...because I felt that I had a response to nearly every letter in the mailbag...

Q3A:

This is a huge subject, and I think Q3A is still WAY too early in its development (at least we don't know enough about it) to make many judgments on it yet, but that hasn't stopped most people. OK, a few points:

a) If someone hadn't dared to innovate on a genre, or create a completely new genre, we'd still be playing side-scrollers or top-down games, or at best, single player FPS, but id decided to take a chance and incorporate TCP/IP support in Quake, and look how it is now...

b) One of the most downloaded add-ons for Quake was the reaper bot, meaning people liked playing against enemies that behaved and had the same abilities as them. This is pretty much what id is doing with Q3A (also like Unreal's BotMatch)

c) The screenshots we are seeing of Q3A are looking incredible and the networking is supposed to be top-notch.. I don't think anyone should complain about this.

d) If you don't want to play on the Internet, or against bots, then DON'T BUY Q3A. There are TONS of great single player FPS games out/coming out, such as SiN, Unreal, and Half Life.

e) id hasn't let us down yet.. You would think people would trust them by now..

Q2 Extremities Pack:

I can clearly see how people would think this is a cheesy way for id to make some quick cash and try to steal sales away from the other FPSs coming out near the holiday season, but there are a few problems. id hasn't told us much about the pack at all... For all we know, they could be including some exclusive levels/mods/etc. on the CD that aren't available on the Internet. Also, I don't think id is going to do the developers wrong, and risk being flamed. They're in touch with the community. They know how much negative feedback they'd get from it, and with all the competition in the FPS marketplace right now, they won't risk ANY negative feedback. One more point.. This CD could prove to be very convenient, for those people who have no mass storage product, and have to re-download ALL those mods (hundreds of megs) every time they format.

Prey:

*sniff* I was looking forward to it, too :o

FPS BS:

MY GOD WILL YOU PEOPLE JUST DROP IT!?!?!?

More FPS = Better. Reasons: a) FPS isn't constant.... If you're in a corner, it could be 70, but in action, it could drop to 25... You can DEFINITELY tell a difference in 70 & 25... (I dare someone to argue that one) b) Bragging Rights! :D c) The next game to come out will have steeper requirements, so the hardware that is coming out today is just paving the way for better and better games

Unreal:

I admit, the TCP/IP multiplayer did suck, but look at Quake1... The single player sucked, but multiplayer ruled, and it's a great game... Unreal.. single player ruled, multiplayer sucked, and it's a great game... And getting better... Actually, Quake's TCP/IP sucked before it got patched (which is what Unreal is getting right now.. just have patience)

Isn't anyone else outraged at the current trend of 3D graphics APIs?

It seems to me that certain games (i.e. Unreal) have OpenGL/Direct3D ports that only work on specific cards! I thought that by programming to an API like OpenGL or Direct3D, you would not need to customize the software to each display adapter.

So either the card manufacturer is lying to us. Or the game manufacturer is lying to us. Either way, the end result is that the consumer gets screwed!

In the case of Unreal, it is even sillier since so many new games are using it's 3D engine. I wonder if these companies who have signed up to use the Unreal engine realize that the only 3D API that it officially works under (working being a very subjective term) is Glide!

I'm glad that XGN gave homage to my beloved DWANGO. I hope it rests in peace. I just wanted to express my love for DWANGO. I had such an addiction to DWANGO that I missed the ball drop in Times Square on New Years Eve because I was playing Doom2 on the Oakland Dwango server, a memory which I'll never forget. So I just want to express my love for dwango and I think that dwango has left a legacy which will live forever.

Editor's note: Here, here. I think I can speak for both Blue and myself when I say that we look back fondly on the days of Dwango.

--MrCoffee

This is a joke, right? You would have to be a real Dork to find anything cool about winning this. Of all the stuff id could give away, why a scrap from some dude's car? How about a Quake 3 poster signed by all the team members. How about naming a deathmatch level after the winner; or spray painting his name in graffiti on a deathmatch level wall. The options are endless with a little imagination.

Czar, you creeping moron. Oops, that was a personal attack. I shouldn't assume you are creeping.

1) You appear to have some kind of superiority complex. Hence the self-inflicted nickname I suppose?

2) You apparently haven't a CLUE as to how video buffering/drawing works. (But thanks for the chuckles. WAY fun.)

3) Second, you are obviously not a biologist, nor a psychologist, so stop pretending to be one. (PS: statements like "The human body is electro- chemical" are not as impressive as you apparently believe them to be.)

4) What the hell is your point? You're all over the map. At one time you even concede the very point you appear to be arguing. You badger everybody with "it looks as if we have a qualitative versus quantitative fight here", but never get to anything qualitative yourself (with the exception of spouting random unsupported claims.) Tip: repetition does not make something more truthful. Also: stating something as so does not necessarily mean it is so.

5) Speaking of qualitative/quantitative, you seem to be forgetting my mailbag entry regarding the "study" I conducted on this very issue regarding to 3D gaming. Granted it involved a statistically puny sample size, but it was well controlled and double-blind. And strongly suggested an ability to detect--and a strong preference for--90+ FPS in Quake2. Regardless of why or how or ridiculous tripe on frame-buffer this or chemical reaction that. It was technically "science" (observation, hypothesis, contra-positive test design, random sampling, double-blind execution, reference control group, and a "peer"-reviewed "published" resulting theory). A process you apparently know little about. Your mindless unsupported spouting is...well, mindless unsupported spouting.

6) The reason you can't see scan lines on a TV (itself a false statement) has nothing to do with the TV's FPS. It has to due with the tube's phosphor persistence. Remember the old IBM mono-green computer displays? (Probably not.) They had a rock-solid image. They also ghosted horribly. (I had one and loved it.) It wasn't high refresh, it was long-persistent phosphor. The phosphor coating continued to emit light far longer than one scan interval. If the phosphors on a TV only emitted light for the amount of time they were excited by the electron gun, TV would be unwatchable. The persistence of the phosphor coating of TVs is carefully "tuned" by the manufacturers (and pretty much industry standard now) to yield the optimum tradeoff between ghosting and flicker. On the other hand, a short-phosphor computer monitor tuned for extremely high scan rates is totally unusable at 60 Hz, unless you have LOTS of Tylenol. Even so, you CAN see TV's "scan lines" if you look at the TV indirectly with your peripheral vision from at least 15 feet away. Better yet, do that and also make a motorboat sound with your lips like a kid, which vibrates your head (and eyes) and exaggerates the effect. (But something tells me you do that all the time anyway, and drool.) Fortunately few people watch TV this way, or they'd make the phosphors longer-persistence (at the expense of a little ghosting). And/or increase the refresh rate.

7) Since you are confusing the FPS issue with a new variable--persistence, let's remove persistence from the equation. Buy or build a variable continuous strobe capable of 120 Hz. Good strobes have very short persistence, short enough to "freeze" a bullet in mid-air (do NOT test this at home). Turn off all the lights at night, turn the strobe to 30 Hz, and try doing a physical activity, say, jumping rope or juggling (or both). Not too easy, eh? But hey, you can't see more than 30 FPS anyway right? Turn it to 60 Hz. Easier, huh? Now 120. As easy as normal light (if a little freaky-looking). But don't take my word for it, try it. For added fun, look at your piss in the light of a strobe. Of course, this strobe test can't be compared directly to the issue of Quake2 FPS. But it does address your baffling insistence that human eyes can't see more than 30 FPS.

8) If you don't like what Intel has to offer, don't buy it. No one is forcing you, unless you can't resist the "Pentium Inside" logo. Better yet, don't talk because every word betrays your ignorance. First, the processor issue is not QUITE as simple as you propose. (BTW, do you live by your arguments and still use an old Pentium MMX or PPro? If so, that may explain why you are convinced high FPS is useless, because you've never seen high FPS?) Second--let's suppose it IS that simple, that the Xeon is a warmed over PPro. So what? What beer do you drink? Would you ever consider buying Coors over Keystone? Same beer. Lexus over Toyota? Same car (most models). Duracell/Eveready over generic store brand? Same battery (usually). America pretty much works that way, for better or worse. I don't care to change it, in fact it gives me a leg up. Third, please name a time in history when you could buy more processing power (pick you benchmark) per initial-release-dollar as the latest stuff--say, Intel's Xeon. I could care less if the Xeon had no new advances to offer (but it does). It's still much faster than my P2-300, and a better horsepower value than when it was as new. My current CPU is fast enough for me (for now), or I'd buy a Xeon. Or, if I were building a new machine, I'd buy a Xeon. I didn't know why I'm wasting my time on this issue.

9) RE "rising price trend": You obviously weren't around in the days of the $5,000 286 with 20MB hard drives and 640K RAM (don't forget to factor in inflation), you little pipsqueak. Back then I ran a computer retail business--once I sold a 486 for *$20,000*. It had 16MB of RAM and a 120MB hard drive. Roughly three years ago a client bought a bunch of quad Pentium Pros with RAID arrays and 512MB for about $60,000 each (quantity discount). A few months ago I built a machine with similar processing, storage, and redundancy abilities--and 1GB of RAM--for $7,000. Almost an order of magnitude drop in price in ~2.5 years, while non-technology prices were rising. Last year I paid $2,000 for two 9GB 10k RPM SCSI drives. Now you can pay $2,000 and get the same speed and capacity--oh, and a PC to go with them too. Two years or so ago I bought a Voodoo Rush (Stingray 128) for over $300. Now I have a Riva 128 and Voodoo2 for less. BEST damn computer purchase I've made (and I've made a bunch)! The 2nd SLI was a close 2nd in satisfaction-per-dollar. This in spite of resenting 3dfx for their clever marketing ploy of selling TWO of them when they should have been on the same damn board to start with. (A rip off? Not if you own 3dfx stock.) Of course I wouldn't appreciate the high FPS without games like Quake2. The Riva TNT is by some accounts faster, has 2D, and sells for ~$175. And of course you seem to be forgetting the not-too-distant-past days of $8,000 high-end OpenGL cards, which today's cards smoke. What mothership are YOU on? Better yet, shut the fuck up.

10) "...Oh wait, you [don't] care what the hell I say because my name doesn't happen to be John Carmack, Jesus Christ, or God..." No, because you are a creeping moron.

Followed the link from your page to the Jon Peddie and Associates' 3D accelerator benchmarks page. What a waste of my time. Who is this clown? Does he actually manage to sell his services as an industry consultant?

His benchmark results are very misleading. According to his results, one might think that the S3, TNT, G200, and Real3D i740 are comparable in speed. Only after examining his raw data do you realize that if they couldn't get the card to run one of the test games in the configuration for the test, such as with VSync off, they simply gave the card a score of 0 for that game! They used six games for testing, and added the scores together for a total. The STB TNT card did not run GL Quake, Quake ll, or Sin with their test parameters, so they gave that card three zeros! This method skews the results so terribly that they are useless and misleading.

The grand totals for all of the cards ended up being fairly similar, with each card's totals running from a score of 207(i740) - 263(S3). This indicates a paltry 22% difference in speed. Hardly an indicator of the difference between 2nd and 3rd generation accelerator chips.

The individual scores for the games told a very different story. The TNT outperformed the i740 by about 2x in each of the three games that the TNT ran. The TNT also outperformed the S3 by about 30% in the same three games. Compare this to his overall score of 263 for the S3 and 240 for the TNT. That indicates that the TNT is 9% slower than the S3. Huh? From one third faster to ten percent slower. This guy must have a deal on the side with S3. :-)

His statistical method is completely flawed used in this context. They guy obviously doesn't know or care about what he is doing. Please think about whether you want to include links to his company's site in the future. This was not benchmarking, it was lying or ineptitude, and was very misleading to the casual observer.

It seems to me that Q3A is filling a spot in the market for id. Many people forget that the licensing deal for the Q2 Engine is likely to include royalties from the sales. If Id were to do an incredibly rich single player game, they may sacrifice some of the royalties from the much anticipated Half-Life. I guess that some developers with big bucks can make a deal where all cash is up front with no royalties. My guess is that valve isn't among that list. My guess is they have a royalty based deal with less cash up front. Therefore, it is in id's best inerests to have Half-Life succeed.

The other issue is technological. Unreal is having it's multiplayer woes. I saw a quote from Tim Sweeney saying that Quakeworld is an amazing bit of schooling. I think id is not too concerned about graphics now. The advance of the hardware will auto-magically determine the capabilities of the rendering. Lag and cheat elimination in online play are real challenges. Just ask Tim Sweeney (or JC). They are bulding a new foundation. A game's technology includes graphics, sound, input (and output) control, and networking. The trinity GRAPHICS engine is to be a scalable one. That means that new features can be added as the hardware improves. Personally, I think Unreal has amazing graphics(duh). The sound effects are neat, but a little hollow. IF id makes a game with Unreal like graphic quality, but is a giant step ahead in all other aspects, then that will be a game I will buy;guaranteed.

QIII Arena will rock. It will also give id the non-graphics part of their next 2 or 3 games. Trinity graphics will cover 3 or 4 games.

Another question. If JC isn't working on the graphics (BH is), then what is he working on? Is it only network code? I think he's probably spending a good deal of time with Señor Hellrot on scaring the hell out of us with new "AI".

Unreal shpeil
From: Method Man [ODB]

Last night, I was introduced to the new single player game, unreal. One sentence says it all about this game: interesting at first, but it doesn't quite add up when I have q2dm waiting a few minutes away. I lost interest in ten minutes. The first level was very cool in design and the storyline seemed to go somewhere. The visual effects were the best I've seen. I got really excited. Then, after I turned it off in disgust, I realized two things: 1. The weapons in their concept and execution were about on par with hexen I. The three weapons I picked up in those ten minutes were uninspired and, not only were they weak, but they all did the same amount of damage per time spent with your butt in the line of fire, so to speak. The optional fire for each weapon were unrealistic and didn't change the tactics I used at all. For instance, since when does shooting a pistol gangsta style equal a better firing rate? And a machine gun that shoots crystals that you just pick up from the ground that doubles as a shotgun? Bla. and, 2. The levels seem to have been constructed by some Internet hack with a few dozen hours on his hands. They have no real flow, no originality (except for the part with the lights going off one by one and you're trapped inside a hallway with red strobes going on, but even then that turned out to be disappointing and short) and NO INTELLIGENCE. They fit into the storyline as well as the ending of the last episode of Duke Nukem, the football field. And that was a comedy game. I did laugh when I saw the four armed aliens, though.

I believe this engine is good. It betters the quake2 engine. I just wish that GT could have given the engine to id, and let them come up with the one player game, the weapons, the enemies...the list goes on and on. I haven't tried the multiplayer unreal, but even it's supporters admit that it's support for that is very weak. So what makes it so great? I believe that the people who enjoyed this game are the same kids who were really excited about Diddy Kong racing. They give the same reasons.

Just wanted to answer of few of Nemesis' questions from the mail bag last week...

(1)Why has everyone started bashing Unreal lately? Because Unreal sucks. I was one of the few that was all hyped up about it when it first came out. I reserved a copy of it, got it and then installed it and DAMN it sucked! My first thought was, well looks like my computer is finally out dated. Quake ran like crap on my system which was equipped with a voodoo2 card and was a mid line computer... 128 meg o ram and such... But anyway it ran like crap... Then I got a hold of a few other new games, SiN demo, Shogo and they ran fine... That's when I realized it wasn't my computer was behind that far the problem is that Unreal had poor design... Don't get me wrong the game it's self had some break threw things in it but nothing worth $60 well I can get it now for $30 at Wal Mart and Quake 2 still is going for $45 that should tell you something right there... So to sum up this question Unreal SUCKS, SUCKS, SUCKS, SUCK!

(2)Why does id get all the credit? What the HELL are you thinking! Why? Why you ask? Because they deserve it. What you are saying is all the credit should go to the mod coders on the net??? That's like saying that God deserves no credit for the wood our houses are made of!!! DAMN man you need to have your head examined by a professional and fast!

(3)Another criticism I keep hearing is that "The weapons in Unreal are weak!". There are weapons that let you kill someone in one shot. What more do you want?

Again you missed the entire point! It's not the destructive force behind the weapon it's the weapons themselves... They suck! There is no "feel" to the weapons... When I play Unreal it doesn't matter if I use the sniper rifle or the damn eight-ball (which only fires like five rockets, what the hell is that?) I get the same "feel" from it... click... boom... click... boom! That's it! Now in Quake2 I get in these moods where sometimes I like the awesome force behind the room painting BFG and other times I like to take my time and drop my sight with the Rail Gun and pluck them off one by one. But my fav is the rocket launcher. I love clipping walls and nailing players around corners! Now that's gaming!

Finally as a note to you, you mentioned that Half Life will beat out Unreal... Your damn right! I had the chance to try out Half Life and (remember this is running on the QUAKE2 engine) it is unbelievable... Now that game is deserving of the name UNREAL... As for MegaEpicGames... They should have called their FPS "Wish it was Close to Real". Oh and by the way Half Life ran an easy 35+ fps on my machine that will only run Unreal at 16 fps... It's obvious which is the better engine... id kicks ass!

Well nuff said.... In case you still are confused Nemesis.... See the chart below...

Unreal == SUX

Quake2 == AWSOME(Not to mention it is beating out all the so-called Quake2 Killers)

As time has shown there is only one company that can beat an id release.... id.

Noticing your updates from yesterday, and I quote "Out of the Blue [2:39 AM EDT]", I couldn't help but thinking:

Does this blue character ever sleep?