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ioquake3 1.36 Goes Gold
Time Doctor writes "The de-facto standard in Quake 3 engine technology, ioquake3, has hit version 1.36 recently. It includes a garbage bag full of improvements: in-game VOIP; optional external Mumble (voip); OpenAL; IPV6; anaglyph stereo rendering; Full x86-64 architecture support; Rewritten PowerPC JIT compiler, with ppc64 support; new SPARC JIT compiler, with support for both sparc32 and sparc64; improved console command auto-completion; persistent console command history; improved QVM (Quake Virtual Machine) tools; colored terminal output on POSIX operating systems; multiuser support on Windows systems (user-specific game data is stored in their respective Application Data folders); PNG format support for textures. Of course, there are even more fixes for security holes and other bugs in there. So, if you don't like ads and queues in your Quake 3 experience, get a copy of Quake 3 off Steam and copy your data files and key into your ioquake3 directory."
Why Steam? To me this just looks like an ad for Steam. What's wrong with using the files from our existing Quake 3 install? I'm sure we all have one from long before Steam came along.
But they're evil cash eating monsters who make cool games like Left 4 Dead. I gave them some money just so they could eat it and make more games, because, you know, I like games. :)
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
I destroyed my PowerPC Mac with a hammer as soon as Steve Jobs, our Leader, declared them to be obsolete and went out and bought a much faster Intel Mac.
Besides x86 chips have always been faster than PPC ones. Except before the Leader announced the change. Then of course they had always been slower. This may seem a bit contradictory to you, but that's because you don't understand the Reality Distortion principle.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Much as I dislike DRM, I support Valve and Steam. Unlike some companies that use DRM as an excuse for delivering inferior service/products, Valve provides a fast, convenient service, at a reasonable price, and produces highly-polished games which have massive replay value -- and they keep producing free-to-download expansion content for literally years after release.
I have no problem with giving them my money so that they can afford to keep releasing excellent games. Because like the parent I also like games.
Pirate Party UK
The reason is that Quake's gameplay has become a de-facto standard of sorts for competitive gaming. Most real-life competitive sports that people play regularly have been around a hundred years or more, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that computer gaming has standardized on older games as well. Quake isn't alone, we also have Starcraft in the RTS world, Counter-Strike in the team-based tactical FPS genre and probably a few others. For games as entertainment, yes we do want original ideas. For games as competition, we want stable platforms that players can rely on to stick around for a while to make the investment in developing skills in those games worthwhile.
Make me a friend and I'll mod you up
The irony, of course, is that in the wider battle for the online gaming marketspace, both Q3 and UT lost out very badly indeed to a free mod for an aging game based on a hacked around version of the original Quake's engine (ie. Counter-Strike).
I think looking back, Quake 3 was the point at which id went from being the undisputed industry leaders in the fps genre to "one among many". With the original Quake and Quake 2, if you played fpses online, you basically played one of those games, or one of their mods. There were a few other minor niche games, but none of them really had much of a wider community. Counter-Strike was the last game to really unite a majority of the online fps scene under a single banner and, as it starts to fade away, there doesn't seem to be any single successor (on the PC at least), but rather a broader fragmentation.
I wonder if the same will happen in the MMO market once WoW jumps the shark? If, rather than having one all-consuming leviathan in the market and a few minnows trying to snap up a few hundred thousand users around the edges, we'll end up with a situation with multiple MMOs well up in the millions, but no clear pack leader?
Or you could just download OpenArena
If id hadn't released the sources to Quake 3 you wouldn't have a free game to download
Summation 2
Please officially (re?)release hordes of Q3A CDs all across the globe. Its a fine game! Kids and grown ups alike all across the world would enjoy it. It can easily be the de-facto standard in entry level serious gaming.
You can cut down on support explicitly. Its OK. Quake community is very smart and big. It can easily support newcomers. But the legit media is something always desirable - it is convenient and trustworthy. But please sell it cheap. Around 4-5$. You will easily find lots of CD pressers and distributors to take away all the logistic pains from you.
And there would be assured buys of millions of legit cheap Q3A CDs by enthusiastic gamers worldwide. Its already a must-have game in your game collection anyways. Every body will be happy.
Maybe, its a business decision to stop issuing more Q3A CDs. So please make another one to start issuing it again. It won't make you losses. No way. And gamers would be happy.
The core game is awesome & kick-ass. 3rd party mods, addons, maps, etc make it ever so expandable. The community will always have some innovative way to modify it. Look at 'WoP'! Amazing!
In the end, I can only make a request. Please start selling Q3A: Gold Edition CDs again.
Over & out!
This got modded 'funny', but I think 'insightful' would have been a lot better mod.
Seriously, the 'you can't sell the game' argument falls apart for so many reasons.
1) If it's a good game, you aren't going to sell it anyhow. At that point, Steam's easy and free replacement policy (just redownload it!) is much better than a physical CD.
2) Even if you -can- resell it, you won't get the original price. You'll be lucky to get 1/4 of the price simply because you took the game out of the store.
3) How many people have sold a used PC game lately? No stores will buy them back to resell because it doesn't work for PC gamers like it does for console gamers. That leaves other gamers via EBay or Craigslist. Personally, that's such a bloody hassle that I'd rather just lose the 1/4 of the cost I might get back from it.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
I hated Counter Strike. It was just too slow. Different strokes for different folks. I think theres plenty of room for more than a few "ordinary" FPS.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
That little sotto voce whine about the ads in Quake Live is really lame. It's a free game. Are you seriously so obsessed with hating ads you'll pass up the opportunity to get a free game (which, by all reports from amongst my Quake-fan friends, is excellent) and cop the occasional ad?
I'd rather not buy Quake 3 again (it's not just "getting a copy" of Steam, you have to buy it) and just enjoy Quake Live.
ioquake is a fucking awesome project, but seriously
Uh.. What's the point of buying Quake 3 anymore when Quake Live exists?
#define true false
I think looking back, Quake 3 was the point at which id went from being the undisputed industry leaders in the fps genre to "one among many".
This was also the point that id games seriously started to drop off the single player experience in favour of pushing the multiplayer experience at launch. I'd argue, as a single player fan, that this hurt them at retail, because I'm sure a lot of people discovered the delights of multiplayer gaming after finishing the single player game and were probably put off by the "thin" single player game.
But I suspect the real reason has something to do with the fact that back in the day if you wanted a 3d engine you coded it, and there are very few Carmacks in the world. By Q3 there was a whole middleware industry in selling 3d engines to third party developers, lowering the bar to competitors; id were doing it too, so even some of their direct competitors were actually using their tech.