Q3 Mission Pack

ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH Will this work-day never end! Friday is soooo long today. UG!

"As for being so mad about id charging for a mission pack, you must be pissed that Epic charges for UT. Because it's no more than the Unreal engine with bug fixes (and not enough bug fixes obviously) plus some multiplayer content. Which is exactly what the Q3 mission pack should be, fixes for Q3 plus some new content. Only Epic wants to charge full price for this Unreal patch. Just because you prefer to play this Unreal mission pack doesn't mean that your judgement should be clouded and that you can't see that people who liked Quake3 will get exactly the same thing Unreal fans got with UT, except for cheaper, and sooner."

Yeah, well...Q3's mission pack won't tweak the netcode, weapons, provide a new interface, provide better bots, two new (slightly unoriginal) game modes, around 40 brand new levels, etc. There's quite a difference. And if UT was a mission pack, why can't I play it through the original Unreal executable? I can play Opposing Forces through Half-Life, I can play Quake 2 mission packs through Quake 2 (if I actually wanted to)...

And of course, I never really played Unreal. Therefore UT seems VERY new to me...

Oh yeah, I believe you pointed out Epic's "lies" about its D3D code and such. It's called hype, every company does it. id Software called Quake 3 "THE deathmatch game" (or something like that), and it obviously isn't. If it was, then we wouldn't be here arguing over whether Q3 or UT is better, because we'd already know! :)

I had a long response to Rattboy and Belzebitch (both of you have appropriate names, by the way), but damn Shugashack lost it. So I will say this:

Rattboy, I don't blame nVidia for everything. I think nVidia has partly contributed to the problem, but I think that it's Epic's fault that so many are having D3D problems.

Belzebitch, quite simply, I didn't care what Tim Sweeney was talking about. I became a UT zealot when I started playing around with the demo and noticed that it was fun as hell. The only Epic games I have ever played before UT was Jazz Jackrabbit 1, and a little of Unreal, which I didn't really care for.

And quite simply, I expect Quake 3's engine to be good from a tech point of view. They spent practically the entire development time on the engine itself (it's showing), and it's Carmack, a coding God. I expected no less than a kickass engine from him. Too bad the game doesn't match the quality of the engine, in my opinion.

*cough* Eh heh.

- Holesinswiss

The funny thing is, in essence, we are debating over the "value" of this Mission Pack and whether it will be worth buying or not. Speculation, speculation, more speculation and we haven't even been offered the slightest clue what will be in it other than a couple screenshots of new player models.

- Holesinswiss

Hell, Rattboy, I don't even know about the palletized textures thing in UT... Epic programmers have said that the texture issue is the reason for the hitching but I strongly suspect that Epic's got something to do with that too. Hell, I don't know, I'm not an Epic programmer or an nVidia expert (and as far as I know, neither are you).

Personally, I think officially sanctioned "content" for a game you enjoy (even semi-enjoy) playing is worth its weight in gold. Unless it's really horrid, I'll probably be shelling out the $30 or whatever for the "Mission Pack" when it comes out.

- Holesinswiss

Rattboy, fuck you.

Belzebitch, fuck you.

I think that if I have the cash, I will be buying. It will have to be substantially different content than the original game, or I will be forced to consider the other alternatives. FAKK2 and TWINE are both Q3A and compelling single-player titles, so maybe the extra bucks would be better spent there? I dunno, either way, you people will pay $30 dollars for a mouse pad for God/s' sake, just to give you the psychological edge in rail shots. Go for it, its only money.

so it's offical ,Id's gona charge for this fix errrr pak. bummer dudes.

Big factual error: to my knowledge, only one person at Epic is working on the PS2 version of the engine so far (that would be Greenmarine). Everyone else is supporting UT and the next-gen technology.

Isn't GOD already supposed to be lined up as Epic's publisher, too? They did publish Jazz Jackrabbit 2, after all.

Oh, and in general Mr. Rattboy... you sound like you're trying to come down hard on Epic at all costs.

I like UT. I like Q3. I think both do things largely right but with a few flaws (in different areas). Why does everyone feel obligated to paint one or the other as the incarnation of evil that can do no right while glossing over the other's work?

Am i the only lazy ass that doesnt have a job and plays quake between classes?

It's funny how Daggah complains about this pack, when he hates the full game and he will definitely NOT be buying it. Don't buy it dude! Nobody's putting a gun to your head. I'm probably not going to buy it either unless it's got really good reviews.

As for Epic and D3D, it's really funny how Tim Sweeney says that D3D is *the* API to develop for if you do Windows development, more so than OpenGL, when his own D3D code is SHIT compared to his GLide code and his GLide code is slower while pushing fewer polygons and using smaller textures and fewer effects than the competing *cross-platform* OpenGL engine.

I guess Daggah lets it slide when Epic does or says something stupid, but for id there is not forgiveness!

Read this: you'll all feel beter

http://www.theavclub.com/redmeat.html

Will id incorporate other forms of multiplayer combat? Geez, I'd like to see a bit more than 4...

Thanks!

-Lex

6/28/00

This is sad. Yeah, Epic had more in thier UT game, more bugs, more hitching for D3D users, more promotion of 3dfx hardware, and more Beta messages [you rememebr the netcode of unreal? try the OpenGL of UT.]

Now the Bonus pack AKA the useless pack. You know the one where certain skins don't show up in team play games, even though they were vigorously testing it for months to ensure a high quality product. The one where runes just sometimes exist but are invisible? The one that has had NOTHING said of fixing these things?

The first thing I saw in my UT package was a statement claiming the CD protection systen [it isn't protecting me] would prevent D3D detection. Umm, how does a CD protection system interfere with hardware detection, never mind, this is EPIC, its nvidia fault somehow, right Daggah?

Then the oepnGL that was supposed to have been improved from the Demo, was the exact same thing. Furthermore the promises of making D3D work better in computers with less than 128MB of memeory we all saw posted at the Unreal Tech page in November was pretty much a lie, as they copies and pasted the known issues and bugs from the Demoes and listed them for the v 400 retail product. Then 402, and 405. Wonder if it will get copy and pasted in for 412 [or whatever its finally called] too? I bet it is.

Shortly after 405, Epic abandoned thier PC users and began targeting the consoles, where maybe they can hack it, but I ain't gonna buy thier product still, and then showed off a demo running at 10FPS while talking about how fast the system was. Am I the only one that thinks they should just shut-up about speed by now?

Right before CGD whatever, Sweeney says he will finnish the Unreal1 patch and release it after the conference. Conference ended when? Patch is where?

GT is no longer going to distribute EPIC's games so they are searching for new distributors for thier next game [should they not finnish what they start first?, I guess not.]

Yet you complain because Id releases a normal Expansion pack [like in the past] which costs $29.99?

Ok...........................................................

This sucks. I won't buy it.

r_speeds is only indirectly related to big-ass rooms. it all depends on how many polygons are in view. generally big-ass rooms have lots of polygons because (no matter how undetailed it is) people don't stretch the texture. stretching the textures a LOT (like 32x) will really lower r_speeds. also, skies are only 1 poly, no matter how big.

warez it? I don't think so. You can be sure id is spending mucho time on making sure that only those who paid for the new shrinkwrapped content will be able to play it (multi that is.) I could go into detail on HOW they'll probably do it, but I don't care since I'm more than likely not buying it, or going to the trouble of running renamed, slightly mod'd versions that only a minority of public warez'd servers will run the "risk" of having installed.

Seems like alot of people are thinking of warezing this "expansion". But here is something to think about (this is my reply to 117 question) (Sorry if this is the second time you are reading this but when it was first reported that Q3 was going to have a cdkey, the HalfLife way of doing it seem to clarify things. And I don't know who reads these messages in comments or threads.)

Half Life has an expansion, Opp-Force. It also had extra multiplayer models and maps.

This is how it worked. Installing it required an existing installation of Half-Life. It then upgraded the program and added a new mod - opforce.

You were also given a new cd key.

So one way they prevented other people from playing on opforce servers was to check the cd key to see if it was from the expansion, they did it when they authorized it from the WON servers.
There were also other things which were added to the expansion, like that grapple-tenticle. (Some maps required it.)

Of course, Half-Life doesn't have bots either.

I hope this helps or clouds things up for you. At the very least, I feel that it will have a cd key. They have a cd key in the main product to prevent warez, why wouldn't they do that with the expansion?