By Tina Gasperson
News Editor
On Oct. 13, a terminally cute Dust Puppy could be the next new model for Quake III players. That’s the day Loki Software and Userfriendly.org announce the winners of their Quake III Arena skins and levels contest in which contestants will vie for prizes in one of three categories: maps, skins, or models.
All entries must have a UF theme, and sorry guys, no vulgarity is allowed. The contest ends on Oct. 11, and the winning entries will be displayed at the Annual Linux Showcase in Atlanta on the 13th.
To create designs, Linux users can take advantage of Loki’s Linux SDK, which includes the port of Q3Radiant, a program that previously was only available for Windows.
Loki Entertainment is well-loved in the community for its dedication to bringing the best in gaming software to Linux, as well as its sponsorship of several development projects intended to increase the number of tools available to open source game developers.
The Quake games are immensely popular among geeks, an audience that makes up most of Userfriendly’s readership, probably because the comic strip takes a hilarious look at life from the viewpoint of the Un*x/Geek community.
Most of the characters are human, but Dust Puppy, with his fuzzy head and stringbean legs, is unarguably the cutest and most identifiable denizen of the strip.
Since Userfriendly character AJ (among others) has been known to drool over Quake III from time to time in the strip’s history, coming up with the idea for the contest was just a matter of time.
“Because there have been so many Quake references made in the strip and the characters and fans all love the game, we knew it would be a big hit,” says Erik Loptson, PR coordinator at Userfriendly.org. “[We wanted to give them] the opportunity to use their creativity and skills to actually bring the characters into the game.”
The sponsors don’t expect the Quake contest to become an annual event, mainly because there are so many other games slated for porting to Linux in the future. “We hope to work with Loki on these as much as possible,” says Loptson.
Loki and Userfriendly aren’t expecting to be overwhelmed with entries for the contest, so your chances of winning may be pretty good — if you’ve got the talent. “Our best guess is that we will receive 30 to 40 entries in total across all of the categories.” Loptson adds, “The skins category will see the highest response, as it requires the least amount of time.”
Entries will be rated on a scale of zero to 10 “frag puppies,” and the top winners in each category will receive two games of their choice from Loki, an autographed copy of each of the two Userfriendly books, and a real live (OK, maybe not alive) Dust Puppy. Second place winners get one game from Loki and a Dust Puppy, and each honorable mention will also get one of the cute little critters.
Quake is not the only game Loki has brought to the Linux community. Some of the applications the entertainment software company has ported to Linux include SimCity 3000, Heroes, Heretic, Railroad Tycoon, and Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns.
In fact, Loki CEO Scott Draeker made a point of announcing that the Kohan game for Linux was slated for release at just about the same time as the Windows version.
Now, if Loki could just get the big name game developers to look at Linux first.
