News and Waffle

The Spanish Man Arrives ^

by Paul - Friday 02 July 1999 @ 10:14

Here are for you all to chew on. In this batch are Excessus's and Hotcake's newest maps along with some other interesting maps.

Frib and Peej have joined forces to provide Peej 'n' Frib's Custom Quake Map News and Banter, to it its full title. Its an absolutely excellent idea if you ask me and I hope it really works out.

The Firing Squad has put up a guide on how to optimise the Q3Test. I've had a quick look through it and its pretty good.

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Busy, busy, busy, busy, blah, blah, bUrp ^

by Paul - Sunday 27 June 1999 @ 10:12

Sorry everyone no reviews this week. Why you ask? I've been busying finish off Inspection which is now open for business. I do however have my usual ramblings...

Another PQ newbie this week, Shadowdane. Looks like this guy has made a load of maps ranging from good old Duke3D to Quake 2.

I got email from RaYGunn about a new site that along with Guf they've just put up called Black Mail. Since I'm a lazy ass heres a cut and paste from the email I got about the site :
"This site is about firstborns, dirty laundry, scandal, and the like... in other words, early level design work from names you know and love (or at the very least recognize). We got dirt on old skool DM mappers, famed freelance designers, industry professionals, and even a prominent webmaster or two. All in all, it should be a fascinating peek at first releases and in some cases, even unreleased work.

We have opened with maps from Levelord, Headshot, and Crash! With more to come soon!

I also got an email from someone called Bario. He asked very kindly if I would link his site to some news that he'd mentioned, to explain better heres the email...
I've released the source code of my previous work, The Production Complex, a Q2 singleplayer mission pack.

My work is on http://www.multiplayer.it/bario, if you want to link it, i will be glad.
So everyone go there now.

John Carmack has finally updated his .plan file with a monster of an update. He goes on about lighting (very technical and I don't understand a word of what he is saying) but of interest to me was this.
* blood trails behind gibs
Sounds good to me =).

By the way, the reason I put Euro's on the Shambler flyer was because they are particularly worthless. Hahahaha. *ahem*. Sorry.

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F- for you ^

by Paul - Saturday 26 June 1999 @ 10:10

Heres a couple of reviews by Monsto. In keeping with me handing out a 0 not so long back, Monsto slaps an F- on a map. Cool or what? Fat Controller has also popped by with 3 very enlightening reviews for the Your Review section.

Final thing. Mr Shambler... I was was fully aware that you had gone on holiday, so big =P to you.

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Where did he go? ^

by Paul - Thursday 24 June 1999 @ 10:09

Can you help find a missing Shambler? The last reported sighting of him was last Thursday. Please look at this flyer below and if you spot Mr Shambler of TeamShambler Quake Level Reviews please don't hesitate not to do anything...

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Interviews! ^

by Paul - Wednesday 23 June 1999 @ 10:08

Here the final two Featured Author Interviews. No really they are!!! Anyway, thanks go to Killer and Thanatopsis, who are working on the KT-imPAKt, for the taking part. Monsto has done a rant, which I've just uploaded. The rant is on the conversion of Quake 2 maps to Quake 3 Arena and authors attitudes about this all. Its very interesting and should definitely provoke some response.

Excessus has released a new map called Exdm4 - The Furnace.(473Kb). Its the first map I've seen to use King Pin textures and it looks brilliant. Excessus has once again produced another top map. As always Skorpion has produced a route file for it which you can get here. He has also created a route for Mayhem by Gibbie, which I reviewed last weekend, and a route file for Chao$ Theory.(291Kb) by Hot Cakes.

I fixed the email addresses in the reviews Frib did at the weekend, since originally I'd screwed them up.

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New Your Reviews from Mr FC ^

by Paul - Tuesday 22 June 1999 @ 10:08

The Fat Controller has done a review of ProdigyXL's latest Quake map, XL Game Over. Pop by the Your Review section to read it.

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Hot Cakes! ^

by Paul - Monday 21 June 1999 @ 10:07

Hot Cakes is now here at PQ. To celebrate the opening he has released a new map called Chao$ Theory.(291Kb).

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Quake reviews are up ^

by Paul - Sunday 20 June 1999 @ 10:06

A bumper batch of this weekend. Mr Fribbles has helped out and has done 4 of todays reviews. Isn't that nice of him =). Thanks Frib! I've also lightened the screen shots a tad. To me they now look too bright but maybe for the rest of you they look a bit better.

Okay Dokay. You Quake 2 people can now send in your maps for review! So pop over to the and do so. Please read the instructions on that page! It makes our life a lot easier when it comes to doing the review. I cannot believe how many people just give website addresses and say get it from here or give the incoming dir on cdrom.com. These are useless!!!

More site movements. Bal is now on the BatttleShip Quake along with Michael Daugherty better known as the map author formally known as Jerkoff. Another new site at PQ is Pandemonium. I've seen this site before and it has some excellent artwork there. Now I have to update all the damn download links for the maps. Mumble, mumble, %$^k, R$.f3...

I got a couple of interesting maps in this week which I have been asked to review but I don't think I will because playing then gave me a pretty bad headache. Not to deprive you of them though (hehe), here they are. Moonlight.(348Kb) and The Limbo of Broken Ecstasies.(56Kb). As you may have guessed these maps are really really weird. Below are screenshots of both maps in Quark with the lighting effects turned off so its all in full bright mode (click on them for larger images, full size is 985x738).

YOINK! Screenies removed....

The reason I've taken these pictures is because in Moolight I just got totally lost (Its very dark in and everything looks the same) and for Ecstasies its just because it has some very odd textures in.  If you're feeling adventurous and have some headache tablets with you then go check out the authors website which has the completely sane name of PSYCHO-JOURNEY through Quake 1.

Wanna see some more grade A awful maps? You do! Go here then for a batch of Quake 2 nasties. Whats the grading system about? Seems a tad odd to me.

Now I'm not usually one for pimpage of SP maps for Quake but when you play a map of such a high quality you will understand why. Damaul has recently released Damaul6 - Bestial Devastation (922Kb). If you don't have the Zestorer patch then you will also need to download this file as well (1959Kb). This map is absolutely superb. Heres a couple of screenies of it.

YOINK! Screenies removed....

Due to this map I went and re-downloaded Zestorer. What an excellent mod that is. I remember the levels as if I played them yesterday so they are not much of a challenge as they originally were, but its cool to just trek through it all again. If you're interested go here to download it (thats a UK link).

Theres been a uproar on the conversions of Quake 2 maps to Quake 3 Arena. Most of these conversions have been without the original map authors authorisation and a storm has gone off (rightly so) on sCary's Gigaboard. ztn, escher and frib join in the proceedings basically telling these dum f**ks to stop what they're doing. I'm totally on their side with this. If the author doesn't want his/her work converted then don't do it. I've played some of these conversions and have to say they are just complete turd. Since they are originally Quake 2 maps the scale is completely out of whack and some of tricks used to make the maps work are awful. One prime example is in Aerowalk. The map has a slanted ramp in the main atrium. Well when you walk from the bottom up you are teleported to the top of it. Stupid!

Gibbie has told me to plug the Frogbot. So heres a plug for it, go get Frogbot. Frib and Escher apparently use it, but I'm not very impressed by it. Alot of messing about is required to get the thing going and it certainly will not be replacing the Obots.

Ninja has recently started a new feature on his site called 'Authors'. The idea behind it is to have info on each author (d.o.b, site address etc.) and also to provide a jump point to everyone's websites. So go see how many old gits mappers there are =).

Peej has posted an article on 1-on-1 tips. Well worth a read.

There is a pretty good interview with John Carmack up on Voodoo Extreme. Continuing the id theme the latest issue of Edge has an 8 page article on id. Its about Quake 3 Arena and it has a few details I've not seen anywhere else.

There is a news article up the Arenaline Vault about possible trouble surrounding the completion of a game called Mortyr. I'd read a couple of features on it and it looks pretty cool. Its a 3D shooter set in Germany in World War II. According to the article the game is in a real mess.

King Pin has gone gold! Wahoo! Saw that on Blues and Scary's. Its funny but I no longer visit Redwoods. The page takes too long to load and when I get there the news isn't updated regularly enough. Anyway, Ridah (Ryan Feltrin) updated his .plan file with news about a DM game included in King Pin called Bag Man. Heres what Ridah had to say on it:
If you've been looking for something new to play on-line lately, let me introduce you to "Bag Man". It might sound odd, but it's actually very addictive, and intense. Take CTF, mix it with Mobsters. Stir.

The result, is a game revolving around cash. Both teams have a safe. Somewhere in the center of the map exists a Cash spawning location (counterfitting machine outlet, if you must..). The object being, to collect as much cash as possible, then return to your base and lock it in the safe.

But, as the game progresses, it becomes highly rewarding to steal from the enemy safe, hence the term "Bag Man". Anyone that has stolen from the enemy safe, has a big sack over their shoulder, and can be carrying up to $200 in the sack, plus whatever cash they've put in their pockets (picked up along the way). This makes them prime targets for the enemy, and highly valuable friends.

At the end of the game, the team with the most Cash wins. Simple as that.
As soon as I see King Pin in the shops I'm gonna nab myself a copy.

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Lotsa updates ^

by Paul - Wednesday 16 June 1999 @ 09:58

Third Update
Agent Orange has dropped by with some reviews. So go take a gander at them.

Second Update
ProdigyXL has finally released XL1DM4 - XL Game Over.(220Kb). Initial impressions. Disappointed. I just can't stand the texture set used. Its like the one used in Bless to Kill by Headshot. Its just yuck. After a little playing though I found that it plays really well (4 in FFA) and has some extremely cool architecture.

The Fat Controller is now here at PQ with a brand new spanking cool look. Shambler should like it, it has a subtle injection of purple. Stecki has also put his site back up. I was browsing through his site and found something about a car he has called the Doom Car. Interesting I thought. What I particularly like is the way the oil guage bounces to the bass line of whatever is playing on the radio. Kaiser has once again redone his site. I quite liked the old look, all green and everything. Apparently though Kaiser didn't, so now we have a more stream lined look.

Excessus has added a new section to his site called the bin. This is basically a page full of screenies of maps which will never be finished =(. He got the idea from Prod who originally did this on his own site.

First Update
Here are 2 new Featured Author Interviews. Thats not all the Featured Author Interview though, they'll be another 2 next week.

Some good news for all you Quake 2 authors. We will *soon* (read : S-O-O-N, not now but later in a few days, just NOT NOW. OK!) be accepting Quake 2 maps again. Now heres the deal. We still have a backlog but I've decided to scrap it for a few reasons.

• First is half of the download links for the maps are crap.
• Second, I'm sick of the shit from people complaining. Some of the emails though were very amusing =). SH4MBLER!!!
• Third there are too many duplicated requests, some people think spamming us with their maps will get them reviewed quicker. The answer to that is no, its more likely to get binned. Also on a few occasions maps got reviewed twice. (I'm only human! I do make mistakes).
• Fourth if you really want your map reviewing then you'll resubmit it.

I received an email from Yogi (not Yodi as I put last time) that the FreshTeam is now one of the new arrivals here at PlanetQuake. So if you've not heard of them before or are just the curious sort go visit the Fresh Team.

I checked the Generations site yesterday to see how things were going and I find out the damn thing has been canceled! Ouch. When they started the project they asked id over a year ago whether what they were doing was legit. Due to some confusion on both sides, work went ahead on it. The project continued until a week or so ago when id got in touch saying what they doing was in violation of licensing agreements etc. The guys had two choices. Convert it to the guidelines id had set (basically remove all legally binding references and so turn it to crap) or stop. They made what I think is the correct decision given the circumstances and stopped work on the it. Kinda sad really. For the full low down check out their site. Good luck to whatever the Generations team works on next.

ProdigyXL is going to be releasing XL1DM4 sometime today. All I can say is about fugging time! Speaking of Prod his website has turned into a regular news site. You bored or something? j/k.

My favourite net util, Getright, has just been updated. Currently its only a beta (v4.0) but I'll be checking it out anyway.

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Shamblers ^

by Paul - Monday 14 June 1999 @ 09:55

If there is one thing Shambler loves doing, its proving me wrong. Well once again he done just that. I wrote in the review of Misdm5 yesterday the following :
"Now if you manage to jump up into the support bars in the roof area shown in the second shot you get a little message saying "Gre4t jump m4n". I tried to rjump into that area but couldn't for the life of me do it. If you can then email me =). "
Well Mr Shambler didn't rjump, oh no, he went one better and grenade jumped it. Bastard!!! So in bid to at least retain some dignity I had a proper go at rjumping up and guess what I did! On my sixth attempt =P. So what I've done is put both Shambler's and my own demo in a zip file for you to have a peek at. You can download it here.(39Kb).

Paradies released a Quake 2 map yesterday called Degeneration.(306Kb). Pretty cool map decked out in a mix of jail and space textures.

Just to keep you guys going the Inspection site will be opened within the next two weeks =P. Now that is specific. Hehehe. Oh and I don't need anymore peeps for the site, I've now got enough people.

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