Hi Luke, tell us about yourself in real life?

Hey! My names Luke, I live in Dublin, Ireland and I`m 16 years old. I`m currently on my summer holidays but I shall be going into my 2nd last year of highschool in september.

You`re one of the youngest Quakers in the scene. When did you start playing Quake, and in particular duel?

I started playing Quake around this time of the year in 2009. I only played duel because at the time I found it hard to find a CTF team and TDM wasn`t very active (or I wasn`t in touch with it) so I found it easiest for me to play duel as I only needed myself and an opponent to play.

Your father traveled to dreamhack with you. How has that trip influenced his view on the game? Did you discuss about Quake after you came back home?

My dad is beginning to understand how quake works. We discussed the main problem with Quake LANs is that players after receive any prize money so they have no real motivation to come other than to socialise at the events.

Did you watch the demos of your match against weird? Did you learn something from it?

I have tried to watch my demos, yes, but it isn`t easy! I`ve mainly watched the Aerowalk game and the main mistake I made was that I paniced, I`ve done this plenty of times versus players and I never seem to learn from it. Take for example last weeks zotac, I had p0ni in the first round. We were playing on ZTN and the score was 4-4 with 5 minutes remaining and I had just ended a fight coming out as the obvious winner (me: 200 100, him: <25hp). He restacks on the 50hp and YA and hits 3 rails in a row and then shafts me on the red without me dealing any damage. I`ve made this mistake time and time again against "top" players and I know about it myself (I hate it) but it happens every time I come close to taking the lead against higher skilled players.

At Dreamhack you said that you don`t really time to the clock. Is this really the case, and if yes, do you feel this is something you gotta change to step up your game?

I think I will only begin timing if I seriously start playing duel for a tournament but I`d rather practice my positioning,combat skills/dodging before I focus on timing.

What would be your favorite map pool?

ztn,aero,tox,dm6,t4

Sound is a crucial component of the game. There are some questionable design choices (like the fact that you cannot walk down stairs silently), and technical limitations (the visibility-sound coupling, creating problems like the one of battleforge, where a window in the middle of the map screws up everything). Imagine you could influence the next Quake, what would you like to see there in terms of sound features? You can go as crazy as "YA armors making you silent for 10 seconds", but motivate your suggestions!

Well I think that id software has to fix the sound in general in quakelive but thats another story I suppose. I`d like to try some sort of silent powerup where you make no noise at all for 30 seconds (weapons and movement) just so you could suprise your enemy. However the main problem I see is if you pick it up in duel the enemy knows you have it and they will just be super-cautious. This is what we have qlfocus for though, so we can try these things out and see if they work and if they don`t we can just remove them.

You once proposed the idea of allowing weapon drop in duel as a way to bait your opponent. Can you expand on this?

Heh, I did mention this at dreamhack. I approached rapha and cypher about it and cypher seemed against it as he thought it wasn`t very realistic and if you accidently hit your drop weapon bind in the middle of a fight you`re doomed. Rapha said he had thought about it but that cypher was right. However I don`t see why idsoftware can`t add it anyway, I mean whens the last time you`ve accidently hit your drop weapon bind in a TDM game? Just because its there doesn`t mean you HAVE to use it.

Can we expect to see you at one of the next lans, in the Netherlands or Italy?
I`d love to, I had a great time at the last event with you guys (even if I didn`t get to go to the after party :D). However I really don`t know, we`ll just have to see in the future.

Any final shout out?
Basically to anyone who I talk to on a regular basis!

pic - https://dl.dropbox.com/u/14939633/IMG_2190.jpg
demo - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8SGWFkgqeI