Q3Arena.com - The Ultimate Quake III Site

A new beta of Qtracker, a fully-functional server browser, server launcher, MP3 streaming audio browser, and HTML server list generator which supports TCP/IP and IPX, so it can detect games on the internet and your LAN, is now available bringing it to version 2.3. The new version provides No One Lives Forever and Rune support, A Quake III: Team Arena filter, has fixed / improved Music support, fixed Half-Life masters (integrated into the Qtracker Masters), enhanced remote administration, auto-Installer enhancements and new skin and filter controls. Find out more on the Qtracker homepage.

A new 1.1RC version of the SuperConfigurable Team Arena mod is now available. The new version fixes a serious exploit/cheat bug, fixes some other bugs and adds a lot more configurable items to the menu. Check it out at the SCTA site for more details.

Version 1.4 of Freeze Tag is now available. Freeze Tag is a Q3A mod that lets you freeze your enemies and thaw out your teammates. The new version makes the mod compatible with the 1.27g point release. Check out the Freeze Tag site for more details.

Q3Launcher Pro 3.0, a utility that will let you launch your favorite mods in Q3A, is now available. Q3Launcher automatically detects all installed mods, maps & bots and includes popular options like mapcycle, mod-specific settings and more.

Animal Arena is looking for people to beta test their mod before they release it. If you are interested in checking out a mod in development and want to be the first on your block to play it, check out the Animal Arena site for more details.

The Mean Arena site has updated their "Bones: Legacy Of The Vadrigar" page with some juicy new screenshots. Also they are looking for a modeler to join the team and even promise some cold cash for the person they pick!
Here's what they said on the the site about the modeler position:

If you're a modeller and interested in creating weapon models for the game, then send an email with subject: "MODEL POSITION" with a URL of your work, and any questions you may have. I'll be reviewing all responses and you will be contacted. Salary being paid to the modeller will be negotiated according to production time. Send all enquiries to: kiltron@planetquake.com

The Full Metal Jacket mod team has posted some screenshots of their new explosion effect. Check the shots of the smoke rising in the air on their site.

Jazz Productions has released a new version of their BFG Tag mod, a mod that adds the BFG weapon to Q3A. The new version, Beta 3.0, brings the mod up to date with the new 1.27g point release and may become a final version depending on any bugs that may be found.

Todd Hollenshead updated his .plan today with news that Team Arena is on sale for only $17.99 at Best Buy and CompUSA.
Here's what he said:

Attention bargain shoppers! Team Arena is on sale at Best Buy and CompUSA for $17.99 in several areas of the US. You should double check with your local retailer to make sure the offer is valid in your area. Pretty good way to spend the $20 that Grandpa gave you in the envelope for Christmas, IMO.

After checking this out I did indeed find that CompUSA is selling it for $17.99 plus shipping on their web site with no need to hunt it down in a store!

Danish programer, Allan Heidenreich has released an update to his Quake 3 Menu bringing it to version 1.09. New in this version of the binding program is a few new commands, updated server links, and some bug fixes. Check it out at the Quake 3 Menu site.

Team Evolve has released a 6 level map pack for the PainKeep Arena mod. The pack is 22,8MB in size and is available at two different download sites found on the Team Evolve site. Get in on the fun and grab it!

The Quake 3 Server Setup Guide has been updated to be in line with Team Arena and the new Point Release. If you are interested in setting up your own Quake 3 server for LAN parties or Internet play, then this is the guide for you!

Quakeidge has two separate interviews with id Software's Paul Jaquays and Todd Hollenshead. Both interviews are filled with facts about Team Arena and of course the usual little or no comment about the new Doom game.
Here's where to find the interviews:
Paul Jaquays
Todd Hollenshead

A new beta version of Q3A Quick Statistix is available. The tool lets you extract statistics from Q3A and output them into HTML.

GameSpy has posted a review with a few screenshots on Team Arena. The interview gets into the good, the bad, and the ugly of the recent release of the only mission pack id Software has created for one of its games. Is it worth the money? You be the judge...

The staff of Q3Arena.com would like to wish everyone a very merry Christmas and hope it is enjoyable for all. We would also like to take this time to thank every one of you for your continuing support :o)

GameSlice has an interview with Front Line Assembly's Bill Leeb and Chris Peterson, the makers of the music for Q3A and Team Arena. The interview covers who they are, how they got the job, and their thoughts about the music for Quake and Q2. Check it out at the GameSlice site.

Todd Hollenshead updated his .plan with news of the Linux beta release and he mentioned a new Quake III: Team Arena FAQ.
Here's what he had to say:

Linux beta is up and we have a Team Arena/1.27g FAQ up on www.quake3arena.com

Happy Holidays everyone!

A new version of the Domination for Q3A mod has been released. The new version supports Point Release 1.27, improved AI, and a new Domination point model. Also on the site is a new map titled "Waste Disposal Area 13". Get it all at the Domination for Q3A site.

Qpong Arena has posted a new version 1.666 of their Q3A mod that adds a Pong like game in a deathmatch arena. New in this version is support for Q3A 1.27, a few bug fixes, and they have added new balls to play with. Find out more about this mod at the Qpong Arena site.

id Software's Robert Duffy updated his .plan with a Christmas present for those who are running Linux machines.
Here's what he said:

Here are beta copies of the point release for Linux. They are on ftp.idsoftware.com and should appear on ftp.lokigames.com as well.

idstuffquake3linuxlinuxq3a-1.27g-beta1.tar.gz
idstuffquake3linuxlinuxq3ded-1.27g-beta1.tar.gz

Those would be the standard + dedicated and dedicated only.

I am off on vacation starting Sunday for a week or so and will obviously be in-active in the mod forums. I do plan to get active once I get back. I've been looking at as many mods as possible lately, we are starting to ramp up on DOOM pretty quickly but I wanted to sneak some time to see what all was there. The Q3F stuff looks really nice and next month while I am visiting the Wolfenstein guys I hope to hook up with the Urban Terror guys just to see what all they have planned. WFA looks great and Rocket Arena is as usual sucking up a lot of playtime. There are some more single player things that look interesting as well. I still have about 300 to look at but that is all good stuff.

A FAQ should be going up soon that provides some work arounds for Team Arena and the point release. All in all it has looked really good. We will be releasing a patch at some point to address anything serious that comes up and we also want to provide the ability to allow mod makers to reference an existing fs_game path for mod creation. This will allow mods to be based on Team Arena.

I wish everyone a happy and safe holiday.

id Software's Robert Duffy updated his .plan with news that the game source and tool source for Point Release 1.27 has been released.
Here's what he had to say:

The 1.27 game source and the tool source has been put up on our ftp site. This game source contains prebuilt tools in the bin_nt directory but there is not yet a user friendly version of the tool installer done. A tool install that contains additional media for Team Arena creation, entity definitions etc. will be released shortly ( mid January-ish ). Timothee and his crew should be releasing GTKRadiant that WILL be user friendly soon ( next week as I hear it ).

The source for the tools is also available. Graeme is going to be releasing the ROQ endocer today or tomorrow I believe. Enjoy.

1.27 Game Source
idstuffquake3sourceQ3A_TA_GameSource_127.exe

This is the combined source code for Quake III Arena and Quake III: Team Arena. It can be used to build the 1.27g point release or the Team Arena release. It contains buildable project files and all related game source code as well as prebuilt tool executables.

1.27 Tool Source
idstuffquake3sourceQ3A_ToolSource.exe

This contains the source code for the Quake III Arena and Quake III: Team Arena tools. It contains source code for Radiant, Q3Map, Q3Data, Q3Asm and related support files. It does NOT contain prebuilt executables or end user friendly gizmos.

The Urban Terror team has released its newest beta version, Beta 1.27, which makes the mod compliant with the 1.27 Point Release. At this time the new version is only for Windows based systems. See more about this release at the Urban Terror site.

Clandestyne Software sent news that they have updated their free Online Games Commands Database. The database contains almost 10,000 console and scripting commands for many games including Q3A.

Also in their news was a release of GamePack 3 for GameBind Pro, their commercial binding/script editor. Check out all of the details on the Clandestyne Software site.

A new beta version of the OSP Tournament for Q3A mod has been relased bringing it to 0.99p.
New in this release is:

Fix: pmove_fixed, pmove_msec, and g_smoothClients can now be set properly by the server.
Fix: Can now utilize OSP-enhanced client features during demo playback.
Add: "pmove" is now enforced by the server, but can be voted on/off by clients (new server var: vote_allow_pmove defaults to 1).
Fix: Fire button handling if in chase while speclocked from the other team now does nothing.
Fix: vq3 compatibility (i.e. for demo playback w/o OSP client, and baseq3 server spoofing).
Update: All server configs now set with proper defaults.

The BackBurner has a new Q3A mod tutorial, called Menu Manipulation, teaching you how to manipulate the Q3A menu so it will suit your mod design. The tutorials are starting to add up at The BackBurner so if interested, you should check out the entire tutorial section and see what they have to offer.

The UI Enhanced site has released version 0.98 of their utility supporting the new point release 1.27. Also on the site, is an updated version their 0.97 bringing it to 0.97b for those of you who still want to play with Q3 1.17. UI Enhanced is a modification of the User Interface supplied with Quake 3 with many added features. To find out more, check out the UI Enhanced website.

Graeme Devine updated his .plan with news of a point release for mac and a Team Arena demo ported for Mac's and word on CD keys.
Here's what he said:

I've posted the Mac Team Arena demo up at: ftp://ftp.idsoftware.com/idstuff/teamarena/mac

---

Two updates in one day. Wow.

Elsewhere I posted a beta of the Macintosh point release at:

ftp://ftp.idsoftware.com/idstuff/quake3/mac/mac127beta.bin

This version is compatible with protocol 48 and Team Arena. I'll provide a second installer for taking a Windows Team Arena CD-ROM and copying the files into your Quake3 directory to enable Team Arena support on the Mac (well, basically, copy the pak0.pk3 file into a directory called missionpack under the application and you're good to go, but the installer will make this even easier).

Like the PC version, you're going to need at least a Rage 128 to play Team Arena. Regular old Q3A users may need to set their virtual memory settings a little bit higher to play Q3A, but a speed increase over 1.17 should be pretty evident right away. The difference here is that both the x86 and PPC QVM compilers have been heavily changed to produce much more optimal assembly code for their particular platforms. Thanks to everyone for the pointers on PPC code, once the light switched on in my head about how to get it done, it proved to be a very elegant platform to code asm for.

Because if the length of this update, you will have to check his .plan for the news he has about CD keys.

The Tribal 3 CTF team has updated their site with some news of their upcoming release which will be ported to 2.27 and have released some fresh new screenshots of some new maps. Check out the new pics and the update at the Tribal 3 CTF site.

Alliance Games has an update on their site with news of work on an upcoming release for their Alliance CTF mod to be ported to Q3A 1.27g. The new 2.0 release should be in time for Christmas. Also on the site is a 17MB movie which shows off Q3A 1.27g that shows off the new features and maps of version 2.0.

Q3A: Coliseum2 version 2.0 has been released. This new release is based on the new 1.27 source code from id Software and it NOT backwards compatible with earlier versions. It is available in as a full download only and can be found on the Q3A: Coliseum2 site.

Paul Jaquays updated his .plan with word about server batch files being left off the Team Arena CD and how to get them until a future point release is available.
Here's what he had to say:

The server batch files for Team Arena were accidentally left off the Team Arena disk. They'll be in a future point release, but for now, you can download them here: q3ta_serv.zip

For those of you who are having troubles switching between the two versions of Q3A, RTD Quake 3 has a 1.17 to 1.27g Point Release convertor program. The program lets you switch between the two versions if you need to for mod compatibility. Get it at the RTD Quake 3 site.

To resolve a few Voice Chat issues, Christian Antkow updated his .plan with the list of voice commands for binding in Team Arena.
The list is pretty big so here's some of what he said:

To use these, do something like;

/bind o vsay_team onoffense // I'm going on offense
/bind p vsay_team ondefense // I'm going to defend the base
/bind o vsay taunt // Play a random taunt message

Cheers,
-Xian

 #define VOICECHAT_GETFLAG              "getflag" 
                      
 #define VOICECHAT_OFFENSE              "offense"
                       
 #define VOICECHAT_DEFEND               "defend"
                        
 #define VOICECHAT_DEFENDFLAG           "defendflag"
                    
 #define VOICECHAT_PATROL               "patrol"
                        
 #define VOICECHAT_CAMP                 "camp"
                          
 #define VOICECHAT_FOLLOWME             "followme"

The rest can be found here.

Æstats 4.61, a log file analyser for 3D Shooters with Stats/Ranking output in HTML, has been released.
New in this version is:

Added Wasteland (a Half-Life mod) support with 19 weapons and 9 suicides.
Updated Tactical OPS (UT-Mod) support Weapons added: "Ak47" and "MossBerg"

Christian Antkow updated his .plan with news on how to resolve a few issues some players have when running the new point release. Here is a bit of what he had to say:

I've been reading messageboards, and recently started getting some emails about it, so I thought it best to write a small FAQ outlining a few issues with Team Arena, and the recently released 1.27g patch for Quake III.

Q: "Team Arena drops the last two digits of my CD Key when I enter it in the menu. WTF man ?"

A: The last two digits of your CD Key serve as a checksum for the preceeding 16 bytes. They are not essential for online play, and their purpose is to verify that you have entered your CD Key correctly. If you have entered your CD Key correctly either in the TA setup program, or manually in the TA menu, you should not have any problems with having an invalid CD Key. The last two bytes are not written out to the q3key file, and as such, do not appear in the menu. Don't panic =)

He goes on to list a couple of other things, the complete .plan update can be found here.

A new version 2.35c of aGSM (alternative Game Server Monitor) has been released. aGSM is a freeware Win98/2000 utility to find & monitor Internet game servers and games running on your LAN. It has a total of 35 games supported, six languages (English, German, Russian, Swedish, Danish, Polish, Romanian), and many other nifty features. Full details of the release and all of the features can be found on the aGSM site.

Clandestyne Software has released a new version of QBind, a script/config editor for Quake engine games. This new version includes support for Quake III Arena v1.27g as well as making some other minor fixes and enhancements to the program.

Live audio and video coverage for this weekends Babbage CPL event in Dallas, Texas can be found at CPLcoverage.com. The site offers spy cam coverage in the BYOC area and the Tournament area, tons of photos, and will have live interviews.

Orange Smoothie Productions now has a new version .99o of their OSP Tourney Mod. New in this version is support for Q3 Point Release 1.27 and the following:

Splash-through-floors is still an option in OSP. However, I've set the default to OFF to maintain consistency with id's current baseq3 model.
Head models are NOT supported
Only base3 is support, no TA support yet (no source!)
Left most OSP sound code in as it works better :)
menu commands for cgame are temporarily disabled (bug)
disable_<weaponname> option not included (OSP's is more flexible).
Variables are getting reset due to improper loading of q3config.cfg (quake3.exe problem). This should really only affect listen servers presently.
Removed 125Hz support as 1.27 supports its own version of this option.
This version will NOT work with any Quake3 version prior to 1.27.
I've kept the 1.17-compatible source around in case the need arises to create an updated version of OSP for this version of Quake3.

With Quake III: Team Arena being released in stores across the U.S. today, a huge preview of the add-on for Q3A has been posted at GameSpot. The preview includes 60 screenshots of the levels so you can get a pretty good glimpse of what is in store when you buy it.

Robert Duffy, id Software programer, updated his .plan with some info on the new code and he had some news about running Q3A on a Pentium Pro.
Here is what he had to say:

Quake 3 Non-MMX

ftp://ftp.idsoftware.com/idstuff/quake3/win32/quake3nommx_127g.zip
For the Pentium Pro crowd, just run quake3nommx.exe instead of quake3.exe and you should be good to go.

1.27g Point Release / Source / NDA's / Tools / Stuff

The point release is going well. Several MOD teams should have beta's out that are compatible soon. Quite a few of them have had source for about a week.

I have NOT had a chance to catch up on source NDA's for the past day and a half. At this point, I am not going to send anymore out as I can spend that same time getting the source ready to go out the door instead. I appreciate everyone requesting and sending back the NDA's. I sent out around 300 NDA's and had about 100 sent back. If for some reason you sent one back and did not recieve access to the NDA board, I apologize but it was either after Tuesday night or it got lost in the flood. For a first pass it went well.

I hope to have the full Quake III Arena and Quake III: Team Arena source out very soon, Monday-ish looks like a good plan right now.

At the same time, we should have tool source ( finally ) for folks as well as pre-compiled tools, etc. and I believe Graeme is going to post the ROQ encoder as well. Timothee and crew should have the GTK version of Radiant out soon too.

I plan to close the NDA portion of the message boards pretty quickly but will keep providing general access to the newbie mod forum and by request will add folks to the standard mod forum. If you have asked for the latter, ask again via e-mail as I have missed it and am about to clean out the forum and NDA e-mail bin. I'll be catching up in the dev forums over the weekend as this stuff settles down.

robert...

We just received word from the Coliseum2 team that they will be releasing version 2.0 of the mod next Monday and it will be ported with the latest point release posted today by id Software.
Here's part of the news release:

Coliseum2 has been ported to the new Id 1.27g code base and version 2.0 of Coliseum2 will be released on Monday, Dec 18th 2000.

Since this new version is based on the new code base, it will not be backwards with earlier versions and will be available as a full download only.

New features include a more extensible map rotation function with optional random feature. Also included will be a new IP banning system with full wildcard support.

id Software has posted what they say is the final point release for Q3A, version 1.27. Right now you can get it at File Planet.
Also, Graeme Devine has updated his .plan with some news of the release and some news about Team Arena.
Here is what he had to say:

Hi there!

We're planning on releasing the final version of the 1.27 point release today. Barring any last minute problems it should be out early this evening. This release is 100% compatible with Team Arena, and addresses the great feedback we had from the 1.25 beta releases and Team Arena testing. The physics in the point release (and Team Arena) are exactly the same as 1.17. More details will be forthcoming, we just wanted you all to have a heads up to be prepared!

I released a test version of the Macintosh build of the Team Arena demo to a few volunteer testers last night, and will continue to work with them on getting both the point release and Team Arena finalized. I'll probably seed another test version out there tonight based on the first round of feedback I got today. The first respones on this test version have been extremely positive.

Loki has been busy working on the Linux build, and this is also up and running. We can expect to see binaries posted from this "shortly".

Orange Smoothie Productions has released yet another beta version of their OSP for Q3A mod bringing it to 0.99n. The release only fixes server side issues and is not needed for the client version.
Here is a list of improvements in this release.

Fix: map_restart voting
Fix: nextmap voting
Fix: Backpack pickups in CPM if its just ammo
Fix: q3tourney2 viewcam definition file to eliminate weird sounds while in multiview on this map.
Tweak: q3tourney4 viewcam definition file for better layout for action in critical areas of the map.

More information can be found on the Orange Smoothie Productions beta download site.

id Software's Graeme Devine and Ion Storm's Warren Spector will be on GameSpot TV Holiday Chat next Next Monday, December 18. Find out more about the chat session with these two game legends at the GameSpot TV Holiday Chat site.

The BackBurner has posted a Q3 Mod Making tutorial titled Instant Quad. The tutorial focuses on adding Instant Powerups to Quake 3. It's a very good tutorial which is aimed at coders with skills ranging from limited to experienced.

Voodoo Extreme has a short interview with id Software programer Robert Duffy. The interview reviels that although Robert designed Radiant for Quake 3, he almost has no idea how to use it! Find this surprise and more about Team Arena on the Voodoo Extreme site.

The Q3F Team has posted 36 new screenshots previewing maps from their upcoming Beta 2 release. The update includes new shots of Japanese Castles, a map by G1zm0 that's now being ported to Q3F. Also included are shots of the original map Sorrow, the all new Smartbases 2, the fully updated Urban Warfare, Cathedrals: The Restoration, Vilify and Twilight of the Duck. Be sure to check them all out on the shots page on the Q3F website.

A new Q3A mod, Target Quake 3 Arena was released last night and already has a patch for it bringing it to version 1.01. Target Quake 3 features 3 gametypes (TeamBall, VolleyBall, and OldWestShootout) as well as support for FFA and CTF. It's 11 maps include work by Christian Antkow, John Schuch, and Dan Haigh. Other bonuses include new crosshairs, textures, and menu screens. Get this new mod and its patch to 1.01 at the Target Quake 3 Arena site.

The BackBurner has a Team Arena Demo review up on their site. The review includes opinions from players and webmasters. Here is a taste of what you will find:

"As I entered the game, the first thing that I was looking for, was the new powerup called "The Doubler". Supposedly, this doubles the amount of damage given by each weapon. As you all probably know, the "Quad Damage" in Quake III is actually a triple damage, but anyway, lets get on with the review. :) The doubler does live up to its name, and what�s more, it creates and exciting battle strategy of "Lets get in there 'n blow it all away!!"

A new Q3A mod called Q3 Gridiron version 1.0 has been released. This mod is is quite a bit different from your typical mod as it is basically a football game. Here is part of the press release for it:

Are you tired of all the counter-strike clones out there? Are you tired of class-based realism? Maybe deathmatch is getting a little boring too, you yearn for that fast-paced hardcore action where teamplay and strategy are so important. Here's the answer, Q3 Gridiron!

This modification plays very similarly to a game of football. That is, football with rocket launchers! The idea was to have a mod that combines heavy fighting with a bit of strategy and teamwork thrown in the mix. We settled for nothing less.

In this mod you work as a team to score. You can score a fieldgoal, a 6 point touchdown, and a 7 point touchdown. There are 5 different types of passes you can use as well to help accomplish this task. While you might think that football fields all look the same, this team has certainly shown otherwise! Q3 Gridiron 1.0 debuts with 8 great looking maps, each with a different theme and setting. Q3 Gridiron brings a whole new look and feel to Quake3 and is certainly a very unique mod. You gotta see it to believe it! Q3 Gridiron is insanely fun and addictive, and even if you're not a football fan you'll find yourself drawn to the strategy and teamplay aspects, as well as the heavy but balanced fighting.

For something different to play, check out the Q3 Gridiron site.

ShellShock's Crater has a new release of Q3Offline 00.12.09.00. Q3Offline is a Q3A front-end for offline play. New in this version is:

Added support for playing mp3 files. This is pretty cool for Star Trek Voyager Elite Forces, which contains lots of speech samples from the cast of the TV show. The template for the game is set to play a greeting or taunt when you select a bot on the Q3Offline Bots page. Even better is when you launch the game - how about 7 of 9 announcing "We Are The BORG"! Sends shivers down my spine every time.
Added support for a default document template. The default template is used:
- When starting Q3Offline and File, Auto Load MRU is unticked.
- When you click the New button on the toolbar.
The File, New menu option will always prompt you to pick a template.
There should only be one default template; Q3Offline will ignore any other default templates except for the last one it finds in the Templates sub directory. If there are no default templates, then Q3Offline will always prompt you to choose a template.
Fixed bug which didn't allow you to import a map or bot from the default game folder (e.g., baseq3) if you were in a mod folder - thanks to Ken Hudson for spotting this one.

Want to set your Q3A game up like fatal1ty? Stomped has posted a cool guide written by fatal1ty showing us how to set up Q3A the way he does to win major championships. The article also covers possible ways to get more FPS out of slower systems. Check it out here.

Robert Duffy updated his .plan with news that Team Arena has gone gold and has some news about the 1.27 Point Release source code. Here is what he had to say:

Team Arena is Gold. :-)

Some other things coming down the pipe from us in the near future.

Source code was made available earlier today to MOD authors so they can prepare their mods to be compatible with the 1.27 point release. This will help get everyone up on the same rev of the game at the same time. The point release ( 1.27 ) will be released a day or two before Team Arena hits shelves.

As soon as Team Arena is on shelves, full tool source code will be released as well as new executables and I believe Graeme will be releasing the ROQ compiler as well. These are all good things. I am going to get Timothee and the GTKRadiant crew tool source in a day or so, so they can prepare that flavor of the editor and tools for the masses.

The official combined game source will be released during the same time period as the tools. This will be the integrated Q3A and TA source base.

Thanks to everyone that assisted with testing during the beta cycle and feedback during the demo.

Todd Hollenshead updated his .plan with news that Team Arena has gone gold and to be expecting to see it in stores as early as Friday the 15th of this month. Here is what he had to say:

Team Arena is G-O-L-D! We expect that it may begin showing up at shops like EB and Babbages as early as Friday the 15th. It may take a bit longer for stores like Best Buy, CompUSA, etc. to get it in. You should check with your local retailer to see if/when they will be getting their supply in.

For customers outside of North America, we're going to do our best to get copies out to you before Christmas, but I don't have any sort of solid dates at this point. I'll let everyone know as soon as I get this information.

If you haven't checked out the Demo or .avi yet, they're definitely worth the download.

We're still working on Mac and Linux, but Demos for those (as well as binaries) should be available "soon".

A call for help from the Tribal CTF team was sent today as well as news of an update on their site with new screenshots from the Elemental Base map. The team is now in need of a talented 2d artist and modeler. Check out the Tribal CTF site for more information on the job and a look at the screenshots.

We received news on registration for the SavageUK Q3CTF Super Sunday Cup Season 3 today.
Here's what they had to say about it:

Registration for the SavageUK Q3CTF Super Sunday Cup Season 3 is now open.

To register your clan for Season 3 of the SavageUK Q3CTF Super Sunday Cup click on this link... Register

The format of the cup will be exactly the same as in previous seasons, with the first round being group games, followed by knockout rounds.

The closing date for registering your clan is Thursday 28th December 2000. The first round matches will commence on Sunday 7th January 2001.

More information on the event can be found on the SavageUK Q3CTF site.

The Deathmatch Zone has an interview with id Software level designer, Paul Jaquays. The interview covers Dreamcast and PC users playing on servers together, Team Arena questions, and some general topics. Check it out here.

Stomped has an interview with id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead. The 10 question interview covers why id Software decided to make an add-on themselves instead of letting another software company do it, as well as many other Team Arena related questions. Here is a clip of the interview:

Stomped: Why did id create a mission pack for Q3A on its own, rather than license those mission packs to other developers, like what was done for Quake I and Quake II?

Hollenshead: We didn't internally develop the Quake or Quake II Mission Packs because we were 100% occupied with working on either Quake II or Quake III Arena. Once Q3A was done, we were exploring exactly what were going to do next, but knew that we wouldn't be able to get fully cranking on a 100% new game until John (Carmack) had fleshed out some technology issues for the next generation stuff. We needed an interim project to work on and making a team-oriented game was something that many of us were interested in. So we began work on Team Arena.

A new version of Kquery has been released bringing this server/browser to version 2.2.1. The new version adds support for Elite Force and adds some new features.
Some of the new features are:

Player Finder (kquery reports to you players found on your server listing)
Player lister (Kquery can show you all people reported in all games)
Import / Export your master server list
Custom List Querying (Specify which games to try)
Filter now has "remove unresponsive"

Robert Duffy Updated his .plan today with news for mod teams on how to sign up for the id mailing list.
Here's what he had to say:

Mod Teams

I've had a couple of hundred requests for mod team additions to the new mailing list. I'd like to impose a bit on the people that have sent me a request to going ahead and sign up for the NEW and improved mod list :-) Last week after cutting a release candidate for Team Arena, I sat from about 2.30am to about 4.00am and entered all of the names in but our list software apparently times out if you don't submit the list every 5 minutes. We are setting up a conferencing system at the moment so the mail list is actually going to be a threaded discussion board. We are going to have one devoted to Licensees and one devoted to mod teams.

This is now up and running and you can apply for an account here: http://underworld.idsoftware.com/enter.html

Thanks

robert...

mxGamer.com has an interview with Angel Munoz, president of the CPL, about their upcoming Babbages tournament, their new offices, what can be expected from them in the future, and several other topics. You can check out the interview here.

Locki, team leader for Q3F, has sent word of the release of the nine new player class model pics which will be in Beta 2. The shots are "in progress" and are unskinned.

Locki also mentioned that they have released a plugin for GTKRadiant called Chilli. Chilli provides level designers with the ability to display bezier spline paths in GtkRadiant. These can then be exported to an SPD (SPline Data) file. This technology will be present in the Beta 2 maps. Head on over to the Q3F site and check it all out!

EuroGamer has good coverage of this weekends Babbages CPL UK qualifier. Posted recently are interviews with Timber and Luke from UNR, along with a brief overview of the results from the first round of the competition. More coverage will be posted during the day so be sure to check out EuroGamer for the news on this event.

Version 1.00 Beta 1 of the Loaded Q3A mod has been released. Loaded Q3A is an extremely configurable modification for Quake III Arena that gives you a greater ability to run a server exactly the way you want. FFA, Tournament, Single Player, Team Deathmatch and CTF game types are all supported. The new version has a lot of new features and fixes. Here is a partial list of what it has to offer.

Client game authentication system to eliminate cheaters and detect cgame build versions.
Optional spiral rail trail.
Client-side screen blending in solids.
Optional overtime modes include extra time followed sudden death.
Optional map rotation validation to ensure all map entries are correctly installed on the server.

There are a lot more additions, fixes, and changes so head on over to the Loaded Q3A site and check it out.

Robert Duffy updated his .plan with news that the Team Arena maps can be quite a bit larger in physical size than any other id games. Here is what he had to say about just how big the new maps can be and some of the possible implications surrounding them:

I've had a lot of requests for info on the terrain stuff that Todd mentions in his plan and which is visible in the demo movie.

Several things are going on with the terrain stuff. There have been quite a few updates and enhancements made to the engine for TA but the engine has always been quite capable of the triangle counts necessary for terrain.

Jim did some amazing work that allows the terrain brush conversion along the other support necessary to do the texture blending etc. The size capabilities are quite vast. The old restraints in the editor were +/- 4096, the new restraints are +/- 131072. Now there would be some pretty substantial floating point precision errors seeing that distance but the fact is you can make HUGE maps. As long as you have valleys and canyons or buildings etc. you can do some truly amazing things. John pointed out that people will possible run into surface count limitations and so on but this should not be much of an issue.

As far as FPS issues go, the map with the large gothic looking castles runs about as fast as many of TA's indoor maps, not all of them but based on how they work they are not too hard on system performance.

To give an idea on size, the largest q3a map is tiny compared to the smallest terrain map in TA and that map itself easily fits inside the center section of the largest terrain map in TA. And to put that in perspective, that map looks like a postage stamp in the +/- 128K area.

The playground just got a lot bigger.

Z-Axis has posted a lengthy IRC interview with the HeadHunters 3 for Q3A mod team.
Here is the introduction to the interview:

I had the opportunity arise to chat with the guys that are making Head Hunters 3 for Quake 3: Arena. This has to be the most frantically paced MOD I have ever played for Quake 1, 2 and 3... it simply kicks ass like no other. This is a MOD that has a simple premise, gib your enemies, grab their head as it bounces along the floor, and return the head to an alter to register a frag. The fun comes in stealing other people's heads when you frag them, because any head they were carrying flys across the room when you frag them. It is pretty wacked and I definitly recommend check it out! Read the interview, and you will see, this is one MOD you will not want to miss out on.

Fortefide.com has an interview with CodeMonkey, lead coder of the BFG10K mod released a few days ago. The interview covers what started the mod, who the team is, and what the features of the mod are.
Here's a snipit of the features question:

what are some of BFG10k Arena's best features?

Obviously, the BFG! :) It is a lot of fun shooting it into a roomful of enemy, and watching them first scorched by lasers, then blown to hell by the blast :) LeeMon had the idea to add the BFG specific play modes to enhance the BFG experience. This really adds a lot to the MOD.

Todd Hollenshead updated his .plan tonight with news that id Software has released a Team Arena movie for those who wonder what all the fuss is about but haven't downloaded the beta yet.
Here's what he has to say:

Just in time for the weekend, we are releasing a new Quake III: Team Arena movie. At just over 2 minutes, this movie packs in a ton of never before seen features from Team Arena. If you've played the demo, this is a different clip than what plays in the main menu, so you'll definitely want to check this out, too.

IGN.com is once again going to be handling the initial bandwidth for the download. The download weighs in at around 20MB, so for those of you who were afraid the demo download would melt your modem, this makes it easy for you to check out some of the incredible new stuff that is in Team Arena.

Even if you have played the demo 18 hours a day, for the last 9 days, only taking breaks for bathing, food, and familial Thanksgiving responsibilities, you should still check this out as it contains scenes from our new large scale, terrain based maps. That's right, included in Team Arena are a number of never-seen-anywhere- before-now huge maps. These maps include castles, watchtowers, rivers, bunkers, forts, mountains and just about anything else you could want in battlegrounds of this magnitude.

Enough said - go download the movie. Believe me, it's cool.

IGN.com should have it up on their site around 6:30PM West Coast (9:30PM East Coast), and we'll put it up on quake3arena.com shortly after that.

Enjoy!

Also, the latest word on Mac and Linux demos is that they are "close".