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Off to DC-Con

Well, giggler and I are heading out on a 7am (!) flight to DCCON today. My parents tell me they have a lap top that I'll be able to update from late tonight, so that should be cool. I just finished packing up most of my stuff here at the Ritual office. *sniff* I wanna thank Ritual for letting me stick around the office for an extra couple of weeks even after I didn't even work for them anymore. :) I'll see you guys late tonight.

If you can't make it to DCCON, Lindril will be doing live coverage of the event at the new Cyber Sports Network page. With updates as the tournament progresses.

I would do some coverage, but for once in my life I'm going to actually enter a tournament. We'll find out if I can actually play Quake, or just talk about it. :)

Quake2 pack

There is an article on GameCenter.com giving a bit more information out about the Quake2 mission pack being worked on by Xatrix. (The mission pack that there was a press release about a couple of days ago, scroll down) -Redwood

Speaking of add on packs...

OGR has gotten a hold of 13 new screenshots of the Jedi Knight add on pack that is nearing release. This one looks to be incredibly cool, the Jedi Knight bug has run around about half of the office now here at Ritual. The game is the coolest single player game I've played to date.

Interviews

More interviews with dudes in the industry for you to read:

• Joel Thomas, concept artist at Ritual Entertainment answered a few questions for the boys at www.ritualistic.com go check it out.
• GameHut has posted an interview with Gabe Newell of Valve Software for you to read. Gabe talks about Half-Life of course.

Mac QuakeWorld

There is some news on the Mac QuakeWorld port that um, you may be interested in if you own a Mac. Nate Birkholz, a spokesman for MacSoft, posted to a newsgroup this comment. Ripped from Tikkabik Mac News: via Blue's

As far as QuakeWorld and future versions of Quake go, I believe Mark Adams has already stated that we have been discussing future updates with him. We certainly want to bring all the code up-to-date, and we are very intent on working out a deal for QuakeWorld ASAP. Until now, id has been very busy with Quake2. Obviously they would have to be involved with and approve anything having to do with QuakeWorld on the Mac. Nothing is definite, but we are hopeful. We understand that everyone has begun to get impatient, but please bear with us, as we have had many other products to finish lately and have not been able to afford to yank programmers to work on shareware. This is as much a business as it is a labor of love for us and we have to be realistic.

.plan Wagon

What all the homeys are sayin:

• Charlie Brown, one of the two programmers at Ritual Entertianment working on the Uber Engine for the next big project, updated his .plan talking about whats going down.
• Michael Hadwin, art director at Ritual hints that Ritual may be hiring a few more artists in the future, to work on the Uber Engine project as well. Don't email him just yet though!
• Tim Willits, level designer at id Software updated his .plan thanking everyone who participated in the base100 project a few days ago on the id Software quake2 server. He says that the base100 style maps will not be included in the DM pack, but are a seperate project all together.
• Paul Jaquays, another level designer at id Software updated his .plan talking about meeting people over the internet and actually flying to Italy!

Interviews

A couple of interviews for you guys to read

• Michael Hadwin, Art Director at Ritual Entertainment (The guys working on SiN, heard of em?) did a great interview with VooDoo Extreme's Sharky. There are a few screenshots there as well as some bonus pictures of Hadwin himself.
• QuakeCTF.com has posted a 20 questions / answers with Paul Steed of id Software. Primarly focusing on the player models etc to be included in the CTF add on for Quake2.

Linux Q2 speed boost

I saw this page linked over from www.quake2.com that apparently the webmaster over at Epicenter has hacked the Linux Quake2 .exe to include the 320x200 resolution that was not present in the original port. He personally gets a 135% (!) increase in his framerate after applying this patch. Note, that means if you were getting 50fps, now you get about 67.5fps. not 117.

CSN

A project that I'll be participating quite a bit in, the Cyber Sports Network, which will be ranking, reporting, and covering the land of Quake competetions is opening it's doors! (I've got my first editorial to write up for them starting tomorrow, w00) With big names such as Lindril, LonerVamp, Dru, LordVader, and several others, this is a serious concentrated effort to keep tabs on the best players and clans out there. (They do a voting pool similar to college football, ranking the best players and clans)

Speaking of Polls, the PlanetQuake Poll has been updated again.

Max Payne Screenshots

Thanks to Scott Miller of Apogee for sending along these 2 exclusive screenshots of Max Payne:

Rocket Arena for Q2

It's almost here! check out the latest update to the Rocket Arena page over at PlanetQuake:

Rocket Arena 2 is almost ready for release! We had an excellent test with the PlanetQuake staff tonight and everyone had a great time. There are still a few uh, known issues, to work out, and a few more features I want to add, but a release is imminent. My stated goal is this weekend, we'll see what happens... (whew.. even I'm getting excited about it) Also, just to clarify, there will be no separate Clan Arena 2. All the Clan Arena features you have grown to love will be incorporated into Rocket Arena 2 (not necessarily in the first release however).

Quake Force Recon

Here is the email I got from Maxwell Dechant, about his new release:

TQuake Force Recon, THE Military Weapons conversion for Quake (one) is available NOW on the 808Klan Homepage @ http://www.mindspring.com/~axeman808 The direct QFR page is : http://www.mindspring.com/~axeman808/qfr.htm or the readme: http://www.mindspring.com/~axeman808/qfrtext.htm or the file, direct: ftp://ftp.mindspring.com/users/axeman808/qfr100.zip

Quake2 Fortress

The big page over at http://www.quake2fortress.com is up and online now. I'll let you go crazy and take a guess what this page focuses on.

Speaking of cool pages, check out the new RUST page by da Fishman.

Pure3D?

Wanna win a Pure3D card? (best consumer level 3dfx card out there) Pete Kraft is holding a LAN tournament where he is handing out a couple of them. If you happen to live in Dallas, go on down to the Web Cafe they are just opening up there and enter the tourney.

werd

Ok.. I've been kind of fighting doing this, but it looks like Blue has the right idea, an etc. section (My werd section) at the end of each days news. This is where I'll pretty much address a few common questions and let you guys know whats up or on the horizon. So.. um.. to start off,
- Yea, that quote at the top of the page is incredible.. I couldnt believe it when I saw the dude say it on IRC. Can you just think stuff up like that on the spot? Wow..
- Also, as for the low bandwidth pages, we seem to have a missing artist here at VRGN, hopefully we can track him down today and we can get the new pages here done. I realize that the current layout is choking you 28.8 guys to death, believe me I'm sorry about that.
-

Gathering of Developers

g.o.d., ( www.godgames.com, hosted by VRGN )the new publishing company on the block has announced some of the big name companies that they have signed for future gaming projects. Thanks to Reginald Levy for the email linking this article on OGR.com talking about the developers. Here is a list of game companies that will be working with g.o.d. in the future. (Also listing some of their current / previous projects so you know who is who)

• Ritual Entertainment - Quake Mission Pack #1, Sin
• 3D Realms - Duke Nukem 3D, Duke4ever, Prey, Shadow Warrior
• Epic Megagames - Unreal, Jazz Jackrabbit, Firefight
• Terminal Reality - Hellbender, Monster Truck Madness, CART Precision Racing, Fury3
• PopTop Software - Heroes of Might and Magic 1 & 2

g.o.d. is also still talking to other development houses and may announce more companies in the future.

GameComm

Just got this email from Steve deRochemont. "GameComm is designed to ease communication and facilitate setting up games for several multiplayer games. It operates as a companion to GameSpy ( www.gamespy.com ). It accomplishes this by automatically notifying other interested parties what game and the server you are playing on whenever you start a new game using GameSpy. They can use the client to launch the same game and automatically connect to your current game server."

Features: * Lists players currently connected to your GameComm Server * Shows each player's information when they are in a game (i.e. player name, team, skin, colors depending on what is applicable to the type of game) * Shows each player's current game server (if any) * Each player's current game server is automatically updated * Click on a player name to launch the proper game and automatically connect to their server * Uses GameSpy player profiles and game configuration information * IRC like chat with other players between game * URGENT chat message can Alt-Tab you from Quake to see the message, if desired * Allows for entering of a password to support private servers * Supports observer/spectator mode in addition to normal games

Eraser Bot for Q2

Alpha 2 of Ridah's Quake2 bot, the Eraser Bot has been released on their Team Impact homepage. Here is a quote from the web page about the most recent version:

I spent last night adding in bot configuration, via external files, which has worked out pretty cool. You can make up you're own bot names, specify which model/skin to use, and even specify individual abilities, like aiming accuracy, combat skills, aggressiveness, favourite weapon, etc. These have all been mildly implemented, but I intend on taking this stuff even further, to allow you to program in stuff like chat lines for individual bots or general chat, adding and leaving the game while in progress, so if a bot's getting it's ass whooped, it may leave and let another bot in.

Loki's Minion CTF for Q2

Another new version of Loki's Minion CTF has been released, version 1.24 to be exact actually. There is a buttload of new features

HeadHunters for Q2

HeadHunters homepage has a new beta v0.6 of the Quake2 HeadHunters mod for Quake2. If you havent tried out HeadHunters for Quake1, you missed out! Give it a shot in Quake2 then :)

SuperHeroes for Q2

The Superheroes homepage has been updated with a new version of this fun conversion for Quake, and now Quake2. It's just a minor bug fix, but I don't think I announced the previous version.

JawMD2

Another version of Jawed's model viewer for Quake / Quake2 has been released on his homepage. He's up to v1.27 now and this version is much faster in viewing mode.

jawMD2 has been changed to take advantage of the Silicon Graphics implementation of OpenGL for Windows. Microsoft's OpenGL implementation is no longer used. There are significant improvements in texturemapping speed. In addition Perspective Correction is now an option for texture mapping that can be turned on or off. Go get it at http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/~jawed/

Head Games = bad?

I got this email from Scott Mcnutt concerning one of his levels which is included in a previous Head Games CD. Their current title is the "Juggernaut" add on pack for Quake2:

The publishers, Head Games, are scum. They used one of my levels, when I told them not to, and other authors levels without their permission, some even said not to use their work. Head Games went on to publish Tremors anyway. When I contacted the president of Head Games over the phone, he went on to verbally attack me by calling me a 'fucking cry baby'. That was their president, Danny Hammet. The below URL has some insight on the dealings with Head Games. http://www.blarg.net/~gyro/cdroms.htm

Contests:

A couple contests for you guys to enter:

• terraFORMA is hosting a Quake2 map contest to celebrate the formation of their new development team. The prize is an autographed Quake Mission Pack #2.
• Genocide 3, an extremely popular QuakeWorld tournament is getting close to finishing signups. If you have a LPB or HPB QuakeWorld Clan, get your ass over there and sign up, Hopefully I can get my clan to join too. :)

Driver releases

Some new drivers for you guys to download:

• Rendition has released a new minidriver for all you Quake2 players. This is for the V1000 and the V2x00 chipsets. There is also a new native Rendition rendered for download as well.
• Orchid has released new drivers for their 3dfx based Righteous 3D card. Not sure what is new in these drivers since I don't use a Righteous3D, so of course, I didnt install these drivers. :)
• Hercules has released new drivers for the Dynamite 3D GL card of theirs on the Hercules website. These drivers speed up performance a bit, so make sure and grab them if you use a Dynamite 3D.

.plan Wagon

What all the homeys are sayin:

• Joey Liaw made one of the more interesting .plan updates today talking about the work Ion Storm is doing to make DLL add-on's for their games a bit more safe:

Now before you think I am all paranoid, there is a solution we are working on for all Anachronox (and probably Daikatan) DLL's. Basically it involves having Quake provide DLL's with file, network, and graphics services, and rejecting DLL's that make these calls directly to Windows. More on this when we finish it, it's mid-progress right now and my design may change unpredictably. Also for Anox and Katana you never replace gamex86.dll, you download plug-in DLL's, and you can have as many as you want running at the same time."

• Paul Steed has returned! Paul talks about his recent absence from the .plan wagon and how he will try and be a bit more responsible with his updates, although he does hint that he's not so sure he can stay quiet
• Disruptor updated his .plan all excited that Microsoft has finally released a Teardrop fix (Yet another hole in MS security)
• Charlie Wiederhold of Ritual updates his .plan asking for input on the recent id Software base100 experiment.
• Onethumb, new man to Ritual, has probably made his last .plan update to the old best.com, thanking everyone who helped him get a job at Ritual

Update because Gary is bored

A couple of nifty new things for you, yes you GARY MCTAGGART to look at while sitting at home.

Also, the weekly sections will be resuming and are now online. (click the forward arrow on the left menu) The low bandwidth pages will be very similar to the pages I had back on ritual.com btw.

The SiN Files

You wondering how the progress is going on SiN? Well with just one more milestone to go for the big project, Levelord tells all in his latest update discussing the big meetings that Ritual is having every evening going over each level one at a time picking them apart wanting to make everything fit just right. This is the 4th edition of the always entertaining series. Check it out on Games.net -VooDoo Extreme

Screen Shots

Some more screenshots of a couple of games everyone is anticipating:

• 4 more screenshots of Unreal have been handed over to the guys at OGR.com. The game is looking mighty sweet, everyone will get a good close look at the game at Respawn coming up in Canada also. -Blue's
• The Jedi Knight expansion pack, Mysteries of Sith which is just about to hit the shelves has several new screenshots for you to look at, LucasArts, the developing powerhouse has posted them on their own homesite.

Bundled or not?

Well now, just for kicks Joost of Slipgate Central emailed me this URL which does indeed bundle Quake2 with the Juggernaut add on pack. This is of course not officially endorsed by id Software, and is just an act on Computer City's part to sell more stuff, but hey.. a bundle is a bundle.

Quake2 Mission Pack press release

Here is the press release from aCtivision talking about the first Quake2 mission pack expected to be released in March.

MESQUITE, Texas, Jan. 12 /PRNewswire/ -- Activision, Inc. is enlisting players for another tour of ``Quake II'' duty with the distribution of id Software's ``QUAKE II Mission Pack: The Reckoning.'' The new ``QUAKE II'' add-on, developed by Xatrix Entertainment and published by id Software, is expected to be available for the PC in March. ``QUAKE II Mission Pack: The Reckoning'' casts players as part of an elite commando force that must infiltrate an alien city and locate and destroy a secret alien moon base. Players dive into a series of mission-based campaigns and navigate through three hazardous episodes that challenge them to explore industrial landscapes, crawl through waterways and airducts, navigate treacherous canyons teeming with vicious mutants, and stow away on an alien spacecraft. Once gamers have annihilated the malevolent beings, they can jump into specially designed deathmatch levels that allow at least 32 players to join together as part of a cooperative-mode platoon struggling to destroy the alien race. ``With `QUAKE II Mission Pack: The Reckoning,' we are able to up the ante in the first person shooter genre by extending the 'Quake II' phenomenon with a new dimension of gameplay,'' states Robert A. Kotick, Chairman and CEO, Activision, Inc. ``The developers at Xatrix are creating a superb action packed add-on that will keep 'Quake II' guns blazing throughout 1998.'' ``id fans can't get enough of 'Quake II,' and with this action-packed addition, the ruthless carnage continues,'' said Todd Hollenshead, CEO of id Software. ``In the spirit of 'QUAKE II,' gamers can continue saving the world from destruction.'' ``Gamers who were blown away by 'Quake II will be stoked that this new gaming QII extra continues the gibbin' adventure,'' said Drew Markham, CEO and creative director of Xatrix Entertainment. ``Xatrix is excited to be making history with id Software through the creation of the 'QUAKE II Mission Pack: The Reckoning.''' Brimming with mutant aliens and carnage-blasting weapons, ``QUAKE II Mission Pack: The Reckoning'' puts gamers' fraggin' skills to the ultimate test. Hordes of wild Gekk can stalk virtually undetected, but attack with lightning quick moves as they drop from the shadows to claw or bite unsuspecting prey. Alien Repair Bots prove to be a deadly force against players' survival and bio-mechanical, hulk-like Symbioids deliver deadly particle stings as they chase players through a variety of perilous environments. ``QUAKE II Mission Pack: The Reckoning'' boasts a savage arsenal of new weapons including a deadly plasma accelerator that delivers a pulsing energy blast, an energy trap that captures enemies within a specified radius and turns them into a food cube for players' consumption, and a particle shotgun that shoots a deadly wad.

All Star CTF v1.01

A new version of the All Star CTF pack has been released for all you oldschool Quake1 players. (Myself included)

All-Star CTF 1.01. The updated client offers a revised version of one level (Xeno3) and improved documentation, and is available as an upgrade patch (1.6 meg). The server has also been updated to version 1.01. The server includes a couple of minor bug fixes and is only available in a full version (4.5 meg) ).

Q2 Pack & id announcement

Todd Hollenshead, CEO of id Software made a .plan update to squelch the rumors that this new Quake2 add-on pack, "Juggernaut" is being packaged with Quake2. Totally false. The "announcement" that Todd refers to should come to light sometime today hopefully.

I've seen posts on several Quake II news sites that there is a new commercial product "bundled" with Quake II. First, this is not true. There is nothing bundled with Quake II other than the manual and some promotional dropcards. Of course, most of you know that since you've bought the game already ;) (thanks again, btw). Second, this product is not in any way affiliated, authorized, or licensed by us, since we haven't even seen it yet. I'm not sure where the "bundled" story got started, but just wanted to stop it before it got out of hand. We should be releasing some exciting news tomorrow about our first Quake II Mission Pack. Once the press release is finalized, I'll make an announcement here.

PaintBall v1.0

Gary Griggs has sent out the final PaintBall email for Quake1:

The final version of Paintball 1.0 has been released by Quake Innovations (http://qteam.stomped.com)! This is the Quake TC everyone's been waiting for! Paintball 1.0 captures all the fun and excitement of real life paintball with its gameplay, maps, sounds, and models. The update from the beta includes bug fixes, support for reducing intentional friendly fire, updated maps, and improved documentation. Players who have been running the beta version must upgrade to the final in order to play on the upgraded servers.

QTracker v1.51

Ron Mercer sent out email for his new version of QTracker:

Qtracker v1.51 has been released at http://qtracker.stomped.com. This new version is a maintenance release for JediKnight. It fixes several bugs, as well as includes the .dll update. It also adds a "Max Rank" column so you know how powerful a character you can take into a JediKnight game.

More Quake2 releases

Just more stuff coming out of everywhere for Quake2, here are a few more things for you to download and goof around with:

• Saw over at Redwood's that the first official Quake2 skin pack has been released by ^Drag0n^ and is available for download over at QWCentral. It's a bit over 3 megs in size.
• The FAQ Proxy for Quake2 v0.02 has been released on the homepage. You don't know what a proxy is? Then you don't need it.
• As promised earlier, the Superheros patch for Quake2 is now available for download. This is the first beta of course, so read the documentation, yadda yadda.. don't blow your computer up.
• Holy Wars for Quake2 will be hitting the net in February, and Nusco sent out this little teaser image for you to look at along with the homepage.
• Another bot project fairly far underway, the C.R. Bot, has just released a new version for public consumption. v0.93 to be exact. There is a list of new features of this version on the homepage, the battle for supreme Quake2 bot is well underway, I like it. :)
• ServObit, a mod for all you guys who run Quake2 servers out there that will let you add obituary messages for when players die to Quake2 has been updated to v1.3 now. Not a whole lot you can do to tweak an obituary patch, but SteQve has found a few. :) Btw, I'm taking a guess that id will include obituary messages in the DM pack for Quake2. American mentioned to me a while ago that he had already written up a bunch of death messages that didnt make it in there yet, so it is in the works.
• QGraph, one of the most robust and impressive Quake2 statistic generators I've seen to date is hitting version 2.01 to fix a problem with working with the new version of Quake2. (v3.10) Check out the homepage. on Frag.com
• Millenium's Editing Page, the guy behind those colored skin packs that everyone is using so much has released a set of skins for you CTF fans out there. So my suggestions would be if you are working on a CTF mod, grab these skins from the homepage and include them in the next release.

.plan Wagon

What all the homeys are sayin:

• Brian Hook made a couple more .plan updates talking about bug fixes etc, work work work.. the dude sleeps less than I do. (Heh, of course I'm sitting here writing this at 5am, having not slept yet..)
• Jack Mathews of 3dfx and Team GameSpy updated his .plan with um, talk about toilet paper, oh and his work on GameSpy that you may be interested in:

GameSpy Stuff: Worked *really* hard this weekend on fixing up GameSpy to be the way it should be. I really haven't even gotten to the UI part yet, but that should be cake. Right now, I'm reorganizing the way the servers interact with the server sources (server lists). Right now, we have all these oddball checks to see if things are QuakeWorld, or Quake, or Hexen2, or Q2. It's really out of hand. It's not like it's anyones fault or anything, just that we really didn't see what QuakeSpy would have become. For the individual servers, this is more or less done, as we have a CServer class that we make calls to, which get routed to the right server-type handling code by C++ for us. But we still have these insane QuakeWorld interception calls. Not only that, but adding stuff to the left is a complete bitch, and the code is just plain unwieldy for it. So now, there will be two new base classes, CServerSourceType and CServerSource. Each CServerSourceType is a game type, such as Quake, or QW.

Oops

Yup.. I was wrong in yesterday's update about the 3dfx minidriver.. I'm not the sharpest kid in the world, so you'll have to bear with me and my small problem. (Being dumb) Not much really exciting happens on weekends in Quake / Quake2 land, kinda a bummer, that and my homegirl was sick over the weekend, (still is a bit actually, she says it isnt a tumor though)

Oh, since the weekly sections probably wont be posted till late tonight, and today is "stuff that suck" day, I figured I'd share a couple of pearls of wisdom with you here on the front page in the mean time for things I've decided that suck:
- Taking a piss with cold hands:
OH GOOD LORD what a mistake.. but what can you do?
- Having an air conditioner right above your head blowing cold air on your hands:
Hence, the above statement. this crap sucks, talk about irritating.. Can't even feel my hands at night, they turn colors and stuff.
- No Pepsi:
Damn.. since I no longer work for Ritual, they quit stocking Pepsi in the fridge, I've choked down maybe 2 mountain dews in the past week, drinking mostly stuff I bring in on my own instead. Oh the agony...

Oh, on a good note, giggler and I both payed $3 a piece for a cup of ice tea at the local theatre. Actually I had 2 cups, a total of $9 between the 2 of us... But hot damn that tea was good!

Use that Quake2 minidriver

(oops, goofed the first update) Disruptor is updating his .plan with more minor bug fixes for the few people out there experiencing difficulties with Quake2, read this:

If you are playing with 3DFX based boards and are experiencing some connection difficulties or general wierdness over the net with a modem connection, make sure you are running the updated 3DFX MiniDriver for Quake II I've heard reports that it's fixed some play issues in some cases. For what it's worth, the updated minidriver will be included in the Quake II Deathmatch Pack "soon".

Releases

A few patches etc that have been released over the weekend for you to play with:

• Juggernaut for Quake2, a TC for Quake2 is already completed (!) and avaialble for purchase at your local Computer City. -PlanetQuake
• QuMa has hit version 1.6 and of course you can download it at the homepage. What the hell is it you ask? Here is a quote from the page:

Description QuMa is a utility for creating/editing maps for the game Quake, Quake 2 and its derivatives (like Hexen II and the Quake Mission Packs).

• QTracker has hit version 1.5 and in addition to support for Quake and Quake2, also boasts support for Jedi Knight as well. (The only Jedi Knight server browser that I'm aware of currently)
• Battle of the sexes has hit version 1.7 which is of course a patch for Quake2 taking advantage of the male / female appearances available in the game. Check out Spinoza's page and grab a copy.

Ritual Stuff

Some Sin stuff for you guys to look at:

• HardCorps SiN News is coming up with all the press stuff straight from aCtivision. They have just posted the untouched rendering as well as the full ad that will be appearing in several magazines.
• Scott Alden, the newest programmer to join Ritual Entertainment has done an interview talking about his previous work at 3dfx and what he is currently working on over at Ritual. (He's on the SiN team, but mentions the "other project" a couple of times)
• There is a preview of SiN posted on Gamers-Zone that well, doesnt really show anything new, but hypes the game pretty well. :) -Blue's
• www.ritualistic.com has been named the "official" source for Ritual Entertianment news. Here is a quote from Patrick: "We're very excited to be able to expand on our relationship with Ritual," said Patrick `Millennium' Curry, Ritualistic's co-founder and art director. "We've always been a content-driven site, and now it'll be even easier to give our readers more of what they want."
• Lastly, Don "onethumb" MacAskil has been hired by Ritual as the new tech dude. Redwood's page has posted the full press release. Congratulations to Don, Ritual is a great place to work, and you'll have the time of your life.

The Big One

The guys at id Software were doing a bit fun the other night trying to pack as many people as possible in a new map that they released, here are a couple of .plan updates for you to read talking about the events:
First, Disruptor updated his .plan releasing the new map for everyone to download, and giving out the server address:

Quake II Server Load Testing Tim Willits has a version of an upcoming map, Base100 (2.5 megs), ready to test out, and we'd like to do some serverload testing with this map. Please download the aforementioned map, and connect to; alpha2.idsoftware.com ... which will be running the aforementioned base100.bsp. Please note that you will need a system with 32megs of memory to run these ginormous multiplayer maps (The BSP is 5.2 megs). All our other Quake II servers are offline while we are testing base100. Be a part of history =) Join in on the biggest Quake II multiplayer game yet! NOTE: DO NOT redistribute this map in any way. This map is being released for the purposes of server load testing here at id. There will be a final release of this map "soon".

A little while after that .plan update, John Carmack updated his .plan talking about the results:

We got 70 people on a base100 server, and it died after it wedged at 100% utilization for a while. Tomorrow we will find exactly what overflowed, and do some profiling. Base100 is really only good for 50 or so players without overcrowding, but we have another map being built that should hold 100 people reasonably well. I will look into which will be the easier path to more server performance: scalar optimization of whatever is critical now, or splitting it off into some more threads to run on multiple processors. Neither one is trivial. My goal is to be able to host stable 100 player games in a single map. I just added a "players" command that will dump the total number of players in the game, and as many frags/names as it can fit in a packet (around 50, I think).

Lastly, John Carmack made another .plan update right before taking off for a hotel for a week talking about optimizations to be made:

.plan Wagon

What all the homeys are sayin:

• John Carmack has made too many .plan updates to keep up with. He's gone on a trip though right now, so DONT EMAIL HIM. Mr. Carmack is just gonna delete that crap when he gets back into town.
• Brian Hook is talking about his "package" and a few other things that may be of interest. The guy is easily amused. :) He talks a bit about his work with Java and voiced a couple of complaints.

The fast pages

Ok, so I wasted a lot of time today playing around with the new computer.. sorry.. heh. Hey, I played with a riva128 a bit that Canopus sent me a while ago. For some reason the thing didnt work in the old pp200 that I had, but worked like a champ in this new p2 / 300. In fact it out performed a millenium2 in Quake. I never thought I would get motion sick playing Quake, but after seeing it running around this absolutely silky smooth, it really did make me dizzy for a bit while I got used to it. Whoever tells you cpu speed after about a p200 in Quake doesnt matter is blowing smoke up your ass. p2's + Quake = CRAZY.

Oh, uh.. that headline.. heh. Yea, I'll have the "Express" version of the pages posted, as well as the rest of the subsections finished by late Sunday night (assuming we don't go out) or if so, Monday sometime.

Also, I apologize for the DNS being flaky recently, I know it's buggin out, go tell those punks at AT&T. As I mentioned earlier, the entire network at VRGN is being rebuilt, so it'll be about another um, 8 days now until things are solid.

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Copyright Steven M. Gibson - VRGN