John Carmack has made another late night .plan update with word that a new version of Q3Test should be hitting the net some time next Monday for download. All of the changes mentioned in his previous .plan updates as well as the missing Mac release will be included in that release. Oh yeah, and can you believe they are gonna be making a Rocky VI?

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.

Viper3D offers up a new Q3Test tweak guide for those of you still not getting the framerate you deserve when playing Quake3.

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

Mike Renner sent along this link from the GameStar Online news page which has a mention of the first public showing of the Quake3 bots which id Software has been so secretive about to most of the public. It looks like Fabian Huester sent along a bit of translation through Babelfish to Blue which you can read here:

During a presentation in Edinburg id software, for the first time, presented the bots against which you fight in the solo mode. There are to be approximately 20 different computer fighters in the finished game, among them a futuristic inline skater that hops over other players. When desired, beginners are guided by a tutor and make a sightseeing tour of the arena: Where are the best weapons, how do you come to the Quad Damage, where are secrets hidden?

John Carmack has been burning the midnight oil again. He has posted all the latest changes that have been made to Quake3. You can check out the full .plan update here or I've run through the changes and grabbed a few of the more interesting ones with some comments:

* log all client transitions, item pickups, and kills
Log parser programmers rejoice!
* tournement queuing of spectators to enter the game
Yay! no more seeing who can type "team 1" fastest anymore.
* track wins and losses as long as you stay on a tourney server
* pass serverTime instead of msec for command timing, prevents timescale cheating
Finally
* fixed curve surface flags (no impact when landing on a curve bug)
Damn, no more landing on curves to avoid making noise. hehe

John Carmack talks about the DreamCast system and porting Quake3 to the system on SegaNet. It seems like it has been a bit of a turbulent ride and currently Carmack just doesnt know what the deal was. Apparently they were on the virge of striking a deal, here's a bit of it: Thanks Blue

So then more months pass and then they're all hot again to get Q3A as a modem pack-in on the DC, which I would love to do. A console game with a fixed function network interface moving Q3A with really good modem level networking and everything would be great. You'd get better performance modem-wise on the DC, mainly because you wouldn't have a bunch of other operating systems fighting for space and interfering with the network capabilities of the system. I still think it's a good idea, and they basically had a deal on the table which we were ready to sign and they mysteriously pulled out at the last minute, perhaps because they lost a quarter of a billion dollars last quarter and they just didn't have any money. I don't really know.

iXBT Labs put together this great looking article going through most of the "modern 3d accelerators" on the market and their performance with Quake3. Several charts along with image quality screenshots are all over the place, a fairly good/informative read. They use both a p3-500 and AMD K6-2-450 system.

Judging by these tests we have every right to admit: nVidia Riva TNT2 Ultra at all resolutions is an indisputable leader. Then follow nVidia Riva TNT2 and Matrox MGA G400, which is quite unexpected. Some time ago we used to often complain about a relatively weak ICD driver of G400, but with the release of a new driver version we got a much better performance as well as higher image quality.

Thresh over at FiringSquad takes a look at the v107 Q3Test and gives his opinions on the latest version. You can also have a look at the article that I put out just 48hours before the big release.

OxygenTank has written up a new storyline for Quake3 since so many of us just refuse to play Quake3 unless there is a driving character plot yes?

You guys remember that post about shaders? Well in the comments was another link to more shader file information, signed by another "Maj". Remember, if it kicks ass, it was me, if not...then blame the author :-P WTF is a shader?

All the graphics in Quake3 - rooms, players, icons etc. - are made out of polygons. Shaders are simple scripts that are used by the Quake3 engine and its compile tools to determine the properties of the polygon surfaces and how they are rendered.

John Carmack has returned from his "hermit mode" trip to California with th intent of writing virtual machine or "qvm"  code which will make things quite a bit easier for mod makers who wish to work on Quake3. The good news? He got it done. The bad news? It's a 20% framerate hit right now, ouch. John goes on quite a bit about the optimizations he's planning since a 20% framerate hit isnt even close to acceptable. Just read the damn .plan!

The interpreted code has two prime benefits: portability and security. User mods done with qvms will automatically work on mac, linux, and any other oddball ports that get released.
<snip>
Unfortunately, even after doing most of the straightforward optimizations, the interpreter is causing a 20% slowdown in timedemos right now.

Quake3 hacker info of the day, Alexander Hupp sends word that he has pulled apart the shader file info in Quake3 and gotten all this information out of there. Also check out this Quake3 model viewer that VE spotted.

Ok here is sort of self-explained shaderlist (aargh i am tired -8o clock in morning) this is the complete list -all the stuff -things in ( ) are my own stuff.. I dont have the time now to explain how exactly to use theses things- but look at the shaderfiles -tip: search for the texture name you want to use.

The Viper3D page has an in depth look at Q3Test scores using all the different video settings on a p2-450 w/TNT2 card.

Toni pointed me towards the Q3 pak files again, and after a little digging, I found 2 text files that contain lists of the Arenas with the name of the map, the mapper, and the number of intended players. Secondly, I found the Bot list with information on the model, name,  reaction, aim, move, aggression, and intelligence. For your reading enjoyment, I've posted them in html- Click here for the Arenas listing, and here for the Bots listing.

Originally Pat Lewis sent word about this article before it went online, but the moment it was there Redwood spotted this TexasMontly article taking a look at id Software. It's one of those mass media glamorization deals but they are always fun to read.

In addition to the 1.07 filter that I released yesterday, Deathincarnate took it a step futher and sent this set of GameSpy filters which will seperate servers for you into the teamplay, 1on1, and FFA modes making it easier to find servers that suit your mood depending on the position of the moon. Also for those of you using PingTool Blue has posted a 1.07 filter for that utl.

Since it was past bed time for a lot of you guys last night when Quake3 v1.07 came out I figured I will go ahead and put it at the top of the news today along with a compiled list of stuff that you might wanna play with. Firstly Win32 as well as Linux versions have been released. You should also have a look at Graeme Devine's .plan update talking about feedback from the players. On top of that, I put together a nifty new GameSpy v1.07 filter for you guys who just dont enjoy making your own. The guys on the Quake3 messageboard are on top of things as always, check there for the latest tips. Finally, Zoid made this posting for you guys running servers:

It appears the dedicated server won't load if "set dedicated 0" is in your q3config.cfg file in the demoq3 dir. Delete that file, when +set dedicated 1 will work again.

/// Zoid.

Cool command of the day which I havent seen anyone do yet comes by way of KillOmatic-=>Clan1<=- aka Bonk. Quick and easy instructions:

Hey I just wanna share the q3 taunt.
Bind key "+button3"
I figgered it out from the cmdlist.

citizen over at Abuse sends word that he has put together some new benchmarks of a dual CPU machine using the latest SMP code in the v1.07 Q3Test release that came out last night. Here are the results he got in low res:

resolution	r_smp 0	r_smp 1
640x480	88.1 fps	110.5 fps
800x600	87.6 fps	105.3 fps
1024x768	82.4 fps	90.3 fps