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QuakeWorld Master

Note: Blue's page at the time of this posting is *wrong* Christian made a .plan update stating that the QW master is NOT on the .250 box, and now back at .37

Ok, uhh. DOH! --- Zoid and I fixed the problems with the QuakeWorld masters under NT and they are running nice and smoothly now. --- They are back on our NT box at; --- 192.246.40.37:27000 -- Limbo (Servers which don't bother reporting to the proper masters) 192.246.40.37:27002 -- CTF Servers 192.246.40.37:27003 -- Team Fortress 192.246.40.37:27004 -- Modified Progs 192.246.40.37:27006 -- Deathmatch Only Servers --- Please *DON'T* use 192.246.40.250 as previously stated. I promise I won't confuse you any more about the QW Masters =)

Unreal

Mark Rein has made a post to the Unreal msg board giving a status update on the progress of Unreal, here is a bit of it: -VE

Unreal is not finished yet. When it is, we'll be shouting it from the mountaintops. Anyone who tells you they know the date Unreal will ship is either psychic, confused or pulling your leg. Even we still don't know exactly when we'll be done, but we're pretty sure that it will ship within the first half of this year, which means before the end of June. Reports that it's coming "any day now" are greatly exaggerated. We're definitely getting close, but we're not that close. Our plan is still to finish the FULL version of the game before we address the shareware version. Progress has been amazing in the last few weeks. We've implemented the final sky code and, let me tell you, it's breathtaking! I don't want to reveal any details about it yet, other than to say that it's extremely realistic. James and the level designers have been "tuning" the weapons to get the feel just right. Now that James has the menus in the game, it's really starting to look complete. If you had the chance to play Unreal at the Respawn multi-player gaming convention in Toronto, you'll be happy to know that we've implemented several of the weapon-tuning suggestions we received there and the improvements are very noticeable. We've completed about one-third of the required performance optimizations and the build we have this week runs faster in software rendering than previous builds ran through hardware 3D acceleration! Of course hardware performance is also faster now and there are still improvements to come. I cannot stress enough how much MMX™ technology improves the game's performance. If your budget allows only an upgrade to MMX technology and you're interested in maximizing Unreal performance, be assured that MMX technology makes a HUGE difference in the performance of Unreal. There has been a lot of misinformation in the press about MMX technology and a general under-delivery of good MMX technology-enhanced software. But don't let that deter you. Unreal probably takes better advantage of MMX technology than any game ever made, thanks to the efforts of Erik de Neve. If you're into Unreal and you want maximum performance then you want to have MMX technology, even if you have a good supported 3D card. Thank you Intel!

Quake2 Demo Released

Disruptor over at id updated his .plan about the Quake2 Demo: (Thanks Chrisco]3[)

Also, for those of you who perhaps haven't purchased Quake II yet and want to try out the first part of the game, we've released the Demo at; ftp://ftp.idsoftware.com/idstuff/quake2/q2-314-demo-x86.exe (40 megs) This demo includes deathmatch and co-op play along with the single player game experience.

WinDoom v0.96

A new version of the really impressive WinDoom project has been released on the homepage at http://www.frag.com/doom/ and is free for download. You of course need a copy of registered Doom to use this. It's just a new .exe

VRGN Level Design Contest

Well Fragaholics, The 15th of March is approaching us and VRGN's $1000.00 Quake II level design contest ends! If you've been dying to enter, make sure you FTP your entry by midnight 3/15! or you can dream about that cool looking ONE THOUSAND dollar bill! If you want more information, make sure to visit http://www.vrgames.net and real all the details. I look forward to checking out your level! We've assembled a Celebrity Judging Panel who will judge your levels based on: Originality Factor Architecture / Design, Replay Factor, Suspense Factor

Bastard's Letter

PlanetQuake's Mark Surfas has posted his opinion on the whole Joost Shuur .plan update in which Joost blatently states that Redwood is not doing a good job and should just shut down his page because he is wasting everyone's time. Bastard lists off the things that Joost's credintials and hints that he agrees with Joost.

CrackWhore help

Paul Steed made a .plan update for people having problems with the CrackWhore model:

3/14/98 If you're having trouble seeing the CW model after she's installed, try the following: Goto the ....\crakhor dir and rename it "1" (without quotes). Start Q2 and select the model "1", which should now be there. Exit Q2 and rename the dir back to "crakhor", restart Q2 and select the model "crakhor".

Preview / Review Land

• Obiwan has posted a review of the Minion patch for Quake.

Surveys

• The biggest damn Clan Survey I've ever seen is up. Feel free to fill it out if you are truely bored or just like your clan *that* much.
• The Quake Voice page is looking for some opinions on how they should work on their voice mod for Quake2.

ThreeeDeee

• Thanks to VooDoo Extreme for word that the new VooDoo2 reference drivers have been released.
• Bootnet has a big-ass article on the party 3Dfx threw last night to kick off their Voodoo2 -- quite a bit of info. in this... http://www.bootnet.com/bootwire/98.3/98.3.13.html#DfxBumpsUpItsLaunchParty -VE

werd

Neeto, slight connection problems today, gotta love that. Back online now though, more updates later this evening.

The Master Plan & Quake3!

Damn, it's all happening today, here is part of the .plan update with the timeline for id Software and their .plan for the next game / s from John Carmack:

The Old Plan: The rest of the team works on an aggressive Quake 2 expansion pack while Brian and I develop tools and code for the entirely new Trinity generation project to begin after the mission pack ships. The New Plan: Expand the mission pack into a complete game, and merge together a completely new graphics engine with the quake 2 game / client / server framework, giving us Quake 3. "Trinity" is basically being broken up into two phases: graphics and everything else. Towards the end of Quake 1's development I was thinking that we might have been better off splitting quake on those categories, but in reverse order. Doing client/server, the better modification framework, and qc, coupled with a spiced up DOOM engine (Duke style) for one game, then doing the full 3D renderer for the following game. We have no reason to believe that the next generation development would somehow go faster than the previous, so there is a real chance that doing all of the Trinity technology at once might push game development time to a full two years for us, which might be a bit more than the pressure-cooker work atmosphere here could handle. So, we are going to try an experiment. The non-graphics things that I was planning for Trinity will be held off until the following project -- much java integration with client downloadable code being one of the more significant aspects. I hope to get to some next generation sound work, but the graphics engine is the only thing I am committing to. The graphics engine is going to be hardware accelerated ONLY. NO SOFTWARE RENDERER, and it won't work very well on a lot of current hardware. We understand fully that this is going to significantly cut into our potential customer base, but everyone was tired of working under the constraints of the software renderer. There are still going to be plenty of good quake derived games to play from other developers for people without appropriate hardware. There are some specific things that the graphics technology is leveraging that may influence your choice of a 3D accelerator. <snip>

There is quite a bit more, so I suggest you read it.

The American Way:

Well, here it is, the word from American McGee on what's up.

The past four years at id have been some of the most exciting of my life. I've had a chance to work with great people, producing a few of the most awesome games in the industry. I want to express my deepest gratitude to all of the people who have given their support of my work. I would also like to thank the owners of id for bringing me on and allowing me to grow and learn with them, it was an experience of a lifetime that I could have got no where else. Now that my time at id is over I plan to take the philosophies and ideas that I have learned and use them to achieve my own goals with my own company. For some time now I have recognized that applying retail game experience to casino and Internet based gaming (gambling) systems is what I truly wish to do. There is a lack of impressive content in this market, and I plan to change that. If anyone has interest my future dealings, whether that be from an investment or employment standpoint, I can be reached at american@usalink.com.

Cool how he's using an @usalink.com email address eh? He can thank Mr. Croslin of VRGN for that. :)

New QuakeWorld Master IP

A quick change for all the QuakeWorld players out there who use the id Master, here is Xian's .plan update:

Effective at 3pm, Saturday, March 14th, idgecko (192.246.40.12 -- Our QuakeWorld master server) will be going down permanently. --- The new replacement masters are now running on 192.246.40.37. --- Please adjust your GameSpy master lists accordingly.

.plan Wagon -updated

Got a few .plans for you to read, aye?

• Dave Taylor has a .plan update concerning Trey Harrison's departures from Crack.com. Note, Trey has left Crack.com on good terms, this disclaimer is for the humor impaired.

Trey Harrison has been let go from Crack. His past contributions include a screamingly fast software rasterizer, brilliant gameplay code, and an immersive 3D sound engine, but we were not seeing what we wanted. It's Friday the 13th. Gulp.

• Zanshin gets the award for most truely tasteless .plan update of the year so far.
• Paul Steed has some choice words for anyone who bashes Redwood. I'm gonna have to agree with Mr. Steed on this one. Words to live by:

Redwood's solid, Man. You're barking up the wrong tree. - ps

Wild Things

Someone <cough> giggler <cough> had the guys around here excited about the Wild Things movie coming out tonight. It was for not though, the best movie of the year wont be out till next week. Sorry guys. If you are in the mood for some multimedia though, check out http://www.spe.sony.com/movies/wildthings/ and I'll cya at the theatre! (If you live in the DFW area, drop me some mail, we'll make it big group)

Game Company Soaps

• In a well, stunning development, American McGee, level designer for id Software for the past several years is no longer residing there. Here is John Carmack's brief and to the point .plan update:

3/12/98 --- American McGee has been let go from Id. --- His past contributions include work in three of the all time great games (DOOM 2, Quake, Quake 2), but we were not seeing what we wanted.

American had become a good friend of mine over the years and I wish him the best of luck on his next project. I'm sure we haven't seen the last of Mr. McGee. :)

• Trey Harrison has announced in his .plan file that he is leaving Crack.com to pursue "real life" at age 20. He's heading off to Seattle to start his 2nd year of college.
  - My 2 cents, drop out! You love computers, who needs a real life when you can lock yourself up in a room all day and browse the web, sit on IRC and play games? bah!
• Steve Gateway Tietze over at Rogue has made another .plan update listing off the top 5 finishers of the recent map design contest he held, and the point of his .plan? They are hiring level designers, drop some mail to Jimm@rogue-ent.com
• The official America Must Be Destroyed/GWAR: The Game webpage has found it's final home at Frag dot Com: Also, they are hiring. All interested must send samples and all applicants hired must sign two contracts, one for GWAR's management and one for Tranquil Lament Software.

VRGN User Group

VRGN's own Sharkman will be hosting the first of a monthly event that will be sponsored by VRGN. Check out this page for details if you live in the Dallas / Ft.Worth area. We will be giving away a VooDoo2 card to one of the lucky attendees.

Q2 Stuff

• Redwood sent along word that version 0.81 of the Eraser Bot for Quake2 has been released on the Impact Development Team page. There is of course an update patch as well as a full install.
• The Quake2 demo specs have been updated for those who are interested in hax0ring.
• Pete from GamersX sends along word that Thresh's Q2 bible has gotten another update.
• GibStats II Ver 1.5 has been released. Some of the enhancements include:
  - the automated output of stats to HTML has been enhanced in many respects.
  - some new features were added to the user interface, allowing more operations to be accessed through right mouse clicks.
  - the CTF single and Team scores are now correctly counted and displayed.
  - missiging messages of Quake2 and CTF have been added or corrected.
• LM CTF Version 2.0 is now available at http://www.planetquake.com/lmctf/ and http://www.captured.com/lmctf This version, which works with the 3.14 Point Release of Quake 2, has many features, and now requires an LM CTF pak file. In addition, you will probably ALSO want to download the VWEAP pak file, which allows you to see other player's weapons. Both are available on the download page.

Interviews:

• Lithium sent word that the new level designer over at Ritual, Matthias Worch is interviewed on www.ritualistic.com
• Exponential Half-Life sends out word that there will be a chat session with the guys from Valve tomorrow. Check out the page for details.
• The Ion Storm web page is all you need now for tonight's monthy Anachrochat with the design team for Anachronox. It's at 8pm so be there if you know what's good for you. -Blue's

Preview / Review Land

What everyone else is saying about the games you play and the hardware you use:

• OGR has posted a preview of the Hexen2 Mission pack that we have all been seeing so much coverage of recently. There are of course some more new screenshots and a pretty good look at just what the mission pack will cover. -VooDoo Extreme
• Speaking of Hexen2, the latest designer diary has been posted for you to check out over at GamePen. I just took a look at GamePen recently and the site has dramatically improved. I dig it much. There are of course some more new screenshots there for you to check out.
• GameSpot UK has posted a preview of the Star Trek: First Contact game based on the Unreal engine licensed from Epic Megagames. This one looks to be incredibly interesting. -VE
• PCM&E has posted a review of the Jedi Knight Mission Pack, Mysteries of the Sith.
• Next-Gen has posted a review of aCtivision's BattleZone. -VE
• GameSpot has also posted this huge preview of the Descent: Freespace project that is worth checking out.
• AVault has posted several new AVI's for you to check out of TombRaider Gold. Here is the quote I snagged from VooDoo Extreme:

If you've got bandwidth to burn or are a Lara Croft freak, Eidos Interactive has a few Tomb Raider Gold Quicktime movies on their FTP site. TOMBEXP2.MOV (3.3 MB) TOMBEXP3.MOV (3.7 MB) TOMBEXP4.MOV (3.7 MB) TOMBEXP5.MOV (2.5 MB) TOMBEXP6.MOV (2.5 MB) TOMBEXP7.MOV (2.5 MB)

ThreeeDeee

• HardwareCentral has just unveiled a new feature on Voodoo2! It won't be up on the main page until tonight, so you guys will have exclusive access until then:
  - Voodoo2 Primer/Intro: http://www.hardwarecentral.com/features/voodoo2/articles/primer.html
  - 8MB vs. 12MB: http://www.hardwarecentral.com/features/voodoo2/articles/8vs12.html
  - Main Feature: http://www.hardwarecentral.com/features/voodoo2/
• Apparently Diamond Multimedia has just begun shipping their 8meg VooDoo2 cards yesterday. I also saw on Blue's that they have started their own Diamond Underground page. Heh.
• InterGraph has released some new drivers for their VooDoo Rush based card, the Intense3D VooDoo.
• Billy from VooDoo Extreme sent word that Diamond has also released some new drivers for their Diamond Viper 330 card based on the RIVA128 chipset.
• While I was at GamePen this morning I noticed this great article which covers the evolution so far of the VooDoo2 card. It's extremely informative and addresses just about any rumor / fact that you can think of concerning the V2's.

werd

Ok ok I'm up. Feeling marginally better.

Gotten a number of emails concerning demos not being Quake2. Well to be honest I don't play much Quake2. CTF is quite fun and I do play that a bit. Quake2 servers are generally FFA matches, and that is less than fun, plus I need a lightning gun. :) Zoid is hard at work adding several tweaks to Q2 DM that may make it more enjoyable, but at the moment it's just not for me.

Links

They are posted.

Hospital trip was cut short. No money + no health insurance for another 3-4 months = no doctor. (Damn bank account was frozen today because of my credit card being lost, joy)

Sparc Solaris Quake 2 Dedicated Server Released

oid released the dedicated Quake 2 server for Solaris machines. So um.. I don't own a Solaris, so I can't tell you how it is. My first guess would be that it works though. Here is the obligatory .plan update by Zoid:

The Sparc Solaris Quake2 dedicated server has been released at ftp://ftp.idsoftware.com/idstuff/unix/q2ded-3.14-sparc-sun-solaris2.5.tar.Z It includes a Makefile for building the game source for Solaris as well (grab the Linux shar archive and run it to get the game source on Solaris). Obviously, it only runs as a dedicated server and supports TCP/IP only. Enjoy. I had fun testing it as a coop server with a couple buddies. It was a riot running around in coop taking out the Strogg. The BSDI port has stalled. Creating a.out jump table libraries isn't fun and honestly, I looked around and couldn't find a good way to build the game library for BSDI. :(

btw, the demo was posted about an hour ago for yesterday. :)

Cyberathletics names Romero Chairman

A press release was sent out yesterday from the Cyberathlete organization announcing that CEO of Ion Storm, John Romero was named Chairman of the board for the Cyberathletic committee. Check out the Cyberathlete homepage for details.

Malice Team Contract

Makers of the Malice TC for Quake - Epochalypse have signed a publishing deal with With European based publisher IncaGold. Team Epcochalypse has licensed Twilight's 3D engine 3DGE for use in the next project (currently under development) Hab-12 http://www.twilight3d.com/ http://www.incagold.com/pressframe_index.html -GameNews-WIRE

Q2 Mission Pack Shots

Got some email from Bludr of the Quake-CZ homepage that he has posted some new screenshots of their offiical Quake2 mission pack, The Reckoning by Xatrix Entertainment

Quest 2.0!?

Woah.. the long dormant Quest level editor for Quake1 has been updated with Quake2 support. The new page (on geocities.. heh) is now working on DOS along with Win95 support as well. IF you are an oldschooler, check it out. -Blue's

ThreeeDeee

• GameCenter has posted a review of the Diamond Monster 3D 2. -VooDoo
• Tom's Hardware page has posted his own review of the Monster3D as well. (This isnt the old one, a newer review)
• A bit more on the 8mb vs 12mb deal on VooDoo2 boards has been posted on GameCenter. -VooDoo

Q2 Patches

• The Eraser Bot for Quake2 has been updated to version 0.8 now with CTF support! The bot completely understands the concept behind CTF, although it does not yet use the grappling hook in this version.
• Speaking of the Eraser Bot, Hot Launch from Grady Drew has just been released and is an incredible front end for the Eraser Bot. If you enjoy the bot you better get this front end.
• Battle of the Sexes for Quake2 is now up to version 2.8.1 over at Spinoza's Quake2 page.
• Highscore for Quake2 is no up to version 0.27. Several minor fixes in this version, here is a list of some new features:
  - Fly Through observer mode
  - Chase Cam Observer mode
  - Message of the Day for Server Ops
  - Countdown Timer on HUD (Remaing minutes/sec on level)
  - Player Identification display on HUD

Sites

• The World of Dreams site has opened their doors at http://www.worldofdreams.com and is primarily a page dedicated to the Wheel of Time project using the Unreal engine.

werd

I'm feeling incredibly sick, gonna take a trip to the hospital in a bit. =/ I tried to sleep in today but it all it seemed to accomplish was you guys missing out on the morning news. heh

CrackWhore

Paul Steed has released his CrackWhore model with a quick skin he did himself for it. Check out the .plan update:

Well the day your mother has been dreading has arrived. I've done three versions of my little crackwhore for your fragging pleasure. The skins were done in a rush so be easy on the criticism. After all I ain't no Adrianator :] --- > The following zip file will take care of what needs to go where so check her out and have fun. --- http://www.idsoftware.com/psteed/q2_cw.exe Thanks again for everyone who got involved with the Contest and for those of you understand it was done in chest...er jest and in no way is it a slight on chicks...er women.

btw, thanks guys for wishing me well. I only hurled once today, I guess that's a good thing.

ThreeeDeee -updated

• Billy Wilson from VooDoo Extreme sent out this .doc file from 3Fingers which explains how to overclock your VooDoo2 card.
• A new VooDoo2 Review has been posted over at www.voodoo2.com -VE
• Billy Wilson from VooDoo Extreme sends word that 3Fingers Guide hosted by their site has been updated yet again. This is the only web page you'll ever need for working with GLQuake and Quake2.
• GameSpot has posted part3 of their 3D Exposed article talking about the state of the 3D Market and which hardware / software to buy. -Hanif.

State of Unreal

Lead programmer for Epic, Tim Sweeney has made a post to the Epic Megaboard addressing all the rumors flying around that Unreal is coming out "any day now" calling it wishful thinking:

It sounds like a lot of you folks will be interested in reading the Unreal status report I'm working on for www.epicgames.com . I visited Digital Extremes yesterday and I've beenwriting up a status report to let people know how things are going. One thing I can tell you is that the latest reports that make it sound like Unreal is coming out any day now are wishful thinking. I'll talk more about that in my report. I would advise against pre-ordering Unreal until you hear that it has mastered. Here at Epic MegaGames we are NOT accepting pre-orders for Unreal yet so that should tell you something.

More Problems in Game Land

Ex-lead programmer on the Turok project is having a bit of a friction with his former employer Acclaim. The guy also wrote the incredible Quarterback Club 98 engine you see on N64. Check out the first article, and follow up posted on Next-Gen.

Glen Smith, formerly of Raven Software has announced his resignation from Raven in his .plan file.

Q2 Patches

• A new version of the Ionic Teamplay mod for q2 has been released here http://www.fragzone.se/ionic/ This is a great teamplay/1on1 mod for quake2 that is functionally identical to clanring/qwring mod that were widely used in quake1 competition, and also contains a Spectator mode and other q2 enchantments (menus).
• Yet another version of the Vanilla CTF mod has been released on the homepage. The latest version is of course v3.14 compatible and also works with the latest Q2CTF release by Zoid.
• Orange Quake version 2.4f has been released for Quake2. If you wish you could see your opponents weapon in Quake2 while on the server, this is the mod for you.

Interviews

• Saw a link to this on Blue's page, an interview with level designer for id Software, Paul Jaquays. Check it out on Sudden Death.

Preview / Review Land

What everyone else is saying about the games you play and the hardware you use:

• The new company, Future Primitive has announced their first project, Revenge of the Bittersweet. GameNews-WIRE
• PC Magazine has posted online their review of id Software's Quake2.
• The Ranger's Quake movie, Torn Apart 3 looks like it may actually be released after all this time. There is a preview posted on the homepage with a status update. -SoLo
• Yet another Blood2 preview, this one on Next-Gen.

.plan Wagon

• The German alien that I mentioned a couple of days ago has finally surfaced as the new level designer over at Ritual. Matthias Worch has made his first .plan update to say hello.
• Brian Hook over at id Software has posted yet another lengthy .plan update for you to read. This one talks about another .plan update and his reactions to it. :)

Sites

• The House of Mouse website I got email about yesterday is dedicated to educating the youth of America and abroad of the joys and advantages of using a mouse for playing first person shooters.
• AGDA - The Association of Game Developing Artists is a new association similar in spirit to Mike Wilson's g.o.d. with a different emphasis; that of enhancing the relationship between developers and artists. AGDA plans to help provide industry standard wage information to member artists and to
  offer online resume's as well as portfolio's or 'demo-reels' for game developer's to view.
•  

Bidness

The TJK Market Letter has added Eidos Interactive currently trading at $18 1/2 to its Model Portfolio. Eidos at current valuations (Future P/E of 13) along with its hot pipeline of games (Final Fantasy VII, Ion Storm games- John Romero, Deathtrap Dungeon) and bestselling stable of hits (Tombraider2, Myth, JSF), presents a fantastic buying opportunity. A short term price target for Eidos at $25. Check out the TJK Market Letter for the full buy report and the latest in computer game stock news/market commentary updated daily. http://www.oursquare.com/members/tjk/

werd

Feeling a bit under the weather. =( Thought my head was gonna explode last night. Sucks to be me.

Oh, happy birthday to Thresh. From what Pete tells us Mr. Fong is suffering from one of the worst hangovers of his life today, his first day in the world as a 21yr old man.

Slippery Shooters?

Ignoring the fact that this article seems to be written by someone who doesnt have a clue, and enjoys mutilating screenshots, this "Slippery Shooters" article on games.net is a nice update on the progress of Daikatana, Unreal, and SiN. -Ritualistic Yea, I'm in a pissy mood. :)

Weekly

Woah, almost lost my streak of updates, the Kingly section has been updated. :)

ThreeeDeee -updated

• Looks like the VooDoo2 drivers have been delayed a bit, here is a quote from Tony Tamasi in a 3dfx newsgroup: -VE

One of the bugs we fixed was related to the "Voodoo2 expected, none found" symptom (which can also exhibit itself in other ways), which turns out to be a really nasty low level problem that was particularly hard to track down. Well, we tracked it down, but in tracking it down we exposed another bug, which we decided to fix too. All of this takes time, so, in the intrest of shipping good quality code, I decided that you guys would be better served with better, less buggy code a little later. Sorry for the delays, and thanks for your patience. Tony

• Brian Hook made a brief .plan update for people wondering what the deal was with the PCI RIVA numbers in his chart. Well, they were old, so he yanked em. Just check out the AGP ones, and imagine the PCI ones are about 20% lower.
• Creative Labs will be hosting an "online press conference" for all you monkeys interested in asking questions about VooDoo2 etc. -VE

When: The Creative Labs 3D Blaster Voodoo2 on-line press conference will be held at http://www.soundblaster.com/voodoo2/chat.html on Thursday, March 12, 1998, at 1:00 p.m. EDT. A full transcript of the press conference will be available on Creative’s award winning web site at: http://www.soundblaster.com following the event. Who: Jim Carlton, product marketing manager for 3D Blaster Voodoo2, will be on hand to discuss 3D Blaster Voodoo2 and to answer questions about this eagerly awaited product.

• Next-Gen has posted an article talking about Matrox possibly working on their own proprietary 3D technology once again. The hardware will "allegedly support PCI and AGP"
• GameSpot has posted an article discussing which VooDoo2 card you should buy and in what memory configuration. The quick answer: Spend the extra cash and get a 12meg board.
• The nVidia corporation is apparently doing the same thing those boys at 3dfx did, they are goin public with their stock:

SUNNYVALE, Calif., March 9 -- NVIDIA(TM) Corporation announced that it has filed a registration statement relating to a proposed initial public offering of shares of Common Stock with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Morgan Stanley & Co. Incorporated, Hambrecht & Quist LLC and CIBC Oppenheimer Corp. will act as the Company's underwriters.

• An alpha ATI Rage Pro OpenGL ICD for GLQuake and Quake2 has been released. You can link to a short review (including screen shots) at http://www.3dgaming.com/fps/ati/gl_index.htm
• Oh, and don't forget this little blurb on Next-Gen talking about VD2 bump mapping.

PingTool v1.9

PingTool 1.9 is available at the PingTool web site: http://pingtool.telefragged.com/ PingTool is a server browser that supports QuakeWorld and Quake2. The coolest of the new features is "Shared Ping Data." PingTool can now connect to one or more buddies and exchange ping times.  The ping times are displayed right next to your own in the server list so you can quickly see which servers are the fastest and the most fair.  This is great for one on one play or clan matches! To make it easy for you to connect, this feature is integrated with ICQ.

PlayTester Diary

The weekly diary of Hexen2 playtesting has been posted on the aCtivision pages.

Origin Sued

Just got some email about this interesting article on GameSpot. Apparently Origin is being sued for Negligence with their Ultima Online project. Also got mail from Luscious Hooter with this url: http://www.sandiego.courts.ca.gov/superior/online.html giving the names of the plantiffs. Then there is this link: http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/story/story_1832.html which is a bit interesting as well that I saw on Blue's.

Q2 Patches -updated

• King of the Hill version 1.1, Both a full release for those people that are downloading KOTH for the first time (this includes the game libraries for both Windows and Linux as well as the 6 initial KOTH maps) and an update for those that already have the maps and just need the new game libraries. . http://www.planetquake.com/osp/
• Lithium for Quake2 has hit version 0.92 now. The new version boasts a nifty ChaseCam mode.
• The CO2 Quake Art page has a little transparent HUD textures for those of you who wish to take full screen Quake2 screenshots without the icons on your screen.

Preview / Review Land -updated

What everyone else is saying about the games you play and the hardware you use:

• Riot.com has posted a preview of the Blood2 project.
• UlgraGP has posted yet another preview of Epic's hot looking Unreal. Nothing amazingly new in the article, just the standard purty pictures and claims of world domination.
• In case you can't get enough Unreal, Next-Gen has also posted another preview of Unreal as well.
• OGR has posted a review of the Quake2 Eraser Bot version 0.7
• Next-Gen has posted a preview of Final Fantasy VII which so many people seem to be spooging over for the PC.
• VDPower has posted a preview of aCtivision's BattleZone project which looks pretty durn cool.
• Ionos has made available to the general public four screenshots of the "under development" 3D action title for the PC, Akolyte. The screeenshots can be obtained from the link below: http://www.ionos.com/download/akolyte.zip GameNews-WIRE

Interviews

• Todd Porter of Ion Storm has answered a few questions over on the GameSpot UK site in relation the the Dominion project which is near release. -Blue's
• Joey Law of Ion Storm, working on the highly touted Anachronox project. (You know it has to be good with a name like that and people actually know how to spell it) is interviewed on ANAnet.

Competetions

• A friendly competetion that Thresh, Kornelia, and myself have been asked ot take part in is discussed on this Australian News Page. The current plan, a direct ISDN line to the US. (Long distance charges and all)
• Steve Tietze's map contest is now over, check out his .plan update.

.plan Wagon

• Billy over at RBR paces counter clockwise.
• Onethumb over at ritual seems to be suffering a bit of constipation.

Sites

• k-rist has opened up a "wacky screenshots" page of his own at http://home.sol.no/~osundli/ws.html
• The original Quake 2 CTF-ish Total Conversion has relocated to http://www.captured.com . Star Troopers http://www.captured.com/startc is a developing TC that has multiple classes of characters, tons of new weapons and features, and full CTF support.
• Heh, more than likely in response to a bit of mail that Joost received recently. (Can't imagine why) Slipgate Central which hasn't been updated recently has been yanked until he can get the site back up to speed.

werd

Well, after this update I'm off to the bank again. I sure would like my $2,000 back. I'll prolly come home, cuss and yell some more and then decide to never use a credit card again. :)

3D Benchmarks

Hi, just got back from the big staff meeting with VRGN talking about cool stuff. Sorry I've been out all day.

I dropped Brian Hook some email this morning and he was kind enough to update his .plan with a url to the updated benchmarks for 3D cards and Quake2 after getting some new drivers from nVidia.

The new numbers are at my benchmark page: http://www.idsoftware.com/bwh/benchmarks.html The numbers, for those of you that don't want to look it up, are about 50% faster than comparable Voodoo1 numbers. Even more impressive is that the RIVA128 is syncing to retrace, whereas the Voodoo1 numbers are not.

H3D

Oh my goodness, they have finally done it! The new drivers are out for H3D goggles with Quake2 / Glide 2.45 support. Check out the homepage at http://www.h3dmedia.com and grab your copy. I'll have to grab the goggles I have and actually plug them back in now.. -VE

Modem Standard

Saw on Redwood's page that the 3Com site has posted the upgrade software for 56k modem users to flash their modems to the new standard v.90 for 56k. Although, Richard Paul sends along word that they still havent released the server side patch for ISP's to upgrade, So take your time getting this patch, it won't do you much good until they release it.

QTracker

Version 2.01 of Quake Tracker, which actually includes support for Jedi Knight as well has been released on the homepage.

QuArK

Quake Army Knife alpha version 5.0 is now available on the homepage. No idea what's new in this version, the email I got was cryptic. :)

Diamond / Intel AGP Bridge?

I saw this quote on VooDoo Extreme which sounds very interesting from the FG site.

I picked up some rather interesting information from a source close to Diamond Multimedia: This man told me that Diamond and Intel are working together on a AGP bridge chip, which would make it possible to do SLI with one AGP slot. This chip should be first used in Diamond's upcoming Monster 3, a one board SLI Voodoo 2 AGP solution. I totally forgot to ask about the amount of RAM we could expect on this board, but it'll probably be at least 16 Mb. I'll keep you posted when there's more.

Q1 Mods

• ThunderWalker CTF has been updated to version 4.5 now for both NetQuake and QuakeWorld versions. This is a maintenance update with several fixes of problems users have come across.

Q2 Mods

• The Slaughter Development Team has released their v3.14 compatible update for the Quake2 mod, BagTag.

Bots

• The frogbot, a Quake1 bot, has been released at Metropolis. The beta (? - 25% done) features "awesome smooth movement, greate ai, playerlike features, dm6 support, and more!" (yes, dm6 is currently the only supported level - dm2,3 and 4 are coming soon) it's the most "human like" game you can get with a bot." You can get it from www.telefragged.com/metro
• The TFBot Author is finished working on the mod and he is looking for someone to take over work on the bot. Please go take a look at www.planetquake.com/tfbot and read the news section, he needs someone to take over..

.plan Wagon

• Paul Steed of id was driving home from a meal when he came to realize 3 things in life that you must know. Van HAlen died when they kicked Dave out, Porsche 911's are the best cars money can buy, and he is just "too fucking good"
• Stephen C of 3DRealms like's monkeys. Check out his story.

Interviews

• The Quake Workshop has posted an interveiw with Rober Duffy of the QERadiant project.
• Paul Steed of id Software has done a quick intervivew on this page talking about RTS games among other items. -Blue's

Competetion:

• PlanetQuake's Best of the Net level design contest concludes at midnight tonight. So you better finish up that level and submit it eh?
• The Online Gaming League has posted their CTF Ladder for those of you who signed up.

Sites, etc:

The guys at Telefragged has opened a couple more sites for ya to look at:

• TeleFragged is proud to announce the newest member of their ever expanding network: RitNews http://www.ritnews.com . RitNews is your one stop shop for tons of information and up-to-the-minute news about the happenings at Ritual Entertainment
• Quake2 Master Server http://www.telefragged.com/server_listing/tf_master/ The above page explains how to use and add your q2 servers to it.
• Quake2 Skin2 Paks http://www.telefragged.com/skins2/ 251 male and 46 females have been released in the following skin paks.
• Kristopher Applegate's Quake2 screenshot site is open for bis at http://www.web-emp.com/kapple

Doh

Remember that post the other day about the analysis of the license agreement that is packaged with the Quake2 v3.14 DLL source? Well, I said the "same dude" when in fact, it's a female. Sorry PMS-Bobbi :)

werd

Ok ok, leave me alone about Joost's .plan update. It was not addressed towards me as I have been update regularly every day without excuse for a couple of weeks now. The guy has an opinion, and opinion's are like assholes, ya know? No.. I won't show you mine. :)

I've got some meeting stuff to go to today, so probably won't be back home to update till 5 or 6pm.

Add-On of the Year for Ritual

Congrats to Ritual Entertainment for their Quake Mission Pack #1 being recently named Add-On of the Year by the guys at PCGames Magazine. Here is the press release sent out by Don.

.plan Wagon

• Joost has an opinion on all the infrequently updated news pages out there. I plead the 5th.
• Brian Hook over at id Software mentions dinner with the Ritual guys (glad I found Chicken curry there, I couldnt even read that damn menu) and posts installment 4 on his guide to life.

Q1 Patches

What? People are still making mods for Quake? Why would you need anything after Clan Arena? <g>

• Ninja Quake 1.1 is released on: http://www.fragzone.se/ninja You can download it at: http://www.fragzone.se/ninja/zip/ninjaq11.zip This is THE final version. The new version has 6 new levels and a lot of new cool features. Play football with super dangerous bombs. New deathmatch 5 mode. Bugfixes and more.
• Havent gotten a chance to watch this movie yet, but Clan Phantasm sent out this trailer for a full length Quake1 movie that they are working on. It weighs in at about 5megs.

Q2 Patches

• Superheroes for Quake2 is now up to version 1.7. The new version of course boasts Q2.v3.14 compatibility along with several minor tweaks. It's a server side patch, so like dont get it unless you wanna run a server.
• The Ionic Mod for Quake2 has been updated again to version 1.5 now. The mod is a good alternative to the Cyberathlete competetive mod released about a month ago.

Competetion:

• Point your browsers to The Online Gaming League : http://www.ogl.org Just yesterday, they opened up the sign up form for the Q1 CTF Ladder. Tonight the sign up form for the Q2 CTF Ladder will open up.
• Kunani HIGHSCORE beta server side patch. Carries HIGHSCORE (Highest Number of Kills) throughout all games. Try and beat the All Time Best Highscore for that server. See your name in lights Check the page: www.kunani.com/highscore.html
• Exactly a week after opening at PlanetQuake, the Deathmatch Database today celebrated reaching its first millenium! Almost 600 new modem players have been added to the list in the last week, with 1000 players now listed worldwide. The page now also includes a daily roundup of the deathmatch related stories.
• Disruptor made a .plan update stating that the alpha2.idsoftware.com Quake2 server is running CTF rules on 64 player maps.
• Another DM3 bible has come out from that HPB vlad terror, however specialising on a faster server he grasps the fact of DM3 very well without need of complex language ;) anyway check out http://www.88.com/vlad

Polls

• The results are in from John Cash's question posted in his .plan file over at www.quake2ctf.com
• The Bot Epidimic page has another poll going if you use Quake2 bots check it out.

Source of Doom

Couple of projects people are working on after the release of the Doom source code by John Carmack:

• The "official" WinDoom / GLDoom page hosted by www.frag.com has been updated with a screenshot of GLDoom in action. Here is a quote from Bruce Lewis:

I know some of you are concerned that glDoom will look weird because the textures on the walls, floors and ceilings will be bilinear filtered and smoothed but the sprites will look too pixelated. Well, the sprites are smoothed, too. They don't look nearly as good as they could if they were hi-res but they don't look as bad as you might think. They do suffer from the "jaggies" a bit but they look more "fuzzy" than anything else. I have posted a screen shot here on the main page so you can see what I mean. This is only a little of what is in the rendering test program.

• Saw on Blue's that the Doom Legacy project has released version 1.12 which features +mlook, jumping and other things in the Doom engine.

Speaking of programming, the guys over at www.openquake.org are willing to port patches to Linux / Alpha etc, stop by if you have a patch you would like to port.

Bot Epidimic

Gah, several emails about bots recently:

• There is a new Quake2 Bot Launcher called AutoBot which acts as a front end for Eraser Bot, CRBot and Stupid Bot. More info over at the Epidemic with downloads.
• The Epidimic also has another review posted of the Eraser Bot from Team Impact v0.7
• Lastly, the Epidimic also has a poll going for you to fill out.

Cheaters?

The I Hate TeamFortress Cheaters page is now open for business. I'm not sure what the subject matter of this page is, but I think it has something to do with Duke Nukem.

werd

Those Ritual punks kept me up last night, havent even eaten yet cuz I woke up late and had to do your Sunday news. :) Gonna hit some IHOP and shop for a new car with a German alien.

I would eat at home, but some PUNK at all my Ramen, huh Mike?

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Copyright Steven M. Gibson - VRGN