id Software's Robert Duffy updated his .plan with a lengthy essay on Q3A mod support. It's pretty quiet, so here's the whole deal:

Point Release Stuff

There was a lot of new functionality added in the latest point release, primarily centered around mod development support. We are still sifting through all the feedback e-mail but here are some problems and solutions based on what we have found so far.

1. If you are are not seeing the new "Mods" menu, it is likely that you are running something that replaces the UI. ArenaSpy and several other mods have their own UI DLL's or QVM's so you will not be able to see the point release UI. This can be remedied by removing any extra UI mods. This can also cause a problem with auto-download in that if you connect to a server that sends you something, you cannot see the download progress because the UI your using does not support it. The download is working but you just see "Awaiting gamestate" ( because your not using the new UI ). If you see partial files in baseq3 or an fs_game path this is what happened. Again, using the UI that comes with the point release solves this problem.

2. If you have chosen a 3rd party model or skin, you CAN still connect to and play on pure servers. The caveat being that you will temporarily revert to Sarge. This works just like it always has.

3. If you are using a cracked executable, you will no longer be able to connect to pure servers. "You ruined the game, I cannot cheat anymore!" is not a valid complaint.

4. If you are not able to join a server and you get an "unpure" client message, it is likely that you are loading content from an invalid PK3 file, loading DLL's for gameplay or loading content outside of PK3 files. If you have modified any of the official PK3 files this will also cause you to not be able to connect to pure servers. The other case in which I have seen this is if the server was set to pure and not restarted. I am still looking into this one.

5. I have seen reports of non-pure clients not getting kicked fully and remaining semi-connected. I have be unable to duplicate this problem. If you have details on this please forward them to me.

6. If you cannot see a 3rd party model, I have tracked this down to the method which it was zipped. It appears that some zip programs do not store directory names as individual entries in the zip files. I use Winzip and it works fine.

7. You can use 3rd party UI's to launch games and connect to pure servers. Once you have connected to a pure server, the client will reload the UI based on what the server flags is ok. This will explain running a new UI ( like ArenaSpy ), playing on a pure server, exiting back to the menu and ArenaSpy is gone.

8. There have been a couple of reports of not being able to load nn number of maps, others have reported no problems. We load around 2500 maps from the development directory here and with that and locally I have not been able to duplicate this issue. And no, there are not 2500 maps we did not release.. these are largely successive numbered versions of the same maps.

If you have any information that could help identify a problem or an exact set of reproduction steps for unpure clients not getting fully kicked or not being able to load maps from baseq3, please forward the information to me at raduffy@idsoftware.com.

And for those of you wanting to try out that new Mod menu, I highly suggest HeadHunters or Fists of Fury those along with many others are Very Cool.