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FotM #2: Q4F developers Jeremy Raymond and Jared Cone

Fortressmen of the Month #2 goes big, bringing together the key developers behind Quake 4 Fortress—an ambitious project that built hype, attracted community support, hosted playtests, and fostered a growing player base between 2004 and 2006. Development came to an abrupt end, with the work that had been completed wrapped up in a “v1.5” release. For those who played it during its lifetime, Q4F remains a project remembered with nostalgia and a lingering sense of what might have been.

Now, after nearly twenty years in the games industry, Q4F lead developer Jeremy “photeknix” Raymond and lead programmer Jared “3j” Cone look back on their journey. They begin by discussing the history of Team Fortress as they experienced it as teenagers before turning to the Fortress mod they created as young adults. They reflect on Q4F’s ambitions, its distinctive design, its road to QuakeCon 2006 and meeting Splash Damage, and, despite all of its promise, its eventual downfall. Finally, they offer a glimpse into the game industry careers they have built since those early modding days.

Güven:
Q1. My first question to you, Jared, is your TF history.
Which TF games you were involved with, and on what level, before you got into Q4F development, and after it?

There’s already an extensive answer about your TF history in this BattlefieldQ4F.com interview dated to 2006, Jeremy. It also details nicely how Q4F development at first started as Doom 3 Fortress, took the Quake turn and proceeded from there. Apparently you had your roots from QWTF, TFC and Q3F, and you even involved in a brief development attempt of Q2F. What about Unreal Fortress (UnF) though? Because I see in your independent creations that you were an Unreal Tournament 2004 level designer. What about ETF (Enemy Territory Fortress), which was not mentioned alongside Q3F in that 2006 interview? Lastly I see there is a TF2 map designed by you, so I also wonder your relationship with FF and TF2 in the aftermath of Q4F development.

Jared:
I played QWTF almost daily from shortly after it first came out up until the public scene died off with the release of Quake’s source code. Then I transitioned to playing Q3F for a long time. I played TF2 for a bit but couldn’t really get into it. My first experience with TF development was as a level designer working with Jeremy on Doom 3 Fortress. I worked on a port of The Rock. After that project fizzled out Jeremy started up the Q4F team. I transitioned to programming for Q4F and have been doing video game programming ever since.

Jeremy:
Hey Jared, been a long time. Hope you are well!
Güven, It’s cool you found that old interview. It has info in it I don’t remember, so it’s nice to look back at those details I forgot over time. I think I was 25 then. Today, I’m 46, and my memory isn’t that great. So I’ll do my best to fill in the gaps.
UnF and FF are really the only two Team Fortress mods I never had the chance to play or make any maps for. I was very active in clan play during ETF but was very focused on Q4F development at the time. TF2 came along while I was in college post Q4F development. I did some clan play for a bit, but college work eventually took over and had to retire from league play to focus on my studies. I only ever did one TF2 map, and it was for my graduate project. I was instructed to do a single player level for Half-Life 2, but I wanted to make a TF2 map, so I did both. I made a TF2 control point map and turned it into a single player mission for HL2. This was the last time I worked on or played TF. I’ve always been interested in going back and making something new, but it’s hard to find the time when doing level design professionally full time, so I haven’t had the chance to, sadly.

The gameplay video made by Jeremy for the Q4F Mod Workshop at QuakeCon ’06, showing Alpha Build 2 footage from testers who showed up at the last minute for the purpose. Source: moddb.com and Jeremy’s YouTube channel

G:
Back in the day, you describe the “tweak” of Q4F as 1) being a QWTF-TFC-Q3F fusion, 2) Simplifying TF’s learning curve (and introducing auto-hop in this context).
But I wonder how you think Q4F would feel, in a more general sense and in its essence, if it came out the way you wanted. I read that Quake 4 had ramp slides and crouch jumps. As the last id Tech engine to be open-sourced, id Tech 4 was almost a full rewrite of id Tech 3, and a switch from C to C++. The new graphics are a substantial change as far as I can see and read. And as someone who enjoys Quake Live (the 2010 remaster of Q3A) and ETF whenever I get the chance, I am struggling with the feeling of QWTF and TFC, and I never got to experience Q4F aside from hopping around on an empty map.

Q2. So I want to imagine with you the feeling we could have today if Q4F was finished and populated. Would it stand out, even though it would be 20 years old?

Jeremy:
Q4F was inspired by the TF games that came before it, but it was definitely our own take on the game, for sure. I felt there were several things that turned away newer players from other TF games, such as trick jumping, so I wanted to add some new ways to bridge that skill gap. Something that would be easier to learn but still take practice to master. Adding an auto jump while holding the jump key helped bridge that gap and players just had to learn how to time those jumps on declines to help them pick up speed. I do believe we kept in strafe jumping and the newer Q4 mechanics, but this was a QOL step for new players to learn how to do that easier. We also included some new ways to get to high places other than skill, grenade, and rocket jumping, such as wall climbing with some weapons. We kept all the old tricks players came to expect from TF, while providing some newer simplified features to help close that skill gap.

How do I think Q4F would compare to other TF mods today if they all got a renewed player interest? It’s hard to say. I’d like to think the simplified systems would help attract players, but otherwise it’s difficult to guess how it’d stand up to others. Q4F is more of a personal vision of what I wanted TF to be like, in cooperation with Jared, of course. Gameplay wise, we mostly got there, it just lacked content and polish. I’d like to think it’d compete equally with the others. But QWTF will always have a special place in my heart for being the original and getting me into playing competitive online games, league play, and especially getting me into level design and game development.

Jared:
Q3 made bunny hopping easier to execute but limited its steering so players had to choose speed vs. maneuverability. I think that was a good choice for Q3. For TF we preferred Q1-style strafe jumping. It enables some spectacular parkour maneuvers for navigating the level and grabbing the flag. However we needed strafe jumping to be more accessible to a general audience. I remember struggling through several iterations of the air control code. I think the one we landed on required the player to still subtlety move the mouse for steering but didn’t require holding or alternating the strafe buttons.

If Q4F had been completed, I would hope it would have been remembered as a modern (at the time) approach to bring TF back to its roots. Just as fast-paced as QWTF but easier to get in to. Unfortunately Quake 4 multiplayer never really took off the way the previous games had. That made it really hard to find help in the mod scene so everything just kind of fizzled out.

Medic and Soldier models by Merp (top). Source: Q4F.net News
Pyro using flamethrower (bottom). (4:3 screenshot stretched to 16:9. 3^rd person view activated by entering pm_thirdperson 1 in the console after loading a developer (unrestricted) map with devmap <mapname>. Q4F can be installed by copying Q4 patch 1.4.2 files found online and then the Q4F 1.5 files onto the Quake 4 client downloaded from Steam.)

G:
I had realized that in the 2006 interview you explained auto-hop in the most simple terms, but without using the term “auto-hop” itself; and you just did the same thing now. I may be the first person to break the news to you guys but, are you aware that auto-hop is a real thing now? Fortress Forever (2007) was the first TF mod to introduce it as far as I can guess, and FortressOne (one of the most popular QWTF forks nowadays, released 2018) and ETF 2.0 (released 2025) also have it. And the fact that your mod (2004-2006) precedes all these makes me wonder if you are the pioneers of the concept.
Q3. Do you remember how you came up with auto-hop?

Speaking of pioneering, I also see some interesting visual design choices regarding the classes. You went with a female Medic, and possibly non-human Pyro(maniac) and Demoman (see the images below). Although there is some ambiguity surrounding TF2 Pyro’s sex and ETF Agent’s (Spy) species, these choices of Q4F still remain unique across the various Fortress mods. Do you remember the thought process behind, and who were leading it?

Jared:
Hmm, that’s an interesting observation about auto hop. I feel like it’s been a feature in games for so long that I forgot it wasn’t like that in vanilla Q3 or Q4. Crazy!

Jeremy might remember better about the medic model. I think that was one of the only models that was made specifically for Q4F and it looks great. For the majority of classes we had to kit bash the models using parts from characters that came with the Quake 4 single player campaign. I remember the character models being a particular pain point with not being able to find any help from the small Quake 4 modding community.

Jeremy:
You know, now that I think about it, there have been a few other games I’ve played that added an “autohop” feature that just felt natural to the game, like Dusk, so I never really thought about it. I didn’t feel like we were doing anything groundbreaking, we just saw a way to simplify player mobility and help level the playing field a bit. It was a team effort with Jared to figure out the best way to do that until we landed on something that felt good.

I wasn’t aware any other TF mod adopted it. That’s really cool. I’ll give props to anyone who recognizes a feature they could use to improve their game, whether or not we did it first. I love sharing great ideas, and if there is anything from our game that inspires anyone else… take it! Make it your own. Make the best game you can make. Many games inspired us to make the best game we could with what we had. And I’d be humbled if we ever did the same for any other developers out there.

Another really cool feature Jared added that I haven’t seen many games do (if at all?) is customizable team colors. The ability for players to change their team colors to whatever they want and it affects the colors they see on characters and in the world around them is such a great feature, I wish all team based multiplayer games had this feature.

As for the character models, very early on, we had someone join that started work on a custom Medic and Soldier, those are the in progress screenshots that we shared with the public. However, they were never finished and we never found anyone else to help with our class models, so Jared worked his magic to piece together bits of different Q4 characters to come up with something that fit the best for each class. It was a limited pool of options, so we did the best we could to make them feel unique.

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