Is Quake3 Ready?

it is now...
and steve, fix damn general forum!!! 8-)

I LOVE BRINGING BACK OLD THREADS

I LOVE BRINGING BACK OLD THREADS

I LOVE BRINGING BACK OLD THREADS

hehehe, I am a quick one ain\'t i!

#239:

Ok, let\'s talk innovation.

I say innovation isn\'t a new way of doing old things. Innovation is doing new things, period.

If Quake 3 isn\'t innovative, what the hell is it? Refined and honed. Ok, if that\'s the case, what was Half-Life?

Quake 2 marked the split of FPS into two directions. Valve took the engine, modified it a bit, and refined and honed the single player experience, added (the obvious) cinematics, made the level changeing \'seamless\' (though slow enough to be \'seam-filled\' it seems to me...you ended up waiting just as much in total as in Q2. It was still nice, I agree. Worked better than the \"Prey\" idea, heheh), and otherwise modified the single player in all the obvious ways.

Quake 3, instead, took all FPS before it and extracted the multiplayer elements of it. They modified the gameplay to make the Deathmatch the best in the industry. They dropped the plot, etc, so they weren\'t limited to one useless \'theme\'. Yes, I guess they just refined it, but that\'s exactly what Valve did, as well. Valve did nothing that had never been done before.

On the other hand, Quake 3 went totally multiplayer. Even single play is simulated multiplayer. Nobody has ever made a multiplayer-only FPS before. If Valve had made HL 100% co-op (Daikatana? Eheh...), so that they could concentrate on making a flawless co-op game, that would be comparable... That would be TRUE innovation. Actually more than Quake 3, because Quake 2 was made with Deathmatch heavily in mind, and Deathmatch on the internet isn\'t exactly new, but internet co-op in any game other than Diablo...well...it\'s rare.

As it stands, and as I see it, Quake 3 and Half-Life were both refined in the obvious ways for what they wanted to do. But Quake 3 has something new under it\'s belt, and is thus \'innovative\'. Not in the gameplay, rather in the product itself.

And I say, something doesn\'t have to be %100 new to be worth my while. If it\'s not broke, don\'t fix it. Yes, innovation is nice, and refreshing, and neccesary. But so is tradition. Deathmatch appeared in Doom, was refined in Quake, refined more in Quake 2...and now it\'s perfect, or as close as it\'s likely to get. If this isn\'t your basket of fruit (heheh), go play TF2, with my blessing (I\'m sure you want my blessing, right? Right?), and try to stick THAT out until it reaches it\'s apex, as deathmatch has now done. Try not to say, \"Been there, done that, and now its not worth doing ever again...\" when TF3 comes out.

Oh, and you\'re right, Blizzard shouldn\'t have made StarCraft :P. Personal opinion, of course. They should have helped Westwood make C&C2:TS instead...

ehehe knock knock spite

omg... that was funny. Anon you have been busting on the Q3 Test and Q3 completely and complaining about it the entire time on about 20 posts! Now at #237 you turn around and say we should all stop what you where just doing! 5 or so other post including mine where they were screaming out to you that this was a test and to stop busting on a code test. You just completely doubled back on your self. Pretty funny...

#238: carmack said he won\'t put it in cuz he isn\'t too impressed with it and because it doesn\'t have NT support. he programs on NT so that would be a problem. he said he\'d consider A3D because it has NT support though, but no one will change his mind, it\'d be a decision for him to make himself.

#239: TFC is an addon for half life, not the game. do you still play half life deathmatch ? how many people still do ? if TFC was out for quake 3, i\'d think it\'ll be a lot better because of the framerates and the netplay. the only reason i\'m not playing TFC right now is because when i\'m in a room with two other people my framerates go down a lot making the game unplayable. this hasn\'t happened for me once in quake 3, no matter how many people are on a server, or in one room. and the net code in tfc is horrible when i\'m lagged, the packet loss makes it too hard to play. in quake 3 the pl isn\'t as bad, but there still is some. imo, valve screwed up the qw netcode. maybe they\'ll fix it in the next patch, i won\'t try it til i get a new pc tho.

According to CLQ, over twice as many people are playing Quake3Arena as Tribes CTF. This could be due to the fact that everyone uses 1 name in tribes and some people use many names in q3a, but the amount of time played is higher for q3a as well (and obviously, frags are much higher...but anyone can figure out why that is).

a lot of you complain about quake 3 now. but when the full version is out, we\'ll see how many of you are playing q3 because ut or tf2 are too slow on your pc, or cuz their net code sux. i\'m not saying it will, they\'ll probably optimize it. but the netplay in unreal wasn\'t as good as q2 and in half life it was all screwed up. and tf2 will have more players on a server at a time, which means more lag and lower framerates.

ok. Anon how can you not freaking notice that this is a test! Do you really think there going to give you the full game to download with \'test\' smacked on it!?!? Maybe you don\'t understand that id has always been the ruler of DM? They are masters at there art! Have you read reviews, or do you not want to because they know what the hell they\'re talking about? I\'ve read over 20 reviews and not one has cried about changes they should make in the TEST!!! id has lead the gaming tech world, do you think they won\'t have the best network code? Maybe what they have showed now is old(it\'s still a freaking blast) even if the weapons are old the freaking level of play has rose! Do you think they will add nothing new? They have added enough bells and whistles to call this a freaking game already!

Secondly, I\'ve played Unreal and Half-Life, they were fun, but I could bust them up forever on all the fine details like you are doing now!(your busting on a freaking Test of the game, of coarse nothing is going to be perfect!) I\'ve played Half-Life and Unreal on-line and they couldn\'t old a stick to Quake 2, they are fun, but they are also freaking followers!

One last time, THIS IS A TEST THIS IS A TEST THIS IS A TEST THIS IS A TEST!!! What kind of moron would bust on a TEST, in less you found the game to be completely crap... and again, mag reviews gave this game at the lowest 4 stars, or 80-89%!!! If you set standers for games that high every other game would end up at 1 star on your charts.

(p.s. no of this was meant to be offensive, just to pound some ideas out of your head!)

230: A lot of people like TRIBES, but more players than Q1 or Q2? I\'m not thinking so.

225: That\'s like saying Blizzard shouldn\'t have made StarCraft. And don\'t even TRY to explain why Q3 to Q1&2 isn\'t the same as SC to those other \"crafts.\"

Oh, and to add to 227\'s words of wisdom, don\'t forget that one of the best \"innovations\" about Q3 will be its portability and modifiability. (if that\'s a word eh) I mean, screwing around with Q3 is probably going to be a real treat as opposed to Q2, and then those modifications will work on all the different OS\'z!

I can\'t wait to see what kinda screwy curves-out-the-ass maps will be playable once NV10 comes out. (though that\'s more of a tech thing and not innovative content)

Seems a lot of the crits here are missing something. online Quake is at its core a simple dm game, that\'s all it\'s meant to be and it does it the best (it\'s the most played multi-player fps, right?) . So, what\'s happening here is it\'s being optimised for dm multiplay and that\'s all
(whether it\'s been well optomized or not is irrelevant to this point), and shouldn\'t be compared to any other online fps game of a different style (team fortress),
and even if it is getting more newbie friendly consider this
-Whether the machine gun is too powerfull or not it\'s not gonna change how well your aim is, your reactions are etc i.e. how well you play.
so may be worthwhile showing how good a player you are by being able to cope w/the changes
-More noewbies means wider user base means more exposure means bigger tounaments=bigger prizes (which is cool, last year Thresher came to face the uk\'s champ in london\'s no.1 night club)

#225:

The very fact that they ditched all superfluous junk, like the crappy Q1/Q2 single player, and concentrated on just making a kickass deathmatch game, is, in and of itself innovative. Nobody has done anything like this before. They\'re taking what made the earlier games great and forging a great game out it.

IMHO, too many of you people have too narrow a view of innovation. You think of it only in the terms you\'ve heard it refered to before, relative to computer games. Yes, the choreographed scenes in HL were innovative. The \'complex\' plot is innovative. The models and gameplay are innovative. But these are the obvious innovations, and it was only a matter of time before they were done.

Q3 is different. id is breaking new ground with it. And that is true innovation. They\'re doing the not-so-obvious.


Oh, and BTW, I wrote #193, which is why I\'m doing so much defending.

#233:

Why, Quake 3, of course!

Team Fortess 2 would definately be a (fairly distant) second, though.

Tribes and Unreal suffer from the same malady, IMHO. Both have crappy-assed weapons. The rocket launchers, nailguns, grenade launchers, and shotguns in Quake, Quake 2, and Quake 3 have always had a certain solidity to them. Their sounds are deep and roaring, and the explosions are big and loud. The models, even the RL in Q1, all look solid, if not realistic.

Half-Life\'s weapons look realistic, and also manage to satisfy. Nobody could complain that the explosions in HL weren\'t enough...

But Unreal? And Tribes? The weapon sounds are squeeky little \'blips\' and \'boops\', the explosions are green, orange and blue bursts of colour, the weapon models all look like you could break them over your knee, and the enemy can always take a dozen hits. Seeing as how you always, at all times, have a gun in front of your face, and shoot almost constantly, this is enough to sink a game for me. There\'s nothing less satisfying than nailing a dude from across the map with a sniper rifle, and...nothing. Do it again....nothing. Again...nothing. Finally, you hit him a fourth time and he drops. I like Action Quake\'s sniper rifle, where a hit will take down your target, with extreme prejudice. The same is true for all weapons. Pissing someone off with a dinky little laser doesn\'t do it for me.

I agree. Anyone who calls DM a mindless shoot-anything-that-moves experience has never played a good 1-on-1. I hadn\'t until the beginning of this year, I had always played on our school network with 4-16 at all times, and I\'ll admit that I was getting (a little!) bored with it. I thought 1-on-1 would be a lame FFA. When there were only two people, we\'d play co-op FvF or something.

But then I tried 1-on-1... (Oh, the drama!)

Seriously, to play good 1-on-1, you not only have to think about what you need and where that is, you have to think about where your opponent is and what he\'s getting/doing. Essentially, you have to play two players (at least, that would be the ideal). Not only that, but you have to figure out where he thinks you\'re going and what you\'re doing. Then, you have to adjust your path to make it less predictable. And then, of course, you have to take into account that your opponent, if he\'s worth his salt, is also doing his best to be unpredictable, and you have to attempt to account for that. And of course, you know that he knows that you\'re trying to be unpredictable...and so on, ad infinitum.

And that\'s not all! No, far from it. In the beginning, the two of you don\'t see each other, because you\'re avoiding each other to build up your arsenal. Finally you do meet...and suddenly you\'re caught in a veritable dogfight, with dozens of different options at your disposal. You need to predict his aim. You need to predict his weapon usage, and adjust yours accordingly. You have to decide when you should strike, when you should bail, when you should pursue, when you should nurse you wounds and stockpile ammo again.

And the whole time, you\'re trying to gain an edge by discerning his patern, his habits, his reflexes.

Mindless, you say? It sounds almost like a friggin science! There are times in a good 1-on-1 when it feels like you\'re playing chess. If you\'ve never experienced this, go back, just once, and play 1-on-1 Quake 2 with a friend. Try to predict him. Try to outdo him. Try to ambush him. Not so easy, eh? This is why good 1-on-1ers can whoomp your sorry ass, without necessarily having better skills.

Whereas I could (theoretically) get bored of FFA DM, I could never, ever get bored of this.

what about painkeep for q1?...that had some strategy but was still fast and furious...i like the id keeps things simple tho, i dont want to have to bind every key on my keyboard to some action...

216: Heh, apparently some stupid people play DM. But keep in mind that while DM has stupid players, DM players are not stupid.

And about the \"thought\" involved in placing a remote mine... I\'ll just compare that with a successful rocket kill on Q3test2.

mine:
1. See enemy
2. Determine/change path of enemy
3. Place mine somewhere in path of enemy
4. Click button when enemy is near mine

rocket:
1. See enemy
2. Note path of enemy
3. Consider possible changes in direction based on map
4. Choose opponent\'s most likely path
5. Judge best location & time of rocket hit considering rocket and opponent vectors, as well as splash damage and any \"bouncing\" you might want to get done.
6. Aim at the proper place. (this is a *projectile*, not just point and click)
7. Fire rocket
8. Follow through =]

-=/ DinK

Touche, #216, RTS and FPS can and eventually will be one and the same (TF2? Starsiege:Tribes was a kickass game, but the commander mode sucked ass...). I still think I\'ll be playing more Q3 than TF2 by a factor of five, though... And RTS elements have no place in Q3A.

And, though I gave up on HL DM pretty quick (ping... ... ... ... ...pong), I fondly remember FvF and BotS and Ultimate Quake (anyone remember that one?), with their trip mines, and nukes, and spells, and so forth.

Just a few notes:

I think a big point that a lot of you are missing is that Q3A is meant to be the best deathmatch experience you can get, or best CTF experience or whatever else comes in the box. If you are looking for long drawn out team games, you shouldn\'t make it a point to sit here and bitch about how Q3A will bring nothing to online gaming. It\'s sure as hell going to bring ME a lot of fun (and hopefully programming experience) over the next few months.

People complain far too much about the wrong things in the test. I enjoy reading the lists of suggestions (packs, footsteps, weap switch etc..) but a lot of people don\'t realise that this is a TECH TEST. I mean, there are people complaining about the CROSSHAIR and TEXTURES and things like that in the test!

I love it when people say things like \"they need to fix XX weapon because it is hard to hit people when I get lagged to hell.\"

Whoever compared Q3 to hockey is totally right. Q3 isn\'t a game that I sit down and play for an hour to beat a level, it\'s a hobby/sport that I can play for 5 minutes or have fun with all day.

...and while Q3A won\'t be deathmatch only, it\'s annoying when people call DM just mindless shooting. If you think DM is just about shooting whatever you see, then you either dislike it and are pulling insults out of your ass, you suck at it, or you are very good at it and don\'t realize what all you\'re doing. Lack of long-term strategy doesn\'t make a game mindless. You just have to consider a lot of things very quickly.

-=/ DinK (just testing)

Ok, now I\'m pissed again :)

-#206: Fine by me, bring \'em both on up here...

-#207: \"Just open your mind...the only thing Id is good for anymore is their engines\" Um...can you say, contradiction? Don\'t parrot. Parroting is bad. Be sure you know what an \"Open Mind\" is before you go telling other people they need one.

-#209: For damned sure! UT might be good, maybe. I\'m hoping.

-#210: Woah, sanity! You\'re making me feel all embarassed for foaming at the mouth and whatnot!