Archived News:
The official Quake 3 Arena site has the Quake
III Arena test release for G3 Macs for download. There was a brief false-start earlier
when a version was briefly posted and pulled, but that's been cleared up. Here's a local copy, with mirrors
of the 21.4 MB file, and here's the word on the release:
Before Downloading, READ THIS:
This is the Mac version of the test
Linux and Win32 version will be released as soon as possible
Q3TEST is for TESTING new tech and multiplayer code.
Q3TEST is NOT the game "Quake 3 Arena".
Q3TEST is ADDICTIVE. Be sure to get some sleep.
Known Mac Issues
- Sometimes the Mac build crashes in low memory conditions, we're looking for help in
tracking this.
- The sound latency can be improved.
- Currently the game will only run on the main screen in a multi-monitor setup.
- The overbright bits we use to change the way lightmaps work in the PC build is not
currently in the Mac build.
We are running servers at;
- 192.246.40.37:27960 -- q3test1
- 192.246.40.37:27961 -- q3test1
- 192.246.40.37:27962 -- q3test1
- 192.246.40.37:27963 -- q3test2
Xian updated his .plan again with word the Quake III Arena messageboard test
( story)
was a failure, but that more experiments may ensue over the weekend.
THE 3D ZONE (German-language 3D gaming
news) has posted ten new screenshots of Skout, the upcoming first-person shooter from Soft Enterprises.
Things are hopping, id's Christian "Disruptor" Antkow updated his .plan with word on the official moderated Quake III Arena messageboard
(temporary location.). Here's the poop:
I've written a message board for use in discussing the impending Q3Test
releases. It's primary function will be a central place for you to post bugs so that we
can quickly peruse the boards and see what some of the main problems are. It's still in
development, there are a few problems that I still need to iron out, but it's mostly
functional.
I'm interested in seeing how it performs under a high load. I originally used MS Access
MDB format, but became frustrated with file locking issues with a minimal load of
activity, so I spent most of the afternoon today installing MS SQL Server 7 and adjusting
the code to work with it. Coming from a database background (Oracle at my previous job), I
was quite impressed with SQL Server 7. Really easy to set up, and the performance seems
very good.
Anyway, if you want to beat on it, it's temporarily located at;
http://underworld.idsoftware.com/cgi-win/webcon.exe
If any of you would like to use that as a discussion forum, and generate some data for the
database, I'd appreciate it. If you find any serious bugs or get any error messages,
please post in the "Q3Test: Bugs" forum.
The board will be moderated by id staff to retain it's focus. For general Quake 3
discussion, I highly recommend the Quake 3 messageboard at
sCary's Shack
id's John Carmack updated his .plan with a very lengthy discussion of the factors involved in the decision to release the Mac version of the Q3ATest prior to the PC version (next story). Here is an excerpt from the quite lengthy update that talks about the bottom line here:
We hope it will be done soon, but there are factors out of our direct control involved.
Don't be spiteful. This is just the beginning of the testing and release process.
One conspiracy theory suggests that Apple is somehow getting us to do this.
What we have "gotten" from Apple is a few development machines. No cash payoff. No bundling deal. No marketing contract.
I am looking at this long term. I want to see OS X become a top notch platform for graphics development. I think highly of the NEXTSTEP heritage and I might move my development from NT if it turns out well. There is a lot of groundwork that needs to be laid with apple for this to happen, and my working on the mac right now is part of that. Plus a lot of complaining to various apple engineers and executives. :-)
To be clear:
At this time, there is no mac that is as fast for gaming (or just about anything, actually) as a pentium III with a top of the line 3D card. Period. I have been misquoted by some mac evangelists as saying otherwise.
The update concludes with this:
Gaming is not a reason to buy a mac, but Apple is taking steps so that it may not be a reason to avoid a mac if you have other reasons for wanting one.
MacOS still sucks.
id software's Graeme "Zaphod" Devine updated his .plan with word that, in a surprising bout of
cross-platform-ness, the Mac version of the Quake III Arena test will be the first version
released, perhaps as early as this weekend:
The test is not coming out tonight, but we do have a Macintosh candidate ready
to go. If all goes well tonight, it will be out over the weekend. The Linux/Win32 builds
are not yet ready.
The test version of Quake 3 Arena is just that, a test, and as such we here at id software
need to have some controls over it as we start to test it out publicly. Without these
controls we cannot actively track and improve the product in a manageable manner.
We wanted, and are eager to be completely "out there" on all platforms, but the
OpenGL drivers the product needs for all the platforms are not yet finalized. By launching
on the Mac first it gives the various 3D board manufacturers some time to get their Win32
OpenGL 3D drivers certified with Microsoft. We're using, and depend on, the latest and
greatest drivers and want to be able to distribute those drivers for the Win32 platform.
The Macintosh market is smaller than the Win32 market, and has less configuration options
than the Linux market. There is only a single OpenGL driver, and the hardware is
essentially always the same. This is an ideal "controlled" environment for the
initial testing. Basically, if there is a huge issue with the initial release we're
exposing a smaller audience to it. This turns out to be a good thing.
The plan is to release the Macintosh version first, followed by the Linux version,
followed by the Win32 version. We will release on the other platforms as soon as possible.
We will rev the other platforms as we make new releases.
I hope you understand and agree with this decision/process. It is a good step towards a
timely release of the full demo and retail product.
Dawn of Darkness: The Demo, a
demo version of Dawn of Darkness, which
describes itself as the "ultimate total conversion for Quake II," is now
available. The playable demo of Ward Six Entertainment's
soon-to-be-gold TC is about 11 MB, and contains one of the commercial product's 15 levels.
The Qtracker Homepage has the version 2.3 beta 3 release of the Qtracker server-browser program. The new release offers a major new feature: Automated HTML server list generation, updated every minute, which can be FTPed
automatically to your web server or just stored on a local drive.
The busy bees over at The
Hive have posted another interview, this one with Monolith CEO Jason Hall.
Gamehut's Mortyr gallery has a
half-dozen exclusive new images from Interactive Magic's upcoming World War II game.
Version 1.02 of the GameCam
chasecam mod for Quake II has been released. There are now four different variants, Win32,
Linux (glibc), Linux (libc5), and Solaris (Sparc), of this plug-in mod that can be added
to any other Quake II mod.
So much for the Polish lesson yesterday, Jacek Fedoryński writes to point out the
captions on the Polish Mortyr page ( story) were not Polish, but German. Not to worry, here's the promised
lesson nonetheless: In Polish, graphics and music would be "grafika" and
"muzyka," respectively. Thanks again, Jacek.
The Cached Home Page has an interview with
PGL finalist JMaster.
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