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Quake2 Coop

John Carmack of id Software made this .plan update with some great news:

Coop play works now, including coop savegames. I also fixed the savegame problems when under doors or on lifts. We still have some game issues we need to hack around to allow coop to be played all the way through the game (like needing to pick up multiple power cubes, but still leave them for other coop players to grab), and the monster ai needs a bit of work for multiple players, but it will all be there for the next release.

Sin ad for March

HardCorps SiN News has gotten a hold of the finished ad that will be circulating this March in magazines around the country for Ritual's Sin project. Interesting story behind that image, That rendering is actually based off of a screenshot of one of Tom Mustaine's levels in the game. I ran around the level yesterday and it's almost freaky feeling. :)

The move..

Well, I've got the files and images sections moved over here, and should have the rest of the broken links fixed by tonight so the page can be considered "fully functional" except of course for QuakeFinger, which our server is still having problems with. Our tech guy is on vacation right now though, so um.. bummer for the next few days.

Been runnin around tryin to get the pages up to par and kinda forgot that you guys would like some news to read. Bit late, but here ya go. :)

Half Life screenshots

The Fragile Morality page, (Half Life fan page housed over at www.telefragged.com) has posted 20 (!) new screenshots of Half Life for you to check out. These screenshots are fairly recent so should give you a good idea of what kind of shape Half Life is currently in. Check em out!

Windows 98 Beta

If you are interested in being a Windows98 beta tester, and have 30 bucks to spare, you should check out the Microsoft page and get a copy. Not that I would know or anything, but uh.. Windows98 beta 3 will apparently improve your winquake framerate by a noticeable margin depending on your system.

Sin Shots

I saw on VooDoo Extreme that the aCtivision HardCorps news page for Sin has a few screenshots of Sin that you may not have seen yet.

Zanshin on S3

Zanshin has made a lengthy update to the GL Dojo with screenshots and info talking about the recent S3 GLQuake wrapper that uses direct3d. He posts some screenshots as well as performance results that he has gotten. (on a p2/ 300 no less!) You can get the wrapper and check out the slide show courtesy of S3 from the S3 Virge support page.

Linux Quake2 make file from Zoid

Zoid has released the make file that all you Linux hax0rs have been so eagerly anticipating. Here is a copy of it for ya. Thanks to Redwood for sending the word out. He da man.

CTF Stuff

Couple of bits of news for you CTF freaks:

• The Hexen2 Dev page has posted a new version of Hexen2 CTF for everyone to play. Is there ever going to be a HexenWorld?
• Vanilla CTF for Quake2 has been updated to version 0.3 now. As the name implies, this is a straight forward version of CTF for people who dont want to deal with that other crap and just find the damn flag. :)

Reaper 2?

Apparently the Quake Devels page has a report talking about work being done on a "Reaper II" bot for Quake2 that claimed to have the blessings of Steven Polge, author of the original Reaper bot that everyone knows for Quake1. Steven Polge though emailed Mr. Heaslip over at Blue's News with a quick statement.

"First I heard of it was reading about it on your page today. It does NOT have my blessings"

Steve is currently working for Epic Megagames developing the AI system for Unreal.

Speaking of Unreal..

Brian Sutton has sent out word that Epic Megagames will be showing off the latest version of Unreal at Respawn 98! People who attend the big LAN party located in Canada will have the opportunity to sit down and play Unreal and get a glimpse of what may be one of the hit titles for 1998. Last .plan update I saw from an Unreal developer he was talking about just finishing up all the maps and going back through the shareware maps to add "cool scripted sequences" Here is Brian Sutton's recent .plan update about Respawn:

Vik Long - PowerVR (Found him, PowerVR at Respawn!) Mike Wilson - GOD (Still looking) Myscha the Sled Dog - Epic (Unreal at Respawn! --- There are now 320 people signed up for Respawn, this is gonna be huge. Next week a press release will be going out from a certain company about us, you people are going to love us when you read the news.

VooDoo2 FAQ

A new version of the VooDoo2 FAQ is available for everyone clamoring for more information on the hottest chipset to not yet hit the market. The FAQ is of course hosted by the "fab site" VooDoo Extreme.

g.o.d.

The latest Multimedia Wire mailing list has their top headline "PUBLISHERS MAY GET A G.O.D.-GIVEN HEADACHE NEXT WEEK" Which of course means that the new publishing company, Gathering of Developers will be announcing next week just which top developers have joined the new group. Apparently g.o.d. is looking for about 40 million to capitalize the new company, and all indicators are pointing that they will be successful. Mike Wilson, CEO of g.o.d. is quoted as saying that they will announce "six or seven" developers that have been signed.

Mike Wilson of course is former CEO of id Software, as well as Ion Storm.

FlameBot for Q2

Just got this email from Russel Cavell (aka Doc) late last night concerning a Quake2 bot, check it out:

A new Q2 bot is born, the Flamebot. We had a succesful internal run of the waypoint / object finding last night, and have decided that the web site was required as a demo / alpha / beta will be available within a day or so. We have placed some screenshots of the waypoints on the site, and a list of current / planned features of the bot. Thought this may help add a little fire to the Ridah's bot, and the battle of the BEST BOT FOR Q2 battle which is sure to commence soon. Flamebot can be found at http://dd.networx.net.au/flamebot.

TFCon 98

TFCon 98--the first ever TeamFortress convention and possibly "The Best Spring Break ever" -- is happening the week of March 23rd in Tulsa, Oklahoma! The big news, though, is that TeamFortress Software is busily coding TF II with the Quake II engine, and they'll be demonstrating their new software at TFCon! This is gonna be huge, possibly the biggest thing to ever happen to the TeamFortress scene. A whole week of lasertag, paintball, and (I suspect) trips to Denny's will help round out the week. Team TFCon is already taking signups for the event! Tickets are going to fall between $50 and $75 (depending on demand), not including airfare or hotel (Hotels are dirt cheap in Tulsa -- Stay at the Motel 6 for $30 a night.) Food will be provided and you'll get a customized T-shirt featuring your name and your favorite TF class. Complete information is available on the TFCon 98 website.

The source of news..

Uhoh.. the secret may be out.. the man who emails all of us webmasters with his gaming news has turned up with his own page. Could be the end for the rest of us. :) Prophet's News, hosted by his new employer, Games.Net is now online and already kicking.

Prey Journal

GameCenter has posted the second installment of the Prey Designers Journal. An inside look at just what the Prey team is up to as they work on developing their 3d action game that requires 3d hardware. Prey is being developed by 3D Realms.

PowerBall for Q2

A new version of PowerBall has been released, as well as a new look for the web page for the guys at PowerBall Central. They've hit version 1.0! w00, Go get drunk and naked to celebrate the v1.0 release, then maybe go play some Quake2.

CTF for Quake2

Loki's Minion CTF for Quake2 keeps getting updated, just check out the homepage and grab a new copy every other day. That should do it. Speaking of CTF, the new CTF page located at http://www.ctfnews.com/ is open for business. Check there for anything that is CTF. :)

Australian QW Master

The plee has been answered, a new Australian QuakeWorld Master server is now online for all those um, Australians. the new IP is: 203.55.240.100:27000

GL Drivers

A pair of new drivers for you guys that just love that GL experience:

• New PowerVR drivers for Quake, Quake2, and Hexen2 have all been released on the VideoLogic Homepage. I gotta give the PowerVR guys credit where it is due, they are ALWAYS working on ways to squeeze more performance and kill bugs. Great job in supporting the users. -Blue's
• The H3D guys are also releasing some new drivers if you are a lucky owner of some H3D Goggles make sure and grab a copy of the new drivers from the homepage at http://www.h3dmedia.com/Quake/

Xian's Quake2 Fix

Disruptor made a lengthy .plan update with help for people experiencing strange problems with Quake2 and TCP/IP play, read it:

Win 95 TCP/IP Fixes for Quake II Ok. After trading e-mail with a few people from Microsoft, and a few users who were experiencing problems that were fixed yesterday, here's what you should do if you are having problems running Quake II over the net (or getting ADDRNOTAVAIL errors). First off, if Qfecheck reports problems with your TCP/IP subsystem, there are a few scenarios. According to Microsoft's Knowledge Base article dealing with some errors with VIP.386, VTCP.386, et. al, You should delete the following five files from your \WINDOWS directory if they exist. Again, delete the following files from your \WINDOWS directory. * NOT THE \WINDOWS\SYSTEM DIRECTORY !!! * VDHCP.386 , VIP.386 , VNBT.386 , VTCP.386 , VTDI.386 According to the aforementioned Knowledge Base article, those files should be in your \WINDOWS directory only if you've upgraded from Windows 3.XX. Due to a quirk in Win95, it will load the files in your \WINDOWS directory first instead of from \WINDOWS\SYSTEM where the Win95 version of the files reside. Also, an annonymous tech support rep at Microsoft passes on the following info; As for the Winsock update problem, it could be an OSR2 issue. OSR2 is notorious for not letting system updates overwrite files that are already on the hard drive. The solution we would use here at tech support is to have the user rename their winsock.dll file and then install the wsockupd.exe file. They also need to make sure they get the one in the sysbckup directory if they are going the 'rename and install' route. A last resort would be to remove tcp/ip from the network configuration, shell to dos and rename all the files associated with tcp/ip, and then reinstall tcp/ip. Another solution is to completely reinstall your TCP/IP subsystem. This can either be done in one of two ways. You can either remove TCP/IP under Control Panel/Network, reboot, then reinstall from the Win95 CD, or another method is to download the Winsock 2.0 SDK for Windows 95 (1.4 megs) and run the WS2SETUP.EXE program located in the SETUP directory. This has solved many of the problems users have reported with connection problems in Quake II. Please let me know if the above fixes your problems if you were having problems before.

.plan Wagon

What all the homeys are sayin: (btw, hopefully QuakeFinger will be working at the top of the page in a day or two)

• Brian Hook has made a couple of .plan updates, talking about FOV in a little mini discussion with onethumb. He also of course tells us his football predictions as well.
• Rich over at Ion Storm made quite a long .plan update himself talking about just how he got started in the industry and not even expecting to be where he is today. (Sounds familiar.. heh)
• Oh, and Disruptor made a big .plan update talking about TCP/IP in Quake2. of course you know that because it's right above this huh?

Hook on performance

Brian Hook of id Software updated his .plan file with a link to this nifty little html chart showing off the performance he has gotten for just about all the popular 3d cards out there with Quake2. So... if you are shopping for a 3d accelerator, and want to also stare at those voodoo2 benchmarks that you can't get a hold of yet, check out the table at http://www.idsoftware.com/bwh/benchmarks.html

Sin's John Blade

Here is an early taste of the awesome magazine advertisement you'll be seeing in March, featuring our hero, Col. John R. Blade. Blade is the head of an elite strike team known as HARDCORPS. He's described as "Bob Marley meets Blade Runner". As you can tell from this exclusive image, that's a pretty apt description. Yet it doesn't quite scratch the surface in relating the sheer intensity your character exudes. Thanks Phoebus of HardCorps SiN News.

Cash on Quake2 Mods

Thanks to the guys at www.openquake.org for forwarding this post from John Cash on the OpenQuake mailing list., programmer at id Software concerning modifications he is making to Quake2:

Having had a little time to mull over some of the requests from mod authors and this list, I've decided to go ahead and implement a few of them. Chat messages ("say" and "say_team") are now done in the game code. Zoid in particular wanted this so he can do some cool CTF messaging stuff. His stuff should be applicable to most any teamolay type mod. Oh yeah, I made say_team actually work too ;-) Right now team is decided either by model or by skin, but I've made a couple of generic functions (ClientTeam abd OnSameTeam, if I recall) that could be modified to determine the team in other ways if desired. This stuff is already 90+% done and will definitely be in the next patch. A generic EF_ light. I'm not positive yet exactly how I'll be implementing this, but I'm going to go ahead and give you a way to create a dynamic light with arbitrary rgbi (red green blue intensity) values. WARNING: GL players will love this and get the full effect, but software players will get a "best match" selected from the 256 color game palette so you probably want to make sure you check out your stuff with the software renderer too or else you'll find out that mapping 24 bit color to 8 bit color can produce some really awful "matches". A generic particle function. Once again I've not yet done this but I am going to give you something. I'd like to remined you to look at using the TE_SPLASH when possible; I might even go ahead and add a few more colors to that to encourage it's use. The main problem with a generic particle function is that it can generate an insane amount of network traffic. If your mod is single player only then this isn't as big a deal. Let me know (preferably on this list; I get enough email already) what you guys would like here. Something very similar to what Q1 had? Or maybe you have a better idea by now. I haven't realy thought about it yet, but I will be for a day or two before I code it so make your opinions known now ;-) Happy New year! John Cash

Uber Engine!

The big project that Gary McTaggart and Charlie Brown have been working on has some light shed on it, the Uber Engine, the next technology that Rituals future game will be based around. Check out the interview with Ritualistic.com

Speaking of interviews with the Ritual guys, Levelord has done an interview talking about himself and the work being done on Sin over at Bokatu's Realm of Sin.

Amiga Quake

Yea, a recycle joke, but hey, they did a great job on the web page, so check out Amiga Quake, and preorder your CD!

Clan Blast!

SegaSoft's HEAT.net ClanBlast, a team tournament centered around SegaSoft's Quake mod, DaBomb has finished its first day of matches. This single-elimination tournament which ends Saturday evening has a grand prize of $2000 for the winning clan. No points for 2nd place. For more information visit the ClanBlast page at: www.gamers.com/heat/clanblast.asp

Quake2 Connection Tweaking

Redwood has posted these few tips on Quake2 v3.10 that you may wish to read:

Something you can do with your Quake 2 v3.10 on the internet is tweak your connection a bit, like QuakeWorld. You can adjust the rate and also get a network graph. The only thing missing is pushlatency unfortunately. Modem players may want to adjust their rate down from the default of 45000. To change your rate, go to the console while connected to the server and type /rate xxxx where xxxx is the number of bytes per sec you want the server to send you. People on 28.8 may want to try somewhere between 2500 and 2800. 56K may want to try 4000 and ISDN, 5000-10000. So, for a 28.8 player to set their rate to 2500, they would type /rate 2500. To view how your connection is, type /netgraph 1 to show a nice little graph at the bottom of your screen. The green is the amount of lag, the red is dropped packets (bad), the white means the packet was choked off by a lower rate (I believe). To turn the graph off, type /netgraph 0.

Quake2 Stuff

A bunch of Quake2 stuff for ya to download, look at, etc etc:

• Q2 Modeler has hit version 0.81 and is available for download of course. This modeling tool takes the 3dsmax approach to model making (4 windows) Considering 3ds and 3dsmax is what the game companies are using (and a bit of Lightwave) this may be a good idea eh? Check out the homepage.
• A mod that friends and I have talked about a few times, and Destroy's QuakeD Site has done it. Damage match. The winner isnt the guy with the most frags. (well, generally he still is) but the guy / gal who has inflicted the most total damage to everyone. (Frag steelers dont get rewarded as much)
• Battle of the Sexes for Quake2 has been updated again (thanks Blue) and is up to version 1.6 now.
• Lithium sent word that Millenium of Ritualistic has released his skin pack for the females now that makes them much easier to tell apart.

Quake2 CTF

Gotta have your CTF fix for Quake2 eh? Can't wait for Zoid to finish the official CTF mod? Well here are a pair of mods already released for your CTF'ing pleasure:

• Thanks Wanker for the word that LM CTF v1.22 (beta, of course) has been released on the homepage. LM CTF was one of the first CTF mods out the door for Quake2 and keeps getting updated pretty consistently. Check out Loki's Minion Page.
• War of CTF (which I saw at Blue's) has been released as a v0.9 beta, a bit more simple version of CTF, pretty good for the purist out there. :)
• Well, Keys v1.2 isnt actually a CTF mod, just a runes mod for Quake2, but everyone who plays CTF loves those runes right. (Although runes did not originate from CTF mind you) Check out the Keys page.

Articles

A few articles / bits of propoganda for you guys to read:

• Edward's Handy Gun Guide, which is a good tutorial for people wishing to design weapon models for our cool little 3d action genre is available for anyone interested.
• Jokey Smurf has written up his opinion of the future of Online Gaming. The article is posted on Gamers Extreme, noted affiliate of PGL, so take it with a grain of salt. :)
• Armin Rigo, the author of the popular Quake Army Knife front end mod for Quake / Quake2 is posting his plea for the standardization of Quake2 mods. Sounds like a job for the guys at www.openquake.org -Blue's

Qoole Beans

Never enough beans! Qoole, the Quake Object Oriented Level Editor with Quake and Quake2 support has hit version 2.31 now. Funniest thing I saw while in San Francisco, the author of Qoole firing up his editor to test some things, and "wtf? how come I don't have the registered version?" heh. Great editor, much faster and sleeker than it used to be.

The Polls

A few more poll results have been posted, and another one for you guys to vote on as well:

• PlanetQuake's Poll has posted the latest results, answering John Carmack's question about whether or not several code updates that are small or larger less frequent updates are what people prefer. The answer: small frequent updates.
• GameSpy has hit it's final day of voting for sounds in the GameSpy Sounds of Fury contest. Check out this .wav file for an example.
• OGR.COM put up the 1997 Awards for Games of the Year.. Quake II won best action game and multiplayer game, but it also won the Reader's Choice as Game of the Year. - Reginald Levy.

Quake2 for Linux

Doh, got this email while workin on the new site, Zoid has released Quake2 for Linux, dig it: Here is the file locally.

Quake2 for Linux has been released. You can grab it at .../quake2-3.10-i386-unknown-linux2.0.tar.gz It has the same requirements as Q2Test, other than the fact you need to own a released Quake2 CD. It's based on the 3.10 Win32 version, so it's up to date with all released patches. I hope everyone enjoys this release and we'll see a lot more Quake2 servers on the net running under Linux. I'll probably release a Makefile in a couple of days that shows how to compile the gamex86.so source (Linux's version of Win32's gamex86.dll). The game source released in q2source_12_11.zip will compile under Linux unchanged (the wonders of portable C code). User created addons must be recompiled under Linux to work--a good arguement for mod authors to release source and write portable C code. As usual, the Linux port is an unsupported product. You can email me at zoid@idsoftware.com, but I can not guarentee a reply (I'm very busy with Q2 CTF at the moment). But I'll help out where I can.

btw, yea.. I need to archive news, just holding off for the site move. I'm about to pass out, I havent even gone home yet, came straight from the airport to the office just to say hi to you guys. :) I've run into a few graphic changes that need to be made to the page that I can't do myself, so um, it may be just a *tiny* bit longer.

But, guess what. once I'm moved to VRGN, the page will pick up in content considerably. Hell, it may be the 1st news page you start coming to instead of the 2nd one day. :) (assuming it isnt already)

Workin

Hey, actually just found out that everything is good to go on the new server at VRGN. I'll miss the news this evening as I work on getting the new pages up and going. (New graphics / layout etc) Should be finished by late tonight(or tomorrow, im dying from jetlag). If you are really bored Check out the current page (Which is a pig loading with a ton of graphics, I know.. it will be stripped down quite a bit) http://scary.vrgames.net

I'll have to bug dwoemer about getting QuakeFinger up and running on the new page as well. Ugh, I'm looking at this more and it will be a good amount of work.. gonna be a long night. =/

Quake Ports

Oh my god! this can't be! Updating the page more than once in 48 hours?!?! say it aint so! Couple of bits of news concerning Alpha Quake and Linux Quake for ya. First off Brian Hook made a .plan update again about Alpha Quake:

The DEC Alpha server we have here will continue to run. I think its DNS is alpha2.idsoftware.com, so stick that in your addressbooks. Okay, the new DEC Alpha AXP patch is up. Once again, this is only for machines with a DEC Alpha AXP processor, and it's only been tested on a 21164. While this is patch 3.11, there is NO patch 3.11 for x86!!!! So please don't ask about it. The two code bases will be unified whenever patch 3.12 comes out (and don't ask, since we don't know). The file is Q2-311-AXP.ZIP located on the FTP server in the idstuff/quake2/axp directory.

Secondly, Zoid updates his .plan talking about his progress on Quake2 CTF as well as the Linux Quake2 stuff.

I've done a substancial amount of work on both. I'm bringing Linux Q2 up to version 3.10 today, so I hope to have it ready for you hungry linux users Real Soon Now(tm). Quake2 CTF is coming along great. The art is going in nicely and looking fabulous. The code is pretty much done and I'm finishing up on the maps over the next few days. Map building is a love/hate relationship. Waiting for those eight hour vis times hurts. But, it's coming together and I can't wait to play it. :)

Year in Review

Everyone loves these, the year in review by those gals at the Quake Womens Forum. Thanks to everyone that voted for me, especially considering the recent poopiness of my page. I don't know what to say.. *sniff*

Hi

Well, I just fired up the ol' email program sitting here at Three D Graphics about to play my first round PGL match with nerv. (B2's roomate) and well, nothing new has happened most of the day (I went shopping though and got cool pimpy clothes.) I'm looking foward to getting home and putting together the new p2 / 300 I got. (see if I can sucker Gary into giving me one of those nifty 3dfx cards he has "acquired" throughout his career also.)

Oh, Space Quest7 has apparently been canned according to Paul Bradley. check out www.cpuweb.com/space for the petetion to save it.

Also, you guys should check out www.zbone.com if you are heading out to LA anytime soon. (Fargo, I know you are reading this)

LA for another day.

First thing, I can't feel my damn fingers, no heater,   there are gonna be a few more typos than usual in this update. (I think it's a tumor) Also, I will be pursuing legal action with the guys at www.ritualistic.com for releasing confidentail material found in this image. My contract with the Spice Girls was a very tough one to work out. (They are jealous of my good looks) and may be jeapordized since one of the terms of agreement was that we were not to be photographed together. (being a sexy bastard, it's more trouble than it's worth)

Oh, you'll love this, sorta kinda like maybe slightly missed a plane. I'm like, in LA for another day. It's damn freezing here too. Looks like VRGN has gotten the new domain working at scary.vrgames.net now, I'm sure all of you have grown attached to this server, it's like having a fussy kid. No matter how impossible it is to work with, you still kinda like it. (Of course, if this server was an actual child, I would have shipped the little bastard off to military school by now)

Well, figure you guys might like to hear about the trip to the bay area for a bit. I was lucky enough to get to attend the DeathRow BBQ a couple of days ago. You know the best part? There was no bbq. They only called it a bbq because it sounded cooler than a "lan party." We ate at Taco Bell. It was weird walking into a Taco Bell and not recognizing all the employees. (They love giggler and me in Dallas) Got to meet up face to face with all kinds of guys, and really see some great players. I would list off the people, but then someone will hate me if I forget a name.

We fired up the ol' Clan Arena, played a few 4on4's, lots of 1on1's were going on as well. Best match I watched was a squeaker between Unholy and Frick on DM6. It's a shame most of these guys won't be making it out to DC-Con. Really do wish rockets and physics acted the same in NQ and QW. It's a difficult transition from playing QW all the time online and switching to NQ on a lan. (running circles around those damn teleporters on DM6)

Also got to watch the last few minutes of Thresh's first PGL match, and Da5id's. (No, Thresh didn't die, he did get telefragged once though)

Quake2 V3.1

John Carmack updated his .plan with the new version of Quake2 for everyone to download. (sorry, can't get the file to my webserver, but hell, the page will be sitting on a nifty new server tomorrow night) Oh, this new version will NOT load your previous saved games. Don't go patching Quake2 if you want to finish out the game single player mode. (Wait till you're done)

Version 3.10 patch is now out. ftp://ftp.idsoftware.com/idstuff/quake2/q2-310.exe A few more minor fixes since yesterday: qhost support made qport more random fixed map reconnecting removed s_sounddir print out primary / secondary sound buffer status on init abort game after a single net error if not dedicated fixed sound loss when changing sound compatability removed redundant reliable overflow print on servers gl_lockpvs for map development checking made s_primary 0 the default Christian will be updating the bug page tomorrow. So hold of on all reporting for 24 hours, then check the page to make sure the bug is not already known. http://www.idsoftware.com/cgi-win/bugs.exe All bug reports should go to Christian: xian@idsoftware.com. I have had several cases of people with lockup problems and decompression overreads having their problems fixed after they mentioned that they were overclocking either their CPU, their system bus (to 75mhz), or their 3DFX. It doesn't matter if "it works for everything else", it still may be the source of the problem. I know that some people are still having problems with vanilla systems, though. I have tried everything I can think of remotely, but if someone from the Dallas area wants to bring a system by our office, I can try some more serious investigations. Something that has shown to help with some 3dfx problems is to set "cl_maxfps 31", which will keep the console between level changes from rendering too fast, which has caused some cards to hang the system.

VRGN

Yea, those crazy guys at VRGN are running a couple of contests, can you say $$$?

• First off there is a Quake2 map contest, where the first place winner gets $1,000 cold cash. Just make a good map, read the rules, and send it in.
• Secondly, there is the Twisted Christmas challenge. Run through the map completing it as fast as possible. (someone contact the QDQ guys)

Quake2 Alpha Port

Brian Hook updated his .plan with news on the Quake2 Alpha port. It's out!

DEC Alpha support was incorporated into the 3.10 patch. DO NOT DOWNLOAD THIS PATCH UNLESS YOU ARE GOING TO RUN QUAKE2 ON A DEC ALPHA MICROPROCESSOR!!!! The patch is far from cooked -- we only have one DEC Alpha that is reliable and works with our OpenGL accelerator. The 3DLabs Permedia2 drivers we have on hand are REAL flaky with Quake2 -- they generate an exception after about 5 or 10 minutes inside 3DOGLDRV due to a floating point invalid operation, and there are numerous visual screwups -- incorrect textures, no support for glTexSubImage2D, etc. Patch 3.10 does not solve ALL the VERITEGL problems. Particles and other transparent things (including water) are screwed up. I can't do anything about this until Rendition gets back from vacation. Hopefully a new VERITEGL will solve the problem instead of requiring a new patch. The file is Q2-310-AXP.ZIP located on the FTP server in the idstuff/quake2/axp directory.

Unreal Article

Yow, Wired has thrown down the gauntlet with Epic Megagames with this recent article. Mostly just giving the guys at Epic some flack about the incredible number of delays that Unreal has experienced. (I personally have lost count, I'm pretty sure at one point though that it was supposed to be a "Quake killer" though) -Clawz

ClanRing CTF

The ClanRing page (imagine, of all places to find news concerning a ClanRing patch?) has been updated with the new version of CTF for clans. Version 2.7 to be exact. What's it do? Um, take the good old ClanRing patch we all love with the elections, votes, warping etc, and add CTF. hows that?

Quake2 Stuff

The storm of Quake2 stuff being released hasnt slowed down yet, got a buttload more of stuff just released to get your paws on:

• Radiant, the QE4 port for people with human machines, has hit v1.0 build 32. The new version should fix most of the crashing problems that people were having with the previous build. Yea, you can actually run QE4 in Windows95 with this port.
• Jawed's MD2 Util is still being worked on as always. It has hit v1.2 now with the interface having gotten a rework. (Hell, the first version didnt really have an interface, you could just um, look at models. Now there is texture stuff, all kinds of things. Looks great. Check out Jawed's Page.
• Beta v1.4 of Server Config Mod has been released for Quake2. (What the heck out there isn't a beta? Hell, I'm a beta, wanna test me? You'll have to sign an NDA though)
• Quake Army Knife with fully suported Quake2 stuff has been released as version 4.7 now. Grab a copy from the homepage and um, have an army knife for Quake or something. It's actually a spectacular front-end utility that is pretty helpful.
• QGraph, which recently hit v2.0 has moved to a new home at the www.frag.com page.
• Single Player Quake2 Heaven has opened it's doors to all you single player freaks. Speaking of which, I ran into Crash of the famed Crash's Quake page and he mentioned that his Quake2 single player page is well underway as well.

Interviews

Ask them questions, and they answer.

• BlackHorse of the Navy Seals Quake TC does an interview with the guys at Unclespanky.com
• Uh, I thought there would have been a few more interviews to post from the past couple of days, so I like started up this format thinking I could list them off, when in fact BlackHorse is the lone interview right now. I guess I'm just wasting your time now with this whole little section. I apologize. Carry on.

.plan Wagon

What all the homeys are sayin: (Did I miss anything? heh)

• John Carmack of id is making several .plan updates talking about all kinds of stuff, of course the most recent being that v3.10 of Quake2.
• Disruptor of id is of course hard at work now with the bug pages for the new version. Check out his .plan for the latest.
• Corrine Yu of Ion Storm updated the ol .plan doing some fire control after coming under attack of Mr. Hook of id recently.
• Brian Hook of id updated about CA, NFL, and AlphaQuake.
• Giggler of Ritual updated about CA and the concept behind it. Speaking of which, The CA page has an update since people have been wondering what is up.

Older News

Copyright Steven M. Gibson - VRGN