Redwood & Stomped Merge! [5:30 pm] - Huntsman
Just got an email from tactic over at Stomped that Stomped and Redwood have merged and been purchased by Internet Entertainment Associates, LLC. The best news? Redwood, no longer delegated to a sub-domain, will actually update his news :)

More Benchmarking [5:30 pm] - Huntsman
This is the song that never ends. It goes on and on my friends... I'm sure you know what I'm getting at here. The GrandMaster B himself posted some commentary on the whole benchmarking deal. It's a HUGE update, so I'll post the beginning of it, and you guys go check out the rest.

Here's the deal on benchmarking. If a test is not reproducible on anyone's system (because, for example, the test itself is secret); or if the test cannot be validated through an independent or authoritative source on the matter, especially if the validity of the test is in question; or if a testing methodology is not published for peer review and public scrutiny, then it is invalid.

By those criteria, the benchmarks that I publish aren't going to be 100% trustworthy. And you know what? They aren't. Human beings are running the benchmark, and thus there is some room for human error. I'm using a build of the Quake3 binaries that I'm not sure is 100% golden (but I'm assuming it is). I haven't thoroughly reviewed the TIMEDEMO code to make sure that it's actually doing the right thing. I may have hardware that is overclocked that I'm not aware of. Hell, I may have mislabeled some hardware and got it switched around.

And most important, none of you reading this (except Eric :-) ), has
seen these benchmarks being run.

So you're basically trusting ME. And I, in turn, am trusting the hardware manufacturers not to write drivers that detect Quake3 and optimize for it; I am trusting that John Carmack knows what he's saying when he said "I fixed the timedemo code" and, before that,"timedemo is broken"; and I am trusting that Eric doesn't screw up when running the tests. So there's trust basically all the way through this chain of events.

You know what? He's absolutely right. I mean, when I go check Sharky's or Anand's or ArsTechnica, I expect to see pure honest benchmarks. It worries me when I see somebody not want to share what thier method of benchmarking is. Remember people, a lot of the people who post these benchmarks aren't trained engineers; they aren't the people who make the products that they are testing. A lot of them are just people who have some webspace and know how to ftp the stuff they make in Frontpage to that webspace. Take what you see with a grain of salt. Even when I make recommendations on the Shackware (which I'll update soon, heh) don't expect me to be a be all and end all source of hardware recommendations. Read everything you can get your hands on, talk to your friends who have the product and think for yourself. Hmm. I think I've made this too much of a soap box lately too. I'll shut up now.

BLEEM! Done [5:30 pm] - Huntsman
Wheeeeee names with exclamation marks! Saw over at Voodoo Extreme something that should make some of you happy: Bleem!, a Playstation emulator for the PC has been finished. There is also a demo that doesn't support 3D acceleration for those of you who want to see if it's worth all the hoopla and lawsuits.

E3 Models [5:30 pm] - Huntsman
What does everybody go to see at E3? Games? Pfft. No. It's the models that all the game companies pay to run around in tight clothing to "promote" interest in thier product. Here's a page with some pictures. The SegaSoft girls are pretty cute, but uh, most of em look kinda like h0's. Some of you might like that though. Those Deutsche Telekom models are scary though. Eek.

want huntsmansucks.com? [5:30 pm] - Huntsman
Hahahaha. Tom might want to consider doing this. In what can be called no less than a ferocious stand against negative press on the internet, the George W. Bush campaign for president has registered OVER 200 DOMAIN NAMES that could be used to publish negative press against the possible presidential candidate. Included are bushsucks.com and bushblows.com. Saw this at ArsTechnica. Here's the full news.com article. This is hilarious. Be right back, gotta go get sTevesucksfornotsendingmeE3reports.com.

Raven's Bag = No Longer Containing Cat [10:30 am] - Hoonis
Hmm, now that the news about the Raven Voyager game is out (and the news that they are using the q3 engine), let me just chip in with a little spooge of my own about it.. When club shack (minus our illustrious silverback shack-o-rilla sTeve) stopped in at Raven, we saw some of the most AMAZING stills from that game. Watch this space for more blow-your-socks-clean-offa-your-feet coverage on Raven's upcoming Soldier of Fortune title

Netscape 4.6 [10:10 am] - Hoonis
There is a new version of Netscape out today, release notes for this version seem to indicate mostly hard-to-notice bug fixes. (note to Huntsman: is this massive?)

Stuff [5:30 am] - Huntsman
Ok, I'm back. Thanks all you people who email me and tell me i rAwk or r0ck and stuff. It makes me :~)

Is it just me or are the new Pepsi commercials with that little girl with the different voices the most god awfully annoying things to flash across a TV screen since the Old Navy campaign began?

I got an E3 report from Patrick Curry - it came from him because apparently sTeve is passed out in somebody's hotel room (I know he couldn't hold his liquor).

Anyway there is lots of partying happening, lots of loud and shiney stuff, lots of pretty girls and fat game developers. The UGO booth had midgets. GOD and Gamespy were throwing a rave. What are the E3 standouts? Q3, Star Trek Voyager using the Q3 engine (Hunt's note: I trust the Raven guys to actually make a good Star Trek game), the Half Life Mission Pack and FAKK2 (described as SiN done right).

BTW: "Jack, I'm gunna get you sucka!!!" - love, Pat

Benchmarks! [11:00 pm] - Huntsman
You know them, you love them. And we finally get a put an end to this whole Tomzilla vs. GrandMaster B vs. Small Hardware Sites fiasco. Here it is, formatted for your convenience (Note this is not everything, check Mr. Hook's .plan for everything, and scroll down a bit for commentary)

All benchmarks run on a P3 500 with 128MB RAM. Sound was disabled.

640x480 @ 16bit

640x480 @ 32bit

1280x1024 @ 16bit

Ok, where to begin. Basically if you want to run Quake3 well, you need a Rage 128, a Voodoo 2/Banshee/3 or a Riva TNT/TNT2. I have personally have a TNT, and it does get a bit choppy on the "normal" settings when things get too whacky on Q3Test2. I can comment on any other cards because, well I don't have them. Best bang for the buck? The Riva TNT. You can snag a Creative Labs TNT $74 over at buy.com. Lets see, whats interesting here...

The Voodoo2 still really does hold it's own. People whine and moan about how its ugly/doesn't support enough colors/textures are too small but hey, it sneaks in right on the tail of the TNT2. Also interesting is that there really isn't that much performance difference in the TNT and TNT2 at lower resolutions. I do believe after a bit more nudging of code and tweaking of drivers, the benchmarks will show disparity between the old and new cards.

On the whole "Tom's a fraud" business... Everybody grow up, ok?

Hook on Video [1:15 pm] - Huntsman
You're poor little Q3 won't work? My deepest appologies. I'm not tech support :) Brian Hook's latest .plan has some helpful hardware tips for those of you who just can't get it working:

• if you have a Voodoo Graphics, Voodoo Banshee, Voodoo 2, or Voodoo Rush:
  1.) download the VERY latest Quake3-certified drivers from www.3dfx.com
  and install them. Please be very careful that you don't have any files
  like 3DFXVGL.DLL or OPENGL32.DLL residing in your Quake3 directory.
  
• if you have a regular 2D/3D accelerator under Win9x, either download the
  latest drivers from your respective hardware vendor's Web site, OR
  download GLSETUP that will autodetect your hardware and install up
  to date drivers. GLSETUP will be much larger, but if you don't know
  what hardware you have, it will simplify things for you immensely.
  
• if you are running Windows NT, download the latest drivers from your
  hardware vendor's Web site and install them.
  
• If you've been messing around with config files and unpaking the pk3 files, and everything is hosed, torch the directory and reinstall.
• Benchmarks will hopefully be up tommorow night
• Most problems are regarding 3Dfx's latest drivers and ATI's NT drivers

RIAA Wants to take away your MP3s! [4:15pm] - Huntsman
Saw at Slashdot that there is a Wired article describing how the RIAA has developed a little plan to pop a cap in MP3's existance. Their genius idea? Dig this, it makes Microsoft seem like Mother Theresa. (or makes them look just like Microsoft, depending on your stand point): First, develop a "wannabe" standard called SDMI which they want everybody to use as the defacto downloadable music format. Then, force all hardware and software companies to choose whether to use MP3 or SDMI. Those who goe with MP3 will be denied access to SDMI specs and the major lable music that does it. And then, best of all, there will be a so called "time bomb". (this is great). At first, the SDMI software will allow to download and listen to non SDMI compliant music formats, but there will be a kill switch. Ooops. All od a sudden, MP3's are off limits. This is quite amusing. Make up your own insults.

E3 Reports [3:00 pm] - Huntsman
Expect to see a lot of these:

• Pile over at Evil Avatar has a day 1 E3 Report. It touches on Voyager, Soldier Of Fortune, Deus Ex, EverQuest, Monolith and G.O.D.
• Gamespot has thier little news page up with impressions of Thief 2, Team Fortress 2 and a quite different looking Dark Reign II
• Evil Avatar himself has some cool looking Soldier of Fortune screenshots.

E3 Q3 Report! [12:00 pm] - Huntsman
Homeboy Foozmelon just reported that he just finished a game with some of the id guys playing some Q3. Apparently he played on 2 new levels, describing one as "crazy". He also says that the machine gun spews shell casings on the floor, and when you shoot at water, it bubbles. The invisibility is being used, as is the grenade launcher which is "bouncy and cool". Also the bots are reportedly very impressive, so as much as people couldn't tell who was real and who wasn't. I didn't hear the hoped for "rockets are a good deal more powerful", but, hey... I take what i can get.

More Unified Driver Sutff [9:30 am] - Huntsman
Saw at ArsTechnica that there is a little article up with some quotes back and forth between 3Dfx and Creative Labs regarding the "translation driver" that allows Glide games to be played on a TNT up over at Maximum PC. My favorite quote?

3Dfx's research indicates about 80 percent the titles that will ship later this year will support Glide as an API, he said. 3Dfx recently celebrated preliminary numbers from PC Data that show its Voodoo³ boards occupying the top three positions on the sales charts for the first three weeks of April.

"Give me an open field and I'll score a touch down too. When the Ultra TNT2 hits the street in a week or so, then I'd like to see how much market share they can continue to dominate," Carlson said. (Carlson is a Creative Labs guy)

Well I was going to bust open the "unified driver" and see how it went, but I found myself with the case of my computer ACTUALLY SCREWED ON and subsequently discovered that I am far to lazy to dive into the mess of wires and get the freaking serial number off of the card. Come on Creative, can't you trust us? :) Hoonis (unf unf, you're a perv, Hoon) pointed me to a link over at Dave's Classics where he says he hears that the new driver is so slow its almost unplayable. Heavy sigh.

Thief II Specs [9:30 am] - Huntsman
Everybody had the press release, but nobody had an actual info. Well, here it is, ripped unabashedly from Thief-DarkProject.Com:

Facts:

• Eidos is the publisher.
• The subtitle is "The Metal Age".
• You will play Garrett, in the same city.
• Enemies will more thoroughly investigate changes in the environment, possibly even re-lighting extinguished torches and so forth.
• It will be using the Dark Engine.
• There will be renderer enhancements, including 16-bit texturing, colored lighting and variable translucency.
• It will be available in spring 2000.
• Thief 2 will concentrate more on the stealth and thieving elements of the game, removing most of the monsters and more typical action elements.
• A corrupt sheriff will play a large role.
• It will be divided into three acts, similar to Thief 1: act one following Garrett's thieving, act two his investigation, and act three his attempt to put a stop to the larger plan he uncovers.
• Sixteen missions are planned.
• Each difficulty level will require you to complete the entire mission.
• There will be a cooperative multiplayer mode that will function like another difficulty level, with co-op specific goals and objectives. There will be no competitive multiplayer.
• Thief 3 will have a new engine.

Video Game Violence [9:30 am] - Huntsman
Yes, I'm as sick as crap as the rest of you, but I'm running low on news :) The San Fransisco Gate has an article up that's not too bad and fairly intelligent. Ok, I'll summarize this whole video games and violence crap: Quake and Doom and whatever don't inspire violence. People don't kill each other because they've done it on a computer. The people that go out and kill people are already deranged. Somebody sent me a scan of a National Enquirer article which had a letter from one of the Columbine kids to his brother. It wasn't exactly the product of a stable mind. These kids were probably stuck in front of a TV from ages 1-5, then sent to school where they learned news ways of being psychotic little chaps and then brought home and ignored by thier parents. In my personal opinion, people need to stop blaming the "media" and take a hard look at how they raise thier own kids.

Room's with *views [9:30 am] - Huntsman

• Sharky Extreme has a review up of the Hercules Dynamite UltraTNT2.

• The Firing Squad also has a review up of the Hercules Dynamite UltraTNT2.

Driver Drivel [9:30 am] - Huntsman
These first two were ripped from BetaNews.com:

• Diamond has released the drivers for the Viper v770 Ultra. Not that card is out or anything :\

• Got a Matrox Millenium G200? Want OpenGL Drivers? HAHAHAHAAHH. But you can have the latest update for all the other API's it supports (uh, Direct3D?) These are for Win9X.

Miscellaneous Crap [9:30 am] - Huntsman
Well, you'd think after a day at E3, the booty of news would be overflowing. But err, I guess not. sTeve? Anyway, if you do have any news, send it :) A few of you have asked for my opinion of Quake3. Here goes: I didn't play the 1.03 release (which a LOT of people claim was better) but from what I've played, I think it does have a lot of promise. The plasma and shotgun is great (once you get then hang of them, they are extremely dangerous) and I like the railgun as much as I possibly could, but my aim sucks. The rocket launcher is too pea shooterish. Yeah, you don't want a dominant weapon, but dear god, you couldn't pop a balloon with that thing. I think id has tried to make it too hard to get one shot kills. One of my favorite things about Quake/QuakeWorld was the fact that you could just start going off (like grab the Red Armor and a few rockets in DM6) and kill everything in sight with a few well placed shots. The art is beautiful, with Adrian Carmack and Kevin Clouds possibly being the best pixel pushers in the industry, and Kenn Scott being so good with skins it should almost be illegal. The level design is very nice - Q3Test1 has the possibility of being a good team play map, while Q3Test2 reminds me a bit of DM6 with the multiple levels and really fast paced get anywhere in a second action. It is a bit difficult at times to make out player models, especially in Q3Test1. I'd like the player to move a smidge faster. Foot steps don't bother me. I think I'm going to go play some now.

Q3 Stuff Round 2 [8:30 pm] - Huntsman
All these .plan updates are making my job quite easy. Lets roll:

Brian Hook updates his .plan no less that 8 times (count em) with a buncha stuff. Here are the high points:

• If you know what video card you have, and know you have the latest drivers, you don't need to worry about GLSetup
• - Quake2 uses the minidriver effectively, so don't mess with that. Just
  use the latest 3DFX minidriver from 3Dfx and park that in your Quake2
  directory. Do NOT copy the minidriver into the Quake3 directory and
  attempt to use it! It will NOT work!
  
  - do not attempt to use the Quake3 certified drivers from 3Dfx with
  Quake2. I don't believe that 3Dfx has had time to adequately qualify
  those drivers with Quake2, so that may be causing some problems.
  
  - make sure you don't have duplicate OPENGL32.DLL, 3DFXVGL.DLL, or
  3DFXGL.DLL files floating around. This may cause conflicts or other
  odd bugs. There should be a single OPENGL32.DLL (NOT a 3Dfx supplied
  one!) in /windows/system; a 3DFXVGL.DLL in /windows/system; a 3DFXGL.DLL
  in /quake2; and if you have a Voodoo3, a 3DFXOGL.DLL in /windows/system.
  
  - on Voodoo3/Banshee, make sure you are choosing "Default OpenGL", NOT "Voodoo
  OpenGL". "Voodoo OpenGL" should only be selected if you have a Voodoo
  Graphics, Voodoo 2, or Voodoo Rush installed and wish to use it.
• Take those time demo scores you see floating around with a really large grain of salt. Approximately the size of the dead sea. And also - Tom Pabst may have the largest set of cajones ever. There will be unbiased benchmarks soon, so hold on to your pants.

Live!Ware 2 [8:30 pm] - Huntsman
Creative Labs has release Live!Ware 2 with EAX 2. At a whopping 28MB, its a big download, but promises many nifty features such as MP3 decoding, an "enhanced" AudioHQ (you know that REALLY annoying taskbar-esque thing that installs itself?) and 80 game presets so you can hear your rockets echo in Quake2. Did I mention I LOVE IT when companies put exclamation points in thier product names?

Acclaim and nVidia Alliance [8:30 pm] - Huntsman
Sailor Scout from PlanetFortress.com reports that nVidia and Acclaim have strategically aligned to leverage thier specific strengths (software and hardware) to "push the PC gaming experience to new levels". I personally enjoyed being pushed. What does this mean? Lots of 32bit games, which in the end forces 3Dfx to get thier butts in gear and put out a new chip that can do more that 256x256 textures and 16, er excuse me 22bit color.

Server Browsers part 2[10:00 am] - Huntsman
I'm wracking up on the sequels today - Pingtool 2.5 beta 7 has been released, no doubt adding functionality and removing small bugs. You guessed it, Q3Test support.

Q3 Stuff [10:00 am] - Huntsman
OMG. Q3 Stuff. Who woulda thunk it. Anyway:

Brian Hook wants all you little hax0r kiddies who think you are cool to stop screwing with stuff. Also, here's a quick run down of issues (with comments by your's truly)

• SLI configurations may have issues with working. 3Dfx has been contacted, and he hopes to hear from themsoon.
• If you have a Rendition V2200 and have weird tearing problems, type "r_swapinterval 1"
• Delete the IHV test and don't install Q3Test over the top of a pre existing installation. And for all you people who mail him about it not working when you install over the top of it, well, "duh"
• Don't copy system files (3DfxOGL.dll or anything else you try) into the Q3 directory. It will break Q3.
• Want shadows? They look extremely cool. But don't expect great performance :) do this at the console:
  r_stencilbits 8
  vid_restart (remember this command, it's useful)
  cg_shadows 2
• [Hoonis] For a solid black stencil-buffered shadow that only takes like 10fps off a tnt, try
  cg_shadows 3
• Don't overclock. If you overclock and Q3 blows up, you don't have a "rock solid system"
• Yes, there is a difference between 16 and 32 bit. Look at the sky.
• I also noticed this yesterday, the infamous Tom over at Tom's Hardware has some type of scores of Q3 running on V3 and TNT2. This is quite amazing due to the fact that timerefresh and timedemo are a bit broken.

Graeme Devine is heading off to E3 like everybody else except me. He won't be reading mail till Sunday.

• 3Dfx and NT are having issues. Mostly Blue Screen of Death type issues. (personal note: I have a TNT and haven't had a Q3 related lock up. neener neener neener)
• If you have Windows 95 or 98, RUN GLSETUP BEFORE running Q3Test. It's a tool people. Use it. If you have NT, you are expected to know a bit about computers and keep your stuff updated.
• When you change your color depth from 16 to 32 bits with a TNT, things get dreadfully slow. I've noticed this also. Hopefully will be fixed.
• If you have a slow system, don't fire the plasma gun at the wall 12 times, it overdraws your system and you'll get lagged and consequently killed.
• A lot of people are trying to run Q3Test with 32MB of ram. HAHAHAHAH. You'll have "issues" if you try to do that.
• Don't alt-tab if you have a Matrox G200
• Setting all visual settings to "highest" causes artifacts under the TNT.
• A lot of people have suggestions about the game, and some love it. I personally like it a lot, but would like to see the Rocket Launcher given a bit more power. It feels like you are throwing water balloons at people. Not much damage, not too much splash, and takes forever to get there.

And finally, John Carmack with some speed tweaks and fixed stuff:

• You can force all models to the lowest level of detail, making things go faster but making the reaaaal ugly. Try r_lodbias 2.
• Get rid of the extra silly rings around stuff: cg_simpleitems 1
• Turn off gibs: cg_gibs 0
• Here's the Mr. Fixit list:
  * clear game memory at init, which fixes the stuck-at-intermission problem on mac servers
  * fixed mismatched free / Z_Free in demo menu
  * removed unused reference to sprites/plama.md3
  * automatically get sounds from model name
  * scale sensitivity by zoom
  * immediately archive changes to latched cvars
  * cheat protect r_portalonly
  * don't print "XXX connected" on level restarts
  * fixed "give item" on levels where 0,0,0 is in solid
  * fixed timedemo <--- YAY
  * don't play pain falling sound if dead
  * fixed falling damage sound not snd specific
  * fixed crashtest 2
  * fixed crashtest 1
  * q3map_backshader
  * q3map_globaltexture

Half Life Dedicated Linux Server [10:00 am] - Huntsman
Well, they could have picked a better time to release it, but here it is anyway. It's a big download (77MB) and only runs as a dedicated server, but if you have the jones for Half Life and are a Linux freak, stick it up! Also on the Action Half Life page, they report that Half Life will be out on the Mac this fall.

MacOS X Q3 [10:00 am] - Huntsman
Saw over at Blue's that a MacOS X port for the 1.05 dedicated server (the most current release). This is approved and sanctioned by id. A client is still in the works.

Motherboard Guide [10:00 am] - Huntsman
Ars Technica has a nice guide to motherboards up - they claim it's worth the wait... though I'm not too sure :) Here's a clip:

...the motherboard is the main factor limiting PC upgradability. (Well, aside from cash-related factors, of course.) Purchase an inexpensive Socket 7 board, and the world of the Pentium II is denied to you; purchase an equally inexpensive PPGA-370 ZX chipset motherboard, and your life is limited to the "socketed" Celeron. What we're saying is that the motherboard can tie you to a CPU faster than one of those rodeo types that you laugh at on ESPN late at night.

Server Browsers [10:00 am] - Huntsman
Don't like GameSpy? Don't tell Jack - go check out these:

0.30 of Bowzer! (I love programs that have an exclamation point in thier names) has been released with a buncha bug fixes. Grab it!

QTracker 2.3 beta 5 has been released - It nails down a problem of not actually being able to connect to a Q3 server and fixes other various bugs

Misc Stuff [10:00 am] - Huntsman

• Voodoo 3 OverClocker 2.0 has been released: It supports Windows NT, lets you change filter settings, lets you change clock settings and may even make coffee and may rub your feet if you ask it nicely.
• Next-Gen reports that the next Nintendo console will use a PowerPC processor to power the next Mario game. It will be 400mhz, with a 200mhz graphics chip.

unf [10:00 am] - Huntsman
Ah. The miscellaneous, crack pipe ramblings at the beginning of every morning that makes this whole "update the news" deal worth while. Anyway, I do like Q3. I've played entirely too much of it already. And playing with a 40 ping compared to a 200 ping makes a huge difference. And I my heart just about stopped as I thought Frontpage was going to crash. Eek. Anyway, sTeve didn't show up last night, which wasn't a surprise due to the fact that E3 really hasn't started. And if you didn't know, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace go on sale today. I of course plan on ordering a few. DO NOT CALL OR GO TO THE TICKET WEBSITE UNTIL I HAVE GOTTEN MINE. I will hunt down each and every one of you for every busy signal I get. As soon as I have mine, you can get yours :)

Just Another Mirror [9:30 pm] - Huntsman
The guys at igamer.net send word that they have a whole OC3 that needs to be clogged by all you kids who haven't gotten Quake3 yet. Lets see if we can get a bit of ShackDot action happening here. Hammer away!

Also as I was getting ready to hit the save button, the email fairies told me that the new Q3A site has the win32 mirrored also. Knock em dead, soldiers!

id .plans [9:30 pm] - Jack & Huntsman
Plenty of interesting .plan updates from various id folks today. Here they are, in the order QuakeFinger shows me:

• John Cash has a beam of light for all you guys stuck behind a firewall. SOCKS SUPPORT! (Linux version presumed to have shoe support)

Stuck behind a firewall and think you can't play Q3ATEST?

Q3ATEST has support for SOCKS5 (RFC-1928). Well, at least the wintel version
does... I'm not certain it has been picked up for the Mac and Linux code yet;
I'll have to check on that and take care of it. There are three cvars that
control it. They are only settable from the at init time (from the command
line).

+set net_sockEnabled 1
+set net_socksServer
+set net_socksPort

Please note that you use the address (name or IP number) of the SOCKS server
(firewall machine), NOT a Q3ATEST server. The port number defaults to 1080,
you should not need to change this.

Currently it does not do any authentication. It would be pretty easy to add
the username/password authentication method (RFC-1929); I will do so if there
are people who need it. The odds of us doing the GSS-API method (RFC-1961),
however, are not very good. I am only supporting IPv4 addresses; I mention this
just to satisfy the curiosity of people who know SOCKS and would have asked.

This piece of code has not been beaten on very much. If you have/need/want to
try it out, please let me know how it works out for you. Thanks!

• John Carmack updated that someone has won the second $100 prize with finding another crashing bug in Q3Test, and also stresses not to send him non-crash related email

Do NOT send bug reports and game comments directly to me!
If I have to filter through hundreds of emails a day, I won't get any
more work done... Only crashtest related problems should come to me,
everything else should go to q3feedback@idsoftware.com.

5/11/99
-------
Sami Tammilehto wins the second prize. Some large connectionless packets
can cause crashes.

This one was a result of me having the maximum token size defined lower
than the maximum string size.

• Brian Hook updated saying that the lack of TIMEREFRESH and TIMEDEMO was a snafu. Also that he'll be doing some benchmarks for everyone on Thursday:

Turns out that TIMEREFRESH and TIMEDEMO do not work in the build that got
released due to a bug on our part. We will have this fixed in the next
major release, but may be a while (please don't bombard us with e-mail
about the next release...or at least if you do, send 'em to Graeme :-) ).

I'll try to have benchmark figures up on Thursday night

• Christian Antkow made an update that the Q3Test server list page has moved:

I've moved our Quake 3 Test server page to the following location.
Please updated your bookmarks

http://underworld.idsoftware.com/serverlist.html-ssi

SamHell Interview with the Witch [7:15 pm] - Huntsman
Our own personal hitman, SamHell, has an interview with Harvey "Witchboy" Smith, the lead designer behind Deus Ex (which looks real cool btw). Anything interesting? Well duh, he wouldn't put it up if it was boring would he? Here's something that Eidos will be happy to hear:

Q. What are you doing to make sure that you stay on schedule with your work in Deus Ex?
A. Ha--working too many hours for one. Seriously though, we have made some precious sacrifices in scope to keep the depth of game-play and features we want. In other words, we have given up 'game locations' that some of us really wanted to do in exchange for the time to keep all our RPG-ness and to make the areas we do have as deep as we can.

In other words, no feature creep. *cough*

One Last Tourny [9:30 pm] - Huntsman
Usually don't have tourny news here, but what the hey, it's being sponsered by ABit (/me pets his OC'd 300a)

Its a European Quake2 1on1 Tournament sponsored By ABIT Computer
Corporation. The finlas will take place in Denmark (16 player LAN) and
we will have Makaveli coming around to play some matches.

www.lanparty.co.uk/edl

Heavy Metal: FAKK2 Site Live [5:45 pm] - Jack
My own company's next game, Heavy Metal: FAKK2's site has gone live. You can find it right on over here. For those of you that don't know, this will be an Action/Adventure third person game based on the good ol' Quake 3 engine. Check out the site, it's chock full of info and pretty pictures!

Q3Test + Voodoo2 + NT4 Solution [5:45 pm] - Jack
Someone who bugs me on ICQ all the time about this, Tookycat, has told 3DN about how to get the Voodoo2 to work in NT4. This works for Voodoo3 as well, and Voodoo1 if you disable the GL Extensions in Quake 3. Just copy the 3dfxogl.dll from the Voodoo2 Win98 driver kit to the Quake3 directory, make a copy of it, and name that copy 3dfxvgl.dll. There you go. Please don't email me on this one for support. And no, this won't fuck up your system. Just delete those files out of the Quake3 directory if you want to return the system back to normal.

Q3Test Performance Guide [5:45 pm] - Jack
The guys over at 3DHardware are continuously updating a Quake3Test Performance Guide. Check it out.

ION at E3 [5:45 pm] - Jack
VE spotted that Stormtroopers has gotten a Q&A with Tom Hall and Warren Specter about Anachronox and Deus Ex at E3. Here are the big questions:

Stormtroopers: Will Anachronox be playable at E3?
Tom: Yes. It will be on the floor
Stormtroopers: Will the [Deus Ex] demo at E3 be playable ?
Warren: Yes, the Deus Ex demo will be playable. We have one mission that's looking pretty solid and another that's getting there. Interface and all game systems are in-place and ready to go. We've had plenty of non-team members sit down and play after just a bit of instruction in the workings of our interface. At the show, Chris Norden, Harvey Smith and I (along with some other ION Austin volunteers) will be manning the mice but it's nice to know we can let other people play if we want to.

Macintosh OpenGL [3:15 pm] - Jack
Apple has released OpenGL for their hardware, primarily for Quake 3. It's in BinHex format and MacBinary, and I've put up a pretty file page here.

Oh, and I stuck the download links at the top of the news there to make the downloading easier.

Running Q3Test on Multimonitor Systems [12:30 pm] - Jack
Check this out, a Shack exclusive! :)

I have two Voodoo3's running multimon at home (an AGP 3000 and PCI 2000). I was frustrated to find out that because of Microsoft, multimon enabled systems cannot run OpenGL accelerated.

So what's the solution, you ask? Well, on Voodoo3, hop into your C:\Windows\System and copy the file 3dfxogl.dll into your Q3Test folder. Then, rename it to opengl32.dll. Presto, that works.

Any TNT/TNT2 owners want to contribute? I would assume a similar method would work on their card, but I don't know the filenames, and I don't know how their driver handles multimon. If you find out, email me and Huntsman, and we'll give you an update.

[update]

By the way, I don't mean that you can run Quake3 across two monitors or anything like that. I mean that on multimon enabled systems, Quake3, by default, doesn't work at all. This trick will allow you to play on your primary video card in full screen.

First Bad Bug [12:30 pm] - Jack
John Carmack updated his .plan, saying that the first $100 has been handed our for BigImp finding a nice attack on servers. If any of you start doing this, I'll kick your asses:

5/11/99
-------
BigImp wins the first prize. It doesn't crash the server, but fmtspec
names will crash all clients that try to log on. Technically that would
be an upkeep required DOS attack, but I'll let this one go.

I even had a "FIXME: make vsprintf safe" comment by the offending line...

I am going to update the server to filter out all % chars that come in
over the net to prevent any other similar things.

GLSetup Announced [12:30 pm] - Jack
Chris Hecker's baby, GLSetup, has been officially announced. You can read the press release and some rad quotes by lots of game developers here.

For all you that don't know, GLSetup is a kick ass program that installs drivers for your OpenGL card, and will appear on just about all game CD's that use OpenGL (including Quake 3:Arena).

Soldier of Fortune Stuff [12:30 pm] - Jack
Here's a couple of Soldier of Fortune (Raven's upcoming lifelike FPS) snippets by way of VE.

• Avault has posted an interview with Brian Raffel, Scott Rice, Rick Johnson, and Eric Beissman over at Raven. There's even some hints at Q3 stuff here:

AVault: With Activision having consigned another 3D action title to Raven, the Star Trek title, is it time to move on to newer technology? On the game note, will your relationship with id Software continue?

Soldier of Fortune team: The Quake 2 engine is very powerful and versatile. We have loved using id’s technology and hope to continue to, but this is the last project right now with this particular engine. Is there a Quake 3 license in our future? One can only hope. We are using a new technology with Star Trek. It will be shown at E3 and it is very powerful and easy to use. You will be quite impressed with what it can do and what it allows us to do.

• Avault has also scored a preview of the game, shown right on over here.

E3 Eh? [12:00 pm] - Marcus 'Majesty' Yam
Damn I'm tired, but I'm sure all of you are after nabbing that Win32Q3Test and playing all night long. Is it just me, or do the sounds just not fit in with the game? Oh, and I still don't like the footsteps...it makes the thrill of making contact with a prediction shot, just by pure educated guess, not by keen use of footsteps. Okay, sure, you can walk to make no sound, but then that slows the pace of the game. Ah well, this very well may end up to be like the whole sv_airaccelerate issue in Quake2, where it's an option on the server.

Anyone with a 3D card capable of 32bit rendering probably will notice quite a difference in Q3Test between 16 and 32. Though most of the major 16bit dithering evidence shows through in the cool weapon and lighting effects...most of them will probably be turned off in the long run if their is such an option for speed's sake.

Ah, good to see UT getting some attention too, count on Huntsman to link to the same preview twice! Really, don't forget about Unreal Tournament...it may surprise some of you old skewlerz ;-)

Annnyyyyywaaaaaaaaaayy, I'm off to E3 paying my own sorry way...wait, did I hear "party invitation"?

UT Preview [11:30 am] - Clay "Huntsman" Mitchell
Well, don't forget the other multiplayer fps coming out, Unreal Tournament! Unreal Universe has a preview of it after the playtested it over at Epic. Here is a quote:

Unreal Tournament is almost completely different from Unreal. It feels different, it plays different and it looks different. Epic learned a valuable lesson from Unreal's initial poor netcode and boring weapons. The new modes of play that Unreal Tournament sports will appeal to anyone who likes deathmatch, capture the flag and teamfortress.

I've been playing Q3 for the last couple hours now. Its... fun. Wish the rocket launcher had a bit more splash to it (my aim sucks) and that I could exec external config scripts... but anyway, I'll be back later... Must... Play...

The Q3Test Plan [3:55 am]
John Carmack has a .plan update which should interest quite a few of you guys.  Carmack announces that the future releases of Q3Test will be including new gamecode which will introduce teamplay elements into the test. But prior to that there will be a 1on1 map released specifically tailored to "tournament style" gameplay. Should be fun!

Now that the first win32 test is out, here is The Plan for going forward: All future releases should be same-day for all architectures. There may be an exe-only update to the current distributions if there are significant problems, but it isn't scheduled.

The next major test release will include a new one on one map designed for tournement play, and new executables with server and game modifications, but will not require downloading a new pak0.pk3.

The release after that will introduce various teamplay rules on the original two maps.   This version will likely be another full download, because I know that I still have a couple things to change in the map format.  This will probably be the first test running with the virtual machine. The final major test release will introduce the single player game with bots and ranks.

After any bugs are shaken out of that, it will be the "Q3 Demo" instead of the "Q3 Test", and we should be ready to release the full game to stores. In an ideal world, people that aren't prepared to deal with in-development software would wait until then to form an opinion of the product.
<snip>

Also, It looks like he is of course looking for people to find bugs and if so report them, and more interestingly he's giving a shout out to all you server harx0rs offering up $100 for those of you who can find a hole in the servers that can be crashed repeatedly. BigImp already scored himself $100, you could be next!

Graeme Devine also has a .plan update mentioning that the CPU usage on the Linux server seems to be running pretty high, but that will just have to wait for the next Q3Test release. Also, Disruptor is looking for a 8 CPU Xeon box.

Q3Test For Win32! [3:55 am]
It's out! Quake3 Test for the Win32 platform. There are a couple of files for you guys to grab. You can head over here to get the Q3Test client. Some of you may not have the latest GL drivers, so you should grab GLSetup which will update you to the latest OpenGL drivers for your respective 3D accelerator. Make sure and check out www.quake3arena.com as well. Wondering what the heck GLSetup is? Check out www.glsetup.com. Here is a link to the documentation included with Q3Test which you can check out while you download, and also a link to the README.

update: The Quake3 messageboard was taken down for a while since you guys were hurting my poor server. It's now back online though since that initial rush seems to have down a little (Whew)

Quake3 Commands [3:55 am]
Well, after you guys download Q3Test and play around a bit, the next thing usually is you wanna know how to tweak out the game a bit and learn some console commands right? Well I've collected a few of the commands with the help of DieharD and Pestilence you might find more interesting to play with. Here ya go:

team s = spectator mode!
cg_drawfps = show your framerate
r_railcorewidth , r_railsegmentlength , cg_railtrailtime = all visible railgun graphic adjusments.
cg_gibs = turn on or off gibs
cg_footsteps = turn off your own footsteps, people still hear you though.
cg_bobroll , cg_bobup = client view (not player) bouncing and rolling adjustments
cg_gun = turn the weapon model on or off
crosshairhealth = crosshair changes color to reflect your health (on or off)
r_dynamiclighting = dynamic lights. turn them off for a nice framerate improvement

You can get full lists with the /cmdlist or /cvarlist commands in the console, share the more interesting console commands you guys find on the messageboard and I'll get them organized up and setup for the seperate Quake3 page I'll be doing when I return from E3.

LithTech2 [3:55 am]
Jason Hall of Monolith has a .plan update addressing several questions he has been receiving recently concerning the next-gen 3D engine technology they are working on over there at Monolith:

I will say this though -
The engine is now fully indoor/outdoor. For example, you can walk right out of a super detailed castle into the scary wilderness, seamlessly. It is quite impressive, and you don't have to have an "ultra-fog-clip-plane-make-the-engine- go-faster-by-hiding-geometry- with-lots-of-fog- oh-did-I-mention-that-we-need-to-put-fog-in-there- to-speed-things-up-already"

Anyway, due to repeated requests I have snagged 3 preliminary screenshots of some LithTech 2 test maps for people to check out.

If you are going to be at E3 and have managed to reserve a timeslot with us for the backroom demo, we appreciate your interest and look forward to seeing you there.

The shots below show only a very small portion of what the new LithTech stuff can do. I was under heavy restraint in terms of what the team would like to show prior to E3, so I just took what I could get (there is a bunch of other cool stuff that I can't show until E3 - sorry)

Views [3:55 am]

• Unreal Tournament
  The folks at Unreal Universe have posted their preview after a hands-on experience with Unreal Tournament.
• Quake3 Screenshots
  The flood of Quake3 screenshots begins. Riva3D is first out the gate though, wee!
• Soldier of Fortune Shots
  Saw on Blue's that there are some SoF shots over at Computer Games Review

Tech [3:55 am]

• Quake3 3dfx Banshee Drivers
  3dfx has released some new drivers for their Banshee cards which should work for Quake3. Grab them from the website.

Gaming Etc [3:55 am]

• Q3Test & GameSpy
  You guys are playing Q3Test all day and night right? Well just a reminder that the latest version of GameSpy released yesterday features support for Q3Test.

werd
Well, it's out, and now I'm out... Gonna be heading out to the airport in just a few hours, Huntsman is gonna be taking care of you guys for the most part during the days, I'll be showing up in the evenings (hopefully) filing in some E3 reports on stuff I see etc. Will have a few digital cameras handy so will make sure and get some images up for you guys during the week too.

New Q3Test For Mac & Linux [4:55 pm]
Graeme Devine updated his .plan with word that new versions of Q3Test are just now being released for the Mac & Linux platform, but the Win32 version probably wont be out till close to midnight tonight CST. Check it:

Q3Test 1.05 is DONE! New Linux/Mac versions are going up right now, and we're finishing up the installer for the Win32 version. If all goes well, the Win32 version will follow in a few hours (few == six or so).

Here is the mirror list for the Mac Q3Test and Linux Q3Test in RPM or TAR.GZ format. Feel free to post reactions to the changes on the Q3 board. Zoid tells me that there is a *huge* performance increase in the latest linux version, so make sure and check it out if you can. Also make sure and read this:

IMPORTANT!

You must completely nuke your old Q3TEST install before installing the update. The config files from the old build are BAD voodoo. You can also type "exec democycle" to watch a bunch of id people play the map

TNT2 Stuff [4:15 pm]
Got a few TNT2 boards being announced lately you guys might wanna check out. The guys at 3DSpotlight got some info from Asus on the TNT2 board, they are working on. The folks at Riva3D have word on the Canopus entry into the TNT2 market. The folks at Creative Labs have announced their TNT2 card as well (Thanks Blue)

Assuming Q3Test comes out tonight, I'll pop up some benchmarks of Q3 running on a TNT2 as well as V3 cards.

Gaming Industry = Big [1:15 pm]
Steve Tietze over at Nihilistic was kind enough to point me to the way of this L.A. Times article talking about the huge amount of growth the gaming industry is going through. Almost caught up to the movies!

Indeed, the video game industry has transformed itself from a niche business into a global powerhouse that market researchers say hauled in about $6.3 billion last year, just shy of the $6.9 billion taken in at the box office.

New Voodoo3 3500 Plans [1:55 pm] - Jack
It seems 3dfx's plans have changed with regards to the 3500. Instead of just having LCD out and 17 MhZ over the Voodoo3 3000, 3dfx has decided to add in a TV tuner, and dump the LCD out. The speed will remain the same however.

Want some speculation as to why? Because for most consumers, the 3500 is not much of a value add. At a mere 17 megapixels (34 megatexels) more that the preceding part, why bother buying it? Well, there's the LCD out, but who has an LCD monitor lying around? Generally, not that many. So instead of having a niche board with almost nothing to add, 3dfx decided to put a TV tuner in there and have something that *really* differentiates the card from other high end ones.

Plus, it's a decision they can make that the other chip makers (read: nVidia) are unable to because 3dfx has control of the boards. That and I'm sure STB has an assload of Brooktree decoder chips laying around. Anyway, you can find the official press release here. Here's the snip VE used.

3dfx Interactive® Inc. (NASDAQ: TDFX) today debuted the ultimate system for PC-based entertainment: the Voodoo3 3500 TV. Based on the acclaimed Voodoo3 graphics accelerator technology, the Voodoo3 3500 TV combines the industry's most powerful 3D and 2D graphics with complete TV tuner and multimedia functionality in a single AGP or PCI board. Featuring support for MPEG 2, DVD, FM stereo with dbx, and high-resolution displays, the new board includes the most feature-filled entertainment card for hard-core game enthusiasts and cutting-edge multimedia entertainment consumers.

You can also check out this AGN3D interview with 3dfx asking about the V3 3500 board which is soon to be available.

Q3Test, 3dfx, & NT [11:15 am]
Brian Hook has a .plan update talking about the "deal with 3dfx support under NT" which I'm sure a number of you guys are pretty damn concerned about. Here's the low down on whats up. There is already a thread going about this on the Q3 Messageboard

Some folks have written asking what the deal is with 3Dfx support under WinNT.  To be honest, I don't know, and that's something that should be taken up with 3Dfx (I'll ask 'em anyway).  One thing we've run into is that the 3Dfx WinNT drivers haven't worked too well with any of our newer Intergraph workstations (TDZ2000 and GT1).
<snip>
... we haven't had much luck with V2 under WinNT during the development of Q3A, and we haven't tested with Banshee or V3 at all under WinNT.

Matrox G400 [10:15 am]
The Matrox folks have now officially announced their G400, and more importantly for us the G400 Max 3D accelerators. The only problem of course being Matrox + OpenGL = HAHA.

Fitted with a fixed 32MB of high-bandwidth SGRAM, the Matrox Millennium G400 MAX provides lightning fast, ultra-crisp displays with a 360MHz UltraSharp RAMDAC capable of driving high-end monitors at resolutions up to 2048 x 1536, 32-bpp at 85Hz. Available to end-users in mid-June 1999, the Matrox Millennium G400 MAX will sell for $249 ESP

Oh yeah, please support the cause. Thanks Matt.

Q3Test Tonight! [6:15 am]
John Carmack updated his .plan file with some good news. Testing was "solid" and he feels the Win32 Q3Test will be released tonight barring any type of disaster.

A good day of work.  I just finished a long test game with all three architectures, and everything looks solid. As far as I can tell, these are ready to go after making installers and such, but everyone else has an oportunity to find bugs while I sleep... We won't hold up for minor gameplay issues, but if anyone turns up a repeatable crasher I will rebuild everything. Barring problems, we should start rolling the releases out tonight.

* fixed crash case on fallback from an unsupported fullscreen
* fixed overrun with very fast system connecting to a very lagged server
* fixed bad Z_Free on sounds not found
* fixed autoswitch with sync clients
* fixed losing console field on positive histories
* fixed demo recording and playback with new net code
* handle signed bit fields in msg code
* fixed playerstate event bit loss on encoding
* fixed "bad clientnum on player entity"
* reenabled corpses sinking into ground

See that? demo recording works! The Shack demos section will finally be coming back to life soon, wee!

Deus Ex Interview [6:15 am]
SamHell here at his nifty new Shugashack home has done up his weekly interview. This time around SamHell gets a hold of the lead level designer on the Unreal engine based Ion Storm project, Deus Ex.

1.Has the Deus Ex team had to make modifications to the Unreal engine to accomplish what you want to achieve in this game?

Well, Chris, Scott and Al (our engineers) have written a lot of special case game code to support the RPG features we all want, but overall the Unreal engine and UnrealEd are fantastic. Fun to work with. the Deus Ex programmers are always doing stuff like modifying the AI (for realistic NPC behavior), adding the interactive conversation system and the editing tools for it, etc. tons of stuff.

Motherboard Stability [6:15 am]
The guys at Ars-Technica take a look at a recent AnandTech article rating BX motherboards on stability of all things. They raise some pretty good points, check it out.

I am a bit perplexed by how one arrives at a stability rating for a motherboard.  In my own testing sessions, I've seen systems crash when running a test suite like Winstone even though they would rarely crash otherwise, even in very intensive use.  Is Winstone a good test of stability?  The purportedly less-than-stellar stability of Abit motherboards hasn't bitten me in hours and hours of intensive use on my BH6 (nor on my old IT5H).  Running Windows NT with a massively overclocked Celeron, I only need reboot to update drivers or to pop into Linux or something. 

Voodoo3 = HotCakes [6:15 am]
Yowzer, it looks like the Voodoo3 boards from 3dfx are selling at a breakneck speed. Whenever I go to computer stores actually I've noticed that the shelf space for V3 cards are usually running low. Check out this bit of PR that 3dfx sent out who are quite excited.

According to PC Data, which measured retail sales of the entire video card market for the first three weeks of April, the Voodoo3 3000 AGP was the No. 1 selling board in terms of both unit shipments and revenues. The Voodoo3 2000 PCI was ranked second, and the Voodoo3 2000 AGP was ranked third. In fact, the Voodoo3 line outsold the nearest competing product by 450 percent in terms of unit shipments, and an astounding 1,200 percent in terms of revenues.

Views [6:25 am]

• Unreal Tournament Shots
  The EvilAvatar folks have scored some new screenshots of Unreal Tourmanent. You might wanna also check out shot1 , shot2, and shot3 at VE.
• Drakan Shots
  SharkyExtreme has posted a few new screenshots of Surreal Software's Drakan title.
• HeavyGear2 Shots
  Need a few more screenshots of HeavyGear2? Well check these out. Shot1, shot2, and shot3.

Tech [6:25 am]

• 3D Cards, 2nd Generation
  Have a look at this Beyond3D article talking about the next-gen of 3D accelerators.
• 3dfx ICD Review / Comparison
  Wondering just how good that new ICD is? Well it's tailored specificallly for Quake3 but works of course with any OpenGL game.  Reverend takes a look at the ICD with Quake2 and HL.
• 30 vs 60fps
  Which one do you prefer? Gee.. let me think. Oh well here is an article that might entertain you.
• Voodoo3 Image Quality
  Beyond3D has a nifty new article talking about image quality and that Voodoo3 you've been itching to buy. You can also check out this Q3Center article talking about the same thing as compared with the TNT2.

Tech [6:25 am]

• New Gladiator Bot
  As you may have guessed from the heading, a new version of the growingly popular Gladiator bot for Quake2 has been released.

werd
Gonna be busting my ass all day to get a few things done for you guys. I leave tomorrow morning for California a bit early for E3 just cuz I'm crazy like that. Thanks to the guys at UGO for paying my way.

Stuff to get done today... Files section (argh), Soldier of Fortune preview courtesy of Zith, Q3Test strategy guide courtesy of RIX. Think we can pull it off? Leave it to Billy to find out today is National Masturbation Day.

A big thanks to the folks at Webdog for figuring out the button IE homepage deal I've now got on the sidebar.

No Q3Test Tonight [9:15 pm]
Well it looks like there wont be any Q3Test tonight. Graeme Devine updated his trusty .plan file with this. Thanks Mr. Music:

We're getting closer, but I think it'll be tomorrow before we're out.

Internally we're bashing on the new maps, code, servers, and clients. There is a /lot/ of new stuff in there and we want to bang on it for a bit before we release.

We are building installers, pak files, and so forth, so our confidence level is good, but since it's only been 15 minutes since the last bug fix (which was a doozy of a find BTW) and the new maps are still being bsp'd. All of this makes a release tonight seem like a bit of a risk.

If all goes well we will bash on it tonight and tomorrow, and once John gets in tomorrow we'll be ready to go.

Also while checking out .plans, Brian Hook clarifies a bit for those of you who seem to be confused about the difference between a mini-driver and an ICD. Obviously one of them played in Grosse Point Blank, and the other did not.

Yawn? [7:15 pm]
Yeah, waiting pretty much sucks. Keep in mind Carmack did say the release was "doubtful" today so dont get all pissy if it doesnt come out. Just be pleasantly surprised if it does. Sorry about the goofyness with the messageboard earlier, some crap about NNTP and DNEWS stuff. Taking the cue from loony I've collected a few things for you guys to check out while you wait:

• The new Austin Powers website is now online. I saw the preview last night and I'm happy to say it looks like they are keeping the same formula for one of the greatest movies ever.
• Check out the Next-Gen article talking about the "Mass Media Out For Blood" and their hunt for voilence in videogames to expose what evil poeple us computer users are.
• A Half-Life FAQ has been updated.
• Blue spotted the new SouthPark trailer on Yahoo.
• Here is an article talking about LAN parties from the San Jose Mercury.

GameSpy v2.1 [5:15 pm]
Check it out, the GameSpy guys have released v2.1 of their server browser with support for finding Quake3 servers. You can't exactly play Quake3 from Windows just yet, but you can watch all your cool Linux and Mac friends from a window!

Q3Test Today? [11:25 am]
John Carmack has another .plan update with some grim news. It looks like the release of Q3Test tonight for the Win32 platform is looking a bit doubtful. What is even more upsetting is apparently Carmack must have fallen and bumped his head, because he put footsteps back in. Bad Carmack! Bad!

We would up making tweaks to both maps today, so the data didn't reach final form until a few hours ago. I just finished making release candidates for all three architectures, but I already found a couple problems that need to be fixed. If everything goes perfectly (ha), and I nail these problems immediately when I wake up, then we might make it out tonight, but it is looking a bit doubtful. There are a few known issues that I decided NOT to hold the test up for: The gauntlet is functioning correctly, but the visuals are wrong. The designed behavior is that when you hold down attack it will scan for a target and only punch forward when it hits.  The visuals currently show it punching constantly.

Dynamic lighting is currently taking a really excessive amount of cpu time.  If you are having performance problems in firefights, you may want to turn it off.  The option is in the preferences, or you can just issue "r_dynamicLighting 0" at the console.

The powerup item sounds aren't global across the entire world since I went to the client side predicted items. There are some cases when a weapon that was picked up with a predicted item and immediately fired doesn't make a muzzle flash.
<snip>
* put footsteps back in...
<snip>

Footsteps = bad. Just have a look at the Q3 messageboard, 9 out of 10 dentists agree!

Raven's Spectre [11:25 am]
Loonygames has posted an interesting article talking about some technology that Raven Software has been working on prior to the aCtivision acquisition. Thanks Octane

Yep, that's right, Spectre was to be Raven's own 3D, massively multiplayer engine. And from the way the programmers describe it, it was a hefty one at that. "[Spectre] did not contain any BSP [information] at all. It was all portal-based," explained Gil Gribb, whose main project at the time was Spectre. "It also had the ability [to create] 'instant rooms.' So rather than each level being made as an individual, you could make rooms and corridors and things like that and string them all together. Other features it had were related to scalability, whereby if we wanted to take this to a massively multiplayer setting, all the data structures were designed so that what isn't here doesn't effect you at all, and it doesn't bog down the server. The approach that Spectre took is that the server basically would know the limited range of the player, and consider sending down only things that were close by him."

Love Doll Results [11:25 am]
The EvilAvatar hosted OldMaidX has posted the first round results of their low-poly model contest with entries from several different professional game artists.

Views [11:25 am]

• More Action Half-Life
  The guys at Halflife.org have scored a few more new images of the Action Half-Life project.
• FiringSquad on Q3Test
  Thresh takes a look at Q3Test and gives his own review of the game from playing on a Mac.
• CliffyB
  TheMushroom interviews CliffyB of Epic Games asking him of course a few of the obvious questions, and a few that.... arent. Saw that on Blues
• Microsoft Game Footage
  Saw on VE that the Microsoft folks have released video footage of about 30 something different games for you guys to check out that they will be showing off at E3 this coming week.
• Nihilistic Slide Show
  Interested in what Nihilistic did at GDC? Check out their nifty little slideshow that is now online.

Tech [11:25 am]

• Neon250 / TNT2 / V3 Comparison
  The guys at Pete's Hardware made a trip to VideoLogic to check out the Neon250 and lived to tell the tale.
• Intel's Coppermine
  GuruTech has written up a preview of the next-gen Coppermine CPU from Intel. Fairly brief but gives you a general idea of what the Intel follks are up to.
• Voodoo3 Cooler
  The Voodoo3.net guys review a V3 cooler that you guys might want to invest in if you're cranking your V3 card.

Gaming Etc [11:25 am]

• Q3A Benchmark Page
  Check out this Quake3 benchmark page showing off the performance people have been getting with the Mac & Linux builds of Q3Test which are currently available.
• $150,000 Unreal Mod Contest
  Yikes, have a look at this Unreal mod contest offering up $150,000 in prizes. That is like, an assload of money. Saw that on Blues
• GameSpy / G.O.D. E3 Rave
  Make sure and check out the GameSpy sponsored Rave party at E3 this year, I'll see you guys there!

werd
Argh! So I'm gonna bet that Q3Test doesnt come out today... We might get lucky late tonight but as Carmack says, "doubtful" At least he's being honest and telling us what is going on though. Gotta thank the guy for that.

Sorry about the troubles with the server yesterday, really not sure why half of you guys couldnt get to the page. It's gone now though, so what the hell eh? Pretty sure it was some DNS wackiness.