, and both legal and still compatable with 95% of servers is the hard part.
Unfortunatly Quake is not free, and the versions that are free are incompatable (and kicked with accusations of cheating).

Meh, just ignore my post.

/me gives Spike a chocolate cookie

You are right, sir! I never really understood QTV to be honest.

AAahh didn't know it wasn't completely free..

Well its the usual catch22, if someone hasn't played before they go to all the trouble of getting quake etc all down and working, then they join a server and get hammered.. simply because there aren't enough new people joining.

It would be good if you could have a multiplayer menu where you can just press play. That should take you to the closest ffa server with players.

Do you guys remember the Java version of Q3? It was pretty cool, tho you had to have a supercpu to get descent FPS. Tho MP was not implanted, one was only able to run around a map.