Articles in the archive contain broken links because outdated files are removed.

SGI Quake 1.08
SGI Quake 1.08 has been released on Quake Utils for SGI Irix. Thanks Thomas Winzig.

Actura Part II?
There is a hubub brewing about another CD, Tremors, published by Head Games Publishing that is possibly making use of Quake levels and QuakeC patches without the permission of the level/patch authors. Here is a webpage that is dedicated to exposing and investigating this situation. I'm sure there will be a lot more to report on this shortly.

GLQuake Dojo QPed Move
The very cool GLQuake Dojo has set down on PlanetQuake, and has been spiffed up with a bit of a facelift. I have probably gotten as much "check out this great page" mail about the Dojo as I have about any site. Zanshin the maintainer is doing a terrific job on his site. QPed, the Quake Pak Editor, has moved to PQ as well. QPed uses the Windows Explorer interface to allow the manipulation of .paks.

Voin Quake
VoinQuake page now is up and running at its new location.

QSpy 5.2 Beta 4 Preview
QSBRN&R has a glimpse at QSpy 5.2 Beta 4, and a picture of QuakeCast's own Mace Royer, the prelude to his own site.

Killer Quake Patch 2.0z
Killer Quake Patch (KQP) 2.0Z has been released on the KQP Homepage:

• Added Zeus bots...
• Added new auto-missile WITH *Smart Aiming Device* (aka SAD)...
• Added every single patch that I've released since KQP 1.0, (Disc, Mini-Cannon, Radar, Portal gun, 4 barrelled shotgun, air strike, rain of fire, etc)
• Added some exclusive stuffs (Poisoned arrow, anti-camping device, etc)
• Added Air Fist and some other patches.
• Added server control commands - Server Admin NOTICE THIS!

Eye On Storm Newsletter
The second issue of Ion Storm's web-based newsletter Eye On Storm is online, including photos of the whole Ion gang (follow the Storm Troopers link). Thanks Voin.

FvF 2.09
FvF 2.09, the "I need sleep version," has been released on Freeform with a pair of new functions added: Display Other's Info and Class Lock.

The Dragon Triad
Prophet passes along news of The Dragon Triad (528 KB) has been released by John Diamond, author of Alien Quake using models from Qtest. Word is it comes with a level that the author describes as "Hexen-like" where your enemies are dragons.

Aliens TC Post Mortem
As reported recently, "ALIENS T.C. - Designed for Quake" has been shut down by Fox. CoolCat, the Project Leader, has posted an explanation on the homepage. The UAC (the group that was working on the patch), will continue making Quake patches, based on original concepts.

Midnight CTF
Midnight CTF is an original Capture the Flag (not using the Threewave code) game where you play with the lights turned out and a flashlight added to your inventory.

Sexy?
The Quake Women's Forum Sexiest Quake Man contest is over with EmBrioNic Pete of North American War Council and Quantum Access is the Sexiest Quake Man Alive!!! Especially if you consider persuasiveness sexy (hehe), comments on his sexiness from those who voted for Pete include:

Munyul - "because he asked me ever so nicely to vote for him, heheh"
met - "He promised me one of his better g0ats if i voted for him ;)"

Dmcon 97'
Official registration starts today for Dmcon 97', a LAN party at Iowa State University on June 27th, 28th, and 29th. Admission is open to the public, no invitation is necessary.

NYC LAN Party
PlanetQuake, Pseudo Online Network, and Blue's News are concocting a gigantic Quake LAN party blow-out over the Memorial Day weekend: May 23-26, at Pseudo's swanky loft in beautiful downtown Manhattan. Basty is going to be making the trip in from the Left Coast, Joost will be in town, and we're hoping as many crazed Quake players as we can fit into that place will join us for over three straight days of non-stop playing (well, okay those not taking my sleep depravation seminars might nap now and again). It's Bring Your Own Computer (and sleeping bag for that matter). More details very shortly.

Qoole 1.41 & Qoole Entity Sets
I see on the Void that a bug-fixed Quake Object-Oriented Level Editor (Qoole), version 1.41 is out on the Qoole page. And Prophet (so named because he knows some of this stuff before it happens) points out that there is now a CTF entity set for qoole 1.4x, and that Matthew Lee is working on an entity set for Dissolution of Eternity.

XvT Watch Out
John Cronin has released his TIE Interceptor level on QuakeLab:Editing. Thanks Red Knight.

QuakeSpy
morbid updated his .plan with a couple of QSpy workarounds and some word on QuakeSpy 5.2:

Again, just to let people know, if you get a page fault during refreshes, just start sorting by ping, or delete your Quake Spy Data file if you *are* sorting by pings.

Also, something new. If QuakeWorld just stops at the console without connecting to a server, it's because you stopped a refresh/update. Just refresh a server (any server) before double-clicking a server.

Now, for news. Quake Spy 5.2 looks like it'll be out in about a week or so, and is looking great. We have Buddy Lists now, which lets you mark servers with lists of friends, we have filtered Busy Server Redial, a sporty new toolbar, a monitor server command, and the coolest thing - chat. Yep, a chat client for registered users. Finally, a reason to register besides the kindness of your hearts!

Dear Mynx
The Dear Mynx section of PlanetQuake is one of my favorite new pages on the Quake scene (and judging from the response, a lot of yours too), and her latest edition is the best one yet (created while battling the flu, no less).

The Other Alien Shoes Drop
Tracy Atkins (Neurotic), the Graphics Artist for the "other" Aliens TC passes along word that Fox has indeed contacted them about halting production on their TC, just as the Alien and Predator projects had each been contacted previously. (BTW, Tracy is now available for other projects.) On a related note, David W. DeMonte points out that Fox has also put the kibosh on the Duke Nukem ALIENS3D TC. And, in a timely move, CoBaK sends along the web address of the US Copyright Office.

QuakeCon Map Contest
The QuakeCon 97 page has some new details about the deadline for the map contest, which has been extended till May 5.

Siren Moves
Siren's Pic Page has moved to http://picpage.stomped.com/. I thought she was moving to PQ, but there must have been a screw up (on my part, no doubt). No harm done, the important thing is that this cool resource (a library of photos of Quake players, if you're unfamiliar), continues to have a home past the end of the school year.

QuakeCast
Off to the QuakeCast, 8:30 PM Eastern... for a change it's probably possible to listen to the show live, as they've added a ton of RealAudio streams. Looking forward to hanging with Joost again!

Midi Skirt
American McGee updated, calling off his cry of Midi distress:

Ok, enough help with the MIDI thing.
You can stop sending me email about it now :)

DOE QC Released
Thanks Al Harrington for the word that the Dissolution of Eternity Quake C has been released on the Rogue Homepage).

Red Annihilation
EmBrioNiC Pete. sends along a reminder that there's still time to enter the Red Annihilation Ferrari giveaway.

Red Annihilation event ends Friday May2nd at Noon pst
=====================================================

A multi-player free-for-all extravaganza culminating in 16 all-expenses-paid trips to E3 in Atlanta (June 19-21) and a 1-on-1 deathmatch to determine the world's greatest Quake player and, most importantly, the identity of the fine red sportscar's new owner. Other prizes to be had at the event include Intergraph Ultimate Game Systems, Intense 3D Graphics cards, as well as thousands in cash.

The best news is that the competition is absolutely FREE and open to ALL. However, you must download Mplayer software in order to signup. This is also FREE, though. Go to http://www.mpog.com/e3signup.html for further information and to get fragging!

The signup deadline has been extended to Friday, May 2, at Noon PST

Plans
John Cash updated commenting on my sense of humor, he's right of course, auto accidents are no laughing matter, my apologies. American McGee also updated looking for some help with a Midi interface:

I've been banging my head against the wall
for the past few days trying to get a MIDI
interface to my sampler working. Someone
out there who *really* knows what their
doing with MIDI please send me an email
and help me out. I swear I'm not making
any RTFM mistakes... I'm probably just
being a moron. :)

Quakefinger
Tracking .plan files has been problematic ever since they became so numerous that I could no longer list them at the top of the news page. Something that automatically updated when a .plan changed was a great dream, but as I have described in the past, I am a bit of a monkey when it comes to programming. Stomped of course created a really cool resource for this, but that didn't do me much good here in trying to present the most up-to-date Quake information. Then I got lucky, and this really cool guy named dweomer emailed me about this site that he was creating to be the ultimate finger authority. So I did what any other red-blooded American would do: I recruited him. So we are now hosting Quakefinger on PlanetQuake, the authoritative Quake community finger page, thanks to the hard work of dweomer and his partner Hank (I'm sure we'll see more cool stuff from them very soon). The site features all sorts of options and an automatic summary page (one page of the last 24 hours of updates), which is what will currently come up if you click my Fingers link to the left, there is also the ability to see old updates, even if their owner deletes them when they update. Quakefinger is also providing the most recently updated .plans at the top of this page (and the return of "the Hand" yay!). The whole thing is still in beta, but it's far enough along (and cool enough) to unveil now. I hope you enjoy.

3D Realms .plans
dweomer added the .plans of the 3DRealms/Apogee guys to Quakefinger, Scott Miller and George Broussard each updated in response to the parable. My thoughts on the mud slinging (like anyone cares) is first one to stop looks coolest, but that's not too cool. In fact, let me take a moment to award the first Blue's Sportsmanship award to Rogue Entertainment for staying out of the wars of words.

God Mode
The Tormented Souls have some new art up in their Cool Stuff section. Fitting with the return of "the Hand", the example sent me is God Mode:

And God said "Let there be ammo"

Ranger Gone Bad 3
I've been rehearsing with my Ranger buds for filming of RGB3, and it's gonna be very cool. There's an update to the news section of the RangerWeb talking about what's to come from Ranger Gone Bad 3: The Fist of Set.

Quake/QuakeWorld Unix Ports
Thanks Bounty Hunter (Xenocide Flag Academy) for pointing out that there are a whole bunch of new ports up on Threewave (you may need to shift-click):

Qoole 1.40
Thanks SoNaR for word that the Quake Object-Oriented Level Editor, Qoole version 1.40 (a non-beta!) has been released on the Qoole page.

Predator TC Terminated
Lombard sends along the news that many had suspected would come down following the demise of the Alien TC, that Fox was taking a similar dim view of the Predator TC (which should've stayed invisible), so it has been canceled.

New DTF
Destroy the Flag version 0.89 is on the DTF site. New features include: the whole base blowing up, the flag catching fire (when the base is falling apart), and a new rune called the Doomed Rune.

qME 3.0 Beta 5
Thanks Prophet for the word that qME 3.0 beta 5 is out on the qME Homepage.

DOE Review
Gateway sends along the news that Dissolution of Eternity got another rave review, this time from GamesDomain. Congrats!

NGL
The National Gib League still has a few slots open for clans interested in participating in the inaugural season.

Gibfest
TEN has posted their account of the Tournament at the CGDC: Kornelia Wins GibFest, Beats Romero!

Quake the Cash Cow
There is a blurb up on OGR describing an id announcement that seems to indicate that they will be able to continue to drive cool cars no matter how many of them they wreck:

id Software has announced that they have entered six different licensing deals for its Quake technology engine. The licensing fees alone will provide roughly $5 million in the next two years, which doesn't even include royalties.

Mrs. Gunfire
Disruptor updated his .plan trying to track down Robin Williams after his mention of Quake on Letterman.

N64 Forever
There is an article on N64.com (thanks Michael Swindell) quoting Apogee President Scott Miller on the future plans for an N64 port of Duke Nukem Forever:

“We have every intention of converting Duke Forever to the Nintendo 64. We'll probably have the same companies working on Quake 64 do the port."

"Our policy now is that we don’t plan on making any games in the future unless they have the potential to be ported.”

New Thunder
There's a new version of Thunder up on the Thunder Home Page featuring enhancements including an improved OpenGL Camera view. Thanks Albert Clark.

The Next Big Thing
Forget Quake II, The Next Big Thing is a site devoted to the game beyond (the game formerly known as Trinity), with tongue firmly planted in cheek.

3Dfx Direct3D Reference Drivers
Thanks Jason Dusch for word that 3Dfx has released the latest 3Dfx Direct3D Reference Driver v2.08, and Glide version 2.3 (supports both Voodoo and Voodoo Rush) here. Be aware that these are not really being distributed for end-use as much as for users of development boards:

The 3Dfx D3D drivers (Version 2.08) for Voodoo Graphics are intended for use with 3Dfx Interactive Development Reference boards. The drivers have been tested on Voodoo Graphics based accelerator boards. However, we strongly recommend that Monster3D, Righteous3D and RealVision Flash 3D users use the corresponding drivers for their boards. All consumer board drivers have been distributed with the respective product. Please be advised that there is a software licence agreement attached to these files that requires agreement on installation.

Voodoo Doo-Doo
Hot on the heels of me learning what this mailing list is, Jason Dusch (again, thanks Jason) points out that as of today The Voodoo Review mailing list has been shut down due to abuse.

Frag and Tag Pool
The Frag and Tag tournament is at the half-way mark, and the QFL is offering a prize for correctly predicting the first, second, third place finishers for both the OPEN and POTS divisions.

Stupid Quake Tricks
Thanks to Jeremy Miller (and all the rest who mailed about this) for the first word that Robin Williams mentioned Quake on the David Letterman show last night. Here is the account sent by Lokatana:

He went on to talk about this game called "Quake", and described how he would walk into a room, stand there for a second, and instantly die a grizzly death. Then, the 5 "college guys" who play for at least 8 hours a day would walk up to him from out of the shadows, give his corpse a kick, and then run off to kill again.

Film At 11 Beta 0.94
Stormalong has released Film At 11 Beta 0.94 (212 KB), the new version of his acclaimed demo editor on F@11's homepage. The most exciting new feature is the "highly requested" 3D view (in the editor).

Bury the Hatchet? Nah.
There's a harsh little parable in Michael Hadwin's .plan (mis-dated April 4).

QuakeWeek
More like the the National Enquirer than Newsweek, Quakeweek is a new irreverent look at the Quake Scene. Apparently inspired by post NVT depression, this site is a lot of fun.

Ion Storm Stuff
EnterMedia has put up an article called Voices of Thunder has interviews with the guys from Ion Storm. Speaking of Ion, apparently John Romero got to drink some milk courtesy of Kornelia, winner of the TEN GibFest Contest at the Computer Game Developers Conference at Santa Clara. Besides winning a new P200 MMX from Intel she also got to play Romero and beat him 22 to 1. More details on the 311 Page.

Voodoo Review
Thanks WarpHammer[CoC] for clarifying the nature of the Voodoo Review (I was wondering yesterday), which is a mailing list/magazine for 3Dfx card owners. More info, including back issues are in the Voodoo section of AGN's 3D Site.

DM3 Strategy Guide
Here is a new guide to strategy on DM3 that seems to be an expansion of the old Smurfy Guide to DM3. Among other things the new guide contains demos of some of the principles.

Quake II Pic Details
Dr. Spank corrected my assumption that his shots from the news report about Quake II were photos of the TV, to point out they were made with one of those "Snappy" capture units (which can capture very high quality images), but the image quality suffered on the production end where the TV camera was just pointed at the computer monitor.

Hexen II Interview
There is a large interview with Raven's Brian Raffel up on the Chaos Sphere talking about Hexen II. The interview is from issue 17 of something (unclear if it's web-based or print, or what) called Voodoo Review by Dave Whittle.

Another 2D Quake TC
BioProbe Design has announced Giana Quake, a remake of the 1987 platform game by Rainbow Arts, described as an experiment of pure nostalgia. It's a Total Conversion of Quake, set in the 2D world of Giana. Details are available on the Giana Quake page.

Quake II News
With all the Quake II news today, it's a good time to point out that the Fault Line is a dedicated Quake II news site.

Death X .81
Omega, the quake expansion team, has released version .81 of their deathmatch add-on for Quake, Deathmatch eXreme.

Hexen II Screenshots
Phoebus sends along word that he's moved his Hexen II pages over to Raven's site (since he's now the webmaster there). To celebrate the occasion, he has posted some groovy new Hexen 2 screenshots from the Egyptian hub, with more shots of the other hubs promised.

Fixing the Clans?
Gateway made an plan update that implies he's interested in helping bring a little order to the chaos of the world of clans. It's a difficult problem to solve, how to make sense out of such a vast number of participants, and I hope that there is an elegant solution.

Quake II Fever
To go along with the screenshots of Quake II from Dallas TV, is an article on PlanetQuake by the former webmaster of Quake Will Rule the Cosmos Darin McNeil. The article is about Quake II hype (or the lack thereof), called, what else, Quake II Will Rule the Cosmos.

You Know You've Played Too Much Quake...
...when you start making cartoons like this one?

Quake II Pictures
Dr. Spank was nice enough to send a zip with some shots of Saturday's news preview on Quake II. I wasn't sure id wouldn't have a problem with them being posted, but now I see that Disruptor updated his .plan to mention that they're up on Redwood's, so I'll take that as an okay (I'd make a hell of a lawyer). Here's the zip with the Quake II pictures (1.3 MB). They are not screen captures, but photos of the TV, so they are not terribly clear. Here is the text of Disruptor's .plan update:

I can't believe someone actually did it. Someone made screenshots of the Quake II footage that was shown on Dallas KTVT Channel 11 last Saturday.

They're on http://redwood.stomped.com

3Dfx MacQuake
There is an article on Next-Generation that confirms the MacQuake rumor reported here the other day, that there is a beta of GL Quake for the Macintosh using a prototype Mac 3Dfx card being shown about that looks pretty hot. This is also one of the gazillion things mentioned in One Thumb's CGDC update on his page.

TEN Rate Change
The Total Entertainment Network has announced that a new version that will go online May 8 that includes an email client and a web browser. Simultaneous with the release of TEN version 1.2 they will lower their monthly flat fee to $19.95. In a separate release, TEN also announced they will soon be supporting Monolith Production's Blood.

N64 Daikatana
There are a pair of articles up on N64.com about Daikatana for the N64 (thanks Wurzle). Here's the story that quotes John Romero confirming that an N64 port of Ion's upcoming Quake engine role-playing game is planned, and here's N64.com's Daikatana preview.

New SoundBlaster Drivers
Thanks Kevin Berry for word there is a Full Duplex Sound Blaster 16/SB32/AWE32/AWE64 Driver Update for Win95 up on the Creative Labs site (which has suddenly become creativelabs.com, though the old URL, the odd creaf.com still works as well). The update includes magic words for SoundBlaster owners using Win95:

Better DirectX 3.0 support. Driver is now DirectX Certified

Not Quakeless in Seattle Et Al
1997 QuakeExtravaganza, The LAN Party in Seattle that I mentioned a while back is this Saturday, May 3. An unrelated (except by location) event is the Northwest Quake Festival an event planned at Gamezone in Seattle. They are said to be expecting members of ERTHQuake, R2, 311 and XP, (which might be a slight exaggeration considering how few people usually commit to events before there's a set date). Also, there's a festival in Arkansas on May 17th, so take a look here if you're in that neck of the woods. Finally in London there's an all-nighter at a the Shoot-n-Surf Cyber cafe that'll cost you £20, you can read the details here.

JQuake Update
Thanks to Mark Britton for the word that JQuake, the amazing Java Quake page has been updated with a new version that includes weapons and damage, (and an unkillable player model hanging out on the map). If I may gawk for a second, it boggles my teeny little brain what these guys have accomplished.

TeamFortress
I got the chance to observe a match in a beta of TeamFortress 2.5 for QuakeWorld last night. When asked if I had previously played TF, I admitted I hadn't because I don't get to play enough Quake to experiment with things that require learning. But I have recently resolved to test out more patches, so this invitation fit my intent of overcoming my ignorance perfectly. TF is very much like I understood it to be, a teamplay variant that makes use of a variety of character classes with scoring based on the traditional capture the flag concept. It was a lot of fun to watch (I ran around a bit on the level after the match we were observing ended but everytime I got out in the open I got my sorry ass sniped).

Modem Clan War
There is a special report on the Modem Clan War on News from the Front.

A World of Quake! Moves
A World of Quake! the Single Player Quake/Reviews site has moved to to http://www.awoq.time2quake.com/.

Wampey's
Wampey's way cool census (poll) has moved to http://www.planetquake.com/census/ with new questions (and new answers for that matter).

Tick TC
Here's the Tick TC Page. No, there's not much there yet, but hey, I like the Tick and it gives me a chance to put him on my page.

John Carmack's .plan
Thanks to FatalSync for the word that John Carmack updated his .plan with some thoughts on the 3D Realms Duke Nukem Forever announcement:

I'm sure you have all heard about the 3drealms / quake deal by now. It took a long time to get everything nailed down, but it should be worth it.

The "quake 2" terminology is a little confusing. They have all the quake / glquake / quakeworld stuff right now, but they will be picking up the quake 2 codebase after we finish it.

I'm quite excited about this -- it should be a very complimentary arrangement. We would never have done a game like Duke at id, but there are many valid styles of design that are mutually exclusive. Todd and the rest of the Duke team are hard working developers with a pretty clear vision of what they want. It happens to be different than our vision, but the market is plenty big enough for both of them.

Trench of Mental Warfare Moves
The Trench of Mental Warfare (home of Custents) has moved to http://www2.telefragged.com/WarTrench/ with a new look, and a new version of Custents. Custents 5.1 has two new entities: a powerful moving light/model entity, and a versatile healing trigger entity.

3D Realms Press Release
There are two press releases up on the 3D Realms site, one announcing the news leaked on Friday that Duke Nukem forever (the sequel to Duke Nukem 3D) will use the Quake engine, and the second, called DUKE DOES QUAKE -- THE BIG QUESTION ANSWERED: WHY?, which, as you may have guessed, answers the big question (thanks to sCary for those). According to the release, the sequel to Duke Nukem 3D is scheduled for an early 1998 release, and will include Quake II features:

Broussard continues, "Duke Nukem Forever will have all of the functionality of Quake and bring in the new Quake II functions, too, including support for 3D hardware, colored lights, Internet multiplayer capability (including a QuakeWorld similar setup) and other cool things too soon to mention. The Quake engine is a joy to work with and players have yet to see its full potential, which we plan to exploit. As Duke would say: 'This is gonna rock!'."

Interesting matter of fact statement from the release: "...When Prey is released late in 1998..." Historically, in game development terms, late 1998 could well equate to a year 2000 release, though the Duke release date seems realistic (if not conservative) since it does not hinge on engine development.

Game Writing
There is an interesting article on attempts to tame the "Wild West" aspects of writing computer games in Wired (thanks Digital1).

Quake Innovations Contest Update
Quake Innovations has a QTeam Level design contest offering over $350 in cash prizes. Contrary to what originally appeared on the contest rules they are not reserving the right not to pay if all the levels suck, all prizes will be awarded.

Homebrewed QuakeWorld Bug Fix
Charles 'Myrkul' Kendrick and Nelson 'TheGriffin' Hicks send along a fix for the QuakeWorld bug that causes projectiles (nails, rockets and grenades) to effectively hit and do damage twice (this apparently happens roughly one-eighth of the time). Damage-fix.zip is described as a trivial QuakeC fix for the bug. The patch basically marks missiles that have already hit their targets and prevents them from hitting again.

Sweden v. Finland Rematch
There was a rematch yesterday of Sweden versus Finland (with the Swiss remaining neutral). Details on the match are available on the Sweden National Quake Team Page. Here is the blurb they sent me:

This rematch was played on death32a as last time, but we played with deathmatch 3 since Finland wanted to. This increased the fragrate a lot, and of course decreased the meaning of tacticts, which I think was bad for us. The first period which was played at the Finnish server, ended 970 - 837, and the second played at the Swedish server, ended 1003 - 819. Some of the Finnish players had unfortunately problems with lag at our server, and that of course gave us some extra frags. Totally there were 3638 frags in one hour of playing. That is more than one frag per second. That is what I call a fragfest.

ThunderWalker CTF 2.0
ThunderWalker CTF version 2.0 is now out at The Valley of the Thunderwalkers. A point about variants on Threewave CTF (which Thunderwalker is): please make sure you are complying with Zoid's request to make any Source code of Threewave derivations available (one of the things I check before I post stuff like this is the availability of the source).

TW CTF includes Custom entities, anew laser cannon, a new sniper rifle, complete with new models. a new grappling harpoon, AirFist, modified Quake weapons, and four new runes: Vampirism, Protection, Living Armor, and Cloaking.

FvF 2.06
FvF 2.05 and 2.06 have been released in rapid succession on the Freeform pages (the wrong progs.dat went into FvF 2.05). Heh, since I recently complained about too many incremental releases, Hap is blaming me for this (makes sense):

Hey lookie, you're right. A version every hour. You jinxed me.

HPCL
The High Ping Capture League has moved again, to http://www.brainscan.net/hpcl/.

Lt.Dan Moves
Lt.Dan has hopped on his prosthetic legs and moved his fine Single Player Quake site to http://www.quakemania.com/ltdan/default.html.

Quake Desktop
Kid sends along word a neat piece of original Quake art, suitable as a 640x480 desktop background. The image is of clay Quake characters, and is available here.

PrOnix Interactive
PrOnix Interactive is a new "quake mapper's guild" involved in making and contributing maps to Total and Partial conversion projects. PrOnix is in need of mappers if you are interested in participating.

WCU class
There is a WCU today 4:00 PM Eastern on irc.planetquake.com (Dumbals originally told me the wrong network -- can't trust a substitute teacher) #Worldcraft. It will be taught by Dumbals because autolycus is moving. Today's class is on misc. triggers and funcs for the beginner (a tutorial on making levels with advanced features).

CTF Texture Wad
Loads of CTF news today. The following comes from my buddy DaKoTa's site Capture, which is home to a new CTF texture wad for map designers:

This is big news for level designers: John "Tattoo" Schultz has just send me his new collection of CTF textures. John was the creator of CTF2M2 "The Warzone," one of the best CTF levels in existence. He describes this collection as follows:

This is the Quake101.wad modified for Capture The Flag. I've taken most of the textures and added a red and blue flag to them. I exclude the electric looking ones and most of the doors. I'm hoping that this will help out the people just starting out in making CTF levels that are like I was when I started and don't have a clue as to how to change textures in a wad file.

He spent a month working on this project and has graciously made it available for other level designers. The file, ctfflags.zip, can be downloaded here on Capture."

CTF Bot Beta
CTF Bot 1.3b1 has been released on the CTF Bot Beta Page (part of the CTF Bot Home Page). Here is a local mirror (800 KB) of the new beta, which has CTF 4.0 support, many more waypoint maps, and lots of new features.

DTF
Destroy the Flag is another interesting sounding variation on Threewave CTF, where instead of capturing the enemies flag, you try to accumulate the firepower to destroy it.

WoT Moves
Wheel of Time Quake has moved to http://wotq.stomped.com/.

Chaos Sphere
The Chaos Sphere, dedicated to Hexen 2 News, has moved to http://chaos.stomped.com/.

Pete's .plan
Embrionic Pete updated his .plan with work on a Shrak server, and the fun to say Shrak FAQ:

Official Shrak server is up at 204.182.161.11:26000 If you have any questions, you might want to check out the nifty faq at:

http://www.shrak.com/faq.html

I'm spending the next 2 weeks on a detailed story board to submit to Quantum Axcess. It is an outline of the 3d shooter I've been working on. Thanks to Lep, Anna and Zero for their help in this. Who knows, "qa" might actually like it =) Lots of n33t0 contests and free stuff on da Shrak.com page..ch33r5 my friends..

More Deathmatch Maker
The Bishop of Battle mailed in earlier pointing out that the demo of Virtus' Deathmatch Maker has a disabled save function (implying you will not be able to save your maps without the registered version). Now that I play around with it myself, however, I see you you can export your map to Quake when you're done, which generates a map just fine (so I have no idea what the real impact of the disabled save function is).

New Movie -- Insanity
A new Quake movie was just released by the Quake Movie Team called Insanity. The link on the site (under projects) isn't working, but the movie is on their site here. The movie is a little shy of action (it's intentionally a tease for a series), with dialog that would embarrass Sylvester Stallone ("Wait, we have guns... let's get him!"), and a little rough on audio and camerawork. But knowing what kind of work goes into these productions (having just attended my first rehearsal for a Ranger movie filming), I think it's a good first movie, showing real effort with a well done set and full audio. I look forward to more productions from QMT and others as Quake movie making becomes a mature art form.

Quest 3D
The Quest Editing Pages are under new management. ArchVile (not ArchV from the Rangers) has taken over and has moved the site to a new location (from the former location) and updated with the intriguing news that in one fell swoop, both Quest and ED3D have been revived from the dead (thanks Jabber-I):

The page is now under new management. Today I talked with Trey and he agreed to let me have the Ed3D source so I can make a new thing called Quest3D. Hopefully I will have the source within a few days after he gets back from CGDC. If you have comments or suggestions just email me at vile@dazed.nol.net.

Plan
Mark "Nostradamus" Dochtermann updated his plan asking for opinions about the direction Hipnotic should take with color depth and video resolution in programming their upcoming games.

QuakeLab: Multimedia Contest
The contest on QL:Multimedia has changed a from a movie contest to a demo contest. The deadline for entries is now May 8, with winners to be announced on the 15th.

Kill the Llama
The Kill the Llama conversion has moved to http://www.fsgames.com/ktl/.

Deathmatch Maker
Well if it's on Gamecenter, as the Deathmatch Maker page promised it would be, I can't find it, but thanks to Zennon for word that the preview of Virtus' new id-endorsed Quake editor Deathmatch Maker is avalable on download.com. Here's the Full install (8.8 MB) and the minimum install (4.1 MB).

Tsunami
There is a new version of the Tsunami patch, a modified Threewave CTF 4.0, up on the Tsunami Quake Page. Tsunami Quake includes a bunch of new commands and impulses to allow you to: walk over items without picking them up, drop runes, drop armor, a bunch of backpack and grappling hook options, and perhaps most bizaare of all, the drop to the ground / fake death option (for when camping just isn't sneaky enough).

Requiem
The home of the Requiem patch is now http://www.planetquake.com/requiem/. If you're not familiar with Requiem it is a broad reaching patch that's very popular with those who have tried it. Requiem features over twenty weapons, including a flame-thrower, a freeze-gun, guided-missiles and a certain BFG-9000. There are also new extras like jetpacks, runes, jumping boots, radar, holograms, random item spawning, and more. Requiem also includes totally new bots that range in skill levels and who can use all the weapons and items, as well as a unique CTF variant that includes a manual placement option to allow both teams to set their own flag/base locations.

2D/3D Video Card Roundup
Thanks Road_Kill for the word on Gamecenter's roundup of video cards.

Hipnotic Site
Have you seen the changes going on at the Hipnotic site? Very nice, err, L33t

ABImE 0.93
Thanks to Prophet for pointing out I missed last night's release of ABImE (Angry Bloody Infernal map Editor) version .93. ABImE is by author of polyed.

Wheel of Time Rolls On
Legend Entertainment has an official website open for their upcoming Wheel of Time game using the Unreal game engine. Wheel of Time Quake is in no way affiliated with Legend Entertainment, though Chad Moore, WoT Quake Project Coordinator, is a level designer on the official project.

Head Hunters Move
Head Hunters, the cool patch that rewards you for collecting your opponents heads, has moved to http://headhunter.stomped.com/.

New Screamin' 3D Drivers and BIOS
Thanks Digital1 for word that the newest drivers and BIOS for the Sierra Screamin' 3D are available at Sierra's FTP Site. (I previously got mail about this and the next item that got zapped, my apologies to whoever sent it).

TEN Intel Tourney
There is information about an Intel-sponsored TEN Tournament here. Thanks John.

Brian Raffel / Hexen 2 Message Board
Raven's Brian Raffel is now answering questions on the Chaos Sphere's Hexen 2 Message on a weekly basis.

QSpawn
If you are interested in helping to test QSpawn a Win95 launcher for Quake, check out QuakeSpot for more details and information on how to contact the author.

UK QW Gateway
There is a UK QuakeWorld WWW Gateway up that is useful to people closer to the UK, though anyone is welcome to use it. It also allows you to query QW servers using a browser without QPlug installed.

Qday
Between 150 and 200 visitors are expected for Qday the two day Quake festival in Holland beginning today. They have a webcam up so you can watch the festivities. Also, NLquake is now online looking to be a communication center for Quake in the Netherlands.

DM Tips
If you want to share any level specific deathmatch tips for the DM maps, or read up on the tips already submitted, check out Schindler's Quake Deathmatch Pages (also featuring an art section).

One On One WebRing
The Quake Guru Players Ring is a new WebRing designed to help find people to deathmatch with one-on-one.

MacQuake Rumor
Completely Unsubstantiated Rumor Department (CURD?): SanJuro says he was at the 3Dfx developers conference yesterday and saw an unreleased alpha of GLQuake running on a PowerMac with a 3Dfx Card.