Wednesday, December 22, 1999

New Q3A Tools -- 9:41 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

id's tool-time guy, Robert Duffy, updated his .plan with the announcement of a new version of the Q3Tools. Here's the word:

I have placed a new install for the tools on the ftp site. Our ftp gets hammered but it should show up mirrored pretty quick as well.

ftp.idsoftware.com/idstuff/quake3/tools/Q3ToolSetup_Dec221999.exe

There are quite a few changes, see the readme for a list.

This release contains new content or updates for the following:

• Q3Radiant, this is named 'Q3Radiant_181.exe'. This will allow you to revert to the older version in case there are unforeseen problems.
• Q3Map, some fixes.
• Q3Data, see the Modeling manual which was put together by Paul Steed and Paul Jaquays.
• Model_manual_ps.doc, the above mentioned model manual.
• bspc - see the included text file for changes.
• Museum.map, Museum.shader - A map done by Kenneth Scott to illustrate a wide variety of shader effects. Cool stuff.
• MapMedia.pk3 - additional content required by the museum.

The museum takes quite a while to light when running Q3Map on it. Be patient :-)

PQ Q3A Guide -- 11:38 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

PlanetQuake has posted a handy Quake III Arena guide. It includes tips on gameplay, weapons, maps, and the obligatory console and cheats info.

Expert Quake and Loki's Minions Join Forces -- 11:10 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

PlanetQuake is reporting that the well-known Quake mod teams Expert Quake and Loki's Minions have merged to form Alliance Games. I really don't intend on keeping up with all the mod and map news for Q3A, but this is a significant announcement for the Quake community.

PQ Redesign -- 11:03 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Check out PlanetQuake's swanky new design. It looks a lot better, but a lot more like all the other Planet*.com sites. The really nice thing is that the news is on the main page and it no longer reloads about five times in Netscape.

Mozilla M12 Binaries Released -- 10:19 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The Mozilla milestone 12 binaries are available on the Mozilla Releases page. There are versions for Win32, Mac 8.5, Linux i386, FreeBSD, OpenVMS, Sparc Solaris, and XP (is that an OS?). I'll give you the scoop when I am done downloading it.

Make sure you check out the release notes. Note: although the roadmap said this would be an alpha release, there's nothing on the website indicating that it is. Therefore, keep in mind that this is pre-release software that does contain bugs and may crash. It is not Communicator 5 nor is it a "test" version of the same.

Tuesday, December 21, 1999

UT Guide -- 11:41 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Gamespot has posted a gigantic Unreal Tournament guide covering just about anything you might wonder about UT gameplay. They offer it free on the web, but you can also buy it in Adobe Acrobat format (don't ask me why you'd want to pay for something free).

Quake I Source Released! -- 9:01 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

John Carmack updated his .plan with a bit of bad news followed up by some good Christmas news for you l337 haX0rs out there.

The Q3 game source code is getting pushed back a bit because we had to do some rearranging in the current codebase to facilitate the release, and we don't want to release in-progress code before the official binary point release.

We still have a Christmas present for the coders, though:

http://www.idsoftware.com/q1source/

Happy holidays!

Hopefully The Master has the protective tarp over his keyboard to prevent any drool-related damage :)

Q3A Point Release .plan update -- 4:38 pm CST, Update by The Master

Graeme Devine updated his .plan with the news of the point release fix list. Here's the scoop:

Here's the cliffnotes version of most of the bugs we're looking at. I'll make the actual feature database available as HTML at somepoint soon so everyone can take a look as to what issues we're addressing.

• New scoreboard.
• New team scoreboard
• Voting can change the gametype if the new map doesn’t support the current gametype
• Misc icon fixes
• Team overlay tidied up
• Spectators can go through doors
• Late player start on screen score display fixed
• Re-add mouselook
• Callvote nextmap
• Extra/different pakfile disconnect bug fixed
• Packetloss on the scoreboard
• Delay deferred loading of players until after death
• Server browser remembers “show full”/’show empty” status
• Server browser will not refresh on stopped lists
• Show IP address in server browser
• Compressed sound support
• JPEG from disk support
• Cache filefind results so we do not requery the filesystem every load
• Make 10.x.x.x and other public addresses not use auth server
• Protect CD key into a different file
• Improve overall error reporting to user
• Make sure everyone can command the bots
• Load/Save config re-added
• Bots don't start kill, hitnokill, or hitnodeath chats when there are nearby enemies
• Awaiting snapshot/gamestate issues resolved

A.T. Hun comments: You can thank me for finding the solution so that "everyone can command the bots." See this news item for my heroic efforts :)

Mozilla M12 -- 12:25 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Slashdot is reporting that the Mozilla Milestone 12 source code is now available on the Mozilla FTP server. Expect the builds for the various OSs to appear on the Mozilla website soon. I thought that M11 showed a lot of promise. Some are saying that M12 is quite a bit better. Mozilla is the open-source web browser project funded largely by Netscape. It will be the basis for Netscape Communicator 5.

Update 6:55 P.M. According to the Mozilla milestones page, M12 is an alpha release! The next milestone, due February 15, should be a beta release. As of right now, none of the M12 builds are on their website. I'm not adventurous enough to try to compile the source myself.

Graeme Devine .plan update -- 12:17 pm CST, Update by The Master

Graeme Devine made a .plan update indicating he's released a new master build for Mac Q3A to Activision after finding some bugs. He's also planning to post a list of fixes in the Q3A point release, and mentions his x-mas shopping.

You'd think that someday a game would get released without a point release a month later. . . Never mind, it works for Microsoft, why not anyone else :-)

"Pumped" Demo for Q3A -- 11:14 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The Reverend has produced a demo called Pumped to torture-test your system in Quake III Arena. He uses the map Q3Tourney4 because it seems to be the most hardware-intensive map in the game. He uses this demo to show how much better the WickedGL drivers are than 3dfx's own drivers. Check out his site for more information on those drivers if you have a Voodoo-powered graphics card.

Best of 1999 -- 10:47 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Stomped asked several game designers and gaming webmasters for their 1) favorite game of 1999, 2) the game they are most looking forward to in 2000, and 3) what they really want for Christmas. Since The Haus is a little peon site, we didn't get asked, but I'm going to tell you my choices anyway:

1) Quake III Arena I've spent so much time on the tests, demos, and now the full version, it's almost silly. The others I've spent the most time on this year are X-Wing Alliance and NHL 2000 (and Shogo in the first half of the year).

2) Daikatana Can Romero and company actually get the game out? Will anyone buy it?

3) For all my credit cards to be paid off by the end of 2000.

Zoological Demo -- 10:44 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

As we hoped, NVIDIA has released the Dagoth Moor Zoological Gardens demo which will stress out your video card, especially if you don't have hardware T&L. It's a 42M download, so pack a picnic basket.

Thanks Blue.

Q1 Map for Q3A -- 10:21 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Redwood has another Quake I map conversion available for download. This time it is Q1DM4. I mailed id's CEO, Todd Hollenshead, for his opnion on these maps, but I haven't heard back from him yet. Here's your obligatory screenshot from the original map:

Q1DM4

The Master comments: Now this is a map I want to play in Q3A with a bunch of bots. WHOOOOOOO!

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