Ranger Gone Bad 2: Assault on Gloom Keep

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Ranger Gone Bad 2: Assault on Gloom Keep
The Rangers storm Gloom Keep in Ranger Gone Bad 2.
Engine(s)	Quake
Genre	Action
Running time	11 minutes, 5 seconds
Created by	United Ranger Films
Voices	None
Release(s)	1996
Format(s)	Quake demo recording

Ranger Gone Bad 2: Assault on Gloom Keep is a machinima film made using the Quake game engine. It was made by United Ranger Films in 1996. At the time of the film's creation, The Rangers (as they were known) were virtually the only group making movies in Quake (the term 'Quake Movies' or 'QMovies' became a common name for them). The movie was recorded at a LAN party featuring a number of participants, and made available for download shortly after. The movie is notable for being the first QMovie to have a genuine movie-like feel to it, at a time when there were little or no facilities for editing .dem files used for recording Quake. The movie uses text comments made by the players to represent subtitles - The Rangers' follow-up film, Torn Apart 2, would be the first QMovie to feature actual speech. The film was very well received, and was arguably instrumental in encouraging other individuals to create QMovies of their own. It was to be followed afterwards by the epic Ranger Gone Bad 3: The Fist of Set, but the film never reached completion as the Rangers disbanded.

As with the vast majority of machinima released during the Quake movie period, the film was recorded by a player using the games internal demo recording command. The film can be played back using a copy of Quake for DOS or Microsoft Windows.

[edit] Reception

With Diary of a Camper being widely acknowledged as the first ever Quake movie (and, by extension, the first ever machinima piece), the importance of Ranger Gone Bad 2 has become lost on many. Whereas Diary of a Camper was viewed as little more than a fun curiosity by the Quake community, Ranger Gone Bad 2 made people sit up and take notice, and realise the potential of what the Rangers had achieved. Stephen Lum of The Cineplex described the film as "the Quake Movie that made Quake Movies popular", and Paul Coates of Psyk's Popcorn Jungle described it as "the movie that launched the Rangers into superstardom... and, considering its age, is very well choreographed, has some brilliant camerawork (done using the RangerCam), and bucketloads of action thrown into the proceedings... many Q-Movies have come after this, but none have surpassed, or equalled, the action in this". The creators of Operation Bayshield said that "after seeing the Rangers' movie, we decided that in between DM'ing we should try making a movie ourselves" - presumably referring to Ranger Gone Bad 2. (Quote taken from Operation Bayshield original .zip download)