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Quake First Person Shooters (Games)

Rocket Arena For Quake 3 Arena Released 173

Posted by Hemos from the frag-'em-and-bag-'em dept.
Manb writes: "As of a few minutes after 9pm EST the long awaited mod was released for download from a slew of mirrors. Rocket Arena has been hyped to be the premiere addon for the final Quake edition from Id Software. With the releasers saying that it will redefine gameplay by changing the core of the Quake 3 engine it is a very promising release. There even seems to be a integrated mp3 player to listen to your own music while fragging your opponent. Even with a soundtrack to this release it is a must download for any Quake fanatic. It's a little hefty weighing in at 56 megs for the client, a meg for the server, and ~70 megs for the soundtrack it's not for the faint of bandwidth. Check out the homepage here."
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Rocket Arena for Quake 3 Arena Released More

Rocket Arena for Quake 3 Arena Released

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  • What about requiem? I mean, aside from TF, it's *THE* best addon for Q1. Since everything is slowly but steadily climbing up through the versions of Quake (except TF) when can we expect to see the *OTHER* cool mods?

    Uh-oh, gotta run. Smell a week-long frag-fest coming up in my basement.
  • I took a look at the screenshots, and it looks totally rockin'. Too bad I just have a voodoo2 and can't get these kind of pictures. RA is the only Quake-variant I ever played. Never much did like normal Quake deathmatch and all. Doom2 RULES
  • I don't think this would the of doom from ID software they will have a come back tour

  • Microsoft has to play catchup (Score:3)

    by FascDot Killed My Pr ( 24021 ) on Monday July 24, 2000 @04:28AM (#910287)

    "There even seems to be a integrated mp3 player to listen to your own music while fragging your opponent."

    Uh-oh. MS better integrate an MP3 player in the Doom clone they've already integrated into Excel...
    --
    Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!

  • Don't forget QuakeRally (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 24, 2000 @04:29AM (#910288)
    We [quakerally.com] are doing some cool stuff too.

    /skw|d

  • It's a shame but true - American Quake gurus pretty much have online Quake to themselves. Over in Europe (and Australia, I suppose) enthusiasts will not download a 56Mb file over a 56K modem, when you pay for the call, and the latency makes gameplay crap too.

    Wait a few more years, while broadband rolls out over here, and another potential 50 million targets will turn up in your sights!

    Do you reckon it'll eventually be an Olympic sport? It'll be better than indoor bowls....
  • i don't see what the difference will be, i mean cos everyone just goes around with the rocket launcher anyway. the only thing i can think of is that instead of being in a complex map, the fight will be in some kind of "arena." sounds exciting.
  • simultaneous linux release. gotta love that. :)

    Can anybody tell me how to permanantly add the RA and Q3F mods permanantly to my mod list? or point me to an URL? I can't figure it out, and the add mod button doesn't work.

    ________

  • Quake 3 Fortress (Score:4)

    by Tom7 ( 102298 ) on Monday July 24, 2000 @04:35AM (#910292) Homepage Journal

    Rocket Arena was really fun for Q2, and this promises to be a great deathmatch mod with Q3A's superb engine.

    For a little more strategy and teamplay, check out Quake 3 Fortress [q3f.com] . This is a port of QuakeWorld TeamFortress (some of you may have experienced the bastardized "Team Fortress Classic" in Half-Life) to Q3A, and it's very nice. Q3F has 9 different classes of characters battling in teams in several different styles of play (capture the flag, capture "command points", and soon stuff like "kill the president").

    I play it more than I probably should, but if you mourn the Quake 1 days or are looking for something new, check it out!

  • Hey we have cable modems here!! I'm in scotland and can get a stunning 512k down 128k up from my cable modem.

    However whilst i might have highish bandwidht and a low latency... i'm still crap at quake.

    Call me mr. potential target :)
  • simultaneous linux release. gotta love that. :)

    Not if you own a Mac. Q3A is a three platform game, guys....

  • IE? CSS? BAH! (Score:4)

    by nicky_d ( 92174 ) on Monday July 24, 2000 @04:36AM (#910295) Homepage
    Nicely-done page - first thing I get is a pop-up box saying "Please come back with a CSS compliant browser such as IE or Netscape 6 (or Lynx)". How about if THEY come back with an accessible webpage?
  • Heck, I have DSL at home. I still have to buy Quake3 though. Hmmm ... maybe I'll do it since I messed up my Unreal Tournament install when trying to compile OpenUT.
  • got a message to "go away and come back" last night in linux with netscape, and today in NT with netscape 4.7 also.

    noticed if I tried MSIE I didn't get that messgage. Anybody else?

    ________

  • >>(some of you may have experienced the bastardized "Team Fortress Classic" in Half-Life) The Half-Life version was done by Team Fortress, the same guys that made TF for Quake, fewl.. It wasn't bastardized, it was a logical progression!

  • Needs more work (Score:4)

    by DragonMagic ( 170846 ) on Monday July 24, 2000 @04:39AM (#910299) Homepage
    I dunno exactly how long the beta test for Rocket Arena Q3A was, but it needed to be longer with a few more testers who could point out some of the simpler problems.

    I was a big fan of Rocket Arena Q2 back when I played Quake II. I loved the team play and survival aspects of it. Realisticly, it was what Quake should have been for deathmatches.

    However, playing RAQ3A last night, I was horrified by how much had yet to be fixed. The menu, though fancy, is dreadful. When you go to the mp3 player, mp3s don't play, there's no exit button to the menu, and it seems overly burdened with functions.

    Also, the download is 60 megabytes just for the client side, and it's multiplayer only. There's no playing against the bots when the master server is down, no practice...

    And in some arenas, when you're booted back to the main arena for some reason, there's only a few spawnpoints, all about floor height, so if more than a few players spawn at the same time, they'll be stuck together, which is not fun at all.

    And it seems that many server admins are confused by how to setup a server. I was on quite a few last night which had bad time limits or confusing play.

    crt probably did make another breakthrough mod for Quake, but it seems that it needed more brewing. Hopefully he'll fix these problems and make it a bit easier and better before too long.

    Dragon Magic [dragonmagic.net]
  • for Team Fortress for Commander Keen 4. the best id game ever.

    hopefully after DOOM 3 they will continue to retrace their roots and make Commander Keen 7!

    whee!!
    ...dave :)

    (PS - this is HELLA not Offtopic so don't even THINK about marking it that :)
  • When I was on a modem, I would frequently download files on the T3 at work, and throw them on a zip disk. I could burn a CD now if I didn't have broadband at home.

    otherwise it might be worth it to download overnight, or with a download program (so you can do it in parts) and burn a CD to share with friends.

    be creative, and you should be alright.

    ________

  • They are just not afraid to state the truth.
    Netscape 4.x mangles css driven web pages so badly that it ruins the web as a whole.

    just use mozilla.
  • Yep, I guess it might be because Unreal was the first FPS I played bigstyle multiplayer on but Quake just didn't seem to cut it.

    The joy of playing it during lunch-three-hours. :)

    "Headshot"

    And UT is even better, the Redeemer has to be one of the most awe-inspiring weapons I've ever seen.

    wrighty.

  • I went to the site last night (after seeing the note on Blues' News about it) and was presented with no content and a very nice pop-up message telling me to come back with a different browser. Here's the JS reason why:

    var Name = navigator.appName; //That'd be the browser's name
    var Version = parseInt(navigator.appVersion); //That'd be the browser's version

    if (Name == "Netscape" && Version <= 4)
    {
    alert("Please come back with a CSS-compliant browser, such as IE or Netscape 6 (or Lynx)");
    }

    So, basically, unless I use a pre-beta browser, or a text-only browser, I'm SOL as a Linux user. The mod itself runs on Linux Q3:A - you just can't view their site with the currently most usable browser (that says a lot about the state of browsers on Linux, doesn't it?).
  • i don't see what the difference will be, i mean cos everyone just goes around with the rocket launcher anyway. the only thing i can think of is that instead of being in a complex map, the fight will be in some kind of "arena." sounds exciting.


    You don't get a lot of first place finishes do you? Weapon selection is a critical strategy element. If you just run around throwing rockets everywhere you might to a lot of collateral damage but people who actually know how to play are going to waste you.

    Kintanon
  • Now I can blow stuff into bloody giblets of glee again. IMO though, I like stuff with a little more substance. For Quake 2, Action Quake was hands down THE best mod. Action Half-life just doesnt quite measure up but its fun. Counter-strike is awesome and of course has Gooseman from the old AQ2 staff, and while it is an extremely well done mod, it is more militaristic, and lacks some of the just plain hilarious fun of Action. I myself am waiting for Action Unreal Tournament to go beta, it looks very promisong for a mod, especially given that the Unreal engine, while not as graphically pretty as the Q3 engine, is easier to map in, and runs MUCH faster.

    Plus UT was just better from the get-go with more game options and such.


    www.mp3.com/Undocumented [mp3.com]
  • Somehow I think this story was mentioned purely so people could bitch about how the web page is designed, and more to the point how much it sucks becuase their browser can't view it correctly.
  • Actually it's web designers who ruin the web as a whole.
    --
    Niklas Nordebo | nino at sonox.com | +46-708-405095
  • The truth about what? That they don't know how to write a good webpage without forcing CSS on people? The web is supposed to be browser-independant, after all. Ars posted a great editorial [twu.net] on the subject only a few days ago. I suggest more web page authors read it.
  • That's the first thing I noticed as well. Mozilla seems to handle the page well, however.

    -Karl
  • Lucky git! Stunning scenery AND a fat pipe! (ooer)

    ADSL is still in the pipeline down here in sunny (not) Buckinghamshire, and cable still has to rear its head in my town.

    Question - what are the little boxes on the back of satellite dishes called?

    Answer - Buckinghamshire houses!

  • Quake is opensourced. If you want to add things into that, you can do what you like.

    Quake 3 is written in such a way that _anyone_ can program new goodies into it. Rocket Arena isn't released by ID, it's released by some guys who wanted to release some cool addons for it.

    Try and do a bit of research before you start calling people names
    • For Quake 2, Action Quake was hands down THE best mod. Action Half-life just doesnt quite measure up but its fun.
    As far as Action Quake [telefragged.com], has anyone heard if Action Quake III is going to be made?

    Alex Bischoff
    ---

  • "..someone write an Open Source Quake!.." Hmz I thought that the source-code of Q1 was downloadable from the internet...so let's not try to write Quake all over again, but try to find it and download the sourcecode...looks easier to me :)
  • enough said.
  • Oh, come on. Don't be daft.

    There's nothing that says all Linux software has to be open-source. Flaming anyone who releases closed-source Linux software is just counterproductive and stops mainstream adoptation. And this is coming from a non-fan...

    Besides, it's not even _necessary_ here. The better way to handle that is a plugin module, library, whatever. Much more elegant and no need for completely open source.

    I suspect, when you get to see it, that'll be how id have implemented that. Most sensible way, IMO.
  • I think what you want is CrystalSpace [linuxgames.com]. It's a 3d rendering engine that supports dynamic lighting, terrain, particles, sprites, everything. So go ahead and write your Quake clone for it.

    What?

    Oh, I see. You want a game where you can go out and frag people, not some dinky little walktest. Well, you have the source. Go out and write one.

    Well? Go and write one already!

    Still here?

    Ah ha, too difficult for you? You just wanna frag? Well go play with your little closed source Quake3.

    Rant, Flame = Off, Off (tuple packing and unpacking! Gotta love python! :-) )

    Seriously though, the open-source business model is not suffieciently developed for Id to make any sort of money off of Quake3 if they open-source it. After all, they couldn't exactly sell very much support. But people are already working on open versions. Not just fraggers, but also RPGs and more. Check out the Crystal Space projects page [linuxgames.com] for more info. And instead of complaining about commercial companies doing what comes naturally to them, go and write something better.

    --
  • actually, without wanting to sound modest, i am a good quake player (having won many rounds on the internet), so i don't run around blasting rockets left, right and center.
    I actually prefer to play something like CounterStrike for HalfLife, and other similar things where you actually have to hit the person and are rewarded for something like a headshot with them dying instantly, rather than blasting a rocket at someone, or vaguely near them on the wall/floor to knock a bit of energy off. Which do you think requires the more skill?
  • Actually it's web designers who ruin the web as a whole.

    No, it's clients who demand that the site look perfect in every browser, thus forcing the use of things like CSS who ruin the web as a whole.
  • Hmm do you really think so? Whehehehe! Why whine about the website if you can play a good game of RA3? Those people that are complaining aren't really interested in Quake, but are just NBWs (Natural Born Whiners)!
  • Yeah, maybe if it were open source, they wouldn't be so tempted to put in blatant backdoors. [insecure.org]
    ---

  • for the browser impaired... (Score:4)

    by Bad_CRC ( 137146 ) on Monday July 24, 2000 @05:02AM (#910322)
    planetquake.com has direct links on the main page, that's what I used to download it yesterday from netscape.

    link without error message [fileplanet.com]
    linux client [planetquake.com]
    server [planetquake.com]

    enjoy, in spite of an extremely bad web author. (still generates error, but at least you can see the links)

    ________

  • CSS is tremendously useful. People shouldn't be forced to use primitive, practically incorrect HTML just because netscape royally fucked up with NS 4. Mozilla's supposed to come and save the day now. There was an article on here a few days ago (too lazy to find it) linking to an open letter to netscape concerning this issue.
    -
  • Well, this is WAY off-topic, but they should be making their pages accessible in accordance with the current browser situation. Mozilla has a very limited user base compared to, say, Netscape 4.x. Hopefully one day, and soon, things will be different. In the meantime, they should tailor their pages to be accessible to all. Assuming, that is, they want people to view them. Besides which, it would take about ten seconds to write a standards-compliant CSS page that looked like a dog in IE. At the end of the day, all graphical browsers ruin the web, so why pick on just one?

  • Boot into Windows 98 or NT and play UT, screw Q3A.

    With Quake 3 making it impossible to be a sniper(gasp! But most people will read it as "camper") by removing any hiding places, Q3A to me, became stoping grounds for people who feel running around and mindlessly using a rocket launcher is good gaming. There is no finesse!! Whoopie I can circle strafe!! Try that in UT and I'll blow your head off. Besides, Q3A has no damage zones...If I shoot someone in the head it does the same damage as hitting them in foot...Id made an inferior game, but hey who cares if the game sucks, it runs on Linux!!! (is that the right attitude to have, or am I not following the advocacy HOWTO properly)

  • John Carmack didn't write RA. No one from Id did.
  • FYI I play UT on Linux ... see openut.sourceforge.net [sourceforge.net]

  • Re:Id are hypocrites (Score:3)

    by mav[LAG] ( 31387 ) on Monday July 24, 2000 @05:08AM (#910328)
    Ok troll, I'll take the bait...

    You know, this is amusing. If Q3 were Open Sourced, anyone could modify the source code and integrate whatever music playing technology you want.

    OTOH, if Q3 were already open-sourced, licencees of id would have no need to pay licensing fees for the Q3 engine.

    Id are such pathetic hypocrites. They release Quake on Linux, but will not Open Source it.

    Er - check again. Quake has been released on Linux and the source is under the GPL which is an Open Source compatible license (if that's what you mean). Try here [sourceforge.net] for more info.

    IMNSHO, id are as far from being "pathetic hypocrites" as it is possible to get. Not only have they donated large sums of money to the FSF, they pioneered the development of games under Linux with their Doom and Quake releases. Added to that the source for everything up to Quake I has been GPLed. No-one really knows how the business model of Open Sourced games works yet, but I would say id lead the way in walking the tightrope between commercial profit and open code. I have no problem with a closed engine and open game logic - it makes mods possible while preserving the company's profits.

    Open Source Quake 3 now! Or better, someone write an Open Source Quake!

    Even better than that, go and download the QuakeForge's source which is comprised of the pristine original sources from id plus loads of bug-fixes and enhancements...

  • True that many use the RL alot in regular game, arena games are alot quicker paced and you get to watch the "winners" technique, so when its your turn to jump in you have a game plan...alot of fun..
  • Well DUH! I should be able to play Quake AND using my favorite mp3 player at the same time? Wait, I can do that, just use BeOS. No I can't, no Quake3 available for BeOS. Oh well, yet another reason to keep my w9x partition. As Game OS, W98 sucks. Give me BeOS or Neutrino!
    J.
  • Nope... no plans. Beta's for Action Half-Life are out, and Action UT is in the works.

    Action Quake 2 [action-web.net]

    Action Half Life [action-web.net]

    Action Unreal Tournament [action-web.net]


    www.mp3.com/Undocumented [mp3.com]
  • Yet another reason to disable javascript.
  • You mention damage zones but did you know that all the engine uses is a bounding box that's the same size no matter the size of your model? I found this out after I downloaded the Lego man model.

    Very cool but to score a head shot you need to forget about looking for the whites of their eyes, instead aim above their head!

    wrighty.

  • The web is supposed to be browser-independant

    That's absolutely right. Therefor, w3 has set some standards which browsers should comply to. By that standards, as far as CSS is concerned, Netscape4 is _not_ a www browser.

    ----------------------------------------------
  • That's a great theory, and in a perfect world, it would work, but you're obviously not a web developer.

    [rant ahead:]

    There isn't a single piece of web browsing technology that works properly. I cope with this every day. A client demands a certain look to a site, which is impossible on EVERY browser. They complain that colours don't show up properly on their display, only to find out that their display is set to 8 bit colour mode. Or that the webpage look "different" at 640x480 and 1600x1200. Or that it's "brighter on my other monitor" because they have their brightness knob turned up too much.

    Over-expectant clients, coupled with clueless client service people create demand for a specific look to pages, and the only way for developers to create these looks is to use "cutting edge" technologies.

    I've said it before: Too many slashdotters think that the web is gopher, and completely shun any site that doesn't work in lynx, and too many client service reps and designers think that the web is television, and we should be able to apply the same design and marketing concepts to it.

    The web is its own medium. It's not a business card, or magazine ad, it's not TV, and it's not just a really popular form of gopher. It's a MULTI-media (I hate that term -- it's tired) medium. Sure, ideally it would be browser independent, but it's all about images, and sound, animations and video and it's pretty hard to watch a streaming video broadcast in text mode on a 386 running linux on 2 megs of ram and an EGA graphics board. AND it's about information sharing -- aside from video and images and sound and animations, it's about getting information to its users. It might look like crap, but I can almost ALWAYS read and navigate a site if I try hard enough, even using lynx.

    The web is broken, because the W3C too often overlooked. Some day, the web will work properly. When browser authors get a clue, and start conforming to the standards that would make the web work.

    Sorry for the rant. It's Monday, and I've already had Coldfusion spit out my "code" (if you can call it that) because it doesn't handle double-quoted SQL properly. Don't get me started on coldfusion. (-:
  • Id is not being hypocritical by releasing quake for linux, but not making it open source. Just because they want to support linux does not mean they have to support the concept of open source. Personally I think that they would be stupid to make quake open source. Why? Because they already have a far superior engine to that of any other 3d game. They can still make money by licensing that enigine (Id is a corporation after all... their goal is to make money not satisfy a small minority...).

    Also Id does release enough information about quake so that you can make damn near any modification you want, so I don't really see what the difference is. Sure it would be nice if Id released the source code for the whole game, but it's not really to their advantage since they have no reason to manage the code any longer. They don't want to make any major changes to the game after its released, and generally only release bug patches after the games come out.
  • once again some wicked q3a mod is released and i can't play it on my G4 becasue its a self-extracting EXE. anyone know where i can find RA3 zipped?
  • Hey dude - speak for yourself. You should move to Scandinavia. Here in the Copenhagen area we can get 512k/bit flatrate DSL lines for about 60 a month.. Over in Sweden they you get 10Mbit for 30 a month...
  • I agree that CSS isn't the problem. If I sounded like I think it IS the problem, then I was in error. The problem is that without [technologies such as] CSS, pages won't look the same. I NEEDed to use CSS and javascript on a project I did a couple weeks ago, because, by default, Mac Netscape displays text a LOT smaller than Windows Netscape, and IE. The client wanted smaller text, and the images were being pushed out of place with the large text, so, when I shrunk the text, it became illegible on the Mac. And I needed to use platform specific CSS to cure this.

    It's all about compliance to standards.

    (Also, along these notes: Users who don't upgrade their browsers, and are using 1995 piece of crap Netscape 2 should NEVER complain that a site doesn't look right in their browser.)

    Sorry.. ranting again (-:
  • In fact, This page [lowmagnet.org] will crash netscape 4.7x for some reason. It has an identical structure to the rest of the site, but unless you turn css off, it crashes NS. Strangest damn thing.
  • That was plugged a LONG LONG time ago... still not an excuse, but its not really relevant anymore
  • Works for me with NS 4.73, though that may be because I'm using a proxy which changes the browser string.
  • By this logic, Netscape 1 is not a www browser. In truth, browsers that can't handle the latest HTML (for whatever reason) should do their best to handle it gracefully (like Netscape 4 does) but for the actual HTML to tell the reader to switch browsers is insulting.
  • > The web is its own medium. [...]
    > Sure, ideally it would be browser independent
    The fact is that if you use a browser that respects standards to design and test the pages, then the result you'll get will fit most browsers, proprietary or not.
    For example, before the CSS, I was personally used to make my HTML code for Fresco (RiscOS platform) and it usually looked perfect on MSIE, Voyager and Netscape.
    (NB: Fresco's rendering engine was used by Oracle Network Computer's web browser: NCFresco.)
    This approach should be generic in coding: take a standard environment and if your code works on it it should work everywhere.
    If you want to add browser-specific features, then do it after.
    Now, if you explain your client that in order to have his data readable by as many surfers as possible, he should renounce to some features (who said "Marquee" or "blink" ? ;-) or at least replace them using more portable stuff (animated GIF, java, etc.).
    Concerning CSS, if they use an HTML-code generator, then it should be able to export the HTML files as "interpreted".
    BTW, it is funny to see this bit of javascript in RA3's page source:
    if (Name == "Netscape" && Version >= 4) {
    alert("Please come back with a CSS-compliant browser, such as IE or Netscape 6 (or Lynx)");
    }

    What if the browser is "less-featured" and completely different from Netscape ?
    Seems that the guy who made that page doesn't know that there are alternative browsers.
    --
  • I think the mp3 player integration is a fantastic idea. What I would love to see even more is an entire scenario inspired by an album. Have you heard the Kittie cd? That just screams DOOM.


    ----------
    AbiWord [abisource.com]: The BEST opensource word processor

  • TFC (Score:1)

    by Tom7 ( 102298 )
    What I meant by "Bastardization" is that it's a totally different feel (and indeed, game) than QWTF. For lots of people this was their first TF, and there's nothing wrong with that... (though I personally think it was rather badly done).

  • Actually, I find CounterStrike to be less about skill and more about sneaking around. Hit a guy with 3-5 machinegun bullets and he's dead! Sure, that's realistic (one of the things that's made CS so popular, in fact).. but there is not much "skill" in melee combat, just speed.

    In Q3A, you can't finish your opponent off that easily. Unless he's already hurt, hitting him with any weapon will give him a chance to respond. Those little one-on-one skirmishes are what I like best about Q3A, and I think they take more "skill".

    (BTW, in Rocket Arena you get all the weapons when you spawn. The difference is that once you die, you wait until the end of the round before coming back (like CS). I don't really know why it's called rocket arena.)
  • Q3F shows up in my list, though I usually start quake with the "+set fs_game q3f" command line option to load it from the start. If you do this, you don't have to worry about the "mod list".
  • Just a heads up for those who were expecting otherwise :/

    crt has stated it'll be available in a future release however. Now, what I'm wondering is why he went ahead and packaged the soundtrack mp3's in the Linux release anyway...

  • Re:Id are hypocrites (Score:3)

    by double_h ( 21284 ) on Monday July 24, 2000 @06:02AM (#910350) Homepage

    Id is not being hypocritical by releasing quake for linux, but not making it open source.

    Umm, actually Quake *is* open source (GPL). I suspect that in a few years, Q2 and Q3A will be as well.

    There are any number of reasons why iD might not want to release their sources right off the bat. Chief among these is that they are a business, and their primary responsibility will always have to be making money for the stockholders. Aside from retail sales, iD does a good bit of its business from licensing its game engines to other companies. Even if other companies were scrupulous enough not to lift any of the engine code directly, were it made publically available from day one, you can bet there would be a lot of competitors scrutinizing that code and trying to implement similar clean-room versions.

    iD may not have the most altruistic business model around, but it's still a pretty good one: profit from the cutting edge tech for a couple of years, then give it to the community when something better comes along.

    Keeping things closed-source for a while also helps keep the multi-player gaming experience more honest and enjoyable for everyone. There have been problems with cheaters in online games since day one, but they become MUCH worse when mischief-makers have complete access to the sources.

  • I thought that should do it too, but the page won't render anything more than a single image with JavaScript disabled. FWIW, it doesn't render much more with JavaScript enabled, either.
    DISCLAIMER: Netscape 4.6 (Win32).

    Yep, it really is an unfriendly page design...
  • We are near beta stage, I am about 90% done with the car physics. Even though we only have a handfull of people working on this, exepect a beta within a few weeks.
  • What about requiem?

    I'm still holding out for Qpong. TF isn't the only thing being ignored by the community. And the three servers I'm able to ping among the Q2 servers are down more often than up.

    Smell a week-long frag-fest coming up in my basement.

    Lime. Put Lime on the bodies. Kitty-Litter if nothing else is available. The cheap stuff won't cover the odour as well, but oh well.
  • Let me guess... British Telecom right?
    In Belgium, OTOH, cable modems are everywhere.
  • Urban Terror will be released August 5th, and is pretty much Action Quake III in all but name.

    http://www.planetquake.com/siliconice/ [planetquake.com]
  • they are a business, and their primary responsibility will always have to be making money for the stockholders.

    iD software is still a privately held company..

    no stockholders!

    almost a rarity these days, eh?
  • Yet another reason to disable javascript.

    Now here's a thing: in Netscape (at least the Linux version - I didn't try others), if you turn off JavaScript, it stops CSS from working. Weird, or what!

    -- Steve

  • The UT engine and netcode are inferior. I get better performance with 300 ms ping over a modem with Q3 than I do with 150 ms ping over a cable modem with UT.

    And graphically - UT has all sorts of nagging visual artifacts that are an eyesore. Play LavaGiant CTF and look at all the places you can see pixels of red lava where there should be no lava.

    I'll admit, Q3's DM ain't that hot. But I don't play DM, I play CTF and Q3F. Q3F is far more fun than anything even UT has to offer. But in the end:

    UT's engine is flawed, which the community cannot fix.

    Q3A's engine is far ahead of any other game out there. Yes, the gameplay might not be so hot out of the box, but that can be fixed by the community. All of the innovative gameplay forms (Class-based teamplay such as TF/Q3F, QPong, etc.) start with Quake and often never leave Quake.

    Look at Q3Rally - Nothing like that exists for UT, and nothing like that is even in development. And probably never will be.
  • The page of the developer lists only Win95 and unix, what gives?

  • I'm curious, how was it different? I've played HL TFC, but not QWTF. I understand the HL maps are lighter, but surely that's not the entirety of it?
  • >5) Valve suck (no really! ask the TFC community after the release of TF1.5...) This is true, I am a reg in news:alt.games.half-life.tfclassic .... and pretty much all the regulars there have quit playing TFC. All we talk about now is how to catch German spies, what kind of cars we drive... and make fun of Brian A. Stumm.

  • Let me know when MegaTF comes out for Quake 3. That would be cool, all the fun, more eye candy and no cheaters. Regular TF doesn't interest me though, the classes are too unbalanced. I mean, have you ever seen a kill leader who wasn't a sniper? At least with air mirvs, jetscouts, laser drones, and 20mm cannons you can give the snipers a little hell too. Of course that doesn't mean making the mistakes of the past again, like implementing the 20mm jump.

  • I noticed the mp3s are a self-extracting executable. Probably could get them out under wine, but definitely not as linux-friendly as a zip file would have been.

    ________

  • That's about the most ridiculous argument I can see anyone throwing at someone. "Go write it". If I want to patch in a minor modification to say, my icq program, or my text editor, fine, most intermediate programmers can do that. But go take an engine and write a game with it? With all due respect, maybe YOU can do that but 99% or programmers have no interest, no time, no resources, and more common sense to take that argument seriously. Have you seen how CRAPPY most 3d games are??? These people got PAID to do this with a budget, experience, and time, and motivation, and you still get stuff like Daikatana.

    If you just don't want to hear the whining fine. Neither do I. I don't want to hear whining about how closed source/MS/RIAA/MPAA/cheese/KDE/Gnome sucks then. (not directed specifically to the author, just all those who make this argument in general). And yes, I know I'm a hypocrite, just letting you see another POV.
  • I know, I know. these DMs are fun. Damn good fun. But you can only frag so much. Instead of all these DM arenas, why won't iD make a mod which actually have a storyline ?? Imagine a mod with Quake graphics and Counter-Strike gameplay. Now, that would be sweet.

    PS: Does anyone know if iD has any plans of making Q3 open source ?!?

    NeoCode
  • dude, it works in lynx. what more do you need?

    B1ood

  • EARTH TO PEOPLE (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    C'rrect me if I'm wrong here, but I thought the beauty of CSS was that if a browser did not have it implemented it got ignored, which is why the the commands are either enclosed in tags or comments in the header of the page.

    Could it be that they're simply using a browser detect script because they hve a problem with inferior browsers such as Communicator?
    -Fred Persec
  • We'll release QVMs so it will work on all supported Quake3 platforms. If id would release the source to q3asm, I'd develop in linux.
  • Users shouldn't be forced to click a pop-up box on every page informing them the author doesn't like their browser. You can use CSS in Netscape. I do. You have to be aware of Netscape's CSS limitations, but the same is true of any browser. And HTML without CSS isn't necessarily incorrect, just as the addition of CSS doesn't make HTML correct...
  • I think I read somewhere that you can just rename the file from .exe to .zip and then just uncompress it normally.
  • Well I figure that this is the perfect oportunity to plug my favorite Quake 3 mod, Weapons Factory. I don't know how many people out there have played the original, but Weapons Factory is a modified version of capture the flag. It contains nine different classes each with different ability and is very team orientated. It is currently in beta testing at a .3 release, it is expected that the mod will reach a final release state in August. So if you get the chance, go to captured.com/weaponsfactory/quake3 and give it a try. Anyone else want to plug their favorite mod?
  • It's worth noting that I run a website called PlanetQ3F [planetq3f.com], which is a resource site for Q3F. Maps, scripts, etc.. yada yada yada =)


  • It's worth noting that I run a website called PlanetQ3F

    Great, then maybe you can fix the fscking fonts so I can read it sensibly on a non-MS platform.

    :%s/FONT-FAMILY: Arial/FONT-FAMILY: Arial,sans-serif/g
  • Yeah, but the in-game player doesn't work :/

    Oh well, there's always next release

  • BAAAAD soundtrack (Score:4)

    by psergiu ( 67614 ) on Monday July 24, 2000 @07:58AM (#910386)
    Do NOT listen to Upbeat Depression - Ultra-Violence while in midgame - especially do NOT listen to the beginning or the ending of that tune. You will be forced to enter console mode for a while and you will lose. In fact delete that mp3 file right now !

    Whoewer selected a tune with samples of "running water" in it to be included in a networked- multiplayer- 12_hours_straight_gameplay- no_sleep- no_eat- and_especially_NO_TOILET_break game is a very sick person or a very good prankster.

    I have to go now ...

    +++ATH0
  • Now, while I see lots of mentions of Quake III (understandably) and Unreal Tournament in the postings here, I hardly see anybody plugging for Counter-Strike on Half-life! According to Gamespy, Counter-Strike alone has 10,100 players right now, more than all Q3A (3,000), Unreal Tourney (2,200), Starsiege (1,600), and Q2 (1,400) game types combined!

    It's the anti-Quake. Instead of cartoony lightning-fast action, where you can get gibbed and respawn milliseconds later to avenge your death, CS has (quasi)-realistic gameplay where if you get shot in the face, you're dead. Helmet or not. And when you get shot, you have to wait for the entire round to end, which could take four or five minutes. They're very different styles of play, and they've both got their merits. However, to insert my bias, I'm of the opinion that CS represents a landmark in FPS shooters, not for technical accomplishment (Though they've done some good shit with the Quake 2 engine) but for sheer gameplay (and as a bonus, realism). This is the first super-popular FPS game that requires patience and strategy.

    Are these 10,000 Counter-strike players all non-geeks? Why is it that Rocket Arena for Quake gets a news notice and no mention of Counter-Strike is ever made?

    OK, I take that back, I know that I can turn off the Quake topic if I want, and I know that Slashdot can't cover every last piddling thing. But fer chrissakes, give the CS boys some credit! I hope Sierra is, 'cause Half-life is almost two years old and it's still the most popular game on the market by a landslide, even against the granddaddy of all FPS, Q3A!

  • I like MegaTF. Like I said, some stuff doesn't work, like 20mm Jump which makes HwGuys way to mobile. I also think scouts should have the air strike call ability so they can make an occassional kill. After all the scout should be scouting for someone right?

    The new stuff is Great. Air mirvs and laser drones are perfect for hitting snipers nests with, weakening the way too powerful snipers. HwGuys used to suck, soldiers could take them out in a slugging match because the assault cannon took so much time to chew throught the soldiers armor. The 20mm gives them good firepower, but eats ammo like crazy so its not very good on offense. Its perfect for the defensive hwguy class. The jetjump makes scouts incredibly fast and mobile, important because mobility is all scouts have. The other stuff is just nice to have for defense, like the different kinds of mines and traps.

    Over all I find Mega TF to be much better balanced than standard TF. Snipers are still a bit too powerful, but oh well.

  • Netscape 4 is the problem, not the web page (Score:3)

    by crt ( 44106 ) on Monday July 24, 2000 @08:40AM (#910401)
    I'm very much in agreement with the Web Standards letter [webstandards.org] to AOL/Netscape posted a few days ago.


    If designers continue to cater to the limitations of Netscape 4 the platform will never die and exciting new technologies like CSS and DHTML will not be usable. SOMEONE has to start using those technologies first, to drive up adoption of newer browsers that support these technologies. It's not going to be yahoo.com or cnn.com, it's got to start with smaller sites like my page.


    The problem with Netscape 4 is not that it doesn't support CSS (Lynx doesn't support CSS and it renders the page fine). The problem is its half-assed support for CSS. It thinks it understands CSS, but it really doesn't. If AOL/Netscape would just release a version of NS4 that flat-rendered any CSS pages the results would be much more usable. I tried to make sure the page was accessible to text based browsers as a lowest common denominator, and for visually impaired people (although not many of them play Quake I would imagine).


    I know a lot of people would be happy with a web that was just black text on a white (or grey for old-schoolers) background, but some of us are intrigued by the possibility of near-pixel-perfect accuracy in web page rendering. It opens up an amazing range of creative possibilities.


    There are CSS-compliant browsers available on every major platform today. If you're still using 3 year old technology (Netscape 4) perhaps you should consider upgrading. If you aren't happy with those other browsers, perhaps you should contribute to making them better.

  • I wrote to the webmaster months ago, and no replies! I think we all need to write to them and whine! :)

  • As far as I know, Mac Q3 does not have support for "native" mods like RA3. I'm looking into the possibility of doing a QVM version for Mac, but that may be difficult because of some of RA3's advanced features.

    OS X on the other hand should have great support for native mods (through shared libraries) and I plan to support it once available.
  • If you're not using TrueType fonts in X by now and haven't at the very least downloaded the free Microsoft "Web Fonts" library, then I must say stop complaining. Even /. here lists the fonts for itself as "arial, helvetica" with no mention of sans-serif.

    Truetype is a very good technology (as is most of the stuff that M$ has ripped from other companies). It is way faster for display purposes than PostScript and of course it is better than raster fonts.

    Install freetype and an x font server and get with the fscking program.
  • I've wondered how long it would be before games would figure out that they're really a platform.... You wait, the mailer is next. Then of course, we'll need a browser (Mozilla makes both easy) and then you will need to have the ability to change your IP filtering rules while in-game.... Next thing you know it'll be QuakeOS service pack 10 with the Web server built into the chain gun.
  • If you're not using TrueType fonts in X by now and haven't at the very least downloaded the free Microsoft "Web Fonts" library, then I must say stop complaining.

    Perhaps you should stop making assumptions. The whole world is not a Linux box. Would you care to suggest how I add TrueType fonts to my MI/X server under Windows? It doesn't support any outline fonts at all, only bitmapped ones. How about for the X server on the DG AViiON on which I'm writing this? (OK, so in the latter case, I could set up a TrueType font server, and tell the X server to use that, but it's not as trivial as it is under Linux, particularly given that much of my X traffic is over a transatlantic link).

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