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November 1st

*Sent off source to get the 1.06 Linux version done.
Tim just got a Mortal Kombat II machine. Productivity may suffer.

Thanks to Alan Eisinger for finding that.

GameWeb Site of the Week!

October 31st

Do you have a deathwish?

32 clans are cordially invited to attend id Software and the Quake ClanRing's CLANCUP, at Microsoft's Judgement Day 2 event to be held on November 23rd, 1996 in Oakland, California at the Alameda Naval Air Station.

Clans that wish to attend need to arrange to have 4 members at the event location no later than 10am, November 23rd. The event will last until approximately 11pm that night, with a day long tournament featuring prizes, on-sight broadcasting via the Pseudo Online Network, and more. This is your chance to get out in person and prove yourself the champions of the ClanCup at Judgement Day 2!

Entry bids can be made at id Software's site, the URL for the form is below. Contact your members, figure out a way to get there, and enter yourself in *the* clan event of 1996!

Step into the slipgate...your Judgement Day awaits... http://www.idsoftware.com/registration.html

Questions? Will Bryant

...I can tell you it lets you choose from the skins and displays them for you right there. But the QW part will look and feel exactly like QSpy, but
1) You login
2) Servers are picked from the master server(s), not from web sites

Also, messages sent "behind the scenes" are different, but it is basically the same program with different transport mechanisms. In fact, the finger proposal (which I am hoping to have a final-beta out with soon) idea should still work. And it will still be worthy to use it instead, because, as Carmack says, the "dynamic" downloading will be slow.

October 30th

John Carmack was nice enough to send me a beta copy of QWCL (QuakeWorld client), a few weeks ago, but as it turned out, my machine was one of those that crashed when entering full-screen mode, so I couldn't check it out. When the new beta was released this weekend, much to my delight, it worked! I asked John if it was okay to share my reactions, and he said it was, so here goes:

Connecting: The beta does not yet have a front end, so you connect by entering a command at the console. This works great (boom, and you're in), but I can't describe how this will work on the actual release because there's only one server to connect to... I'm not sure how you will pick a game when there are many to choose from.

Playability: Ping times within the game for me have been very impressive, around 250 ms (I use a 28.8 modem), and the games feel even smoother than what I am used to with a ping like that (on the rare occasion that I get it... my "normal" Quake pings generally tend to be 100 ms or so higher--around 350 ms). Just as promised, gameplay is very smooth, with none of the spasms and hitches that are a way of life for a modem player (though I must point out that I get pretty playable games, for a dial-up, to start with). There are still side effects of the lag; for instance, the one place you know not to aim to hit a moving target is directly at him, but it's still a significant improvement over "normal" Quake in this regard. Maneuvering through doorways and making jumps are no longer the big challenges of the game.

Bugs: This is still a beta, so there are a few bugs which shouldn't show up in the actual release. For instance, there are certain areas on each map that seem to cause odd effects where you almost pop through the walls, as well as an odd bounding box bug that requires you to jump up and down to be able to fit under overpasses that should have sufficient headroom (like the computers below the super nailgun on DM3). QW also seems to suffer the frequent telefrags that earmarked the first Quake releases.

Overall: I am very impressed with the gameplay in QuakeWorld. So much so, that my biggest complaint is the limited distribution... I logged in last night (this morning actually) at 2:30 am, and there was nobody there. It made me realize what a winner the new client was when it occurred to me how disappointed I was that I had to play "regular" Quake. OTOH, QuakeWorld or not, the game is always going to be better with a lower ping, so I think I still want ISDN...

I think the custom CTF stuff will rock.

I think he's probably right.

Whew!

Matt Kittleson wrote to point out that sCary had scooped me by mentioning his Stark's CTF Tips Page. Well, he sure knows how to get mentioned--stoke the old competitive fires! Not to be outdone, I'll mention it twice!

There's a case where listen servers don't listen. If you start quake with "-listen" and then use the menu to start a multiplayer game it will start but won't accept any players. You can correct it by doing "listen 1" from the console.
Cool factoid: in German, Bright Red is "hellrot"

Thanks to Lacey (Obone) for letting me know. BTW in Pig Latin, Bright Red is "ightbray edray."

"...I'm still working on fixing reported bugs and there may be minor performance tweaks ahead as well."

As long as they fix the "disappearing texture bug," I'll be happy (though performance enhancements are always welcome).

October 29th

"Beware of idiots who are putting % in their names. There's a problem in the code that prints the obituaries (so-and-so killed so-and-so) that can crash the server if a name has a % in it. Thanks to Zakk for sending me the info to find this one."

"Well, I know it's been a while since I updated these pages, but I've had a good reason. My wife Lisa gave birth to our first baby, a girl, on October 11. Jessica Michelle weighed in at a whopping 8 lbs. 8 oz. Both Mom and the little fragger are doing great, and Dad is enjoying every minute of it!"

October 28th

Yes, I did come back from Disney World.
Tower of Terror - kicks ass!
Johnny (my 5 year old) rode evrything but Space Mountain
(too short) and Tower of Terror (too scary)
Joey (my 2 year old) ate evrything he could and got
a really good yank on Tigger's tail
Tropical Storms SUCK (first two days == very wet)
Sorry for the lack of updates, but I've been working on Quake2
and, as you've probably noticed, we're not saying a whole lot
about it right now. We're just trying not to go out
hyping it and later find out that we couldn't actually do
some of the stuff.
Hi mom!
Meanwhile back at the ranch...
*fixed client side demos
*fixed ipx for winquake on win95
*fixed wrong total monster count
For all you progs programmers; look in monsters.qc
and remove the line "total_monsters = total_monsters + 1;"
in the function "swimmonster_start_go".
*wrote CD Audio support for WinQuake
Other "news"...
No, American and I have *still* not done the match
We really are going to... really! I'm just trying
to catch him when he's got a really bad hangover ;-)
I've finally bought my "id car":
M3, Bright Red, 2 door, manual (of course)
Faster than American's MR2
Faster than Tim's Mustang
NOT as fast as any of the Carmack clan's cars
Did I mention it's faster than American's car? ;-)
Got the new Marilyn Manson and KMFDM albumns
new music to annoy the wife and neighbors (hey, the kids like it!)
Dentists are evil: "slight discomfort", yeah right

"last time we saw it, it was kosher"

The part about "last time we saw it" is a little vague, but ask any Rabbi, kosher is kosher...

October 27th

There seems to be a number of forged emails going around lately.

If you receive an unsolicited email from "John Carmack" it may not actually have been from me.

If you run into someone on irc claiming to be me, it absolutely isn't. I don't go on irc.

That having been said, I can guarantee that the following email is genuine:

Yep. Any data file should be able to be downloaded. Sounds, skins, models, etc. You would probably be pretty unhappy on a 28.8 if you were going to download an entire level, though. The download will be sent over regular quake messages, so it is likely to me <50% the speed of a regular download.

Now it's Choryoth of Quake Command's turn to break out the root beer and party hats.

Okay, I'll bite. Yes, for the record, Stomped also has a new look. It's clear I wasn't going to stop getting mail informing me of this until I posted it.

October 26th

Just go to the page and enter a server. It will return the following information about everyone playing there: Name, Frag count, and Colors. It also gives the server rules and the map, and (this is a great idea), one of those game intermission shots of the map so you can figure out where they're playing (in case e#m# doesn't ring a bell). You can specify how often to update, up to once every 15 seconds, so it will keep score of the game in progress for you. The thing that makes it so cool is that no matter how many people are monitoring a server, it is never queried more than four times a minute, so game play on the server shouldn't be disturbed. This is a great next step towards Quake as a spectator sport.

"I got another QuakeWorld beta out. I think I have all the network play improvements in their final form, I just need to add the dynamic data downloading and nail all the bugs."

For future reference, id suggests that if you are contacted by anyone for permission to use your levels on a CD, that you not deal with them until you know they have a license from id to publish them.

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All rights reserved. Copyright © 1996 by Stephen Heaslip