Quake Quake2 Quake3Arena Quake-Engine
09.29.99 Everybody is getting better. I'm not getting (that much) worse and people keep doing better and better compared to me. Even the scrubs are starting to make my life tough. Q2.WWIV.com is the DLB clans hangout for killing scrubs, and I'm getting killed by people like Mojoe. MOJOE for God's sake! He sucks! At least he used to. I have to practice so I can get back to being decent at this game. Me and Mandrake had a couple of duels today to see who was better (cause we had a lot of smack talk going on) and we played on the Fragpipe and then the Edge for 15 minute timelimits. The first game was a pitiful display. We were in the lava and getting squished more than we should have been. It ended up 6 to 6 at the end. What a bitch. We got ~13minutes into the Edge before AOL IM finally crashed quake2. It was like 6 to 5 in my favor. I used to be able to school Mandrake on the edge, even after he got his new computer. One on one game sin the Fragpipe were usually ok for me too, so I guess I am slipping a bit and Mandrake is definitely getting better. I got a really sweet config going now with Threshs video config, Essobies crosshairs in my pak files, and 3Fingers Combat Pak Ultra to make my gaming a little bit better. I messed with my voodoo2 and I'm getting ~40 fps on demo1.dm2. I think I can find some better 3d drivers and get some more fps and I can probably tweak this config some more to let me play a little smoother. Once I do a bit more work on the config I'll post it here.
It's not even funny how bad I get schooled in rail only tourney by some of teh guys on the floor. Lerxst just started with Quake I think and he fucking 0wns. Lafayette is really better than me with the rail too, and they both work the grapple better and faster than I ever did. Mandrake is always beating me there too. Beholder, who used to just escape my wrath in rail only is now doing shitty. Poor guy :) I definitely gotta work on my railing.
09.26.99 Finally I get to be a LPB. I suffered at the hands of my shitty ISP for a long time just to get this chance to use the railgun effectively. Of course I still can't hit shit, but that neither here nor there. At least it's my fault when I miss now. No confusion anymore. That may seem like a bad thing, but I can still blame a lot of stuff on the server, so I am by no way held accountable for all of my actions.
I've been playing a lot of action q2 since we got here. It's really good and I am much better without a ping. I can still royally get my ass kicked though. Me and Mandrake got murdered by a couple of HPB snipers the other day. That aroused some suspicion in me, but I assume that those guys just guessed where my head was gonna be in 3/10th of a second really well. That is one example of how I can complain without having a bad ping. I really like being able to shoot at people and actually have the gun fire in the same second. It's really convenient when you're trying to kill people. We played a couple of tourney rail only games here on my dorm floor, and I can win on q2dm1 (by a hair), but I get killed on a lot of other maps. I gotta get everybody else using the KTimPAKt map pack that planetquake likes so much, cuz it's really good. I do alright in quake2, but I usualy get my ass beat down by LPB and HPB alike. I'm an equal opportunity victim. The baseq2 crowd is made up of a group of people who are better than me. I think that's about it.
Quake3test (1.08) is going a bit better for me. I could do good at home with my dirt 56k, and I do pretty good with the 20 pings I get here too. Me and Mandrake are doing really good at rising right to the top of the really crowded servers (20-30 ppl). I think it makes out clan look really good :)
Now I'd like to comment on the (3dfx only) Unreal Tournament demo. It's good. Unreal had some good parts to its weapons, and so did Quake2, so when UT just made all the weapons it coudl think of and that kind of tuff, you cant go weong. The secondary keeps it from becoming cumbersome too. I do like the handling and physics in Q3test better though, and I like the style of it better than UT, but I am definitely not saying that Q3A is going to blow UT away. I think it's gonna get a lot of hardcore fans and be a relly popular game, because it is pretty damn fun. The deathmatch setup is pretty nifty with the mutation script stuff. I like what they're doing. When it comes down to which is going to be a better seller and more popular, I am guessing that id will keep control because Epic has to catch up on net code, on modifications, and on portability. But I think id is gonna have to catch up on AI. Q3A definitely has the model department won (at least they did with the old models, but I doubt they will completely screw up and have terible skeltal animation md4s :) Hopefully UT will be a lamer style game that will lure all the bad ppl out of Q3A and leave me witha pure and good game playing environment. It's all gonna be good for me though. I got a fast inet hookup :)
09.09.99 I subscribe to PCGamer and I consider it to be the best print magazine for PC game information. By far. Nobody else has their connections or ability to write useful reviews. Occasionaly my views come in conflict with theirs, but thats to be expected. October 99's issue, which arrived today, contains a conversation between 2 writers discussing multiplayer first person shooters. They basically go into the dialog talking about how Team Fortress 2 raises the bar for FPS MP. They go on to say that although Q3A is pretty, it is not gonna be as fun because some FPS games are, and should all be, going to teamplay as opposed to straight up deathmatch. The yalso say that TF2 is "unstoppable" and that Unreal Tourney and Q3A are going to have to fight for second place. For the sake of all that is good and holy I must disagree.
All three games are multiplayer only. All three games are first person shooters. This does not put them in direct competition however. First, I don't know if this is true or if it's just my imagination, and I don't feel like checking it out, but isn't TF2 going to be an add-on for HalfLife? That doesn't really matter though, I just thought that maybe that's true and weird. Anyway, TF2 is MP only, no bots, no nothing. I know UT will have bots and I know Quake3 does, so there's one difference for TF2 from the rest. Here's the big one, which the PCG guys touched on but never fully understood, TF2 is a team play game while Q3A is a free-for-all game. Q3 will include CTF and teamplay modes, but id is playing to their strength: all out battle for domination. I don't know shit about UT, I know it's gonna have CTF and teams with support for bots in the game right out of the box. Enough about Unreal Tournament, cuz it's gonna end up like Unreal: played religiously by a bunch of people who get way to loyal to a bunch of eyecandy.
I first think I should clarify my position that, as of this point, I think Quake2 is the best game ever. Not simply because of it's out of the box gameplay, but because it is a virtual gaming platform. I have played mods of thirdperson games, a flight sim, tank warfare, real time strategy, and many more. Including teamplay. How many team mods are there? A lot. A very large amount. Really. And some of them are good. Better than TF (original)? Thats your opinion. Quake(1/2/3A) is like a console with free game modes that you can get updated and made better, and make them yourself.
Is the source gonna be available for TF2? I really don't know. Email me. Will it be as sweet to work with as the Q3A source? Dunno. That's a good question that will have an interesting answer because the halflife source was C++ while Carmack and co. are still going with ANSI C. Between Q2 and HL src I don't even know which is easier because I have'nt gotten into HL editing or doing much except briefly looking at the src. But presumeably TF2 will be C++ in the same manner as HL, but Q3A will have a really different setup. Apparently the code will essentiallybe the same in the way the game is setup, but the code will be arranged differently by far. And as far as the virtual machine goes, I haven't the foggiest. I must learn more. But I am reasonably sure that the Q3A src will be a much better way to do things, because Carmack don't write no whack-ass shit code. We'll see how things turn out I guess.
Back to business. Quake3 will continue in the same way as its predecessors, having a good base game, and then easily allow users to make mods for it, allowing infinite gameplay options. The only reason people who have Quake3 will stop playing it will probably be the same reason people stopped playing Q1, or those who stopped Q2 for Q3Test: another id game. id has loyalty all over the place. Personally, I love id. Personally, I dislike Valve. Personally, I dislike Ion Storm. I'm rambling... Another id has is the ability to make a good game, and then the balls (or whatever you think it is) to let people completely remake their creation. They have a strong mod scene for Q3 already. Many teams have begun adverting their project (DragonballQ included) and have begun plans for a great Q3 mod. What lifespan can TF2 have? The same lifespan as TF1 hopefully (for TF players). But what kind of life does it have? New maps, new missions, new models, new classes(?), and new weapons(?) will only keep it fresh for so long. Then the experience becomes new only through the people you play with. And for those of us with modems, experiences with people over a 400 ping in a game with less than top of the line net code aren't the best experiences.
One reason I think teh PCGamer guys are so gung ho for TF2 is because they have a T1 and a very slick network in their offices on which they are required to play games. They talk about how much better it is to bark commands at your teammates than it is to sit alone while you kill them in a "boring" deathmatch. Would anyone be willing to tell me exactly how I am supposed to yell at my teammates over a modem? Voice communication software. Used it, and it slows down my already slow connection while still not giving me the quality ot understand people or the surround sound that is created at a LAN. At best you can hope for a lag free conection via your T1 and high quality sound through your headphones, but it's stil a jumbled mess of yelling with a bunch of people you don't know. Join a clan, then you can know them. OK, sounds like a good idea. Suppose you don't want to though. Teamplay games suffer when your teammates don't work with you. And the internet makes teamplay suffer. TF2 will undoubtably be a blast for LANs, but I am not so confident for its internet survival.
Q3A will have better net code than TF2 (or UT, or anything for that matter, except perhaps Tribes2) and communication is optional. I have a good time in deathmatch because of the people I can talk to. And if I want team play, I can download it. I can have everything TF2 offers and more when I get Q3A. Much more. And why isn't Tribes 2 being included in the Q3A vs TF2 vs UT fight? Another time perhaps...
Also in PCGamer is an ad for Q3A. It's basically a condom machine setup but it dispenses Quake3 or something. You'd have to see it, cuz I don't wanna explain it. The only thing I really want to mention about it is that the advertisers have abandoned Deathmatch for (the presumably more PC term) Fragmatch. Accident? Death is now a taboo word perhaps. If they want to make a DragonballZ game they can call it the NextDimensionMatch, cuz that's about as lame. Surely that is enough writing for today.
06.09.99 I play Quake2. I play Quake3Test. I have Quake, but I don't play it often. I have Half-Life, but I don't play it often either, maybe when I get a good net connect I can play multiplay. Single player (bots not included) never seem to keep my interest when there is the option of going online and killing people. So I have not completed the signle player element of any first person shooter since I beat the second episode of Spear of Destiny :)
Campers: what's the problem? I think it's fun to have a person who camps the armor with the rail and then you gotta kick his ass out. It's a challenge.
Spawn Campers: Punk bitch ass sucking fuck donkey assholes. The scum of the earth. I can't stand a LPB spawn camper. They make we wanna puke. POS.
You cn find me playing on gamespy servers as Pasty[DLB]. I am in the Dirty Little Bastard Clan. I designed that web site, and I don't think it sucks, and I went with a less graphical aproach to that site also. But it looks way better than this site. Check it out, especially if you are looking for a clan to join.
Mods I like: ActionQ2, Rocket Arena2, Tourney, Threewave CTF.
Mods I don't like: Rob the Strogg, QPong, Matrix Quake.
Quake is a big part of my life, so you can expect more on this page soon, and updates pretty often. I am the project leader and a coder on the DragonballQ for Quake3Arena mod, so I will probably be writing all my thoughts and personal progress on that project here. If you care, stop back.