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...Linux is a pain to develop a good game client for. DirectX games are not easily ported, and most games are DirectX. This means most professional game developers are fluent in DirectX. DX makes things a lot easier than writing for every sound/video card out there.

Well, I'll put aside the fact that any developer worth their salt should make abstractions, such that they don't expose anything DirectX based to the engine directly, rather the engine talks to a layer that handles the DirectX calls for them (the upshot of this being that it's easy to simply drop in a new abstraction layer if you want to add support for a different API, say OpenGL, thus making porting relatively easy). But, implying that under Linux one has to code for every video/audio card directly is simply ignorant (yes, you didn't _say_ that as such, but it is easy to read that into it).

There are many different APIs that one can use to achieve uniformity. The obvious ones that are brought up often being OpenGL and SDL. But there are others - OpenAL, HawkNL, OpenIL... a very long list of choices that one can employ to avoid having to code anything vendor specific and at the sametime often have the benefit of being able to use said APIs on multiple platforms (all of the ones listed above support Linux, Mac OS X and Win32, to name but a few). Plus, some of these APIs, outside of being Open Source are supported, or even developed, by IHVs directly.

Quake3 for Linux sold dismally, while people were buying the Windows version enough to be dunking the CDs in their coffee. And the Linux client was released first: if ever there was an opportunity for a killer-app game to help boost Linux, that was a great time.

Not true. Check out...

John Carmack's Finger

Stated quite clearly in there is that vendors were pushing the Windows version of Q3 much stronger than the Mac or Linux versions (for obvious reasons) - to the extent that the Windows version was available first. Reading between the lines it's quite obvious that what is being said is "If you want to support Linux, _don't_ buy the windows version of Q3 and then simply d/l the binaries - wait until the Linux version comes out at the shops". Not surprisingly I doubt many people did this, as they wanted to play thei new game _now_. What is quite clearly the case though is that the Windows version was available before the others, not the other way around.

Loki went out of business by doing the smart thing: bootstrapping itself with porting Triple-A titles from Windows, to earn some cash and develop a library to live on. Who's going to look at the Linux market and see it as viable when id and Loki can't make a good go of it?

As has been debated many times - Loki went out of business largely due to mismanagement, _not_ due to lack of support. Publishers and distributers aren't looking at id and Loki and saying that "Linux isn't viable", they simply _aren't_ looking at all since they are entrenched in the Windows market. They need to be made aware of Linux in the first place.

Linux users are habituated to not paying for Linux software, as a rule ... taking on the burden of developing the same thing without that help, for a community that likes their software free (both kinds of free),... that's a lot to expect.

This is a fallacy that I think needs to die. The belief that "All Linux users won't pay money" is just absurd. Sure, there are zealots out there who refuse to use any software that isn't Free (as in speech) and distributed under the GPL, _but_ here's the thing - _those people aren't the ones that people will market things at in the first place_ (they didn't buy Windows either, afterall, so they just fall off the radar). The point here is that Linux is becoming more mainstream, and as it becomes more mainstream the percentage of zealots compared to the community as a whole will _decrea

100% in 1:00 in mp4 format, recored on the real game.

A great site. And you can download in game recordings so you can actually see the game run through in real time.

http://www.planetquake.com/qdq/

Well, most of us have been training for this day for quite a while. I think the world will be safe.

ProQuake is a modification to the original Quake (NetQuake, not QuakeWorld) code to provide some client-to-server verification of maps and models.

I'm curious if anyone here has heard of any attacks on this cheat-free method?

Thanks
-molo

Urban Terror is terrific, I've played it on the Mac & Windows, either way is the same. Check out some of the
gameplay screens.

Hmm there's plenty of other mods for Quake III Arena as well.

- Binky

What is your personality like? Do you like all games equally? Is there something you wish to make just floating around in your head?

You should be looking something suitable for you not other people. Everyone likes how things work differently. Also go take a look at Gamasutra for some good reading.

Personally, try out Valve Hammer Editor and QuArK. They are standards that can be used for many games.

I'm surprised noone mentioned this already... play Quake 3 Arena as Bush, Gore, Lieberman, Nader, Cheyney and others.

Here is a collection of user submitted Haikus abotu the Quake expereince.

A new box has been released and is recommended for running your *BSD.

Please click here for more details.

It adds very nice lighting and texturing, but nothing more. The gameplay and modelling is still old and clunky.

Tenebrae was just an example, but I believe you're incorrect in saying that the modelling is still old and clunky. People around the Tenebrae object have reworked a lot of the models in the original game to have higher polygon counts and higher resolution textures. Quake 1 looks good with the new models and effects.

As far as gameplay goes, nobody play's the Quake 3 Arena standard game either anymore. Quake's gameplay could easily be on par or better than current games if people were still working on it. Breaking out the old TeamFortress is still a blast today, for example (much better than TFC for Half-Life).

Face the facts: Linux is dying

First RedHat killed Linux, now Linux is scratching at the lid of its coffin. We all knew this would happen.

Be sure to also get the dying Linux case mod for your new Linux system!

There are some great Quake Done Quick demos and videos out there for the original Quake 1 game. They are just amazing to watch. Everything just timed perfectly with endless motion, action, awesome nade/rocket jumping, etc.

I personally liked 2, but then I'm the type of person that prefers Action Quake 2 over Quake 3.
I think the series peaked with THPS3
Here's the THPS3 torrent, just for you.

If you like game "trick" demos, especially Quake ones, check out "Frags Done Extreme" also known as FDE... and also check out "Def Dag Extreme" (DDE). There are actually 2 movies in both of those series.

Basically they involve "best of" clips, blooper clips, and acrobatic stunts gathered from countless Quake deathmatches. If it has been a while since you have played Quake deathmatch, then I know you will be surprised with the stuff people are able to do in the game after playing it for seven years.

They can do trick jumps and acrobatics that you will swear they have to be using modified server physics... but in fact, all of the tricks are possible without modified physics. The stuff is so amazing that it might re-spark your interest in the FPS game that started this whole internet deathmatch deal.

FDE and DDE make use of too much slow-motion, but it is a necessary evil because most of the really cool acrobatics require extremely fast movement speeds, which are obtained using explosive jumps, bunnyhopping, strafe turning, accel zig-zagging, ramp jumping, wall running, etc... For some of the stunts, the players actually get their movement speed faster than a speeding rocket! Hence the heavy dose of slo-mo.

By the way, have you ever seen someone do an axe jump? If the above download links are dead, then try this site, which has mirror download links.

Try out another "superreal"-combat mod for Quake3:

"True Combat"

Tactical shooting with the real iron sights of each gun. Was pretty interesting, a bit like counterstrike with wave-type respawning, many players. Punching a hole of lead through the enemy never felt that real before the "iron sights" :)

Click here to see the most appropriate case mod for a *BSD system.

If you can also print out your word processor documents on mummy-wraps, you've got it made.

Start by calling HP and asking for the special *BSD-compatible inkjet printer that shoots out embalming fluid instead of ink.

Click on this image link click here to see the ideal case mod for a system to run your *BSD on.

click here to see the ideal case mod for a system to your your *BSD!

I am currently using a Matrox G450 Max dual head, and my desktop resolution is 2048 X 768 on two 17 inch monitors. Interestingly enough slashdot seems slow right now, so on my left monitor I am reading other news articles while I wait for Slashdot to load.

If you have never tried multiple monitors, I suggest you give it a shot - even if you are only using a second card in a PCI slot. While you will be missing some features that the integrated multihead cards have, it is still superior to a single monitor.

It is extremely efficent for tasks such as working on servers etc. For example, I can have a shell open in the right monitorto a server, and have the webpage, or database open on the left monitor. I can view changes I make to the server quickly on the left monitor - and fix screw ups faster because everything is right in front of me. It sounds pretty much the same to most people who have never tried it, but it is not. The difference is subtle, but signifigant. You start to save small segments of time over the course of a day - and that all adds up.

I would really like to eventually get a Matrox Parhelia and have a third monitor thrown into the mix.

For those of you wanting to try it, get a cheap PCI card and a cheap monitor - they are easy enough to find for about $10.00 each nowdays. You will probably find that you like it, and upgrade to a nicer monitor than the $10.00 POS you started with.

However, as for the comment: IT managers will view it as a good investment and not just for gamers

So unless you are talking about articles like thisand this planetquake article You probably have not tried it for gaming.

How do I know? I have tried it.

The framerate SUCKS. Granted, I have a bad card for gaming - it is old and out of date. However, I have tried Quake and Quake 3 running over both of my monitors, and while playable there is a signifigant framerate loss. Furthermore there is the problem of aim with a dual monitor setup. Your crosshair is split between the monitors, therefore aiming becomes very confusing indeed. You would need a minimum of 3 monitors (like with the parhelia, or additional PCI) for this to be effective. A nice advantage is that it is really easy to spot opponents with such a wide FOV. The disadvantage is that you can't aim to shoot them worth a damn.

So when playing games, I use a single monitor. But I keep this card around (even though it sucks for gaming) because it has excellent desktop performance, and I am not giving dual head up now that I am used to it.

Nice troll.

[disclaimer, I couldn't care less which one sucks less ati or nvidia, I personally like matrox as I like "solid state" cards with dual head and have no need for 3d stuff]

You, hypocrite bastard, forgot to mention that nv3x supports 16 *and* 32 bit floating point, while ati only supports 24, of course when you do things at 32bit precision, nv3x is slower than ati at 24bit, and that when you do it at 16 it's faster, but the quality isn't that good.

God Carmack has written more than enough about this in his .plan and even posted about it here in /.:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=65617&cid=6051 216
and
http://finger.planetquake.com/plan.asp?userid=john c&id=16154

Now, what *I* want is the video card manufacturers(and hardware manufacturers in general) to stop behaving like 3 year olds and fucking document their products and release open source drivers, that would get ride of most of this bull shit that is just driven by marketoids, wastes everyones time and contributes nothing to improve the technology that is what really matters.

And maybe then we could get some decent 3D system under Plan9 that kicked everyone else's ass, just like draw* did for 2d ;) //K

* Not related in any way to DirctDraw, you ignorant idiot.

Pshaw. UT? Gimme a break. Go back in time to the time of Quake 1. Dag and Def Rule

I'm from a lot more than that. Heard of Quake done Quick?

As for the paper mario thing... the stuff i've read about it is not clear. They only say "paper mario is coming to gamecube". To me that sounds like the old game, not a new one. If you say "mario" is coming then you'd know it's a new game, but there's only one paper mario game.

It would sure beat getting a headache from crossing your eyes. It might also help to keep focus when you try to focus on something on the screen in 3D, but of course.. it's on the screen.. so it's no in 3D.. and everything goes blurry again.. while you try to re-cross your eyes and keep from getting fragged at the same time.

Now.. if someone could make StereoUT(2003) ....

Some of these are entertaining, but nothing compared to the laughs you'll get from the good old days of quake movies.

Check out the: History of Quake movies

Then procede to download and be amused by:

The original and the best: Operation Bayshield!

And another hugely entertaining classic: Blahbalicious

Some of these are entertaining, but nothing compared to the laughs you'll get from the good old days of quake movies.

Check out the: History of Quake movies

Then procede to download and be amused by:

The original and the best: Operation Bayshield!

And another hugely entertaining classic: Blahbalicious

Here (from Space Bunnies I believe)

Here (a kangaroo)

Cya in there then, eh?
Vox (a.k.a.- Corporate Greed)

Here (from Space Bunnies I believe)

Here (a kangaroo)

Cya in there then, eh?
Vox (a.k.a.- Corporate Greed)

I see many posts by people that haven't played Quakeworld recently. They don't truely understand what players can do, physics wise, in Quakeworld deathmatch. They confuse bunnyhopping in Quakeworld with bunnying in Quake 3. They are two different beasts. Check out this post for more info

Let me make a few other recommendations for those who haven't played in a while, or to those that have never played this wonderful FPS game.

For Quake's first couple years of life, players enjoyed the game and basically learned a few physics tricks: rocket jumping, wall running, etc... but after roughly 3 years since its release, some new acrobatic tricks were discovered that completely changed how Quake is now played.

Quake has now become something that not only requires great aim and strategy, but also great acrobatic skill.

If you want a taste of what I am talking about, download the Frags Done Extreme and Def Dag Extreme videos. They suffer from an overuse of slow motion, but thats because most of these acrobatic tricks require such great speed, that they are hard to see in full speed. Also note, when watching these videos, that low gravity or other such things are not used. The people in the video are simply moving incredibly fast, and the video is played in incredibly slow motion.

So when the players look like they are flying, it is because they really know how to move, not because of low gravity.

Trust me, if you have ever played Quake, but not played in a long time, those videos will blow your mind! THATS REAL DEATHMATCH BABY!

For those that are interested in playing Quakeworld, note that it is opensource and runs on all of the major PC platforms, such as Windows and Linux. I recommend the FuhQuake client. Though the game engine is opensource, the art content such as levels, models, sounds, and textures are still copyrighted by Id Software.

So if you want to play, you will need to pay around $10 for a bargin bin copy of the game. Install it, and then install FuhQuake over it.

Finally, the question that I have is, if all you want is Quakeworld, then why not play Quakeworld? It is cheaper than Quake 3, opensource, and Quakeworld has lower system requirements.

People still play Chess after hundreds of years. The game gets better with time, as players learn new ways of playing. Should we give up Chess for newer shinier versions with better graphics and sound? Nah, just play the game if its fun. Stop wasting your money on more of the same.

Seconded!! Here's the Web site of the Quake Done Quick crew.

Of special note is Scourge Done Slick, a speed run through the Quake add-on pack Scourge of Armagon. It has remarkably good voice acting, some good lines (including a cameo by The Levelord), good camera work, and some astonishing moves and play tactics. As a Quake afficianado, I regard this as required viewing.

No matter how you slice it, it's good stuff. Recommended.

Schwab

Seconded!! Here's the Web site of the Quake Done Quick crew.

Of special note is Scourge Done Slick, a speed run through the Quake add-on pack Scourge of Armagon. It has remarkably good voice acting, some good lines (including a cameo by The Levelord), good camera work, and some astonishing moves and play tactics. As a Quake afficianado, I regard this as required viewing.

No matter how you slice it, it's good stuff. Recommended.

Schwab

For those of you who are interested in picking up a game now and then, I highly recommend the ProQuake engine (GPL) and the CRMod++ DeathMatch competition framework.

These are modifications of NetQuake that were made to keep the original feel of Quake, with some minor improvements. None of the core of the game is changed with these packages. You can even connect to these machines with the original Quake client.

List of CRMod++ servers

-molo

For those of you who are interested in picking up a game now and then, I highly recommend the ProQuake engine (GPL) and the CRMod++ DeathMatch competition framework.

These are modifications of NetQuake that were made to keep the original feel of Quake, with some minor improvements. None of the core of the game is changed with these packages. You can even connect to these machines with the original Quake client.

List of CRMod++ servers

-molo

Polycount has lots of free graphics. Sure, you'll have to credit the author, but I don't think that's a problem. A friend of mine has an Hack'n'Slash game written in BlitzBasic using a bunch of models he found there. Doesn't look half-bad, either (except for the GUI... that needs work)

For those people with Quake 3, you can try out ARQ. The board is the same, with Q3 models reprisenting different pieces. When you fight over a square, you both get transported to the arena to fight it out. Of course, different pieces have different weapons and damage ratings.

It can be played on any Q3 map, which becomes the arena you fight in. Pretty cool.

Try 4D Shooter. (also here) A test version has been released. I'll just copy and paste the info:

4D Shooter is a 3D virtual reality game created in 2003, to look, sound, and feel like a retro 1991-esque 3D game, however, no one caught the idea of first-person-shooter then, and not much titles used the mouse creatively, so if Distinctive Software Incorporated (DSI) would take the FPS idea, this is what you'd get! (This project does not involve the actual DSI and 4D Rulers company, nor is related.)

How many polys are we talking about? A range from 2 to 78, playable on almost any computer.

This game is not yet released, no release date has been announced. The system requirements will hopefully, be a 486dx2 33MHz w/ Math-coprocessor. a 16MHz would be supported if the screen size was set to a minimum. We recommend a 486 66MHz for playing this game. It runs about 89FPS on my Pentium 166MHz in almost every place (320x200x8bit) with 5 bots, so I guess your excuses of not running it will be over. ;) (486 66MHz fps estimate = ~24fps)

This game is based on id's Quake technology, and the game will be released free, the engine will be under the GNU GPL, while all else is public domain, making this a 100% legal product.

The sites have a bunch of screenshots, and the download fits on a floppy.

I remember those Quake done Quaker days. That was
super cool. First record was 19 minutes.
And i believe they recently set that to an amazing
12 somewhat secs!!!! With jumping instead of running.
I still enjoy watching those speed demo's alot.
It's worth installing your old Quake and watch 'm
QDQ Project

Just give a look here

Ok guys, these games are becoming scarily beautiful and realistic...now where is my virtual reality? Hell, even something as simple as the original Doom series (or even better, Doom Legacy) in fully immersive 3D would be a nice start.

Lawnmower Man? I want that. Come on, it must be trivial now!

Try:
StereoQuake for the stereovisualization code.
Stereographics for the goggle systems.
Barco for the monitor.
Immersion for the gloves and haptic devices.
Windows NT/2000, Irix, and Solaris support most all of this equipment.

Additional applications and systems can be found at Sense8, Fakespace, and Mechdyne.

Have fun... (I use to work as an "information technologies associate" setting up this equipment for a major research universities... you can find your Lawnmower Man style VR equipment in the nuclear engineer and genetic engineering laboratories of research universities.... "Digital Media Laboratory" is another moniker for it....)

Just listen to John.

This is a copy of a letter I sent to ID and Activision a few months ago. These companies are loosing players in droves and the companies don't even care. Check out the PB forums and see the comments from all the irate players:

What happened to the Quake (2/3) Series?

This is basically an open letter to id Software and how little importance they place in their products. They are loosing players in drovers and their reputation is going down the toilet.

But first a little intro.

I began playing Quake 2 in 95 when some friends at work were having a DM/CTF LAN party. Needles to say I was hooked. I went out and bought the game and downloaded Map after Map. I Became pretty good and eventually became one of the best Q2 CTF players around .

The Q2 CTF MOD was, at the time one of the most innovative MOD's around and pretty much dictated what a Capture the flag Mod should be like. I enjoyed playing on the old YYZ CTF servers and testing new maps from some of the most awesome mappers at the time (Hafhead and gizm0 to name a few). Everyone was into the games, teamplay was amazing and cheaters were nonexistent because Id was on top of various hacks (wallhacking excluded).

Eventually, my scores started to go down and I was ending up at the middle of the pack at the end of rounds. I began spectating people and noticed that people were gibbing enemies from the side and from behind them and discovered the world of bots.

What is a bot?

Some n00bs may get confused by the definition.

There are two types of bots. 1) Used as an AI opponent on various servers to fill empty spaces on servers. These AI players have incredible aim. These bots are good if you want to practice aiming on the run. On Half-Life Servers you can tell bots by their ping. (They all have a ping of 5)

2) Players use the bot components noted in #1 and integrates the auto aim features into their character and play on servers with the auto-aim components. I'm not going to post any of the bot links but they are out there. The people who started using the bots to enhance their own playing experience were mostly pretty stupid. They usually configured their bots to cover auto aiming in a filed of vision of 180 degrees or more around them. What this means is that if a player with a bot is looking forward and they hit fire, the bot will hit anything 180 degrees or more around them without turning. Secondly, they will usually just (if playing a CTF map) shoot and kill people and not work on any of the team objectives.

One more thing to note is one other problem with Quake 2 was that Q2 Servers were susceptible to IP Ping Floods and could take down a given server.

ID Software has a practice of Stopping builds and not releasing any further upgrades or practices. Not long after this, I started to loose interest in this game.

This was about time that the Q3 Arena Demos started to Circulate around. I began playing this game and reading the advanced press from various sources.

When I learned that CTF would loose all the cool components that made Q2 CTF a classic, it was time for me to find a new on-line game to play.

I wasn't drawn to this game very much. Sure there were some cool things about it but I wouldn't buy it ($59.99 was the price I believe) when Q3 Arena came out.

I chose to buy Half-Life and still play it to this day. It's an amazing game and Awesome Mods are still coming out to this day.

In my opinion, if a company can't take what made a given game famous and remove some or all components in a multiplayer game in the next release of a game, the company looses face in the gaming community. No One Lives Forever 2 is a good example of this. No One Lives Forever 2 was initially released without a DM or CTF mod (DM were later added with the first Service Pack after MANY irate customer complaints) the MODs that made NOLF1 a classic (running over people with snowmobiles rock!!!).

Bought Q3 Gold

I was at a Wal-Mart one day and noted Quake 3: Gold for $19.99 and bought it for the heck of it. I was interested in seeing what became of the game and was looking at what it took to map CTF maps. I've been looking into getting into mapping and wanted to do some research into what is needed to create Maps. I soon learned this was a kettle of workms that I probably should not have opened. Install a pain on XP Long story short, Quake 3: Gold has to be installed in a specific manner (it has to be a complete install) on the primary partition, in the default 'suggested' path (XP Pro) (this information was found on the Planequake forums ).

I soon found out that this install was to be the source of some of the issues I've been receiving.

I also use The All Seeing Eye to connect to games and because Q3 wouldn't work in the manner I wanted to install the game in, ASE wouldn't work.

PlanetQuake, Fileplanet other quake related files

Ok, when I played Quake2, planetquake.com was the place to go for all information, patches, maps, etc. I went back to this site and went to the Quake 3 section and began researching what would be needed to update my installation. The planetquake site was slow (I'm on a Cable Modem) to load and took a good 2 minutes to load a page. When I found a given page on maps or mapping, the links that were available were outdated or didn't work. There was no definitive 'manual' on how to find different mods or what programs are needed to map and which files were the most up to date. The links they provided (when they worked...which was about 10% of the time) were anything but helpful. I found four different mapping programs, none of which I've gotten to work correctly yet.

Planetquake has gotten lazy in their old age.

I found the Q3 MODS and patches on fileplanet but due to the new structure of the site (wait in line?!?!?...LAME!!!) I would have had to wait 4-5 days just to download a few files. I searched all over the net for the files I needed on other sites and was able to finish the download in a day.

Once I got some semblance of a Q3 install completed, I connected to a Q3 Server through ASE.

I remembered in the Q3 Install and patch that a program called Punkbuster which is a program that would detect cheaters and bot users. I thought 'cool' Id is doing something about bots and cheaters!'

Punkbuster a nightmare to upgrade

When installing and upgrading Punkbuster to current Standards I was not able to either through the game or using the command line update util. I found out that the problem with the PB (again on XP Pro in Non-Domain mode patched to current standards) is two fold:

1) The Quake Final Patch Release does not install a couple of key files for some reason or another (I found this out on the Planetquake forums ).

2) XP has a default behavior in that all system directories are 'read-only' and cannot be changed no matter what you try (Group Policies, ACLS, command line attributes, removing simple file sharing, etc.). In the case of Quake 3: Gold on XP, the default install dir is 'Program files' directory. Punkbuster needs to convert a couple of HTML files to binary and since the Read-Only Attributes are pushed from the Root Level of the primary partition, PB can't make the conversion.

New Cheats out that render Punkbuster Useless

I'm not going to go in depth about this but there are a couple of serious issues with some cheats out in the wild that PB can't handle at the moment. One issue seems to be addressed. The other is a bot that is undetectable by PB and is being used more and more on Q3 servers.

Players are furious that this issue isn't being addressed (myself included) by ID.

Read the Punkbuster Forums . Just about every single post is a rant about when/how is ID/Punkbuster will be addressing the current hacking issues and how ticked they are on how this issue isn't being addressed. (Side note: as of approx 27.Jan.2003 Punkbuster's forums have been removed and this site is taking the brunt of the PB issues.

I played on some of ThreeWave's CTF Servers (A killer MOD by the way)the other day and played against bot users. Some of these players are so stupid they turned their bot settings to 180 degrees or more and all players on my team wereable to spot this immediately.

Before I wrote this article I played a Vanilla CTF Game on a Q3 Server and there were a couple of players who were killing players in midair with weapons with the littlest fire power or hitting people in midair (from long distances) so they fell and cratered.

Needless to say, the team that I was on were trying and were winning in caps for a while (but not gibs) slowly left the server after many of the players on my team left (we started with 8 and when I left there were 3 versus 7 on the other team).

What's going on ID?!?!?

You're loosing players that used to be hardcore Q2/Q3 players in droves and they probably won't buy any more of your games due to the lack of attention you're giving to the cheaters and hackers.

Also, as a result of my experiences, I have since turned my mapping interests to the Half-Life Mod 'Day of Defeat' and the new James Bond Game '007: NightFire'.

I tell you one thing, I'll never buy another ID product again.

Software is easy to fix, reputations are next to impossible to fix. Get with the program ID!!!

Dolemite

Software development is one hundred percent design

Lawyers with RPGs are invincible.

The tricks done in the QDQ videos are impressive, and definitely worth checking out, but the tricks done in the Frags Done Extreme (FDE) series and the Def Dag Extreme (DDE) series are far more impressive. They contain both frag tricks and acrobatic stunts.

The fact that there is truely no limit to your speed in Quake is one of the key reasons it has more interesting physics. The other key points are the ramp jumps and no weapon switch delays. Things missing in Quake 3.

Just like rocket jumping was a bug at first, but then later designed into FPS games. And in fighting games, juggling your opponent was not designed into the game at first, but once people saw that such combos required skill... such things started to become designed into fighting games. You would think more FPS designers would design these things into future FPS games (no weapon switch times for juggling and no max speed, bunnyhopping, strafe movement for acrobatics).

Obviously the trend of today is to do realistic FPS games, but for the fun FPS games, these things should be standard gameplay constructs, just like the rocket jump.

A classic (lighthearted) timeline for a game:

Ion Storm Announces "Daikatana Year" For Final Twelve Months Of Development
Long-awaited game to reach store shelves soon

I've just bought Samsung SyncMaster 172T, and I can only tell good things about this monitor - it looks good even on VGA cable (I guess it'll look better with DVI cable, somehow), and screen lag is as minimal as you can get (for record, "Quake done Quick with a Vengeance" is perfectly watchable :) ).

Samsung has something with monitors..

It does not include DVI cable tho, which was quite a surprise for me, and those suckers are relatively expensive when bought standalone.

I'm still waiting for Doom 2600.

Trust me.

They just want to find dates. They figure if it worked for 'everybody's favourite guy'(TM) John Romero it might work for them too! All they need now are chicks who are kinda sorta a little ugly and with all the money they make from the Tomb Rader franchise they can build themselves a new and improved girlfriend too!

That's a shame...

Hey, QIII V1.32 just hit the servers yesterday! Let the killing begin!

Uh, I mean fragging.

I really dig this, man. It's a good cause and it helps your family realise that they have choices, lots of them. Noticing that alot of people are recommending office productivity suites (which is cool, but you can only recommend Open Office/AbiWord/Gimp so many times =P) or server/high-end programs (very commendable, but...very time-consuming if anything like what I had to do to teach my parents), I wanted to include a list of games I figured might brighten their day.

First off, glTron. GPLed and very very addicting. Great to show off the fact that 3D Gaming and Linux are not mutually exclusive. (I would mention TuxRacer here, but it has been said before)

Secondly I want to go old-school with Nethack. I mean, it's Nethack. If someone in your family thinks they are cool because they can survive a Zerg-rush, let them play this and see how tough they are. ;)

Thirdly I would mention anything old by Id. They have a ton of free mods and maps for Quake or Quake II and with the new Tenebrae mod it's not your Mom's old Quake. Plus if you compile it for their PC on their PC, it might get them interested in Programming.

Which brings me to my last addition, Dev-C++. For the Casual Programmer (i.e. takes a few courses, kinda C-curious) This is the perfect IDE. Based on GCC it has a good-looking front-end, great support, and takes up ALOT less space than Visual Studio. I know at least one teacher that recommends the students run this, and rightly so. It really puts the brain-strain on the appropriate part of programming, the actual program.