Articles in the archive contain broken links because outdated files are removed.

Half-Life Stuff
Here's an unedited log of tonight's chat with the boys at Valve sent along by Sean McCleese. Also, a Half-Life MPG (1.5 MB) has been posted on  Jaspur's Half-Life that shows of a really nice portal effect. Thanks Billy "Wicked" Wilson of Voodoo Extreme.

Zooom
I see on Redwood's that John Carmack made a .plan update about an expedition he, along with Bear and John Cash made to the airport to do some time trials on a runway with their cars (with Carmack's TR ending up in the shop). At least they've kept him off the Salt Flats (so far...).

3D Card Roundup
Gamecenter has posted another 3Dcard round-up. Thanks whiskey. Odd spin of the day: in comparing GLQuake performance to the Voodoo's 29.6 FPS, they call the PowerVR "Damn close" at 24.3 FPS, but the Adrenaline Rush's 25.4 "a far cry from the performance of a standalone Voodoo Graphics card." Weird, huh?

Quake II Screenshots
There are four new screenshots (three forming a pretty funny sequence) on PC Gamer's Quake II Preview.

Living in Sin
There is a PC Games Online Sin Feature that serves as a teaser for their big November magazine spread on Ritual's work in progress.

Quake 1.08 (Updated)
As pointed out earlier, the ever vigilant Frans P. de Vries of the 3D Action Gamers' Archive discovered that without much (any?) fanfare, Quake 1.08 (205 KB) has appeared on id Software's FTP site. There's only the executable (dated March 11, 1997) and nothing else. For those keeping track at home, new versions of Quake since 1.06 have appeared in subtle ways (thanks to all that wrote in to clarify this Wesley T Morrison being the first): 1.07 is the version of Vérité Quake that supports the Mission packs, 1.08 was included in Mission Pack #2, and 1.09 is the latest version of GLQuake. Matthias Buecher points out that version 1.08 will load 1.06 saved games, which 1.07 would not.

New Doc Holiday Art
Doc Holiday (Dhabih Eng) has completed his latest work of art, a poster of SiN woman Elexis Sinclaire. He promises an improved one in the future:

Jedi Knight Ladder
Hansum's Underground Jedi Knight Ladder is now underway and already has almost 30 players ranked.

The Snipe
The latest edition of the Snipe's column is online, talking about the politics of sniping (apparently sniping in this case is a "political statement"). Thanks Prophet.

Zer Entities
The entities from Zerstörer - Testament of the Destroyer for use with the BSP level editor have been posted at the BSP HQ.

Duke Nukem Forever Screenshots
There are some new screenshots of Duke Nukem Forever up on Duke4ever.com scanned from PC Gamer. Thanks Lithium (PreyStation).

Anachronox Preview
There's a new preview of ION Storm's upcoming Anachronox on PC Gamer. Thanks loonyboi.

Valve IRC
A reminder that this evening will be the IRC interview with Wedge, Choryoth and DRiller (AKA Steve Bond, John Guthrie, and Dave Riller to inhabitants of RealLife^TM) of Valve to talk about Half-Life. You can pre-submit questions at the website at id.lobosoft.com, where you can also find more details about the conference, slated to begin at 9:00 PM Eastern time. There will be a preliminary interview at 8:15 PM Eastern with Singe of the Slide patch (a cool guy, we spoke with him on QuakeCast last night) and Banjo Software, creators of the new HacX add-on for Doom II. As usual, the action all takes place in UnderNET IRC in the channel #idsoftware.

Jedi Patches
A couple of new patches have appeared already for the registered Jedi Knight, a disarm patch (8 KB) by Brian Taylor that allows you to use the "force pull" to disarm opponents (literally, as in amputate). Thanks to the cool JediKnight.Net for that. Also, here's a Saber Control patch (8 KB) by Killer Quake Pack author Solo that allows you to vary your attacks with the light saber and also use it to disarm (again, literally) an opponent during a deathmatch.

New TeamFortress Movie
The TeamFortress software crew has released a new TF intro movie in two versions: a version that plays the music from the Quake CD (455 KB) and a version that doesn't (which I won't post because it includes the music in the demo, which I assume violates a copyright). This a well-done fun action clip that just uses regular Quake, TeamFortress is not required.

AirQuake Fix Fix
Requoting one of my favorite movies, Brazil, "It seems my complication had a bit of a complication." There is another fix for AirQuake (142 KB) on the AirQuake TC homepage that contains a new progs.dat that addresses bugs in the sound code and RC bomb.

New Future versus Fantasy
Future versus Fantasy Quake Episode 2, for registered users, has been released on the FvF Homepage, FvF version 3.8 has been revised to work with the new episode.

.plans

• Ion's Jeff Wand (Mad Samoan) made a .plan update that shows he's detected the "pansyfilter" we use on the guest's voices on Stormwatch... errr, StormFront.
• I just hope John Cash's .plan update doesn't give John Carmack any inspirations for car shopping, those Ferraris make me nervous enough already.

Interview
Here is an interview with Epic's Myscha the Sled Dog. Thanks Prophet.

Competition
My boys over at Voodoo Extreme are running a big contest called Incoming Voodoo Extreme's Most Wanted Competition, which is chock full of valuable prizes. Full rules are available there.

Movement
Jedi Knight Editing Zone has moved to www.jediknight.net/zone/.

etc.
A new site dedicated to the latest on Monolith's upcoming Riot: Mobile Armor is Riot Control ... We have a tie for Log Parser of the Day between the new WiT Stats that now features command line support a new progs.dat that renames players with blanks for names to Llama and SpeedStats, a log parser for TeamFortress Quake ... Boomshakalaka, haven't had the server bomb out like it did most of yesterday in quite a while. Sorry about the downtime (it's still pretty flaky right now--we're still working on it) ... Six Million! Yesterday also marked the occasion of the sixth million visitor recorded by the counter here. Thanks to all who frequent this joint, I hope you are enjoying yourselves as much as I am. I'd like to extend a special thank you to the fanatical newshounds that send in stories ...

QuakeCast/StormFront
Tonight on StormFront at 8:00 PM Eastern we will speak with ION Storm artist Jeff "Mad Samoan" Wand as he described in his .plan (StormFront, Stomwatch, whatever). On QuakeCast at 8:30 PM Eastern we will speak to Polish, sCary, and perhaps Giggler about The FRAG, and Singe from Slide, Qtank, and many other projects.

Hexen C Updated
There is a new Hexen II C complier (315 KB) for version 1.09. It's said to be a bit rushed, so you might want to shck out the read me. Thanks Phoebus (HexenWorld). Also, The HexenC Arcanum is a new site hosted by HexenWorld dedicated to being a Hexen C resource.

Jedi Knight 3Do Viewer
There is a 3Do viewer (181 KB) to check out the games internals up on DarkJedi.Com. DirectX 3.0 or higher and Win95 required. Thanks Jediknight.net.

New Ritual Programmers
Ritual has announced the hiring of two new programmers, Gary McTaggart and Charlie Brown both formerly of 3Dfx Interactive. The following is from Ritual's Press release (thanks sCary) describing their role and expected impact which reveals Ritual's ambition to create a next generation technology of their own:

Now that they have joined the Ritual family, Gary and Charlie will be hard at work developing next generation technology for Ritual’s future products. Although Ritual has not yet announced specifics about their future games, some of the features of their upcoming proprietary technology will include: 

Procedurally generated geometry with continuous levels of detail

Extremely rich surface materials

State of the art character technology featuring inverse kinematics and NURBS based rendering

Complete integration of 3D accelerated hardware

Half-Life Monster of the Week
The new OGR exclusive Half-Life Monster of the Week has been updated with info, screenshots, and video about this week's beast, the Barnacle [Cirripedia donaldsonia].

Jedi Resources
The second installment of UGP's Jedi Knight Strategy Guide has been posted, focusing on the second disc, missions 9-21. Also, there is a new secrets section and an ever-expanding set of walkthroughs (expected to be completed within the week) up on The Valley of the Jedi.

Daikatana Mailing List
The Daikatana Shrine has started a Daikatana mailing list for general discussion about Daikatana and related topics. Just send an email to majordomo@warzone.com with "subscribe daikatana" (without the quotation marks) in the message body. You should receive a reply immediately confirming your addition to the list. Thanks Prophet.

All-Star CTF
There are some new screenshots of some of the All-Star CTF levels (done by All-Star level authors) on the Xenocide All-Star Pack page.

Cyrix's Attempt at "Quieting" Carmack
There's a blurb up on bootNET about Cyrix' next-generation socket 7 CPU, based on its 6x86MX design, codenamed "Cayenne".  Cyrix is apparently aware of how Quake users in particular have been affected by their CPU's poor floating point performance in the past, as this quote from the author of the article suggests:

"And answering all the criticism of weak floating-point processing power, Cyrix promises the new chip will feature a dual-issue, fully pipelined floating-point processor with a strong enough FPU to keep even id Software's John Carmack quiet."

The article also describes another Cyrix project in development called MXi that sounds like a killer if it can live up to this description:

"MXi, a high-performance x86 CPU integrating a 2D/3D video and DVD processor in one tidy package. Combining all the attributes of Cayenne, MXi promises greater than 4x AGP bandwidth, while giving you all the 3D features you'd ever want, including bilinear/trilinear filtering, alpha-blending, gouraud shading, MIP mapping, Z-buffering, and more."

The article says to expect them in second quarter 1998. Thanks Norton.

Interview
Crack deathmatcher Kornelia is interviewed on The Installation.

.plans

• id Software's Brian Hook made an update to his .plan that, among other things discusses the facet of game development that Paul Steed referred to yesterday, "crunch time", and why it both sucks and rules.
• ION Storm's Jeff "Mad Samoan" Wand made a .plan update cryptically responding to Levelord's recent cryptic hair reference. He also mentions he'll be our guest on Stormwatch (Front) tonight.
• Speaking of the Levelord, or BeerF*ck, as his .plan nick now reflects, he also updated recently with another of his heartwarming anecdotes. If you didn't see the follow-up, sCary posted an incriminating accompanying photo on the Shuga Shack that confirms the story (or maybe it's a confirmation of vampires in the Dallas area).

Departments

• LAN Parties: One of those LAN Parties on short notice this weekend in Phoenix, AZ; and an event in Uddevalla, Sweden.
• The Want Ads: Updated daily. The neat thing is that there are actually a few paying positions listed (please drop a line if this listing gets you a job or an employee--that would be pretty cool to know).
• The MailBag: What do you thing the B in LPB stands for, anyway?

etc.
There's an article on GameSpot talking about the advantages of the Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) that gives some insight into how a PC processes computer game graphics. Thanks "Wicked" Billy Wilson (Voodoo Extreme) ... The weekly Riot screenshot has been posted by Monolith here. Thanks Flame ... Mynx pointed out that Mental4's Ultima Page at Scorched is issuing a challenge to the big gaming sites to review Ultima Online. For some reason the game has only been reviewed by a couple of sites, though other games that have come out since have already been reviewed ... I have to be honest, there's a quote somewhere in the news archive of me joking about killing myself if Blue's News ever became one of those Top 5% websites. Well, I guess you'll have to take away my shoelaces and remove all sharp objects from the Blue Tower: check out the image of the day below. Congrats to my pals over at Stomped, who I see were also so honored):

The Return of the Prey Interview
Prey for a T1 no more, as JUDGECAL has come to the rescue, transferring the interview with Prey Project leader Paul Schuytema posted yesterday into RealVideo format (RealPlayer required). Here's the version for 90 kbps and faster connections, and the one for modem users. For the bandwidth unimpaired, after a few misfires, the AVI interview with Paul Schuytema (55 MB) is now also stored locally.

Jedi Strategies
There is a strategy guide for Jedi Knight Multiplayer play posted on the Adrenaline Vault. This article is impressive in its scope, and should prove invaluable whether you follow the light or dark side of the Force. Thanks JediKnight.Net.

New AirQuake (Updated)
Test 23 of AirQuake (3.3 MB), and a subsequent fixed progs.dat to remove a teamplay bug (142 KB) have been released on the AirQuake TC homepage. The new version of this cool modification has a bunch of changes, as detailed in the read me.

New Linux Vispatch
Byron K Guernsey sent along an updated version of his port of VisPatch for Linux and FreeBSD (20 KB) that fixes a few bugs in the version released yesterday. This program will allow you to run transparent water patches on Linux and FreeBSD servers without having to re-upload the maps.

Quake II Demo Update
Thanks CookieMonsta for word on this PC Gamer Online article, with an update on the Quake II demo (I initially failed to realize that it sheds any more light on the status of the demo) that quotes Bear describing a scenario where two demos will be released:

The Quake II demo will be released in two versions, id Software's Barrett Alexander tells PC Gamer this afternoon. Alexander, id's director of business development, tells us that the first release will be a compatibility demo, primarily to test the game with people's machines. A second, more polished demo will be released shortly after the first, perhaps within a couple of weeks of it....

...Alexander also commented on multi-player support in the demo, or lack thereof. "As far as multi-player, we'd like to have it in there if we could," he says. "But we have a lot of coding to do. Carmack has literally re-written the engine from the ground up."

On the story behind the demo story, Disruptor's and Paul Steed's .plans each contain references to their feelings about the way this was handled publicly, Paul's update also describing the understandably draining effects of crunch time in game development.

CyberAthlete Response
Here is an excerpt from an email (posted in its entirety in the MailBag) sent along by Angel L. Munoz, the main man at Cyberathlete, organizers of The FRAG, on the subject of today's announement of TEN's new Professional Gamer's League:

I just read TEN's announcement that they will be hosting " Professional Gamers League" tournaments. While I welcome the competition, I think that the fact that they are calling themselves "the first professional sports league for computer gamers" is quite outrageous, specially in light that they spoke to me personally about working with Cyberathletes over a month ago. As far as we know Cyberathlete is the FIRST professional sport effort for gamers not "PGL"....

...Our position remains the same about online tournaments (as stated on the Cyberathlete FAQ). Quote follows:

Cyberathlete does not consider any "online" tournament or any tournament with an "online" qualification process as an entirely professional tournament. The reasons for this are:

1. Online Tournaments are not inherently fair. Ping times and game performance vary depending on the distance from the server.
2. Online Tournaments are open for false impersonation. There seems to be no effective way to verify the true identity of players.
3. Online Tournaments may be illegal in certain areas. Our research has concluded that online tournaments may be illegal in certain States and in certain Countries and there seems to be no way to indisputably verify that people are not playing from States or Countries that consider these events illegal.

Professional Gamer's League
There are articles on Wired News and GameSpot describing TEN's new effort at creating a Professional Gamer's League (PGL). The first season will consist of a Quake league and one for Red Alert, and is open to all, though only the top 128 players in each game will advance to the playoffs. This looks like quite an organized effort, said to have already generated more than a million dollars in sponsorship money.   It will be interesting to see how they overcome some of the problems in conducting fair contests over the Internet.

More Jedi Hacking
There are instructions on JediKnight.Net on using skins in multiplayer Jedi Knight. There are only a few skins that can be used, but there is also word that the next version of MedDLe will include JK support, which will allow for custom skin editing. Thanks Prophet. There is also a page up for JED, said to be the first Jedi Knight editor (more accurately the first Jedi Knight editor website, as there is no program yet). Thanks Bryant Luk of Star Wars Gamers.

New Canopus Drivers
Canopus has released new Windows95 drivers for both the Total 3D and Pure3D on their website. Here's version 2.20.06 of the Total 3D drivers (1.4 MB), and version 1.10 of the Pure3D drivers (1.5 MB). The new drivers offer integration of each card's TV out features with Windows. Here's what else is new:

Features include simultaneous TV/monitor display of 640x480, 800x600 and an incredible 920x690 desktop resolutions. A "Total3D TV" tab is added to the display properties control panel, offering complete positioning, flicker and underscan control. (NTSC and PAL supported).

Other features in these new driver releases:

Total3D
Mip mapping support
On-the-fly color depth switching with Total3D Control utility
New refresh utility for controlling desktop and DirectDraw refresh rates

Pure3D
Support for Glide version 2.4.2

In a related note, Canopus has also announced Total3D 128V, a 128-bit graphics accelerator powered by the RIVA 128 chip, featuring 2D/3D performance with advanced video-in and TV-out capabilities.

New Expert Quake
Version 1.3 of Expert Quake (1.1 MB) has been released on the Expert Quake page. The new version includes their own variation on the arena concept (à la Rocket Arena) which can be played in conjunction with any of Expert Quake's other customizable features.

More MultiArena Servers
There's word on the Rocket Arena on a couple of new MultiArena servers running the experimental M.A..map (728 KB), by tesh, author of the arenarg series.

Game Designer's Corner
A new department is open on PlanetQuake (congrats to the Planet on yesterday's one-year anniversary) called Game Designer's Corner focusing on game design, as the name implies. Already up are several articles, including one called Artificial Deathmatch The story of the bot., by ION Storm's AI guru, Zeus Author Nelno the Amoeba. Thanks Prophet.

Interviews

• There is an interview with ION Storm designer/brain Tom Hall up on 3D Alpha Eighty-Two Stop Anachronox Shop. Thanks Prophet.
• Zoid is interviewed on the Quake Workshop discussing Threewave CTF and Quake II.

(P)Review(s)

• Next-Generation updated their Unreal Preview with the new screenshots released yesterday. Thanks Prophet.
• There is a review of the Canopus Pure 3D on Frag.com.

Competition
The Open Nordic Capture League is getting underway. While they expect most of the participating clans to be from Europe, clans from anywhere are welcome, provided they can deal with the ping and odd scheduling of playing on foreign servers.

Departments

• LAN Parties: An important note for attendees of the Regeneration LAN Party in Brisbane Australia this weekend, or those who thought they were attendees: it's been canceled, check the webpage for more details; another Armageddon planned for the San Francisco area; the event that was being planned in London, Ontario, Canada now has a firm date; a new event in Stillwater, OK; BTW, Hypocrite passes along word that the tourney at EG Con this past weekend resulted in a tie between Humperdink and MikeJ.
• The Want Ads: Updated.
• The MailBag gets an update after slow week, today a new phrase is coined: Quake Rage.

etc.
I'm terribly sad to report that QuakeWeek, one of the finest Quake sites I know of (famed for its insightful, biting wit) has shut down, at least temporarily, due to the effects of the dreaded real life. Thanks Prophet ... Quake2.com has completed their redesign, which includes |2|'s new logo ... Waiting for Quake II? The #Quake Peon Palace (your ego must pass under this line _ to enter this attraction) has posted a list called  What to do while waiting for Quake2, you can contribute to the list yourself if you feel inspired ... Huge Happy Birthday to my good pal, Valve level designer and Quake Command alumnus, John Guthrie, AKA Choryoth, who turns 24 today. Thanks Sean ... Image of the day is this screenshot (129 KB) from the Nar Shadda level in Jedi Knight, a version of which was sent along by both Loaded and ^Drag0n^, that shows what might be a subtle Quake symbol (or perhaps just a sign of Quake on the brain for observers: like a gamer's Rorschach test) ...

Unreal Screenshots (Updated)
Epic's Cliffy sends along word of some nice new screenshots of Unreal up on Online Gaming Review. "Busy" Billy Wilson of Voodoo Extreme also points out that while six of the shots just posted by PC Gamer Online are the same as the OGR shots, there is also a seventh that is different.

Prey Interview Movie
Perhaps the clever headline here would be Prey for a T1, PreyStation has posted an AVI interview with Prey Project leader Paul Schuytema that weighs in at a health 55 MB. Thanks "Wicked" Billy Wilson of Voodoo Extreme.

Pure 3D S-Video
onethumb reminded me that his recent .plan update talking about comb-filters on the Pure3D might be of general interest, as it illustrates how s-video output is not always superior to composite.

Linux Vispatch
Byron K Guernsey has done a port of VisPatch for Linux and FreeBSD (18 KB), allowing you to run transparent water patches on Linux and FreeBSD servers without having to re-upload the maps.

Redwood Story
Congrats to bona fide Internet celebrity Redwood, who's profiled in the Houston Chronicle. Other aspects of the community are touched upon, but spotlight is on Red.

Multiplayer Demo Update
No official confirmation or denial on the story below yet, but what I hear is that it is true that the demo will not support multiplayer,  and that my clue phone was simply off the hook on this one.

No Multiplayer in Quake II Demo?
Hanif passed along a quote from Disruptor on IRC that he says represents an explanation of why, when it's released, the Quake II demo will not contain any multiplayer capabilities. Taken out of context, that's not 100% clear from the quote, and to be honest, I have my concerns about the accuracy of this. I have been trying since last night to track down a confirmation or denial (in other words "to be continued"). Here's the quote:

<Disruptor> ok
<Disruptor> sorry about this
<Disruptor> but I'll explain
<Disruptor> We're made radical changes to the underlying architecture of Quake
<Disruptor> We've moved to DLL code and the graphics engine got a major overhaul
<Disruptor> The purpose of this demo is an architecture test...
<Disruptor> we want to give out the demo and make sure it runs on everyone's systems
<Disruptor> We'll have a special q2bugs@idsoftware.com e-mail address to submit bugs to

Jedi Hints
For those times when you're stuck, and using the Force just won't cut it, call on Trail's Guide, the first of Jediknight.net's hosted sites, dedicated to providing complete information for finding secrets on each level, level walkthroughs, and general hints for improved gameplay. Jediknight.net is looking for other quality Jedi Knight related sites that are interested in being hosted, more details are posted there. The secrets from the first eight levels of Jedi Knight are also posted on Jedi Knight Academy. I saw that on The Cantina.

Unreal Developer's Site
Sean Green maintainer of the seminal Unreal news site, Shadows, is starting a community-oriented project to create a central Unreal conversion resource he's calling the devemp. Interested developers should contact him for details, but here's a brief summary of the intent:

The first and most important thing to mention is that I hope devemp to be more than a site. What I'm shooting for is to have "teams" of developers, all working on what they're best at, for example we may have teams for news, textures, brushes, levels, scripting.. etc.. the team members would be under no pressure to release anything, meet deadlines etc.. they could just work on their stuff like they would do normally and then release stuff on the devemp.

The Games in their Pasts
There is a Giant List of Classic Game Programmers, a companion piece to the print Halcyon Days: Interviews with Classic Computer and Video Game Programmers on the Dadgum Games site. In the Recently Uncovered Classic Game Trivia & News section is the following about the past work of id software founding members John Carmack, Tom Hall and John Romero:

The name id Software isn't normally associated with Duck Boop, Bongo's Bash, and In Search of the Golden Cheese, but these are three of the games written by co-founders John Carmack, John Romero, and Tom Hall in their pre-id Apple II days. Check their entries in the Giant List for all the gory details. For the record, Bongo's Bash was a Romero creation, given away as a freebie in ads for the ill-fated Cauzin Softstrip. Tom Hall takes responsibility for the other two titles mentioned.

Riot Music
Submitted for your approval: An mp3 of music from Riot: Mobile Armor (2.5 MB) has been posted on the Riot website. Thanks Flame. Hey! The GlobalCenter server didn't corrupt the file on upload (a problem on the old server), so it isn't zipped (so you may have to shift-click to save the file).

Why We're Burnt on Inferno
Brian hook updated his .plan following up on yesterday's question about the scarcity of players on Inferno (seems a lot of responses were similar to my own-I hope there's something to be done about that server's connection).

Movements

• upaboveit's Hexen II page has moved to hexen2.stomped.com/.
• The Clan Complex is once again open for business at www.gagames.com/complex/.

Departments

• LAN Parties: an event being planned in Roanoke, VA.
• The Want Ads: Updated.

etc.
In an odd game-deadline related note, GameSpot's game forcast lists the Unreal shareware as being slated for release last month (I wouldn't hold them to that). Thanks Kyle "Katarn" Bridges ... Replacing TeleFragged's old Sin site is Defiance of Sin ... Art Of Sin, the web artist that did the sites for Terra219, |24|, quaked.com, madcow, Wolfenstien 3D TC, and more, has a new gallery page, eponymously titled  The Art of Sin ... Quake gets press in the oddest places sometimes, thanks to CatGyrl for word that Stevie (KillCreek) Case and Jen (Phoenix) Press in the latest issue of Seventeen Magazine ... Log Parser of the day is WitStats (again), as version 1.8 is out on the WitStats page ... Image of the day (no, there really isn't going to be one a day, but heck, it's only 10 KB) comes from Rob Packard of the Rave clan: Quake II Fever... Catch It!.

Half-Life Preliminary Findings
There's word up on Sierra's Half-Life page that there will be a free CD available at the end of this month to whet our appetites for Valve's upcoming game. Thanks Prophet. Here's the quote:

Want to see demonstrations of the coolest Half-Life features by members of the Valve team? Want to see the latest and greatest Half-Life screen shots? Then the Half-Life Preliminary Findings CD is just what you need. Check in at participating Electronics Boutiques and Best Buy locations Halloween Week (Oct 27-31) and ask for your FREE Half-Life Preview CD. Limited to supplies on hand. If you miss getting your hands on one, keep your eyes peeled here for portions of the demo available for download.

Multi-Arena Server
The first Multi-Arena server, running four Rocket Arena games simultaneously allowing players to move between games at will, is up and running at ripper.stanford.edu:27500, using this map (728 KB), by tesh, the author of the arenarg series. Authors interested in making Multi-Arena maps can find the map specs and all required information in this file (988 KB).

Jedi Knight Editing (Updated)
A new skin file (490 KB) has been posted on JediKnight.Net expanding on the first that was just a couple of characters: you can replace the player skin with any of Boba Fett, Commando, Cybot (C3PO), Jan Ors, Jerec, Max, Officer, R2D2, Rodian (Greedo), Sariss, Stormtrooper, Trandoshan, Tusken, and Yun. This coming on the heels of the news of the the first Jedi Knight file extractor (155 KB) found on DarkJedi.Com. There's also news of The Jedi Knight Editing Zone, an attempt to decipher the internals of the game to allow editing.

The FRAG
The organizers of The FRAG (not to be confused with The Frag, the Frag, tHE fRAG, or any other mixture of cases) have announced that they have upped the capacity for computers to the point where the network will be able to support 240 user-supplied machines in addition to the 64 sponsored ones. Reservations to bring your computer will be accepted online, on a first come, first served basis.

Deathmatch Strategies
OGR has a Quake deathmatch guide featuring general tips plus some specific strategies for playing the DM levels, including demos from DM2, DM3, and DM4. Thanks Prophet.    

Interviews (Updated)

• The Orville Wright of AirQuake & ION Storm Designer (which I didn't realize) Iikka Keränen is interviewed on PlanetQuake.
• There is an interview with game music guru Bobby Prince up on the Adrenaline Vault. Thanks Prophet.

New QuArK, DEACC32
Version 4.02 of QuArK (694 KB), the all purpose Quake editor, has been released on the QuArK page, where you can also find DEACC32 (43 KB), a new 32 bit version of QuArK author Armin Rigo's Quake C decompiler, which as been updated to work with Hexen II as well. Thanks Prophet.

TeamFortress Cheating Fix?
The wires have been running hot around here the last couple of days with angry reports of incidents of blatant cheating in TeamFortress games. Thankfully, word has been posted on the TeamFortress homepage that a bug-fixed (anti-cheat) version 2.65 of TeamFortress is now running on select servers. This will not be an official release until there's been a chance to evaluate its effectiveness at curtailing the cheats, and users are encouraged to try and take note of any abuses on the newer servers (though they need no more reports about cheating on older servers). Thanks Gregg Reno.

New Star Wars Prelim Release
Prelim Release 1b (814 KB) featuring some weapons and models is up on the Star Wars Quake page. This release is described as a "hold-over" until Prelim 2 is ready.

CTF Configs
Paco and Cromwell's CTF Quake Page is putting out the call for CTF players and clans to submit their config files. They plan on posting them for download, which will be valuable resource (I was surprised at the intricacies of the config of a true CTF maven when I looked through one for the first time).

Quake Rally on Q-Fever
This week's featured TC on Q-Fever is Quake Rally.

Tech Talk
My buddy loonyboi has a new set of answers to user-submitted questions on his Tech Talk column on PlanetQuake.

.plan

• id's Brian Hook updated his .plan with a query on why Inferno seems so empty nowadays. I can say I no longer use that server personally because my ping there is double, or worse, what it is on a typical server (this wasn't always the case: I believe this is since id got their new ISP). I just checked GameSpy and I have a modem-esque 193 ping to Inferno (192.246.40.250:27500) on a 128 kb ISDN connection, where I typically get pings under 100. Oh yeah, Brian's right: Kordell Stewart is just amazing.

Competition
There is a TeamFortress League getting underway that will feature clan events, custom maps and an ironman tourney.

Departments

• LAN Parties: A Geekfest (their words, not mine) in San Diego, CA, WellyLAN 3 in Wellington, NZ; and Dallas Area Network Gaming II (guess where).
• The Want Ads: Updated.

etc.
The #Quake Peon Palace has a log of someone trying to spoof being me, JUDGECAL, and a couple of others on EFnet #quake. Just for the record it wasn't me (and I doubt it was any of the others either). Lafarga msg'ed him with a question that he didn't answer correctly, and he got the boot ... Word on Birdman's Quake Lair is that SpaceTec has released updated Jedi Knight drivers for the SpaceOrb 360. Thanks Prophet ... Image of the day is courtesy of Voltas (Ed Wist) from this page ...

Da Mac Pak
There is an installer on Da Pak page to set up Da Pak on a Macintosh. There are also instructions there on how to play with Reaper bots on Da Pak, as well as a list of more servers running it. Thanks Prophet.

Malice Cover Art
There is a copy of the cover art for QA's imminent TC Malice on MacQuake Nexus. I've played with this just a little bit and so far it rocks: cool, well modeled weapons (except for the hand on the pistol, Paul Steed has done about the only hand model I can recall looking natural) and some nasty enemies (also nicely modeled and textured). I love the rocket launcher in this: rocket jumps seem to go twice as high as in Quake, and it looks brilliant (each rocket sliding into place before firing).

Zig Zag? No Bambu?
Anthony Bailey of the Quake done Quick team has an article up on PlanetQuake entitled Zigzagging Through a Strange Universe that brings to light a couple of quirks of the Quake engine, reminiscent of Strafe Running in Doom (wow-first time I got to link to the Doom Strategy Guide here) that you may be able to put to your advantage in single player action, or even deathmatch. Thanks Hanif.

JKtracker?
There is work on JediKnight.Net that version 1.1 of Qtracker will support Jedi Knight. Thanks Cerebro.

Competition
The National Team Fortress Association (Formerly WTFL) a TF league complete with All-Star game and Playoffs is open for sign-ups on the NTFA Website. You can also find information there if you are interested in refereeing matches, or contributing to their website.

.planatomy

• id Artist Paul Steed made a .plan update further clarifying (or "kicking deceased equines" as he put it) his CrackWhore contest.
• Ritual level lord Levelord is joking about someone else's hair??
• Ion Storm level designer Dr Sleep updated his .plan talking about cool Daikatana mood lighting.

Departments

• LAN Parties: A weekly gathering in Oslo, Norway; and a monthly one in Colorado Springs, CO.
• The Want Ads: More and more: by the way, if you are listed here, please let me know if and when I should remove your listing.

etc.
Log Parser of the day is WiT Stats which works on Regular Quake 1.06, even though non-QuakeWorld servers don't generate a FragLog, per se ... Durn, I forgot to mention this when it occurred, but I wanted to take note of the one year anniversary of Blue's News having moved to its own domain, which took place on October 9, 1996 ...

New Slide
Version 1.1 of Slide (351 KB), the cool, if offbeat Quake conversion that puts contestants on hoverboards in a hairy downhill race, has been released on the Slide homepage. There is also a nine level Slide map pack (4.9 MB) of the first "official" slide levels. Thanks Tom Servo.

Qtracker Released
Qtracker 1.0 (2.8 MB) has been released on the Qtracker Homepage. This is a utility to search for (and monitor) servers for Quake, QuakeWorld, and Hexen II. Among this programs features are an attempt to reflect the ping you will see in the game, the ability to display player names even if they use those wacky special characters, and the ability to differentiate players local to the server.

Quake II Screenshots
PC Gamer has posted another pair of Quake II Screenshots on their Quake II Screenshots Gallery.

Quake Arcade?
There is an article on Next-Generation Online describing Quantum 3D's plans to create arcade Quake machines under Intel's Open Arcade Architecture program. The setup is described as running on a PII 266 with a 3Dfx Obsidian board, capable of running GLQuake at 800x600 at over 60 frames per second. Other wrinkles such as ever depleting health in single player play, and the use of a (blech) trackball, are also described. Thanks Hanif.

Forsaken Demo
I just checked out the rolling (non-playable) Demo for Forsaken (13.1 MB), an upcoming 3D game from Akklaim. This is very cool looking stuff (even though it is quite reminiscent of Descent, which was never one of my favorites), especially on a 3Dfx, where the lighting effects for the weapon fire use the hardware to excellent effect.

Reaper Review
There is quite a lengthy review of the Reaper bot up on Ramshackle that is an in-depth look at the Reaper's strengths and weaknesses, and touches on the issue of violating Steven Polge's copyright.

KeyGrip Resumes
There's word on the KeyGrip for Quake page that work has resumed on this highly anticipated Quake demo editor. crt says he and Drastic_Man are in an accelerated development cycle to get a new public beta of KeyGrip 1.0 finished.

Scitech's Free Open GL
There's an article on GameSpot discussing the potential impact on the future of Open GL development that Scitech's Release of the source code for their MGL 4.0 Open GL (use to create both WinQuake and Hexen II). The article speculates that this may effect efforts like Zanshin's attempt to write an Open GL port. Thanks Spyke.

GameSpy Ping Woes?
There is an explanation on Q.S.B.N. of why it may appear that some user's pings are higher with the new GameSpy than they were in QuakeSpy, and why this does not actually represent poorer performance.

Interviews

• T. Elliot Cannon (I got it right this time!), AKA "Myscha the sled dog" level designer for Epic's upcoming Unreal, is interviewed by the crack (or is that smoking crack?) team over at Voodoo Extreme.
• Takhisis, founder of the Queen of the Hill tourney, is interviewed by Aurora on Planetquake. Thanks Hanif.

The Best Laid .plans

• id Software's Kevin Cloud updated his .plan congratulating Ritual for making the cover of the November issue of PC Games with Sin.
• Apogee/3D Realms' Scott Miller posted a brain teaser in his .plan (this same puzzle actually already appeared in someone else's .plan using the members of U2's names, but I can't find it). Bunzo has posted the answer here on The myths and facts of Duke Nukem forever. Thanks Prophet.
• id Software's Paul Steed updated his .plan with a reaction to some negative mail about his CrackWhore contest.
• 3Dfx/TeamQSpy's Jack "morbid" Mathews updated his .plan on a few topics, including Voodoo Rush performance, passing along and experimental setting to try on Voodoo Rush cards that could boost framerates further.

Departments

• LAN Parties: A truly short notice event (tomorrow) in Long Beach, CA.
• The Want Ads: More help wanted and help offered.

Correction
Oooops. I said yesterday that the new Worldcraft logo was by |2|, which is inaccurate. The new splash screen when you run Worldcraft is by Walter |2| Costinak, while the logo and design of the Worldcraft page were actually done by Aurora and RomeovoiD creations. Sorry about that.

etc.
Dear Mynx has returned with a vengeance. Check out her latest Q&A session and be informed, amazed, and amused  ... Inside 3D is now going to be hosting sites dedicated to editing and modifications, and even possibly TC's and PC's now that they are masters of their own Domain. Check here for more details ...