Future vs. Fantasy Quake

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FvF History

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Future vs. Fantasy
Server and general information page

The server's address is fvf.servequake.com (or fvf.fvfonline.com)
Type: "connect fvf.servequake.com" in your Quake console to connect.

Got a question or comment? Visit the FvF Forum.

Gunter is the mastermind behind the server.
Polarite is hosting the server.
Hap is the original creator of the mod and provides webhosting for this site.

News

10-5-2016

I updated the FvF client pak file, so you should get the latest version from the Download section.

9-14-2016

Ok, we're up and running on a fast New York server, thanks to Polarite! Grab your client files from the Download section and connect fvf.servequake.com !

9-13-2016

I've restored the web site in preparation for a new FvF server being set up soon (hopefully).
And I put up an FvF Photo Gallery with some FvF images that are up to 20 years old!

3-23-2014

FvF is currently up and running on BizarroEvade's server at fvf.servequake.com:26008
Go to the Download section to grab the new FvF Client Pak, and try out Mark V.

7-30-2011

The webserver had a huge borkup, but Hap managed to straighten it out with the hosting company, and I've restored from backups.

2-11-2010

Foq is now hosting the FvF server at fvf.servequake.com, and the Hub on port 26001.

12-8-07

I restored the Forum.

3-13-2007

Orl has re-vissed the IKSPQ series of maps so that they have properly transparent water for the server, and this has also resulted in better FPS performance in these maps. You'll need to re-download them to get these benefits.
Also, I've added in an option so that players can Vote to run the custom maps. So go to the Download section and grab those re-vissed Iikka maps (along with the Terra map pack if you don't already have it), then hop on the server and enjoy!

11-21-2006

This site is now hosted at fvfonline.com thanks to Hap!

6-11-2006

I updated this page with the history of FvF, and I added my high-quality monster skin conversions of OgrO's textures to the download section (these are only for advanced Quake clients such as Qrack).

4-10-2006

We have some new custom maps we will be running on the server sometimes - the Terra Map Pack. These maps are large, dark, and full of traps (a lot like Doom). I'm combining the Terra Map Pack with the Iikka maps that we already use, into one big, new episode. Check the Download section to grab the Terra maps, and the Iikkas if you don't already have them.

2-25-2006

Orl is now hosting the FvF server. I have also updated the client files, so everyone should download the new ones from the Download section below.

12-22-2005

We are currently without a Host for the FvF server. X-Men has hosted it for 4 years, but has decided not to do so any longer. Much thanks to him for hosting it that long. I am looking into finding a new Host. -- Gunter

3-9-2004

We've vispatched the maps on the server. That means the water is now fully transparent, and looks much better in GLquake (only). Players will need to vispatch their maps too, in order to take advantage of this. Go to the Downloads section to get the vispatch utility. I'm setting the server to automatically activate a setting of r_wateralpha .6 when you connect, so patching your maps is all you need to do.

8-8-2002

I got us a dynamic DNS thingy, so if the server IP ever changes, you should still be able to find it at fvf.servequake.com
Isn't that nifty?

-- Gunter

Downloads

Want to enhance your experience? Download the FvF Client Pak (version 2.09.20). This download is not required for most Quake clients in order to connect and play on the server, but it will provide lots of cool enhancements such as modified models, skins, and sounds.
FvFclientPak20921.7z (4.47 meg)

The officially-recommended Quake client for FvF is Mark V. I have made a page to help you get that set up and running, which includes all the Mark V enhanced downloads you need. So if you want to use Mark V, you don't need any further downloads from this page. Instead, go on over to the FvF Mark V page. (The Mark V page does also contain various other enhancements for modern Quake clients, which may or may not work for you, depending on which client you use.)

If you already have a favorite Quake client, the only other download you might need are the custom maps we sometimes run:

Our custom mission will have you running through the IKS series made by Iikka, the Terra Map Pack by Christian Grawert, and the Dimension of the Past maps by Jerk Gustafsson.

Download all maps in one archive here: FvFmaps.7z (12.3 Meg)

The maps should go into \Quake\fvf\maps\ or Quake\ID1\maps\ (see the included ReadMe.txt).

Old downloads that someone may still find useful:

If you use an advanced Quake client such as Qrack, which supports high-quality textures, you should get this high quality monster texture pack I put together (5.25 meg). If you need these in Darkplaces format, get the ones from the Mark V page instead.

For the vispatch utility to make your water transparent, go to Quake Terminus.
It's the next-to-last file in the Utilities section. This only makes a difference for non-software rendering engines, such as GLquake (and pretty much all the modern Quake clients these days).

If you want to play FvF single-player or possibly with friends on a LAN, here is the full version of FvF4 from 1998, after it became a paid mod (this is different than the modified FvF2 we run on the server, which is not available for download).
Registered FvF 4

Installing and running the mod

Well, it runs like any other Quake mod... here's the quick setup, just like the readme says:
Create a folder inside your Quake folder called something like "fvf"
Download and Unzip the FvF files to that folder.
Then run Quake as you usually do, only pass it the switch "-game fvf"
For example, if you usually start quake with:

Winquake

You would start it with:

Winquake -game fvf209

The easiest way to do this is to create a batch file (which is just a
text file named something like fvf.bat that contains the line above) and
place it in your Quake folder, and double-click it to run it.
That should start up Quake running FvF. If it worked, you should see a big
"FVF" on the console background and everything else should look
different too, including the start-up demos. Now all you have to do
is connect to the FvF 2.09 server and you will be able to see the skins.

Note that I highly recommend Mark V rather than WinQuake, GLquake, or ProQuake.

Check out the Mark V page to get that setup.

How to Play/Tips for playing

The first thing to note is that you can type "vote" in the console to change certain game settings.

In regard to how to play, Read the fvf209.txt file! It describes all the classes and their weapons. Some of the information is outdated, but most of it is accurate enough.

Basically, you just keep pressing 9 or 0 to cycle through all the classes... (these keys are automatically bound when you connect. If you have bindings that overwrite 9 and 0, the impulses you need to use are 30 and 31). Each class has its own playing style. Find one you like and try it out. It's usually best to change class only after you have died because you lose all the weapons you collected when you change.

There are 3 main modes of play: Deathmatch, Quest, and Purge.

Deathmatch is just the normal going about and killing everybody... Teamplay may or may not be activated, and there is also a 2-team deathmatch mode.

Quest mode is where the players team up and take on the beefed-up monsters. In this mode you gain points for killing monsters, and after you gain enough points, you gain levels, which grant you certain benefits, even after you die. If you do die, you can go back and collect your pack, which contains all your weapons and ammo. It's a bad idea to change classes unless you have just died, because you will lose your pack. And be careful; the monsters formed a union demanding equal power and equal wages.... so the they have all been improved from their original ID versions... so don't expect it to be easy!

Purge mode is a 2 team battle to control the Altar. The Altar is at the start of the level. The Artifact of Divinity rests on the Altar, and whatever player grabs it becomes the Deity, who stands on the altar to cast blessings on his team, which tries to protect him from the other team. The other team, of course, tries to Purge the Deity (it takes 60 points of damage all at once) and claim the Artifact and the Altar for themselves.

Quick notes on some classes:

Androids regenerate Ammo. But NOT while you are holding down the fire button... If you are playing an Android, tap the button quickly to attack, or let off the button every now and then, so you can continue to regenerate cells.

Snipers and Fighters start out pretty weak but become very strong after collecting all the weapons (they 'max out'). It's best to avoid fights and run away until you have collected a lot of weapons to power them up first.

Ninja and Snipers have Grappling Hooks as their weapon #1 (they can also use a +hook key). For Monks and Androids weapon #1 (or the +hook key) will toggle their Flying modes. Don't forget to use these things to your advantage.
The flying may take a while to get used to... it's a lot like swimming in the air, except if you press Jump while flying, it makes you fly forward really fast instead of going up. Use +moveup to go straight up (like swimming).

The Fighter has a torch he can throw that will knock people off walls or out of the air (he can use it by selecting weapon #2, cycling weapons, or using the +hook button). That's how he takes care of those pesky grapplers and flyers.

All other classes can use the handy +hook key to instantly select their highest-numbered weapon. Don't know how to set up a +hook key? Just type in the console (or place the command in your sutoecec.cfg), for example: "bind shift +hook"

History of FvF

Way back in 1996 when Quake was still new, one of the first quality modifications to come out was Future vs. Fantasy from a group of people called Freeform Interactive. It was innovative as one of the first mods to support different classes of characters other than the standard Quake Soldier. Players could choose from a cast of generic characters from Fantasy (such as Mage, Cleric, Ninja) or Future (like Cyborg, Android, Sniper). Each class had a unique set of weapons, most of which were quite different from the standard (and let's admit it, boring) Quake weapons.

FvF quickly became one of the most popular Quake mods of the time, and soon introduced new modes of play. Aside from the standard Deathmatch, there was Purge (a two-team battle game with CTF-like elements) and Quest (a coop variation where the classes must work together to take on the tougher-than-usual monsters).

As time went on more classes were added (including secret classes) and more updates were made. Also new weapon models were included within the mod files. However, it was up to server operators to decide whether or not the models would be activated on their server -- many servers would run the mod without activating the custom models. This would allow any Quake players connect and play without having to download anything, which was great for bringing new people into the game.

But in the middle of 1997, Freeform Interactive dropped the support for running servers without the custom models, and fully embraced new graphics and sounds. At this point in time, online Quake was all the rage, and FvF itself had a vast number of players (myself among them -- after I discovered FvF I never went back to standard Quake), so bringing new players into the game wasn't a problem. FvF was moving into version 3 and beyond.

Eventually, Freeform got the idea to try and make money off of FvF. With the release of FvF 4, the mod now started up with a screen calling FvF shareware, and asking players to register and pay $10 to download the full version, which contained not only the new classes, weapons, graphics, and sounds, but also new monsters and all-new maps.

Of course, as the years ticked on and 1998 rolled around, Quake has lost steam and popularity. With FvF requiring players to download the files in order to play at all, new players for the mod had not been coming in as the old players faded away. Worse still, many of the remaining servers were running the full registered version, and many of the previous players (*cough*) weren't willing to pay $10 just to play. And so FvF slowly died off, like so many other Quake mods....

FvF had also been converted to Quakeworld, and that's where it was last being played before finally taking its last gasp.

Then one day in the year 2000, I picked up my Quake CD and decided to check out playing online again. I saw that there were no longer any FvF servers, and I asked several players I met if they'd ever played Future vs. Fantasy. I tried to get some players to connect to a server I'd run so they could check it out, but I found that, of course, they couldn't do so without having the mod installed. I thought had I remembered a setting that would allow people without the mod to connect and play. After doing some web searching (and finding FvF had basically faded from existence and completely died off), I managed to dig up the last version of FvF that could be ran all server-side, not requiring clients to download the files in order to connect and try it out: FvF 2.09 (old and bug-filled as it was).

At the time I had found Artifact-RJS Quake and was mainly playing that. But I was always asking players I met online if they'd heard of FvF or would be interested in running an FvF server for me. I just knew that FvF 2.09 could attract players since they could connect and test it out without having to download anything extra.

I also tried to get help from some of the old FvF players (through an old FvF forum that still existed). One of them ran an FvF Quakeworld server that really didn't get any play.... I tried to convince them that FvF 2.09 was the way to go, but I couldn't get any of them to help....

Up through 2001 I met more players online, and I did get different people to run a server for me, including CrAzIcRaCkEr, JackHole, and PainKiller. I worked overtime to invite new players to come try out the mod, and encouraged people to download FvF 2.09 to get the cool-looking skins as well. I also tried to invite some of the old FvF players to come play too, and a few of them did. Some of them on the old FvF forum, however, were very hostile and insulting, trying to convince me that FvF was dead and would stay dead, no matter what I did, and I was just beating a dead horse.... Of course, I KNEW I was right, regardless of what they said :) But PainKiller decided to stop running FvF, so I was again without a server.

Around September 2001 I happened into a server called Rune Death Junction. The server host would play there (then going by the handle 'Death', later changing to X-Men), so I go into my FvF promotion pitch, "Ever play FvF? It's a really cool mod. Want to try it out? Here's where you can download it. Want to run it instead of Runequake? There are already other Rune servers... but there are no FvF servers... your server would be unique and get new players!" So the server became "Eternal Death FvF." I then did my server promotions to invite new players to come try it out. We also found that the players really seemed to like Quest mode (I had previously been running the servers mainly in Deathmatch mode).

I had also been trying to fix a few of the many bugs in FvF 2.09 by hacking at it with a hex editor.... I fixed some of the text glitches and a few numerical values, but there's not a whole lot I could do to it with a hex editor....

Well, the server had been going pretty well for several months, and we started to get a few regular players. Some of the old time FvF players even found their way there (some good ones -- not the jerks from the old FvF forum, heh), including JaCKo (the original web designer for Freeform Interactive), and Armaphage.

Armaphage decided to make an attempt to decompile the FvF 2.09 source code.... which was not an easy task using the tools he had at the time, and considering the progs.dat had been scrambled to discourage decompiling.... But he managed to do it (minus the file names for the qc files...). I was a programmer by nature, but I had never touched QuakeC before, and I had to work with nameless qc files with no programming comments included.... but hey, it was still better than trying to hack out the bugs with a hex editor!

So I started updating things and fixing those bugs which I could figure out. Armaphage helped by providing some initial Vote code which I think he got from Team Fortress. Actually, FvF might have died off again if Armaphage hadn't gotten me the source code to work with so I could make updates....

Time passed and the server remained. In 2002, Hap (the original FvF programmer) started working on his new game, Purge (a standalone game with elements similar to FvF). JaCKo was in contact with him, and asked him to release the source code for FvF. Hap found his source code for the full version of FvF 4, and released that. I was able to use it to update more things in FvF 2.09. I also updated some of the files included in the mod (some of the old models would crash GLquake).

X-Men continued running FvF, except for a while in 2002 when The-Death created a new mod by combining FvF and Runequake together. So not only did it have the FvF features; it also had the runes from Runequake, which the players could use to fight each other, or they could play cooperatively and use the runes to fight the monsters. X-Men ran that for a couple months. I was quite against the idea, and in fact, I don't like anyone getting their hands on the FvF source, as it seems to be a rule that if anyone gets your source code, they'll make some bastardized version of it with added "super-kewl powers," which totally blows the balance of the game out of whack....

After that, my updated FvF 2.09 ran for a few more years. I was able to fix up more and more things as I got a better grasp of QuakeC. I also found some creative ways to make 'new' weapon models while working around the limitation of not using custom models (like my infamous 'Grunt feet fists'). I tried to maintain the original balance of FvF though, and not alter it to a point where it would be too different from what it once was. Since Quest mode seemed to be the most popular with the returning players, I started toughening up the monsters using code examples people had released on the 'net.

As time passed, I'd play off and on -- I wasn't always playing Quake all the time, but the server would pretty much run itself. There were a few die-hard players who would play Quest mode religiously whether or not anyone else was playing. Then around the end of 2005 X-Men couldn't continue running a full-time server (he hadn't really had the time to even play for a long while). It was a good 4-year run.

Around February of 2006, I started playing Quake again. I'd see people on the Rune servers who would ask me what happened to FvF, and I'd explain that there was no longer a host, and I needed someone else to run a server for me. I eventually ran into Orl, one of the FvF players from X-Men's server, and asked him if he'd ever considered running a server. Well, in March we worked things out so that we could have a server going full-time, and FvF was up and running again. I invited the old players back, and a few new players came too.

Well, I had to delve back into the code again to make some simple changes, such as the splash screen massage. But after doing that, I kept finding more and more things to update.... I've also found that my QuakeC skills are really much more refined now, allowing me to make changes which I couldn't before. I've really put a lot of work into the mod over the years, especially lately. The original qc files for FvF 2.09 were around 680k in size; my files now have grown to around 1,030k.

So for the last few months I've really been improving the mod, and breathing more life into it. It also seems that Quake itself has been making a small comeback lately, with the community solidifying and becoming more active (small as it may be).

And that's the story up till this point, June of 2006. So, as you can see, the main reason that FvF Quake is still alive is simply that I refuse to let it die like so many other Quake mods have (and I couldn't do it without the help of others). FvF deserves to live; it is still the best Quake mod there is. Most Quake mods lack variety -- they're all rocket launcher, rocket launcher, rocket launcher. Sure, Runequake is fun, but it lacks real strategy and balance -- it's mindless scrambling for the most powerful weapons. As I said, that can be fun, but I think Quake players these days are getting spoiled with it.

Future vs. Fantasy, on the other hand, has it all: Strategy, Variety, Teamplay, Balance, and different modes of play, including the standard Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Purge, and the popular Quest mode, which I think people like because they need a break from the mindless scrambling of Runequake. Quest mode is also very "newber friendly" for people who want to learn Quake without just getting slaughtered in crazy Runequake, while still offering a real challenge to experienced players with increasing difficulty levels as they progress.

So where will FvF go from here? Who knows. That's up to the players. But as long as Quake 1 is still being played, I'll be around pimping Future vs. Fantasy. Don't you think you would like to be playing FvF right now?

Update....

FvF continued to run fairly steadily (though mostly unused) for years, switching to a few different volunteer server hosts.

Then at the beginning of 2015, the then server host decided to stop running his Quake servers, so FvF again went dormant. Then when Hap changed to a different web hosting company, I never bothered to restore the FvF website, so FvF truly went dark....

But it was not forgotten.

In August of 2016, The gaming site "Rock, Paper, Shotgun" did a retrospective article about FvF, Armaphage posted about that article over on the Quakeone.com forums, and that sparked renewed interest, with some old FvF players talking about how they wanted to play again. So Polarite said he would run a server at no cost for us.... So I restored the website, contacted Polarite, got the server running again, I made more updates, and there you go! FvF refuses to die!

Links

Here are some old archived FvF information pages (archived because the original sites no longer exist!).
Some of the information is outdated, but these are still good reads.

Official FvF FAQ
FvF Purge strategy page

QuakeOne is the most active Quake community these days. Go there for information and help and file downloads.

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