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Kornelia Wins AFT!
Hanif over at TEN just emailed me the news that Kornelia of Clan 311 has won the AFT (All Female Quake Tournament) held in California for this weekend. Congratulations to Kornelia, all you guys clamoring to get a shot at playing Kornelia, well she will be attending The Frag during Halloween, make sure and show up and get a shot at her! If you didnt know, Kornelia as well as the 2nd place finisher, KillCreek are on the Cyberathletic team, and for good reason it looks like.
Update: Final 4 placements were as follows:
.plan Wagon
Kevin Cloud updated his .plan talking about well, the stuff in the art dept of course. Check it:
I'm finishing up the boss for American's big gun level. Right now, I'm considering different options for his combat strategy. In Quake, killing the bosses wasn't satisfying to me because it required pushing a button or some other one step removed process. I prefer heavy fire fights mixed with a little arcade style strategy. For example, I liked fighting the Cyber demon or Spider demon of DOOM over the final boss of Quake. Anyway, that is currently the way I'm thinking.
The Frag
Yes, a totally free lan party that will be the grand opening of a new idea for Quake and other DM games to come. Turning it into an actual sport! As in, getting legally recognized and all that comes with it. Oh, and I'm on the organizing team, so you better show up. :)
From the organizers of QuakeCon 97 and from the Cyberathlete Team, comes The FRAG (The Foremost Roundup of Advanced Gamers), an unprecedented Quake event scheduled for the Halloween weekend (October 31st through November 2nd), in Dallas, Texas. It will be kicked off by a Halloween bash on Friday, followed by a weekend of Deathmatch tournament with the main prize being a new Typhoon Elite gaming computer system (valued at $5,200).
Admission to The FRAG will be absolutely free. For more details about The FRAG, head over to http://www.thefrag.com/
BSP HQ
w00, a brand new site dedicated to the Quake map editor out on the net, BSP. Here is the mail I got:
This e-mail is to announce the grand opening of BSP Headquarters http://bsphq.telefragged.com . This site is the result of a merger between BSP.COM, from PlanetQuake, and DeadMeat's BSP Tutorials, which were already on Telefragged. The new site will contain all the latest news and information about the Quake Editor BSP, along with the latest versions of the editor as they become available. The tutorials are still available, and are at the new site now.
Brian Hook Interview
The boys over at www.quake2.com did their interview with Brian Hook and have the full story available on their page. Blue took the liberty of yanking out some of his favorite quotes from the interview so I guess I should follow suit. Here are some of the highlights (Thanks for doin the work Blue!)
"right now ALL of us at id are doing nothing but getting Quake2 ready to ship. Trinity work will probably begin in earnest early next year."
""lights shining through walls". I can not BELIEVE the number of people who simply think we're lazy or too stupid to get this happening. *fume* ... The problem is this -- yes, we can backface cull the lights and not show them on opposite sides of a wall, however backface culling will NOT prevent lights from splashing across a floor. ... In those instances the lights wouldn't poke through the wall, but it would flood under the wall and show up on the floor, which actually looks WORSE."
"We're still looking into the effects of a use button and how well it will work within the Quake2 universe."
"A map view like Descent's simply isn't going to be feasible because of the
complexity of the geometry we're dealing with."
"we're aware of the weapon balance issues people had with Quake, and those are being addressed. We're going to have more weapons, and we're also going to be modifying the characteristics of some of the weapons (DB shotgun will be more powerful, RL may be a little weaker or slower)."
"the software renderer supports transparent particles, water, windows, etc. ... It doesn't support colored lighting. ... We don't have the time to implement it, and it would be a LOT of work. We assume if people want colored lighting that they will be using hardware acceleration. Software rendered colored lighting simply isn't going to be that fast, and the vast majority of our users will want performance instead of eye-candy."
"It's our opinion that the Voodoo is likely going to be the best board for Quake2
when we release. As for "Voodoo 2" and other non-existent accelerators - we'll
support anything with a working OpenGL driver."
"re: PowerVR PCX2 ... This is a good chipset, and for the price it's hard to beat. IT's lacking some features, like good quality colored lighting (we have a hack workaround for colored lighting for the PCX2 and Permedia2), but overall for the price it's tough to beat. It's close to 3Dfx performance, but not quite there."
"We don't care what kind of CPU you want to use, however we don't like it when we're blamed for AMD or Cyrix' inability to come up with a fast FPU. We'll support any CPU that's fast and doesn't require us to bend over backwards to support."
"The internet play will be much the same. Unfortunately we won't have client-side
prediction in Quake2 out of the box." "There will be a BFG type weapon, but I don't know if the specifics have been worked out yet re: weapon balance and exact effects and power."
Half-Life MPG
John Guthrie of Valve Software emailed me about this new MPG showing off Half-Life by Valve. It's a good 9megs, but well worth the download. In case you guys havent heard of Half-Life yet you better check out this movie and be enlightened. It's based on the Quake engine but with major enhcancements such as 16bit color among other things. (The turbulent water is cool)
Qview / Qhost v4.2
A new version of this extremely robust Quake server util is out. Here is a list of fixed and features added to the latest version. Here are the files via stomped / Redw00d's page:
Hexen2 Skins
If you are interested in making your own skins for Hexen2, here is a web page dedicated to helping you out.
Mac Quake Files
Saw over on Blue's that for those of you actually stuck using a Mac to play games (Quake) there are some new files / patches for you to download that address some of the bugs in the earlier release. Check out Mac Gamer's Ledge if you need it.
Qonfig v0.44
For all you .rc files / configs freaks, there is a new version of Qonfig out that well, helps you make cool Quake config files.
Epicenter
A test release of Epicenter has hit the net. This is just a .map editor version, but the big plans for this thing are to include all editing features used for Quake including models / textures you name it. Hope they can pull it off.
ThunderWalke CTF
Another version of ThunderWalker CTF is out. I'm not really sure what is new or what has been fixed, but hey. It's a new version. Go get it if you like to play this patch.
GameCenter Responds
Just a couple days after morbid updated his .plan talking about GameCenter, they have posted an official response to all this ranting going on.
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Jack Mathews Hired by 3dfx!
Jack Mathews, aka morbid. member of the Qspy team, and QuakeWorld dev team among other things has been brought on board by 3dfx to work in Developer Support. Whats that mean? It means the lucky dude gets to fly all over the place to see developers wanting 3dfx support in their games. A big congratulations to Jack and we wish him well at 3dfx, a great company. Hell, I'm excited for the guy.
I'm off to some titty bars or some crazy stuff for the night, cya guys Saturday.
GLDoom
One of our coolbeans programmers here at Ritual, Jim Dose' updated his .plan talking about his project of converting Doom to GLDoom. He talks about using alpha blending, light sourcing, and the big one, +mlook or free looking into the Doom engine! Yes, this is a good thing. Make sure and read his .plan, it is pretty damn interesting.
QMaster for Hexen2
Kevin Yuchao Cao, a computer engineering major over at Case Western spent one long night making his util, Qmaster recognize, download the list and ping servers from the Ironman list. He is testing out game launch configurations right now so expect it done soon.
GameCenter Feathers Ruffled
Hehe, check out what gamecenter has posted in response to all the rants etc in the Quake community talking about how clueless they are and how they have been opressing 3dfx. I don't have a url for this, so I have to post the big thing, it's from the GameCenter mailing list which has no copyright info included with it: (Thanks SnopBorgyborg)
Gamecenter has received a lot of feedback about our analysis
of 3Dfx's recent management decisions. http://www.gamecenter.com/News/Item/0%2C3%2C1080%2C00.html
Actually, "feedback" is too mild a word. We've been accused of everything from having a grudge against 3Dfx, to having a financial stake in seeing 3Dfx's stock price drop, to taking "payoffs" from 3Dfx's competitors. Allow us to clarify a few points:
First, this was a critical analysis of 3Dfx's recent management decisions, not 3Dfx's products. Some readers have apparently confused our analysis with a product review. Those are two very different types of stories, and they are maintained in two very different areas of Gamecenter.
Second, Gamecenter has only recently begun reporting on how companies manage their businesses, not just the products they sell. This has caught some readers--and some companies--by surprise. We realize this is new territory for a game-industry publication, but we sincerely believe it is an important and valuable aspect of our coverage.
Third, Gamecenter strives to apply the same zealous, critical reporting to all the companies we cover. Recent stories analyzing Matrox's decision to develop a PowerVR-based card http://www.gamecenter.com/News/Item/0%2C3%2C1062%2C00.html ,
Hercules' embarrassing pre-announcement of the Thriller 3D http://www.gamecenter.com/News/Item/0%2C3%2C1055%2C00.html ,
and Rendition's public-relations problems launching the V2200 http://www.gamecenter.com/News/Item/0%2C3%2C1065%2C00.html
attest to this.
We're proud that we've sparked such passionate discussion over the future of 3D technology. Such debates aren't triggered by the content-lite, single-paragraph blurbs that many other places pass off as news--there just isn't enough content in these bits of fluff for anyone to understand the significance of events, much less get excited about them.
Does Gamecenter intend to back off subjecting companies in the gaming industry to such intense scrutiny? Not for a second.
======END MICHAEL BROWN=========
Let Michael (or me) know how you feel about this ( michaelb@cnet.com or aliceh@cnet.com ). We're committed to bringing you the very best news and editorial strength coverage of large issues.
OT goes to Accolade
Congrats to onethumb of best.com for scoring himsellf a design job over at Accolade! here is his .plan update:
In the end, I accepted a job here in California with Accolade. I've already begun, and am getting even more excited about the project as it goes along. I'm sortof a hybrid assistant producer and game designer, and hope to have quite an impact on the project. The game is an unnanounced 3d shooter using cutting edge technology. No, it is not using the Quake engine or Unreal, it's using anengine the wizards here developed in-house.
Anyway, it looks like it's going to be a great ride, and believe me, this game has a great vision, lots of talent and passion, and should make a big splash. I'll certainly do my best to bring everyone the best game possible.
The Bigass Quake2 Contest
American McGee, level designer and sound dude for Quake2 is having a Quake2 logo contest. Here is the jist of the contest, head over to the homepage, hosted by Redw00d. for details.
A few years ago I had a leather jacket of mine made into an "id jacket". It's your run of the mill black leather jacket with a blue and yellow id logo made of leather sewn into the back. It turned out really cool.
I wore it for a year and then decided that it wasn't really my style anymore. A few days ago I came across it and decided that it might make a great prize for a contest. I then spent a while trying to figure out what the best contest would be.
Thinking back to the "Bleat to Your Llama" contest I remembered how much fun it was to get all those great pictures of people with llamas and Quake boxes. I mean, to think of all those crazy Quake fans out there taking pictures with llamas made me smile. I received tons of great pictures, and quite a lot of adventure stories. I want to do something that gets people into the contest like that. This is what I came up with:
Go forth into the world and create a Quake II symbol. Make it as large as you can. Put it wherever you can. Make it out of whatever you can. Take a picture of it. Send it to me.
Qspy and Hexen2
Work is already underway on Hexen2 support for Qspy, hopefully something wil be available by the end of the weekend. speaking of which Rick Johnson of Raven updated his .plan talking about major improvements to the network traffic created by Hexen2.
Once again, burning the midnight oil. Thanks to Eric for the doughnuts. My initial testing of the network optimizations give me the following: Starting demo1, and just standing there:
Current demo release: 62+ bytes
My current test version: 28 bytes
So hopefully this will make a big difference.
Raven Jobs
Ack, I was asleep on the floor of my office until 15mins ago, amazing how nobody even woke me up.. heh. I'll have a much larger update done after lunch. Looks like there are some job openings over at Raven Software. As you guys probably know a couple of Raven members left to join 3DR a couple of days ago. Check out the mail from Patrck Lipo:
...things they are a-changing at Raven Software, and with our recent merger with Activision, we intend to strengthen our relationship with id Software. As a result, our next run of three projects are ALL going to be using the Quake II technology. This means we're going to be looking for programmers that not only know C, but love the hell out of Quake and everything that is Quake. ...
Remember, these positions are full-time, and would involve living and working in Madison, Wisconsin. Your current location is not a major concern. Again, if possible, please provide a demo of your work and sample code. Raven is an equal-opportunity employer.
If you think you're ready for Raven Software, contact:
Patrick Lipo
Email: plipo@mail.ravensoft.com
AFT Interviews
Gamers.com has done interviews with several, if not all of the women who will be participating in the finals in California this weekend at the All Female Tournament. Btw, KillCreek played giggler yesterday and has improved a good amount since the last time she played him. (check out www.terminaloasis.com ) Should be an interesting match.
RC5 Stuff
Shogun forwarded me some info talking about the "Quake Community RC5 Team" and how well they are doing in the competetion. You can check out the latest stats over at www.lithium.com/cgi-bin/rc5stat.cgi?Lithium
3DNet
Disruptor of id Software updated his .plan talking about the status of 3DNet. Btw, after we get the T1 here in the office we will hopefully run a 3dnet server from one of the machines here. Here is what homey said:
The 3DNet service bot is now up and running. Drop by the oper's channel, #underworld, to inquire about registering a channel.
To check to see if a channel has been registered already, try
/msg lobotomy chaninfo #chan
Please note: Major game channels are reserved for their publishers and typically do not have ops (The standard for 3DNet).
(To connect to 3DNet, you can use irc.3dnet.net and it will connect you to a random server)
Hexen2 Downloads
Yes, I stayed up all night again, cool eh? Copied this over from yesterday, becuase I know you puds are still downloading (note: pud = term of endearment, because I care about you guys)
After you download the demo, why not play it on the net? http://ironman.hexenworld.com/hservers.html of course.
Malice Shots
Embrionic Pete of Quantum Access hooked me up with these two screenshots of their soon to be released Quake TC, Malice.
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Qspawn v1.0
New version of Qspawn is out. go grab it, or well download it at least. Website hosted by Brutality of course.
.plan Wagon
If you didnt catch Paul Steed's .plan update the other day, he mentions a confirmation of the email I posted yesterday talking about seeing your opponents weapon, it isnt gonna happen. bummer. -Faustus
Speaking of the game. I have some bad news. There will not be different weapons during deathmatch. We've made a commitment to get Quake2 on the shelves for X-mas and there just isn't enough time to devote to making the multi-weapon thing work. We're just as disappointed as you are, trust me.
ISP Database
Here is a quite large database listing of ISP's with information to help you decide on which one is best for you if you wanna get those badass daddy ping times. -Faustus
Sniper Weekly
Not really sure what this is, but Prophet emailed me about it, so I suppose I shoudl link it. PC Games Weekly feature The Sniper, is out at http://www.pcgames.com/features/snipe/
Hexen2 Stuff
Ok, seems like everyone is getting a real kick out of the sheep in Hexen2. Here is my personal favorite so far www.lockandload.com/someone/hex2.htm
Interviews
Moves
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Hexen2 Status
Here ya go! Finally finally got the demo on our own webserver. Download it here:
Hexen2 Demo Download sites
Here is a list of other places you can download the Hexen2 demo from.
After you download the demo, why not play it on the net? http://ironman.hexenworld.com/hservers.html of course.
Quake2 Info
Kevin Stone (aka Stonage) forwarded me some mail he traded with John Carmack, lead programmer at id, concerning Quake2 (of course!) Here is an edited version: (bold denotes John Carmack's answers)
...Also, the hands of the model appear to be apart of the weapon in skin and in mesh, so does this mean that you cannot view the weapon the other player is currently using in deathmatch? It looks like we are falling back to that, because we don't have the time to explore other possibilities.
Also, are there other types of dynamic lights besides point sourced? Are there directional or spotlights? Are there any special effects lights?
They can all be colored or of negative intensity, but otherwise they are similar to Q1.
Finally, I heard reports in .plan files that the new BSP tools have increased the compiling speed of a BSP from what used to take an entire day to BSP down to 39 seconds. Now, to get it done in 39 seconds, does it just modify existing data based on changes made in the editor, so it can eliminate repeating work or did it compile a complete map in 39 seconds?
Only the vis part has been dramatically sped up. The radiosity solution is now the longest part of the problem. Also, note that most maps still take a minute or two to vis even on a 16 processor system
Quake2 Daily Shot
Via PC Gamer's website, the daily Quake2 screenshot. thanks Michael Tan. (At bottom of todays news)
Ion Storm buying Dominion
Word of this was actually leaked yesterday, but PC Gamer's web page now has some more info on it, to quote PC Gamer, who is quoting an Eidos rep:
"As of a conversation I had with Charles Cornwall [CEO of Eidos plc] this morning, we believe that we have an agreement whereby they would be funding it," says Wright. Eidos would help pay for both the acquisition and the development of the game. Wright also calls the rumored $2.5 million price tag on Dominion "a little high," though declined to discuss specific numbers. We expect a formal announcement on the deal shortly, possibly on or around September 1st.
As some of you may know, Todd Porter who currently works at Ion Storm previously worked at 7th level on the G-Nome project, and some of the Dominion project as well. I'm sure it will be a tearful reuniting. :)
GamesNET IRC
Ack, sorry.. got carried away working on the Wack-Ass links section, forgot about news. heh. I'll have it ready shortly. Ther GamesNET servers have been ugraded, check it:
GamesNET IRC has just completed its server and java upgrades. The new network is highlighted by a East to West coast fiberoptic link. Not only is GamesNET the first chat network dedicated to gamers, it is also the home to most of the Quake community. It now boasts the fastest IRC network in North America with less than a 75ms delay from coast to coast (if only our pings in Quake were that nice). Anyone with a java-capable browser can jump into the network. The really awesome thing is that ANYONE can embed this java applet onto their webpage for free. Visit the website at http://www.GamesNET.net and the irc network at irc.GamesNET.net port 6667 with your IRC client or http://www.GamesNET.net/javairc.htm with a java-capable browser. Get info on imbedding the applet onto your homepage by emailing Java@GamesNET.net
Qoole Beans
A new version of Qoole, v1.998 has been released. (Quake Object Oriented Level Editor) So if you wanna make qoole maps, download it. Btw, the CD that you get when buying the full version of Qoole comes with an assload of extra stuff that is pretty cool, er. qoole.
NT4.0 SB Drivers
Saw over on Blue's that apparently some new sound drivers for NT4.0 have been released. You can get them from this ftp site. Haven't checked them out yet, so I dunno.
Fragapalooza
More news on the Fragapalooza front, huge lan party to be held in a hangar in Canada, here is mail from Derek French:
- I have posted directions for driving to the Hangar from outside of the city at the FP97 web site.
- Dropins are more than welcome.
- It all starts in less that 48 hours.
- There will be at least one internet accessable QuakeWorld server running and we hope to have more. Should be able to get some QPlug action going at the FP97 site.
- I hope to have steal part of the internet connection so that there will be massive postings of demos, photos, and me jumping on e-mail, IRC, and ICQ.
QWF Skin Pack 2
The girls over at QWF are putting together skin pack #2. If you are a modeler or skin artist, you have until Sept 1st to send in your submission. There should be prizes and stuff. http://www.planetquake.com/QWF/qwf.html
Speaking of Women
Yet another all female tournament is moving along, this one is Queen of the Hill. It's a QuakeWorld tournament which looks to be pretty well organized with divisions for West / Central / East as well as lpb / hpb.
RocketMount
The boys at RocketMount have resurfaced with an orientation on Clan play. Page was great back when it first started, so I imagine it can only be better now. Head over to www.rocketmount.com and have fun.
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3DR Snags A Pair of Ravens
Thanks to Lithium for alerting me to this press release found on 3dr's web page. They have hired 2 developers away from Raven (who just merged with Activision) Also in the press release is pretty much the same text that was on the release a couple of weeks ago talking about the hiring of a new level designer. (Not Dr. Sleep, another dude)
Jack's Headline
Mr. Jack Mathews updated his .plan with a very rowsing rant against CNET and the poorly done article they posted a while back talking about a questionable document from 3dfx referring to NEC's hardware.
New GLQuake
A new version of GLQuake just popped up on id Software's FTP site. here it is via my webserver because I know the guys who host this page just love it when we transfer several gigs a day. :)
Messiah Movie
Another 3d game that is "2 years ahead of its time" according to Next-Gen, there is a quicktime movie available for this bad boy. I'm downloading it now at an alarmlingly slow rate and will have it posted shortly.
Update: Here it is, via the Ritual webserver.
450 MHZ Pentium2's
Saw over on VooDoo Extreme this little bit about the upcoming processors from Intel. Some real power coming our way sooner than expected!
As you can hear from different sources, Intel is doing well in their advance towards the release of Deschutes and the upcoming 440BX chipset. Sources say that samples of boards with the 440BX chipset are successfully running at the promised 100 MHz bus speed in their labs already and the CPU to do that with is the new Deschutes Slot One CPU at clock speeds of 400 and even 450 MHz already now. As it seems Intel is way ahead of their roadmap and we might see Pentium II CPUs with clock speeds of more than 400 MHz much sooner than expected.
This was yanked from Tom's Hardware Guide.
DeathMatch Essentials Released!
The final word in cool ass DM mods, DME has been released, you need to download this, here is the mail I got:
We've finished up DeathMatch Essentials and it is ready for both the curious and mod authors to consume.
DME is a mod that allows you to see what weapon other players have ready in DM. It also adds about 80 frames of animation to the player model. There is nothing like running around a corner and bumping into a guy holding the Rocket Launcher!! Or ducking under an incoming rocket.
For the QuakeCon demo, we were very conscience of our memory utilization. For this final release, you can now use DME on an 8meg machine. The code, models, textures have all been optimized in just about every conceivable way. Better yet, Zoid fixed our problem with retaining player colors under glQuake, so now that works too!
http://razor.stomped.com/
Quake2 Shot
Yup, new shot from PC Gamer, posted at the bottom of todays news.
CTF Stuff
You can grab this patch atftp://ftp.cy-net.net/pub/quake/ctfsvglw.zip that will add the colored glowing balls effect to CTF for all you QW players out there. This is a server side only mod, so you actually only need it if you run a CTF server.
Hexen2 Previews
If you just cant get enough Hexen2 previews, here are a couple more for you, thanks Prophet.
Wisdom
They be there. Check it and be enlightened.
More Doc Art
I imagine this guy has gotten a job offer or two by now for his artwork, Doc Holiday sent out this new poster he did the other day just in case you forgot how good he was:
More AGP
Seems a lot of people are pretty interested in getting more AGP info, here are a few URL's that have been passed along to me to keep you guys informed:
Agp stands for Advanced Graphics Port. It does allow the video card to share memory, but the big thing about it is the EXTREMELY high bandwith from the bus to the CPU. It is higher than PCI, making graphics writes and reads from video memory faster. Thanks to everyone who sent info.
Unreal Release
Yow, just got this email from a GT Interactive Rep asking me to use a button "unreal now!" of course. I don't do the buttons thing but here is the mail:
Greetings from GT Interactive! Thanks for all your hard work on keeping the Unreal web community going strong as we approach Unreal's release. Attached please find our new Unreal button -- feel free to use it as your link to the GT Games' Unreal site at http://unreal.gtgames.com
AFT Finals
There is an extensive article on Entermedia talking about the All Female Tournament finals. Both Kornelia and KillCreek among others have made it, so it should be fun. :) -Prophet.
Terra219 Interviews
There are 3 interviews with the guys from the Terra219 project over on Nakedman's TC page. They talk about how madcow added colored lighting to Quake among other things. (No, not some cheesy different colored textures deal)
Who's Your Daddy?
Espn sent me this url which rates "gaming heros" based on success-ratio, funk-factor, geek-appeal, and ego-size. John Carmack placed 4th, due to the fact that John Carmack "sits in all day programming" he came in 4th. John Romero came in as #1 though.
TeamFortress Page
If you are looking for help to setup all of those TeamFortress bindings, Like zooming for your sniper and stuff like that, check out TFiguration over at http://www.gibbed.com/koq/t_index.html, it will make you popular.
Camper?
Isaac "insane" Dawson has a rather interesting (at least provoking) article talking about good ol' campers. Sniping, and circuit running and all those cool labels you can give someone who happens to be beating your ass. Check out his homepage as well.
Madman's Game Design
Another update to Madman's page helping out people interested in designing games, or at least TC's.
- Our TC coverage part two is done including:
- replies from id and Epic to our mini survey
- A number of TC reviews
- An overview of the TC's to keep an eye on
- Three new articles about texture mapping, mathematical ways to represent shapes in a game engine and reality vs. playability, all done by Will Kerslake. Very good material!
- A PSX Streetfighter EX Plus alpha review by Blake
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Wampey's Back!
After a one week MIA, Wampey's Census page is back with 2 weeks
worth of results. Interesting result of the week:In In your opinion,
will having so many 3d shooters released in a short time-span hurts sales for all?
Yes 567 59.5%
No 386 40.5%
.plan Wagon
Brian Hook has a much more down to earth .plan update today, talking about using DDRAW for full screen low res modes for Quake2, and having gotten a hold of a couple more 3d cards that he will be testing and posting benchmarks of sometime in the near future.
AGP Stuff
Probably should have mentioned this earlier, there is an article on CNet talking about the first testing they got to do on AGP systems. Quick explanation of AGP (this is from my head, could be wrong) is giving the ability to graphics cards to share RAM with the system. This would help eliminat texture thrashing. (when the HD is hitting to load more textures into your limited vid ram space) Saw that on VooDoo Extreme
Rit / Hip Server
Dragos was kind enough to host a Ritual (Hipnotic) Pack QW
server for us to enjoy. Just hop on scary.deathstar.net and make sure to
include the -hipnotic or -game hipnotic command when you jump on. Dragos is the admin for
http://www.gibbed.com
http://www.deathstar.net
http://www.quakescape.com
Moves
Interviews
There is an interview with KC (8 pages!?) over on GameSpot. Bet you wish you beat Romero now huh? Cute picture included.
Quake2 Editor
This is actually part of the same update as the Story stuff, but I figured it was worth a seperate update, check out Paul Jaquays over at id Software is ranting about:
QUAKE 2 EDITOR
I HAVE THE POWERRRRRRR!!! The new BSP system just landed last night and John Carmack linked it to our editor tools. Oh, MY!! The things we can do with brushes now!! Christian's map that was taking a full day (+) to BSP, zipped through in 39 seconds!!! I can make any texture squirm and warp, flow like a river, act like water, do damage, be slippery, glow, be transparent, be really transparent .... the possibilities are near endless. WOW!!
Thats like, good news and stuff.
Why Call it Quake2?
A lot of people have asked this considering that Quake2 is not a sequel to Quake but a new game, here is Paul's explanation:
I've had a request (which means that there's a lot more of you out there who don't write) to explain why I'm saying that Quake 2 is not a sequel to Quake. The word sequel implies a continuation of what has gone before. In this case, a continuation of the battle against Quake, the mythical overlord of evil, by soldiers fighting in an undefined army in undefined places. Although many of the features of Quake 2 will be similar to Quake players (such as a 3D environment, some weapons that function similar to those of Quake, lava, slime and use of game's logo in certain special game powerups), it is not a continuation of the Quake story.
>
> With Quake II, id has chosen to follow a different story line (and they did this before I got here). Instead of a vague "Kill the minions of Quake" sort of imperative, we have created a brand new story with a solid, homogenous, entirely futuristic, totally militaristic story line. In Quake 2, you are a soldier in the TCM (Terran Confederation of Man) army, a combined force put together from the surviving armies of nations on the planet Earth and those of Earth's colonies on the Moon and the new independent nation of Ares on the planet Mars. Humanity is commited to what we hope will be the terminal battle of an ongoing war to not only repell alien invaders from our system, but to destroy their ability to make war of any kind. The battle (in this episode) takes place on the planet Stroggos, the alien homeworld, the core of their barbaric "civilization." Levels are designed to be played in a logical, sequential progression. And here, your mission doesn't end until the big guy, the core of the problem goes down for the long dirtnap.
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> OK, now WHY are we calling it Quake 2, when it's not really a sequel to Quake? Several reasons. Trademarking. The names we were going for, the ones that to our thinking, really expressed the concept and theme of the game were owned by someone else (when it appears that you may have money to actually cover real or imagined damages, "foxxing" really gets ugly. They don't just tell you to cease and desist). We kept putting forward names to our copyright attorneys and they kept telling us "You're not safe from liability with that one." The deadline for having our real and true name in time for E3 came, and our hands weren't grasping that one great name. And there it was waiting for us like an old lover ... our working title ... Quake 2. It knew we'd come home to it at last. It should have been obvious. We've built up a great deal of name recognition with Quake. We shouldn't just throw that away.
Quake2 Shot of Day
PC Gamer's Quake2 daily shot is here, at the bottom of todays updates.
Quake2 DLL's
Redw00d posted this Q&A session with John Carmack talking about Quake2 and the DLL stuff he got from KB1, dig it:
>How does id plan on supporting the Quake 2 programming community? Will there be any kind of SDK released (documentation, example source code, etc)?
There will be a ton of source code released.
>Is there any reason why programmers won't be able to create .DLLs using any >tools that they wish (VC++, VB, etc)?
If you do it in something other than C / C++, you would have to reimplement all the functionality in our base game.dll. Its possible, though.
>Do you know of any freeware/shareware compilers that can create DLLs? It'd >be a shame to alienate all those creative programmers that can't afford a >$200+ compiler.
GCC and LCC can both create windows dlls and should work, but we haven't tested either of them.
>Based on the fact that Quake 2 will use .DLLs, what are id's plans >concerning non-wintel platforms? I understand that in the "big picture", >these other platforms don't really add up to sqatto.
The dll's should be source code portable to all architectures, but they will need to be recompiled.
>What are your security/virus/trojan concerns regarding user-created .DLLs?
>It's entirely possible for Joe Programmer to write a patch that hides a >"feature" like smoking the hard drive of anyone who frags Joe 3 times in a >row. I'm assuming that the best solution would be for programmers to >submit their source code to some trusted authority that could review, >compile, and distribute it.
Yes, it has some scary issues.
>In Quake, it's quite difficult for programmers to alter the status console. > How will this be different in Quake 2?
It is fully programmable. You will love it.
>In Quake 2, will it be possible to run more that one patch at the same time >(assuming that they don't have any fundamental conflicts)?
No, the dll is still monolithic.
>I'm guessing that in addition to being much faster than QuakeC, DLLs will >also provide more functionality. Is this true? Can you elaborate?
You can do any system calls you like. Saving player databases or sideband communicating with other servers, for instance.
Kelly Bailey Interview
The person behind those Half-Life sound tracks that were posted yesterday, Kelly Bailey has done an interview over at Jaspur's Half-Life page.
What If...
Dave over at Nailed (A quality site) has posted the results of his "What if.." survey. There are answers from people all over the place talking about what they would be doing if they werent in the computer games industry.
The Movies
Looks like there is some info about movies based on Doom as well as Duke Nukem beginning to hit the streets. Ultra Game Player has a couple of blurbs, thanks Prophet.:
DM7 Stuff
Jim McCauley of PC Format dropped me a line to clarify that indeed PC Format did have permission to post DM7 by Ion Storm as well as American over at id Software. Not to worry kids.
Quake2 Music
The results are in from Dyno's Quake2 music opinion poll. Make sure and check it out if you voted. -Prophet.
.plan Wagon II
In a little follow up to the .plan's that have flamed out recently, John Carmack, lead programmer at id Software wants to apologize for this bit of flaming that has gotten out of hand:
I want to apologize for some of the posturing that has taken place in .plan files.
I have asked that attacks on our competition no longer apear in .plan files here. I don't think it is proper or dignified.
If everyone clearly understood that an individual's opinion is only that -- the opinion of a single individual, I wouldn't have bothered. Unfortunately, opinions tend to be spread over the entire group, and I am not confortable with how this makes me perceived.
Building up animosity between developers is not a very worthwhile thing. A little chest-beating doesn't really hurt anything, but putting down other developers has negative consequences.
I think that we have a track record that we can be proud of here at id, but we are far from perfect, and I would prefer to cast no stones.
The user community often exerts a lot of pressure towards confrontation, though. People like to pick a "side", and there are plenty of people interested in fighting over it. There are a lot of people that dislike id software for no reason other than they have chosen another "side". I don't want to encourage that.
Magazine articles are usually the trigger for someone getting upset here. Its annoying to have something you are directly involved in misrepresented in some way for all the world to see. However, I have been misquoted enough by the press to make me assume that many inflamatory comments are taken out of context or otherwise massaged. It makes a good
story, after all.
Sure, there ARE developers that really do think they are going to wipe us off the face of the earth with their next product, and don't mind telling everyone all about it. Its allways possible. They can give it their best shot, and we'll give it ours. If they do anything better, we'll learn from it.
Tom Hall Interview
The dude behind Anachronox, and the creative superstar behind Prey in it's conception back at 3DRealms, Tom Hall did an interview with UnrealNation.
After the Fall
Don't know how new this is, but I also don't think I ever mentioned this one. After the Fall, a single episode Quake TC has been released over at the homepage, hosted by PlanetQuake of course.
QRUN
A new version of QRUN, v1.30, has been released. This is most useful for all the guys out there who like to Quake on a LAN and need a front-end util that makes things a bit simpler to setup.
Fray Stuff
A number of follow ups and stories after The Fray has ended, here ya go:
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.plan Wagon
Brian Hook does his best to talk smack about an article / interview with members of the Unreal team. Although I am looking forward to both games, The Unreal team members were a bit goofy with their answers, here is a bit of Brian's post:
The latest issue of BOOT has an article called "Carmackageddon" that makes the Unreal guys look like a bunch of frustrated high schoolers. Really guys, can you shove your collective feet ANY further down your collective mouths?!
Go check it out -- it's pretty funny the shit they talk for never having shipped a 3D product. They note how Quake is "dated", yet not a single other full 3D environment shooter has shipped since Quake. Unreal has been under development, according to that article, for 3.5 years -- since before Quake. Yet they haven't shipped.
<snip>
Schmalz: "We've been creating content for the latest technologies. A lot of the other games coming out in the next little while are bland; the content is obviously affected by the older technologies."
If you quit worrying about the latest technologies maybe you'd ship a game before id ships TWO.
DM7
Official permission has been given to post the DM7 map. There are some glaring bad oversights when it comes to r_speeds in this map, but I guess it was just a hack job to make the map work. Here is the file.
Hexen2 Release
It won't be released tonight, check out www.hexen2.com for the latest.
Half-Life MP3's
Steve Bond (Wedge) hooked up a few of us webmasters with a
couple of cuts from the Half-Life sound track. These are mp3 files so you need a player to
listen to them. (If you don't know what an mp3 is, you are not the net junky you thought
you were eh?)
Half-Life1.mp3
Half-Life11.mp3
(Make sure and hold down shift when clicking on these)
Der.. uh.. kinda forgot to post what Steve said along with the mp3's, here ya go:
The music in Half-Life is a mix of classical orchestration (with
a lot of horror themes), techno, and ambient. Typically music with a strong melodic or rhythmic element is only played once to set a tone for a space or situation, although some of the ambient tracks were designed to loop. The first track (Half-Life1) is the opening track of the game and combines the orchestrated and techno elements. The second track (Half-Life11) is orchestrated and is from the alien world.
Later on we'll be releasing some of the ambient tracks to give people a sense of what they are going to sound like. There are around 20 total tracks in the game.
The Promos
Welp, just saw Blue was told to remove the box art from his
pages, so I'll do the same before I get a little letter requesting it. There was no
mention of the storylines that have also been released, so I figure people may still be
interested in that eh?
Quake2
Launched from a giant SPACE carrier, you are part of a secret ASSAULT force sent through an INTERPLANETARY gateway in single manned PODS. Shortly after landing on an ALIEN surface you learn that HUNDREDS of your men have been slashed to just a few. Now you must FIGHT your way through heavily fortified MILITARY installations, lower the city's defenses and shut down the enemy's WAR machine. Only then will the fate of HUMANITY be known.
Larger, Mission-Based Levels : You have a series of complex missions, what you do in one level could affect another. One false move and you could alert security, flood an entire passageway, or worse.
Superior Artificial Intelligence : This time the enemies have IQ's the size of their appetites. They can evade your attack, strategically position themselves for an ambush and hunt your ass down.
In-Your-Face Sound and Graphics : Hear distant combat explosions, and rockets whizzing past your head. And with a compatible 3-D graphics accelerator,experience smoother, 16-bit graphics and real-time lighting effects.
Wicked Multiplayer Capabilities : Up to 32 players, friends or foes, can go at it in a bloodydeathmatch via LAN and over the Internet.
Hexen2:
The FourHorseman of the Apocalypse lurk in the shadows before you. They are Death, Pestilence, Famine and War. They are the root of all that is evil. They are the least of your worries. The last known Serpent Rider, Eidolon, lives. As the Necromancer, the Assassin,the Crusader, or the Paladin, you must defeat the dark generals and their Hell-spawned legions before you can face the Archfiend and attempt to end his ravenous onslaught. Go in peace and you will surely die.
THE POWER OF QUAKE: Experience the Quake Engine's true polygon-based modeling for the most realistic, detailed environments ever seen in 3D gaming.
CHOOSE YOUR FATE: Possess distinct spells, powers and 32 new weapons. With experience, gain levels, more hit points, and certain abilities that apply to your specific character class, such as increased speed, firepower, and jump distance.
MIND-BLOWING ENVIRONMENTS: Bludgeon your way through four demon-infested worlds --- Medieval, Egyptian, Mesoamerican and Roman. Smash stained glass windows, collapse structural beams, and pulverise trees.
MULTIPLAYER CAPABILITES TO DIE FOR: Come face-to-face with Knight Archers, Fire Imps, Were-Jaguars, Skull Wizards and more. Go in with friends, or go against foes in a bloody Deathmatch. Up to 16 players can go at it via LAN and over the Internet. Or two can go head-to-head via modem.
All this great stuff was ripped right off of Blue's glorious Quake News page.
Hexen2 Preview on OGR
OGR has posted their own little preview of Hexen2 to get us just a bit more anxious before release.
DM7 QW Server
The frist DM7 QW server that I'm aware of is located in the US at 204.52.135.50 Auto download is turned on so you can grab a copy of it. Te id guys didnt seem very keen on it's release, but well it is available on a CD with a magazine in the UK as well, so it's officialy out. I'll post what I can find out about what id thinks of this. This is Redw00d's server.
.plan Wagon
Brian Hook has gone off one one hella .plan update. This might be a record, or well, at least comparable to back when Carmack was updating about QuakeWorld. He talks about dumping MGL and doing their own code, all the supported video cards, not supporting NT 3.51, and quite a few other things.
Quake2 Shot of the day
Here ya go, another screenshot of Quake2. posted at the bottom of todays news because I'm just so damn nice.
E3 Video
JUDGECAL over at Pseudo just called me up about posting the Real Video version of the video that was being shown during Nightfall at E3. It's pretty damn long but hey, you can see Levelord fall on his ass and a bunch of Ion dudes making fools of themselves for the camera. Here is the 28.8 version, and the ISDN+ version. You need a Real player from www.real.com
Requeim
The Requeim patch has been updated again, this time with a new monster. The Redback Spider. It's an all new model, and the source code is available on the homepage.
Brutality
Heh, just had my 15minutes of Fame, I got to update www.brutality.com today, my next dream is of course to make an appearance on PlanetQuake one day.
Stuff That Sucks
It's posted. btw.. Mom gave me a long ass lecture about some of the links in my Wack-Ass links section.. I tried to give her a speech about "target audience" and "It's all a part of the net" etc etc.. She didn't buy it.. heh.
Paul Shuytema Interview
There is an interview with Paul of the Prey development team over on Avault. They go in depth talking about the choice of Talon Brave for the main character, and "raising ones middle finger at the PC" among other things. Kinda cool.
New Visage
For all the Mac owners out there, good news (Aside from the problem of owning a Mac) . A new version of the all-purpose Mac Resource Editor is out over at the Visage page.
Team Fortress v2.6
Doh, can't believe I didnt' mention this the other day, the final version of Team Fortress is out. Head on over to the homepage and grab a copy. I'll download it and post it here on the local webserver sometime today. (It's tedious over ISDN with 12 other dudes sharing)
Fray Pics
The first few pics of The Fray have been posted here.
Fantasy Quake
A new version of this pretty impressive Quake TC has been released. There are numerous bug fixes in this version. No new actual features though that I'm aware of. It's quite a download but worth it. -Prophet.
RGB3 News
Saw over on Blue's that the Rangerweb has been updated with info on their next Quake Movie. Apparently it was on hold for "confidential reasons" and will be released when it's done. (Good time to release it) The final download will be around 16megs with full voiceover, custom maps, skins, models, everything. Can't wait for it. The preview we saw at QuakeCon was pretty good besides the occasional extra bits of time needing to be cut.
California McGee Chronicle
An interesting Chronology of the events that transpired this past weekend with the Quake2 sounds released on "Normans" page.
Resident Evil Preview
There is a preview of Resident Evil over on OGR. There are some pretty cool new screenshots included with the article as well.
Heya
I'm like, up late..been a while since I said hey.. so hows it goin? I'm pretty good here.. just chowin down on my Hot Tamales and RC (They were outa Pepsi) Rob is up mighty late workin on the best texture set I've ever seen outa the dude. I'm gonna finish up my current map just so I can switch over to that texture set for the next one, that stuff rocks! Might as well update a couple of news things while I'm at it..
AMD K6
Billy over at VooDoo Extreme has a little blurb concerning the next generation CPU from AMD which will have a "pipelinable" chip. This is good news for Quake fans. Check out www.voodooextreme.com for the low down.
Slide
A TC that was initially released during The Fray, Slide has hit the net. It's pretty damn cool, ever go through those sliding parts in Mario64? Kinda like that.. but uh, in Quake.
PaintBall Fest
QTeam is hosting an online PaintBall fest of some sorts, I'm not real clear on the details (The email I got was uh.. by a 7yr old Ukranian on crack or something)
DM7
I read over on Blue's that apparently the fabled DM7 Quake map will be released with the September issue of PC Format in the UK. It's a very vertical level, and pretty damn big. I'm lookin forward to playin this one with the rest of the people out on the net.
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Fray Finals Demo
Zith just sent out this demo from his POV of the Fray finals match. a 16player gibfest which he place 2nd in behind AceJas of Clan Gib. It's fairly entertaining and shows off how much people like to whine. Btw, its about 2.7megs. Oh, it is a QuakeWorld demo, so you need the QWCL from www.quakeworld.net if you are still living in the dark ages and dont have QW yet.
Malice Preview
My homeboy Prophet and I have done a review of Malice, the new TC from Quantum Access. These are the same guys who did Shrak. This time around they are much more experienced, and it shows through in this review. There are several screenshots included. Hey, it's a Shack Exclusive!
PowerVR Quake Shots
Zanshin has apparently found a utility that will take screenshots of the PowerVR version of GLQuake. He takes some shots of the noticeable tiling effect when using a PowerVR card. From what I've seen of GLQuake using the VR Card, I like it a lot. (I have one in my machine) and it is indeed a very cost effecient alternative to a 3dfx based card. I have to admit though that the tiling effect is a bit irritating in some cases.
YPOD
One of the Doom TC's for Quake, Your Path of Destruction has been updated with more news and screenshots of the very hot looking TC. These guys have been at it for quite a while and I for one am looking forward to the release when they are done. Just hope they beat Quake2. :)
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Check out this map database that is attempting to cover every Quake map out there and the authors who made them, I browsed the site for a while and this thing is absolutely huge. I even dug up a few of giggler's older maps that embarass him a bit.. haha..
More Quake2
You remember all those groovy sounds of Quake2 from yesterday right? Well they have some screenshots there as now, but uh.. these are a bit better than the sounds from yesterday. Check out Nom's page if you just cant get enough of these quake2 shots. Btw, I'll be posting the new Quake2 shots at the bottom of each days news so people dont have to look at them if they dont want to. Saw this on Red's page.
QSpawn v0.98
There are no new actual features in this one, but if your older version of QSpawn is crashing you may wanna grab this one, there are a number of internal fixes that should help out people who are having problems with v0.97. They are just preparing for the bit v1.0 release. -Prophet.
QW v2.0 Review
PCM&E has done their own review of QuakeWorld v2.0 Check it. -Prophet.
TDK
Version 1.0 of The Demon King is now available (6.6 megs)
also theres an upgrade to version 1.0 from 0.9 (1.1 megs)
it's available at planetquake/tdk URL = http://207.38.120.69/tdk/
TDK features 13 levels and a bunch of other crap, made by me (Eric), fragmaster, Steve
Rescoe, and David Persson and others.
QW 1on1 Tourney
There is a new QuakeWorld 1on1 tournament starting over at http://w3.icdc.com/~negroe/quake1on1/ go sign up.
Moves
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Copyright Steven M. Gibson |
