Quake3

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Saturday, April 11 1:31am

Rocket Arena2
Here they are, the new Rocket Arena mods for Quake2.

- Client Pack (12 megs)
- Server Mod (670K)

 

Friday, April 10  11:21pm

Return of Fun Names
John Cash has some news that I'm sure everyone has an opinion on. The return of fun names kids. John also plans on putting an end to the animated name stuff though, if you guys arent aware of animated names, it is possibly for someone on a t1 or greater connect to animate his name at a high enough rate to actually flood a modem player off.

Working converting everything over for the new fixed virtual reolustion console that John mentioned. The
font is now a code page 850 like set so those of you who don't happen to have English as your native language will have all the letters in your alphabet available. As before, some of the extra slots are being used for graphics parts. There characters *are* available for use in your name. The font was bumped up in size from 8x8 to 16x16, although the rendered resolution may be different because of the virtual console size. The font itself is just white now. Colored text is being done a different way now. Some places we will force the text to be draw in a single, fixed color. Others it will start out white, but can be changed mid-string. That includes your name! Yes, the return of the fun name... with a vengeance! If anoyone would start a petition if I disabled animated names, please tell me now. They are a bad waste of bandwidth and right now I plan to stop that with "no name spamming" code.

Duke4 Chat
Uhoh! We might actually be getting some more details about the Duke4ever project, w00.

TEN's Online Lecture Series continues this Friday with a special chat event featuring George Broussard from 3D Realms talking about Duke Forever! This moderated chat event will begin at 4 PM Pacific Time on Friday, April 10 in the "Lecture Series" Chat Arena and run for a whole whopping hour!(Get those questions ready!)

Please visit TEN for more information.

I think for some reason I was actually dumb enough to get a TEN account, so I'll try and show up for it and give you guys the whats up. (Assuming my account works)

SiN Update
Ok.. I'm pretty sure this .plan update is recent.. heh. Check out Grue's word:

Things have come together nicely on the art side of Sin, and the fine tuning has begun. All the screenshots we have released can be considered old news, as we have re-done just about every model -- including weapons, as we have made the switch to the Q2 code. We finally have a texture mapping method we are happy with. The lighting model has also changed drastically and things look so much better. Visible weapons in deathmatch rocks - there's nothing like the chill that goes through you when you see a guy sizing you up from long range with a massive gun. Visible weapons isn't as easy as it sounds, you have to account for every weapon type in every run, walk, fire, crouchfire, swim, swimfire, etc. Blade can shoot rifle style, big gun style, and pistol style. It adds up to a lot of animating

Quake3 FAQ
Can't get enough updates to the ol' FAQ. Following up on John Carmack's recent .plan update the FAQ has been updated.

Kali95 with Quake / StarCraft
"Kali95 v1.44 Beta Kali has released their latest software, Kali95 Version 1.44 Kali Beta 1.4 adds support for the most anticipated game of the year, StarCraft. In addition to StarCraft support, this version introduces built-in TCP/IP support so you can see the running servers for popular games like Quake 2, QuakeWorld, and Jedi Knight. So go download it here ftp://ftp.kali.net/pub/kali/beta/k95_144.exe (2.3 mb) " .from Game Post: http://www.gampost.com

Dominion Patch
Ion Storm will be releasing a patch for Dominion along with a couple of new maps today over at http://www.ionstorm.com/news/swbot.html Thanks to Billy Wilson.

SGI Lawsuit for nVidia
Yup, I guess that RIVA128 was just too good to be true. SGI has filed a lawsuit accoding to this press release on Yahoo. "High speed texture mapping at affordable prices!" or some such stuff. No word yet from nVidia on what they think, but I'm willing to bet they are gonna say they came across the process on their own. Fun fun fun in silicon land. (And we all know how much fun silicon is)

3Fingers GL Guide
Yes, I know that GL Guide I have posted is quite a bit outdated now. I'll have to setup a forwarding link over to the 3Fingers page instead sooner or later. You think 3Fingers refers to his total number of digits? Or possibly that is just one hand. There are so many mysteries in life.. Oh uh.. btw, there is a new version of the guide posted in .doc format on 3Fingers' page.

Future vs. Fantasy
The new Future vs Fantasy QW 4.02 Client Pack is now out! Featuring the new Chaos Mode, plus improved Teamplay, GLQW player support, and the addictive Purge Mode.Download the mod from http://fvf.warzone.com/index2.htm, and the update from http://bs.dfa.net . Then blast over to clanbs3.stanford.edu or fvf.stanford.edu

Werckle Leaves Raven
Here is a bit of a letter from Mike "Chaos" Werckle who left Raven Software yesterday:

Hey everyone, my days at Raven have come to an end.

I will miss everyone at Raven and I wish them the best in all their endeavors. It was a privilege to work with each and every one of you. Nothing is harder for me at this point than knowing I will be leaving my friends behind. I will miss you all greatly.

Jazz2
Yea, it's not even 3D, but it's the other project those guys from Epic have been working on aside from Unreal. The demo has been released, head on over to Unreal Nation for the download or the Epic Jazz2 page.

Preview / Review Land
What everyone else is saying about the games you play (Or are wishing you had a copy to play)

Q2 Stuff
Stuff that is Quake2:

Sites

werd
Gah.. so that update yesterday with Charlie Brown's .plan update was completely wrong. oh well, thank god there isnt any sorta anti-moron policy for webmasters of game pages. I'd be outa a job or something.

Oh, and thanks to mom for sending me Easter candy. The return address of "E. Bunny, Hippity Hop, VA" was touching. :)

also, I pulled the demo from Wednesday at the request of some of the players. =(

 

Thursday, April 9  9:01am

John Carmack on Quake3
Not to be outdone, but John Carmack just hours after doing an in depth interview with me about Quake3, has made a .plan update to inform you guys on the status of Quake3. Not sure if any of these points werent already covered, but here ya go. He also talks a bit about Doom source code work as well. Check the link for the full thing.

Things are progressing reasonably well on the Quake 3 engine.

Not being limited to supporting a 320*240 256 color screen is very, very nice, and will make everyone's lives a lot easier.

All of our new source artwork is being done in 24 bit TGA files, but the engine will continue to load .wal files and .pcx files for developer's convenience. Each pcx can have its own palette now though, because it is just converted to 24 bit at load time.

Q3 is going to have a fixed virtual screen coordinate system, independant of resolution. I tried that back in the original glquake, but the fixed coordinate system was only 320*200, which was excessively low. Q2 went with a dynamic layout at different resolutions, which was a pain, and won't scale to the high resolutions that very fast cards will be capable of running at next year.

All screen drawing is now done assuming the screen is 640*480, and everything is just scaled as you go higher or lower. This makes laying out status bars and HUDs a ton easier, and will let us do a lot cooler looking screens.

There will be an interface to let game dlls draw whatever they want on the screen, precisely where they want it. You can suck up a lot of network bandwidth doing that though, so some care will be needed.

The Engines
Well, from my understanding UberEngine from Ritual will boast more features etc than the Quake3 engine John Carmack over at id Software is working on, although the Quake3 engine will be coming out first. Probably most everyone will get to see Quake3 at E3, and several members of the press will get to see Uber there as well for a side by side comparison. I'm incredibly excited about both these techs and I'm sure the comparisons between the two engines will be a running theme as they both progress.

MS and Q2
Starting today, Microsoft will offer free matchmaking support for Quake II on its Internet Gaming Zone http://www.zone.com/ , allowing users of the retail game to jump onto the Zone to meet and compete against other Quake II players. -GameNewsWIRE

Oh, and check out the Next-Gen article I spotted.

Rocket Arena2
Thanks to [R2]Huntsman ( http://rangers.gibbed.com ) for forwarding me this clip from the Rocket Arena2 beta mailing list

The release party will be held this Friday on 3dnet irc in the room #arena The pre-party will start right at 6:30PM PST (9:30PM EST). You will be sent a password tomorrow or friday morning that will allow you to get into the room. Please don't pass it out, it will be crowded enough already :) I don't want to have to moderate it until we open to the public at 7PM.

More Ion Shuffles
The Daily Informant http://www.ionstorm.com has now been posted. Jonathan "Nelno" Wright takes over as Daikatana Lead Programmer. Find out what Romero has to say about this wonderkid...

While you are over there check out what members of the Daikatana team have to say about this years E3.

Ritual Interviews
http://www.ritnews.com has some interviews with Matthias 'Langsuyar' Worch and Richard 'Levelord' Gray.. Both are level designers on the Sin project which we should hopefully see shipping within a month or so of E3.

Hardware
You know, drivers and all that neet stuff?

Da Patches
The daily dose of poison

ICQ
Yea, another new version of our favorite online buddy list. Check out www.icq.com and thanks to Ant.

The Sites

werd
So I was thinking.. oh wait, nevermind. I am pretty sure that is illegal anyways.

 

 

Wednesday, April 8  7:41pm

Levelord Interview
Rust is gettin busy, they have posted an interview with Richard Gray over there at Ritual for you to read now too.

MacQuake v1.09
The WizWorks page has posted the latest version of MacQuake for um, Mac users I think. Feel free to download it on your PC though and drop the guys some email asking how come you can't get it to work. -Blues

QuakeWorld Invitational League
The answer to the NetQuake Elite12 league is finally off the ground. QuakeWorld invitational league is polling the community right now for the top 6 east and top 6 west QuakeWorld clans to start a 5 week tournament with a point system for wins / losses / ties. Hope my clan gets invited *cough* :)

Heretic2 Preview / Shots
Some more nifty new screenshots of Heretic 2 for you guys to check out over on the AVault pages. They also discuss the gameplay issues that come along with the choice to make Heretic2 a 3rd person POV game instead of going with the tried and true first person POV that has been used in all the other titles based on the Serpent Rider saga. Thanks to VE

New Ion Storm CEO
The Ion Storm news page has been updated with a bit of news on the staff shuffling going on over there:

ION Storm announced today that Todd Porter has been promoted to CEO, while Tom Hall will assume the duties of President. Formerly President, Mr. Porter, along with COO Bob Wright, created the business and financial plans for the company, and, with John Romero and Bob Wright, structured the Eidos Publishing Deal.

My John Carmack Interview
Figure this was some big news that you guys should all check out. John Carmack, mr. busy man over there at id Software was nice enough to answer my E3 question to him concerning the state of Quake3 and what we can expect to see. This is exciting news to be sure:

At 10:54 AM 4/7/98 -0700, you wrote:
>Hey John, quick question.
>
>what can we expect to see for Quake3 at E3?

Not sure yet.

You read it here first guys. John Carmack's first public statement concerning Quake3 at E3. omg! (btw, dont go emailing John, I send Mr. Carmack mail in hopes of posting a response to a question he hears quite a bit, in an effort to 1.enlighten the public, 2.drop his email count so he can get more work done on Quake3. heh)

Disruptor Interview
Although I'm not quite sure any interview can live up to the excitement I just created with my post in the above article, there is an interview with Christian Antkow of id Software posted at the great Rust pages.

Kali Quake2
Not sure just how excited you guys should get over this one, but Kali has announced just a couple of days ago that there is now Quake2 support along with server browsing features.

Preview / Review Land
What everyone else is saying about the games you play:

Hardware
Couple new drivers for you guys to snag:

Da Patches
I am toning down this section a bit since there are so damn many patches being updated with minor crap that is sometimes just not worth mentioning.

FAQ OFF
More FAQ's for you knobs to read

Sites

werd
Yow, got my sleep schedule completely screwed up. Oh well, the weekly section for Tuesday, as well as Wed's demo has been posted. It's amazing how many people did the exact same thing as I did on Monday.. I had no idea we had so much in common.

 

Tuesday, April 7  7:21pm

HexenWorld
It's like deja-vu, all over again! Here's the newest HexenWorld beta, v0.11 - Client (6.13 MB)
http://www.hexenworld.com/files/hwcl_b11.exe
and Server (1.21 MB).
http://www.hexenworld.com/files/hwsv_b11.exe
To recap, this note from Rick Johnson:

Includes 3 new deathmatch levels: hwdm3, hwdm4, hwdm5. hwdm3 is not HW friendly (i.e. big huge open areas = bad for networking). Be sure to go to the key configure menu and bind a key to "Player Names". There is also a console variable, r_teamcolor, that you can set to tint other players who are on your team. HexenWorld v0.11 is also available from Activision's FTP Server.

DirectEngine Clarification
Craig Hubbard over at Monolith sent me this clarification on the reasoning behind the DirectEngine:

...wanted to offer a clarification. The DirectEngine demo is aimed at developers, not publishers. It has previously been available only through NDA. We are making it more readily accessible to benefit potential licensees.

Riot: Mobile Armor is still going strong. Morale is high, the game is coming together beautifully, and we're on schedule. Our split with Microsoft was mutual and amicable and does not threaten Riot's future in any way.

New HexenWorld
Yup, the new version of HexenWorld has been released on schedule just like Mr. Johnson over at Raven Software had planned. There are 3 new deathmatch levels included in this release. There is also a bit better support for team games with the r_teamcolor command that you can find in the player menu. (Go into player setup once you are inside the game) So.. head on over to www.hexenworld.com and snag yourself a copy to play on the net. Here are a couple of direct links for ya though on the aCtivision site:
Client (6.13 MB):
ftp://ftp.west.activision.com/activision/hexenworld/unsupported/hwcl_b10.exe
ftp://ftp.east.activision.com/activision/hexenworld/unsupported/hwcl_b10.exe
Server (1.21 MB):
ftp://ftp.west.activision.com/activision/hexenworld/unsupported/hwsv_b10.exe
ftp://ftp.east.activision.com/activision/hexenworld/unsupported/hwsv_b10.exe

Also, there was a bit of an "oops" as stated here by Rick Johnson:

"Well, I goofed. V0.10 checks for a portals .PAK file which is different than the one on the release CD. This means that you still can't play the demonness. I'll put out a new version on Tuesday."

Quake Jive
Adnan Zafar has created a new site named "jive" about quake lingo. It is a listing of words/terms/abbreviations in and around the Quake/gaming community. The url is: http://www.telefragged.com/jive/ It has a form for people to submit terms to be added to the list.

SiN Files
Games.net has posted the latest SiN files with of course a few more screenshots and a chat with in house tech dude Don MacAskill. If you guys didnt notice ParadoX over at Ritual updated his .plan after a long abscence from the .plan wagon with word that they have been deathmatching in Sin quite a bit recently.

Mod of the Week
In order to help give mods publicity in a crowded world, PlanetQuake is running a new feature: The Mod of the Week! This week's mod is Loki's Minions CTF. Version 3.0 is DAMN impressive, and PlanetQuake really wanted to make sure people checked it out. It's raising the CTF standard. Mod of the week homepage: http://www.planetquake.com/motw

Eraser Bot Source
Thanks to Redwood for the word that the Eraser Bot source code has been released on the Team Impact homepage. All you programming monkeys who want a good look at some solid AI code check out Ridah's work over at http://impact.frag.com Just a fair warning, this is some fairly advanced coding so if you are just a dabbler, it'll probably be over your head.

Oh, and dont email Ridah with questions. Just check out the message board instead.

Quake2 Done Quick
The guys over at the Quake Done Quick page are of course hard at work on running through all the levels in Quake2. They have posted a little patch for Quake2 that includes a timer that will count along with you as you try and finish the levels in as fast a time as possible.

ThunderWalker Ring
Round 4 of the ThunderWalker Invite Capture Ring http://icr.mpog.com/tw has come to a close. Now that all the stats have been tallied, we're pleased to announce the winner of the Defender of the Week Award
http://www.captured.com/tw/guard/ for that round of play.

The Half-Life Word
Eric Twelker of Sierra, the publisher for Valve Software's Half-Life project sent out this letter to myself along with several other webmasters concerning the recent updates to their website that has been changing the release date for Half-Life:

Greetings, Sierra has received numerous inquiries in the past day regarding the official Half-Life Web site's http://www.sierra.com/titles/halflife/ listing of an early June ship date. This listing is inaccurate and, since no specific release date has been announced, the site has been updated to 'Summer 1998.' Half-Life is still on target for a late Spring - early Summer release and the Valve team is working towards hitting in the E3 timeframe. Half-Life is coming along nicely; it's looking great and we're all very excited about it.

Thanks for your patience and continued support!

The Views

Hardware

Patch News

FAQ JOO

werd
Well, I'm sure a few of you guys were wondering whats up with yesterday so here is a list of the things I did:
- You know when you start a movie and it says "this movie has been modified to fit your screen" and stuff? Well that guy who comes over to your house to measure your TV came by.. that took about 30mins.
- Pooring magic shell onto a plate and slapping it in the freezer for 5mins so I can eat it without having to suffer through ice cream in between. (3 hours right there)
- Knitting a sweater for my neighbors pet pig (20mins, small pig)
- Organizing my recordings of the Nature channel by date instead of letter. (4 hours, huge collection)
- Hit on the the chick at the candy counter down at the movie theatre. Talk about getting shot down.. doh! (2minutes, although I was hoping it would take up the rest of my evening)
- Watching reruns of Gilligans Island. (I edited out the commercials, so about 40mins for 2 episodes)
- Thinking of nicknames for my private organs. (I'm always doing this in the back of my mind, this was a concentrated 30min effort though to see if I would have any revelations)
- Mooning my neighbor while doing the research for nicknames. (She digs me)
- Snorting Ice Tea Mix. I can't drink enough of the stuff fast enough, so it is my only recourse. (30 seconds per tablespoon)
- Last but not least, cooking bacon butt naked while in a state of excitement. (All night baby)

And you thought the life of a webmaster wasnt exciting? shya!?

 

Sunday, April 5  5:21pm

GameSpy v2.0 beta
Happy day for all the registed users of GameSpy. You get to download version 2.0 before everyone else, w00! The amount of work put into making this version just peachy is pretty tremendous (Believe me, that mailing list.. jeesh.. heh) so you monkeys better download it and use it. More than likely if you arent using the latest version of GameSpy to play Quake people in your community will shun you for being "behind the times" and a "knob".

GLDoom Shots
Bruce Lewis has updated his page with some more screenshots for you to check out of his GLDoom project. -VE

There are some new screen shots on the glDoom screen shots page. These are to show how the weapons look when being fired. I wasn't quick enough to catch the plasma gun firing and happened to luck out on the chain gun (they both fire really quickly). The muzzle flashes on the weapons don't line up exactly in the screen shots but I've got it fixed. The muzzle flashes also aren't translucent yet. I have a plan for that but just haven't done it yet

MacQuakeWorld / GLQW
The WestLake Interactive page has another update on the status of their Mac ports of the QuakeWorld code. Here is a quote I snagged from Blue's page:

TThe GLQuake .97 patch is nearly finished, we're just doing some extra testing to make sure it all works. Nearly all the .97 changes from the PC are in, and several minor bug fixes to both normal Quake Mac and GLQuake Mac are also in the new 1.09 update. Keep checking back for updates!

Next HexenWorld Monday
Rick Johnson has updated his .plan stating that the next version of HexenWorld is hopefully gonna hit the net on Monday.

Romero Interview
The only interview of the day is a chat with John Romero of Ion Storm. It's a short but sweet talk over at Methos Quake.

Hook on CTF
For those who are dying to read Brian Hook's opinion (Heh, I try not to ever miss one of his .plan updates) Brian has a bitch session about CTF and the AutoDoc.

Job?
3DI Software, Inc. is looking for a new main programmer for their game All Out War. Must be willing to work with new age voxel technology on a semi-completed engine. Contact Dave Gosnell (link to dave@3di-soft.com ) for more information. David Gosnell, Business Director - 3DI Software, Inc. http://www.3di-soft.com

Q2 Stuff

Polls

werd
Weekends.. catch up all that stuff you were supposed to get done during the week but instead spent on the damn computer. :)

Older News Copyright Steven M. Gibson - VRGN