Slashdot Mirror

gurb writes: "Acording to Christian Antkow's plan (finger xian@idsoftware.com or see webdog.org) linux binaries for the latest installment of Wolfenstein are out. Grab it all over at id's ftp server, enjoy!"

jon_c writes: "Id has just released Return to Castle Wolfenstein for Linux multiplayer client test, download here for the full version, or here if you've already installed the windows version."

jon_c writes: "Id has just released Return to Castle Wolfenstein for Linux multiplayer client test, download here for the full version, or here if you've already installed the windows version."

Clark Lindsey writes: "John Carmack of Id Software fame has gotten deep into serious amateur rocketry. His Armadillo Aerospace web site gives regular status reports on the efforts of his team of mostly volunteers in building very low cost VTVL (Vertical Takeoff, Vertical Landing) hydrogen peroxide rocket vehicles. Last week he gave an impressive presentation at the Space Access Society meeting with a description of the progress made in their incremental development of remotely controlled vehicles that will eventually lead to a manned (suborbital) version."

The Space Access Society is worth checking out, anyhow, if you're interested in leaving earth without a NASA ticket -- their mission is to promote "to promote radically cheaper access to space, ASAP." The Armadillo Aerospace site also has one of the coolest-looking Linux machines I've seen yet, but there's no accounting for taste.

Reality Master 101 writes: "Saw this on Voodoo Extreme: id Software's Todd Hollenshead made some very interesting posts on Quake 3 World about Quake 3 on Linux. Calling the sales "disappointing" and saying the support was a "nightmare" due to the "multiple versions and everchanging kernels", he said there will not be a retail version of Q3 Team Arena. One thing I found especially interesting was that he said "retailers don't want it". Not good news for the Linux shrink-wrap software movement."

The word "Internet" was uttered precisely once in last night's presidential debate, and I don't have to tell you the context. You already know the topic was Columbine, and you already know the Net was being blamed for mass murder. What our Republican candidate failed to mention is that his party's bogeymen, the evil Internet and its evil twin violent entertainment, have brought about a new era of peace. If we really want less violence in our schools, we obviously need more violence on our Internet.

"Columbine spoke to a larger issue, and it's really a matter of culture. It's a culture that somewhere along the line we begun to disrespect life, where a child can walk in and have their heart turn dark as a result of being on the Internet, and walk in and decide to take somebody else's life."
- George W. Bush, presidential debate, October 11, 2000

The term we're looking for is "manufactured crisis." That's what we need to start calling it, this supposed violence in our schools.

I don't need to provide you with more quotes from Bush, Gore, Cheney and especially Lieberman about how disgustingly violent our culture has become. You can't pick up a paper without seeing at least three people moaning about violent movies, the violent internet, and worst of all violent video games. They're infecting the minds of our children, don't'cha know. It'd be the new national pastime if it weren't 200 years old: grumping about those damn kids.

Let's counter disinformation with some real numbers. Here's an annotated timeline showing the increase in violent imagery, and the corresponding decrease in actual violence.

1993
Students' nonfatal violent crimes: 1,438,200.
Victims of violent crime per 1,000 population, all ages: 49.1.

Let's consider 1993 our baseline year, the pre-Doom year. That blockbuster was not released until December 1993, so I think we are safe to assume that it did not begin darkening hearts until 1994 or later. By the end of 1993, the internet's two million host machines include 500 webservers.

Demolition Man, Kalifornia and Falling Down are in the theaters.

1994
Students' nonfatal violent crimes: 1,424,200: a 1% decrease from the previous year.
Victims of violent crime per 1,000 population, all ages: 51.2: a 4% increase from the previous year.

In 1994, shareware Doom, downloadable from the evil internet, shatters existing gaming records. Its bloody graphics and Satanic imagery shock and offend many who are easily shocked and offended. In an era where 200,000 is a great-selling title, 1994 sees the first of fifteen million gamers who download and play Doom.

Meanwhile, the web grows at an annual rate of 341,000%, becoming the 2nd-most popular type of data; among the three million machines on the net, there are too many webservers to count.

The movies Pulp Fiction, Timecop, True Lies, Children of the CornIII, and the politicans' favorite Natural Born Killers are all released in 1994.

1995
Students' nonfatal violent crimes: 1,290,000: a 9% decrease from the previous year.
Total under-18 murderers: 2,169.
Victims of violent crime per 1,000 population, all ages: 46.1: a 10% decrease from the previous year.

In 1995, the web becomes the most popular internet service among the net's four million machines. Shareware Doom continues to rack up downloads. Doom II: Hell On Earth, released last October, takes over as the violentest game ever, with an initial release of half a million units.

The Basketball Diaries, Braveheart, Se7en, and Die Hard3 are released.

1996
Students' nonfatal violent crimes: 1,134,400: a 12% decrease from the previous year.
Total under-18 murderers: 1,683: a 22% decrease from the previous year.
Victims of violent crime per 1,000 population, all ages: 41.6: a 10% decrease from the previous year.

1996 is a banner year for violent images. Doom II continues on its track to eventually sell two million copies. Duke Nukem 3D, aimed at the young teenage male market, gives our nation's young boys a healthy mix of strippers, jokes, and mass slaughter with machine guns. Soon after, the breakthrough title Quake offers unprecedented visual accuracy: blood, gore, and murder are now illustrated with detail that makes Doom and Duke Nukem look cartoony.

Scream is released in theaters to tremendous success, along with Broken Arrow, CrowII, Sling Blade, and the excellent Fargo. Meanwhile, there are now 9 million hosts on the net.

The effects of all that horrible media violence in 1996 appear in 1997's statistics...

1997
Students' nonfatal violent crimes: 1,055,200: a 7% decrease from the previous year.
Total under-18 murderers: 1,457: a 13% decrease from the previous year.
Victims of violent crime per 1,000 population, all ages: 38.8: a 7% decrease from the previous year.

In 1997, there are 16 million hosts on the net. At year's end, QuakeII is released, and is quickly banned in Germany for its even-more-realistic violence. And Con Air, Face/Off, Starship Troopers, and Scream2 are released in theaters.

1998
Total under-18 murderers: 1,169: a 20% decrease from the previous year.
Victims of violent crime per 1,000 population, all ages: 36.0: a 7% decrease from the previous year.

In 1998, Quake II hits its sales stride and begins corrupting young minds. Grand Theft Auto, one of the more vilified and censored video games, is released. The web crosses the 300-million-page mark.

Brace yourself for the movie list: Lethal Weapon4, Saving Private Ryan, American HistoryX, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Ronin, Urban Legend, Blade, and the crappy remake of Psycho hit the theaters.

The result?

1999
Victims of violent crime per 1,000 population, all ages: 32.1: an 11% decrease from the previous year.

There it is. In the four years between the release of Doom and Quake II, the number of killers under the age of 18 in this country plummeted. A drop of 46% in just four years is nothing short of astonishing.

Long-term graphs are even more valuable. Click through to these, they're small and quick:

• The homicide rate, 1900-1998. We are experiencing the longest and steepest sustained dropoff in violence since the Great Depression.
• Homicide offenders grouped by age, 1976-1998. The number of teenage killers is steadily falling.
• Average age of homicide offenders, 1976-1998. The average age of the American killer has been rising since 1993.

Last month, I watched CNN as my friend Bennett Haselton got grilled opposite Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.). After CNN's introduction telling us what to think - cutting straight from footage of Doom to footage of crying Columbine students - the Senator explained how violent games cause children to commit violent actions. He wants to keep dangerous weapons like Quake away from our kids.

That's how the Senator - who voted against secure handgun storage, and twice against child safety locks - positioned himself as our noble defender of children.

How do the posturing panderers justify their crisis-du-jour? How'd we end up with the phantom of media-created child violence as a major election issue, while violence plummets?

The facts speak for themselves. If seeing violence has any effect on children's actions, it obviously makes them calm and peaceful.

So here's the slogan for my campaign: our kids deserve the best in first-person shooters. In my America, every family will have free movie tickets, 300 megatexels, and low-ping broadband. Let's put an end to frame rates under 30Hz. For our country - for our safety - we can leave no child behind.

(Sources: US DOJ 1, 2, 3; OJJDP 1, 2, 3; FBI UCR; Blues News; crime.org; poynter.org.)

Patrick McAllister was one of the folks who wrote to us about a report talking with John Carmack [?] regarding id's sales of Linux games. Apparently, it's been pretty absymal - enough to cover costs, but "they wouldn't make a bean-counter blink". I wonder what Loki's experience has been.

Jón Ragnarsson writes "Compaq Western Research Lab has put some movies of the Itsy running Doom, Java, X and other stuff... The ARM CPU still amazes me after all those years... " My love affair with the itsy goes way back to stories that we posted years ago. I even saw one at the 98 LinuxExpo. This is the box that we always wish would be mass produced, but just doesn't seem to ever get any closer. Its still cool tho.

Jacek Fedorynski writes "John Cash has left id Software to work on a yet unannounced project at Blizzard. Here's Graeme Devine's .plan update on the subject."

John Carmack of id wrote Quake III, but Loki distributed the Linux version. Loki Entertainment Software has been described by happy puppy as "...the most visible Linux gaming company," so who better to turn to than Loki President Scott Draeker for word about game development and porting for Linux? Scott's an extra-cool guy, so we expect extra-cool answers from him. We'll post them sometime within the next week, so please keep an eye out.

BigMeanBear writes "Finally the highly anticipated Quake 3 Source is available for mod makers to hack away at. Go get it and make some mods!" The id server seems to be overloaded right now, so you might try some other locations.

WarSpite was the first of many to write with the news that id has open-sourced the Quake 1 Source Code. This includes WinQuake, GLQuake, QuakeWorld, and GLQuakeWorld. Yes, it's been released under the GPL ^[?] . id's ftp site got the goods.

John Carmack is, of course, a GameGod[tm] so famous that even stuffy, all-business Forbes.com recently noticed him and Id Software. He's been interviewed about 42 gazillion times - but not by you. So go ahead. One question per post please, and since we expect a huge response, please try not to whine too loudly if our exotic blend of moderation, editorial judiciousness, and random dart-throwing doesn't pop your question(s) to the top o' the heap, which only has room for 10 - 15 no matter how many are submitted. Answers will be posted Friday, as usual, and I'm sure they'll be great, because John's a great guy!

Emil writes wrote in to tell us that that John Carmack ^[?] has donated $10k to Mesa ^[?] to assist in the development of optimized 3d drivers for release with Mesa 3.1. Very cool. You can find out more about Id or check out The Mesa Website. Update: 05/13 04:24 by H :In somewhat related news, RealTime wrote to say "Precision Insight (the people funded partly by RedHat?) have made available their design documents for the 3D Direct Rendering Infrastructure for XFree86. The final package will be released under an XFree86 style license. "

Jacek Fedorynski writes "Graeme 'Zaphod' Devine of id Software updated his .plan, in which he wrote that the test of Q3A that everybody expected to be out in March will be out in a few weeks. I can't wait much longer. "

John Carmack wrote in to send me an email that he received from Bob Young at Red Hat. He says "I was dissapointed to receive this today... We aren't interested in being out own publisher, and I want to work with a linux specialist that can provide customer support. If any of the other major linux companies want to pitch us a publishing offer, I want to hear from them." Red Hats reply is below. Hopefully there's a company out there willing to make a ton of money distributing id's games...

Update My opinion on this whole matter is that Red Hat did the right thing. Bob's opinions on why RH wouldn't want to publish Id's stuff are fair. I'm sorry this seems to be interpreted as negative, my intent by posting this was merely to help John find another Linux Publisher.

I've yanked the letter because it was personal email between John & Bob and it was clearly inappropriate for me to post it here. Beyond that, it had phone numbers that weren't meant for publishing.

Red Hat doesn't want distribute Id's games because

• They are trying to be a more serious company, and games arent where that is right now.
• Quake is binary only, and RH is trying to distribute only open stuff.

both of these seem completely reasonable to me, and I'm glad that RH is willing to stick to their guns on this one. My intent of posting this story was merely to help John find an alternative publisher for Linux Quake, and I hope he's successful. I want to see a shrink wrapped Linux Quake available at Babbages right next to the windows version more than anything.

My apologies again to everyone involved. I've proved once again that I'm human, and error prone.

Kevin sent us a link to an early story about Quake III Arena. As you would expect, it will feature new multiplayer stuff and a new graphics engine to make everything prettier. And if id follows their pattern, we'll have a Linux port as well. To bad 1999 is a long way off.

Kelly "STrikerRW" Price wrote in to tell us that John Carmack of id has updated his plan to ask people to contact Zoid if they want to help port GLQuake type stuff. I may buy an accelerator yet.

Kelly "STrikerRW" Price wrote in to tell us that John Carmack of id has updated his plan to ask people to contact Zoid if they want to help port GLQuake type stuff. I may buy an accelerator yet.

Eric Clark wrote in to tell us that Carmack has updated his .plan (finger johnc@idsoftware.com) for damage control on the recent stuff about ID Software's backdoor onto Quake Servers (You can read A security advistory if you are unfamiliar with the mess). Similiar to Blizzard's recent StarCraft mess, they say it was just a debugging thing. I still haven't made a decision on this stuff, what do you guys think?

Brian Justice wrote in send us this link about Id Software using Open GL instead of Direct3d. This story tells us that Dynamix will also not be using Direct3D on StarSiege. With all of Carmacks negative comments about D3D, I guess it was only a matter of time before other companies followed in Id's footsteps away from Direct3D.

Following the trend of releasing software into the cold dark net, ID has apparently released the source code to Q2. Perhaps somebody can confirm if this is just the Linux version, the game.dll code, or just the QuakeC code that runs the show? You can read more at Redwood's 3D News or Disruptors Plan. Thanks to Michael Best who was the first of dozens to send this in.

Razvan Jianu sent us a couple of tidbits. First, Linux Quake 3.13 is out. This was first mentioned on Freshmeat. Even cooler is a collection of New 64 Player Maps. Apparently a PPro 200 bogs down at 64, but it still will be fun to try!

Razvan Jianu sent us a couple of tidbits. First, Linux Quake 3.13 is out. This was first mentioned on Freshmeat. Even cooler is a collection of New 64 Player Maps. Apparently a PPro 200 bogs down at 64, but it still will be fun to try!

Tim Newsome was the first to report that Quake II for Linux is apparently now available on iD's FTP Site. Grab it and play till you get paranoid and try to shot your neighbors head off with your snow shovel.