Old News - Feb.9 -15, 1998
2/9/98 2/10/98 2/11/98 2/12/98 2/13/98 2/14/98 2/15/98
 
Feb 15, 1998
Level Contest

The Level Contest Is Still Going, And Won't End Till March 1, 1998. The Levels Will Be Judged On March 5, 1998.
The Winner Recieves $15(US) And A T-1 Server Will Run His/Her Map For A Week Or Two.
Check Out Rules and Details For All The Rules And Details.
See All The Submitted Levels At The: Contest Entries Page
Submit Levels Here

Maps, Maps, And Ahh More Maps. Yeah

Vice Lupo Has Submitted Luophse2. Check Out The Contest Entries Page  For A Download Site.

Stop Sadam

A New TC Is Being Made at http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Lair/8771/ called Stop Sadam. It Is Still In The Making, You
Can Send In Your Own Files To Help Him Out.

C.R. Bot

Version 0.99c of the C.R.Bot was released on the CRBot homepage.

BSP

Version 0.93 of the BSP Quake/Quake II  level editor has been released on the BSP Headquarters Web Site.

New Timer

If You Are Wonderng What The Timer Right Below The Counter Is, It Is A Timer That Records
How Many Seconds The Page Has Been Viewed. I Think It Will Turn Out To Be A Thing Like Counter,
I Wish I Would Have Thought Of It.

Vacation

I Will Be Gone Feb 16, 1998 - Feb 23, 1998. So I Will Not Be Able To Update The News.
Still Feel Free To Enter Maps, And Send E-mail. It Will Just Take About 7-8 Days To
Reply To Mail Or Enter Your Map.

Thanks,
Big Al
Feb 14, 1998 - Happy V-Day
Level Contest

The Level Contest Is Still Going, And Won't End Till March 1, 1998. The Levels Will Be Judged On March 5, 1998.
The Winner Recieves $15(US) And A T-1 Server Will Run His/Her Map For A Week Or Two.
Check Out Rules and Details For All The Rules And Details.
See All The Submitted Levels At The: Contest Entries Page
Submit Levels Here

Contest - Map

Jason Ingram Submitted A Map Today. It Is Called qdc][sg Check Out The Contest Entries Page  To Download It Or Other Maps.

Hot Potato CTF for Q2

The first version of Hot Potato CTF for Quake II has been released by Quake Innovations on the Hot Potato Homepage. Hot Potato is a CTF variant that forces the flag carrier to pass the flag with a short span, or die. Thanks BluesNews

Stupid Bot

There is word on the Quake2 Bot Epidemic about a new bot called the Stupid Bot, that apparently is not stupid at all, though you apparently need to work your way through some Japanese instructions.

Eraser 0.6

A new version 0.6b Eraser Bot installer is on the Impact Development Team page.

CNN

CNN has an Article on Quake2 and online gaming.
 
 
Feb 13, 1998, Friday The 13th, Ohh My God Were All Gonna Die.
Level Contest

The Level Contest Is Still Going, And Won't End Till March 1, 1998. The Levels Will Be Judged On March 5, 1998.
The Winner Recieves $15(US) And A T-1 Server Will Run His/Her Map For A Week Or Two.
Check Out Rules and Details For All The Rules And Details.
See All The Submitted Levels At The: Contest Entries Page
Submit Levels Here

New Cyberathlete Mod

A new version of the Cyberathlete Mod has been released and can be downloaded here.
John Carmack's 3D Card Roundup

John Carmack took the occasion of the Intel740 release to give, as he puts it a general update on the state of 3D cards as they relate to Quake engine games", in his .plan. He runs down a whole list of cards, but the two we haven't heard much from him about yet are the Voodoo 2 and the Intel740, so here's his analysis of those:

3DFX Voodoo 2
-------------
Not shipping yet, but we were given permission to talk about the benchmarks on their preproduction boards.

Excellent throughput, excellent fillrate, good quality, excellent features.

The numbers were far and away the best ever recorded, and they are going to get significantly better. On quake 2, voodoo 2 is setup limited, not fill rate limited. Voodoo 2 can do triangle strip and fan setup in hardware, but their opengl can't take advantage of it until the next revision of glide. When that happens, the number of vertexes being sent to the card will drop by HALF. At 640*480, they will probably become fill rate bound again (unless you interleave two boards), but at 512*384, they will probably exceed 100 fps on a timedemo. In practice, that means that you will play the game at 60 fps with hardly ever a dropped frame.

The texture swapping rate is greatly improved, addressing the only significant problem with voodoo.

I expect that for games that heavily use multitexture (all quake engine games), voodoo 2 will remain the highest performer for all of '98. All you other chip companies, feel free to prove me wrong. :)

Lack of 24 bit rendering is the only visual negative.

As with any voodoo solution, you also give up the ability to run 3D applications on your desktop. For pure gamers, that isn't an issue, but for hobbyists that may be interested in using 3D tools it may have some weight.

Intel i740
----------
Good throughput, good fillrate, good quality, good features.

A very competent chip. I wish intel great success with the 740. I think that it firmly establishes the baseline that other companies (especially the ones that didn't even make this list) will be forced to come up to.

Voodoo rendering quality, better than voodoo1 performance, good 3D on a desktop integration, and all textures come from AGP memory so there is no texture swapping at all.

Lack of 24 bit rendering is the only negative of any kind I can think of.

Their current MCD OpenGL on NT runs quake 2 pretty well. I have seen their ICD driver on '95 running quake 2, and it seems to be progressing well. The chip has the potential to outperform voodoo 1 across the board, but 3DFX has more highly tuned drivers right now, giving it a performance edge. I expect intel will get the performance up before releasing the ICD.

It is worth mentioning that of all the drivers we have tested, intel's MCD was the only driver that did absolutely everything flawlessly. I hope that their ICD has a similar level of quality (it's a MUCH bigger job).

An 8mb i740 will be a very good setup for 3D development work. Thanks BluesNews
 
 
Feb 12, 1998
Holy Wars

Beta 6 of Holy Wars for Quake II has been released on the Holy Wars for Quake 2 page.

Quake64

Movies and screenshots from the upcoming Quake for Nintendo 64 have been posted as part of N64.com's
updated Quake64 preview.

Orange 2 1.8

Version 1.8 of the Orange 2 mod for Quake II has been released on the Orange page, and a test server running the
new version at louise.net.eu.org.
 
Feb 11, 1998
Level Contest

The Level Contest Is Still Going, And Won't End Till March 1, 1998. The Levels Will Be Judged On March 5, 1998.
The Winner Recieves $15(US) And A T-1 Server Will Run His/Her Map For A Week Or Two.
Check Out Rules and Details For All The Rules And Details.
See All The Submitted Levels At The: Contest Entries Page
Submit Levels Here

New CTF ServerConfig Mod

Version 1.6b2 of the CTF ServerConfig Mod has been released.

Rust

There are now tutorials and example maps demonstrating the use of every entity in Quake II on r u s t - Game Editing and Design.

Quake II Info Section

The Quake II Info Section Here At Big Al's Kick Ass Quake II News, Will Be Opening Within 2 Days.

Screen Shots

If You Have Any Screen Shots Please E-mail Them To Big Al. They Will Be Added To The Screen Shots Department.
 
Feb 10, 1998
Quake II Info

The Quake II Info Section Will Up With-in A Few Days.
If You Have Any Quake II Info To Add E-mail Big Al.

Screenshots

The Screenshots Section Needs More Screen Shots, If You Have Any Screen Shots Please E-mail The To Big Al Here.

Rocket Arena 2

Rocket Arena 2 Map Pack Screen Shots At The Rocket Arena Page.
 
Feb 9, 1998
New OrangeCTF

A new version of the OrangeCTF mod has been released.
 

New Quake2 FrontEnd

OnTheWay is a new Quake2 server utility. It gives you total control of the maps you want to use, how they're arranged, as well as setting deathmatch variables and remote administration access.

Battle Of The Sexes

A server-side only version 2.4.1 of the Battle of the Sexes mod for Quake II, has been posted on Spinoza's Quake 2 Mods Page fixing a bug and adding a couple of features. Clients do not need to download the update.