The 'movie trailer' to the Q3Test movie, Quad God, has been released. It's just over 1MB and is in .asf format [download it here], so make sure you have the newest Windows player.

QuadGod is the title of a Quake3 demo movie that was built on the test from Tritin Films. It won't be a playable demo, but rather in a Windows/Real Media Player or mpeg form. Q3Center features an interview about this very thing:

Sur3aL: Where did you get the idea for the plot?

Joe Goss: As you know the movie is being an entry for Katherine Anna Kang's Q3A Logo Contest which she advertised months ago on Q3arena.com. The rules of the contest states "Create the most cool, original thing having to do with Quake3 with the Q3A Logo as it's basis." So we decided to make a movie that revolved around the Q3A Symbol.
Thus, Quad God.


Sur3aL: Approximately how long did it take for you to organize and get everything set up for the movie?

Joe Goss: Actually we built the movie 3 times. Our first version was 5 minutes. I didn't like it. We remade it into a 13 minute version. Well then ID said it was illegal! So we remade it now into a 33 minute film. It took us for the major film no time at all to prepare because we were already warmed up. After getting of the phone with Katherine, we powered up Quake3test and just started filming it all over, with a more extensive story line in mind. It took us 2 1/2 weeks to make.

Update: It's DieharD-r3v and Bane in the finals.
K9-Gloucester defeated rix-r3v in the run off for 5th place.

These are the 4 finalists and who they defeated in parentheses:

DieharD-r3v (K9-Gloucester)
vs.
a|r1msh0t (screw)


toxic (rix-r3v)
vs.
1134-Bane (1134-Turmoil)

We'll keep you guys updated.

Well, it sucked. A very close game including people like John Carmack, K9-Slam from Stomped, BostonChick and Kornelia was interrupted by some pud who apparently felt it would be fun to ping flood the server.. At the end it was called a draw, even though the girls may have one by a few frags. They camped the rocket launcher though. The 1on1 tournament is down to 64 players, and people like Rix, Batch, Diehard and some other people who's name I can't remember are still in. We'll keep you updated as the night progresses.

GA-john sends word that he's dug around the story loony reported earlier today while having a chat with Barrett Alexander (ex-id now at Rogue) about a new game from American McGee (also ex-id) sporting the Q3 engine:

From the loon's fruit or something: Rogue, along with EA, has started working on American McGee's Alice, which will be based on the Quake III: Arena engine. Details are scarce, but the teaser site is live now, with a more formal announcement to come sometime this week.

From GA: Although details are very sketchy, American McGee's Alice is going to be a warped 3D shooter adaptation of Lewis Carroll's classic story, Alice in Wonderland. As bizzare as Alice in Wonderland was (for its time), American McGee's Alice is going to give this classic a Tim Burton-like twist, by adding more of a darker and edgier feel.

The game will be played in the third-person perspective with the slight possibilty of a first-person perspective multiplayer mode. The game will also follow the storyline of the classic tale, which means player will be encountering such characters as the Tweedle twins, the Mad Hatter, and many of the other assorted characters from the book.

More Shack Stack madness coming our way with the guys at PQ3 planning one to try to break the record. Here's the email:

Doggystyle And PlanetQuake3.net Are Preparing A Shack Stack On Monday August 9 At 10:00 pm est. The IP Is  206.161.208.69  The Password Will Be stackit.

Wonder if they can beat the guys who participated in this page that MG sent in. Wanna see? Check out this [shot1]. Update: those guys also send along this teaser [shot2] for the event.

Update: crt defeated Hanif in a 15 minute match 16 to -1. It seems that Quake 3 1on1 is all about the armor. crt (the programmer/creator of Rocket Arena) walked away with a Quake3 Leather Jacket and a Brand Spanking New(tm) Apple G3. With a flatscreen LCD monitor. Pretty cool stuff.

This is the semi finalist information:

crt 15, [kaos] 3

Hanif 31, SoopahFly -3

This means Hanif vs. crt in the finals

The 1on1 session of the general tournament will kick in around 8:00pm after John Carmack's speech. We'll keep you updated as soon as we get some results.

Wassup. I'm mooching off one of the administrator's computers for this update. For live wire stuff, check out the QuakeCon 99 News Page. As far as I can tell, they are in Batch 3 of Round 2. Things seem to be running smoothly, and Paul Steed brought Booth Babes. I grabbed a picture of sTeve copping feels on all four of them at once. Impressive, eh? We'll have some cool stuff up later, but they are eyeing me like I'm not supposed to be on here.

Something that should be cool later tonight is the Girls vs. Guys Tournament. The girls have a few people including TankGirl, Anna Kang, and my buddy BostonChick. The guys have a bunch, including Paul Steed, Redwood and myself. We expect to get slaughtered.

Spotted loony's post that Linux.com is featuring Zoid in their guest interview. Besides from the general Linux talk, game industry bits are mentioned in this shortish piece. Here's a clip:

Linux.com: Is there anything about Linux that makes it easier to work on as far as game programming? Other programming? Do you feel there is a support network for those specifically programming games for Linux?

Zoid: For game programming in particular, no. There is some movement in this direction, but not a hell of a lot. There's no "DirectX" type deal for Linux. It hasn't bothered me really. Linux and its enviroment (X11) were well designed to begin with and its easy to expand and overlay good tools on top of them.

A bunch of you late night readers saw the "Shack Stack" which popped up through the messageboard late in the evening. You can check out a couple of shots of the event here and here. Well Zapaan, the organizer of the event posted the story over at Q3Center. It's a great little story and they sound like plans for the next one will begin shortly. Cool looking!

A bit of wackyness by the guys over on the messageboard I just ran across, "sHACK sTACK" as Zapaan was calling it. Here is a link to the good news, which also has a few more screenshots to follow I believe will be showing up on Q3Center.com I grabbed this shot for you guys to look at.

A bit more QuakeCon action for you guys. Check out the Frag.com QuakeCon coverage page which opens up with a H2H interview. Also word over on the Shoutcast.com page is that there will be a big broadcast going out from the event. I'll be participating in that side of the things a bit so I'll dig up a few more details for you guys tomorrow.

Speaking of QuakeCon, people seem to be quite bent out of shape on the Quake3 messageboard about the tournament rules for QuakeCon99. People have also seem to have forgotten that they arent even paying for the event.

Seeing as that QuakeCon is bearing down upon us like a very fat man with a gas problem, the QCon site has been updated with information on the official tournament. Here's some quick info:

• Maps will be Q3Test1 and Q3Tourney
• 9 Rounds of play; the first two are 8 player free for alls, and then you have to 1on1
• You'll play on a AMD K7 550 with 128MB of RAM and a ATI Rage Pro
• You get nifty stuff if you get 1st place :)
• You need to sign the wavier:
  plain text: http://www.quakecon.org/QC99legal.txt" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" class="external
  MS Word 97: http://www.quakecon.org/QC99legal.doc" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" class="external

A bit of a followup on that timescale cheating that people have been doing. John Carmack had this to say which our man not given posted to the comments:

I looked into it some more, and there is still a problem, but it is a different one... The server clamps the speed, so timescale 4 isn't any different than timescale 2, but it looks like there is still about a 30% slack that can be pushed. I don't understand yet how this is happeneing, but I will look into it.

The game play is so messed up with timescale running now that I don't think it is an effective cheat, but I will still try and fix it.
John Carmack

"Not Given" over at the Quake3 messageboard had a bit of correspondance with John Carmack on the timescale issue that people seem to think still exists in v1.08. Well here is the email from the Carmack-meister himself:

>Why does this still work in 1.08?
It DOESN'T. It acts all screwed up, but you don't cover more distance or fire more shots.
John Carmack

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.

Well, I was gonna post a v1.08 GameSpy tab for you guys but my damn FTP is hosing out on me, at any rate I spotted this post by Vengeance on the Q3 Messageboard which should do the trick assuming you already have the v1.07 tab.

It's very easy to change the 1.07 tabs to 1.08. I'm using Gamespy 2.1.3.3 If you're using a different version, things may be slightly different, but not very much so.
1 Right click on the tab name in the drop-down box.
2 From the pop-up menu select 'properties'
3 Change the tab name from 'Version 1.07' to 'Version 1.08' (or whatever)
4 Click on the 'Filtering' tab
5 Double-click on 'Rule: version does contain "1.07" 6 Go to the box with 1.07 and change it to 1.08
7 Hit OK Twice.

[update - Reorganized a bit by Jack]
Well, it looks like the .plan update from John Carmack last Sunday wasnt too far off. Version 1.08 of Q3Test has been released. The coolest thing is the player control setup system, as well as the addition of a new player model, the Sarge. Already played it a bit and the new system for players waiting in line on 1on1 servers seems to work great. Make sure and check out the Quake3 messageboard while you're at it. Waiting for that download, Immy has an realaudio file letting you know that we feel your pain waiting for those releases to appear on the web.

Win32 Mirrors
id Software, Barrysworld, Gamespy1, Gamespy2, Stomped.. (Thanks Redwood)

Mac Mirrors
Stomped, id Software, CDROM.COM, Blue's News

Related .plan updates
I slapped together all the 4 previous .plan updates from Carmack for you to read through with a complete list of changes. 
Check out update1, update2, update3, and update4.  
Graeme Devine also made a .plan update to celebrate the occasion.

Shots
Here are shots of the Sarge: [shot1] [shot2] [shot3] [shot4] [shot5] [shot6]
The new menu: [shot1] [shot2] [shot3] [shot4]. 

Some of the changes
Here's a list of some of the changes, the rest can be found above

* fixed marks fading properly in fog volumes
* show weapon in fov >90, adjusting position down as needed
* update scoreboard info while at intermission
* print "waiting to play" for tourney spectators
* fixed tied rank with 0 score and spectators
* return to roaming spectator when a followed client quits or spectates
* release windows cursor when running windowed and the console is down
* log all client transitions, item pickups, and kills
* changed joystick axis to act just like arrow keys so they can be bound in the controls menu for strafing. Yes, this does remove slow walking from joystick movement,but it makes everything a lot cleaner.
* fix up PantherXL trackball support
* tournement queuing of spectators to enter the game
* track wins and losses as long as you stay on a tourney server
* spectators are now in fly mode instead of noclip, and use teleporters
* pass serverTime instead of msec for command timing, prevents timescale cheating
* fixed rcon

Just a quick reminder for you guys, if you remember this post I made last week then you should already be on the lookout for the new Q3Test v1.08 which should be coming out some time tonight. I'll keep a lookout and let you guys know the minute it hits the net with a list of mirror pages for you to download it from.
update: Oh well looks like that .plan update from Carmack didnt come true. Guess uhm.. oops? Sorry about that.

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