Monday, March 6, 2000

Q3A for $29 -- 9:27 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

In case you don't have Quake III Arena yet, what have you been waiting for? Run, don't walk, down to your local Circuit City and grab a copy. They have it on sale this week for US$29 (Win32 version). No affiliation, yadda, yadda. I picked up an extra copy today so we can play vs. bots on the EZ-Net server.

Parsec Patch -- 7:56 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

There has been a patch released for the self-running Parsec demo that was released about a week ago (story). The patch fixes a start-up problem with Windows 95. If you aren't using Win95, you don't need it. And yes, the double meaning of that last sentence was intentional :). Thanks Frans.

SOF Final QA -- 4:48 pm CST, Update by The Master

According to John Scott's .plan, Soldier of Fortune is in final QA. Here's the short stack:

Soldier of Fortune is now with Release QA. This means that we have eliminated all known bugs found at Raven and by Activision's QAs around the world. Release QA verify that we have fixed everything and go through a set list of criteria that the game must pass. They also give the game a thorough QA pass making sure the regular QA didn't miss anything. The lawyers also get the last chance to stick a spanner in the works. If all goes well (which has never happened), this process will take 5-7 days. It is most likely that they will come back with a few minor issues and we'll have to start the process over again. If they found nothing, then they wouldn't be doing their job :)

Q3A Beta Point Release -- 4:15 pm CST, Update by The Master

Robert Duffy updated his .plan with word of yet another Q3A beta point release. You can get it at:

id's FTP site.
Win32: Blues Shugashack
Linux: Blues Shugashack
Mac: Blues Shugashack

Stuff fixed includes:

• Fixed Models and Skins not showing up when you have more than the max ( 256 )
• Fixed Single player loop issue when a bunch of pk3 files ( 100-200 ) exist in baseq3
• Fixed issue with greater than 1K server config strings, this only happens when you have several hundred PK3 files
• Added Q3Space_CTF, a 2 on 2 CTF modification of Q3Tourney6
• Updated bot behaviour to work better with the platform in Q3Space_CTF
• Turn off floating point exceptions ( fixes potential crash right after startup )
• Fixed unpure client bug when levelshots loaded out of secondary pk3 files
• Fixed connection issues for pure clients
• Fixed invisible player bug when clients connected during downloads

Here's the .plan:

A new point release beta is out and on the FTP. We anticipate removing the beta tag in the very near future. We have been doing a lot of testing on connection issues, cheat preventions, auto-downloading as well as running a lot of the new mods through it. Things look good, some of the mods heading our way look fantastic!

This also contains a CTF version of Q3Tourney6 which is tons of fun for 2 on 2 CTF.

One key thing is that when connecting to a pure server both sides will have to be using the latest point release as we updated the pak2.pk3. This is not much of an issue once this version propogates a bit but it is something to keep in mind.

There are 3 issues of note with this version ( 2 of them Linux only )

• ZFree errors, on some Linux systems you may see ZFree allocation errors. This happens mostly when fiddling with the mouse etc. during map loads. We are looking into this ( as is Loki ).
• Mods directory does not show mods ( Linux only )
• Starting a team game with bots does not automatically assign the player ( you ) to a team.

As before, please forward bug and other information to raduffy@idsoftware.com

Kingpin "Issues" -- 9:41 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Ryan "Ridah" Feltrin, formerly of Xatrix, updated his .plan with the status of the sad situation that is Kingpin. Here's a snip or two:

This is something I have looked at several times, after hearing some negative feedback from a few users. Each time I've looked into it, I have failed to find any hard evidence of network code inefficiencies.
. . .
[T]he timing of the Kingpin SDK might not have been ideal, but given the release schedule of the binary patches, it just didn't make sense to put out the SDK until the game was all patched up. Unfortunately I was unable to compile the 1.21 release for Linux at the time of release, so that was left at v1.2, and the v1.21 SDK was released only with win32 components. This has left Kingpin in a state of dissarry.

I've never personally played Kingpin, so I can't comment. It DOES concern me that this new group that Feltrin is in is behind the upcoming sequel to Wolfenstein 3D called Return to Wolfenstein (story). Let's hope the same ills don't befall that project.

Sunday, March 5, 2000

UTWorld and CliffyB -- 10:09 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

UTWorld has posted an interview with Epic's Cliff Bleszinski. Thankfully, the questions in this interview are pretty insightful. A good, albeit short, read.

OzUT Interview with Mark Rein -- 8:18 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

An outfit called OzUT (Australia, Australia, Australia, we love you! Amen.) has posted an interview with Epic's Mark Rein. The interview is in MP3 format, which I painstakingly downloaded. I say "painstakingly" because it was apparently being transferred from Down Under via confused wallabies because it took forever to get here. Once I got it, I discovered that it is almost incomprehensible (too quiet, too much background noise). So I'll just yank the main points off their webpage and assume they were correct :)

• Epic's mission statement: Make kick ass games A.T. Hun comments: Really?
• Epic are working on patch 406 and 407 - not sure which one they will release, if it's 406 then soon, if its 407, which will include support for skeletal animation, then maybe a lot longer, after the Game Developers Conference (around 10 March) at least.
• Unlikely to be any more Epic assault maps, however all the guys at Epic are very excited about AS-Bridge
• Cliffyb's This Map Owns site will be expanded to include Cliffy's reviews of User made Mods/Muts.
• Epic are continually testing the D3D performance, Mark believes 99% of the problems people are having are driver related.
• If Steve Pogle announced the line 724 assertion error is fixed in the next patch it will be

Pondering the Imponderable -- 3:16 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Well, it's one of those slow days when the most fun thing about being on the Internet is hearing the comforting whir from your hard drives. Just as well, as I have my standard-issue Sunday afternoon headache <pause for sympathy>.

I took a test to see how loony I am. I was very disappointed that I only scored a 63 out of 100 on the loon-o-meter. I did get a whopping 75 out of 100 on the "emotional" looniness chart. Remember, there are some people who, through no fault of their own, are sane. It is up to people like us, who are out of our tiny little minds, to help these unfortunate folks out.

While I'm passing out worthless information, you can check out my stats on the EZ-Net Q3A server and notice that I am the only THoP member in the top 20 (#7 to be exact). Hooray for me!

Past Two Days' News

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