News Archives from August, 1998

Click here for news prior to November 1, 1998

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Happy New Year!
I figured I would mention this early since people who visit Methos Quake on January 1st, 1999 probably won't be able to read much of what they see. Please have lots of fun but, play safe. We don't need any accidents this time of year. (trust me, I know)

Q3Test Coming Soon?
I saw this on the GamesOnline. Apparently, we will see Q3Test much sooner than we originally thought. Here's the scoop:

"Paul Steed was the guest on Monday's episode of Lilith & Eve (a new audio/video RealDealie female gaming show) and he made a few comments about Quake III Arena, which include a mention of the possibility that Q3ATest could be available in as little as a month. Here's the exact quote:

"...I would hazard a guess, like, the way things are, about another month or so...""

Now that is the coolest news I've heard since Honny was banging his.. oh nevermind. :)

Barrysworld Web Server Fixed
After 2 1/2 days, I was finally able to post my update to the BW servers. When I talked to DBs yesterday, the first thing he said was "don't blame me, this time it was Ted and RJ's fault". Apparently, Ted decided to reboot the main server and it went downhill from there.

DBs, who was at home sick at the time, said that received a call in which Ted sheepishly asked him if "he wanted the bad news or the really bad news". DBs knew immediately that they had done something wrong.

Both Ted and RJ have been working on the chain gang ever since  . (Can I shine your shoes, mastah?)

LakermaN Aftermath
I received quite a varied response to the Lakerman Interview. Nearly all were impressed with how honest he was with the tough questions. Some people asked why I talked as though he was Thresh and others thought I was too rough on him.

Since I have done interviews before, this time, I just said "screw it, I'm gonna ask the questions that people want answers to". So, I incorporated them in with the mundane "what did you think of Quake" type questions.

A lot of people asked me how they could contact LakermaN. His e-mail address is lakermanofsc@hotmail.com

LakermaN Popular?
A lot of nice people mentioned the LakermaN Interview (thanks) including PlanetQuake, Redwood's, Challenge.AU and Fragzone and a few others. The UK site, Conversion.net also mentioned the Interview with the added comment "LakermaN is supposedly one of the best Quake players in the world, though I've never heard of him". Never heard of LakermaN? Sheesh!

Strangely enough, there were three huge sites that I thought the mention of the LakermaN Interview would be a "given". Those were Swedish site Fragzone (yes, they mentioned it), Finland's mega site, The Dome (no mention at all) and most surprising was my own host site, Barrysworld who never said a word about it. (hmm)

New Qizmo Released
The latest version of the ultra-popular QuakeWorld Proxy, Qizmo v2.56, can be downloaded here. Although it has many nice features, the best one is that they've increased the trial time from 15 minutes to 50 minutes.

Methos Writer Update
I've had approx. 10 responses to my posting about needing a new column writer to replace Paul2, who stopped writing the "Quake Mental Hospital" page. Most of them were pretty good. If you're interested in having your own rantings page, send me e-mail and let me know.

Methos Quake Demos Going
No, Barrysworld hasn't lowered the boom on my demos page. In keeping with the "more than generous" agreement I have with DBs from BW, I'm going to be deleting "a bunch" of demos from the Quake Demos page and the ftp site. Not sure which ones I'll delete yet but, I'll browse through the demos and choose the unfortunate ones. I will probably end up deleting approx. 25% of the demos. :(

I was looking through them earlier and everytime I chose one to delete, I said to myself, "damn, that's a good demo, I can't delete that". Needless to say, there will be some tough choices.

For those that will ask whether Tony (DBs) told me to delete some of them, the answer is "no, he hasn't said a word about it". I've been using more than the allotted ftp space for a while now but, Tony has been very cool about it. Either that or he just didn't notice and he'll freak when he sees how much ftp space I'm taking up. :)

Proxy Launcher Final Beta Released
Now this (I think) is a very cool program. If you use a proxy (doesn't matter which one), you NEED this program. Ever get tired of running those pesky batch files from Gamespy or Qview? Proxy Launcher will do everything automatically for you. The best part about the whole thing is that it's FREE. :) You can download PrxLaunch here.

Methos Site Stuff

• Updated Methos .plan file
• Posted 1 demo of Reload to the Quake Demos Page. This demo was 1.4MB when I downloaded it from Hoony but, when I recompressed it, it was only 569k. Hmm, I must have some kind of super compression program.
• Fixed a spelling mistake on Methos .plan page (Sorry Hak, wasn't intentional)

Christmas Aftermath
After a tough Christmas of sitting around on my ass for a few days, it's time to get back to updating. I hope you had a very happy Xmas and Santa (St. Nick) brought you all kinds of treats to keep you busy for a few days.

LakermaN_of_SC Interview Posted
I have posted my interview with LakermaN_of_SC. For those of you who visit my demos page, you're well aware of how good a Quake player LakermaN is. In this interview, he is VERY honest and talks about tough subjects like cheating and the infamous Thresh comments.

Please take a few minutes and read this interview of one of the best Quake players in the world. He had some cool things to say and you won't be disappointed.

Barrysworld Web Server Problems
Just when I decide to post a large update (including 10 demos to the Quake Demos page), I find out that the BW Web Server is down. When I wrote this on Sunday evening, I noticed in the BW irc channel that the servers will be down until Tuesday (wtf?). I'm not sure why the server is down for over 2 days but, as you can guess, I'm not happy about it.

I'll have to do something to get back at them. The best way to get back at a server is to hit them where it hurts. Maybe I'll post some streaming pr0n video so their bandwidth usage will skyrocket. Just joking Tony. (Methos will let y'all know where his next site will be located, lol)

Spookie: Missing In Action?
After a frantic search through the streets of L.A., there is still no sign of Spookie. Rumor has it that he has locked himself inside a sleazy motel room with a hostage. Apparently, he has kidnapped some innocent mid-western girl and is holding her with a "lethal weapon" (put that thing away before you hurt somebody!). Oh well, I'm sure he'll come to his senses after he runs out of food and videos. Then we'll see him go back to his usually mundane lifestyle. :)

Note: This is all "tongue in cheek" (err umm, well, you know what I mean), don't call the police, I'm sure they'll both be fine. (they may need a doctor though :)

Methos Needs YOU!
Ask not, what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. I'm looking for somebody to write a page to replace the QMH page. Not the same type of page but, something different.

Can you write? Are you of semi-intelligence? Do you have something interesting to say on a weekly basis (preferably about the Quake scene)? Can you spell? (not a huge requirement after seeing Spookie and Paul2's pages) Most important, do you play Quake for the fun of the game?

I don't care how old you are. I don't care what country you're from. Being a well-known Quaker helps. Hating Q2 helps (joke). Having LOTS of Quake friends, contacts and being in a clan helps too (no, this won't be a page for your specific clan)

If you're interested, you can send me e-mail and tell me about it.

Methos Site Stuff

• Posted Interview with LakermaN_of_SC, it's a "must read"
• Updated Methos .plan file
• Posted 11 (count'em, 11) demos to the Quake Demos page including 3 matches between monster players Timber and Lakerman recorded on December 26th and a clan match between two of the top clans in the world (SC & SK)
• Removed external links for stat pages and counters from the News page (this one), the contents page (the one on the left), the Quake Demos page and the Methos .plan page. This should make these pages load quite a bit faster. I will remove them from the other pages as I edit them.
• Fixed 4 spelling mistakes on the Quake Demos page.
• Finally fixed the description of the Val0r vs Thorn demo to reflect the proper players (doh!)
• Haven't seen Spookie yet, he's still locked-up in his sleazy L.A. motel room :)

Christmas Greetings
Just wanted to say Merry Christmas (or season's greetings for some) from the gang at Methos Quake (Methos, Spookie & Paul2). I hope you and your family have a safe and happy holiday season.

Christmas Gifts?
As a small Christmas gift for people who have nothing better to do on Christmas day after the Xmas festivities are over, I've added a few demos for your viewing pleasure. Note: These demos aren't on the demos page (yet), just on this page. These are 5 completely different demos for various reasons. (Update: 3 of the demos were put on the Quake demos page so, there are only 2 here now)

• Deth Vs ShoqDogg (DM2 NQ 274KB) - This is the kind of demo that will never make the demo page. This demo was sent to me with the info "I hated DM2 until I mastered the level". Well, I think that he could use a few more lessons. Quite an amusing demo that was almost too painful to watch. :)
• Aimbot Demo (DM4 QW2.3 232KB) - Anselmo sent along this spectator view of a guy using an aimbot. The bot is actually quite good and it can float in mid-air and shoot people if needed. This demo was amusing to watch.

Enjoy the demos and once again, have a great holiday season.

QMH Dies A Quick Death
With his last gasp of air, Paul2 has updated his "Quake Mental Hospital" page for the final time. I expected him to thank all the visitors to his page and all the people who sent along words of support but, that's not his style. Paul2 decided to go out, the same way he came in, with a bang.

I'm sure there are lots of people (like me) who will miss Paul's "different" sense of humor. Thanks for the laughs Paul, see you on the flip side.

Gibfest ][ Coming Along
The Uber-Admin Team (including me) for Gibfest 2 got together last night and finalized all the arrangements for the big tourney. If things go as planned (do they ever?), it should be one of the most well run tourneys I've ever seen. I've posted more details on my .plan page.

Hoony's Alive!
After what seemed like a year, Hoony has finally updated his Challenge.AU site. He even went as far as to mention that I was "spending too much time bonking my blonde neighbour". Well Hoony, as you well know, I don't bonk and tell. :)

Nice to see you back Hoony, maybe you finally got tired of getting whacked by some of the better Aussie quakers and decided to go back to something safer like updating your site. As long as you don't tell your wife that you're writing again, things should be peaceful. :O

New QuakeWorld Coming Soon
QuakeWorld Client and Server v2,33-0001 was released yesterday on the QuakeWorld site. It fixes some nagging bugs that have been in QW for a while.

Quake ]|[ Arena Stuff
Izn0 (from TrueGamers) sent along the irc log from the Q3A chat held the other night. Here are some of the very interesting things mentioned from the 3 id guys in the channel (Disruptor, Hook & Zoid):

• Weapons that are definitely in the game are machinegun, GL, RL, plasma gun, railgun, a new type of "ultimate weapon", shotgun, we're still considering a lightning gun, but if we do it it will be better than the one in Q1.
• Netcode is all new and improved. Better than Q2 or QW by a long shot. Very stable, runs great with even very poor ping.
• Rockets will probably be somewhere between Q1 and Q2 in terms of speed and damage
• Server ops to control run speeds, knock back factors, and things of that nature. If you want DOOM speed, you can just run a server with those settings. We'd like to see Q3A become the ultimate deathmatch game, configurable enough so that everyone can configure their servers just the way they like.
• There will be prediction. Prediction is absolutely necessary for net play.
• We're hoping to have everything ready on the "when it's done" day. So, ya, there will be dedicated server ports ready.
• Performance is VERY important to us, which is why we took out some stuff like bump mapping, so maps with curved surfaces are going to be fast. But instead of approximating curves with brushes a la Q2, the designers can just spec curves and users will be able to control the amount of tessellation.
• We have at least one weapon in the game that is definitely WAY more powerful than the others. It's currently replacing the BFG, but its final name has not been decided upon. (RBFG?)
• Weapon switch times are far faster, and we also have a better weapon cycle interface so that going from weapon 2 to weapon 8 via cycle doesn't take a million years.
• We're targeting a P200 w/ 32MB as our baseline machine (w/ Voodoo1), but obviously it's not going to haul ass. You'll have to run at 512x384 and probably turn off some features to do so.
• We expect a V2 or a TnT will run the game just fine. Intel i740 should run well, and so will the Savage3D. Banshee will squeak by, but that depends entirely on their driver quality.
• Paul Steed is working on anatomically correct gibs, so they should look better than the Q1 and Q2 gibs.
• I'd like to see us use 3D sound so that you can hear someone approach from behind on four speaker systems. But I don't know if we're going to have that in the game. A lot depends on how good/bad DSound3D is.
• Deathmatch play will be geared somewhere between Q1 and Q2
• No modem direct stuff just TCP/IP through dialup to your ISP. Not sure if IPX is in at the moment.
• We're focusing primarily on gameplay (instead of eye-candy). We spend our days and nights tweaking the atmosphere (graphics, textures, etc.) and the gameplay (weapon balance, speed, features, physics, etc.).
• The starting weapon has not been decided upon, however the blaster is definitely gone.
• We're not aiming at specific modem speeds, we think of things in term of ping, etc. Obviously we'd like to support 28.8K as much as possible.
• The weapons will be right handed only, and much closer to the centerline than it was in Q2. The option to turn off the gun will be available for slightly better performance, however your weapon will give you important visual clues (quad, invis status, how much in shadow you are, etc.)
• Level scale is about the same, but you'll feel "taller". Steps will be shorter, and your view height is raised a bit, so you don't quite feel like a midget all the time.

I only have two wishes for Q3A. 1) Release the game AFTER it's completely finished and not too early like Q2. Make the game for true DM players, don't put in features just because a) they look cool and b) some people liked that particular affect in previous games. Some very cool stuff here, thanks again Izn0.

Methos Site Stuff

• Updated Methos .plan file
• Paul2 updated the "Quake Mental Hospital" page for the final time

Half-Life Review? Not Yet
I went out and picked up a copy of Half-Life the other day and I've played it for a total of 2 hours since then. Unfortunately, I've only been able to play it single-player as I've had more than a few problems with the multi-player aspect of the game. Here are some of my thoughts on the game:

The Good:

• The training sessions are great for new players. Most experienced players won't use this but, it's what other 1st person shooter games sorely miss
• The single player game is very good, seamless interaction in the game makes for a well done story line
• Although it loads levels too many times, unlike Unreal, SiN and Quake 2, the loading times are VERY fast
• Nice realistic graphics and very nice special effects
• Very addictive and immersive game play

The Bad:

• The WON verification sucks. Anytime you do anything other than playing a single player game, the game tries to connect to WON for validation. This is fine, IF it would work.
• The auto-update feature locks up my PC when it tries to install the update after downloading. When I ran it again, it had to re-download the file even though it still existed on my system
• When I installed it on 2 pc's networked together, the game tried to load up an Internet connection when dial-up networking wasn't present on either machine. Needless to say, it didn't connect and I couldn't play.
• On 2 of the 3 monitors I viewed it on, the graphics were on the dark side
• The AI uses the "jump out and scare you" technique. It's a bit lame but, I've never seen a Sierra game that uses anything different

The Ugly:

• After trying to auto-update to the latest version (1.06?) and it crashing my system 3 times, I downloaded the update separately and tried to install it. It then told me that my original .exe file was "invalid". I reinstalled from my original cd and the update gave me the same message. (sigh)
• The latest version of the update floating around is actually a hacked copy of v1.07 and isn't made by Sierra. (beware)
• I tried calling the 1-800 number for support in N.America but, the number isn't available in Canada

GL-Doom Released
As I'm sure you've heard by now, GL-Doom has been released. You can check it out at The Official WinDoom / glDoom Site and see what you think. Just a note, for some reason, I couldn't connect to www.frag.com as of this posting. Let me know if you have any luck.

Ritual Loses A Good One
My buddy Matthias Worch, a 3D level designer and TV star (:0) from Ritual has announced that he has left Ritual Entertainment and he's heading over to work at Legend Entertainment to work on Wheel of Time and Unreal2.

Matthias is from Germany so, we know that he is a huge fan of the Quake / QW scene in Europe. If memory serves me, he is still a member of the German Quake clan, OCR. Good luck in your new job, Matt.

Spookie Talks About Quake Players
In a serious lapse of journalistic judgement, Spookie's latest update on "The Spookie Side" deals almost entirely with Quake Players and their talent. (hmmm) He even goes as far rating the ultimate 1on1 Quake showdown with Thresh and Lakerman. Although he misquotes me on his page (this is nothing new :p) stating that I said Lakerman was the best in the world these days, it's still very entertaining reading.

Spookie and I also discussed (hypothetically) that if a 10 player invite-only 1on1 Quake Lan tourney were held, who would you invite from around the world. Let me tell you, there were many, many tough decisions. If you can come up with the 10 best people, send me some e-mail and let me know your choices. If I get enough responses, I'll post the top 10 choices.

Site Seeing
Moonshine sent along word that he has opened his site called "Quake Nation" (hmm, that name sounds familiar :p) which he calls "Clan news for the United Kingdom". Even though he laments the possible closing of Methos Quake, it looks like a pretty nice site. It's also very light on the graphics side which I like a lot. Make sure you take a visit.

Post My Demo, Dammit!
For some time now, I've had an unofficial contest happening on the Demos Page where I've been posting the demo that has the most frags in a 10 minute match on DM4 vs 12 skill 0 reaperbots. The last three people who have had demos on the site for this are Lakerman (3??), Puta (399) and Mormor (406 frags). These are all very good players.

I received a demo a couple of days ago from a player named QGW-Sniper in which he claims to get 558 frags in this 10 minute match. Now, I don't know Sniper but, I know the other players are very talented so, for Sniper to get 152 frags more than Mormor left me a bit skeptical. I viewed the demo and sure enough, he was cheating. Sniper had set the framerate to .01 and recorded the demo. Just to be sure, I downloaded the demo tool from id Software and this confirmed my thoughts.

Let it be known that QGW-Sniper is now officially, a cheating, scum, loser!

Here's a copy of the cheating demo if you wish to see it.

Site Stuff

• Spookie updated "The Spookie Side" with some cool stuff talk about an ultimate 1on1 match
• Posted 3 demos on Methos Quake Demos page
• Updated the "Spotlight Demo" on Methos Quake Demos page
• Fixed broken link for the July .plan file in the archives
• Haven't had time to update my .plan file. Latest news this week, both my work and Xmas shopping sucks

Llamanet Now Closed
Barrysworld has now shut down the Llamanet servers. This shouldn't affect anybody who visits Methos Quake as the Llamanet addy has been redirected to the BW for a while. However, this may affect some people trying to e-mail me. My Llamanet e-mail addy doesn't work anymore. If you have my e-mail addy in your address book, make sure it's set to the BW mail address which is methos@methosq.com .

Quake Dead? Hold That Thought
Just when many people (including myself) were starting to lament the end of Quake, it rises from the proverbial ashes. Cenobite has sent word that some members of the UK World Deathmatch Tournament squad (ClanUK) will play a LAN tourney in London, England against Sweden's Clan [9] sometime in the next couple of months.

The combatants from the UK will be Cenobite, Sujoy, Timber and Hakeem. I spoke with one of the [9] guys and he did confirm the tourney but, he couldn't confirm the line-up for [9]. No "exact" details of the tourney have been released yet but, you can check the ClanUK Home Page for more info.

If this tourney is half as good as the [9] Vs DR tourney, it will be great to watch.

Quake Mental Hospital Closing
I'm not sure if it's because everybody has been cured or the fact that all the wards have been filled to capacity but, I have the sad task to announce that the Quake Mental Hospital will be closing it's doors in the very near future. Paul2 sent word along with his latest update that he would probably do one more entry and that would be all.

His latest entry has been posted on the QMH page.

Final Quake 2 Update
Zoid mentioned in his .plan a bit on the final Quake II update:

As John Cash mentioned in his plan, 3.20 is the final patch for Quake2. The 3.20 beta testing went very well so we have stamped it as official. We won't be doing another update on the Quake2 code base unless something major shows up (like a serious DoS attack or bug).

The Quake2 upgrade path has a bit bumpy (3.15's air control), but overall the path was to solve two essential needs (a) address bugs/security issues such as DoS (denial of service) attacks, and (b) provide new features.

I hope the mod makers out there are excited now that we've released the new updated game code--including the Xatrix and Rogue game code as well. It has been a long time coming, but we wanted to make sure that when we re-released it, it wasn't going to change again a couple weeks later. It's going to be good to see the new features added to all the existing mods out there such as IP banning, flood protection and spectating.

I like the part about releasing the code for Q2, Rogue and Xatrix. This, of course, means that we'll finally see a Q2 Done Quick demo. :) You can download the Quake 2 v3.20 update here (5.1 Megs)

Demonic Core Wins UKCL
From the "it's about time" category, Clan Demonic Core (DC) has finally won the UKCL (United Kingdom Clan League) Quakeworld championship. After having numerous things go wrong in previous seasons, DC played well to defeat a strong Clan Denial (DN clan is a merger of clans SAS and FA) in the final match.

Demonic Core Wins UKCL Championship

Congrats to Demonic Core and all the other clans that made this season an exciting one.

Quote Of The Day

"Sometimes, the light at the end of the tunnel turns out to be a freight train."
Methos

Methos Site Stuff

• Updated Methos .plan file
• Posted second last update to the Quake Mental Hospital page

Methos Site Stuff

• Sorry, no time for a "real" update today except the following
• Updated the "Spotlight Demo" on the Quake Demos page
• Paul2 sent an update for his "Quake Mental Hospital" page. It's long but, as usual, it's pretty funny. By the way, I've stopped spell checking the QMH page, it's takes way too long.
• Posted 5 demos to Methos Quake Demos page

AOL Purchases Netscape
CNN confirmed today that AOL has purchased Netscape for $4.2 Million in AOL shares. AOL is the largest Internet provider in the world with approx. 20 million subscribers including the 4.5 million subscribers from Compu$erve.

Netscape has long been known for their dominance in the web browser industry with over 65% of the market share in the corporate world. Netscape's residential use was less than 50% and that figure has dropped significantly since the release of Windows 98, 3 months ago.

AOL's exclusive contract with Microsoft's Internet Explorer ends on December 31st, 1998 so we should see Netscape Communicator being used shortly after that. Since AOL uses proprietary software (ie: 16 bit winsock), there will have to be many changes to Netscape before it can be used.

Positive Half-Life Reviews
I'm not sure if I've ever seen a game since Quake and Unreal get so many positive reviews. Go take a look at OGR's Half-Life review and see what they have to say after giving the game a whopping 9.7 rating.

More ION Storm'ing?
Rumor has it that two more members of ION Storm have left to join the eight others that departed last week to start their own company. That brings the total to 19 people leaving in the last two months. Even though the majority of the departed people were working on Daikatana, President John Romero assures us that the game will be completed on schedule. (uh-huh)

Patches Anybody?
A rash of gaming patches & program updates have come out recently. Here are a few of them.

• SiN v1.01 Patch released on this page (19 Megs)
• Unreal announced that Unreal v2.20 could be out as soon as next week. You'll be able to download it from this site when it's available.
• Cheapo QW Proxy has released v2.5 with some nifty new features. You can download it here.
• Qizmo QW Proxy has now been released in flavor v2.51 with a few new features. You can download it here.
• Half-Life has been seen in a few stores around the U.S.A. It's only a matter of time before it's in your neighborhood.

Hmm, no Shogo update? They must have taken a week's vacation. :)

Gibfest 2 Falling Into Place
The arrangements for Gibfest 2 are coming along very nicely. The last "big" stumbling block was the venue that would a) be big enough, b) have a good enough power supply and c) wasn't too expensive. After a few near misses, I managed to get a hold of a great deal. The Gibfest 2 event will be held in the main ballroom of the Radisson Hotel here in the city. With just a few minor arrangements to complete, it will be smooth sailing until January 9th when the fragging begins.

Don't Get Cross With Me!
After my last update saying that Thresh's brother was LGD-Cross and not Kenn, I had quite a few mails regarding him. Although I'm not an expert on the Fong family, I can tell you that he is a year or two older than Thresh and that he played in DeathRow. Thresh's two brothers are Lyle (Cross) and Bryant.

Methos Site Stuff

• Updated Methos .plan file
• The promised update from Spookie didn't come through (yet). Hopefully he'll leave the women alone for a while so that he can do an update on "The Spookie Side"
• Haven't talked to Paul2 since his last update other than to hear that he's pissed off at a "well known, UK Quake player". The next update of the "Quake Mental Hospital" should be a dandy.
• Fixed the 2 archive links on the contents menu that I didn't do properly last week (Doh!)

What Do You Mean I'm Wrong?
Well, I've been known to make a mistake or two in my life but, we won't go into them. :p I received a couple of comments on my last update telling me I made a mistake. The first mistake was saying that Thresh's brother was (former) LGD-Kenn. As most people know, Kenn is just a friend and Thresh's brother is none other than LGD-Cross. (thanks RJ)

The other mistake seems a bit odd. Every site I went to for coverage of the PGL finals said that the winners of the clan tourney won $8,500. I was corrected by one of the PGL guys that the Clan winners received $14,500. This doesn't mean much other than the fact that Thresh gets even more money for playing some games last week. :-)

Spookie Gets A Birthday Card
Mr. Popularity (especially with female Quakers) received a unique birthday present in the way of a Birthday Web Page. It was put up by his friends in the Cali-Girls clan. Make sure you take a look and don't forget to send Spookie some e-mail with your birthday wishes.

Quake 3? SiN? Shogo? Bah!
Okay, enough of these wimpy games, Dumbass! Go and get a real action game. That's right, I'm talking about Beavis and Butthead: Bunghole In One. It's a new miniature golf game being released by Activision. You can download the demo here. (Huh huh, he said hole)

Methos Site Stuff

• Updated Methos .plan file (yeah, I know, it's about damn time)
• I have a few demos to post on the Quake Demos page which I'll do when I have some time on my hands
• Archived Methos .plan file for October 1998

He's Not Getting Older, He's Getting Umm Errr
I have to take this time to wish my buddy Spookie a very happy Birthday. I've known Charles for a year or so and he's been a very cool friend. Make sure you send Spookie some e-mail with your comments on just how old he really is. (32) Happy Birthday bud, it's been a fun year, even through the tough times.

VooDoo 3 Announced
Just when I was about to buy a Voodoo2 card, 3Dfx Interactive® Inc. announced that they will be releasing Voodoo 3 cards in the second quarter of 1999. The new card is suppose to be twice as fast as the Voodoo 2. Here's the scoop:

3Dfx Interactive® Inc. (Nasdaq: TDFX - news) today announced its Voodoo3™ product family, a range of integrated single chips that expand on the award-winning Voodoo2™ and Voodoo Banshee™ architecture to deliver the world's fastest 3D and 2D performance and support ultra high-definition displays. The first members of the product family, which are expected to be available commercially the second quarter of 1999, include the pin-compatible Voodoo3 2000 for the PC-OEM market and the Voodoo3 3000 for the retail add-in-board market.

With its dual, 32-bit rendering pipelines, Voodoo3 can generate greater than 7 million triangles per second utilizing its 100-billion operations per second 3D architecture. Voodoo3 delivers more than twice the triangle performance of two Voodoo2 boards in the Scan Line Interleave (SLI) format -- currently the industry's fastest 3D graphics configuration. The Voodoo3 family utilizes the 3Dfx patented full-speed, single-cycle, single-pass multi- texturing, which enables critical features such as hardware accelerated bump- mapping and trilinear mip-mapping at 60 frames per second for today's most demanding entertainment titles.

Errr umm, yeah, that's what I was going to say. Anyway, no word on the pricing yet but, being an AGP 2X card, I would imagine it would be a 16 meg card minimum so, we can expect a hefty price tag to go along with it.

Strange that this announcement came today as a local electronics super-store here in the city was selling Diamond Monster Voodoo2 8 Meg cards today for the low price of $87.00 (U.S.).

New WinAmp Released
NullSoft has released a new version of everybody's favorite .mp3 player. Go and download Winamp v2.05 and make sure you tell'em that Methos sent you. Err, nevermind.

Methos Site Stuff
I finally got around to doing some of the stuff I was suppose to do yesterday but, I kept falling asleep. Yeah, I'm a tard.

• I'll update Methos .plan file tomorrow (promise)
• Uploaded 10 demos to Methos Quake Demos page. They were actually on the ftp site yesterday but, I hadn't written them up on the page.
• Paul2 updated the "Quake Mental Hospital"

Thresh Does It Again
Saturday was another big day in the gaming career of Dennis "Thresh" Fong. His Quake clan, DeathRow beat Clan Gib to win the season 2 PGL Quake Clan Tourney and earned a cool $8,500 U.S. to share between themselves. Later the same day, Thresh beat Immortal in the finals of the Quake 2 1on1 PGL tourney and won another $8,500 U.S. for himself. Hmm, $10,000 isn't bad for a weeks worth of game playing.

The games were fairly close in both the clan matches and the 1on1 matches. Just to make things interesting, Immortal had beaten Thresh earlier in the week. This meant that during the finals, Thresh would have to win two games and Immortal would only have to win one. It was strangely reminiscent of the Thresh / Reptile finals last season.

On a peculiar note, the final game of the Q2 1on1 matches was played on a custom map called PowerTrip. This map was nothing special and was actually worse than the id Q2 DM maps (which is hard to imagine). It seemed that nearly all the other games were played on the id dm maps called "The Edge" and "The Frag Pipe". I would guess that they had to use these two maps because the other id maps are even less suited to 1on1 matches.

Shogo Patch Delayed
Well, Monolith will not be able to meet the self imposed release date for their big "point release" on November 15th. It will apparently be a day or two late.

Now, normally I would start poking fun at Monolith for another blunder along the road to mediocrity but, I'm not going to. As much as I think that they should have completed the game before releasing it, there seems to be an acceptance for companies releasing incomplete products and expecting the buying public to understand. Because of this acceptance, I'm not going to rag on them for releasing a patch that's a day or two late.

More Monolith Stuff
Yesterday, I received an e-mail from one of the Monolith guys and he asked me (nicely) to stop saying negative things about their product and they are only "trying to make a good product". For those that follow my page, you'll know that I have never said anything bad or negative regarding the game itself. I've only commented on the numerous patches "after" the final game was released to the stores.

The e-mail went on to say that they released the game in an "almost finished" state so that people could enjoy the game as is and get use to the game before the multiplayer was in full effect. He also mentioned that money was not a reason for the release but that the income certainly helped them.

Another comment he made was that my comments and the recent Planetquake poll (readers unanimously agreed that companies should stop all the "small" patches and they would happily wait an extra week or even a month for a patch with all the fixes included) have been a topic of conversation at Monolith and they're doing their best to accommodate people in this aspect.

Thresh's FrontLine Shuts Down
Not sure what happened but, something is b0rked with Thresh and Gamers Xtreme. I was under the impression that Thresh had a heavy investment with them. Anyway, Thresh's Frontline will / has been discontinued. Thresh and his brother Kenn are now running Thresh's Firing Squad which seems to concentrate a lot on hardware reviews.

I was happy to see that Methos Quake was one of the three Quake related sites listed on Thresh's links page (along with Blues and Challenge.AU) on Gamer's. On his new site, only Blues is listed as a news / Quake link. :(

Methos Site Stuff

I will update the following later today. I have to get a couple of hours sleep

• Uploaded 10 demos to Methos Quake Demos page
• Paul2 sent word that he was working on a "Quake Mental Hospital" update
• Spookie promised a "Spookie Side" update for last Friday but, he still hasn't sent one. I'll try to contact him later today and give him hell

Methos Quake B0rked?
Yesterday morning, Tony from Barrysworld redirected the Llamanet site to the new Methos Quake site on the Barrysworld server. For some reason, the other site is no longer accessible and the links in the content menu failed to work.

This has now been fixed and you should be able to browse at your leisure through the site. Tony said he would look into getting a redirect for the llamanet mail addy as well. The new mailing is methos@methosq.com. Use it to spam your mail to me.

Methos Life Of SiN Over
Okay, I know when something's not meant to be. I've been trying to download the SiN demo ever since their 2nd demo was released at the end of September. I've had no luck in getting it to my hard drive. I'm on modem so it makes it that much more difficult.

I've tried to d/l it approximately 10 times and it's crashed every time. The last time was a couple of days ago and it was 94% complete when it happened.

Hmm, too bad there wasn't some nice guy over at Ritual that would send me a shiny new copy of it. (hint, hint :-)

Site Seeing
Over the past few days, these sites have had something nice to offer.

• Challenge.AU - Hoony's at it again with another huge tourney. Rumour has it that this one may even be broadcasted.
• Gibfest 2 - Hmm, I've heard of this one before. A Quake 2 lan tournament site with some of the coolest people around. (except for that Reaper guy)
• A Frag In The Dark - Hobbex is back in business to a limited extent. Although sparsely updated, it's always interesting reading.
• NECL - The North European Clan League site has been in high gear promoting their clans and players.

Go and visit them all. It's well worth the trip.

PGL Q2 Demos
Quake 2 has been needing a shot in the arm from some "name" players for quite a while. Although there are many good Q2 players out there, it will never be considered a serious contender to the on-line throne until it has a flagship to lead it.

The PGL Quake 2 Tournament has provided a perfect vehicle for this and (imo) has done a good job. With many known (and talented) Quake 1 players doing very well in the Q2 1on1 tourney, it has boosted the interest to a level it's never seen before. The clans are still playing Quake 1 for this tourney. (thank god :-)

If you want to see some of the demos from the PGL tourney, you can go to this site and download to your hearts content.

With a ton of bad Q2 demos previously, I watched a few of these 1on1 Q2 demos and they were by far the best Q2 demos I've seen. Of course, you do have to keep in mind that it's only Quake 2. :-)

Wanna Play Thresh? [BluesNews]
Diamond Multimedia announced their Thresh challenge at this year's Comdex. Sixteen players who register on Wednesday, November 18 at 3Dfx's booth, #3650, at the Sands Convention Center in Lost Wages, Nevada, will play one-on-one deathmatches against Thresh (he has a contract with Diamond). All death match participants will receive a t-shirt, and the challenger with the highest score wins a MEGAMonster gaming product (2 Monster 3D II boards). Diamond will hold a separate drawing for another 12 additional MEGAMonster rigs for those not taking part in the challenge.

TR3 Goes Gold
Diamonds may be a girl best friend but, Lara prefers gold. It was announced yesterday that Tomb Raider 3 has now gone gold and should be in stores soon. Hmm, I wonder if it's a coincidence that Christmas is coming soon? :0

Site Stuff

• Archived the News page for October, 1998
• I'll update and archive Methos .plan tomorrow
• I have quite a few good demos to post which I will do tomorrow
• Still waiting on updates for Spookie's and Paul2's pages
• Fixed Llamanet links problem with java contents menu
• Redirected all demos of the Quake demos page and the PGL demos page to use the Barrysworld ftp site

Methos Quake Moving Update
The new address for Methos Quake (please bookmark this addy) now seems to be working properly (thanks Tony). I will be updating both sites for the rest of the month until the Llamanet server doesn't work anymore.

I'll have to check with DBs from Barrysworld to see if the Llamanet server will be available for a while for a forwarding page and e-mail. Hopefully he'll leave it up until the new year so people will be able to transition over.

Sorry about the lack of updates, work has been a bitch. I'll do a big update tomorrow. Stay tuned. :-)

Methos Quake Moving
Sometime around the end of November, Methos Quake will be packing up and moving to the Barrysworld servers. As of today, Methos Quake will be available on both this site and the new site address. The new site address will eventually be http://methos.barrysworld.com once it's setup properly. Please bookmark it or add it to your favorites.

The whole gang will be moving along with me. This includes Spookie, Paul2 and the Quake Babes™. The Llamanet site should be available as a forwarding address for a short while after that but, it could disappear without notice. (I hope not) I'll clarify all the dates and addy info as soon as I talk to DBs from Barrysworld.

QMH Special Update
Paul2 sent along a special "Quake Mental Hospital" update. During his last update, I asked him if he wanted to drop the Tyr0 section from his updates as it was "getting a bit old". He agreed with me but, while I was updating, he told me to include it because he had been "chatting" with Tyr0 a few minutes earlier an it was "well worth printing". Head over to the QMH page and read Paul2's "World Exclusive" interview with his arch nemesis. :) You'll quickly see why Tyr0 has become the poster child for the "Quake Mental Hospital".

Quake III Arena Screenshots
Quake 3 Arena screenshots (new ones) can be seen on the GameZone site in Germany. The site is in German but, the word "screenshot" should lead you to them.

New Shogo Patch Coming Soon™
Monolith CEO Jason Hall mentions in his plan that the "point release" (© 1998 id Software) for Shogo will be released in 9 (now 8) days. Since the game was released in stores around a month ago, this will be update number 842. But, not to sound negative (who me?) this update comes with the exciting news that it "might include some custom deathmatch only levels".

Wow! Who would've guessed that after the game had been in stores for only one month, that we might see things like "a multiplayer patch" and possibly some DM levels. It just goes to show you what a great company can do when they put their collective minds together.

N64 & Quake II [Bluesnews]
What's worse, Nintendo 64 or Quake 2? Look and see for yourself with this N64 Quake II preview that has the first screenshots of Quake II running on an N64.

LucasArts Profiled [sCary's ShugaShack]
Go read the humongous Gameslice feature on Lucasarts Entertainment Corporation. This article will tell you nearly everything you need to know about LucasArts and the people who work there.

The article is great but, it misses one huge reason why LucasArts games are so successful, Money. That's right, it's money. Aside from making great games, LucasArts has a virtually unlimited budget for their projects.

Money allows LucasArts to do the following:

• Have over 300 game designers, programmers and artists all on-staff
• Have multiple projects running at the same time (7 right now)
• They can take the time to finish and test their games completely BEFORE release (unlike a lot of other gaming companies) and thus not having to release the seemingly endless line of patches, updates and bug fixes.

Methos Site Stuff

• Updated Methos .plan file
• Lyric O' The Day on Methos .plan specially picked for Spookie
• Paul2 sent a "special update" for the "Quake Mental Hospital" page
• I'll archive the News page and Methos .plan next update for faster loading

John Romero Interview
Go and read this John Romero Interview. It's possibly the best Romero interview I've ever seen. The interview was conducted by Stevie Case (KillCreek) and the questions range from John's teen years up to his Quake days. He even relates the story behind his head on the stake at the end of Doom II.

Quake 3 Arena Previews
Both Redwood's and Blues have posted their thoughts after seeing preview of Quake 3 Arena. I particularly like Redwood's review. There's some *very* cool info on the most anticipated games since Quake.

Carmack On Quake 3 Arena
id Software head honcho John Carmack updated his .plan to include his thoughts on Q3A programming and security. It's a bit technical but, very informative. Here are a few clips from it:

Related both issues is client side cheating. Certain cheats are easy to do if you can hack the code, so the server will need to verify which code the client is running. With multiple ported versions, it wouldn't be possible to do any binary verification.

If we were willing to wed ourselves completely to the windows platform, we might have pushed ahead with some attempt at binary verification of dlls, but I ruled that option out. I want QuakeArena running on every platform that has hardware accelerated OpenGL and an internet connection.

The only real solution to these problems is to use an interpreted language like Quake 1 did. I have reached the conclusion that the benefits of a standard language outweigh the benefits of a custom language for our purposes. I would not go back and extend QC, because that stretches the effort from simply system and interpreter design to include language design, and there is already plenty to do.

Belated Birthday Wishes
I forgot to mention this a week ago. On October 28th, undead ION Storm Supreme Commander, John Romero turned 31 years old. Happy Birthday John and many, many more.

User Friendly Comic Strip
I've never mentioned it on Methos Quake but, I've always been a fan of the often Quake related comic strip called "User Friendly".  The funny comics are written and designed by Canadian cartoonist Illiad. Go take a look and have a good chuckle.

World Deathmatch Tourney Site
Rumor has it (from the 5 e-mails I received) that there's a new alternate WDT page has been setup for the latest news and info on the WDT. Although there didn't seem to be much there when I took a look, you can go and take a look yourself for any new postings.

My suggestion would be that a new messageboard and perhaps a mailing list would be in order to get some spunk back into the mega project that the WDT is trying to undertake.

Methos Site Stuff

• Updated Methos .plan file

Gibfest ][ Announced
Reaper and iAgo contacted me to let me know that the long awaited Gibfest ][ Tournament has been officially announced. It will be held in Winnipeg, Canada on January 9th, 1999. Gibfest 2 is a Quake 2 1on1 and Clan tournament where everybody is welcome to join in on the fun and prizes.

The tournament will be run by some of the nicest guys in the Quake world and it will be a great time. They've even asked some llama (me) to be the official reporter so, if you just want to stop by and say "Hi" to me or tell me that Quake 1 sucks, please do. I love to meet lots of cool gamers. Anyway, take a visit to their tournament site. It's actually one of the best tourney sites I've seen. Clean, well put together and informative (imagine that!).

He's Back!!!
Mothers, hide your children. Paul2 is back from down under and has updated his "Quake Mental Hospital" page. This update is strictly an "adults only" update so, if you're not of legal age, don't go there. Hmm, I wonder if anybody young will actually say "It's for adults, I won't go there".

New Quake Demo Site
Lukasz sent word that DemoSklad is back on line and is bigger and better than ever.  They also have an English version on-line. I took a visit to the site but, for me, it was *very* slow. Hopefully it'll be better for you.

Methos Site Stuff

• Removed the "Ultimate Quake Poll 2 Results" banner from the top on the news page. You can still get to the results by clicking on "Quake Poll 2" on the left contents page
• Posted the Gibfest ][ banner on the news page. It's a cool site, please visit
• Paul2 updated his "Quake Mental Hospital" page. He's in fine form after his vacation.
• Spookie updated "The Spookie Side" with his usual charisma

More Quake Babes™
Not one but, two Quake Babes™ pics have been posted on the Methos Quake Babes™ page. Not only are they Quake Babes, they're "Babes With Attitude" (their clan name). I would offer my traditional marriage proposal to these two USA Quake Babes™ but, I believe they're both married already.

Shogo Patch Available (again)
In keeping with their tradition, Monolith has released another patch for Shogo. This latest patch is even stranger than the previous 2,000 patches they've released. Since the game was released in stores a couple of weeks ago, one would expect the game to be "complete" when you spend your money on a product. Heh, not so. It's just a trick to get you to spend money so that the company can keep on making the game until it's done. :-)

This particular patch fixes a bug in the "Shogo alpha patch" (wtf? alpha after it's in stores?). Here's what Monolith's Jeremy Blackman has to say about it.

There was a bug in the Shogo alpha patch involving the SoftSnd.dll sound module. If you have been unable to initialize sound, snag the replacement from:

ftp://ftp.maison-otaku.net/pub/shogo/patch/SoftSnd.dll

Be warned; that's my personal machine and a) I've put limits on the FTP load, and b) if it gets pounded into the ground under downloads, I'll be highly annoyed. :)

By all means, make sure Jeremy isn't annoyed by people downloading a Shogo alpha patch from his personal machine.

Half-Life Add-On In The Works
I noticed on Blues that RadioActive Software is already working on an add-on for Half-Life called "Half-Life: Level 5". Not bad considering the game hasn't even been released.

Quake Halloween
I saw this cool Halloween Quake picture on PlanetQuake.

Quake Quote
This quote comes from UK Quake player Granny who said the following (paraphrased):

"I have a new team bind. It's... say_team: I have the Quad, run and hide for 30 seconds."

Heh, with the way I've been playing lately, I think I'll use that one.

Methos Site Stuff

• Updated Methos .plan file
• Added 3 pictures to the "Methos Quake Babes™" page
• Spoke with Paul2, he mentioned he will have an update for his "Quake Mental Hospital" page in the next couple of days
• Spookie mentioned he will have an update for "The Spookie Side" in the next couple of days. I was a bit surprised there wasn't a "spookie" update for Halloween

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