loonyboi's Quake III Bus Tour Report
Day 0: The Arrival

Jason "loonyboi" Bergman
August 22, 1999

Introduction

Well, here I am, sitting in a hotel room here in Houston gearing up for tomorrow, which will mark my first stop with the bus. I've only seen the bus from outside so far, but it is pretty dang impressive looking: big, black, and ominous. I hope the inside is half as cool looking (not to mention air conditioned!).

I guess I should do some sort of introduction here, for all of you out there. Here's the idea: I'm following the Quake III tour bus for the next four days. Each day, I'll be writing up a report, much like this one. As it hasn't happened yet, of course, I can't exactly tell you what to expect from these...but I can pretty much tell you that I'll try my best to keep it sane. Relatively speaking, of course.

I claim no responsibility for my level of sobriety when writing these. Whenever possible, I'll try to disclose my blood alcohol level, just to be on the safe side. At the moment, I'm under the influence of a single beer (kindly provided by the LAN party we attended...more on this in a second).

Arrival

Anyway, so after a reasonably traumatic flight (I don't fly well...I fly, but only out of necessity) I landed here in hot ol' Houston. It's really hot here. When you step outside, you can feel the heat in the air. It's kind of gross.

I arrived at the hotel and met up with David (the poor soul who's traveling along with the entire tour) and Anna, my hosts from id, and I was given my debriefing on the bus. Here's the deal: the bus itself has a nine PC LAN setup. Eight clients, with one dedicated server. The version of Q3 that's running here is *not* the version we've all been playing the heck out of. This version has two extra models, and two new levels. W00p. I've been told that tomorrow I'll have some exclusive screenshots to share with all of you. I'll be sure to get some shots of Orbb, the giant eyeball character, and the modernized female Quake II marine model for all of you to look at.

Settling In

After the debriefing, the the three of us headed off to a LAN party thrown by some of the locals here in Houston. We went by way of Anna's car, so unfortunately I didn't get to experience driving the bus down a regular street yet. Something tells me that will be a really surreal experience.

The LAN party was pretty cool...these guys had a really nice setup (small, but nice). The three of us did a three on three match, and well...got our butts kicked. We were out of practice, of course. ;)

Thanks to Jay Turner and the gang for having us...you guys rule. :)

Anyway, so here I am, psyched, and ready for tomorrow. Whee! Bring it on, baby.

-Jason

Tomorrow's stop

CompUSA. I'll be armed with a digital camera and my notebook, so I hope some wacky stuff ensues. Or something like that, anyway.