Monday, December 27, 1999

Q3A FAQ -- 11:08 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The unofficial Q3A FAQ has been updated with more Quake III-related goodies. Check it out! Thanks Blue.

Sorry About the Mess -- 11:07 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

When we rebooted the server that The Haus is on, our database got corrupted. If you tried to access the site earlier this evening and got an error message, that's why. Everything seems much better now. Sorry for the carnage.

Quake 1 coding -- 9:39 pm CST, Update by The Master

Found this via indirect reference on the Webdog page. There's a site on Planetquake called QER (Quake Engine Resources). If what the community has done to Doom can be done to QW, we may see a SERIOUS resurgence in the QW community :-)

Initial Thoughts on the Full Version of UT -- 10:26 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Here's a couple of brain-droppings (apologies to George Carlin) I've had since getting the full version of Unreal Tournament for Christmas:

• I'll be sticking with Q3A for pure deathmatch. It's just a lot faster and more visceral.
• Options->Preferences->Audio->Play Voice Messages->No Auto-Taunts. 'Nuff said.
• 32-bit color looks dramatically better than 16-bit. It's worth the performance hit, IMO.
• Assault is an awful lot of fun. I need to figure out how to disable those stinking turrets.
• I played on a "gimmick" map called DM-KGalleon which is based on a pirate ship. I expected it to be stupid, but it played rather nicely actually.
• Something is a little silly with the server browser. Sometimes some servers would ping at 4 or in the 40s, which is impossible with my 56K modem. When I would recheck them, they would jump into the mid 200s. Weird.

New T1! -- 10:21 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Well, kids, I just got an email back from Jeff at EZ-Net (our gracious host), so I can announce it officially. EZ-Net added another T1 through Sprint (the other one is through Times-Warner)! Hopefully this will mean that there will always be two possible ways for traffic to get here through Chicago, eliminating some of the downtime we've had recently because of upstream problems with T-W. My surfing / downloading / game playing has been much snappier lately to boot. Yes, EZ-Net rules.

Steed animations posted -- 9:54 am CST, Update by The Master

casManG's has posted the .bip animation files for Klesk, Hunter, and Visor. Steed supplied these to Cas-which was very cool of him. BTW: Cas has a pretty slick looking site :-).

Followup on Q1 cheating -- 9:42 am CST, Update by The Master

I saw a John Carmack followup on Slashdot on the whole cheating issue now that the Q1 source has been released. Hey, folks, cheating in Q1 is already an issue. Q2 is pretty much rampant with it. I'm sure Q3A will be too. Until somebody decides to sue the cheaters out of their parent's cashflow (or their own, depending on age) it's gonna keep happening. Suck. Suck suck suck.

Sunday, December 26, 1999

Q3A Cvars and Commands -- 1:36 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The Engineering Room has a pretty exhaustive list of all the cvars and commands in Quake III Arena. They also have a list of ones that they don't have an explanation for. Check them out under the "Docs" section on their site.

Thanks Blue.

John Carmack on Quake 1 Hacks -- 12:00 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

John Carmack updated his .plan with a solution to the complaints that the release of the Quake 1 source code will make it impossible to have cheat-free games of Quake 1/QuakeWorld any more. Here's part of his rather lengthy post:

So, the problem then becomes a matter of making sure the clients are all playing with an acceptable version before allowing them to connect to the server. You obviously can't just ask the client, because if it is hacked it can just tell you what you want to hear. Because of thenature of the GPL, you can't just have a hidden part of the code to do verification.

What needs to be done is to create two closed source programs that act as executable loaders / verifiers and communication proxies for theclient and server. These would need to be produced for each platform the game runs on. Some modifications will need to be done to the open source code to allow it to (optionally) communicate with these proxies.

These programs would perform a robust binary digest of the programs theyare loading and communicate with their peer in a complex encrypted protocol before allowing the game connection to start. It may be possible to bypass the proxy for normal packets to avoid adding any scheduling or latency issues, but it will need to be involved to some degree to prevent a cheater from hijacking the connection once it is created.

As an aside, UGO seems to have their routing problems fixed. Webdog and Blue's News are flying now.

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