Sunday, December 12, 1999

Stupid Grapple Tricks -- 8:48 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

OK, so it's a slow news day at the ol' Haus, so I decided to find out how to make use of the grappling hook code that shipped with Q3A, but isn't used in any of the maps. Do the following to try it out (enter everything at the console, natch):

devmap mapname (pick your favorite map for this)
give grappling hook

The grappling hook is bound to 0 (zero, not the letter o). Its physics are much like the Q2 grapple. Personally, I'm glad id decided to dump it for Q3A, but that's my $.02.

Webdog Moved to Blue's -- 4:57 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

As we all suspected, Webdog is now a part of Blue's News on the UGO network. Until the DNS stuff updates (hopefully tonight) our plan tracker and news tracker may be borked. I'll ask The Master when he gets home what the best course of action might be in the meantime.

The Master comments: It's gonna take awhile to fix this since the perl scripting for Webdog is still moving and being configured. I'd expect this should be corrected by tomorrow.

Update 10:00 P.M.: The Master worked that voodoo that he do so well and got everything running again! Hopefully between our new scripts and Webdog's new server we should be golden for a long time.

UT 402 Patch Workarounds -- 2:05 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Epic's Steven Polge has posted two workarounds for 402 patch-related problems for Unreal Tournament. If you have a minimum install of UT, the patch overwrites your CD drive location. If you have a foreign language install of UT, the patch overwrites your language information. Workarounds to these problems can be found on the Unreal Technology Page.

UT Map Pack -- 11:31 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Unreal Universe is reporting that Epic is planning on releasing a free map pack for Unreal Tournament. As if UT didn't have a zillion maps already! Free is good. Keep an eye on Unreal Universe for download locations (no word on when it will be available, though).

Doom Q3A Skins -- 11:02 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

For a blast from the past this website has red, indigo, and brown skins for the Quake III Doom model, just like in the original Doom multiplayer. Thanks Stomped.

Q3A FAQ -- 11:01 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

GameFAQs has put up a FAQ (frequently asked questions) file on Quake III Arena. Unlike other ones that I've seen, this one actually offers some good information on the game. Check it out!

Saturday, December 11, 1999

TRIBES Extreme Missions -- 8:45 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The missions that were to be part of TRIBES Extreme (which was recently axed) have been made available for download (3.01M) on TRIBES Players. You TRIBES fanatics would do well to snag them. Thanks Evil Avatar.

I82 Demo -- 4:54 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The Adrenaline Vault has a copy of the demo of Interstate '82 (28M), Activision's follow-up to their popular Interstate '76. The reviews of this game have not been good. I want to download it to see if it really is as bad as some think. Thanks Blue.

Robert Duffy .plan Update -- 4:50 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

id tool-monkey Robert Duffy updated his .plan with the current status of the Q3A tools and recent fixes. Here's a snip:

A couple of things. First, things look like they are still good to go on getting the editor and map building tools out early next week. I am shooting for Tuesday sometime but that can change based on a variety of things. In any event it should be soon. Secondly, the editor and shader manuals will not be available right then but will follow shortly after. The shader manual probably within a few days of the tool release, the editor manual a bit after that.

Paul Jaquays .plan Update -- 4:47 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

id designer Paul Jaquays updated his .plan in a rather big way. He includes some tasty tibdits about what happened to some of the "lost" models, particles, and maps that appeared in some early (pre-Q3Test) screenshots. He concludes with a light-hearted jab at some of the negative reviews Q3A has been receiving:

And, by the way, a lot of the Q3A reviews I’ve been reading lately look a little rushed to me. I can’t help but wonder if they would been far better if they just had more paragraphs in them. ;-)

Read some of the reviews and you'll understand . . .

Tweak3D Demo for Q3A -- 11:04 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Tweak3D has created a demo for Quake III Arena similar to their "Crusher" demo for Quake 2. It will give you an idea of what your framerate will be in a worst case scenario. You can download the file here (1481K). He also posted his results with the demo, including some tweaks he used that may have influenced performance.

To run the demo, make a directory under your baseq3 directory called demos, unzip die.dm3 into the demos directory, fire up Q3A, pull down the console (with the tilde key), and type in the following commands:

timedemo 1
demo die

To create the demo, he fired up Q3DM17 (The Longest Yard, formerly known as Q3Test2) with 31 Visor bots. He stayed in spectator mode, swooping in and around the action. I would never join a server like this :)

With my standard settings: based on high-quality settings at 640x480 and bilinear filtering, dynamic lights off, cg_gibs 0, I got 14.3 fps. My system is a Celeron 400 with 128M RAM, Creative Labs AGP TNT card with CL's 2.08 drivers, Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live! Value with Live!Ware 3.0. Theoretically it should work with the Q3ADemo, but I couldn't get it to work (To be honest, I didn't try very hard either. I assume performance would be very similar to the full version.).

Past Two Days' News

The Haus is powered by:

All original information on this website is copyright © TheHaus.Net, 1999-2005. The use of original images, text, and/or code from this website without expressed written consent is prohibited. The authors of this site cannot be held responsible for any damage, real or imagined, which comes from the use of information presented on this site. All trademarks used are the properties of their respective owners. This site is not to be used as a floatation device (but if you try, I want a video tape of it).