Thursday, December 16, 1999

No Daikatana for X-Mas -- 7:59 pm CST, Update by The Master

Now, I know EVERYONE is surprised by this one, but according to Blue's, Ion Storm missed shipping Daikatana for the X-Mas holiday. Well, I can't say I'm surprised since their publisher wouldn't have a snowballs' chance in heck of getting that sucker pressed in time. Maybe next century John Romero?

A.T. Hun comments: If Daikatana turns out to be the great game that Romero thinks/dreams/imagines it is, the real tragedy will be that it may go down as the best game no one bought and as one of the most catastrophic failures in gaming history. You'd better believe that publishers are going to be a LOT tighter with the purse strings than they were before. Unfortunately that also means more half-baked, almost-completed, needing-15-patches games out there.

If you are bored you can check out an interview with his hirsuteness (Romero) at CheckOut Games.

Q3A Mac Incoming -- 7:57 pm CST, Update by The Master

Well, according to Graeme Devine's .plan update, Q3A for the Macintosh is done.

Mac demo will be out tonight. Mac full version is also complete.

New Q3A Tools Soon -- 2:46 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

id's tool-time guy, Robert "Don't call me Patrick" Duffy updated his .plan with news that he will be releasing a patch for the Quake III Arena tools which have been crashing on some people. Most of the problems seem to be video driver related (no big surprise there).

Review of the Threewave CTF Maps -- 11:06 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

155&Rising on Barry's World was one of the testers for the recently released Threewave CTF maps for Quake III Arena. She has posted a detailed review of these maps including tactics for attacking and defending. She shows how the very design of the maps eliminates the possibility of the "one man army" attacks and forces teamwork to be successful. A must-read for Quake III CTF players and wanna-be map designers. Thanks Redwood.

Thresh on Q3A -- 10:20 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Thresh's Firing Squad is another one of those sites whose reviews I will link to. They have put up an exhaustive review of Quake III Arena, covering its highs and lows (and they seem to find more lows than highs). They conclude with a couple of paragraphs on the whole Q3A vs. UT debate. It seems that their last analysis is very similar to mine, but I'll let you read the article to find out what that is :)

You can also check out their equally exhaustive review of Unreal Tournament here.

Wednesday, December 15, 1999

Threewave CTF for Q3A: Released! -- 8:00 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I guess this is Quake III Arena CTF day :) As promised, Zoid has released three new maps for Q3A CTF. You can download the Win32 installer here and the zip file for Linux here. Note: if you downloaded the maps before about 7:45 central time, the windows installer was corrupted. A new version that works has been posted in its place. They weigh in at about 8M so pack a lunch.

Zoid on the New CTF Maps -- 6:04 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

David "Zoid" Kirsch, id's CTF expert and author of the soon-to-be-released Threewave CTF for Q3A maps, posted on sCary's comments section (#31) with some information on the new maps:

q3wctf1 - Bloodlust
This map is loosely based on the original map "Spill the Blood" by midiguy. The bases and central area are similiar to that original map, but the inbetween areas are quite different. It's a loose remake of the original. I've never heard of this "Bloody Waste" map until a few days ago and it looked like a basic clone of the original Spill the Blood map. This new maps is Spill the Blood in spirit, but it's definitely a Quake3 map.

q3wctf2 - Courtyard Conundrum
This is an original map that features a large courtyard with the flag in the far corner. The map consists of two levels, where the upper level in the bases are excellent for defensive control. The map is a basic figure eight style and offers plenty of good chases.

q3wctf3 - Finnegan's Revenge
This map is the most complex out of the three. The bases are a central room with connecting cooridors on upper and lower sections. The bases are three levels, where as the routes between bases are two levels. This map has a lot of different ways to escape with the flag, but good players can also figure out where the flag carrier is going and take another route to cut him off. This map really fosters good rocket jumping skills as well.

I'm hoping to get the maps out very soon. I think you're all going to really enjoy playing on them.

We're hoping with you, Zoid. Despite the aweful signal-to-noise ratio, occasionally you get a juicy tidbit from those comments.

Threewave CTF for Q3A Shots -- 5:07 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Stomped has posted some screenshots (three from each level) of Zoid's new Threewave CTF levels for Quake III Arena. 'Scuse me whilst I wipe the drool off my keyboard.

New Q3A Maps! -- 1:15 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Ritual's Tom Mustaine has made a brand-spanking new Quake III Arena map called "Mustaine Madness". Actually, there are two maps. One has a quad and a mega health and is intended for free-for-all servers. The other is the same map without the quad and mega health for 1v1 matches. You can download it from Stomped.

I downloaded and installed the maps and fired up a bot for a little action. The bot navigated the map without any problem. There is deathfog everywhere in the middle of this map, so watch your step. There's lots of twists and turns and pillars to hide behind. It's definitely worth the download. Redwood has a couple of servers running it too if you want to try it out online.

Windows 2000: Gold -- 12:16 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Microsoft has issued a press release stating that their long-awaited follow-up to Windows NT, Windows 2000, has gone off to manufacturing. They plan a world-wide release on February 17, 2000. There is no word on whether or not the pricing scheme announced earlier (story) is correct.

Make any Q3A Model a Bot! -- 11:28 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Evil Avatar snagged these directions off the Q3World messageboards. Follow them to make any of the new models that are coming out into bots! Good stuff, Maynard.

Mac UT: Gold! -- 11:09 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Inside Mac Games is reporting that Unreal Tournament for the Mac has gone gold! Expect it to be in stores next month. I'm sure that both of you Mac gamers are pleased as punch about this (I kid Mac gamers because I know they take it so well). Thanks Blue.

Threewave CTF for Q3A -- 10:52 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Redwood posted the news that he (and others?) have finished making/converting the Threewave CTF maps for Quake III Arena. Here's what he had to say:

The Threewave CTF maps for Quake 3 have been finished. There's no known release date for the maps yet but it should be soon(tm). I've spent a lot of time recently with a bunch of hardcore CTFers testing the maps and they are indeed very excellent maps. While I find the id CTF maps to be fast and furious, they are more for casual/small CTF play. All three of the Threewave maps are well suited for clan/tournament level CTF and also can hold many more players than the included Q3A CTF levels. There are many strategies, escape routes, and good defending points. I'm sure they will be classics and get MANY hours of play for the next couple of years. If you're a CTF fan, you should be drooling with anticipation for these maps! :)

The only thing is--there's no grapple now. I wonder what "modifications" they made to account for this?

Update! sCary is reporting that the maps were made "by a few idSoftware employees including Zoid." Fortunately that means that they were not slapped together by a couple of guys with only basic knowledge of q3map and the original Threewave maps. More details to come, I'm sure.

Update #2: sCary is now reporting that there will be more than three new CTF maps released. There are just three Threewave maps being released. I hope they get these out soon, I'm pretty anxious to try them out.

Sign of the Apocalypse -- 10:41 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

id's John Carmack updated his .plan with news that he is, urp, getting married to Anna Kang (who is now formerly of id)!

It wasn't generally discussed during her time at Id, but we had been going out when she joined the company, and we were engaged earlier this year. We are getting married next month, and honeymooning in Hawaii. At her thoughtful suggestion, we are shipping a workstation out with us, so I don't fall into some programming-deprivation state. How great is that? :-)

Why do I keep singing to myself "Anna Kang and I are getting old, but we still haven't walked in the glow of each other's majestic presence"? (Can you name that tune?)

Robert Duffy .plan Update -- 10:23 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

id's tool monkey, Robert Duffy, updated his .plan with a solution for folks having problems getting q3map to work:

A small update. To build a map, q3map requires that 'quake' exists somewhere in the path. It uses this to derive the base path to figure out where to find things. What this means is that if you installed Quake III Arena ( and the tools ) to 'c:q3' then q3map will fail with a < SetQdirFromPath: no 'quake' in C:/Q3/baseq3/maps/unnamed.map > error. I realize this can be somewhat of a pain but it is the way the tools work ( it is also the way the tools have always worked ).

If you installed the game and the tools to the default or the name you chose has quake in it then this will not apply to you. If you installed to a path that does NOT have 'quake' in the name you will need to rename it to get q3map to work properly.

Christian Antkow .plan Update -- 10:19 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

id's Christian Antkow updated his .plan with news of problems on id's FTP server and the release of the Linux Q3ADemo:

Seems the Q3 Editing tools release hosed our FTP server. I can't fix it from home, but I'll look into it in the morning.

In the meantime, I've updated http://www.quake3arena.com/news with a link to it on our webserver so you can download it via HTTP. The tools should also be available tommorow via Sandpiper as well.

The Official Linux Q3 Demo is also now available. Check http://www.quake3arena.com/demo for the link.

Past Two Days' News

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