Part one of FiringSquad's preview of Quake III Arena is online with the first of Thresh's hands-on impressions from beta testing Quake III Arena, going into detail about each of the game's weapons ranging from the chainsaw through the BFG ("or whatever the name ends up being"). The next part promises to discuss character classes and inventory.

Ritual's Mark Dochtermann updated his .plan again with more on 3DNow! support in Sin:

I found two potential problems for 3DNOW users out there. The first one is that if you installed the patch, you are still probably using your old config. This isn't an issue except that version 1.01 of Sin turned off the "vid_checkamd" variable because at the time the 3DNOW support was not done. This variable was then saved in your config.cfg so by updating to version 1.03, you still don't have 3DNOW support because vid_checkamd is set to zero not 1. To fix this either edit your config.cfg in base/players//config.cfg or create a new player config.

The other problem is that the latest changes to the renderer for the mission pack Wages of Sin have not been 3DNOW optimized and therefore do not show up. 2015 had added additional particle effects that are currently not supported in the 3DNOW enhanced, ref_gl_amd.dll. I am taking steps to make sure that these changes are integrated in the near future.

Thanks go to David W. Anderson for finding out the reason, he wasn't getting 3DNOW acceleration.

Wicked3D Parallel Graphics Configuration White Paper is online, giving more on Metabyte's upcoming technology to allow the use of multiple accelerators in combination. Thanks Slade at Gangland.org.

I've received a good deal of reaction from readers terribly excited by the announcement of the addition of Graeme Devine to id Software. Since this seems to be a bit of a change in direction for id, I asked Graeme if he could clarify his role on the team, his designation as Designer, and what this means to Quake III Arena. Here was his reply:

My role here is to be sort of the team coach; it's hard to put a label on this sort of thing so I guess we settled on "designer". By coach I mean, this is id, everyone here is talented, works their asses off, and gives more than just a damn about what they are working on, so it's my job to get us playing a team plan as a team, for the team and by the team.

Currently this focus is purely on Q3A, there is nothing else, but my other long-term role here is to push id out past the current first person shooter design and redefine this genre, not just a little bit, not an incremental design, but big time new ballgame. A lot of people only remember me for the FMV titles and wonder what the heck kind of thinking id had to bring me on. The truth is I've been around in this business since the early days, working in almost every genre that exists on platforms galore, and by working with the talent here we can really strike out and do some very exciting things.

Mat's cunning .plan has been updated with an apology to id Software, calling posting the interviews that have since been pulled (story) a "lapse in (his) personal judgement." Thanks Ron Solo. Here's hoping that this helps ease some of the heat that Mat's been feeling from this episode, which seems to be the result of his enthusiasm, something to which many of us can probably relate. On this subject, more than one email I've received asked if Anna Kang's response from id was intended for posting itself. This was indeed meant as a public statement on the subject.

There's a Jay Wilbur interview on GameSpot UK talking to the ex-id Software biz-guy who now fills that role for Epic Games about Epic's upcoming Unreal Tourney (which I got to catch a glimpse of at GamesCon, and was looking like a much more action-packed DM experience than Unreal, which was about the only impression I was able to get in a brief look). The piece offers an Unreal Tournament Gallery of screenshots, and is all tied into their 3D Action Week, which includes this huge week-long poll called their 3D Action Election which seems to be some sort of tournament, today asking for votes between Quake III, Starsiege: TRIBES, and Prey (not sure what they have in common, one is out, one will be out very soon, and the other won't be out for some time, so I can't imagine what we should base an opinion on between them). Each day new games will be pitted against each other in a popularity poll, and the whole thing will end in "playoffs" between the top choices.

Dynamix Programmer Dave Moore made a large update to his .plan "intended to be something of an open letter to Tribes players that are asking about the ongoing OpenGL work, and anyone else who might be interested." The extremely lengthy update details some of the difficulties they've had with TRIBES OpenGL support based on the dominance of Quake-engine games that he says influences OpenGL card and driver development away from the type of support required by games like TRIBES. Here's an excerpt to try and capture the flavor of his post:

Now, we come to Tribes. Tribes is, by design, less geometrically complex than Unreal or Quake2, and more complex than Quake. Tribes uses procedural animation for some interior lightmaps, dynamically generates lightmaps for projectiles and explosions, and, what "hurts" most, generates a large number of textures in our terrain engine for detailing purposes. The terrain in Tribes was designed to trade geometric detail for texture detail in order to achieve a good trade off for software rendering and Glide for Voodoo1/2. Every problem we have run into in implementing OpenGL for Tribes has boiled down to: no OpenGL card/driver combo currently available is prepared to handle the amount of dynamic texture shuffling that Tribes requires.

Let me state it baldly. There is no excuse for this that I can see in a current AGP card. Take the Voodoo1 as counterpoint. A card several years old, with a fill rate less than half of a good second generation card like the TNT, the Voodoo1 can download upwards of 300-400 kb of textures per frame, at 30 fps, all the while running an app at 640x480 with a depth complexity of ~3. The cards I have been testing on are sometimes hit with huge frame rate penalties (30-50%) when downloading less than 8 kb of textures (10-30 small lightmaps) per frame with a DC slightly above 2. Swinging your head around on the Tribes terrain can cause pauses of a large fraction of a second. (The "hitches" I've mentioned before.) I'll freely admit I'm not a hardware engineer, but let's look at the math. The Voodoo1 downloads across the PCI bus at 33 or 66 Mhz. AGP 2x has an access rate several times that, and the cards have the capability to leave the textures in system memory, and access them directly as needed. (I should say, theoretically have the capability, it's not utilized in some drivers, notably the TNT Detonator driver set) Why is the AGP card slower?

Business Wire reports id Software Names New Designer with word that Graeme Devine, co-founder and CEO of Trilobyte (The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour), has been hired as id's new designer. Here's the report:

MESQUITE, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 1, 1999--Graeme Devine has been appointed id Software's new Designer.
Devine brings his experience as co-founder and CEO of Trilobyte, Inc. and has produced titles such as The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour. Only 3 PC titles have sold more than 2 million copies, The 7th Guest, MYST and DOOM.
"id Software has a track record of not only creating top notch games but of hiring quality talent," said CEO of id Software, Todd Hollenshead. "Graeme's credentials are a remarkable showcase of his skills as designer, programmer and manager."
Devine's designing and programming efforts helped produce The 7th Guest, a title that is ranked among the elite. In addition to that success, he brings his management experience to id. At Trilobyte's height, Graeme supervised fifty-five employees and managed with a hands-on approach combining his designing and programming skills with those he supervised.
"id Software is a leader in the industry. They are the creators of a phenomenon that has reached around the globe," said Graeme Devine, Designer for id Software. "I'm excited to be a part of this talented team."

The Rainbow 6 Retreat has posted the third in their series of interactive interviews with the R6 team, asking reader-submitted questions.

Ritual's Mark Dochtermann updated his .plan with a clarification on support for AMD's 3DNow! extensions, as well as a mention of the imminence of a release of CTF for Sin. Here's the scoop:

There seems to be some confusion out there about 3DNOW support in version 1.03 of Sin. I guess people are so used to having to specify things that they don't expect programs to work like you would expect them to. ;)

Sin does an automatic detection of 3DNOW, EAX and A3D. If you scroll back the console buffer when you start a game it will tell you which renderer it loaded if it says "------- Loading ref_gl.dll -------" you are loading the normal renderer and if it says "--------- loading ref_gl_amd.dll -------" you are loading the 3DNOW enhanced renderer.

Variables which help in the process:

vid_checkamd (default 1) - enables the check for 3DNOW support
s_checkeax (default 1) - enables the check for Creative's EAX support
s_use3dsound (default 1) - enables A3D support

I hope this clears up some confusion.

CTF ===

Aldie has been hard at work on CTF and we are almost ready for a public beta, expect to see something soon.

FullOn3D/Hardware's interview with Hercules' Joe Lau talks about Hercules' current position in the graphics marketplace, and their new products, boards based on both the TNT and Savage3D said to outperform other manufacturer's boards based on the same chipsets.

There are three new screenshots of Drakan: Order of the Flame up on Drakan.Net, including a couple more of the dragon in flight.

A new unofficial Mechwarrior 3 FAQ is online, answering frequently asked questions about the upcoming installment in this Mech combat series from Microprose.

New additions to the Lone Gunmen's site include additions to their sniping guide that brings it to 10 pages, and a demo of something I've seen myself, the rive through capture on Rollercoaster (fly-by capping in a scout--Zoom!).

Version 5.0 of Loki's Minions Capture the Flag is now available, said to be the last LMCTF release for Quake II, saying "look out for LMCTF for Q3." The new release offers some game balance tweaks and ten maps in total.

There's an interview with Blake Hutchins on Bad Karma talking to the writer of the story behind the Starsiege series about where the story on this series of games that began with Earthsiege has been, and where it is heading.

Billy at Voodoo Extreme passes along a reply he received from John Carmack to a question about his mention of possibly releasing the Quake source code. His reply puts a time frame on when the source will be made available, which is after the first original Quake engine licensee has released their game:

"I can guarantee that I will be releasing the Quake source code, the only question is the timing. I don't intend to release it until all of the initial licensee projects have shipped. Anachronox looks to be the last one out, so pull for their completion..."
John Carmack

A test version of Quake III Arena created for compatibility testing with hardware vendors has been leaked. I contacted id about this, asking Director of Business Development Anna Kang what exactly it is that some have gotten their hands on, and she explained, saying "it is not a game, nor is it the test that will be out in about a month. Trying to play the IHV test will only lead to frustration." Here is the full quote about the leaked test:

A version of the IHV (independent hardware vendor) test has been leaked . The leaked version is used for the sole purpose of internal testing and contains no real levels. It serves no purpose other than for hardware vendors to test and optimize features such as multitexture and compiled vertex array implementation. It contains no playable maps. Some maps are specific for testing oversixed textures, extreme texture aspect ratios, and high polygon outputs (much higher than normal maps). We hope the public is aware that this leaked test is useless to them and illegal to have in their possession. This material was given under NDA and its sole purpose for distribution was for hardware vendors to test out various features. We're flattered that so many people are interested in getting their hands on the game, but what is out now is not a game, nor is it the test that will be out in about a month. Trying to play the IHV test will only lead to frustration.

I will not be posting links to "reviews" or links to sites that choose to post screenshots.

Here's the lowdown on issue 27 of loonygames, to be posted all through the week.

loonygames pulls out issue twenty seven! Put that away...have you no shame? Exposing themselves this week:

• Serious Brass Ones: Jason "loonyboi" Bergman sits down with Derek Smart of Battlecruiser 3000 AD fame for this talk about the past, present, and future of his epic series. [Monday]
• From the Mouth of Madness: Jason "loonyboi" Bergman gives his list of the weirdest games of all time. Two games with no graphics, one with 2600-style nudity, and lots of farting. Can you afford to miss this? [Monday]
• Painting on Polygons: After a long, happy run here at loonygames, Chris Buecheler's leaving us for the dark side (okay, so maybe it's just GameSpy...we kid because we love, dig?). In his final column, he passes the torch on to Rick Grossenbacher, author of last week's cover story, "Two Programs, Two Dimensions." [Wednesday]
• Reviews: we review two of the most complex games you'll ever play! First it's a Top Shelf look at Falcon 4.0 [Tuesday] followed by a Bargain Bin look at Battlecruiser 3000 AD! [Thursday]
• PLUS: Whole caravans of User Friendly [DAILY], Penny Arcade does the twice-a-week-thang [Wednesday], Pixel Obscura [Tuesday], NTSC vs. PAL in Pad Happy [Thursday] Code on the Cob [Wednesday] and more! And then some more, because we've got balls of steel, baby.

In my exchange with Anna at id about the leak (above), I also learned that the audio transcripts posted earlier were not authorized for release. Here is what she said about that:

Negotiations were under way to secure an interview with the id team by Mat Bettingson. Due to id's limited time, discussions led to a visit in April. However, Mr. Bettingson came to our offices in February under false pretense and without a proper appointment. According to Mat, he had been told that arrangements for a February interview had been confirmed. A courtesy was given to Mr. Bettinson because he had flown from the UK and we believed that his intentions were honorable. Rather than tell him to simply pack his bags and return to the UK empty handed, we treated him with respect and gave him time with members of the development team in addition to giving him the opportunity to check out Quake III Arena. The understanding was that Mat would be doing a written article on Quake III Arena, nothing more. As a general rule, it is allowed that reporters bring audio equipment to assist them with their notes. However, it has never been the case that these recordings be displayed as audio files. A courtesy given was severely abused and the damage from this unprofessional behavior has resulted in distrust and lack of confidence. We are requesting a formal apology and the termination of any release of audio files.

As a result, I have pulled the copies of the interview that I had mirrored.

There is a Soldier of Fortune Interview on GameWire talking with Kenn Hoekstra of Raven Software about their upcoming Quake II-engine game.

10 Questions With SamHell talks with Illiad of User Friendly fame.

Sharky Extreme's on-site visit to Metabyte gives first hand impressions of Metabyte's recently announced multiple accelerator setup (that they're insisting on calling SLI for the time being) as well as a setup running Quake II on three Wicked3D Voodoo2 boards running three monitors, all in stereo with the eyeSCREAM glasses. They describe the multiple accelerator setup as two Voodoo Banshees running together for about a 40% performance improvement with no loss in visual quality, and there is a rundown of other cards they plan on using with this technology. Here's a bit:

Unfortunately, since the entire industry was shocked to learn of the Metabyte drivers via Sharky Extreme last Tuesday, all negotiations or agreements haven't even gotten to step one yet. This means that widespread SLI solutions based on newer parts like the S3 Savage4 or PowerVR250 or Permedia 3 are at least three months away, minimum.

To fulfill the need for a high-powered SLI option ASAP, our sources have indicated that Metabyte will most likely market two nVidia TNT based cards (one AGP, one PCI) under their own Wicked3D flag. No one knows if Metabyte will be a high-volume capable supplier as they were with last year's Wicked3D Voodoo2 card, but if they do take this course of action, they'll probably be able to handle anything thrown at them.

Version 1 of QTS is now available, a classic Quake mod that features faster running, higher jumping, new sounds and new deathmatch levels, though it can also be used with single player play.

Version 1.1 of the modestly titled Another CTF for Quake II has been released. This capture the flag modification allows you to pick up and carry your own team's flag. The new version includes the ability to use the flag as a weapon (yeah baby!) and a server option to only allowing capping near the flag spawn.

Version 1.0f of the Gloom mod for Quake II has been released as a server-only update. For the moment only the Win32 version is available. Thanks Gloom News.

The Official QuArK Homepage has version 5.7 of the level editor known as the Quake Army Knife. Thanks [ARCH]WhoopAss.

The Wavelength Half-Life Editing site has posted a guide on setting up QOOLE 99 for use with Half-Life. Thanks Apache.

Turok2 Clan League is looking to start clan competitions playing turok2: Seeds of Evil as soon as tomorrow.

• The new Voodoo Review is up with more on the Voodoo3 and "an updated second opinion of the MonsterSound MX300"...
• BXBoards is reporting they have "broken 1Ghz on a Windows NT system" by overclocking dual Celerons over 500 MHz apiece in an article that includes howtos...
• The Ultimate JailBreak Clan has posted a JailBreak add-on with new skins, sounds, and new looks for the weapons...

I had a lot of fun at GamesCon, aside from driving the porcelain bus Saturday night (Zoid and Brett from Microsoft each had the same chicken as me, and both felt ill as well, I wish I could remember the name of the restaurant to make a warning). GamesCon was a well-run event, and I was very impressed with the participation by game industry folks, as well as hardware and software vendors. There's no way the attendance was anywhere near the 5,000-10,000 that their site said they were expecting, but the folks that were there all seemed to have a good time. In addition to the Tournaments and the general LAN party gamers got to see all sorts of new goodies in operation, including:

• The Voodoo3
• ATI Rage Fury
• Unreal Tournament from Epic Games
• Terminus from Vicarious Visions
• Mortyr from Interactive Magic
• Slave Zero from Accolade
• Zoid from id Software
• Levelord from Ritual
• Pat Lipo from Raven
• Kevin Baccus from Microsoft

As well as free copies of TRIBES for all, many other giveaways, Cuban cigars and the world's worst (or at least the corniest) lounge singer. This singer (from the hotel lounge) was like Bill Murray's Saturday Night Live routine. If you saw the Sopranos last night (and you should watch if it is available to you, it is the best show on TV), he was the equivalent of the stand-up comic in the old-age home. I actually have a couple of mpeg movies of this, if they came out okay, maybe I'll post them somewhere.

Link of the day: The Jesus Dance (no offense intended towards anyone's beliefs), a site doubtless inspired by the all time favorite Blue's News Link of the Day, The Hamster Dance. Thanks RAZ and GreenMarine.