Oh my god of sadism.. You see how time passes? Exactly one year ago Halfquake Amen got released. I remember two guys who were waiting for it in the farm board and writing stuff like "Hey it's September 1st, where's Halfquake Amen?". Then a few days later the first review appeared on HL Atlas and the guy who's responsible for this site even supported us with the first download mirror.
Well, I guess summarized I can say Halfquake Amen became a success. People listen to its soundtrack on the way to work, others buy Halfquake tshirts or even HQA-ish-looking ties (no kidding!), some see HQA as a hope for their lifes and a few people even try to make a reality of its story.
Personal Halfquake was the next step to take for the growing Halfquake fan community. Some loved it and still do, some loved it and hate it now and some didn't even try. But then PHQ became a small community of people who didn't know that there are people out there who think like them. PHQ became a place where individualists gather and discuss about life, philosophy, halfquake and more.
And now some even try to get back to the roots. The first Halfquake.

In the fall of 2000 on a LAN party while others were playing Diablo II and betas of Counter-Strike two guys called muddasheep and blackjack were sitting in front of muddasheep's pc and playing Quake 1.

MS: "I love this architecture! And all this sadism, oh man did you see that?"
BJ: "Yeah, it's just brilliant."
MS: "Maybe we should make something like that for Halflife, you know?"
BJ: "Maybe... Do you know the movie called 'Cube'?"
MS: "Hmm.. no?"
BJ: "Hehe, I haven't seen it yet, but I like its story. It's about a few people who get stuck in a place with lots of cubes and in some of the cubes there are deadly traps."
MS: "And is there an explanation why they are caught in this place?"
BJ: "No, that's the point. They're just there. No reason."
MS: "Hehe, I like it. Maybe we should really try to combine those things. Let's say.. you get caught because you did something wrong in the past and now you get tortured. And we're laughing at them and their sufferings."
BJ: "Good idea! But how do we call it?"

I can't recreate the last words we've spoken and I can't remember all the names we've created. Most of them were really funny ("CubeQuake") and in the end we decided to call our modification "Half-Quake", a silly combination of Halflife and Quake. Of course, we didn't know what we were going to make, otherwise we'd have chosen a better name.
A few minutes later I started to make the first level including a short intro and a sample of manson's "beautiful people".
During the making of Halfquake (sorry, Half-Quake) I still went to school and around February I had some serious psychic problems which lasted for about one month. The portal map before Somos was made during this month which should be quite self-explanatory. Blackjack and I also visited a Manson concert which was one of the most important things in my life. This was also the time when we both started to make our emoticons the "wrong" way. For example ":)" turned out to be "(:".
And finally on April 19th 2001 after about 5 months of work Half-Quake got released. It took a few months until we got our first fan mails and reviews. But most people just hated it because of its sadism. We enjoyed it. And we even used some comments on the first one for a commercial for Halfquake Amen, about 5 months later.
On September 18th 2001 Half-Quake2 got started. We knew that this name wasn't that what we were looking for and so we decided to think about a subtitle for our second mod. Again I can't remember the names we've thought about but we all know what made it to the first place: Halfquake Amen.
I also remember the first room I've made. It was totally new for me being in an absolutely dark room with a large letter field. But I liked it. And so did blackjack.
After one year of torturing myself and having nightmares of Somos I finally released Halfquake Amen on September 1st 2002.

People liked it, people enjoyed it and some people didn't get it and hated it ("stupid level design", "n00b texture scaling", "no storyline", "too difficult", "not possible without cheating"). I almost won 20,000 Euro and a laptop and almost got a deal with a commercial guy from Vienna. Almost. Which means: I didn't get it.

And now?
My future is as empty as my past is full.
The inspiration is gone. Reality caught me. Real life sucks. The government sucks. And as if Manson could read my mind he sang in his stupid new song: "Everything has been said before, nothing left to say anymore."

My world is gone. And I want to get back to where I came from. I want to escape. Escape from the maze of life.