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CA Quake2 Competetion Mod
It's finally out! what will most likely become the standard mod used on all competetion Quake2 servers for Clan matches and 1on1 games. The CA mod is well, coolbeans. Check out the press release.
The Cyberathlete Organization, the first professional computer game players
organization in the world, announced the release of the Cyberathlete Competition Patch for Quake 2. The competition patch, released for beta-testing purposes only, "provides organized match-style team play for Quake 2 with support for 1-on-1 games as well as multi-team 'army' battles," said mod creator, Mike "mikeJ" Joya. The mod builds on previous match-play mods by providing a "captaining" mechanism to help make match starts more organized and to prevent interference from destructive parties in all sorts of games.
<snip>The Cyberathlete web site is located at: http://www.cyberathlete.com.
Download the patch from ftp://ftp.cyberathlete.com/demos/camod08.zip
BattleZone Demo!
The guys from aCtivision were nice enough to send me some stuff to check out this game earlier, and now they done released a demo on the net! The game is incredible looking to be sure. Kind of take a C&C style of game, and put yourself in the 1st person POV. Then throw in some great looking models, and even more great animations of those models, and you've got BattleZone.
GameSpot has scored the "exclusive" release. It's 20.4 megs, so um, go watch one of those recorded real vido South Park episodes I know you have while you wait.
The game is of course 3D enhanced for accelerator cards. Thenks to VooDoo Extreme for the news.
Clan Listings
CyberClan Central, a revolutionary web site designed for use by Quake and Quake2 clans, is now open to the public. This site contains everything one has come to expect from a general clan site, including a comprehensive, sortable, searchable clan list, and the ability to add your clan for listing; but CCC(CyberClan Central) can be used for much more by clan.
CyberClan Central allows clans which have signed up for this free service access to many functions including:
* Easy, automated scheduling of scrimmages.
* Rankings against other clans worldwide.
* Comprehensive, searchable, sortable clan lists.
* Possibility to be included in clan LAN tournaments.
Patches
Toys toys toys.. they are almost as much fun as sitting in your car through a carwash.
RIVA128
6. WHAT ABOUT VOODOO2?
From everything I've read, it'll almost catch up to the RIVA 128 in performance. I wouldn't want to have to spend 300 bucks for it, though,and burn an extra slot in my home machine. Their mini-driver will probably run pretty well, but it's been around a LOT longer than theRIVA 128 ICD. The RIVA has a LOT of performance still untapped by the drivers. And of course, NVIDIA's also got some new chips in the works...
Interviews
Preview / Review Land
What everyone else is saying about the games you play and the hardware you use:
Quake2 Point Release, can you feel it?
As a follow up to John Cash's recent .plan update, there is also a quote from Barret Alexander over on the GameSpot site worth checking out:
The Point Release will be available over the Internet, Alexander said, but once the PR is finished, Quake II will be remastered to include everything on the Point Release. "Subsequent reorders of Quake II will have (the Point Release features and fixes) included on them," he said.
Alexander also insists that the Point Release should not be taken as a sign that id needed to rush the release of Quake II to meet a holiday season release, as has been rumored.
"None of this would have gone on the initial release," he says.
Also, aside from that, Paul Jaquays, a level designer over at id updated his .plan
OK, here's some hype. First, I don't know when we'll be officially dropping the point release in your laps. "Real Soon Now", OK? But I can pitch you some news about what WON'T be in it. If you've had a chance to download and play Tim's Base 100 mega map, then you'll be ready for the Sewer (from xian) and City (from me) mega maps. Sewer is all new. Xian can tell you what he thinks is cool about it, but its got lots of pipes and water :).
If you enjoyed the long vistas in City 1, then I think you'll like what the City mega map has to offer. Railgunning distant tiny clusters of pixels and seeing them burst into red spray has a certain satisfaction to the sniper in all of us. Sneaky Field-of-View modifying bindings will add a certain degree of power to some players' arsenals.
My basic theme for the map was "really big, open, and outdoors."
<snip>
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RIVA128 GL Drivers Marks
Well, here ya go like I said, the benchmarks I got from running timedemos in Quake2 with the new GL drivers on my p2 / 337 system. This was the PCI Riva instead of the AGP, but oh well, here are the scores I got: (note: I didnt overclock my riva)
320x240 = 51.2fps
400x300 = 49.5fps
512x384 = 46.9fps640x480 = 40.8fps
800x600 = 30.8fps
960x720 = 20.3fps
Yup, they performed as advertised. Running around in 512x384 is my preferred resolution. I've had some problems with sometimes quitting out of Quake2 and it turn's my desktop completely blue, there seems to be no way to fix that unless you reboot. (Or drop your screen color depth to 256) I'm extremely happy with the performance of these drivers. Great job by nVidia.
Oh, another wacky problem is it totally hosed the brightness of my desktop, I ran display doctor though and it actually fixed the brightness during the chipset detection? wacky.. who the hell knows.
Quake2 Point Release
It's nearly upon us! John Cash made a .plan update for you to read:
Point Release (3.12)
--------------------
It's in Activision's testers hands right now. That means we should be able to release it RealSoon Now. Looks like Zoid is on track too.
Seven Deadly .Cin's
terraFORMA, the team currently working on the highly secretive project "Supernova", has just released the first of seven Quake2 mini-movies, entitled "Sloth." The seven mini-movies are all going to be part of a series entitled "The Seven Deadly .Cins," with each movie highlighting one of the seven deadly sins. The seven movies will be released over the next several weeks.
Fun Names for Q2
Hopefully id Software will take the few minutes it takes to include fun names back into Quake2. Tony Browneller of QNM just sent in his petetion to the guys at id with over 300 signatures.
Hexen2
A few bits of Hexen2 news for ya:
Patches
More toys for ya to play with:
Interviews
Speaking of Daikatana, I noticed that Diamond will be shipping copies of Daikatana with their VooDoo2 based Monster3D 2 video card. That's a hell of a big deal swung by those guys at Eidos.
werd
Well, as I'm sure you guys have noticed, DNS is still not happenin here. bummer. I've been told that things should smooth out within "60 hours" though thank god. Also the VRGN Quake, QuakeWorld, and Quake2 servers should be back online around then as well.
Another thing, man you guys need to check your email return addresses, I bounced yet another *4* emails today trying to respond to people. Yes, that means you Jeremiah Johnson. :)
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RIVA128 GL Drivers
They're here! Thanks to VooDoo Extreme for the word that the new OpenGL ICD for Riva128 based vid cards has been released. Here is the 1.2 meg driver linked from www.ve3d.net
Preview / Review Land -Updated
What everyone else is saying about the games you play and the hardware you use:
John Carmack
Back from his 1 week trip to lock himself in a room and work on Trinity, John Carmack has made a .plan update to let us know just what's up, and talk a bit about his past experience as well. I clipped it up a bit, but check out his full .plan update here.
Ok, I'm overdue for an update.
The research getaway went well. In the space of a week, I only left my hotel to buy diet coke. It seems to have spoiled me a bit, the little distractions in the office grate on me a bit more since. I will likely make week long research excursions a fairly regular thing during non- crunch time. Once a quarter sounds about right.
<snip>I don't want to mention anything that could be taken as an implied "promise" by some people. I'm very excited by all the prospects, though.
<snip>For me, while I do take a lot of pride in shipping a great product, the achievements along the way are more memorable. I don't remember any of our older product releases, but I remember the important insights all the way back to using CRTC wraparound for infinate smooth scrolling in Keen (actually, all the way back to understanding the virtues of structures over parallel arrays in apple II assembly language...). Knowledge builds on knowledge.
<snip>My basic skills built up during school on apple II computers, but lack of resources limited how far and fast I could go. The situation is so much better for programmers today -- a cheap used PC, a linux CD, and an internet account, and you have all the tools and resources necessary to work your way to any level of programming skill you want to shoot for.
<snip>The first year of Quake's development was awesome. I got to try so many new things, and I had Michael Abrash as my sounding board. It would probably surprise many classically trained graphics programmers how little I new about conventional 3D when I wrote DOOM -- hell, I had problems properly clipping wall polygons (which is where all the polar coordinate nonsense came from). Quake forced me to learn things right,as well as find some new innovations.
<snip>The development cycle of Quake 2 had some moderate learning experiences for me (glquake, quakeworld, radiosity, openGL tool programming, win32, etc), but it also gave my mind time to sift through a lot of things before getting ready to really push ahead.
I think that the upcoming development cycle for trinity is going to be at least as rewarding as Quake's was. I am reaching deep levels of understanding on some topics, and I am branching out into several completely new (non-graphics) areas for me, that should cross-polinate well with everything else I am doing.
---
There should also be a killer game at the end of it. :)
Speaking of Trinity, Trinity: The Site has been updated a bit more info. Here is a snippit of it I yanked from PlanetQuake.
Currently Trinity has two different directions it is taking. One is a larger more detailed world. The other is a more complex and intelligent AI system. Neither can exist in their optimum state together in one engine. So sooner or later we'll choose a dominant technology path.
Wheel of Time Shots
The Wheel of Time page has a development update with several new screenshots for you guys to look at. The Wheel of Time is an action/strategy game based on Robert Jordan's best-selling series of fantasy novels. Legend Entertainment has licensed the Unreal technology from Epic Megagames to develop the game. -TechZone
Ritual Movie Deal?
I ran across this snippit over at www.gameslice.com that possibly Ritual Entertainment has caught hollywood fever, here is a quote:
Perhaps one of the most interesting rumors we've heard as of late is that Ritual Entertainment is working with a movie license for their next 3D game. We're currently doing an interview with Ritual and hope to have the official line soon.
StarCraft Delayed
Well, not exactly a 3D game, but it seems that most people who play Quake also enjoy RTS games, OGR has an update on the delay of StarCraft, here is a snippit of it: -VooDoo
Starcraft has been delayed several times, including a crucial delay that put the title out of the holiday running. One beneficial side-effect of these delays, however, is that Blizzard has been able to run a thorough multiplayer beta test and has already used what they learned in the game.
Riva128 Drivers
The big buzz floating around the net is the RIVA128 OpenGL ICD for Windows95 is about to be released. nVidia has been hard at work on the driver for a while now and as Brian Hook over at id Software mentioned earlier, they are actually getting higher benchmarks than the 3dfx based cards in Quake2 (!) Canopus was nice enough to send me one of their Pure3D 3dfx based cards as well as one of their Total3D RIVA128 based cards so I'll be able to do some comparisons myself here for you guys as well. Check out the article on BootNet. Here is a quote of the benchmarks they got with a beta driver:
System: Pentium II 300Mhz Card: nVidia Riva 128 AGP w/4MB SGRAM
Quake2 timedemo map demo2.dm2 640x480=38.6fps 800x600=29.4fps 960x720=20.5fps
I'm running a Pentium II at 337mhz (75mhz bus) and the nVidia RIVA 128 in a PCI slot with 4MB SGRAM. Just for the record, The RIVA128 is actually the fastest Quake video card I have come across in all my testing as well. I pull about a 10% increase in framerate on average over the Millenium 1 & 2, Diamond, Verite, and et6000. I've also tried a few other cards as well, the RIVA always comes out on top though for raw Quake1 framerate.
I'll put the finishing touches on my "Ultimate Quake Station" page I've had on the backburner pretty soon. I get asked quite regularly what I think the best hardware is for playing Quake on.
Forsaken Demo
Finally the wait is over, a demo of the amazing looking Forsaken game has been released on the net for everyone to enjoy. I don't think there is even a software version of this game, you just need a 3D accelerator to enjoy the glory. This of course being a demo, the guys at aCclaim stress that the full version will be even cooler. I'd suggest going to the PCRL page to download.
Poll
Guess I was right a couple of days ago, the PlanetQuake polls are being updated again. this time with some questions about professional gaming.
Patches
Gotta catch up on a few patch releases that I've missed over the past couple of days:
.plan Wagon
Gah, I forgot the .plan wagon section yesterday. (Wasn't really very enthusiastic about the update, kinda just dont have the urge to put big effort into the thing when you know 75% of the net can't even get to your page, yadda yadda.. ok sorry)
The Bible
Thresh & Kenn's Quake2 bible has been updated with more tips for the Quake2 deathmatchers out there.
PGL Wrapup
After the big event, people like to reflect:
Of course, now that the PGL event has concluded, everyone is turning their heads to the Cyberathlete CPL event which has already announced cash prizes that are more than double that of the already impressive cash given away at the PGL. The CPL event is open to all participants who wish to make the trip down to Dallas for the 1st of 4 events to be held this year. As everyone who attended The FRAG can attest to, you show up at a Cyberathletic event, and you are bound to come home with something free, and some huge cash if you enter the 1on1 tournament.
werd
On a modem? the "sCary Express" page is still alive and kicking. I'm not sure what the status of the artist for VRGN is so it's quite ugly right now but functional and much less graphics intensive.
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Trinity
Trinity: The Site has been updated with this bit of info which should interest um, well just about anyone who is looking forward to the next engine from John Carmack. These are a few points made by John Carmack at SIGGRAPH back in August. -VooDoo
1. 3D acceleration technology will develop and improve in leaps and bounds for about 3-4 more years. The reason being that the technology to create really fast 3D acceleration has existed for some time but has not been implemented because there was no one screaming for it. The people making these cards will be "playing catch-up" for the next few years and 3D accelerator cards will get bigger and badder faster than your CPU ever did. Which probably means that the technology gap between Quake II and Trinity will be much more drastic the gaps between Wolf3D, Doom, Quake.
2. By the time Trinity is released, 3D accelerators will most likely be so much more powerful than what is available today, several really cool features will be possible. He accented these two features...i. Real-time volumetric rendering. Clouds, smoke, shafts of light coming thru cracks in the wall and windows.
ii. Poly-count, Pixel Depth, and Mapping that would hardly hinder the artist. No more
flat-headed deamons 'cuz we can make models with many times more polygons!
3. He wants to make Trinity far less restrictive a world to explore. He said he would like it to be a place where you can "fly through the clouds and over to the castle on the ridge, then set down inside it and explore..." Which probably means dynamically linking servers.
SiN
The aCtivision HardCorps News page has been updated with another HUGE image of Elexis Sinclair, the evil chick mastermind in SiN. Boobs.. we all love boobs.
Unreal Movie
A new movie of Unreal has been released on the net for everyone to check out. Thanks to Unreal Nation for the word. I'm not even going to attempt transfering these files to the local server until I get ISDN here at the house. So uh, sorry.. Oh, It's in RealVideo format so you of course need a real player from www.real.com
GLDoom
Bruce Lewis, hard at work on his own version of GLDoom has updated his page with a bit of a FAQ to get people to stop bugging him so he can get more work done on GLDoom. Here are a couple of quotes from it: -VooDoo
Q - Will GLDoom run on my video card?
A - If you have an OpenGL implementation that can run Quake II, you will be able to run GLDoom.
Q - Will I be able to select 24 bit/32 bit color?
A - 16 bit color is the only color depth I'm working with right now. In fact, I may have to use paletted textures to get all the necessary textures into memory (there are a LOT of them).
JawMD2
jawMD2 1.28, the OpenGL MD2 Viewer for Windows95/NT and Linux, has been released. A lot of neat new interface features such as a skin quick-selection control and much more. http://www.quake2.com/jawmd2/
VooDoo2
A few things for you to check out while you sit at home pullin yur pud waiting for a VooDoo2 to be available in the US: Thanks to VooDoo Extreme for both of these links.
Drivers
werd
No, I have no idea what the deal is with the DNS on this page. It's a bit frustrating to be sure. I'm having extreme problems just getting into my server to send this update. Quite possibly nobody will even see this update. Blech. Guess I can put all kinds of dirty words and stuff in here though since nobody can read it anyways.. hmm. Na, I'd bet the one person who actually gets through to my page today will end up being mom.. Damn it.
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Hexen2World
Rick Johnson of Raven Software has updated his .plan with word that he finally is able to put his full time efforts into the Hexen2World project that he had hoped to work on earlier. He says, well, uh.. read it:
Well, after months of doing work which I still can't get into, I've finally been given official time to work on H2World. I'll be starting full time on it later this afternoon. Next week, a few other programmers will be joining me to clean up the scripting code, to make it more net friendly (i.e. do stuff on the client side).
I'll also include any minor bug fixes that have been done in the mission pack so far. This will also include new .PAK files which will contain models that are about 1/3 less in size (so you should have less caching problems with machines that have 16 megs of memory).
Of course, learning from past mistakes, no predicitions on when it will be available, but know that it is being worked on full time by myself, and with other programmers next week.
Sorry for the delays, but you have to remember, that not everything is always under my control, atleast not yet :)
Unreal
Tim Sweeney, lead programmer on Epic Megagames Unreal project has released another screenshot of the UnrealED level editor that is to be packaged with the game on retail release. (Or I think it's supposed to, I've also heard that it may be sold seperately as well) Also check out Game Design Central. over at Inside3D.
Interviews -Updated
Genocide 3
Looks like Genocide 3 what is going to be have to be considered the largest every QuakeWorld Clan tournament to take place is about to begin this week. Since I'm sure there are a number of new Reptile fans out there you may like to know that his clan POSTAL is involved in the tournament. My own Clan, Revolution is also entering the tournament as well.
Thresh & Reptile Finals
In a moment that not many will forget for a long time, Thresh actually lost a match to Reptile on DM4. The match was the final match in the winners bracket sending Reptile into 1st place. But of course due to the double elimination format of the tournament, Thresh was given another shot at Reptile, this time on DM2 and DM6, winning both matches to take the victory in the first PGL tournament finals. I noticed Blue had posted the 2 final matches on DM2 and DM6, but didnt post the most exciting demo of the bunch. Here is Both Reptile's and Thresh's pov of the amazing comeback made by Reptile in the final 6 minutes of their DM4 match to take the win
Reptile on DM4 local / pgl.net
For more information on the tournament, check out PlanetQuake's coverage of the event. Oh, also, it's a long wait at the start of the demos, kick the host_framerate up to 1 then kick it back to host_framerate 0 when you see thresh and reptile join the server. One more thing, yea I know the local links are broken, I'm fighting to upload them on this damn modem. (get ISDN on friday thank god) so if you click on the local copy link, and it works, then uh.. hey, happy day!
Preview / Review Land
What everyone else is saying about the games you play and the hardware you use:
Mod Releases
More updates to a few Quake / Quake2 mods that you should look at:
PlanetQuake Photo Archive
The man, the myth, the legend, Wendigo and his photo archives has moved everything over to PlanetQuake for the world to gaze upon his photographic magic with pictures from nearly every major Quake event to have transpired in our community, including the recent DCCON 4.
QERadiant
One of the most impressive efforts on a Quake level editor for the community, the QE4 port for "mortal" systems has been updated yet again with a new version for everyone to play with. Check out the QERadiant page.
COGA
Here is a bit of a recent email I received from Rykov about a new project, a College Ring.
Hello, this is an email on behalf of the College Online Gaming Association. I would like to inform you of our official launching this Monday. We are trying to establish a nationwide league of University club teams. We hope to be able to give prizes to teams that perform well, as well as gain some respect and recognition for the sport.
Our first season will feature Quake, by Id Software. We are advertising our presense now so we can start a regular season this Fall. The match format will be 1 DM and 1 CTF game. If the outcome is a draw, a 1 on 1 will be played to decide the winning team. More information is available at http://www.coga.com
Quake2 Point Release - 7DM maps.
From the looks of things, including American McGee's recent interview on GamesLINK, the "point release" being currently worked on by the guys over at id Software will include 7 deathmatch levels for everyone to play with along with a large amount of tweaks done to the game made by user feedback after the original release. Of the few people out there who did not enjoy the original Quake2 release, (prolly the same puds who didnt like QTest) make sure and give it another try when the big point release comes out eh?
Speaking of Quake2, here is a little petition for people who wish to have "fun names" added back into Quake2. My vote: YES.
Unreal
The boys over at www.unrealnation.com have gotten a hold of some new scans from the latest Computer Gaming World which shows of some new images of the *hopefully* soon to be released Unreal project from Epic Megagames.
Half-Life
Got email that you can now pre-order copies of Valve Software's Half-Life due to be released in April from the Sierra Online page.
Tomb Raider 2
For those of you who are having difficulting with Tomb Raider 2, Core Design has put up a troubleshooting guide to solve most of the problems. Go check it out... http://www.core-design.com/tr2faq.htm thanks Op3dfx.
Poll Results
etc
The bad news: apparently something was totally goofy with
my update over the weekend, so I hacked through the updates I made and copied them into
todays updates instead.
The good news: Overclocking a p2 is pretty damn easy :)
| Older News | Copyright Steven M. Gibson - VRGN |