id's Graeme Devine updated his .plan with some thoughts on the grappling hook and its relationship to Quake III: Arena CTF as well as word that Jan Paul, author of the Gladiator bot is helping out with the bot code in Q3A. You'll note that he says the code for the grappling hook is in there, but that the levels shipping with the game don't use it. Here's what he had to say:

Ah, grappling hook hoopla – when I read about the hoopla over UT grapple CTF I knew we’d have a similar impact (BTW, believe it or not, there is room for both games in the universe!). The grapple code is still going to be in Q3A (through bot reachability and so forth), it’s just not on the maps we’re shipping with the product. The CTF maps we have in there are designed for non-grapple use. CTF and grapple are not tied implicitly together.

Mr. Elusive (aka Jan Paul) is over here from The Netherlands helping finalize the game. He is of course the famed author of the Gladiator bot for Quake II. As some of you have been guessing he’s been working with John Cash on the bots in Q3A. We’re very pleased to have Jan’s expertise on Q3A.