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Carmack on next Q3 test; parts open-sourced

SithLordBill writes "Looks like there will be another Quake3 test due in mid-September. This one will include single player bots as well as the Virtual Machine (written to interpret game mods). Anyway, Carmack will be releasing the VM and its modules (as well as the modified compiliers, LCC and q3asm) will be open-source as to give mod developers a head start. Check out his most recent .plan update -- there's a bunch of cool stuff there. "

91 comments

  1. Correct, DOOM is not open source by jflynn · · Score: 1

    Absolutely. Thats why I said "fairly open", not "fairly open source". It was ambiguous in this context, mea culpa.

    I asked John Carmack about GPL'ing the doom source, and he said he'd talk to his business partners at id. Apparently, they're not ready for the idea.

    Id makes significant money from source licenses. You have to explain to them how to replace that revenue if you want them to open their sources in general.

    A year before the source release, id was still quoting ~$250k for a Doom license. I think it was a nice gesture by id to release them. They have real educational value, which was id's stated purpose in their release.

    Jim


  2. Re:I would never buy... by Evangelion · · Score: 1

    Yes, all the patches were free. But that didn't change the fact that it took a year to be finished.

    (To be fair, it was pretty functional out of the box - but alot of silly mistakes (leaving a backdoor rcon password in, getting thier master servers pinged every 30 ms, as opposed to every 30 s, etc) could have been avoided with a few iterations of the test, and some multiplayer capabilities in it (q2test was one player only, 3 levels)).

  3. And don't forger JohnC contib to FSF. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I think I remember him donating $25K to the FSF after using his mad blackjack skills in Las Vegas. so hush up all you free beer wankers.

  4. Re:What is a gib? or gibs? intestines? by skull · · Score: 1

    dude. shut the hell up until you have something intelligent to say rather than posting 20 some responses to an article.

  5. TimeCube by FatSean · · Score: 1

    Wow...that's....painful.

    --
    Blar.
  6. Re:Is quake getting any better? by szcx · · Score: 1

    It's not the same game, but it's not entirely new either. Think of it as a refinement. id have the formula just-right, I'm sure not going to bitch if they continue to refine it to take advantage of new technology. If it aint broke... -- szcx

  7. Re:Why so many "tests"? by whoop · · Score: 1

    As for no competition, I've enjoyed HalfLife a heck of a lot more than any quake. Just as I finish the single player game and get bored of plain deathmatch online games, they come out with TFC. After a few months of that, I discovered the CounterStrike mod. The fun just never ends.

    With TF2 coming out this fall, you can bet what I'll be buying. I tried the Q3 test when it first came out, and I was just underwhelmed. It was just too much of the same old brown graphics, race for the rocket launcher, etc. Of course, if HalfLife had a Linux client it would be the perfect game, but oh well...

  8. Re:What is a gib? or gibs? intestines? by Vector7 · · Score: 1

    >dude. shut the hell up until you have something
    >intelligent to say rather than posting 20 some
    >responses to an article.

    Yeah, seriously. If I have to read this guy's !$%#!%$ stupid sig one more time I'm going to throw up.

  9. Re:... by WNight · · Score: 1

    Not at all. Open means open. It doesn't mean anything else. A door can be open but the area behind it restricted. That doesn't mean the door isn't open, it just means you can't go there.

    The doom/hexen/etc source is open in that you can see it. You can't call it your own and sell it, but if you really have to whine when someone won't let you profit from their product, tough shit.

    And if you're any good, you can simply see how they did it and write your own game if it's that important.

  10. Re:Q3 +K7 = 100fps Sweetness by WNight · · Score: 1

    Sure, but can the CPUs handle it? That's the part of the system that's being used the most.

  11. Re:Q3 +K7 = 100fps Sweetness by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They sure can, I play Q3 at 800x600 on my K-6 233 all the time.

  12. Re: OSS or not? by Trongy · · Score: 1

    Carmack did make a $10000 donation to the mesa project which was used to pay a programmer to work
    on the project.

    For details see the news section of www.mesa3d.org


    Also on the measa site it says:
    "Please do not refer to the library as MesaGL (for legal reasons). It's just Mesa or The Mesa 3-D graphics library. "

  13. Oh please. by Trongy · · Score: 1

    The old Quake 2 bugginess myth rears it's ugly head again. Most games are buggy because of their tight development schedules. Quake 2 was less buggy than most games. Quake 2 was primarily a single player game. It did is admirably well out of the box. There was a slew of patches in the first few weeks of release mainly because of people crashing multi-player internet servers.
    This had never happened on a large scale before.
    The deathmatch maps and ctf were only added in later releases. (3.13 if I remember correctly).
    Furthermore most of the changes were related to optimization and tweaking the game behaviour. There were very few critical bugs.

  14. God Mode/nightmare by schon · · Score: 2

    You can...

    Nightmare is just skill level 4 with monster respawning & fast monsters... so if you turn these on manually, then cheats will still work.. the appropriate command-line switches are as follows:

    -skill 4 -respawn -fast

  15. Why?? by bliss · · Score: 0

    It really dosn't make any sense to me. If you are not on a team when they win that dosn't mean that you win if they do. Man that would be great for the stock market.

    --
    The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
  16. And to address the comment on ignorance. by bliss · · Score: 0

    I feel that if one if to really get any benefit from something one needs to take risks and potentially do something stupid to get knowledge from it. If I wanted to learn about cowboys would I not get more experience from being one and doing all the things that one would do than just reading a western? And I also identify myself when I do all correspondence so that individuals can know with whom they are dealing.

    --
    The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
    1. Re:And to address the comment on ignorance. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      YAY, call this troll, I don't care. I'm just HAPPY that bliss has FINALLY goten auto-scored to zero! I'm getting tired of his tripe being score 1, he seems to be a waste of moderator points. Ah..

  17. READ by schon · · Score: 0

    Which site was down? Slashdot? Then how did you post your message?

    Oh, you meant that the link to Carmack's .plan was down... OHH.. that just means that you have no reading comprehension skills, as the previous poster said you didn't need to read the article.. it's posted here... Allow me to Quote:

    Posted by Hemos on Thursday August 26, @09:30AM MDT
    from the frag-your-friends dept.
    SithLordBill writes "Looks like there will be another Quake3 test due in mid-September. This one will include single player bots as well as the Virtual Machine (written to interpret game mods). Anyway, Carmack will be releasing the VM and its modules (as well as the modified compiliers, LCC and q3asm) will be open-source as to give mod developers a head start. Check out his most recent .plan update -- there's a bunch of cool stuff there. "


    Perhaps it's time to go take a grade 3 refresher course.

  18. Re:Why not a low system version with ascii? by crt · · Score: 1

    for $100 (2x the price) you could buy 128mb of memory.. jeez..

  19. What is this timecube thing. by bliss · · Score: 0

    Checked out the site. Seems like a pretty sketchy evidence? Is this supposed to be some sort of pseudo-ethical thing?

    --
    The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
  20. What good do these do anyway as far as the game? by bliss · · Score: 0

    I can't play with the compiler/modules/or assembler nor can I do any real development besides game programming.

    --
    The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
  21. Re:... by Signal+11 · · Score: 2
    I was trying to prevent any misinterpretation of the original slashdot posting. I read his .plan file and he plans on making the source for the VM available - but not the gaming engine itself. Some people may have been confused by the difference.

    And yes, I'm aware of John's contributions. :)
    I should know - I have a matrox card -and- play q3test often.


    --

  22. Re:Why so many "tests"? by Erik+Hollensbe · · Score: 1

    Heh, counterstrike is the reason I don't play q3test much anymore... :)

    Anyone who complains there isn't enough strategy in FPS games should try it out..

    -Erik-

  23. Will it fit on a standard (old 486) motherboard? by bliss · · Score: 0

    That's what I need is something that will fit and isn't my cpu (486dx66) a little too slow that is perhaps what I meant. I think this could be done really easily with good programming techniques.

    --
    The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
  24. Superior, inferior by harmonica · · Score: 1

    Java is doubtlessly superior to C in terms of maintainability, readability, compile time checking, so the software engineering aspects make it much more suitable for large projects. Execution speed is the problem. As QuakeXYZ and similar games will always use the bleeding edge of computer graphics hardware, I can only imagine them running nicely when the Java3D library is perfectly supporting modern graphics hardware (read: the part of it important for games like texturing etc.) and CPUs fast enough to run JVM's feeding the 3d library in an adequate manner with geometry data. Unfortunately, it takes a couple of specialized developers to check this out, without a guarantee of getting any other result than 'not possible yet'.

  25. Re:Is quake getting any better? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It is a tired old rehash riding on the name...Q3test is like playing a cartoon...if you're big into anime and you liked SHOGO then Q3 is probably for you....

  26. Re:Programmable bots.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    yeah wouldn't be great...the bots could come programmed from the factory and you could just sit and watch the game play itself....BOTS SUCK and the whole idea of doing away with the single player game is foolish.....but hey 5 million people will buy it for the name regardless of the quality or premise of the game....The best game going is Heretic2 and it was a commercial failure for activision....Go figure...

  27. Re:quake sucks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well i would hardly consider 'SUCKS' a measured scientific term soooo, it must be based in and upon opinion, thus what you enjoy can very well SUCK to someone else, and I must agree Quake SUCKS. *all opinions are the responsiblity of somebody else*

  28. Re:Java q4? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That is why those high level languages always out perform hand tuned asm. Just too hard to write an optimizing assembler.

    You are correct that compiler optimizations are easier with higher level languages. However, human optimizations (which are still orders of magnitude better than the digital variety) are done best in lower level languages.

    This is not to say that for non-time critical code (90-99% of most apps) that using a high level language is not the best course.

  29. Re:Java q4? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Actually this is not entirely true. The limiting factor is the runtime system.
    Java will need a more complex runtime environment to support garbage collection, even when it is compiled natively. The same would be treu for C/C++ with a custom garbage collection system.

    It is, however, possible to optimize the runtime behaviour, and the increased stability is definitely worth the toll, maybe even for games.

  30. Re:Is quake getting any better? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Shogo is one of my favorite games, but Quake-3 can't even begin to compare to it. Shogo had an amusing plot and required a lot of tactical thinking, Quake is just running around and hoping you shoot them before they shoot you.

  31. NO Competition?! HALF-LIFE EATS IT ALIVE. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    'Nuff said! And with Unreal Tournament and Team Fortress 2 coming out, Quake 3 has a VERY high bar to jump. From playing the first Q3Test, they will come up FAR short compared to the rest of the competition. Half Life (based on the Q2 engine) already beats Q3Test hands down.

  32. ... by Signal+11 · · Score: 2
    First off - Quake is simply incredible. It lets you repeatedly kill your boss in the office without being arrested. :)

    Second, he is only making the source available for the VM - which helps the mod community. But to make this clear: Quake3 is not open source. For a real open source game, check out Golgotha. I hate it when people call any source release an "open source" release. . .

    --

    1. Re:... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      read the topic of the post again, and make note of the second part. 'parts open-sourced' *I* hate it when people complain about people saying any source release is open source when that's not what they said. =)

    2. Re:... by calc · · Score: 3

      John Carmack is helping out with the open source community quite a lot. He is currently helping write the matrox g200/g400 glx drivers. Also, remember what the first real linux game was? Doom! So please do not complain when companies can not completely open the source to their main source of revenue.

      Thanks John for your support!

      -calc

    3. Re:... by odaiwai · · Score: 1

      The license is open in that you can develop the game for non-commercial purposes. There have been great game developments done for DOOM, Hexen, Heretic.

      AFAIK, one of the complications is that id don't hold the copyright/distribution rights for all of their games and so can't fully release all of the old artwork/music/maps, etc.

      dave

    4. Re:... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      You are a good example of why the community should not have approved the term "open source", instead of "free software".

      RMS was right. The message is being lost.

      Proprietary software is bad.

    5. Re:... by jflynn · · Score: 1

      Absolutely. The DOOM, HERETIC, and HEXEN sources have all been released under a fairly open license. Only commercial reuse is really forbidden.

      Many enhanced engines have resulted, including many for Linux. If you like retrogaming at all, you might like to check out the page at

      http://www.doomworld.com/ports/linux_unix.shtml

      Please be gentle, I don't think this is a large server.

      Jim

    6. Re:... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You can't have a "fairly open source" license. It is either open source or not open source. Those licenses aren't.

  33. Re:quake sucks by magnetx · · Score: 1

    Why do you think Quake sucks? Becuase it's not GNU?

  34. Re:quake sucks by dylan_- · · Score: 1

    ...or a sideways view lying on the ground...

    What?! There are other views?

    :-)

    dylan_-


    --

    --
    Igor Presnyakov stole my hat
  35. Re:quake sucks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Maybe so, but that's just because the only view you ever saw was from in the lava or a sideways view lying on the ground in gibs.

  36. Re:quake sucks by AndersW · · Score: 1

    Why does the coward say 'nuff said? It's pretty clear that when you say ``Quake sucks'' people are going to respond.

    What a depressing dumbness...

    --

    ZZ
  37. Re:quake sucks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The Quake Experience: run around, pick up some guns, shoot at someone, get shot, get killed. Get resurrected, run around, pick up some guns, shoot at someone, kill them, get shot, get killed. Get resurrected, run around, get shot, get killed. Get resurrected, run around, pick up some guns, run around more looking for people, run around more looking for people, run around more, get killed. Get resurrected, pick up some guns, run around, shoot at someone, run around, shoot at someone, run around, kill someone, get killed. Get resurrected, run around, get bored, give up.

    I just don't see what's so great about continually running around and getting killed, though I did like the Quake II capture-the-flag game where tactics were more important than firepower. I much prefer games which require intelligence rather than a fast trigger-finger.

  38. I love to die by ch-chuck · · Score: 1

    especially when you respawn in the same general area in time to see your liver still bouncing around.

    Looks like it's time to invest in a nice 3D/glide card.

    Chuck

    --
    try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
  39. Java q4? by Chris+Siegler · · Score: 1

    He almost used Java and the Kaffe VM instead of C according to an old interview. His most interesting comment was about Java being a superior language to C, and what sounds like his willingness to write q4 in Java (if it is possible by then with a java->x86 compiler like gcj)

    1. Re:Java q4? by bliss · · Score: 0

      Maybe I'm all wet but isn't java interpreted and so therefore has an enermous penalty running anything much less quake? Dosn't compiling it just make it loose most of the multi-platform useses for it?

      --
      The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
    2. Re:Java q4? by Chris+Siegler · · Score: 1

      Stop thinking like Sun. It's only interpreted if you compile it to java bytecodes and run it with a java VM. With a compiler like gcc/gcj, you just compile it like you would C. The only real problem with compiled Java that I see is getting the GC to behave.

    3. Re:Java q4? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually that's not true. Native Cobol compiler will never be as good as a native C compiler. Same can be said for Java. The language is too high level to compete with C performance wise - lack of pointers, garbage collections, etc I can go on and on...

    4. Re:Java q4? by kijiki · · Score: 2

      Actually, lack of pointers should help performance. A major hinderance to optimizing C and/or C++ is that the compiler can't tell if you're aliasing pointers. High level functional languages have the potential with more research and a lot of effort to greatly outperform C. It was only recently that C++ could even compete with FORTRAN for numerical simulation speed. Higher level langauges (fortran is a bad example) give the compiler much more information about what you actually intended, so it can optimize more aggresively. There is lots of interesting research going on in this area.

    5. Re:Java q4? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You are talking about one of a implicit treading compiler problems. This problem occurs only in very computational intensive apps running on massively parallel SGI or Cray hardware. Very limited market.

  40. Re:quake sucks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    All first person shooter deathmatch games have capture the flag, and well as MANY (especially for quake) other mods for other tactics based games you can play.

  41. What parts? by bliss · · Score: 0

    The question is what parts? What like the part that says "Hello and Welcome to QIII"?

    --
    The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
    1. Re:What parts? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Come on, you didn't even need to read the actual article for this. The virtual machine, its compiler and assembler, and a few related modules.


      Igonrance is bliss, and [/. user] bliss is ignorant ;)

  42. Re: OSS or not? by MikeBabcock · · Score: 1

    I think what we really want to know is what licensing the source release will be under. Knowing ID software's profits off of their game engines, I doubt it will comply with the OSS model, but it will still be beneficial to both the community and ID software.

    If we, as the Quake-3 players-to-be help debug this source, we will make it a better game to play on our own. As long as Carmack is willing to continue the evolution of the OSS-ish model of Quake-3 over time (and he's been good for releasing updates to other closed-source games in the past), we will all end up with a great game.

    It is still my suspicion that ID would not be willing to allow others to freely use their VM in other programs without paying the usual licensing, but they may decide to share it in other areas in the future. It would be nice, for instance, if ID helped in the development of MesaGL ... (or do they? :).

    ... we can be hopeful, can't we?

    --
    - Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
  43. Hmm... by Shiska · · Score: 1


    How about just releasing the game :) ...I thought that this time around, things would be the same way as they were with q2 ... as I recall, it wasn't long after the release of q2test that the final product shipped.

    Sorry. I just want the game. Badly :)
    ----------------- ------------ ---- --- - - - -

    --
    ----------------- ------------ ---- --- - - - -
    Your honor is perfectly understandishable.
  44. If you play the regular game. by bliss · · Score: 0

    Basically multiplayer games are all like this. The only real challenge to any game would be for you to turn the difficulty level all the way up. The story line of quake would make this the more real senario since it is just one human man against a whole hoarde or killing borg-like aliens. This involves emmense levels of strategy and planning to avoid and kill your opponent. I do believe that some multiplayer play is boring. Perhaps to save time/money for multiplayer games X-evil should be considered http://www.xevil.com a great game (although shareware) you get to kill things to the nth degree and if you register the game you will help a fellow struggling programmer too.

    (Who could only play quake by using N-64. Does the patch for ascii-quake allow for less system resources ram/cpu, etc than traditional quake?)

    --
    The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
  45. What is a gib? or gibs? intestines? by bliss · · Score: 0

    Just get back up and get a BFG10k and kick ass that helps to relieve me.

    --
    The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
  46. Quake Security Holes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    I'd like to know what /. users think about this

    According to this article, quake is "a bad thing" (TM)

    1. Re:Quake Security Holes by Rational · · Score: 1

      Yep, I'm sure John Carmack is stealing credit card numbers from all those Quake servers... LOL.

      --
      "Be nice, veer left, and never stop thinking" Iain Banks - Walking On Glass
    2. Re:Quake Security Holes by Evangelion · · Score: 1

      This was fixed a long time ago.

  47. Why not a low system version with ascii? by bliss · · Score: 0

    I would pay 2x the price if they had one for systems with low memory and such would be pretty cool too to see someone blown away in a puddle of ,,,'s :)

    --
    The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
    1. Re:Why not a low system version with ascii? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Geez, not everyone has $100 to spend. I help setup donated equipment in and I donate bandwidth to a homeless shelter for parents and their kids. Of the 9 machines, our fastest machine is a Pentium 60. Lot's of people give us old machines and old games, but we can't talk them into buying RAM for us. Besides, a $100 128 Mbyte DIMM won't even work in the vast majority of systems in use. You have to buy much more expensive 30 or 72-pin SIMMs, and typically replace (not augment) what's already there. It's depressing to have to tell an excited kid (who is homeless and doesn't get to use a computer often) that the game they have in their hand won't run on the machine in front of them. My point really is, I just wish it was easier for game developers to write games for a wider range of hardware. I wouldn't mind running Quake 3 at 320x200 on an old Pentium.

    2. Re:Why not a low system version with ascii? by [bog-oh] · · Score: 1

      Have you tried ascii quake 1? So much fun :)
      I don't have the URL offhand, but it is really nifty.

      --
      THIS IS PRE-ALPHA PRIVATE RELEASE CODE!!!
      DO NOT USE IT UNLESS YOU ARE A DEVELOPER.
      ALL IT DOES IS CRAS
    3. Re:Why not a low system version with ascii? by Seth+Cohn · · Score: 1
      --
      Help achieve Liberty in your lifetime - join the Free State Project - http://www.freestateproject.org
  48. Re: OSS or not? by platypus · · Score: 1

    Not id per se, but J.Carmack personally.
    To see it yourself, go to the g200-dev mailing list. He is a very keen participant of this list. Incredible, I wonder how he gets the time, but anyway, he seems to be really cool.

  49. Re:quake sucks by Rational · · Score: 1

    Sounds already more interesting than golf, tennis, ping-pong, chess, checkers, backgammon, football, soccer, basketball and any of the "Build some shit and send it rushing to the enemy base" RTS games...

    If you don't like Quake, don't fucking play Quake. What's so difficult about that concept that you cannot get your head around it?

    Geez, some people...


    --
    "Be nice, veer left, and never stop thinking" Iain Banks - Walking On Glass
  50. Re:I would never buy... by Rational · · Score: 1

    The difference is, most games out there are never patched and never finished, or patched once and forgotten. I can think of no other company which would still work on patches one year after the official release (other than, of course, persistant universe games, like EverQuest).

    --
    "Be nice, veer left, and never stop thinking" Iain Banks - Walking On Glass
  51. Re:Why so many "tests"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I think the reason there have been so many Q3Tests is simply because

    1) they want to get it right

    2) there is no competition right now in action FPS, why hurry to kick it out

    3) generate hype - which iddoes better than anyone, and much of it deserved BTW..

    Personally, I've burned out on the id games, Loved Doom, Quake I, but I finally barfed after a few months of Q2 CTF. I've been playing Tribes a LONG time, and it's still excellent. Another free plug, System Shock 2 makes you wet your pants with fright... Be afraid...

  52. Q3 +K7 = 100fps Sweetness by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The Quake 3 Arena Tour Bus was here in Austin yesterday. They had K7 Athlons and Voodoo3s, and with 7 people in a game, the fps counter only dropped below 100fps twice in the 15 minutes I was on the bus, for about 10 seconds at a time. Other than that, it was steady 100fps. (I think when it dipped was when most of us were in the same room together.) That *seriously* kicked ass. I want an Athlon now. That blew away any gaming experience I have *ever* had. If you catch the tour bus in your town, trust me, GET ON IT. Oh yeah. They give you free stuff, I got a 3dfx hat, but you can also get an AMD K7 shirt. -A UT frosh

    1. Re:Q3 +K7 = 100fps Sweetness by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      To bad the screen rez was 640 by 480. Any new 3D card can do that.

  53. It's like the people in Q1 by bkosse · · Score: 1

    Who would shoot their teammates just to blow away their armor.

    --

    --
    Ben Kosse
    Remember Ed Curry!
  54. Re:What good do these do anyway as far as the game by Evangelion · · Score: 1

    ?

    I really wish I had the energy to parse this, but it's late in the day.

    What are you saying?

  55. Guess what :) by bliss · · Score: 0

    I can and will at any time just get a new id and change ideas accordingly there is really nothing you or anyone can do. Perhaps I need to speak to Malda about this. This is a direct infringment on my rights to post as I please. Perhaps AC's should be given a default comment threshold value of -1.

    --
    The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
    1. Re:Guess what :) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      What rights?

      And don't talk about the Bill of Rights, that just stop the government stopping you from doing stuff.

      It doesn't stop Rob stopping you.

  56. Doom/svgalib by bliss · · Score: 0

    Quite nice and it worked for me! Yes!!! Pretty cool however I wish that god-mode had worked for nightmare I wanted more to kill.

    --
    The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
  57. Does it need all the same memory resources? by bliss · · Score: 0

    Does it need all the same resources such as memory/cpu as the original?

    --
    The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
  58. Re:quake sucks by Wah · · Score: 1

    The Quake Experience: Run around pick up guns, see opponent, chase opponent, jump off 100 foot cliff while trying to shoot opponent, follow opp. around corner, realize he has outsmarted you, die in fountain of blood, try again.

    CTF (Capture the Flag) is more fun IMHO than the regular game, more strategy and all that, but the regular game (even Q3Atest)is so fun because of the intelligence of your opponents. No AI can match the simple craftiness that your average 12 year-old can come up with, much less an experienced player. Matched against similar pings, it comes down to skill. A fast trigger finger is nice, but if you don't know how to strafe wildly while hitting a wildly strafing opponent, your trigger finger don't mean sh*t.

    I play because after nearly 20 years of playing games it is by far the most intense, immersive, fastest, and gratifying experience I have found coming from a machine. That being said I was up until 2:00 last night (no I'm not in school, real world) trying to keep Morgan Industries from overrunning my fungus farms. Thats from "Alpha Centauri" for the gaming challenged. Definitely a "thinking mans" game. There are also a couple of nice CGI swipes at M$ in the game, and quotes from nearly every major thinker in western history. Very highly recommended if you like breathing and use a computer.

    --
    +&x
  59. Tired by Tsk · · Score: 0
    I'm tired of those Quake news

    Reminds me a bit of the strategy used by guess Who .............
    Microsoft.
    Each time Mr Karmack or someone from Id has a statement on the yet to be released best game of the century , everone listen say " Huhhhhhhhhhhhhh thats soooooooooooooo coooooooooool". A bit like W2k , just listen people say wheay W2k's the best.
    This bothers me because people don't look around they just follow the buzz ....
    Now all this beta testing is needed thats sure But one release IMHO should have been enough not 3 or more just because the game isn't ready wet and people migth take a look elsewhere and stop thinking ID
    Microsoft does just the same annonce great things make it beta test for free by many people and hops goes to sell .........

    --
    none Yet.
    1. Re:Tired by Evangelion · · Score: 1
      Now all this beta testing is needed thats sure But one release IMHO should have been enough not 3 or more just because the game isn't ready


      Yeah, one beta release was just great for Quake 2. Got all those bugs right out of there. That's why it had to be patched from 3.05 to 3.20 over the course of the next year. Because it was enough beta testing.


      When a company officially finishes a game just under a year after they release it, and then tries to do more beta testing for thier next game, that's called 'learning from ones mistakes'. Quake 2 was a mess out of the box. Hopefully, all this playing and drooling over Q3Test will make it actually in good shape out of the box.

    2. Re:Tired by Ender+Ryan · · Score: 1

      Ummm... that's completely ridiculous. John Carmack's business strategy is almost completely opposite of M$. M$ releases vaporware(nothing at all), claiming for a very very very long time that it will be the best. Carmack keeps to himself and writes code, the whole time telling people exactly what he's working on, and he releases tests for people to play with etc..

      Carmack's strategy seems to be, "let's keep people updated on what's going on and release tests and shareware version so people can see what the game is like" etc...

      M$ strategy is basically, "let's convince people that this product that we haven't even started working on is going to be the best ever. let's buy another company that already has this product, or basically make an exact copy of it, and call it innovation".

      Get a clue!

      --
      Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
  60. Is quake getting any better? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


    Or is it the same game, just reprogrammed to take advantage of advances in hardware?

    My guess is the same game......

    1. Re:Is quake getting any better? by Trepidity · · Score: 2

      Quake 3 == Wolfenstein 3D 6

      It's the same basic gameplay as Wolfenstein 3D, the Doom series, and the previous games in the Quake series. Graphics have obviously been improved. New weapons are added each time, and the physics models have improved. There's also some more range of movement, with stuff like crouching and jumping.

      Overall, however, it's still the same game.

  61. Re:Why so many "tests"? by Zurk · · Score: 1

    system shock sucks. crappy interface. go around hunting semi-human creatures armed with wrenches in a lab like atmosphere. bullshit.

  62. Programmable bots.... by Bacteriophage · · Score: 2

    Wouldn't it be so awesome if the "bots" that will be available in q3 single-player could be programmed, just like you can program a robot in Robot Battle? It might be fun to have online tournaments where only people's bots that they created could participate. I'm sure this could be done, and it would be a LOT of fun!!! Heck, you could even send a bot you created against a real person and watch them crumble against your awesome programming talent! Yeah!
    "There are no shortcuts to any place worth going."

    --
    "Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work." -Flaubert
  63. Re: But they are the best... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


    There are only a few games out there, and Quake is
    the best of them.

    Maybe Loki will be able to make a better game, but
    I doubt it. Loki is great, but id is #1.

    When id no longer makes the best Linux games, then
    your statement will have some merit.

  64. The site was down or at least unreachable. by bliss · · Score: 0

    For at least about 30 minutes alright I am sorry for the unknowledgeable statement. Doh!!!

    --
    The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
  65. Re: But they are the best... by Evangelion · · Score: 1

    Loki doesn't make games. They port them.

    CTP was by Activision, Myth II is from Bungie, etc, etc.

    That's like saying Zoid wrote Quake for Linux - he didn't write it he, he ported it to the various Unices it runs on (not to diminish Zoid's work, of course, as he is certainly a very fine programmer who handles teamplay & CTF code and all in all is very cool and who I know is reading this right now :-).

    (Which reminds me -- Zoid -- for Team Play in Q3, can we get something to address the problem of TeamKillers? It's a really, really annoying problem in q3test right now).

  66. I would never buy... by bliss · · Score: 0

    Something that had emense problems with it. Did they offer free patches?

    --
    The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
  67. Team Killers by Lamont · · Score: 1

    for Team Play in Q3, can we get something to address the problem of TeamKillers? It's a really, really annoying problem in q3test right now

    No shit. What's up with that anyway? I mean to people actually get a sense of satisfaction of switching to the other team and then killing themself or others on the same team repeatedly just so they can lower that teams' score and thus allow their former team to win?

    I guess if people can find a way to cheat, they will do so.

  68. Re:quake sucks by vixiejvc · · Score: 1

    Just because you don't like it yourself doesn't mean that it 'sucks' per se.
    Personally, I rather enjoy just shooting some annoying little pixels after a long hard day. Helps blow off some steam :)

    (that seems to be a problem with a lot of folks I see - if you, personally, specifically don't like it, then it "sucks" and nobody should ever use it. Riiiiiiiight.)


    "I don't believe that there is one, single, perfect spiritual way and, in realizing that, obviously you become a lot more open."

    --

    If we do not change our direction we are likely to end up where we are headed.