Sunday, November 14, 1999

A Little While Yet . . . -- 11:45 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Stomped reported a comment that id's Christian Antkow made on IRC about 45 minutes ago. He said that it would be at least couple of hours before the Q3DemoTest comes out. Stay tuned . . .

Todd H on Q3DemoTest -- 10:45 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Todd Hollenshead, id's CEO, updated his .plan with more news on the forthcoming Q3DemoTest. Here's a snip:

As Graeme indicated, this is a preliminary release. We are retaining the prohibition on physical media distribution until we release the final or "gold" demo. That means that magazines will NOT be allowed to distribute this version of the demo on coverdisks. This is marked all over the test, however I would appreciate it if all of the Quake 3 and game site webmasters that are mirroring or covering the release would lend me a hand and make sure our friendly neighborhood game and computer magazines understand this.

Rest assured, we will allow physical media distribution of the final demo, once it is released, but not yet.

Hear that computer gaming mags? Don't put the Q3DemoTest on a CD! Otherwise Mr. H might have to send a couple of guys named Vito over to "explain" it to you.

Q3DemoTest Information -- 9:41 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The major gaming news sites are getting reloaded to death right now. We'll try to get a list of mirrors up as soon as it is available. FWIW, most of the .plan information in my previous posting was from about two hours ago. Hopefully soon! Hopefully Sandpiper will hold up better than Gigex did with the UT Demo!

According to Redwood, the folks at id will be using the feedback from this DemoTest to make the final tweaks before the game goes gold. He also mentioned that Major and Daemia are the same model and Grunts and Stripe are the same model, just different skins for each. So while there are four new characters, there are "only" two new models.

Q3DemoTest Tonight! -- 9:26 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Put your modem on full-scale Defcon 5 alert kids! The official Quake 3 Arena demo (more correctly, the demo-test) should be released tonight! Thus spake John Carmack:

The demo test is built. It should go up in a couple hours if nothing explodes.

Mac and linux builds won't be out tonight.

• clear SVF_BOT when exiting follow mode
• render temp memory
• new mac GL initialization code
• no zone memory use in music thread
• added check for trash past zone block
• explicitly flush journal data file after a write
• added FS_Flush

Graeme Devine added the following:

Quake 3 Arena demo test should be out tonight. Watch the skies!

Just so we're all sure. This isn't the general demo. If all goes well we'll upload the general demo in a few days.

The demo contains four maps (q3dm1, q3dm7 (q3test1), q3dm17 (q3test2) & q3tourney2 (q3tourney) and six characters (Sarge, Visor, Major, Grunt, Daemia, & Stripe). Bots are in there on five difficulty settings (from "I can win!" to "nightmare!").

Christian Antkow threw in his two cents too:

Ok. For the curious, it's looking like... 11/14/99 07:34p 52,123,258 q3DemoTEST.exe

We're doing final testing now. Sandpiper has been called and they are aware that we're planning on a release tonight. The file will simultaneously be made available on our FTP site (heh) and Sandpipers distribution network through www.quake3arena.com.

Ok Quake Community... Lets show Sandpiper what we're made of and really stress out their network =)

"soon"

This appears then to be a "test" of the demo, just to make sure there are no more show-stopping bugs. More details to follow!

Slow day-site info -- 2:06 pm CST, Update by The Master

Well, today has been mega-slow (along with the whole weekend), so I've begun working on a new feature for The Haus. I'm going to try to pull together a dictionary of lingo spoken in the game world. Important stuff like leetspeak, gone gold, etc. I've got a couple ideas, but if you have anything you'd like to contribute, please E-mail me!

Saturday, November 13, 1999

New Voodoo Drivers -- 10:24 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

VE sends along word that 3dfx has released new drivers for the Voodoo3 and the Banshee. Supposedly these drivers improved OpenGL performance.

Rorshach's Journal -- 10:09 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Since it's such a slow news day I revisited a site I hadn't been to in a long time: Rorshach's Journal. Rorshach is one the more amazing skin artists in the Quake community. I've often wondered how much he charges for a clan skin. With all the new models and full 32 bit color at their disposal, I would think that Q3A would be a skinners dream come true. Check his site out!

Finger Tracker -- 8:57 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Yes, we know our Finger Tracker is not functioning right now. We're working on getting it back up . . .

Carmack .plan Update -- 8:51 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Here's the latest in the never-ending saga that is the Carmack worklog:

• graphic for defer
• don't set any systeminfo vars from demos
• A3D fix
• spectator follow clients that disconnect
• stop follow mode before going to intermission so you can ready
• use (fullbright) vertex lighting if the bsp file doesn't have lightmaps
• auto set demo keyword on servers
• finished cd key authorization
• fixed symbol table loading for interpreter
• reconnect command
• removed limit on number of completed commands
• changed default name to "UnnamedPlayer"
• awards over people's heads in multiplayer
• fixed global powerup announcements

Looks like he's really getting down to dotting the i's and crossing the t's now, folks!

I must confess, I'm a little nervous about this CD key authorization. I hope that this authorization doesn't become the nightmare that Half-Life's was.

Past Two Days' News

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