Saturday, December 4, 1999

Off-Topic Rant: Pete Rose -- 10:14 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

OK, I'm REALLY COMPLETELY sick of Pete Rose now. He's been in the spotlight more recently in his renewed attempts to be reinstated by baseball. Every time he opens his mouth, he is more irritating than the time before. He is utterly unconvincing and completely unbelievable. Check out Ray Ratto's article on ESPN.com about him. I like this quote a lot:

In short, we wish here for him [Rose] to be banned until the end of the universe just for making us sick to death of the sight and sound of him . . . He has worn down many people's ability to resist him, but the fact remains that he is trying to get into the Hall of Fame based solely on his ability to make people beg for relief from his presence.

Personally, I'd like to see MLB Commish Bud Selig reinstate him, just so he could ban him again. The really sad thing is that a lot of people are buying his line of crap. Go back to QVC, Pete, maybe someone will buy it there.

Communicator 5 Delayed -- 10:05 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

CNet is reporting that Netscape Communicator 5 will be delayed two months, much to no one's surprise. A December beta release date was very optimistic and has been pushed back to February. Netscape is losing market share left and right, but I'd rather have them wait to release a decent product than to release it early and have it be a bug-fest. I will do anything to avoid IE. I HATE having a stinking web browser bring down my whole system!

Thanks Slashdot for the scoop.

Pondering the Imponderable -- 8:54 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Redwood posted in his review of Q3A (see this news item for more detail) that he thought the full version was 1-3% slower than the DemoTest. Well, using the exact same settings as I did in the DemoTest, the (non-Test) Demo actually gave me about an extra fps in DEMO001. Go figure.

I still haven't gotten the cross-hair health thingy to work. I changed my crosshair to the Test crosshair, and typed cg_crosshairhealth 1 at the console, but it doesn't work. Any thoughts? Please, email me!

"Hidden" Q3ADemo Skin -- 8:49 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Oops! Forgot to post this this morning. Someone emailed Blue with the news that there is another skin in Q3ADemo for Sarge. You can't pick it from the "Player" menu, but you can use it by pulling down the console and typing "/model sarge/krusade" (without the quotes). Very cool, if I do say so myself.

Babble -- 5:19 pm CST, Update by The Master

Well, it's been a surprisingly slow news day. Which is probably a good thing, since A.T. has been away from his machine today :-)

I've seen a couple issues on the Q3Servers maillist indicating problems with CD-Key checking with the retail Q3A, which doesn't surprise me.

I've begun to research database solutions for The Haus/Linux, and have been VERY pleased by what I'm seeing in mySQL. Excellent free software. And available for NT for a price as well!

Tier 6 and 7 .TGAs -- 9:23 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Blue has posted the orginal .TGA files for the Quake III Arena tier 6 and 7 opponent shots that he posted the other day.

Graeme Devine .plan Update -- 9:13 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

id's Graeme Devine updated his .plan with a solution for Q3ADemo users who get booted back to the main menu when thye try to connect to a server.

Why do I get booted back to the main menu?

It's because you've got a 1.11 client and you're trying to join a 1.09 (demo test) pure server.

Since the protocol # is exactly the same, you see all the 1.09 servers in the browser, but when you try and join the game you get booted because you aren't "pure".

We'll switch off support for 1.09 listings in the browser once 1.11 demo is out for the Mac and Linux. Meanwhile there's not much I can do since I can't tell from the client side if you're a 1.09 or 1.11 client asking for list of available servers.

Until then, download this Gamespy tab for Q3ADemo, or this one for the full version of Q3A. Then you can use Gamespy to filter out the servers you can't connect to.

Friday, December 3, 1999

Q3Demo Is Out! -- 11:50 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The official Quake 3 Arena demo page has been updated with the link for the full non-test Q3A Demo! You can download it here (48,908,140 bytes). Pack a lunch. Or two.

Please note that this is only the Win32 version. The Linux and Mac versions will be following in the next couple of days.

Update! Other mirrors include: Blue's News, 3D Action Gamers, Adrenaline Vault, and the mirrors that are FilePlanet.

Björn3D on the Voodoo4/5, Part 2 -- 10:56 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Björn3D has posted the second part of their Voodoo4/5 article. It's a pretty interesting read. Make sure you also check some minor errata from the article too.

In my mind, the biggest question surrounding the Voodoo4/5 is neither what kind of performance hit to expect with the T-Buffer effects nor is it concern over the lack of T&L. The $100,000 question is: will 3dfx be able to make a decent OpenGL driver? Heaven help them if the cards won't work well with Quake III.

Christian Antkow .plan Update -- 10:41 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

id's Christian Antkow updated his .plan with news of Q3Demo's release and more piracy issues. Here's a snip:

Q3ADemo.exe for Win32 has been uploaded to Sandpiper. I'm waiting for a callback from their NOC to verify that replication has been started. It should hopefully be live sometime before 1pm CST if all goes well.

12/02/99 04:27p 48,908,140 Q3ADemo.exe

On another note, I thought it important to address a security issue with your Quake 3 config files for the commercial release.

When you enter your CD Key, we store it in q3config.cfg in the cl_cdkey cvar. Unencrypted. Please treat your retail config files as you would the alarm code to your house, or the PIN number on your bank card. If you must send your configs to someone, please make sure to edit out the "set cl_cdkey xxx..." line.

Riddle me this, Batman, why would they implement a CD-Key but not encrypt the key? I can see a mess coming from this . . .

Graeme Devine .plan update -- 10:23 am CST, Update by The Master

Major Graeme Devine .plan update-including news that Q3A Demo is final! and some of his personal views on the piracy issue and Q3A. Please read the .plan (as soon as Webdog posts it that is) for the full update.

The demo has gone final and will be available through Sandpiper in a few hours.

I've gotten a lot of feedback from people regarding the use of authentication servers.

Yes, John Carmack has a nice car from his hard work, but unfortunately software piracy has become such a serious issue that we need to use schemes such as CD keys to protect our future sales. Games cost large sums of money to make and market, and if you want to have software developers continue to develop games then piracy, understanding it, and addressing it, needs to be part of the development process.
...
So with computers we’re stuck with freedom, which isn’t all that bad. How many of us (Linux crowd hush please) run 100% piracy free machines? Does occasional use count? If I only used it once to repartition my drive do I have to pay for Partition Magic?Isn’t Winzip part of Microsoft?
...
Is piracy of id products the only way the community has prospered, grown and sustained itself all these years? It’s true a certain number of you will always pirate a game and never make thepurchase. But a whole bunch of you are raving, fanatical loyal id fans with money in one hand and EB on speed dial in the other to see if Q3A is in stock.
...
So yes. Use a SOCKS server (we will authenticate multiple CD Keys off a single IP), open up those ports on your firewall (you can resolve master.quake3arena.com and just use that IP address), but please don’t belie our intentions.

Q3A Review -- 9:53 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Redwood has posted a whopping great Quake III Arena review (the first of about a trillion that will appear on the 'Net soon). Included is the silly background story (as if), tons of screenshots, and Redwood's own inimitable commentary.

One thing I was particularly happy to read about was the fact that there is now a "Team Commands" menu for the basic bot teamplay commands. That's much easier than typing like a maniac for 10 minutes to get your bots going before the game can begin. Hopefully the full Q3Demo will sport this feature too. One thing he mentioned was that two human players could spectate and control teams of bots, turning it into a 3D strategy game.

Q3A Character Screenshots -- 9:51 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

sCary has posted in-game screenshots of every character in Quake III Arena. He also says that people are emailing him that Q3A is showing up all over the US. Go get it!

Past Two Days' News

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