Methos Quake News - January 1999

Sunday, January 31st, 1999

Quake 3 Arena Reaction
I received LOTS of mail from my last posting. The most popular topic was from the Q3A comments I posted. It was nice to know that most of the people who wrote to me completely agreed with what I had to say. Here are a few of the comments I received including comments from Batch and RiX that actually played the games at id last week.

"I like your list of comments about q3a, and i agree with all of them. Hopefully in the coming weeks, ID will invite us (rix and I) back down to test it again, and I will definitely pay closer attention to all of the things your bring up, and make my suggestions to ID according."
- Batch

"I couldn't agree more on each one of the points you have stated. I just wish there was a way to make those matters known to the id guys."
- Blitzer

"To me it felt almost identical to the original Netquake. It doesn't have that "cheap" feel that you sometimes get with Quakeworld."
- RiX

Of course, not everybody agreed with me as witnessed by the following comments by Kalliath from the UK clan QL.

On my comment about fancy graphics and lights...

"ID have to think about actually marketing the game FFS, if they don't make it appealing to newbies then its not gonna take off and they ain't gonna have any incentive to make any more games, I think u should take into consideration an extremely large portion of PC owners buy games purely for the graphics. The hardcore gamers will be able to turn all this shit off."

On my comment about Personal Power-Ups...

"This is absolutely brilliant, it adds a completely new dimension to gameplay, especially the personal teleporter idea."
- Kalliath

All comments were welcome as it's nice to hear other peoples opinions. Especially when they come from actual Quake players. I haven't had a response from sCary yet. :)

TrueGamers Invitational
I want to know your opinion to one simple question. With all the great players that will be attending the TG 1on1 tourney, who do you think will win?

If you don't remember all the players, here's a refresher list...

Blitzer - Finland
Columbo - Denmark
Kane - Germany
Lakerman - Sweden
Nikodemus - Sweden
Reload - Australia
sCary - USA
Sectopod - Norway
Timber - England
Xenon - Sweden

Send me some e-mail and tell me your opinion on who will win and your reasons why you think they'll win. It will be interesting to see what the world thinks.

Methos Site Stuff
Sorry about the small update as I've been really busy at work the past while. I've been trying to upload some demos to the Quake Demos page but, the BW ftp site won't let me and keeps closing my connection. Hopefully, it'll be more stable soon.

Wednesday, January 27th, 1999

Quake 3 Arena A Bust?
Ever since all the cool pre-reviews of Q3A came out last week, I've been thinking of what it might be like. I listed most of the cool stuff in my last update (way back when :) so, for today, lets talk about some of the puzzling things.

600 ms Weapon Changes - I'm not sure why but, nobody seems too upset by this one. How cool was it to shaft your opponent and then finish them off with an rl before they could get away? This won't happen anymore. id's argument is that you can't change weapons that fast in real life. Well, this is a computer game.

Teleporters - Put the Quake 1 teleporters back. They were an integral part of 1on1 matches. The Q2 teleporters suck.

System Requirements - Nobody has mentioned this except that id said they were "aiming for" a p200, 32 megs and a voodoo1 card as a "minimum". Although it seems that most gamers are using 266-450 MHz computers these days, using the p200 minimum means that the game will be processor reliant. Thus, if you have a super computer, it will play a lot better. Things don't always have to be this way. They could've made Q3A with an engine that doesn't require their customers to have a main frame for a personal computer.

Colored Lights and Graphics - When will gaming companies learn that in multi-player games, fancy lights, graphics, skies etc, mean NOTHING. Gameplay is EVERYTHING! The only thing I remember about games like Unreal, Hexen 2, Heretic 2, Riven and a few others is that they were pretty. Nothing more. Not many people will remember these games a year or two from now.

Jumping Pads - WTF is this? Whatever levels these appear on will be considered novelty levels such as Ziggurat Vertigo.

RL Speed - Described as "between Q1 and Q2 speeds" which means 75% of Q1 speed and 150% of Q2 speeds. Can anybody else remember a popular fighting game where, in the sequel, the gameplay was purposely made much slower? This was the strangest thing about Q2. Now, id is trying to compromise between the two games. Why bother? Just make it like Quake 1 was. Until Q2 came out, nobody ever complained that the Q1 rockets were too fast.

Personal Power Ups - I'm not sure why but, I don't like these and never had. In my opinion, the only things that should be picked up and saved are weapons and ammo. Everything else should just be instant use items.

Every decent 1st person shooter since Quake has had that "sluggish, lagged" type of feel to it (even playing locally) and I hope that Q3A can revert back to the same type of "feel" that Quake had. If it feels similar to Q2 or other games, it won't be as good as Quake is / was. I'm sure there are many more things that won't be done the right way but we can wait until we actually see the game before tearing it apart.

By the way, don't take this the wrong way. I'm truely hoping that Q3A will be the greatest game ever. I hope it's better than Quake and much better than Quake2.

Ultimate Quake Poll Returning?
I was thinking about doing a 3rd (and final) Ultimate Quake Poll. I never mentioned this to anybody but, I've received quite a few e-mails lately about having another poll. I'll leave this up to you guys. If you want to see a final poll (before Q3A comes out), send me some e-mail and let me know.

It's Almost "Go Time"
I've noticed that there are quite a few tourneys about to happen. Not sure if this has anything to do with the imminent release of Q3A but, it's as good a reason as any.

Challenge.AU is having the AU vs NZ rematch

ClanUK will be hosting Clan [9]

Heroes, NECL and UKCL tourneys are still going strong

The QIL2 league is down to 8 clans

Last but certainly not least is the True Gamers Invitational 1on1 Tourney

All of these events should be pretty cool. I'll try to give my thoughts on a few of them.

AU vs NZ Matches - Should be very close. My choice, NZ by a few frags (Sorry Hoony)
ClanUK vs [9] - Wow, it's a tough one. My personal hope would be that ClanUK would win (I was born in England) but, I feel that [9] will probably pull it off after some close games.
QIL2 Tourney - I think that EG will win but, I always hope that R3V does well

TG Invitational Info
Out of all the tournaments, the TG Invitational 1on1 tourney has captured my interest the most. How many times have we watched players and said "damn, he's the best I've seen" and then somebody always says, "yeah, but he wouldn't beat ????" (insert favorite player).

With the exception of missing players Thresh, Sujoy, RiX, Cable, Gollum and a few others, the players attending this tourney are arguably some of the best players in the world. Here's the scoop on the tourney:

When: April 3-4, 1999

Where: IT Palatset in Gothenburg, Sweden (about 180 miles from Stockholm)

Confirmed Attendees: (in alphabetical order)

Blitzer - Finland

Columbo - Denmark

Kane - Germany

Lakerman - Sweden

Nikodemus - Sweden

Reload - Australia

sCary - United States of America

Sectopod - Norway

Timber - England

Xenon - Sweden

The Games:

Round Robin Style Tourney

20 Minute Timelimit on Matches (I will assume 5 or 10 minute overtime if tied)

Maps being used are DM2, DM4 & DM6

Players play 2 games on different maps, if one player doesn't win both games, the 3rd map will be played

No Power-ups (including ring on DM6)

Players choose 1 map and mode (DMM1 or DMM3). Third map will be DMM1 unless both players agree to DMM3)

QW 2.3 Mod will be used (grrr)

Top 4 players advance to finals (not completely decided yet)

Quite a few people have asked me who I think will win the tourney. I'll give "my opinion" on the players involved and what I think will happen. They're all great players so, don't take any of this in a negative way.

Blitzer - Very controlled and talented, he will need to play at the top of his game to get to the finals
Columbo - Good player, not a great 1on1 player, I don't think he'll make the finals against this kind of competition.
Kane - Very good 1on1 player. Mostly a DM4 expert, he should make the finals with a bit of luck
Lakerman - Very good 1on1 player who will do very well. He should avoid playing DM6 matches against a few of the player and he must play it smarter than he usually does.
Nikodemus - A better clan player than 1on1, if he can stay away from DM4, he could make it to the finals
Reload - A talented player but, relatively untested outside of AU. Should do well on DM2 & DM6, he will be hard pressed to win many DM4 matches. He will need to practice his shaft for DM6 matches.
sCary - Good all-around player. Very good at many levels and has seen all the tricks in the book. Steve is a smart player that will have to play very smart to get to the finals. Much like Lakerman, he plays better when he's feeling "loose".
Sectopod - Probably my darkhorse that could win the event. Not the favorite but, he has the talent to make it to the finals
Timber - Normally a DM4 expert, he'll have to practice his DM2 and DM6 play to have a chance in the finals
Xenon - Good all-around player, he'll have to play at the top of his 1on1 game to make it to the end.

So, there you have it. Who will win? I don't know but, I'm as excited about the tourney as most people seem to be.

Stayne's House Of Demos
Hmm, for some reason, people think that last time I mentioned Stayne's House of Demos (was down when I last tried), I had "less than nice" things to say about it. Not true at all. I just couldn't find some demos that I wanted to download.

The last time I went to "SHOD", he had a new demo of "Reptile" on DM6. I thought, "cool, Reptile's a DM6 expert and I haven't seen many DM6 demos from him so, this should be cool". Well, after I watched it, it was Reptile but, it wasn't the Reptile we all know from DeathRow. It was another Quaker using Reptile's name. His name was "M7-Reptile". Now, this isn't Stayne's fault at all (although he could've mentioned it) but, I think it's really lame when players use the name of other established players.

Anyway, go and visit his site, he has tons of good demos (except for all those damn Q2 demos :p).

Methos Site Stuff

I have a few demos to upload to the Quake Demos Page. I'll upload them later today. Assuming that the Barrysworld ftp actually lets me upload.

Fixed the "Subscriptions" feature (again) for IE4+ browsers so visitors can be notified of updates

Wednesday, January 20th, 1999

Scary Delivers The Goods on Q3A
Today, this is the only Quake news that matters. sCary has posted his 11 page review of Quake3Arena. For those that don't know, last week, id Software invited Quake players sCary, RiX and Batch to play some 1on1 and ffa games for an entire day. The good thing about this review is that's it's done by a serious Quake 1 player and not some web site p1mp that bows to all the gaming companies. <cough>

sCary is also somebody that speaks from the hip and tells things as they should be. No sugar-coating or sucking up was done in the review. Now, having said that, his review doesn't come close to answering all the questions people will have about Q3A but, it does answer some of the things we've all been wondering about.

Here are some of the cool points that I gleamed from his review:

24bit color, curved surfaces, volumetric fog, mirrors, and drastically higher poly counts
Point of view in Q3 is slightly higher off the ground, making you feel taller than Quake2 (yay)
The control and feel of Q3A feels much more precise, closer to Quake1's QuakeWorld feel (big yay)
You now have control over your air acceleration at about the same degree as in Quake1 (yay)
Rocket jump height was about on-par with Quake1
Quake3 will be shipping with levels of several different sizes. Maps made specifically for 1on1, team games, and FFA.
Maps reminded sCary of previous maps from Doom, Quake1, and Quake2, as well as several new looks
There's a console command to turn the detail all the way down on curves to save framerate (thank god)
No Ladders in Quake3. Carmack feels they just slow down gameplay and get in the way. (hooray)

Jump pads. Remember ROTT? How about more recently the bounce pads on the Half-Life "Bounce" level? Well they are present in Quake3. (hmm)

Teleporters. Hardly any of them. John Carmack explained that he felt they complicated the game more than it needed to be. (awww, telefrags rule!)

There are 10 weapons planned: MachineGun (default), Super Shotgun, Grenade Launcher, Plasma Gun, Rocket Launcher, Rail Gun, Lightning Gun, Flame Thrower, and BFG. (not all will make it into the game)

The Rocket Launcher is similar to the Quake1 launcher at approx. 75% speed, damage and firing rate are about the same. (cool)

The Rail Gun, only change is that it will have a slightly increased firing rate

No Pentagram of Protection in Q3A. (shame, it was an important part of clan matches)

The Quad can now be called "The Trip" as the power of quad is now 3x instead of 4x

Invisibility looks similar to the effect used in the movie Predator (cool)

Regeneration Stands, you can stand in a tall cylinder and regenerate your health

Personal Teleporter, when used, it will transport you to a spawn point on the map. Nice feature to avoid those last second frags

You hear a tone when you inflict damage on your opponent (even from splash damage)

Opponents name appears on your screen (avoid that Lakerman guy)

Q3Test is scheduled for release in March, 1999

A couple of the things that sCary didn't mention were:

What type of systems he played on and what type of hardware will be required

No mention of colors and skins. Will Q3A have an option for base / flat skins the way they have in Q1 or will they be hard to see skins like the ones in Q2?

All in all, a superb review of what will turn out to be the most anticipated game ever. Quake 1 players are getting tired of playing Q1 and (for various reasons) won't switch to Q2. Quake2 players are limited from a talent pov on Q2 and want to switch to something better. Let's hope the Quake world can unite on Q3.

sCary has also asked for your Q3A questions to be posted on his messageboard. He will release a Q&A on the questions, next week.

Tuesday, January 19th, 1999

Sad News To Report
I wasn't going to do an update today but, I just had to stop in and post this news that LQMS-JeZeBeL sent along to me. I hate to do this but, here goes. Brandy, from the Quake 2 clan BWA (Babes With Attitude) died recently from injuries caused in a car accident. I'm sure that all the visitors to Methos Quake send along their condolences to her family and friends. I didn't know Brandy personally but, the Quake community is certainly lessened by her loss.

Without meaning to belittle the above news in any way. A strange coincidence is that Brandy was going to be the next Quake Babe™ on Methos Quake. Without any comments, here are the pictures of Brandy I was going to post.

Brandy (bws) - We'll miss you.

If anybody has a problem with me posting these pictures, I'll remove them. No disrespect of any kind is intended. Once again, my condolences go out to Brandy's family and friends.

Monday, January 18th, 1999

Quake Mental Hospital Final Update
Paul2 decided that he was feeling lonely this month so, he sent along a QMH update for all those people that can't get enough abuse from him. He was so lonely that he actually did an interview with himself. This will be the final update for the Quake Mental Hospital except for another demo he has promised to send.

Speaking of the QMH, I'm closer to deciding who will be putting a page on Methos Quake to replace the QMH. It's now down to three choices, an American, an Aussie and a Swede (oh-oh, Paul2 is gonna be pissed). I'll probably make the decision in the next week or so. Oh, and for the record, Paul2 is a real person, it's not me writing the page under an alias.

Unreal Deathmatch Pack Released
Epic Megagames has released the Fusion Map Pack, it's a collection of six brand new Unreal deathmatch maps available on PlanetUnreal.

Romero on Bad ION Press
John Romero responds to the bad press that ION Storm has received in articles written by the Dallas Observer newspaper. When asked to comment, JR had the following to say:

"Well, of course we're not happy about the negative press and the fact of it is that an ex-Ion employee was instrumental in setting it all up. Daikatana is doing great and the team is really positive and pumped, although this kind of news is disturbing."

Xenon Gives Latest Info
Xenon from Sweden's infamous Clan 9 chatted with me the other day and gave me some info on the upcoming Clan UK vs [9] matches. Apparently, there were a few little things to be ironed out.

Here are "some" of the rules that we know of:

The matches will be played in London, England on the weekend of February 27 & 28th

The Lan matches will be played with the QuakeWorld mod (wtf?)

Proxies will be used (for Lan games?)

Players aren't allowed to use shotgun scripts (where weapon returns to shotgun after firing)

Paul2 won't be allowed in the building as he may annoy the Swedes :p

Hmm, I went to Sujoy's site to check the article he had written a few weeks ago on some of the rules but, that page seems to be missing.

Xenon also mentioned that I should start "pimping" the Russian players because (in his words), "man they are f**king good at NQ...as good as the Americans were :/". Strangely enough, he mentioned a few moments later that Clan [9] might be going to Russia to play the winner of a clan tourney there. (LOL) Thanks for the info Xenon.

Get Your Z's Here
Cable sent along word that Finland's Clan Z now has clan demos available for download on the Clan Z home page. (if you can find them :) If you can't find them, at least go there to see their cool logo.

More Site Seeing
Kamarov sent along word saying that you MUST visit his Quake 3 Nation site. I took a visit and I was surprised at how much Q3 news there was out there. Kamarov is a nice guy (he told me to say that) so, make sure you go and visit him. Tell him that I sent you and mention that he sucked at Gibfest2. :) (couldn't even beat Sparhawk? Bah!)

Methos Site Stuff

Added a prettier "new" icon on the Quake Demos page

Paul2 updated the Quake Mental Hospital page

Posted 4 demos to the Quake demos page

I (finally) archived the news page from November and December of 1998

Thursday, January 14th, 1999

GibFest ][ Winner Finally Speaks
I caught up with GF2 winner, [TC]-Sparhawk the day after the Gibfest 2 tournament and asked him if he had gotten some sleep after his big win. He told me that he didn't get much sleep because his girlfriend was "giving him his prize". Hmm, I can't believe that he would want that more than the "cheap plastic trophy" but, oh well.

I asked him to share his thoughts on his big win and GF2. Here's what he had to say:

"Gibfest 2 was amazing this year. Everything went so smoothly, Iggy and the whole GF2 crew did an amazing job. There was a lot more competition this year then there was last year, I think there was at LEAST double the amount of people playing. I had to play quite a few good players to get to the final, I honestly didn't think I'd make it past Drav, his rail is insane.

Once it came down to the finals, it was no surprise to me that I was playing my best friend Slug. He's a wicked player, the final could have gone either way, I just managed to take control near the end. All in all, the event couldn't have been better, everyone got to put a face to the names they play online, and everyone had a great time.

Oh! Giving the Methos award for the kewlest play to Drav was definitely the right pick, he's very sportsmanlike and just a super nice guy all around. Hope to see everyone back next year, possibly for Q3 Arena, maybe 3 times' a charm =)

Oh, one last thing, TC 0wnz J00! (Ether would have been mad if I didn't throw that in there =)"

As a special treat, for the first time anywhere, here's the winning demo from the Gibfest 2, Q2 1on1 finals from Sparhawk's POV. You can download it here. (605 KB, Q2) Enjoy!

Quake 2 Proxy?
Does anybody know of a Quake 2 proxy (non-ctf) where a player can use the %1 location variables? If so, send me an e-mail and let me know.

Methos Site Stuff

Changed the red'ish color on the Quake demos page to be a lot darker

Added the Barrysworld banner script to the top of this page

Wednesday, January 13th, 1999

Gibfest ][ Rocks
I attended Gibfest 2 this past weekend and it was the most well organized Lan event I've ever seen. Even before the end of the tournament, myself and the GF2 team knew that a Lan event couldn't have been run more smoothly than GF2 had been run.

Dave "iAgo" Wakeman was the driving force behind the event and had the following to say:

"It's Over! Man, did that ever ROCK! Just want to thank everyone who came out, it was great for us to meet you all! Looks like everyone had a blast and things went real smooth."

Congratulations to [TC]-Sparhawk on winning the 1on1 championship. Sparhawk also won the first Gibfest 1on1 tourney. Congrats to [KA]-Nova (a 12 year old monster Q2 player) for winning the big DM64 match against lots of great competition. He had 187 frags to beat Sparhawk by 1 frag. (wow, was that intense)

A big congratulation to [TC]-^Draven on winning the 2nd ever Methos Quake Award for being named as the "Coolest Player" at Gibfest 2.

Most of the Gibfest 2 gang. A great group of guys!

I've done a complete review / rundown of all the Gibfest 2 stuff on Methos .plan page. Please go there and take a look. I should have some demos soon. You can see the complete results, demos and many more photos (including a bunch of dorky pics of me) on the GibFest 2 site. The demos haven't been posted yet as they have to sort through a ton of them. They have about 40 pics posted that were taken with digital cameras. They have tons that are being developed.

Barrysworld Crack Down
I'm sure you noticed the new banner at the top of the page. This is part of the price I pay for being able to have my site on the Barrysworld web servers. The gang at BW were nice enough to let me go without an advertising banner for quite a while so, it's not too bad.

If the banners bother anybody, please understand that it's not my choice. I'm only living within the same guidelines as all the other hosted sites on the BW servers.

Quake SiN'ers
I guess you can take the sin out of Quake but, you'll never take the Quake out of SiN. Let me explain. Former Ritual designer Matthias Worch did lots of work on SiN. Matt is also a member of the popular German Quake clan, Ocrana. If you look closely at the screenshot below, you'll notice some sneaky work by Matthias. He was able to add the Ocrana clan logo into SiN without anybody at Ritual noticing it.

The skull on the wall is the Ocrana Clan logo

Hmm, I wonder if that's why Matthias isn't working at Ritual anymore? :) Nice work Matt. It makes the Ritual boys remember that they wouldn't be popular without Quake.

Speaking of Ocrana
Go and take a look at the new design on the Ocrana home page. It's awesome. Make sure you have the shockwave add-on before visiting. It could be the most well organized clan site I've seen.

Quake Demo Site
I finally had a chance to visit Stayne's House of Demos. I had tried before but, it was down for quite a while. Many people have asked me what I think of the site. I suppose the easiest answer is to say that I like it. With 1200+ demos, it can't be ignored. He has demos from nearly every "known" player you can think of (plus, quite a few nobody has heard of) and the sorting database is great (I have to get me one of them).

What I didn't like about the site was that over 1000 of the demos were chasecam or spectator cam pov. This rarely makes for entertaining viewing. I decided to search for some demos I might like to see. I found 4, 1st person pov demos that I would like to download (out of 1200). When i downloaded the demos, 3 of them were actually cam views and not 1st person pov as advertised. The other demo was from the other persons pov. (sigh) Needless to say, I wasn't happy wasting that much time searching and then getting something that was described incorrectly.

I'm sure that many people will get lots of enjoyment viewing the vast amount of demos he has available. Unfortunately, I don't think I'll be one of them.

Quake ]|[ Wallpaper
I saw this Quake 3 wallpaper and I and thought it looked cool enough to use as my own wallpaper. You can download the higher quality .bmp file here (820kb).

Methos Site Stuff

Gave a complete review / rundown of Gibfest 2 on Methos .plan page

Posted 7 demos to Methos Quake Demos page. Including, a new bot record demo and 2 (much requested) demos by everybodies favorite cuntor, Paul2

Sunday, January 10th, 1999

Methos Crash
Just wanted to let everybody know that I had a major system crash (damn Win98) and it will be a few days before Methos Quake is up and running properly.

I have lots of things to talk about including the great time I had at Gibfest ][ over the weekend. I also have a few demos to upload and if possible, I'll upload the GF2 finals between TC-Sparhawk and TC-Sluggo.

Thanks for being patient, I'll be up and running in a few days.

While you're waiting, go and download this demo between R3V and Nine (3.16 MB QW2.3)

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