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Uber Engine
Charlie Brown from Ritual has made a .plan update of interest to everyone waiting for "the next big thing" since well, the Uber Engine is it. :)
UberEngine:
The geometry is almost complete. I had 3 major worries about the curved surfaces and LOD that finally came to a head this week. Two of them are completely fixed and the other remains at 80% complete. That is what I will be focusing on in the next couple of weeks. The "adjustment" that Gary and I came up with a few weeks ago is working out very nicely.
The Level Designers seemed to be pretty happy with the way the tools will function, and there is little to no preprocessing necessary for generating the levels. More details on thisin the future.
Gary has been busy pluggin away at the lighting code and has the basics up now. We have another big intergration coming toward the end of this month. At that point, we shouldactually have some nice looking geometry (textured and lit).<snip>
Q2 Patches -updated
VooDoo2 -updated
Q2 in Germany
Just a quick note, Quake2 is apparently banned in Germany now according to Blue's page. I havent heard much abou this one, and since I don't live there, and dont know anyone who does, that kinda explains it. :)
The CEO of id Software issued a statement saying pretty much, yup, figures.
Worldcraft v1.6 Update
John Guthrie (aka Choryoth) from Valve Software sent out this email last night with a nifty little attachment. The long awaited v1.6 update patch for Worldcraft users. Wanna guess what's new? Here's a bit from the email:
* Quake II and Hexen II support A Game Configurations tab has been added to the Options dialogs which makes adding support for these games very simple. You can control the palette, entities, and textures from here. Worldcraft ships with entities for Quake, Quake2, Hexen2, and Quake2CTF.
* Ease-of-use features
It is now possible to add multiple PAK files or WAL file directories in the Texture Options dialog. This is important since Quake II stores its textures in a WAL format within the PAK, as opposed to within the BSP files (as was done with Quake).
Worldcraft has the ability to extract WAL files from within the PAK, and supports both formats simultaneously.
The texture browser can display all textures, textures of an individual WAL group, or only the textures currently in use.The Texture Application tool now lets users edit the Quake II surface attributes. It is now functionally equivalent to QE4, and it addresses some problems found in that editor. (For instance, the ability to modify several solids' surface properties without changing their textures is a nice feature).
The Worldcraft 'Check for Problems' feature will detect and correct mixed content types. One of the noticeable improvements in Quake II is the colored lighting and Worldcraft makes picking colors a snap. Any entity key that takes a RGB number as a value now has a "Pick Color" button associated with it which will bring up the Windows default color choosing dialog. Picking a color is as easy as clicking on the color chart.
Checking for leaks no longer needs to be a time consuming process. Included now is the ability to load a pointfile (leak file) directly into your map, where it will be plotted in a thick red line. This option is available from the Map menu.
The patch will upgrade registered Worldcraft 1.3, 1.5a, and 1.5b users to 1.6. Speaking of Worldcraft, The author of the editor no longer works at Valve Software due to being unhappy there. (It happens, heh) and sent word to Blue that he is now back in Victoria Canada working on a new project for ACD Systems.
CSN Relaunch
The Cyber Sports Network page has been re-vamped and relaunched with a great new look and some new content as well. A couple of articles will be popping up on CSN shortly that will surprize a lot of people. Keep an eye on the page is all I can say for now, You'll be glad you did. :)
Special Ops
AVault has just posted a demo of the Bungee Software game we got a preview of a couple of days ago. It's 3D accelerated and looks peachy. Here is a quote I mooched from the guys at VE:
Suffice it to say, realism is the central goal of Spec Ops. You are controlling a team of Rangers through a variety of 3rd person challenges. You can leap from soldier to soldier and have a more direct influence on their actions in this manner. Forests, arctic plains, deserts, and jungles are among a few of the environments you'll be able to interact with during the course of gameplay. Time constraints and levels of security will dynamically affect the difficulty of your goals; if you're not careful, the entire enemy force will be alerted to your presence before you even show up.
Q2 License Agreement
The PlanetQuake guys are on the ball again posting a look at the license agreement that has been included with the v3.14 DLL source that was recently released from id and the implications it may have on the hax0rs out there who wish to tinker. This is done by the same guy who helped take a look at the Hexen2 agreement stuff a while ago.
Preview / Review Land
What everyone else is saying about the games you play and the hardware you use:
The game will be using Real-time Deformation and Tessellation (RT-DAT) technology. How will this make the game stick out from others on the market?
Easy, we got it, they don't. This technological leap allows all the characters to move naturally and look real. As the human eye notices movement, then shape, and then color, seeing the characters in motion makes the advantages of the Messiah engine clear. This is the next step in the evolution of 3D graphics and gameplay.
Hahaha.. ok, well um.. I guess that's hype for you.
.plan Wagon
Sites
werd
McDonalds gives me gas.
Excitement of the week: I bought a 12 pack of "Wild Cherry" Pepsi instead of the regular stuff. I need to calm down.
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Gimme some Sin
Couple of bits of news on the Ritual / Sin front:
Half-Life
Blue's page has just posted 5 new screenshots of Valve Software's Half-Life project. Blue took a visit to Valve a while ago and has um.. been sitting on a preview for a while now.. It's close though!
Q2 Stuff -updated^2
I tuned up the source for QBSP3, QVIS3 and QRAD3 for threads, memory and speed on PPro/PII. Don't try running these on a 486. I'm seeing quite an improvement on large maps. I plan to modify QRAD3 to render the final pass in chunks instead of taking ungodly amounts of RAM in the next release. Props to id for making the source public. Get the package here.
VooDoo2 -updated
I just got off the phone with Dylan Rhodes, and was assured that the rumor going around that creative is having card problems is false. It seems that a certain WV resller posted something on their page about the Creative Voodoo2 burning up and Creative sticking it on Engineering hold. None of this is true so current and present Creative owners have nothing to worry about. Expect an official statement from Creative Labs within the hour.
Another Lucas Departure
Blue's page got the scoop on this one, apparently Ray Gresko has just parted ways with LucasArts as well. Ray was the lead programmer on the Jedi Knight project. Ray is forming his own company with an unannounced group, called " Nihilistic Software"
The Real Shack
Brian 'Plucky' Ploeckelman from the Game Designer's Corner sent me a couple of
pics that you guys have to check out. Brian ran across the real shack, and he actually sat
down to have a meal there too.
Pic1 / Pic2.
30 New Unreal Pics -updated
Just saw this link over at VE that GameSpot UK has come up with *30* new pics from Unreal for you to gaze upon. Talk about purty lookin.
note: I received email from Matthias Worch stating that these pics are actually ancient pics, some of levels that wont even be included in the final game.
SiN Pic
The boys at www.ritualistic.com just posted an amazingly cool looking .bmp from artist Mike Hadwin over at Ritual. It's over 2 megs in size, and is a pic of the Eon & Peon pair of baddies.
DM3 Bible
If you consider yourself a Clan player at all, then you more than likely have played DM3. :) Check out the newly updated GamersX DM3 bible which full of some great tips for newbies and advanced players alike.
Speaking of the whole Thresh thing, there is a recap of his Quake2 adventures. Playing people in Quake2.
Preview / Review Land
What everyone else is saying about the games you play and the hardware you use:
Interviews
"What process do you follow when you design a Deathmatch map, i.e. do you say to yourself I want to design for 2-8 players or do you have a picture in your mind of something cool and you develop around it? Basically which comes first, the game requirments or concept of how the level should look?"
.plan Wagon
Sites
werd
Welp, it's friday.. um.. cool?
I got these nifty new speakers for my computer, not quite as nice as my home system (badass Kenwood) but they are enough to go thump in the night. Just a note though, if you play Quake / Quake2 with speakers instead of headphones, you are missing out. The advantages of using headphones are surprisingly big. I felt nearly lost when trying to play with speakers.
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Hexen2 Diary
Thursday's playtester diary from aCtivision and the Hexen guys has been posted on the aCtivison pages.
Links
Yup, the links are up, I'll try and get them posted in the morning more often, got distracted today with the ISDN stuff.
New Drivers from 3dfx
Dunno if this is new from the ones released 3 days ago, but
3dFX has released new reference Direct3D drivers for Voodoo and Voodoo Rush cards, version
4.10.01.2071 dated 03/04/98 for both... usual URLs apply...
http://www.3dfx.com/software/download_vgd3d.html
for Voodo Graphics
http://www.3dfx.com/software/download_vrdispdrv.html
for single-board Voodoo Rush
http://www.3dfx.com/software/download_vrdispdrvd.html
for dual-board Voodoo Rush
Thanks Brian Davids.
The Source for Q2
John Cash, Todd Hollenshead, Disruptor, and Zoid among others all updated their .plans to commemorate this little occasion. The DLL source for Quake2 v3.14 has been released, here is a little note that the CEO of id Software passed along:
Christian just finished uploading the 3.14 .dll source. You'll notice that there is an installer with an end-user license agreement that must be agreed to before installing. The purpose of the license agreement is to ensure that unscrupulous third parties will not take what we are making available for recreational purposes and use it instead for profit. In a nutshell, the license agreement requires that you agree that you won't commercially exploit our source code before you install it. This is something new from us, but it is done both in the interest of protecting consumers from low quality shovelware and protecting id from people who would take advantage of our generosity.
CTF Source
Here is Zoid's .plan update along with
the source code release for the latest CTF for Q2 work:
- Win32 Source
- Linux
Source
The game and CTF dll source is up on ftp.idsoftware.com. It'll be fun to see what people will be doing with it. I know everyone's been waiting to hack the crap out of them. :)
I've been working on the Solaris and BSDI dedicated server ports. Hit a snag with the Solaris version today that slowed me down (damn byte order problems). I hope to have them soon.
Currently, I'm only targetting the following platforms for the Quake2 server
ports:
Linux i386 (server and client)
Solaris Sparc
BSDI i386
I've been asked about lots of other operating systems such as HP-UX, Solaris x86, FreeBSD, etc. The three I'm targetting are the most widely used and I haven't had enough interest in the other platforms yet.
Note that mods will need to be compiled for each platform. Fortunately, the game code is portable and doesn't require any changes to compile on any of the platforms. I'll be including Makefiles for each platform and precompiled game and CTF shared libraries. This is a warning to mod authors to make sure they write portable code--you're mod may end up on a Solaris server someday!
Q2 Stuff
Patches / Drivers
Preview / Review Land
Trinity Editor
In between life tips, Brian Hook of id Software also posted in his .plan a bit about his work on the Trinity project:
Worked on Shader even more today. Got a lot of it cleaned up, I have a palette window up, and I implemented the properties control panel that lets you control what bitmaps go into a single shader description. Learned a lot about AWT in the process.
AWT gives you some butt-ugly UI, and it's barely functional, but at least it seems to work.
My next task is to allow actual painting, then create some kind of abstraction that lets the artists work with individual shader maps while at the same time allowing them to work with a more global abstraction consisting of all the shading maps associated with a specific shader description. Blech. I still have quite a bit of UI stuff to work on, but I'm making steady progress.
Unreal.com
The Unreal.com website has had a major update with updates showing off a couple of new environments including the awesome looking SkyCity map as well as the Slith creature.
MacQuake 1.08.5
A new version of the Mac Port of Quake1 has been released. Head on over to the Westlake Interactive pages to grab either the patch or the full version. There are tons of bug fixes in this update so make sure you grab a acopy. -Blue's
The Bodyshop
The Bodyshop has added 8 new models in the last 2 days which makes the grand total 47 Plug-in Player models! 1000's of skins. They also have over 20 skinpacks. Over 20 soundpacks for models. And thousands of skins. A discussion board for skinning/modeling Q & A. You can also vote on your favorite skins & models to help compile a top 10 list. News everyday on upcoming models/skins and other projects. For all these goodies, visit: http://bodyshop.logicquest.com
Poll
The Quake2ctf.com website has made an update with the poll that John Cash asked about in a recent .plan update concerning the utilization of the autoexec.cfg files in Quake2.
VooDoo2
.plan Wagon
werd
Welp, ISDN is still broke, another friend of mine at the same ISP is having the same problem, so we know it's those puds over there that have something screwed up. (Note: the term "pud" used in this context id derogatory and signifies my distaste for the staff of my local ISP)
I'm glad so many people are enjoying the fact that the weekly sections are actually being updated every day for the past couple of weeks now. I'm in a great environment working with VRGN now and truely do enjoy working on this page again. Working on this page has finally moved back into the realm of fun.
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Mission Pack for Q2
Big Hadji discovered this new image from the Xatrix Website, the development team working on the Quake2 Mission Pack. Look, purty box:
The Source of Quake2
John Cash made another .plan update concerning the DLL source for Quake2 v3.14:
3.14 game dll source
--------------------
Real Soon Now. I know it sucks, but I'm held up waiting on the legal stuff. Yes, that means it's all packaged up and ready to upload, just waiting for somebody to make sure that all the t's are crossed and all the i's are dotted.
Preview / Review Land -updated
What everyone else is saying about the games you play and the hardware you use:
Seamless level transitions have consumed hundreds of programmer hours. Now you can fire across levels, shooting a monster in the next level while you're still in the first one. And monsters will travel from one level to the next right alongside you. You run, run, run, pause momentarily while the next level loads, and keep running. If you fire at a monster just as you're crossing into a new level, the bullet/flame/laser will continue traveling into the new level and kill the monster
Patches -updated
Some more patches of note for you to play with:
Quake2 Plug
Disruptor updated his .plan for people who might be having difficulties getting the new Qplug for Quake2 to work with the SPAWN OF SATAN Microsoft Internet Explorer:
Thanks to Mike Dowell for e-mailing and letting me know about about a fix with Q2Plug and IE4.
You should create a one byte file called foo.quake2, not foo.quake as was previously outlined. This is due to the MIME types changing in the new QPlug and IE4 needing something to download along with using a Netscape plugin (can you say kludge?)
To update the example as posted on Redwoods;
<EMBED type=application/x-q2plug-plugin src="/foo.quake2" name="206.112.1.31:27910" width=600 height=25 PLUGINSPAGE="http://www.idsoftware.com/q2plug">
Hexen2World
Progress continues on the Hexen2World project, check out Rick Johnson's latest .plan update:
Things are progressing well on H2W. I'll probably notify the people who have been selected to help alpha test H2W sometime on Wednesday. I'll be choosing around 20 to 30 people.
The underlying practice that the programmers have been following on H2W is to make the weapons better for net play. This has meant that some of the weapons may function slightly different or the effects will look different, but nothing too radically different. In the end, they will most likely look better.
1. Checked off the few remaining files that needed updated from H2 to H2W
2. Fixed the rain system
3. Fixed a problem where the player could get stuck in rotated brushes
4. Added ping times to the deathmatch overlay
5. Investigating a problem where a particular teleporter gets you stuck
Eraser Bot
What is likely to be the final "major release" for the Eraser Bot, Ridah has just put out version 0.7 for all the Quake2 bot fanatics to enjoy. Check out the Team Impact page for the details on what's new. There is some new team AI, and everything is supposed to be faster among the improvements.
Quake2 + Winamp?
Ant just sent me this URL at like 3.30am this morning which apparently has a hack for Winamp theme for Quake2.! http://www.q-2w.demon.co.uk/quake2amp.htm
QTracker v2.01
Qtracker v2.01 has been released at http://qtracker.stomped.com This new version is a minor maintenance release. It fixes a few bugs while also adding a new Quake II server library.
The Coven
The Coven has decided to combine its two deathmatch projects, Carnage and Disposable Heroes. The pack will be released some time in April, with both Quake and Quake II versions appearing on a single CD-Rom. Full details can be found at the Coven website - http://www.planetquake.com/TheCoven
Interviews
.plan Wagon
werd
Argh! man you gotta be kidding.. the connect between Mae Dallas and Mae West has been absolute crap for the past 2 weeks.. quite irritating to someone who likes to play Quake on west coast servers.. So get this, they FINALLY fixed the connect so it's silky smooth as of yesterday.. and what happens? My ISDN no longer wants to run both channels. I just finished reinstalling 50 things and talking to both my ISP as well as the phone company. They will be "getting back with me" grr... ok I'm done. damn it.
Ok ok! Man.. I take what I said back about mashed potatoes yesteday.. we'll just have to supplement beer into our diets instead. amazing that all 8 emails I got about that subject all suggested beer instead of mashed potatoes.. An interesting slice of society must be reading this page.. heh.
btw, Zith owns!
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Justin Chin Leaves Lucas
Thanks to Zapf for this: I just got this off of the PC Gamer web site:
"Justin Chin Departs LucasArts The project leader on the award-winning title Jedi
Knight has left LucasArts to "pursue other interests," a spokesperson for
LucasArts confirms. Last Friday was Justin Chin's last at the San Rafael, CA company. No
reason for Chin's departure was given. Chin had served as project leader on the game, the
first time he was in charge of an entire team. Prior to that, he was lead artist designer
on DarkForces, the first LucasArts shooter game.
Linux Quake2, Oops
Zoid updated his .plan about a goofup in the earlier version of the Linux release for Q2 v3.14 also:
Quake2 3.14a for Linux is up on
ftp://ftp.idsoftware.com/idstuff/quake2/unix/quake2-3.14a-i386-unknown-linux2.0.tar.gz This fixes the 100% cpu usage problem in the 3.14 release that was out early this morning (I goofed during the 3.14 source merge, oops).
ThreeWave Q2CTF 1.02 was released as well. This includes the bug fixes from the main 3.14 source and adds the new player identification HUD display. The HUD display came out really well--it only adds a single byte to the network packets when it changes. To enable it, type 'id' at the console. The setting isn't saved across levels yet, but I'll be looking at it.
3dfx Drivers, Oops.
Doh, the 3dfx driver release mentioned earlier had a goofup in the control panel, not the actual driver, here is a quote:
We Goofed!
There was a mistake with the control panel in the D3D 2.15 release that caused the drivers to be unrecognized. The problem is NOT with the drivers. It is only with the control panel. We have fixed the problem, and we are testing the fix (Tuesday 3/3/98). We will post the new kit as soon as it passes QA's inspection (which should be today, 3/3/98).
Please accept our sincerest apologies for this mistake. We (those of us burning in hell for this) are putting steps in place to ensure this doesn't happen again.
Thanks Again For Your Continued Support,
3Dfx
Quake2 Mods -updated
Of course, just in time to become outdated by the new version of Quake2, here are a couple mods that work with Q2 v3.13
Drivers -updated
VooDoo2 Patches
Thanks to VooDoo Extreme for both of those bits of news.
Quake2 V.3.14
Christian Antkow over at id Software sent out some mail with notification of another new version of Quake2 for you puds to download, Thanks Ant.
- Win95 upgrade
to v3.14 (534k) - works now, sorry about the corrupt file.
- Linux Library
for v3.14 (872k)
- DEC Alpha Library for v3.14 (897k)
Of course, new versions of CTF for Quake2 are out as well:
- Win95 installer
(6,920k)
- Zip Archive (5,430k)
- Zip Upgrade (270k)
Here is part of John Cash's .plan update to commemorate the occasion:
Version 3.14 is ready and will be uploaded shortly. We have both intel and alpha versions ready. I believe Zoid had the Linux version ready and the latest CTF to boot. So get them bits a burnin. My apologies to all the ISP's who are trying to figure out why all their links just maxed out.
The game dll source will be uploaded tomorrow evening (tuesday, March 3rd) provided there are no major problems encountered with this version.
There were no changes for fun/extended/whatever names. I don't know how to make it any clearer than saying we have no plans at all to change the code that deals with names. The only really good argument I've heard was from somebody in europe who pointed out that there are a number of characters used by other languages that reside in that part of the normal character maps.
I might have seen fit to do the work needed if we actually had those characters in our table, but we do not.<snip>
QTracker v2.0
The wait is over, Qtracker v2.0 has been released at: http://qtracker.stomped.com Qtracker is a server
browser/picker for Quake, Quake II, QuakeWorld, Hexen II, JediKnight, and Mysteries of the
Sith.
The list of new features is huge, so here's a quick rundown:
- Mysteries of the Sith Support
- Limited X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter Support (IPX ONLY)
- Fully Integrated & Detailed Server Libraries
- Quake II IPX Support
- More Server Libraries, Including the New JediKnight.Net Libraries
Quake2 Plug
Zoid and Disruptor got together to make a new version of QPlug with Quake2 support finally. You can grab a copy of the 39k file from the id Software page.
Preview / Review Land -updated
Competetions
Interviews
.plan Wagon
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And the Winner is..
Paul Steed of id Software post a .plan update announcing the winner of his CrackWhore contest. He also mentions some stuff on the CrackWhore model for Quake2.
AARRGHH! ThereRs just not enough minutes to each hour and hours to the day. Disruptor and I were trying to get a cool webpage going for the Contest results but neither of us have enough time to do it right. As it is I spent all day Friday working on stuff but I have just too much to get done to keep fucking with it, soooo
Here's the winning entry: http://www.idsoftware.com/psteed/winner
Her name is Anna Niichel and she happens to work at another game company believe it or not. I chose her as the one because her pics embodied the spirit of the model I built based on homage to the Crack Whore Clan Qlo so many moons ago. Check out her pics then send her mail at anna@hotmail.com to make her feel special (whoohoo!)
Patches -updated
LAN FAQ
Everything you ever needed to know about setting up a LAN party with your friends etc. The LAN Party Hosting FAQ v14.b has been released. It can be found at: http://lan.gibbed.com/FAQ/ Latest update contains many minor changes as well as a few major changes to the Networking section
Speaking of Q2 Networking..
There is a page which gives away a bit of the Quake 2 Network Protocol Specifications over at the Pandora Bot project.
Also, Disruptor over at id has posted a cool chart in his .plan that tracks the number of people playing Quake2 according to servers with the +set public 1 command.
Raven Job
Mike Werkle of Raven updated his .plan about a job opening over at Raven:
First and foremost we are looking for people who have strong character animation capabilities, either as traditional cel animators or as 3D animators. Knowledge of a specific software or computer system is not the most important quality we are looking for. We are willing to train the right person.
QERadiant
A new version of the Radiant editor for Quake2 has been released. This is a "users port" of the editor used by id Software along with many of the licensees in creating those beautiful levels that you've seen.
Q2 Demo / Log Analyzers
Tweakit v2.08
The new version of Tweakit for all you VooDoo / VooDoo2 card owners is now up on cdrom.com for your downloading pleasure.
QuakeFinder
QuakeFinder for the Macintosh users has been updated to version 1.5 now. If you have a MAC, and are attempting to play Quake on it, this is the server browser for you :)
Dough Boy Dead!
Veteran Pillsbury spokesman Pop N. Fresh died yesterday of
a severe yeast infection. He was 71. Known to friends as Brown-n-Serve, Fresh was an avid
gardener and tennis player.
Fresh was buried in one of the largest funeral ceremonies in recent years. Dozens of
celebrities turned out including Mrs. Butterworth, the California Raisins, Hungry Jack,
Aunt Jemima, Betty Crocker, the Hostess Twinkies, and Skippy.
The grave side was piled high with flours as longtime friend Aunt Jemima delivered the
eulogy, describing Fresh as a man who "never knew how much he was kneaded."
Fresh rose quickly in show business, but his later life was filled with many turnovers. He
was not considered a very smart cookie, wasting much of his dough on half-baked schemes --
conned by those who buttered him up. Still, even as a crusty old man, he was a roll model
for millions.
Fresh is survived by his second wife. They have two children and another bun in the oven.
The funeral was held at 3:50 for about 20 minutes. thanks DRAGON PHIR
HEAT CTF
All-Star CTF on HEAT; work on Allstar2 underway The creative team behind All-Star CTF http://www.captured.com/allstar is proud to announce two exciting developments. First, All-Star CTF for Quake will soon be a featured title on the HEAT Network http://www.heat.net . Second, work has already begun on a new version of All-Star CTF for Quake 2.
Polls
Unreal Nation
Unreal Nation has installed a feature so you can customize UnrealNation to your likings. Simply fill out a form and it will generate your own customized version of Unreal which you should bookmark or set as your start/home page. http://www.unrealnation.com/custom.phtml Very cool, feels like I'm at MS or something :)
Interviews
sites
werd
If you happen to live in the Bay Area (CA) there is a Quake arcade at Sunnyvale Golfland that has a really cool sounding setup. You have to use a trackball instead of a mouse, but it's not bad considering the trade off is you get to play on huge screens :)
Oh, my cold sore is almost gone now, thanks for your concern :)
The suckage is updated.
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