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Bah
Had probs with the server once again last night. The internet is cute that way. Sorry about the probs.. I've been promised that everyone is stable and good to go now though.
Our First Cover
Aww... isnt this special.. Ritual Entertainment has scored our first magazine cover with Sin. Big thanks to PCGames magazine. I thought you guys might like to see it, along with a zipped up version of the image that was used.
Here is a zipped version of the actual image used.
Also, thank you to Kevin Cloud of id Software for his kind words in his .plan update
Quake2 Arcades!
Check out this Next-Gen article talking about the production Quake / Duke3D etc arcade machines / stations! They are runnin on p2 systems with obsidian 3dfx cards (This is a good thing) and will be selling single machines as well as 4 player workstations for multiplayer.
Cool note: since its tough to include a mouse with these things, the guys showed that they do indeed have a clue by providing the next best thing, a track ball. Oh, and 6 buttons to control your strafing / movement etc. Well done. -Prophet
True Love?
Woah.. this weeks Dear Mynx section has a letter at the bottom of the section by a certain member of another game development company. It's stuff like this that makes me all gushy inside.
QTracker v1.0
Version 1.0 has been released of what looks to be a util that is attempting to rival GameSpy for the #1 Quake / QuakeWorld / Hexen2 server tracker / parser / ping thingie. QTracker even tries to show if people are using those wacky fun names as well as give an estimate of your in game ping.
Quake2 Shots
PC Gamer Online has posted a new weekly pair of screenshots for Quake2 in their archive section. As always, they look spiffy. Thanks Hanif
KeyGrip Back on Track
The KeyGrip pages have been updated with word that they are indeed back on the project cranking away. They are in crunch mode now working overtime to get the new version 1.0 out to the public.. I had the opportunity to play with a beta not to long ago, and this mofo is WAY faster than the latest public release. You will dig it.
Need a Web Host?
The guys over at www.inside3d.com have decided to open their doors to host web pages dedicated to editing Quake / Quake2 etc.. stuff like that. Check out this page for info or just email hosting@inside3d.com
Clue Wagon
The QSBN pages have been updated to explain to people that if your ping is higher in GameSpy than it was in Qspy, it uh.. does not affect your actual gameplay. Qspy is a front end you knobs. You don't actually play through it. That thing is just reporting pings.
Preview / Review Land
Here ya go.. the daily dose of everyone elses opinion:
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.plan Wagon
Well, the programming stud man (next to John Cash, of course) has decided to make his work log public domain once again.. lots of programmer mumbo jumbo in there, but its a great look inside of exactly what Mr. Carmack is up to. (Talk about busy.. he must be at work as much as I am.. heh) Thanks Rob Secrist.
New Worldcraft
The new fixed version of Worldcraft has been released, check the homepage out and find out more at www.worldcraft.com or of course you can download the file here locally as well.
Forsaken Demo
Here is a self playing demo (13.4megs) of that amazing looking 3d shooter Forsaken. It looks absolutely coolbeans on a 3dfx card, didnt even attempt to try it in software though. Very similar to Descent, but uh.. better and stuff.
Interviews
ChaseCam 2
The Chasecam homepage has been updated with new versions of this fun and popular patch. If you dig the chase view in Jedi Knight (hit that f1 key!) you'll like this one. Saw that on Blue's.
Preview / Review Land
A whole nother buttload of previews etc are out there, here ya go:
Thanks to Prophet for the list.
Clan Database
Saw this one over at Blue's, Paul Mallinson of PC Zone UK wants you clan info, dig it:
PC Zone is currently looking to source a worldwide clan directory for inclusion in a forthcoming media project. To achieve this we are going to need your help.
If you - or others you know - have a clan, fill out the information below and mail it to the e-mail address (with a subject line of Quake Clan) at the bottom of this message and we'll include it.
Feel free to pass this message on to other like-minded Quake heads - we are looking for a massive response.
Your Clan
Name: [clan name here]
Leader: [leader’s name here]
Contact: [e-mail address here]
URL: [web address here]
Country: [clan country of origin here]
Sponsor: [clan sponsor here]
Mail all replies to: daniele@dennis.co.uk
Oh, and can you also attach ONE screenshot of your clan in action. Just for the record.
Redw00d's Quake2 Preview
As many of you may know, a couple of people got to head on over to id Software and get a close look at Quake2 (full version, as well as the demo) Redw00d was one of our lucky participants and has posted his story of the trip to Texas and meeting up with his homecut Zor.
Impel Productions
Here is the email I got forwarded to me from Prophet, from AJ Greenlee of Impel Productions:
Impel Productions have release Alpha 1.00 of their Abyss of Pandemonium to Publishers and Distributors and are currently working on releasing a Public Demo. We have a little bit of cleaning up to do so the Public can play it as a game. Public Release will come with in the next 3 weeks. So all of you out there who have doubted us, well, you can decide for your selves =3D).
QPED v1.62
The only Quake pak editing utility that I ever use has been updated to version 1.62 (Thanks Hanif) dunno whats new in this version, but uh.. I bet its like, better and stuff, and they fixed a few bugs. Dig on the QPED Homepage.
QuakeOn v1.0
Well I'll be damned another Quake utility that hits version 1.0 This is the full big ass version with help and a new QTray included as well. you better dig this one. Check out the QuakeOn homepage.
Worldcraft v1.5b Fix
The Worldcraft homepage has been updated with news that they pulled the old v1.5b that was released because of some problem, and will have a fix available sometime today / tonight for all you monkeys to download. Thanks to Rotwang.
ACK! Pardon This :) There is a problem with 1.5b :) Ben has already fixed it, but it is late here and we have all gone home from work! Sorry everyone. There will be a fix tomorrow morning!
Moves
Here be the page moves in the community, yo.
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Are You Pure?
DemonEater sent me this URL to test out exactly how pure of a Quake player you really are. Take the test and find out eh?
update: People asked me, so I'll admit it.. I'm 48.4% Quake pure. If anything is gonna get me laid, that should do it.
Hm.. since I feel like sharing today, guess I'll mention that I gave IE4.0 another shot the past couple of days, as well as Outlook Express for email. Both of them = piss. IE4 because the damn thing is slow as a pig just clicking on my bookmarks list, and the right click menu blows among other things. Then Outlook Express is actually pretty cool, but not good for a high volume of mail. I would suggest it though if you get 15 or 20 emails a day or less.
I'm back to Netscape and Eudora Pro now. :)
Wackness
Posted yet 5 more beauties for you guys to browse. Wack Ass indeed.
Half-Life Monster
OGR has posted the "monster of the week" again from Valve's Half-Life project. As usual there is new video footage as well as a nice big description of the current monster. It's that Houndeye thing this week, that one that makes those sonic blasts or something that squeels at you and runs all over the place. Thanks Billy Wilson of VooDoo Extreme.
Da Pak
If you guys remember QuakeCon (Who doesnt?) then you probably remember the maps that were used for the official deathmatch tournament as well. Well the 2 guys who won got together afterwards and decided to do their own deathmatch pak. Check out the homepage, because it's out! Here is the email I got:
The pack is available here:
ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/idgames2/planetquake/dapak/dapak.zip
Here's a short introduction to the project:
After the QuakeCon 97 Dan 'Danimal' Proietti and I (Dan made qcon2, I made qcon1) started to work on a Deathmatch level pack. It features 8 custom base style DM levels as well as some nifty server mods. Copy, maintainer of the Levelab joined the team lately and will contribute maps to future add-ons for DA PAK as well.
On the homepage you can find news on DA PAK as well as other maps by the authors.
Jedi is Out!
Just a reminder.. Jedi Knight should be availalbe on store shelves today, go out there and grab your copy then waste your life away being enveloped into the Star Wars world.. it's great stuff.
Interviews
Got quite a few interviews today, here they be:
.plan Wagon
Here we go.. todays list of .plan updates:
Legacy of PacMan
I know at least a few people would be interested in reading this one, GameCenter.com has posted their own article talking about the legacy of PacMan and how it has evolved etc. One of their better articles. -Prophet
Reviews
Here we go, what everyone else is saying about games out there:
Jobs!
Couple of different companies are looking for people to hire recently, here ya go:
Jedi Mailing List
QuestGate has setup a mailing list for those of you who wish to exchange news and info talking about Jedi Knight. to subscribe to the list just email listserv@questgate.net with the following in the body: (thx Prophet)
subscribe jedi-release <email address>
Rocket Arena Archive
Saw this over at Blue's that the Rocket Arena Archive has opened up it's doors. If you are a big fan of Arena Quake (you know you are, it's ok to admit it) then check out the pages. They only have 1 new map there so far but of course thats because they just opened!
Wisdom?
Due to a unforseen curcumstances (Stagefright anyone?) yesterdays wisdom didnt make it through. I'll have to provide my own wisdeom in the column today after posting these links instead. Bummer. No wait, you guys should be excited.. How can your life go wrong when you've got someone like me teaching you the way?
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.plan Wagon
Bear over at id Software wants to clear a few things up about people goin ape-shit recently with the Quake2 demo "nearing release"
October 8, 1997
Someone wrote me today and said that there were rumors flying about that QTest2 was coming out soon.
I wrote back and said that there won't be a QTest2. Now there's more concerns from that statement, so let me clarify:
We all along have said there will be a Demo released for Quake. This is a bit different from a 'QTest2', in that QTest2 would lead you to believe it would be the same type ofthing as QTest was. QTest was a non-monster-populated, internet playability test. The Demo will not be like this.
The Demo will be released when we are finished with it, and at that time you will get to see exactly what's in it :) And, I promise you will flip over it!
Ok.. actually he didnt really clear things up, he just tried to make things as vague as possible. :)
On a Sad Note...
Just got word that AOL is expanding to Australia.. My heart goes out to you guys over there. I feel your pain.
Verite Day
Well check this out, the 2nd generation of drivers for Hexen2 players have been released over at Bjorn's 3-D World. (Ya, what?) Saw that on Blue's so I'm just gonna blindly trust that was the originating release site.
Reign on Verite
Mark Reign of Epic Megagames, the guys behind Unreal has made a post the mmboard talking about 3d cards and Unreal. -VooDoo Extreme
Although when I said second most popular I DID mean the V1000 since I think that it is very popular, but since it isn't fast enough for Unreal, I'll have to forget about that. We won't know how good the V2x00 family is until it's out.
I saw one of the new cards and it looks great. But everyone and his brother has a great looking card coming out and they all claim to be as fast or faster than Voodoo.
Also when you mentioned "plain vanilla" direct3d code to support all 3d cards I was just assuming that it wouldn't be the best.
You're right. It won't be "the best" but it will a heck of a lot better than not-at-all. I've seen our D3D version running on a 3DFX Voodoo card and, even in an unoptimized stage, it looked pretty good. D3D is never going to be as fast as a native port but with these newer faster cards it should be fast enough to fun.
Mynx is Back!
After a surprisingly brief maternity leave (Mynx had one in the oven for a while) Dear Mynx is back and kicking over at PlanetQuake. So if you have any sort of troubles or questions that you need the advice of a woman, check out PlanetQuake and email mynx@planetquake.com
Poll Results
GameSpot has posted the results of their latest poll, "Quake2 will kick ass"
Jedi News
First off there is a review / preview of Jedi Knight over at Gamecenter.com that is worth reading. I am telling you guys.. you NEED to play this game.. it just gets more and more incredible the more you play it. I don't recommend games for you to play very often, but this is one of them.
After you check that out, Hyperactive.com has posted their own walkthrough of Jedi Knight as well. Of course I can't get to the webserver right now, but I'm assuming it would be of the full version.
Oh and then you got this cool review of Jedi from the guys at PCM&E as well. Redw00d says it is quite lengthy and in depth.
3dfx Build
Hey dig these shots out from www.3dportal.com of the 3dfx port of Shadow Warrior that hopefully will be available to the public soon. There are some more shots available there.
PowerVR GLQuake Drivers
The new drivers for GLQuake (Also work for Hexen2) for all you PowerVR owners have been released. Here be the file hosted locally. (Woah, I missed doin gthat for the past couple days) The guys behind these cool new cards are NEC.
Unreal Preview
Oh my, another preview of Unreal.. check out the Next-Gen take on what we all pray will be soon released, Unreal from Epic Megagames. -Prophet
Sexiest Quake Player
As we all know the winner of this contest would be Redw00d before we even start it.. but hey, they want to go through the formality of this thing, why not.. head over to Siren's Pic Page and cast your vote. If you for some reason find me attractive. (Coincidentally, you are probably on drugs right now as well, hey.. send me money after you vote for me)
Space Orb Drivers
If you are the lucky soul to own one of the Space Orbs out there, head on over to www.spaceorb.com and grab the new drivers. Not sure what is changed in these things. (Maybe they include a pak2 cheat for Quake so you can stand a chance in DM) Here are the new drivers.
Yea, it was a cheap shot.. I know.. heh. I'm just all pissy because of nearly 500 emails to sort through.
The Bat
The Ion Storm page at www.ionstorm.com of course has been updated by Shadow man to clarify the little bit of "controversy" if you will concerning the Bat image that they posted about a week ago. Several people thought it was massive amounts of polys, but indeed it is a low face count model that you can actually expect to see in Daikatana. Looks great!
Woah
I'll be damned, email actually works again now. Only 498 emails to dig through now. Yea, this should be dandy ass candy fun.
This is NOT an invitation to start emailing me all wacky like now. things will be a bit slow but I hope to get back up to speed by the end of today.
.plan Wagon
Just about every damn person in the world has updated their .plan file in the past couple of days. check out http://finger.planetquake.com and get your fix.
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Bork Bork Bork
Like uh.. this stuff is still broke or something. Everyone got disconnected from the T1 except for me now though.. haha.. I think I'm gonna browse the web for a bit
Grrr...
Still having problems this is not even close to fun. No email no nothing here at Ritual.. our ISP and webhosting guys are chit chatting right now trying to figure out what the hell is wrong, hopefully something will get done today. They seemed pretty confident it would be fixed last night, but guess not.
Daikatana Movies
Don't ask about the trouble I had to go through to get these things here, but there are 3 new MOV's of Daikatana released from Next-Gen. Along with the 3 movies of course comes a new preview that includes some new screenshots as well. Here are the movie clips:
.plan Wagon
Rick Johnson, programmer at Raven Software for Hexen2 has made a .plan update talking about the Rendition port and a few bug fixes among other things.
There will be another patch to fix the patch (sounds like the intro credits to the Holy Grail) which will address:
1. The multiplayer crash bug
2. Save games from previous version loading in and giving you funny graphics.
This will probably be available very shortly, and we are sorry for all of the inconviences that this has causes. We will continue to address any future problems that may exist.
Another release of the Rendition beta may be coming out tonight or early tomorrow. This addresses some rendering glitches and problems where the game stops rendering, but continues to function.
Cash Interview
I never realized that there were 3 programmers working for id Software, but apparently this John Cash character also works at id as well and claims to work on the Quake2 project. Well there is an interview with him on PlanetQuake. Judge for yourself.
Mac Quake News
The MacSoft page has been updated with version 1.08 of MacQuake for the Mac players out there to download..
Zer News
If you are running a Zerstorer server, stop by the homepage and grab the latest progs.dat and qwprogs.dat that help optimize and get things working for Macintosh players.
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Tech Difficulties
Heh.. you guys don't even want to know.. Seems our network and the machine that our web and mail is being hosted on have decided they no longer get along. I did although update stuff that sucks through a telnet to a shell to a ftp etc etc.. fun. It's there though. I hope I dont have this thing screwed up.. cuz I can't even get to our own website to double check it. heh.
updates are short and sweet for now, sorry.
Today's Ripped Off News
Hm.. while I'm at it might as well mooch all of my news from Blue's and Red's page today since email doesnt work either. First thing to mention that I see on Blue's page is Rebel Act Studios is looking for beta testers.
Eye On Updates
The web team at Ion Storm has put together another newsletter. Check out www.ionstorm.com and be entertainted and enlightened.
QStats v1.6b5
New version of this robust log parser / analyzer / chart maker has been released. Steve is workin overtime on this baby and has included linux flavors as well. Check out the homepage.
Pure3D
The boys over at www.pure3d.com sent me an evaluation card last week and I finally got around to putting this card in my machine for uh.. "testing" So far it's great. Texture thrashing = history. 4megs of texture memory is a good thing. I'll talk about it more later after I can actually see what I am posting etc.
Game Design
And you thought they were dead... Madman's page is back with more tips for the fledgling game designer out there who wants to be the next, uh.. big time game designer. Check out the Guide to Game Design.
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Naked Update
Heh, the guys in the office are gonna love to read this one, uh, anyways there are a bunch of interviews posted on the Quake Designer Interviews page. (of course!) Check out this quote from Levelord's:
2. Would you rather be a fisherman, an astronaut or a party clown?
...definitely a party clown. The hours are great and the dress code would enable me to still work at Ritual during my off hours. I also love children... ...having them search my pockets for non-existant pieces of candy... ...only to find my engorged, throbbing Butterfinger... ...oh dear, ...I'm sorry, ...nevermind. ...an astronaut!
Sometimes I'm kinda glad that Levelord is not in the same office as me.. No wait, actually I am always glad. That dude scares me. The other interviews:
One More..
One other interview on the plate today / tonight, Harry Teasley of Valve also did an interview at VideoGameDesign.com as well. -Jaspur
Queen of the Hill
The latest all-female tournament going around town, Queen of the Hill is doing well, the results from the first round have been posted and the favorites are doing well still.
Jedi Online
Saw over on Blue dude's page that JediKnight.net has some info up on the messageboard talking about multiplayer Jedi. It's no QuakeWorld, but hey, the game rocks.
Btw, played it some more last night, this game just rocks my world over and over.
eXtreme Tag
Version 1.0 has been released on the homepage. Sadly, there is no QuakeWorld support in this mod (That counts me out, sorry..) but you oldschool NetQuake lovers can have fun with this one.
Moves
People keep moving and stuff, dig it:
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Copyright Steven M. Gibson |
