As he said he would, Graeme Devine from over at id updated his .plan with a list of things they are fixing in the upcoming Q3 patch. Quite a list, so I'll only paste a few items here.

- New scoreboard.
- New team scoreboard
- Voting can change the gametype if the new map doesn’t support the current gametype
- Protect CD key into a different file
- Team overlay tidied up
- Bots don't start kill, hitnokill, or hitnodeath chats when there are nearby enemies
- Late player start on screen score display fixed
- Re-add mouselook
- Callvote nextmap
- Extra/different pakfile disconnect bug fixed
- Packetloss on the scoreboard
- Delay deferred loading of players until after death
- Load/Save config re-added

Graeme also mentions he will putting up a bug database in HTML format soon. Be sure to read the entire update here. Also take your discussions over to the Quake3 messageboard if the flat mode of the comments bugs ya.

Aqua's comprehensive Quake3 Guide has been updated. This guide has info on bots, weapons, powerups, armour, health, ammunition, world, levels, console commands as well as visual and connection tweaks.

I've been hearing some crazy numbers on Quake3 sales figures, and it looks like they werent kidding. Activision just put out this press release announcing Quake3 selling 50,000 copies in the first 3 days on shelves, not including pre-orders. The PR states "QUAKE III Arena on Track to Be Hottest Selling PC Game of Holiday Season" which sounds pretty positive.

The NVNews page has a fresh set of Quake3 benchmarks on the GeForce that have been updated since the v1.11 release (full build) of Quake3.

A lot of IRC regulars seem to be getting a kick out of QIR which just released a new version. It's an IRC bot that tracks Quake3 servers and reports status of them online through your favorite IRC channel.

Activision has put their Quake3 Support FAQ with information on things that possible go wrong while playing/trying to play Quake 3 Arena

For those of you still trying to memorize all of the maps and cant ever remember what map looks like which, Zoid from id Software was kind enough to put together this nifty index of all the levels for you guys which I linked to larger images from the Quake3 levels archive. Probably wanna bookmark that url for reference until you have all the levels burned into your brain. :) Here is what captain Zoid sent along with it.

Lately, people have been telling me, "Wow did you see that cool thing on q3dm14?" and I can't for the life of me remember what map q3dm14 is. I do plan to memorize them in the future, but for now I need some help.Using the Unix ImageMagick montage utility, I was able to quickly cook up a reference image for all the maps that include the BSP file name and the map title. It's really handy when you just can't remember what map q3dm10 was. I hope that other people find it useful as I have.

Paul Jaquays, for some reason losing his way going to my Quake3 messageboard got confused and posted here instead a bit about the fabled lost maps of Quake3. (Thanks mugger)As many people noticed there were a number of Quake3 screenshots that have been released  (look a couple pages deep) which depict levels that never made it into the game. Here's a bit of why there arent in there:

1. They weren't particularly fun (confusing, too large, etc.).
2. They added nothing substantial to the game (they may have been too much like a map that was already going to be in the game).
3. They were built around what turned out to be non-bot compatible features (like flight).
<snip>
Then there are the screenshots that appeared in early magazine stories and on the Quake 3 promotional poster a year ago that feature images that can't be found in production maps. Some, like the entirely "organic" maps, just didn't work well as game play areas (and the designer who had the vision and the most motivation to make them left in mid-project). Others were prototypes or concept "sketches" or "studies" to try out construction styles. As our work with the new "materials" like shaders and curves matured, we moved in stylistic directions that made better use of them....<snip>

For those of you working on your Quake3 config and trying to do all those crazy advanced binds etc, The Bind Arena has quite a bit of useful information.

Word from LokiGames is that LinuxQuake3 is ahead of schedule, in fact I've already gotten 2 reports of people getting a CD in the mail. Good news for all the linux buffs out there.

Word from LokiGames is that LinuxQuake3 is ahead of schedule, in fact I've already gotten 2 reports of people getting a CD in the mail. Good news for all the linux buffs out there.

The QERadiant.com website run by Robert Duffy of id Software has been updated with word that we can expect the tools for Quake3 to be released for public mod making mania in about a week. The web page has a list of all the included tools, here's what RobbyD had to say on the release:

The editor and map building tools should be available in about a week. This will include a prebuilt editor, q3map, and additional support files to get you going with map design and construction. There will also be some sample maps and shader exam les.

I'm in the process of running the editor against various GL configurations and making sure it runs well on Win98 machines. I'll post a list of confirmed GL setups that I found to work, with the release. If it runs on a driver set installed by GLS tup I'll call it good. The tool and game source will follow sometime after this release. A few things still need done in that area but it should follow reasonably soon after the binaries. The "about a week" time frame estimate is just that. An estimate.
<snip>

So, with the PGL disappearing and the CPL taking off like crazy with stuff like their $100,000 Quake3 tournament to be held next year on the west coast as well as i2e2 doing some UT tourneys, a lot of people are still wondering if this whole professional gamer thing is going to take off. Challenge-US has a look at Quake3 from the perspective of a professional gamer.

Quake3Mods.net has opened it's doors. It will contain information on creating mods for Q3A and also offers hosting.

It looks like Paul Steed is about ready to start helping out all the anxious mod makers out there. Check out the post he's made to the Q3World editing forum to kick things off. It's a little techy but I figure anything Quake3 related makes people happy today. :) Remember, the source stuff hasnt been released for Quake3 just yet as Carmack is still working on some 'clean up' and documentation. It should be soon though which probably means within a week or two.

All models are currently limited to one gesture. The reason is that a gesture is associated with the upper body. The other upper body dedicated animations are: shooting , hitting , changing weapons , idle with weapon (one frame) , idle with gauntlet (one frame) The only other upper body animations occur in the death anims which naturally involve the whole body. Remember that the characters must be divided into 3 distinct parts... <snip>

Also, I'll put together a final Quake3 screenshots section over the weekend of 'action shots' to go along with the Characters and Levels shots for you guys since so many overseas guys have requested it.

Ok, these are some spoilers so if you wanna figure out all the secrets in Quake3 on your own then dont read any further. Of course if you already checked out all the levels and characters in Quake3 I imagine this stuff wont hurt your feelings. For those of you who just wanna see all the 'cool stuff' as soon as possible here is a list of the many tips that people have emailed in.

- WindmiLL sent in this image of a UF character that shows up at the bottom of Q3DM16. Other people to send it in were Neo[SLG] and Kurtz. While on the subject, check out the latest UF which features Quake3.

- D34thM0ng3r was the first to finally find DopeFish on Q3DM11 near the shotgun and teleporter in the wall. Image sent in by NSAspook

- A pair of images on Q3DM19, check out the OMM logo on the back of the antenna lift, and the UF dude on the bottom of the level. Thanks Rick, NSAspook, and Redmeat.

- Homeboy Scott was the first one to send in this image of Eric Webb's head (and closeup) which is in Q3DM15. Other poeple to send it in were Brad Shoemaker, ThreadZ, and JayZee. Eric is the resident id monkey who answers all those q3feedback emails.

- JayZee also sent in word that there is a hidden player in the Quake3DEMO, just type /model sarge/krusade at the console. A good place to check it out would be Q3DM0 which has a mirror.

The guys at NVNews have posted a few new Quake3 benchmarks with the GeForce256 for those of you still curious about performance. You can also check out my performance benchmarks from a little while back.

To follow up on the GameSpy registered Quake3 filter I posted yesterday, the guys at PingTool have created a filter to use as well.

A lot of people have been asking where the heck the editor and source code for Quake3 are since they want to get hacking away on those mods now that the game has been released. Well there is no editor on the CD but Redwood got this word from Todd Hollenshead that 'soon' is the key word. Also, I fixed a couple of the muffed up thumbnails on the Quake3 character images. You can check out every single one of the characters in the full game now, sorry about that. Here's Todd's reply to Sean:

Not certain at this point, but "soon". There's still a bit of cleanup type work to do before we upload it.

tsh

Word on the Quake 3 Arena news page is that Quake3 is indeed showing up in stores around the USA today, and more interestingly for the Europeans that they are expecting it to start showing up over there around the 15th of this month now. That date has changed so many times though who the heck knows anymore. The 15th is probably when it will show up in most places but as Activision has made it clear before it will most likely start showing up in a few stores before that. Thanks JayZee as always for the tip.

update: In case there was any doubt, I've gotten numerous emails reporting Quake3 packages arriving from Fedex, as well as it being available in just about every software store location around the USA. Quake3 has hit, go get it. Stores that have confirmed at least one location with Quake3 on shelves: Software Etc, Best Buy, Fry's, Babbages, CompUSA, Software Plus, and several smaller non-chain stores.

Anyone here already get a copy? Tell us what you think!