Time to set the story straight on "Ranger Gone Bad 3 - The Fist of Set".    This is the 
story of RGB3 from the perspective of Matt Van Sickler and Heath Brown, the 
formulative team behind the RGB2 and RGB3 movies.

Here's the history lesson.

The Ranger Clan set to work on their masterpiece of Quake moviemaking, RGB3, in the 
early winter of 1996.  Originally we had selected a map called 'Slavery' made by a guy 
named Checkas for the set of the movie.   ColdSun wrote dialogue and scripted scenes for 
the film, and we started going through the motions of making a Quake movie.

Somewhere into the project ColdSun and UnknownSoldier decided it wasn't working.  
We were making too many concessions to map 'limitations' at the cost of plot elements 
we wanted to include.  In other words, we were writing the story around the map, instead 
of making the map to fit the story.    UnknownSoldier decided to rework the map a bit, 
after getting Checkas' permission and the .map file.  Little did he know how viciously the 
creative map bug was going to bite him.  When he saw the possibilities opened up by 
creating custom sets, he went nuts.  Sequestered in his dorm room, mapping sessions got 
longer and longer, while class attendance became less and less frequent.

Three months later, after receiving help from the likes of Tokay at id, Choryoth at Valve 
(along with Wedge, the creator of the infamous RangerCam mod used to film the epic), 
and Gateway at Rogue, we had two brand spanking new, sprawling, completely custom 
maps for use as the set in our epic.  A new story was scripted.  New dialogue was 
scribbled into notebooks.  We started filming again.  At this point things were going well 
and our clan roster of actors consisted of ColdSun, robs, Sphinx, GreyDog, mute, p1nga, 
Zoid, Armadon, void, CrAZyBiLL, JavaMan, Mansa, HitMan, CoolHandLuke, 
TalonClaw, Blue, LoneWolf, HoBBiT, grendel, and Uppa.  UnknownSoldier directed this 
motley crew during the filming.  ArchV was primed to do the editing.  razo claimed he 
was allergic to filming, so we just made fun of him in between breaks from the 
production.

Filming was completed on May 17th, 1997.   Literally hundreds of hours of raw footage 
had been shot over a period spanning months.   Everything you will see in RGB3 was 
complete at that point, except the editing and some model animations.  The voice crew 
was cast, and wavs were recorded.   ArchV started to bring the rough .dem files into a 
polished form.

For some reason, the Ranger film crew leaders got the bright idea of promising a showing 
of RGB3 at QuakeCon 97, since quite a few of the Ranger Clan were going to be present.  
As QuakeCon drew closer, it became apparent to ArchV and UnknownSoldier that it 
wasn't going to happen.  There was just too much work left to do.  We scrambled to 
throw something together to please  the fans.  The first two days of QuakeCon were spent 
holed up in ArchV's apartment near the convention site.  Hours before the RGB3 Preview 
was to be shown, a zip disk was handed over to an Ion Storm employee (we forget his 
name) to transfer the demo to videotape.  It was an unauthorized copy of this zip disk that 
provided the material which was leaked by CRT on the Keygrip site last week.

The Rangers  went out to dinner to celebrate and kick back for a couple hours.  While the 
entire Ranger Clan was at dinner, someone decided it was time to show the video at 
QuakeCon, without even giving the Rangers a chance to preview and approve it.  There 
were glaring errors that were traced to a bad batch file and a missing set of .wav files.  
The reaction to the quirky demo, missing major parts of the sound and exhibiting a very 
strange walk animation was, needless to say, not very positive.  It was a very 
disheartening experience for all the Rangers involved in the movie making.

Work stopped on the film for a month after QuakeCon while ArchV and 
UnknownSoldier took a much needed break from the rigors of demo editing.  When work 
on the film resumed, it quickly became apparent that neither Arch nor Unk had the 
motivation to continue the project.  Self-imposed deadlines passed, progress became less 
and less frequent, and eventually RGB3 'died' for the first time.  We shelved it and 
decided we would get back to it in a few months when the burnout had worn off.

Months passed, and the source materials languished on Unk's hard drives.  After a while 
interest in the project returned, and work was progressing well until disaster struck.

As a precaution to data loss, and since he didn't own a tape drive, Unk kept a mirror of 
all the source files on a second hard drive.  One day his primary hard drive died without 
warning and seemingly without cause.  We were glad UnknownSoldier had backed up all 
the source to the other hard drive just in case.  Of course, Murphy's Law had to intervene, 
and ten days later the second hard drive failed.  The ultimate cause  a faulty power 
supply.  UnknownSoldier tried desperately to revive the second hard drive, but without 
another computer to try it on, or the funds to purchase a new one, he gave up in 
frustration and delivered the bad news.  With both repositories of source material wiped 
out, RGB3 died its second and seemingly final death.

About four months went by, and Unk upgraded his system to a sparkling new Pentium 
200, new motherboard, power supply,  and all.  (RGB3 was filmed on a P133 listen 
server, in normal Quake, with the vast majority of actors being on modems.  Don't try 
this at home kids.)  As he was plugging components back into the case he figured "what 
the hell, let's plug in the old Quake drive and see what happens".  He'd kept the bad drive 
in case he someday had enough money to afford an expensive recovery operation to 
retrieve his RGB3 data.  When he plugged the drive in, it worked.  For some reason the 
new system was able to read the drive.  That data was intact.  RGB3 was alive again.

(Now that Unk works in the Information Systems field and has a little more knowledge 
about computers, he figures the something in the previous computer had simply wiped 
out his CMOS settings for the hard drive, and it hadn't auto-detected the hard drive 
properly after that.  While this may seem obvious to any techie, at the time Unk was just 
a "software person" on Wintel boxes, and better acquainted with Amiga hardware than 
that of a PC.)

Drastic_Man entered the scene as the new editor of RGB3 in January of 1998.  He 
worked tirelessly, splicing small demo chunks into big demo chunks for the final edits.  
Some of the hardest splicing was done by Drastic as the project dragged on.  But, 
ultimately the burnout returned for UnknownSoldier and the project was shelved again.

Like a phoenix, the project was to rise from the ashes again in a few months, but the 
landscape of clandom had changed quite a bit since the project began.

By summer of 1998 most of the original project members had long ago left the Ranger 
Clan to form the clan Silent Assault, or to just do other things.  The Ranger Clan had 
voted itself out of existence - [R2]ColdSun was now SA|ColdSun, as were Uppa, 
LoneWolf, GreyDog, and UnknownSoldier.  Blue had left the clan shortly after 
QuakeCon.  Zoid left after he became busy doing contract programming for id software.  
TalonClaw had simply disappeared into the wastelands of cyberspace, taking mute, 
ArchV, and JavaMan with him.  Hobbit, p1nga, void, CrAZyBiLL, Armadon, 
CoolHandLuke, and grendel had also left the clan at various times.

Although the Rangers had voted to disband the clan permanently, it had resurfaced when 
Sphinx chose to reinstate the proud name of the Rangers and resume business as usual.    
These new Rangers laid claim to the productions of the original Ranger film crew (Diary 
of a Camper, Torn Apart I and II, RGB I and II).  Since at this point the new Ranger Clan 
only had two people in it who had ever had anything to do with filming Ranger movies 
(and not terribly large parts at that), the people who made those first films were not happy 
that the new Rangers were taking credit for the work just because they happened to share 
a clan name in the past.  Heated arguments took place, extremely harsh words were 
exchanged, and in the end a lot of enemies were made between the two groups.  After 
more bickering and fighting, it was finally agreed that the original movies would be 
linked from the new Rangers Clan page, but that RGB3 would from now on be a non-
Ranger project  and the new Rangers would not try to release the footage they already 
had, on one condition; the project had to be finished.  The credits would be accurate as to 
the participants up to that point, but it would not be released as a Ranger Clan film.

In late summer of 1998, almost 2 years after production of RGB3 had begun, a third 
demo editor agreed  to take on the task of finishing up the movie.  UnknownSoldier made 
the triumphant announcement to Blue at Blues's News that RGB3 production had 
resumed, and DAMMIT this time it would get finished!  Alpha_Male, of clan 
Knightmare and later Clan Ranger fame, did an excellent job of cleaning up every single 
flaw in the original preview that could be fixed.  Zoid, now working for id software on 
Quake 2, also helped knock out some bugs in the demo with custom glQuake 
executables.  Unfortunately, just as work was about to begin on the next segment of the 
film, both Alpha and Unk suffered a dreaded episode of Real Life(tm), and the project 
died yet again!  That winter, UnknownSoldier burned an archive CD of his source files 
and tucked it away in a safe place  his intention to never touch it again.  Three times the 
project had hit the shelf to gather dust, and to Unk it looked like it just wasn't meant to 
be.  Over a year passed by with no mention of the ill-fated movie.

Which brings us to the present.  Blue mentions the long-dead film in OOTB several days 
ago.  In response, Machinima announces plans to write a post-mortem article about 
RGB3 (a little premature we hope  read on).  The next thing you know an illicit copy of 
the QuakeCon RGB3 preview is posted on the Keygrip website.  For the first time in over 
a year, RGB3 is being talked about again.  Seeing that the interest is still there, key 
players of the RGB3 team reassemble and discuss giving it one more try.

So here's the present situation:  A fourth demo editor has signed on to the team.  The 
source files are being reviewed  probed for signs of life, you might say.  CrustaR has 
added the final touches to Alpha_Male's polished version of the RGB3 Preview, and a 
key scene was reshot to improve the quality of the intro sequence.  RGB3 is closer to 
completion than ever  not only because of the hard work that the actors and three 
previous demo editors have put into this epic, but also simply because it is back off the 
shelf  after all this time and in the hands of a very capable finishing team.  The most 
difficult editing was in the 12 minutes you're about to see.  Finishing the rest of the 
movie should be far easier than getting this first 1/3 out the door.

To set the record straight on ownership, RGB3 is no longer a Ranger Clan production, 
and hasn't been since the fall of 1997 when the project leader left the clan.  However, 
we've decided that the Rangers will be involved in the final testing phases of the movie 
and be allowed to mirror the demo on their webpage, in honor of the clan's history.  All 
future releases of material will come from ColdSun and UnknownSoldier under the 
moniker United Ranger Films  anything else is unauthorized material, just like the 
QuakeCon preview that was posted several days ago.  We decided to keep the name 
United Ranger Films for our group because we're the only ones who ever released 
anything under that name (the new Ranger Clan has yet to release a game-movie), and 
frankly we like the sound of it.  Especially the acronym.  =)

Will the full version of RGB3 ever see the light of day?  There have been so many 
setbacks, so many times this production has died and come back to life, that we're not 
going to even venture a guess this time out.  This project has slipped by more release 
dates than Daikatana.  Hell, this preview is coming out 4 days after we said it would.

But the motivation is back.  The fire is with the team again to get this thing finished so 
the world can see the achievements made by a dedicated group of gamers 3 years ago.  
Here's hoping you all get to see the finished product.  If you would like to see the 
conclusion of RGB3, please email the team and let us know you are interested in the 
project.  Lastly, if you are an original team member who did voice acting, and you would 
like to help complete the project, please contact us as soon as you can.  We could use 
your help.  =)

Enjoy the preview.

ColdSun & Unknown Soldier, on behalf of the entire RGB3 Team.
rangerfilms@hotmail.com


