Another late night .plan update from John Carmack at fingershack.com. It looks like Quake3 will be going to a skeletal animation system. (As opposed to vertex based animation, which Q3 does right now) The benefit of the new system that Carmack didnt mention in this .plan update is saving extra memory. With vertex based animation the locations of all vertices have to be stored in memory, with bones it's much simpler as several vertices are tied to single bones making less coordinates to have to be stored in memory. At least I'm pretty sure. :)

I implemented the loading and rendering support this weekend and tested it with a couple hand-inserted bones, so now we just need to write the glue between character studio and the new .md4 format.  The new format is bone based, but it is NOT hierarchial. Each vertex just has an arbitrary weighted list of the bones that influence it. Bones are just 4x3 matricies of floats.

The NVNews guys have a Quake3 Tweaking guide which are always handy.

With the word yesterday of problems with the master server reporting empty servers, according to Stomped the GameSpy guys finally figured out how to get around things on their end and you should be seeing larger server listings again. If I may chant the PQ theme along with Mr Heaslip, ROCK!

Also, I failed to mention this yesterday but in the 2nd part of Graeme Devine's .plan update he challenges people to compare the net codes of Quake, QuakeWorld, Quake2, and Quake3. Honestly, with the horrid player collision code, and the players lerping around in Quake3 right now I'd choose QW or Quake2. Also I'll try and squeeze and explanation outa Jack on the time-spanned error correction in Quake3 which bugs the hell outa me.

Well, instead of me explaining this one just check out the .plan update from Graeme Devine up there at id Software. Those Quake3 servers didnt dissapear off the master server, they are just empty. He explains how to get them back:

Some of you have commented on the master server being a bit odd right now. It's actually running just fine, it's just responding to queries for protocol 41, which is not entirely compatible with protocol 40. Only servers with people on there will actually show up. You can force showing the empty servers with the keyword "empty", but this isn't so useful since in 1.08 you can't combine that with game types (e.g. you can't say "empty tourney"). For completeness's sake, you can also say "full". But heck, if you type in "nude reptiles", you can scan that too and get exactly zip.
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Guess it's never too early for a Quake3 programmer mailing list. With the announcement of the tools release by John Carmack CRT sends word that PlanetQuake is hosting a couple of mailing list for those of you interested in hax0ring Quake3.

Q3Coding is a moderated list for discussion of the actual code, including "how to" questions, the client DLL, porting Quake 2 mods, bugs and fixes, etc. This list probably won't get much traffic until the actual code is released, but you can subscribe now A second unmoderated list has been set up for general Quake 3 Coding discussion (e.g. mod ideas, compiling help, general C/coding questions) and can be joined here

As I sit here trying to recover everything after that nasty crash today, I (broken link) Quake3 Messageboard which has to be one of the most impressive uses of time I've seen in a while. Keep in mind you gotta have some free time of your own to want to read this. Just read the comments

PC Paradox has an interview with the Bitboys behind Glaze3D...getting...deja vu.

TechZone has posted an interview with one of the (Bit)boys behind that Glaze3D muscle-chip that has been much talked about, but not seen yet. Hrmm...quite a few assumptions here eh?

Q: Assuming the Voodoo4 is equal to 4 Obsidian boards running in tandem, or 8 Voodoo2 boards with a total external memory (SDRAM) of 96MB and a fill rate approaching 1000 mtexels/second, will the Glaze3D 1200 be able to compete?

A:Voodoo 2 does 90 MPIX/s, so Voodoo 4 would do 720 MPIX/s. At true color and with a 32-bit Z this would require 8.6 GB/s of memory bandwidth. This is not available without embedded DRAM and Voodoo 4 doesn’t use embedded DRAM. So Glaze3D definitely has more better performance.

I'm not quite sure where the Quake3Nation guys dug up this information, but they have a full character list of all of the players to be included in the full version of Quake3. The list includes an impressive 60+ characters including the Doom marine, Quake "Ranger" and Quake2 "Bitterman"

Bitterman - [More Information]
Your favorite lead character from Quake II is back from kicking Stroggs ass.  This vetran will show you how not to play.  He uses the "Razor" model with Bitterman skin.

The Quake3Arena Bus Tour page has another update with word that there will be an announcement later this afternoon (a surprise) and whoever can guess it by 5pm today will score a Q3 t-shirt courtesy of Anna Kang. Check out the page for the scoop.Also, for you weenies out there who cant figure out strategies in Q3Test of your own, here is a Q3Test2 strategy guide which should help you on your way to manhood.

I am carrying this one over from yesterday since it's such a hot topic.So with the recent news that there most likely won't be any more Q3Test releases until the OEM demo, do you guys feel like Quake3 is going to turn out ok? I mean given we havent seen the BFG or grenade launcher, and the lightning gun is going to change a bit. What about the rest of the game dynamics? There seems to be a number of tweaks left to be made which I'm assuming id will take in to account. The v1.08 code is certainly not a reflection of the final game code, but man do I hope they change a few things. Any "final thoughts" guys? Carry it over to the Q3 messageboard if you're feeling extra saucy.

Anna Kang at id Software was kind enough to send word that the Quake3Arena bus tour page has been updated with a good amount of info on where you can catch the bus and get a peek at Quake3 Arena in all its glory. Here are a few of the Texas locations which kick it off:

August 15, Sunday - Dallas at CompUSA Arlington
August 21, Saturday - Houston at CompUSA First Colony
August 22, Sunday - Houston at CompUSA Weslanyan
August 25, Wednesday - Austin at University of Texas

FiringSquad plans on taking a good hard look at that whole Glaze3D deal which everyone loves to buzz about. Here is their preview article of sorts.

The 'Squad wrote up a little history lesson and preview of the BitBoysOy's recently re-announced (on August 2nd) Glaze3D with their monster specs while down at Siggraph. Okay, so at this point it is vaporware...hopefully it's not though by early 2000:

It looks like the Glaze 3D chip is finally going to make it to silicon with a little help from Infineon, the company previously known as Siemens Semiconductor Group. Bitboys has a silicon group at Infineon helping them with the layout. They expect silicon in December or January, and they plan to ship in Q1 or Q2 2000.

How fast is Glaze going to be? Well, the standard 150MHz quote doesn't sound too "next-generation" by today's standards, but it's an approach we're likely to see from everyone in the near future. With dual and quad-texturing pipelines, the need for a higher clockrate is partially alleviated. Is this the right approach to 3D? Well, we feel it's a good interim solution. In the end, MHz matters. However, today's graphics port doesn't have enough power or space to accomodate increasingly powerful processing units. Until a fundamental change in AGP is implemented, we're going to have to make do with innovation over brute force

Beyond3D has an interview with those now famous BitBoys from Glaze3D.

CGO is taking a look at that Glaze3D announcement that went out a few days ago. NV10 and Voodoo4 look out?

Since we're all having to download another 30MB+ Q3Test, the boys at id felt sorry for us and added a new player model, Sarge. Graeme Devine tells us that all you have to do is type "model sarge" at the console and you're golden.

John Carmack updated his .plan apologizing for the lack of a new Mac client, and with his normal array of fixes. Here's a couple of the latest:

* Spectator's are no longer "tied" with people who have 0 frags
* Those of you who run at a high field of view (fov) now get to see your weapon. I run at 120, and haven't seen a lightning gun up close

Well, havent done this in a while so I figured we can give this new comment system a shot. What do you guys think are the biggest changes / improvements that need to be made to Quake3? It's a pretty simple question but it leaves a lot of room there for anything. I've listed off my own personal beefs with the current code and I'm pretty curious what you guys think as well. You can just post them here or as always head over to that incredibly busy Quake3 messageboard. While on the topic I traded some email with John Carmack a couple of days ago and he addressed the following questions of mine (I'll paraphrase)

Q: Mouse cursor missing in windowed mode, cant move my Quake3 around?
Carmack: Oops, fixed
Q: Timedemo sometimes capping at 100fps?
Carmack: Don't think so but will investigate.
Q: Teamplay match player spawns with too much machingun ammo?
Carmack: Will discuss it with the guys.
Q: Annoying to pick up a rocket and ammo next to each other and have either 11 or 15 rockets depending on order they are picked up.
Carmack: That won't be changed.

CGReview has posted their own look into the future that is Quake3.