Mailbag
June 1,1999 -- Previous Mailbag

Letters are edited for spelling errors only, and may contain profanity. Commentary by Jason "loonyboi" Bergman.

Uh...good point.

From: Salmoneus
Subject: no brainer

Hi,
I understand about you shooting the underside of the level while falling in "The Longest Yard", but I don't understand why it would even be a question if others do the same thing. It seems pretty clear to me that there is not much else you can do while falling, nothing else to look at, except the underside of the level. So why not shoot? It's a no brainer. I'm sure everyone does it or has done it at one point. I'll just pass it off as being a slow e-mail week for ya, and wanting some feedback on pretty much anything :)
--
Salmoneus

You know something? I never thought of that. :)

More from Columbine...

From: Ray Simpson
Subject: RE: Question..

Let me start by saying, I am one of those people that go to Bible studies, and yes a church. I find it so amazing how the media will latch on to one thing and make it the cause. I've seen tons of letters stating " It's the parents responsibilities " for what has happened, but what of all the people that posted messages, would your parents approve of what your doing? I mean, you have to admit there is tons of Satanic Symbols in Doom and Quake (Excluding Quake II), if your parents saw you go and get a inverted pentagram that would make you in invincible would they approve?

Yes, yes it's a game and you have to have atmosphere and realism to make it great, but I'm willing to bet if your parents knew half of the stuff you did on your computer they would not approve. But, I'm sure most of you don't care about what your parents think, or even live with both of them (cant wait for the letters stating they have a great family life to come..). I find it so funny to watch people post messages about this subject trying to sound brilliant to get away from some stereo type that the media have put on them. Being a Christian, I can total understand what your going through, every time some preacher or pastor gets caught doing something stupid suddenly everybody cant wait to bag on you.

The reality is this; my wife's friend lost her sister to the Columbine shootings. I how many of you brave speakers actually want to do something about the suffering of the family and others? I find it to convenient that you sit back and criticize everything, but offer nothing of your own... been hurt to many times? Sorry its part of life.. get over it.. and do something about it. You maybe great at Quake, or UNREAL but how good are you at life?

Side Note :

To Jason Rushton

"aren't all humans essentially teammates at the very least" , get a girlfriend and move out of your parents garage. Don't you think that you should go outside and visit with the other "teammates" once and a while?

Ray Simpson


From: Troy ><> Fisher
Subject: Columbine Lawsuit

Finally...someone is placing blame in the right direction (The parent's aren't entirely responsible for the actions of their children, especially at that age).

Unfortunately, this case is a waste because our friend the lawyer dropped the racism card. No one was singled out! They set forth to kill as many people as possible, regardless of race, color, or creed. They may have had racist and anti-jock tendencies, but this lawyer is simply preserving racism in America by bringing it up where it is not needed. Of course...a child is dead. Will suing their parents who also lost a child bring back their child? Nope. Everyone will be miserable.

Someone will now be richer and miserable and someone will be poor and miserable.

As my friend once said:
If we both have ice cream cones.
And you drop yours.
And I give you some of mine...
Would either of us _truly_ be happy?

><>
Troy Fisher

Those oddball Falcon Ads.

From: Daniel Slotte
Subject: Falcon NW ads

Hi,
I love your site, and I been visiting it now for the past two years. It's grown better and better, good news and resources in abundance. BUT, one think is really nagging me. It is pretty disgusting how you put in those Falcon NW ads in the regular news, I mean, who cares about their new Pentium III based system. Almost every Quake player is a computer DIY enthusiast, so they are not likely to have to buy a custom built system for them.

I know you need the money as an incentive to keep going , but there should be another way. It's really off-putting seeing those ads mixed with the regular news, as it is not really relevant.

Sincerely,
Daniel Slotte,
Finland

Blue replies:

I understand how this could be a concern, but rest assured that advertising content has zero sway over editorial content here, and Falcon's most direct competitor, AlienWare, has had as much coverage of their recent newsworthy announcements in the hardware area as anything Falcon has done, and they do not advertise here. The story in question, their offering the world's fastest production Voodoo3's running at 200 MHz, would be newsworthy no matter who was behind it.

Maybe he's not in pain after all?

From: Tim Childree
Subject: NVIDIA torture

In regards to Casey Barton (a guy)'s comments about id torturing Graeme Devine by sticking him with a Riva 128 card, I'd like to know if he's actually tried playing Q3test on a Riva 128? The dental office where I work part-time as tech support has an office LAN set up with three systems (two of which can REALLY be used, since the other lacks 3D hardware).

The two systems which are commonly used by myself and my friends after hours have received our old Voodoo1 cards. One system is a K6-2 300 with an AGP Riva 128 and my old Monster 3D, the other is a Pentium II 350 with an ATi Rage Pro and my friend's old Canopus Pure3D. When I installed Q3test and GLSetup on the two systems (for "LAN testing" only, of course), the K6-2 froze whenever I tried to make it use the 3Dfx card (this is after getting the Quake 3 drivers), so I used GLSetup to install the Nvidia drivers. It looks just as good as my Voodoo2 with two exceptions: the resolution is not as high, and the shadows are simple blocks on the ground (very ugly, I've noticed that early drivers for the TNT had the same problem with multi-textured surfaces). So there you have it, a Riva 128 isn't quite cruel and unusual punishment.

-Tim Childree

Guess I should ask for that $1.50 I sent to the Save Graeme Devine Fund back, huh?

An update.

From: Yugo Nakai
Subject: uhhh... retract my mailbag complaint

The almighty Graeme Devine not only personally responded to my bug report despite my lack of running GLSetup, but he also says they *will* break up GLSetup into card-specific downloads. Also, GMB's comments indicate that id is not in favor of Q3-optimized unstable drivers, so, uhh, forget what I said.

-golemB


A Hidden E3 Gem?

From: Brian Schmit
Subject: Tribes 2 @ E3

If you happened to wander down to the Dolby Digital booth down below you would have found one of the small gems at E3. A high end PC hooked up to the network, and running Tribes 2. This was a wonderful find in that there was absolutely NO-one around, and an chance for me to play the game for about 1½ hours. I also got to ask a couple of questions.

You can't help but notice the new sky. It's absolutely friggin' incredible, but what about the water? I asked Scott Youngblood about it, stating that it was something that I had wanted to see in the original. He stated that it was something they were working on, so it would look even nicer in the final, and that yes, you can drown. They also had several new armor models, not just skins. Every now and then I would catch someone running around with the new model, it was a crazy looking insect type thing, almost a bio armor. I was told what it was but I was too busy dodging mortars being launched at me by LIGHT armor! They had to be cheating because this light didn't seem to be running out of ammo. I never got to see any new equipment. Every time I went to resupply it came up with the old weapons. Of course the old ones had been redone and looked amazing. The system was running a Voodoo 3500, and it rocked. The Dolby Digital absolutely BOOMED. Each time lightening struck near you, you almost jumped away from the keyboard. They were also showing Diablo 2. Next E3 I think I'll stay in the Dolby booth.

-Brian Schmit
AKA Gambot

Search! fans unite. :)

From: Griphis
Subject: Search!

Hey, that "Search!" box is real neat. I could spend hours clicking it. Who needs video games when you've got something that amusing? Search goes on.... Search goes off.... Search goes on.... Search goes off....

-Griphis-

Good to know that I'm not alone in my love of that Search! box. Hey, if you're easily amused by this stuff, try selecting some text and dragging it into the box. I get a kick out of rearranging all the letters on text boxes too...but hey...I don't get out much. :)

Yeah, that's a pretty bad idea.

From: Andre Carlini
Subject: Q3a auto-handicapping?

WTF??!

Oh, perish the thought of actually being *good* at a game. auto-handicapping is the most ridiculous thing i have heard (since talk of making HPBs deal more damage than LPBs on the lithium mailing list ages ago ;) bloody typical to come from a mac-luser too.hell, why don't we just sort the names on the scoreboard in order of users processor speed and fps, then we can do away with playing the game altogether? sheesh.

---------------------------
andre / monstar

Oh, dear lord no! Man...if stats were listed by computer and connection, then I'd have absolutely no chance of ever getting up there.

More on Q3's chances for success....

From: Nanarchy
Subject: My Thoughts

I think Q3A will be a success but not for long, I think they have carried the old "run around, find the rocket launcher and kill" theme around far too long. It should of stopped at Q2. Q3A should of incorporated something that was rather different between the normal quake style of gameplay. Although many people enjoy this style like myself, q3a is yet just another one added on top with better visuals and a few new weapons. I see it as being a mod for Q2 really, you don't see many changes between the three games; besides the weapons, model animations, curves, fog etc.

If id had a Single Player that had a story, strategy, suspense theme like Half-Life, Im sure it would sell ten times more than just a multi-player edition that includes bots. Sure bots are good and all but they will get boring very quickly. Most of the time we only play single player once, but still it adds to the whole point in buying the game. All the rant over the last couple of months confronts me as being nothing to special. I was really looking forward to Q3test, but no I see that there hasn't been all that many drastic changes in the gameplay issues at all. Now I'll discuss some issues that I think where a let down in the test release (I'm your English teacher now biatch!).

* The fact that id released the test without all the weapons in the maps kinda sucked, of course they want to save some good things for the release but how are we supposed to test these out to give you our thoughts on them? We cant!

* id released only two maps, Test map 1 and The Longest Yard, I found this disappointing, 3 maps would of been decent because then we would not become as bored of it as we all now, I mean sure when we got it we did not sleep for the next 48hours but now we aren't bored of it, just cant be bothered playing it because we are bored of the maps. Plus the other thing I noticed is that they should of released a map that had more Volumetric Fog. Once again, how can we give our response's about this if there's only one room that has very little of it in there? (BTW that room owns meeeeeee)

* A rather STOOPID thing, the player does backflips right? Ever noticed how stupid, and crap it looks when someone jumps backwards, resulting in a back flip and then fires his gun! I tell ya, I wouldn't like a rail trail(TM) coming out of my arse whilst in mid-flight. Something they definitely need to change.

I think overall Q3A will be popular because of id's reputation, although I don't think it will be a favorite for very long with things like TF2 coming out in September and so on. Hopefully iD's next game will incorporate Single
Player and a new strategy in the way death match is evolved with a different weapon that dominates rather than the Rocket Launcher all the time.

-Nana
www.planetq3.com/nana

I think you make some good points, but I think id's decision to ditch the traditional single player is actually a very mature decision on their part. Let's face it...Doom rocked single player (still does) but the scene is very different now. Quake's single player simply can't compete with any of the other FPS titles out there, so why should they spend all of their time (and making a traditional single player game is a TON of work) when they know all people really want from them is a deathmatch game? They shouldn't, and they're not. It means we'll have to go elsewhere for a real single player game...but let's be honest...who wasn't planning on that anyway?

On rumor mongering.

From: Keith Hudson
Subject: ION rumors - shame on you


It's not like you to step on the rumor bandwagon. Stop it. It ruins my own selfish enjoyment of your site as a 'just the facts' information site. If you are going the tabloid route do it properly and start reading some English tabloids like The Sun or News Of The World to get a better idea of how to do it 'with gusto'.

--Protege

Redesign?

From: neutron
Subject: comments on your site- please read

I know it's your site & you can do what you want, but I think it is time for you to redesign your site. Next time you redesign it I suggest not using a black background, because everyone & their mother has a black background. Also,I would suggest not having game specific logos on your logo. And some of the sections on your site need updating (like guide still focuses on quake).Once again a great site(my homepage:), I just think it needs a new, fresh look

P.S. I find the phrase here's the poop disgusting (had a hard time typing it..ach)

P.P.S. That falcon banner is really ugly(I know its an ad tho')

You have no idea how long I've been lobbying for a mauve background and maroon text. Tell me that wouldn't rock.

Okay, fine...we'll keep the current design then.

Mmm...Quake, Steak & Beer.

From: Matt Feifarek
Subject: Quake: The Restaurant

Just FYI, I see that there is a new restaurant called "Quake" at 10th and Bway here in Manhattan. It looks pretty yuppie, and I doubt that the people who started it even know what "Quake" is, but you never know...

They have a bar, too...

Perhaps all of us Quake goons should take the joint over and scare away the yuppies.

Take care.

That's really funny...I just saw that the other night. One of these days I'll get really drunk and show up there asking to deathmatch the waiters. Just wait. :)


From: mammenwe
Subject: Best Steak house is.....

Mortons of chicago http://www.mortons.com/ although I've never eaten at Peter's :)

Lawgiver

Bah. I say bah.


From: G T
Subject: Thank you for affirming my belief...

That Peter Luger's is the best steakhouse in the world. That's all...just had to voice it out.

g

Damn straight it is.

More on Q3A

From: jose jimenez
Subject: Q3a its a new game

People please.

If you want faster rockets, no footstep sounds etc. go play Quake 1 or QuakeWorld. If you want a good mix of action and strategy go play Quake2. If you want to play a new game then play quake3. I don't think q3a its meant to be a Quake "x" clone. It's a new game just like quake2 was, ACCEPT IT. I trust id and even if i dont like the finished product ill still got another games to choose. Please let the id team to make the game how they want . Ppl forget they are the "creators" of the fps genre, trust them.

What's wrong with violence?

From: Mr. Fix It
Subject: Non-violent Half-life?!?!?!?!?!

I was just reading about the latest patch for HL and there was mention of a non-violent version. Non-violent Half-Life? Now that's an oxymoron. I can't think about Half-Life without seeing blood splats and internal organs lying around. It's in Germany and France where you can't have violent games, right? Man I feel sorry for them. Half-Life just wouldn't be Half-Life without blood and people getting blown up. It wouldn't be the same if your enemies were just robots. At least that's the way I feel.

-Mr. Fix It