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Saturday, August 9 - 8:48pm

New id Software page

Wow, check this out, www.idsoftware.com has been revamped again. And to celebrate the occasion a couple of new screenshots. Also expect a release of QuakeWorld shortly. Keep an eye on www.quakeworld.net and this page all night. (I'll be up late, w00)

New GLQuake!

A new version of GLQuake has been released and is available at the id software ftp site.

ftp://ftp.idsoftware.com/idstuff/unsup/glq809.zip

Quake2 MP3s

Buzzfunk of MOD (also called Sonic Mayhem) stopped on irc and shot the shit for a bit talking about the music they are doing for Quake2. Apparently the Sonic Mayhem Website will have a few MP3 samples of the music for download by the time you read this.

http://dd.networx.net.au/glquake

Quake2 Cinematics

Slipgate over at www.quake2.com traded some email with Paul Steed on the Quake2 cinematics subject, apparently there wont be any cinematics except for the beginning and ending of the game. (most likely at least) They are working on scripted character stuff for between levels possibly, but only if they can make it real cool and not really interrupt the point of Quake2, which is action.

GLQuake Site

Here is a new page targeted just at all you GLQuake lovers. there are files, tips, etc etc to tweak GLQuake for all that it's worth. pretty good site. Also there will be a GLQuake webring? Ok.. I guess thats cool. :) -Prophet.

Quake2 Info

Ack, this is turning into Quake2 day, there looks to be a possibility that you will be able to see opponents weapons in Quake2 DM! Here is an email quoting Paul Steed on the subject in response to a mail from Chris Spencer:

Keep in mind that just because they are in seperate pieces, it doesn't change the fact they're just considered a collection of vertices. We are investigating ways to reflect weapon changes in the game, but everything's still up in the air. ps

Thanks Rotwang.

Win a 3dfx

Dave Sutton over at VooDoo Guru has a pair of Magic 3d (3dfx cards) to give away to a talented artist who can come up with a new logo for their page.

Huge ass Mofo .plan update

Good grief, Brian Hook of id Software went off the deep end on his latest .plan update. It's too big to post here but just click this link and grab a donut.

QW Paintball

w00, its out.. the first beta of the QuakeWorld port of Qteam's PaintBall. Giggler came back from vacation a couple of weeks ago and was telling me how cool this was, so make sure and give it a try. snag a copy at http://qteam.stomped.com -LordzacH

Hexenworld.com

The PlanetQuake sister site, based on Hexen2 has opened it's doors!

Welcome to HexenWorld http://www.hexenworld.com/ After quite a lengthy process, our vision of a MEGA Hexen II web site has come to fruition. HexenWorld delivers not only the latest Hexen II game news but also contains essential features and hosts all the good sites available that offer something unique to the Hexen II community. Featured pages include Serpent's Realm, Militant's Information section, Bakshra's Dictionary, the Official FAQ, the Hexen 2 Ring, among others. Hosted sites so far include the Hexen 2 Guild Keep, and the Vampire TC, with more sites to be hosted soon. We've teamed up with PlanetQuake and we now both share one another's vast resources. PlanetQuake continues to be the all purpose website, while HexenWorld is the definitive site dedicated to the Hexen II phenomenon. Note: HexenWorld is not sanctioned by either Raven Software or Activision, the companies responsible for this great game. Those are the only official Hexen II sites. Visit HexenWorld, a veritable WORLD of Hexen II information, features, and resources for and by the Hexen II community. We look forward to hearing what you think!

Hexen2 Info

Steve Stringer of Activision (publishers of Hexen2, Quake2, SiN) sent out some mail to a few of us webmasters with some more details on the pending Hexen2 demo release:

The demo will be available on our FTP sites on August 22nd, and will include: * The first two levels of the game plus one deathmatch level * Two character classes: the Paladin and the Assassin * Multiplayer support * Both Software and GL versions will be included Zentron and Oatmeal, the web masters of Hexen2.com, are hosting a Hexen2 iRC Release Party on the night of August 22nd in the official EFNet Hexen2 channel #hexen2 . Brian Raffel, myself, and some of the development team will be there.

Speaking of Hexen2...

There is a scanned image of the first two pages, of the hexen 2 article in the latest edition of PCzone (Print) magazine, at http://home.clara.net/nite/hexen2spread.jpg -Prophet.

Mark Reign

Mr. Reign of Epic (Developers of Unreal) has made a couple new posts to the Epic MMBoard concerning development progress. Check it.

Prey Team Assembled

The Prey Development page over at 3DR has been updated with news on the final 2 map maker positions being filled. Here is part of it: (Thanks Prophet)

"The other important news is that we've sewn up our final two mapper positions on the development team. We'll be announcing another name soon, but today, we'd like to welcome John Anderson to the team. We received countless submissions, and narrowed the field down to a select few who possessed the "magic." Then we put them through one of our Prey "tests" and had them build us a deathmatch map based upon a short fictional description. John's map (which you can download here) was the unanimous choice of the whole team."

Speaking of 3DR...

There is an interview with Scott Miller of 3DRealms, at http://duke4ever.telefragged.com

Ritual Chat

Yea, remember this? It was cancelled about a month ago but it's on now. Entermedia.com will be hosting a chat session with a few of the guys from our office.

On August 13th @ 7:00 PM CST, members of the SiN development team of Ritual Entertainment will be on stage at the EnterMedia iChat Theater for a special 1 hour chat session and public interview, along with an unveiling of all-new screen shots of the game! The event is sponsored by EnterMedia and 3Dx (" http://www.3dx.org/ "). Details will be posted on EnterMedia's Web site (" http://www.entermedia.net ") over the next few days, and all questions should be sent to "theCrew@entermedia.net".

WorldCraft 2 Preview

Overlord sent me mail (Along with a half dozen other guys, but he was first) that there is a preview of Worldcraft v2.0 over at PCGamer. Valve is looking to release this much enhanced version of Worldcraft with Half-Life this November.

Upping the Ante

Just got word from Angel Muñoz, President of Adrenaline Vault (On ICQ) that he is placing $2,000 on Thresh as a bet that Thresh will wipe the floor with Craig Hubbard, lead designer of RIOT at Monolith. Here it is:

Challange from Angel Munoz, CEO of Avault ====================================================== Ok Jason I'll bite, I bet you $2,000 that Thresh kicks Craig's ass. And more I will gladly host the event here in Dallas in a special location for and invite the media to witness Crag's humiliation. Now let's see how serious you were when you posted this on your .plan. Regards, Angel L. Munoz, CEO NewWorld.com, Inc.

Thanks Embrionic for forwarding the mail. Hm.. think it'll happen? :) Jason is the CEO of Monolith, and that is who the bet is being made with.

Abandoned Base2

Some of you may remember a long time ago Jokey from the Smurfs (It's a clan, and no Blue isn't a member) got the .map source for dm3 from Mr. John Carmack himself. Here is the mail from Jokey:

Abandoned Base 2, sequel to dm3, uses source from dm3 provided to me by John Carmack. It is a supposed to be either a clan level or a free for all level. Dark Zone 2 is the sequel to dm6, andis supposed to be for Free for all play or 2v2 games. JM1 + 2 = Jokey's Mahouse 1 and 2. JM2 is modelled after dm4, but I did not call it Bad Place 2 because tokay is working on dm4v2 for Q2 and I didn't want to cause a name conflict. It's for free for all and 1v1 play. JM is a 1v1 level not based on any other level. A lot of people have been expecting these levels. The feedback I got from the beta levels was GREAT. I got TONS of feedback. I even got to chat with Paradox (which was the highlight) about Abandoned Base 2. The url for Jokey's Quake Level Homepage: http://games.3dreview.com/jokey

A Bit Better

Ken Alverson was cool enough to send me a higher quality scan of that Quake2 shot in the latest PC Gamer.

Hexen2 Release Date.

Wow.. check this out.. an actual release date for a 3d action demo? Can it be? Well Hexen2.com says that the demo of Hexen2 will be out on August 22nd. (3days after my bday, w00)

Email probs

Ok, Eudora has puked all over the place on me. (Yea, nasty.. wiping up my desk now..) So like, missing out on a bit of news this morning.. I'll make up something to post though after I'm finished cleaning this thing up.

Thresh Results

Yow.. well um, I guess Thresh proved he's the real deal once again at SIGGRAPH. He was taking open challenges all day throughout the conference and was fragged.

1st Place ($2000 & Voodoo Card): Dayvid Iannaci a.k.a. Da5id 2nd Place ($1000 & Voodoo Card): David Fallon a.k.a. Club 3rd Place ($500 & Voodoo Card): (TIE!) Kornelia Takacs a.k.a Kornelia and Jason Carlton a.k.a Unholy Actually there was a tie for 1st place also. The tie was broken by Da5id and Club speed running E1M2. Da5id beat Club by 1 second (55 seconds)! Club (of Clan Postal) was the ONLY contestant to frag Thresh, and then only once!

I snagged these results from the always coolbeans Blue.

Half-Life Interview

Jaspur of Jaspur's Half-Life page did an interview with Dario Casali of Valve Software. Dario is a level designer / game designer over there, pretty well done article. have a look. http://half-life.telefragged.com

Quake2.com

There is a logo contest going on over at Quake2.com. Make a purty picture and send it to them or something.

X-Men and QRally

Thanks Faustus for word that Impact Team. (Guys who did Quake Rally) has posted something of a bit of interest:

"Also, big thanks to Sumaleth for holding up the forte here while I'm coding up a storm for X-Men Quake. He's done a great job of conveying what I've been trying to explain for a long time now, that QWQR will never exist, at least in the latency reducing form we've grown to love in normal QW. If I were to ever port QR over to QW I would have to disable the client side prediction, which kinda defeats the purpose, as far as I'm concerned. Oh yeh, for those that saw the X-Men demo at Q-Con, all I can say is.. "You ain't seen nothin' yet.."

Raven & Activision

PCM & E has posted a quick and dirty article on the Actvision aquisition of Raven Software. This one tells exactly who gets what and who's in charge. -Prophet. Also check out the Entermedia mention of this.

Quake Map Validator

Beauty of Madness has posted the first version of their QMV util. I'll quote my homeboy on this one: "The Quake Map Validator is a very small (40k) utility that validates and fixes Quake Map Files. Future features (some within the next week or so) include entity files for the Rogue and Ritual Mission paks, Cut and Paste, and support for Quake2 and Hexen2. There are a ton of features which you can find out more about, at the Quake Map Validator Page."

QuestGate Hexen2

Upaboveit's Hexen2 page has opened up, check out this "press release"

Charlotte, NC -- QuestGate is pleased to announce a new Hexen II news site titled "Upaboveit's Hexen II Page". We are pleased to welcome Upaboveit and his talented news reporting to QuestGate. Located at http://hexen2.questgate.net , it replaces QuestGate's previous site known as "Shadows of the Apocalypse" QuestGate Gaming Services is a fast growing service of Info Avenue Internet Services, LLC that provides gaming web sites, ftp sites, email services, finger services, and over 15 free Quake servers. For more information, visit http://www.questgate.net. Press and news organizations may obtain more information by emailing press@questgate.net.

Myst 2

Cipro emailed me this link thinking it may be of interest to all the people who read these pages. Talks about how that freaking slideshow Myst is making more money than all of these 3d action games.. bah.

TEN and AFT

Kinda late, but well.. A lot of you may remember OneThumb going off on TEN a while back about how they are handling the All Female Quake Tournament. TheWeasel, a TEN employee has voiced his response to OneThumb here. Check it out and decide what you think. I've never tried TEN, but I guess I have to now and find out. :)

PCGamer Quake2

Well, looks like a couple of the shots in the current issue of PC Gamer are indeed pretty much identical to the ones on the id Software homepage. This one though does look a bit different. Although the quality is erm.. well not exactly wonderful. Big thanks to Origen for the shot:

SiN Shots

Avenger over at First SiN has taken the recently released SiN mpeg movie and extracted 17 (!) screenshots from it. Little disclaimer here, those weapon models are *place holders* thrown together just so we have something to make stuff blow up with while in development. The actual weapons for SiN (Which will be wonderfully balanced for DM btw) have not, and will not be revealed for quite a while.

Mac News

Here is a recent posting on USENET (Newsgroups) concerning Lion Entertainment, the software company in charge of porting Quake and a few other 3d action titles to the Mac OS.

Lion Entertainment has indeed ceased business operations as of Wednesday, August 6, 1997. We are currently in negotiation with both MacSoft and Accolade to finish the Mac OS versions of Quake, Shadow Warrior, Unreal, and Deadlock. Those negotiations, while going well, are inconclusive at this time. Those of us at Lion want to thank all of our customers over the years, and wish the Mac game market well. Douglas Grounds President Lion Entertainment, Inc.

So uh.. maybe we'll see a Mac port of Quake er.. by the time Quake2 is out for the PC? bummer. -Trephine.

News from Siggraph

[Dd]RANSOM dropped me a line after attending Siggraph with a bit of info on Thresh Quake-raping everyone as well as Quake2 being shown:

I just got back from siggraph. Although there were no id personnel in the building, the siggraph booth was pretty kewl. They had the Thresh challenge, and intergraph sure does not have to worry about loosing any computers to Threshkillers. The guy at the booth informed me that noone has scored a real point on him all week. Someone lucked out with a telefrag.(that dont count) I was unable to play him, cause he was already booked for the whole day! But the guy was seriously awsome. Between matchs he just sat there and made his quake guy dance the level he was in. I did not get to talk to him, but to one of the guys at the booth said, he is really tired of quake(heh, I dont doubt that) They also had Quake2 up and running. I saw 3 or 4 lvls and monsters, along with the eraser gun.(way wicked) Anyway, just thought I would email yah this, if you want to know anything else, I will let you know if I know anything about it. Only had a one day pass :|

New Demo

Ok ok, I give in.. here's a nice little E1M5 demo I made last night. Watch me fall off the yellow armor ledge 3 times in a row and laugh. You need the QWCL.EXE to view this demo. Get it at www.quakeworld.net Then place the .QWD file in your Quake\QW directory, and launch QW with the +playdemo scaryqw1 command.

Btw, yea, I'm a lpb on ISDN. Forgive me for my sin. :)

A bit of expansion

Following up on that demo, just a little note, things have turned for the better for the Shack and I'm looking into adding 5 (!) new sections to the pages next week. Actually a bit more than that.. w00.

More Lessons From Video Games

Manero and his pack of freaks from #trinity have made some additions to the list that I posted yesterday by one of the guys at Raven. It's pretty durn funny. Check it.

Free Models?

If you haven't visited the Free Models web page in a while you better go check it out. (If your into models that is) There are a number of new models for use with Quake or any TC you are working on. Yea, they are free, no strings attached, just snag em and slap them into your mod. Giving credit to the source of course.

Fragapalooza

Looks like this LAN party up in Canada is getting pretty damn big. Derek "crushbug" French has updated the homepage with news that there will be a net connection there (Cable modem) where they will be uploading pictures and DM Demos of the lan party periodically during the event. Also, in the spirit of QuakeCon, there will be "Q" trophies given out to the winners.
Fragapalooza is in Edmonton Canada.

Matrox + OpenGL?

There is an article up on OGR talking about a new card from Matrox which may make a lot of people who play GLQuake quite happy. (And the upcoming games like Quake2, SiN, Daikatana, Duke4, blah blah..)

Jedi Knight Previews

There are a pair of Jedi Knight (Dark Forces 2) previews up at Next-Gen and Ultragp. check em:
http://www.next-generation.com/
The Next-Gen article includes new screenshots as well as a couple of quick-time movies for you to check out, cant wait for this one to hit the shelves! (Thanks Kevin of Jedinews)
http://www.ultragp.com/news/

Tomb Raider 2

PC Gamer has gotten a hold of some new screenshots of Tombraider 2. Check it out over in their features section. -SpaWn

Qoole Beans

Another new version of Qoole, Quake Object Oriented Level Editor has been released. Not sure what has been fixed in this version though, But it's always good to have the latest version now isn't it? http://www.qoole.com

Activision Snags Raven

Raven Software, the guys who brought you Heretic, Hexen, and the soon to be released Hexen2 have announced along with Activision that they are joining forces. Raven will become a subsidiary of Activision with common stock. -Blue's

Quake Add-On Starter

Johannes Weiman's Quake Page is host to QuADS, a new front-end util for Quake with support for saved games, patches etc. If you don't know wtf a front-end is.. uh.. think of Doom2.. remember that program DM.EXE? Yea.. something like that, but uh.. more robust. -Blue's

RocketJumpers

The RocketJumpers guide page has had a good looking revamp. Check out the mail from bait:

For months, I've been working on a completely new layout for The Rocket Jumper's Guide. I'm happy to announce that it's finally to the point where it can be made available for public consumption, and, on top of that, has been picked up by PlanetQuake www.planetquake.com/jump

Mike Dussalt Interview

Videogamedesign.com has done an interview with Monolith Software's Mike Dussalt. Monolith is of course the game company that brought us Blood, based on the build engine.

Half-Life Real

PCGames.com has posted a Real-Video ( www.real.com ) of the recently released Half-Life movie. The original AVI was like 4,092,2093123,565 megs, but this one is much smaller.

Oak-Bot

A new version of Oak-Bot has been released. New movement code in this release.

.plan Wagon

John Cash, programmer over at id Software updated his .plan talking about "Barrel Rocket Jumping" dig it:

We're in the process of changing ISPs right now. We will be getting a DS3 (up to 45mbps) once the fiber can get pulled in. Until then we're running with two T1 lines. We're currently experiencing the new line blues. Ping times to our servers have been very bad for the past day. We are working on it and they should already be getting better. Please bear with us while we get the problems worked out. I've had fun with a new "feature" in Quake2 recently. Let me just say that if you like rocket jumping, you're going to love barrel rocket jumping. It's basically just a RJ off of an exploding barrel (kind of like the slime cans in Doom), but man oh man can you catch some air! The level designers are already trying to figure out good ways to reward people crazy enough to launch an explosive while standing on another one. You obviously won't be able to do this as often as you can RJ (unless we let you carry barrels around), but it sure is a cool ride when you do it. Heh. Carrying explosive barrels; can you say "shoot me"? Quake2 status in a nutshell: on schedule and looking great. NO, I am NOT going to name any dates.

Casablanca

Harry Teasley of Valve has written a rebuttal of sorts to loonyboi's Casablanca article posted on PlanetQuake a couple of days ago. interesting reading.

Heh..

Monkeyboy emailed me about PC Gamer's Quake review posted last year when it was released, a bit ironic how they are spooging all over Quake2 considering this review:

Genre:Action Issue: October, 1996 Highs: Great graphics; animated 3D monsters; excellent multi-player options.. Lows: Nothing really new in terms of gameplay or technology; unfriendly save feature; no automap. Bottom Line: Quake isn't destined to revolutionize action games, but it's a very good first-person shooter from the guys who invented the genre.

Quake2 in PCGamer

Origen emailed a few of us about the latest issue of PC Gamer containing a preview of Quake2 including a couple new screenshots (someone get me those!) Here some of what he said:

In A Nutshell: You'd have to be living under a rock not to know what Quake II is, but for the record, it's the sequel to id Software's Quake, one of the most popular and influential 3D action games ever made - hell, one of the biggest games ever, period. This promises to be much more than just an upgrade, as Doom II was to Doom - there's plenty of new stuff in the game, including all-new graphics, river currents, female characters, souped-up monster AI (including a medit unit who heals the other monsters), and support for Open GL. The Creators Speak: "Quake II is going to be far and away the highest quality product id has ever done," says John Carmack, the man behind Quake II. "I doubt I can convey just how well things are going here. Things probably look a little odd from the outside, but our work should speak for itself. I have been breaking into spontaneous smiles lately just thinking about how cool things are."

There is of course a bit more, but I don't want some PC Gamer reps breathing down my neck for copyright issues.

Quake Mountain

Quake Mountain has expanded to cover Clan stuff etc. . if you have news about your clan to post kerr002@ibm.net (only CLAN or related news)

Rick Johnson Interview

Drywall over at Inside3D did an interview with Rick Johnson, programmer of Hexen2. They mostly covered stuff about HexenC (Raven's interpretation of QuakeC) and what the staff did with it.

A Lesson Learned..

Kenn Hoekstra over at Raven Software decided to post the 20 most important lessons he has learned from playing video games for a living.

1. There's no problem that cannot be overcome with violence. 2. You can overcome most adversaries simply by having enough quarters. 3. If it moves, KILL IT! 4. Operating any vehicle or weapon is simple and requires no training. 5. "Bosses" always hire henchmen weaker than they are to do their dirty work. 6. If you find food lying on the ground, eat it. 7. You can smash things and get away with it. (smashing things doesn't hurt and many nice things are hidden inside other things) 8. When someone dies, they disappear! 9. Money is frequently found lying in the streets. 10. All shopkeepers carry high tech weaponry. 11. You never run out of bullets, only grenades. 12. Ninjas are common and fight in public frequently. 13. Whenever huge, evil fat men are about to die, they start flashing. 14. When you are born, you are invulnerable for a brief period of time. 15. Although the enemy always has more aircraft than you, they fly in predictable patterns which makes it easier to shoot them all down. 16. All women wear revealing clothing and have great bodies. 17. The enemy always leaves weapons and ammo lying around for no apparent reason other than to allow their enemies to pick it up and defeat them with it. 18. You sustain injury if you hurt innocents. 19. Gang members frequently all look the same and often have the same names. 20. When driving, don't worry if your vehicle crashes or explodes. A new one will appear in its place.

Yes, it's true.. video games and real life go hand in hand.

More Quake2 Previews

Can't get enough of these things, another Quake2 Preview has been posted over at Sofwaresource.com. Nothing overly exciting that I can see, but like, it's news or something.

Quake Model Utility

v.21 is out over at the Hipposoft homepage. Check it out and grab a copy. Or just grab a copy from this link: http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/hiposoft/qmu21.zip

Hexen2 Cut Scenes

For all those people curious out to as to whether Hexen2 would be including cut-scenes with the release, Phoebus has confirmed that this will be the case. Check out www.hexen2.com for yourself. -Prophet.

SiN Asylum

There has been a redesign of the Telefragged SiN page run by Shippy. Looks groovy.

CgANS

Some of you guys may remember the QANS (Quake Automated News Server) That tracks all the News pages out there and lists their headlines. (One stop news shop) PrinceMystery has re-opened his page under the CgANS name now with broadened coverage.

Quake2 FAQ

Quake2.com has begun hosting subsites, already having picked up these 3:

Quake2 Dlls Archive and News http://dll.quake2.com Quake2 Webring http://webring.quake2.com Quake2 ClanRing http://clanring.quake2.com

The updated Quake2 FAQ has just been posted there as well. Check it out over at www.quake2.com

Finaly Fantasy 7 Beta

Yea, it's a cool game so us webmaster dudes feel obligated to mention that the first public beta has been released. Check out this FF7 homepage and grab a copy. (less than a meg)
Speaking of cool games, Make sure and check out that new game by Red Orb / Raven. Take No Prisoners

Fray News

That bigass LAN Party in NYC? You know? Well there is a classifieds section open over on the homepage for people looking to share a room (Save $$$)

Carmack and the Future..

Xanadu Prime dropped some email to Blue (which I shamelessly copied here) about Carmack at the SIGGRAPH convention. Ritual actually has 4 guys there right now.

Just got back to the office after another full day at SIGGRAPH. Today was the day John Carmack participated in a 9 hour lecture series entitled "Designing Real-Time Graphics for Entertainment." Gary Tarolli of 3Dfx and several SGI notables also presented. John's presentation focused on his experiences in software development and speculated on the direction that 3D gaming will take in the next 5-10 years. A good deal of the info would already be familliar to most avid Quakers, but I will summarize the stuff that was new (at least to me): - Quake2 will have level of detail (LOD) implemented using intricate models that are simplified by removing some vertices and curve-fitting those that remain. This produces a loss of detail when the object is seen from a distance. The process will save approximately 200 polys per object. The difficulties involve determining which verticies can be removed so as to leave a still-recognizable model intact. - Trinity will probably use skeletal modelling. Ideas thrown around included "skeletons inside nurb-type surfaces" and implementing a continuous skin through the use of meshes. - Wolfenstein3D took 6 months to finish. Doom took 12. Quake took 18. John stated that he has no intention of letting Trinity take 2 years of development time. Hence, he is reconsidering his tradition of starting each engine from scratch with no code carried over from earlier games. However, he still finds the "fresh start" approach very attractive in that it frees him from having to live with past choices that may no longer be appropriate in the current game (i.e. the poor file access methods in Doom were trashed in favor of making the highly flexible ones in Quake....the result being a much more end-user-configurable game.) We'll just have to sit back and see what happens. ;) - John reaffirmed his interest in continuing id's current release cycle pattern. Thus, Trinity will be a high tech, bleeding-edge game that shows off the new engine and attracts would-be licenseees. Elements such as storyline, goals, etc. will be marginalized....along the lines of Quake (although probably not as severe). Then, about a year and a half later, the game will be tweaked and released as Trinity2....a full-blooded idsoftware masterwork..:)...along with all the Trinity-derivatives. - Where will we be in 10 years? John envisions worlds that simply aren't possible yet, due to the immaturity of our software tech. He can see games where you're flying in the air over these majestic mountains when you spot an ancient castle perched on high. You enter the castle....walk around in it....take in its detailed architecture...then accidentally fall off a balcony and into the moat below. :) I can't wait. =]

Btw..

RedBone spilled coffee on his lap yesterday.

Top Sellers

GameCenter has posted the top selling PC and Mac games for this quarter. As always, Myst is #1, Quake is #12, Redneck Rampage, Duke3d, and Tomb Raider follow in that order.

terraFORMA

BabelFish emailed me about the terraFORMA page rework. It's lookin good. check it out.

TEN Winners

TEN, hosts of the uh.. Supremely well managed and run Women's Quake Tourney has announced the winners to their best Quake mod / map contest. PainKeep won for best mod, and Scatter and Mancer won for best maps.

Game-Wire

Just when you thought you had seen enough of Prophet, he sent along this announcement of the opening of Game-Wire.

I would like to formally announce the Launch of Game-Wire, a gaming news site covering anything related to gaming, from Adventure gaming to 3d Action, We will attempt to cover it all. We plan on keeping the content fresh and as up to the minute as possible. I am happy to join Game-wire and call myself a member of this exciting venture. Some of the many features of Game-wire (some are still being worked on , so please bare with us) Job-Wire - a place where companies will post positions that need to be filled Company News - participating companies will be posting press releases here. Some of the companies that are participating include such names as 3DO, 3DRealms and GT Interactive. Game-Wire Fingers : pretty much self-explanatory =]

Census Results

Once again the results are in over at the PlanetQuake Census page. (Wampey's Censuses) Most interesting result there:

There's been a big discussion in #quake about which people would rather have if you could only have one: peer to peer (no latency, head-to-head) tcp/ip (latency, unlimited player) 188 847 1 9.2% 81.8%

Quake2 Preview

Big thanks to onethumb for finding this great preview of Quake2 including new screenshots as well as shots from the Quake2 cut-scenes. -nite at 3dx was 2mins late emailing me about this. :)

Magnificent 7 RA

Forgot to mention this earlier, GameCenter has posted the RealAudio show they did with members of our glorious game community. (Ritual, Ion, 3dr, etc)

DirectX v5.0

Blah, transfering files to your webserver without a shell account blows. I just posted the "authorized" version of DirectX for you guys to download. btw, whats up with these visits from Microsoft? tide*.microsoft.com is all over my log files..

Trinity

Billy Wilson from Voodoo Extreme emailed me about this page dedicated to Trinity. He has done a good job keeping tabs on the progress of the next generation engine being worked on by John Carmack over at id.

SiN Movie

If you haven't already seen this movie that I handed out to the SiN web page masters then you may want to check this out. It's a 1min mpeg of Paradox running around one of his test levels. It shows off how we can blow everything up in the world of SiN.

New BSP

Can't get enough of these new versions of BSP. Thanks Steve Thoms (magicman) for the heads up on this one. BSP is of course a high quality free Quake Map editor.

Half-Life Movie

w00, hot on the heals of the SiN re-release, Valve has put out a movie of Half-Life. I've been told it's about 90 seconds long and includes some music along with cut-scenes.

Flashing in Quake2?

In case you don't remember this little debate back during the initial release of Quake, it would be quite a slow down to the engine to keep rocket flashes / quad glow from showing through walls. Brian Hook has once again confirmed that this will not change in Quake2 over at 3dx. -Prophet.

Q) Someone from id mentioned that rocket explosions are still seen through walls in Quake2. Is this going to be fixed? A) This won't be fixed.

UnrealED

Tim Sweeney has made a post concerning UnrealED over at the telefragged MMboard. -Prophet.

Quake2 Preview

I'm pretty sure this is old, but there is a Quake2 Preview over at this mother of all URL's. I'm gonna post the whole thing because I think we should all stop and take time to admire the absolute length of this bad boy:
http://cgw.gamespot.com/cgw.nsf/783be3781b89ea378525648800689357
Size doesn't matter? bah, tell that to GameSpot.

QRally for QW

Well, it's not going to happen. The Impact Team homepage has been updated with reasoning behind this.

DirectX v5.0

If you didn't grab the unofficial DirectX release last week, well the real one, as confirmed by the MS homepage is out for you guys to grab. If you play WinQuake / QuakeWorld then it would be in your best interest to download this and install it. -Blue's

TC Magazine

The TC Mag over at Frag.com is under a new command.

SiN Shots

Oh my, actual screenshots of a level other than Levelord's Geothermal Plant! Check out these 2 shots of ParadoX's Test level. Yes, that is a controllable cannon in the shot on the left.

Also check out the Ritual News page as well as the SiN pages for info on other screenshots.

Work at Ritual!

Guess what, we are looking to hire a couple new level designers here at ritual to work along side Paradox, levelord, and giggler. Go read the Ritual News for details and send us your best!

GLQuake and DX5

Operation 3.D.F.X has posted a great bit of help for people experiencing problems with GLQuake after installing DirectX v5.0 on their machines:

"To everyone experiencing problems with GLQuake after installing DirectX 5: 1. If you have Glide Runtime 2.4,you must have Direct3D drivers v2.1.Installing just Glide Runtime 2.4 will cause error message wglCannot Connect....(or something similar,I forget) 2. Monster 3D owners: Drivers v1.08 only have Direct3D drivers v2.08 so you can't run any 3Dfx games with these and Glide Runtime 2.4.The solution? Like this:" http://www.hardware.3dreview.com/3dfx/news.shtml

Paul Steed Interview

FragMaster, p1mp of all PlanetQuake and known by dozens of people world wide did an interview with Paul Steed, artist over at id Software. Many of you may know Paul from his uh.. in your face .plan updates. -Blue's

Badass

Head over to NAWC and slap them with your vote for most badass Quake player. You do realize though, if you don't vote for me I'll mess up your face right?

The Core

The Core is "Essentially, The Core is a database of entity definitions (keys, flags, bounding box sizes, etc) for the various patches and so forth that exist. It attempts the somewhat insane goal of trying to capture the most accurate information for the most current version of every patch that uses new or altered entities."

This of course includes things like the Quake Mission Packs, and popular net add-ons such as PainKeep. -Prophet.

X2 Workshop

If YOU = Quake + USR X2 Modem then http://www.navpoint.com/~zephed/qx2.html for help with Quake modem play. -Prophet.

New Look?

Yea.. I was gettin pretty sick of the former look of the pages, and Mike Hadwin (Ritual artist) slapped me a psd file with a new look for the pages, I dug it so here ya go. I have always been tagging my links on the pages with a _parent or _top target, so you shouldn't have any problems. I'll play with LYNX a bit tomorrow as well as a couple other browsers to make sure everything is kosher.

Apocolypse Sounds

A pair of mp3's have been posted by one of the more eagerly anticipated Quake TC's, Apocolypse, over at QuakeLab

Mission Pack #2 Review

Check out this UK Style review of Quake Mission Pack #2 by Rogue Entertainment.

Model Stuff

Pathetic has opened it's doors, and the QMA (Quake Model Association) offering interviews, job listings and News.

Also, the Meddle homepage has changed to http://www.pitt.edu/~brianm/

Mac Server Search

If you happen to be a Mac game player (My condolences) there is a little bit of good news, This Mac Quake News page has some info on the Macintoch equivalent of Qspy, with screenshots. (I've said it once, I'll say it again.. nothing beats the excitement of screenshots of server query software) -Prophet.

BSP Tutorial

Saw over on Blue's page that Deadmeat's BSP Tutorial pages have been updated for the latest version of our beloved Quake map editor, BSP.

Prophet = Alien?

As regular Quake News page readers probably know, Prophet is all over the place when it comes to digging up stuff, interviews etc.. well QuakeMania may have uncovered some interesting info on Prophet, including a pic.

.plan Wagon

Brian Hook, programmer at id has a couple of announcements to make concerning extensions to be used in Quake2:

After long discussions with Chris Hecker I've decided to try and use more industry standard extensions instead of trying to do stuff specific for Quake2. Right now we're interested in the following types of extensions: - multitexture - paletted texture - particle systems For the multitexture stuff the SGI stuff looks like it may not suck, but until I mess with it some I may not know for sure. I'd like to use the glColorTableEXT that is part of the OpenGL for Win32. I'm going to talk to 3DLabs and 3Dfx as to why they each did not support this extension to make sure there aren't some technical foibles behind it. I think that we may be able to use the SGI glPointParameterfSGI extension for particle systems. It's not _ideal_ for what we'd like to do, but I think it's good enough. It allows us to specify a min and max size for scaled particles, and it allows us to change the size of particles via the standard glPointSize API. It also scales over distance, etc. Next week I'll mess with this stuff some more, since the software renderer is pretty much up to speed. I'll also be spending the end of next week getting SciTech Software's MGL code reintegrated into Quake2

Quake2 with CGW

If you didn't already see it in Disruptor's .plan update, CGW has posted their report on Quake2 online for everyone to read. Actually thanks SwanSong for the initial heads up.
- url for the sneak Q2 article
http://cgw.gamespot.com/cgw.nsf/Webal
- url for the upcoming fall games
http://cgw.gamespot.com/cgw.nsf/Weball

3dfx - NEC Debate

GameCenter.com has a bigass article concerning 3dfx and NEC. It concerns the recent choice made by Sega to go with NEC for their next console system. There are quotes from none other than Mark Dochterman (programmer at Ritual) and John Carmack (programmer at id) They pretty much give the low down on what is hype, and what is fact.

Madman's Guide to Game Design.

MadMan's page has been updated once again:

- Oh yeah, we found out the _real_ Unreal release-date (Don't believe us? Go check out!) - Still whining about that 'What's in a DM level' topic (no time to change...) - Blake reviewed Bushido Blade for the Playstation. Excellent game, if you have a PSX, go buy!

New QRally for 28.8

A new version of QRally has been released with optimized code to make it much more playable for people stuck on a 28.8 modem (Ugh, I remember those days)

TF Newswire

Spaceman would like to announce the move of The TF Newswire (formerly the Doomsday Newswire).
The new address is http://www.warzone.com/tfnewswire

Extreme Pain

v2.0 of Extreme Pain is out on their homepage, fixing the "invincible player" bug.

StarWars TC

Some new screenshots on this uh.. questionable choice of TC theme. (Actually, cool choice, but follow the advice of everyone, change the name)

TF Bot

Saw on Blue's that there is progress being made on the TeamFortress Bot. For those who haven't checked out TF, you are missing something big. Grab it from my files section and have at it.

Interviews

The author of QuakeWeek, the 3rd generation of Quake news satire pages did an interview

Confused About Bots?

Glenn F. Maynard, Jr emailed me this url that gives a good explanation of exactly what bots are all about.

Ahh.. weekends..

Nothin like kickin back on a Sunday and sleeping in till 3pm.. Wake up, pick my nose for a bit.. and ponder lifes decisions:
- Do I use a stick, or roll-on deoderant this morning?
- Do I turn on my electric toothbrush or brush manually?
- Do I use the towel when I get out of the shower or run around naked down my apt building halls to the delight of my neighbors?
- It's been 4 days.. should I shave?
- Heh, I would go on.. but should upload this damn update.. :)