The Quake 3 Arena 1.32b Source

John Carmack and his company, iD Software, has as promised released the Quake 3 source code under the GPL. I'm waiting for my torrent to kick in. I have no intention of compiling or modding this software, but hey: having the source code may — just may — explain to me the plot of Quake 3. I am totally ignorant of what the game is supposed to be about.

As I understand it, iD titles don't have a lot of variety to them. The story as I know it thus far:

• Doom: Teleportation accident on Martian moon base causes a rift between dimensions. Bad things exist on the other side.
• Doom 2: Having killed everything on Mars, you discover that the bad things have also found Earth and they need killing, too.
• Doom 3: Same plot as Doom, but set entirely in the dark.
• Quake: Teleportation accident causes bad things from another dimension to invade. Sound familiar?
• Quake 2: There's a war on, and a "Normandy Beach"-style invasion against the Strogg homeworld goes sour. Completely alone, you decide to conquer the planet anyway.
• Quake 3: ???
• Quake 4: I'm not sure, but I think this is the same plot as Quake 2.

Perhaps iD needs to hire a writer to revamp their tired ideas. No more teleporter accidents, please. I'd really like to think Quake 4 is going to be a new idea, but iD just does not have the track record to support that hope. Maybe in Quake 5 you'll be able to use iD's inverse bump-map rendering and Bezier curve graphics algorithms to make a gorgeous game where you roll junk up into a big ball for your father.