More Tremulous content, rewrite mapcat

1 files changed, 31 insertions, 16 deletions

diff --git a/site/content/software/tremulous.typ b/site/content/software/tremulous.typ
index 61076a0..129fcf2 100644
--- a/site/content/software/tremulous.typ
+++ b/site/content/software/tremulous.typ
@@ -2,18 +2,33 @@
 
 #show: post.with(
     title: "Tremulous",
-    date: datetime(year: 2026, month: 6, day: 15),
+    date: datetime(year: 2026, month: 6, day: 18),
 )
 
-Tremulous was a truly fascinating game. TODO: expand
+Tremulous was a truly fascinating game.
 
-= The beginning
+It was a standalone game based on the Quake III: Arena engine. The gameplay was very Q3-flavored, but with two crucial differences:
 
-I discovered Tremulous in summer of 2006 through a random Polish forum. Coincidentally, it wasn't long after its 1.1.0 release, the version that held onto players until the very end.
+1. It wasn't just people shooting each other. It was humans shooting aliens versus aliens chomping humans.
+2. Buildings. Both teams had to build and maintain critical infrastructure.
 
-I was immediately hooked. TODO: expand
+As much as I like Q3, it's an exhausting game. The constant action is very demanding, but also quite repetitive. Tremulous fixed this by turning it into a proper shooter/real-time strategy hybrid. On top of that, playing as aliens was a dramatically different experience to playing as humans. It was actually two games in one in a real sense.
 
-= Paint
+Building also added a whole another dimension to the dynamic and unforgiving combat. There was only one game mode: aliens versus humans. The objective was simple. Destroy the enemy's spawn points (eggs or telenodes) and kill all the enemies. The game ended when one of the teams cannot continue. No artificial "score N points to win", no areas to capture, no little scenarios to play out,  It was very elegant like chess.
+
+But I don't think the game was that fun. What kept me playing for almost two decades was the openness. Tremulous wasn't a commercial game made by a company. Dark Legion Development was a group of programmers and artists who just decided to make a game in their free time. Source code was licensed under GPL, assets under CC-BY-SA and anyone could host their own server.
+
+It was a very fertile ground for a curious kid like me. I learned everything from sound design, mapping, English and the C programming language all from playing the game and dissecting its internals. It started a chain of events that eventually led me to becoming a professional software engineer.
+
+= My Tremulous diary
+
+While writing this article, I started reminiscing about all the fun adventures I had over the two decades I spent playing Tremulous. Below are some of the coolest moments I could remember.
+
+== The beginning
+
+I discovered Tremulous in summer of 2006 through a random Polish forum. Coincidentally, it wasn't long after its 1.1.0 release, the version that held onto players until the very end. I was immediately hooked.
+
+== Paint
 
 I very quickly got interested in how the game worked. At the age of 10, I believed I was too dumb to learn programming. I understood nothing about what an .exe even was. I'd open one in Notepad and wonder, "who writes this?!"
 
@@ -63,13 +78,13 @@ In later Paints, I tried improving playability, removed the control room and ess
 
 In retrospect, Paint 7 was a perfect comedic relief to play in-between serious games and I inadvertently left my niche by trying to make a proper map.
 
-= Redfusion
+== Redfusion
 
 Tremfusion was an improved client for Tremulous. To me, the best feature was advanced scripting. 
 
 At some point, I learned enough programming to mod the game's client. I expanded Tremfusion's scripting language and sent the source to a couple of friends as Redfusion. Unfortunately, it most likely has been lost to the sands of time.
 
-= Cuboid
+== Cuboid
 
 I spent a lot of time playing on Rotačák's R Unlimited CZ. He later went on to release #link("https://store.steampowered.com/app/634070/Murnatan/")[Murnatan] on Steam, a remake of Tremulous, which sadly completely flopped.
 
@@ -81,13 +96,13 @@ Cuboid added scalable buildings to the game. You could build cuboids out of conc
 
 It was completely overengineered and didn't gain much popularity. Still, I have very fond memories of no-lifing the first version in two weeks over a spring break.
 
-= Unvanquished
+== Unvanquished
 
 Around 2014-2015, I was an active contributor to #link("https://unvanquished.net/")[Unvanquished], the spiritual successor to Tremulous. I implemented beacons, Borderlands-style damage indicators and helped artists import a whole bunch of models into the game.
 
 The project was under very active development until kharnov, the project head, suddenly had to leave due to personal reasons. I lost interest shortly after.
 
-= New EDGE
+== New EDGE
 
 New EDGE was a continuation of EDGE, which itself was a continuation of Rotačák's mod. New buildings, new aliens, new guns, many new original and high-quality assets. It was a lot of fun.
 
@@ -95,7 +110,7 @@ TODO: add screenshots
 
 I eventually became a quite prolific contributor, adding many more new ideas. #link("https://github.com/mtiusane/new-edge")[The repository] is still up.
 
-= GrangerHub
+== GrangerHub
 
 By 2015 or so, the playerbase had been divided between the old 1.1.0 and the never-finished 1.2.0 for years. The former was much more active with New EDGE being the only populated 1.2 server left.
 
@@ -105,7 +120,7 @@ Predictably, New EDGE was soon starved of players and we all resentfully switche
 
 They kept stalling, saying the code wasn't ready and that they would release the mythical "1.3.0" soon. 
 
-= An Almango
+== An Almango <an-almango>
 
 In 2016, I met MaeJong, a mapper and one of GrangerPub's top admins. We teamed up to create the only (as far as I know) collaborative map. For this purpose, I created #link-self("software/mapcat")[mapcat]. We worked on smaller segments of the map in parallel and used the tool to automatically join them all together.
 
@@ -188,7 +203,7 @@ However, most of the map is "stream of consciousness" type of nonsense:
 
 The map has been ported to Unvanquished and is still playable there.
 
-= Zittrig / Der Bunker
+== Zittrig / Der Bunker
 
 It turned out that the source code debate was just one issue. The whole GrangerHub was grossly mismanaged. MaeJong, other top admins and even DevHC --- multiprotocol's author --- all defected. Together we created Der Bunker, a new multiprotocol server.
 
@@ -205,7 +220,7 @@ Der Bunker's history was mostly uneventful after this drama blew over. I'll give
 
 #link("https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2-tbdolriU")[ZdrytchX] uploaded many gameplay videos from this era (and earlier years) to his YouTube channel.
 
-= Schachtmeister
+== Schachtmeister
 
 Speaking of minimal moderation, the flip side was that we went #emph[hard] on people who purposefully ruined the game for others. 
 
@@ -217,13 +232,13 @@ The database grew very quickly. Desala either ran out of VPNs, money or patience
 
 Fun aside: Schachtmeister is a deliberate misspelling of Schachmeister (German for "chess master"). Yalt, a German mapper/modder, named one of the areas in one of his maps "Ventillationsschacht" ("ventilation shaft"). This comically long name would often appear in team chats and we eventually started using "schacht" as a generic insult, basically meaning "dumbass". Hence, the "master of dumbasses".
 
-= The pandemic
+== The pandemic
 
 Tremulous saw a resurgence during the pandemic. It wasn't uncommon to see the server so full that it was barely playable. Like in the good old days.
 
 Around that time, Der Bunker hosted a couple of special events. I have two videos from April Fools' Day in 2021 when we turned the game into absolute brainrot: #link("https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwV8kzOahBM")[glourno_2021] and #link("https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMbMUVjzCkI")[glourno_2021: Aliens]. The Christmas mod in 2020 was even dumber, but I don't have any clips at hand.
 
-= The end
+== The end
 
 I eventually lost interest and handed Kai full control over the server. Around 2025, Der Bunker died a natural death as the last Tremulous server.