A bit of CPL news for you guys. Firstly AVault has a few more details on the $50,000 Descent3 tourney going down at the end of this month in Las Vegas. Also on tap for the CPL guys is a tournament in NYC called GroundZero scheduled for September 9th. Here's the latest from Jerry on that one:

Several updates have been made to the Ground ZERO website. The SCHEDULE section has been updated with a detailed event schedule, including times of all tournament matches.Also, tournament rules have been added, under our RULES section. Our LOCATION section is updated as well, with a printable map and a list of nearby hotels and restaurants. In addition, we now have a Public Message Board (FORUM), dedicated to publicly answering any Ground ZERO related questions.

Speaking of this stuff, Cached has a blurb from Tim Sweeney stating that he's pretty sure Mark Rein is/will be working with the PGL guys about getting Unreal Tournament into the PGL if "the time is right" when release rolls around.

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.

The man John Carmack has been workin through the night in his regular fashion trying to speed up that Quake3 game you might have heard of. The .plan update is entirely massive and if you're into that programming thing I suggest you check it out at our favorite Fingershack.com. Remember that 30% speed hit Carmack mentioned a couple weeks ago? Well he fixed it, here ya go kids:

Performance is within my tolerance now:

Q3demo1 dll: 52.9
Compiled: 50.2
Interpreted: 43.9

I will probably work a bit more on performance, but that is the ballpark that it will be in.  5% speed hit in most levels, somewhat more in the big open arenas.  Next week I will be getting the other modules set up for running in the virtual machine and see how their performance is. It is a pretty cool setup - you can have some modules as dlls, some as interpreted bytecodes, and some as compiled bytecodes.  We will leave the user interface interpreted to save memory.

A bit of late QuakeCon99 coverage for you guys to check out. If that Shack picturebook of QuakeCon99 just wasnt enough for you then you should have a look at what Sujoy has to say about the event after coming home. (Sujoy was the closest match for DieharD-r3v in the tourney) Then head over to the Violent Femmes picturebook as well. Lastly have a look at BostonChick's QuakeCon Diary.

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.

I open Outlook Express
and what do I see?
Packets of 1 and 0's
the email fairy has left them for me!

/me takes a bow. Anyway, the news well seems to be a bit dry tonight, but a new Q3TStats has been released, including Q3Test 1.08 support. Seeing how you do on servers is pretty freaking cool, so everybody go download this and install it if you have a server. I'll be checking on you.

A little tip from Graeme Devine up there at id Software for those of you who plan to do some freindly fragging. If GameSpy isnt your thang, the Q3Test intenal server browser has filters of its own that you can play with. Here is the quick blurb from our man via Fingershack.com:

BTW. You can search for Q3A Internet Servers using the keywords "ffa", "tourney", "deathmatch", "team" and "tournament" in the Internet game browser screen to only show specific types of maps.

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

That wacky Redwood guy has word that the Linux Q3Test v1.08 has been quietly slipped out onto the FTPs for you guys to download. Here are the first couple of places to grab it:

q3test-1.08-glibc-2.i386.rpm (34,435KB): Stomped FTP id Software FTP
q3test-1.08-glibc-2.i386.tar.gz (34,434KB): Stomped FTP id Software FTP

Just got word from Turmoil that the NYGroundZero CPL tournament will be giving away an impressive $10,000 cash prize to the first place winner of their official Quake3 Arena tournament to be held in about 27days from now in NYC.

Just as QuakeCon was wrapping up, Steve had posted some information regarding the possibility of a fixed demo playing feature, as well as DieharD's demo being included. Well Blue just received an email from Graeme Devine giving us both bad news and good news, all at the same time:

No there will not be a special update for playing back the QuakeCon levels. We're in pretty much the final push now to get this thing out the door and we've started to make CD images etc. to test out the game, so another test is looking doubtful. I expect the next update will be the full demo, followed in very short order by the game itself.

Quake3Nation has hooked up with an email from Kevin Cloud of id Software talking about those nifty "shader" thingies everyone seems to be wondering about that are used so heavily in Quake3.

Arena Universe has an interview with Paul Steed, the gentleman who brought the fabled booth babes to QuakeCon, and who has also been known to dabble into making models for some game called Quake. Here's a clip:

MBN - Being the kickass modeler that you are, can you tell the readers how many different models there aprox will be in the final product?

PAUL - There'll be 20 models in total with unique ctf skin support. They average 810 faces each.

Not to be left out, the GameCenter guys have posted a QuakeCon99 wrap-up which is a pretty good read. They of course talk about all of the sponsors involved as well as talk about the event possibly foreshadowing future professional gaming events. The Engineering room along with Team Abuse have updates as well.. Also check out the QuakeCon99 Picture Book Huntsman put together.

With all the talk about gaming being eventually seen as a "true" sporting event, it was interesting to witness the end of a three-day tournament. The view on each player's screen was put on two pairs of monitors in order for as many spectators as possible to witness the game. In addition, fixed "cams" were put on the two largest areas of the level to view the action. The responses of the crowd to various in-game activities (escaping a close death, a particularly excellent shot, and the like) were exactly like the reactions one would expect at a "true" sporting event; with this type of audience reaction, professional gaming can't be that far away.

Lastly, the QuakeCity guys attended the talk Paul Jaquays of id Software gave while at QuakeCon99 this year talking about the curved surfaces that I'm sure you guys have probably noticed show up in Quake3.

The PowerGamrez website features a new interview with Christian "Disruptor" Antknow of id Software, level designer on Quake3.

Here you go, an interview with Diehard-r3v of Clan R3V, the champion 1on1 player from QuakeCon99. George was kind enough to do an interview just a couple of hours after he got home and hand over the magical keyboard config that he uses to boot. Check out the full interview, and here is a bit of it.

Steve:would you explain the basic strategy that you used to beat some of the best players in the world?
DieharD-r3v: The basic strategy of the map is to control most of the armour and not let the enemy surprise you by attempting to keep track of his position at all times.

Steve:You beat the famed UK player Sujoy in an early round, did he intimidate you at all?
DieharD-r3v: Yes.  Knowing that he's a very good and experienced 1on1 player, I though it was going to be my last match.

Got a couple of write-ups of the John Carmack talk from QuakeCon99 for you guys to check out. Most of the time John spent talking about current technology and not a whole lot about what he has planned for the future. He spoke for close to 90 minutes I believe. Have a look at what our man Avatar had to say about, and when you're done with that take a look at the PlanetQuake write-up. Don't forget to check out the Ra2io write-up of the QuakeCon event. Here is a bit of Carmack's bit on timescale:

The client constantly reports to the server what it has done, so that the server can move the player around in the same way the client sees it happen. Since the you don't always get a constant stream of packets in an internet game, the client also reports the current milliseconds since it last sent a packet (AHHhh..). What timescale was doing was allowing players to change the % of the ms being sent back to the server. Basically the client was saying "oh no I didn't move 2 feet in 50 ms, I moved 2 feet in FIVE ms!", causing the client to zip around the map.

Before running more errands yesterday evening I mentioned a possible new release of Q3Test which will fix demo support and include the QuakeCon championship demo. (note: here is a QuakeCon article) Well not much new on that front aside from the fact that all of us demo lovers can only hope. DieharD's shaft work was pretty damn amazing though, you can check out the NetGamesUSA stats page and just wonder about it for now is about it. Also on the topic of big tournaments, the CPL guys have sent out this sneak peek of their next big tourney, outside of Dallas! New York City in fact on Septermber 9th - 12th featuring the finals for a Quake2 female tourney and an official Quake3 tournament.

A new version of Q3Tweak seems to come out every half hour. Figure it is about time you guys grabbed the latest version though if you are looking for those Quake3 framerate boosts.

Well, been running around all evening taking Mr. Quakecon champion DieharD-r3v over to id Software for his tour of the offices. He got to check out the latest build of Quake3 and a bunch of DM maps. Have to head up to the airport in about 15 minutes to drop off DieharD for his trip back to Vancouver. I've got some pretty good news for you guys though. While up at the offices Graeme had the news that they are *possibly* going to release a new Quake3.exe which will fix the demo playback, and more interestingly include the demo of DieharD's QuakeCon championship game. The release isnt for sure just yet, but its a good possibility. I'll try and find out some more for you guys when I return from the airport. Oh yeah, and here is R3V's homepage. Hope you guys can figure out that midi in the background :)