Anyway, the UKPak is now out. Theres an interview with UKPak head bloke, Aardappel, at the site which is well worth a look. Also heres the two download links for the pak at moment. Here and here(3.6Mb). Its been put up on cdrom.com so I'll sort out that link when it appears. I will, of course (smug mode on), will be doing a review of the pak. Initial plans go something like this: intro page, page per map and a conclusion. So you can expect a little 10 page review of it. I also want to include comments from people who play teamplay Quake to give their opinions on the maps. I was thinking of adding these comments into the reviews.

I got an email from João Teixeira, author of Brown Stuff (217Kb). (I mentioned this map on Thursday). Apparently he's lost the source for the map! DOH! There was some tweaks that João wanted to make. Unfortunately we won't see them =(.

Nothing else interesting has happened since Thursday. I have noticed that Terrafusion is a little quiet. Actually its too quiet. The grand plans of making it the custom map mecca seem to have gone of the boil. The majority of news updates seem to be done by Peej and actually I have had more news here, which is saying something. I hope things get back on track soon.

Haha. The return of the dark writing!

I bought Metal Gear Solid yesterday. 35 quid. Cheaper than I thought it would be. Interesting game. I love running up behind guards and breaking their necks before they have time to react. I read the review on The Adrenaline Vault and it got panned. I think the reviewer had a couple of valid points but for the most part he was talking complete toss.

Before I forget, the latest issue of Edge has some really cool news on the Playstation 2. Besides it dropping large lumps of brown stuff all over the Dreamcast and co, it'll be backwards compatitable with the Playstation. They say it will probably use software emulation to run old PSX games. Cool stuff!

Another little scoop is that the same team behind the UKPAK maps may work on a pak of FFA maps. Note that the maps in the current pak are aimed at teamplay. <p>I found an excellent map yesterday. Its Brown Stuff (217Kb) by João Teixeira. To save me having to describe how good it is, heres some screenies (I found the map on the Fat Controllers site).

I've been pondering about the future of the site. As to what the content should be. When Taskmaster opened the site his original aim was to review maps from everyone. To let anyone have their maps showcased. I have no intention of changing that. We will continue to review any maps we recieve. Questions have also been asked as to whether we'll do Quake 3 Arena. Well the answer to that is yes. I'd be stupid to say no.

I've tried to take the angle of interviewing top authors but some don't regard the site very highly and refused to take part. Some did and I'm grateful to them! I wanted to do more but I needed a lot of different peoples co-operation to do what I wanted. It wasn't there, but it seems though that Peek's site has successfully managed what I could not do. Anyway...

What I was thinking of was to cover everything about Multiplayer Quake. One of the most common questions I get asked is "How do I play multiplayer?" So I'd like to do FAQ's to help people in this situation. The thing is I can't do this alone. I don't mean I want more people to work here, what I want is people is to help contribute to create these FAQ's. At the moment though the ideas that I've have aren't fully formed and I want peoples suggestions. So please help me to create an even better site!

The Fat Controller has released his latest map in the RC series. Its called Grader Spader (500Kb). If you want to take a peek at some screenies of it while you download it go here. As is consistent with the series its done up a different style from his previous maps (yeah ok, RCDM4 and 5 use the same textures, so sue me!). As the Fat Controller puts it, its a E1M5-textured keep of four chambers. Pretty big map. Also why isn't his site hosted somewhere? Like Terrafusion. I mean, he has done loads of maps, more than some people who've recently joined there. Anyway, just a thought.

I've made further adjustments to the Netscape frontend to the site. The top bar wouldn't mess up on resizing the window. I've changed the index so it works with exact pixel sizes and not %. That was causing part of the problem. As far as the problems with the curved corners on the left and right (I just spotted them) hand side, I don't know what causes that little gap to be there. Suggestions on how to fix it would be very welcome.

Work on the archive changes continues. Heres my plans on what I'm going to do. I'm going to write a little program which will read in a file of reviews. Split them up, give each map review a seperate file, then go and create an index of all the files in the archive. Which should then create various HTML pages which have a listing of all reviews by author, map title etc.

I've also made what I hope to be the final adjustments to the Submit Levels page. I've worded it in such a way that its easily understandable... I hope =P. I've also added a link the links page.

The Q3A movie I mentioned yesterday is pretty cool, theres some really impressive stuff in there. Players doing backflips, things like that. This footage was released especially for the release of the Pnetium 3 chip. Now quite how a Pentium 3 will make much difference is beyond me. From what I've heard the only change the P3 has is these 70 new game enhancing instructions (like AMD's 3D-Now!) and it runs at a lower voltage. Anyway back to movie, the voice over is a bit annoying. Actually, its very annoying. Not because its a twangly American voice but because they mispronounce id software. The bloke says id as one word instead of like two letters, i.d. Geeesh.

Scary has got some new shots of Quake 3 Arena. Cool stuff. Not really had time to look at them properly. Some bad news as well, Webdog has ceased active development. Kind of unfortunate but there you go.

Just found this out on Blue's News that some new footage of Quake 3 Arena (3.9Mb) has been released. I'm downloading it now so I don't actually know what its like or about.

It doesn't scale as well as the IE version but its certainly an improvement! I'd like comments from people who use that particular version of the site and tell me whether or not it is an improvement.

I got a book a couple of weeks ago on websites. Its Web Design in a Nutshell published by O'Reilly. Good book actually. One of the many tips in there was to try loading your site in a browser called Opera. So I grabbed a copy of it. This particular browser accepts no mistakes in HTML files. If there are any, pages will appear screwed up. Well, I've tried it out with site and it seems to work fine =P.

Couple of other things. Monsto does not want anymore review requests at the moment. He is currently working his way through the backlog that he has. He will notify me as to when he is ready to accept more review requests. Secondly please don't get round this by sending Quake 2 maps to me. I don't review Quake 2 maps. Its very simple. I review Quake maps, Monsto reviews Quake 2 maps.

After that blasting I've got some good news. I've ordered a new PC. Heres rundown of the spec:

• Pentium II 450MHz
• 128MB Ram
• 13Gig HDD
• 17" Trinitron monitor
• 16MB RIVA TNT (can't remember the make)
• 12MB Voodoo2
• SB 64 with surround sound setup

All you Blood 2 monkeys will probably be interested to know the long awaited Mutliplayer patch (12.3Mb) has been released. I've seen Kable playing it. Seems alot smoother. A load of Blood maps have been converted over, which look damn cool. Also CTF is included. (Nabbed that from Caleb's Crypt).

I can't believe I've not mentioned this site yet. (Funny really, considering I'd put in on the links page ages ago). Anyway its The Betatesting Facility which is run by Gom Jabbar. Basically you submit the details of your map. People who are interested email you asking for the password to be able to get hold your map.

The Great Green Heron and Xori have both moved to Terrafusion. The GGH has changed slightly. It runs through pictures of the maps which are running on the servers there. Also good luck to Xori in whatever he does next.

Continuing the Terrafusion theme. Something I hadn't noticed but the new look Terrafusion isn't the look which was originally designed. It came to me when I visited Peek's site, I thought I'd seen this look before. I read the news update and saw why. Him and Peej had designed this really cool look for the new Terrafusion, but Idoru went off and did his own thing. Peek however decided to use the look for his site. Which I like over the Terrafusion one. Oh well!

Would you like to read the longest ever map review? You would! Take a look at this review of Dario Casali's (mapper at Valve) latest Half-Life map Double Cross. I can't believe someone can write so much on a map! Its also the highest rating map ever on Radium.

Speaking of Radium. That brings on to the subject of the archives here. Since nobody came forward to help on a better system for archiving maps, I've decided to do it myself. Its going to be similiar to that of Radium's archives. Each map with have its own page and a big index will be link them. Which should hopefully be sortable by the various titles (author, map name etc.). So for the moment archiving maps is on hold until I sort out this new system.

I've also made an addition to the Submit Levels page.

I visited Rust for the first time this week. I know Monsto keeps plugging the place so I decided to go there. If there was ever a site to help mappers out there, this is it.

QuArK 5.6 was released this week. Which was then followed by a beta of version 5.7.

Found an interesting Quake 2 utility. Its MapSpy. This little program is an editing diagnostic utility which finds problems in Quake 2 map files. Heres a link to the site its on.

Something I've not gotten around to installing (and probably won't) is mIRC. Version 5.51 was released this week. Another program I won't be installing is Quake 2. Two reasons. First off is that I don't have the disk space. I seem to have filled it up with other things. Second reason is that I didn't play it much when I had it installed previously.

I may do some reviews for this coming weekend depending on how things go. If not then, I will *DEFINATELY* have some done the week after.

News from a reliable source tells me you can expect the UKPak team to release the final version of their map pack soon. Those of you that played the betas will know how good they are! You can also, hopefully, expect a review of all the maps here.

The KT-imPAKt site has moved to Planetquake. If you've not been there yet its basically a DM map pack for Quake 2. Theres some top quality maps in there so go take a peek.

Gonzo has updated with some news, reviews and pictures of his lastest map. A Quake map with Quake 2 textures, kind of like Killjoys KJDM12.

Spotted a new site that has opened on Quakeintosh. Its Deathmaps and its run by dohnut. The idea is to list the best Quake maps.

Sad news. A World of Quake 2 has closed. Can't say I'm all that surprised. The amount of reviews that appeared there was slowly declining. Also at one point Paul (he runs the site) said he was leaving but then reappeared. Anyway, its now officially closed. Heres Paul's last update.

2-4-99

After over two years of great levels and reviews for Quake and Quake 2, I have decided to move on to other endeavors in my life and leave the reviewing scene altogether. This site will stay up as long as my host will let it but it will no longer be maintained. If any of the links do not work then... so be it! Please do not ask me where levels are or how to play them. A big thanks go to all the level authors that contributed to this site. Without them we wouldn't have been able to enjoy Quake 2 for as long as we did. Also, a big thanks goes to Mosquito, Stupak, and Sniv for your contributions to this site and to everyone else who have made an impact on this site.Oh yeah... thanks Crash, Matt, Gene, and Eric for all your support and help too. Farewell to all...

Other news, Headshot has released his lastest map, Hidden Agenda (211Kb). Haven't played it yet since I'm downloading it now, but the piccys on Ramshackle look damn cool.

Anyway on with the news...

Finally got around to setting up my own account details here at MPQ. I'd been using Smash's account up until last Wednesday. (So if you'd wanted to get into the site you could of Smash =P). I mentioned this because the people who sorted it out were so quick. These people do a great job running and hosting all the wonderful sites you see on the PQ network.

Speaking of sites. I've been told I can finally mention the fact that Kable and Inferno's site, Caleb's Crypt, has now got hosting on PlanetBlood. Go take a peek at his and Inferno's mad ramblings (That is if you're a Blood 2 fan).

UKPak team released a set of beta (Quake) maps this week. This is truely amazing stuff. They look superb. Haven't had chance to play them yet, just have a look around. So you can download the beta from either here or here (3.2MB). These guys want feedback on them so once you've played them go email them what you think.

XLProdigy has moved his site to Terrafusion (His site appears to be down at the moment though). To celebrate this he has released a Quake 2 map, XLDM6 - XL Speed Junky (254Kb).

Escher has released a map(241Kb). Its a Quake 2 conversion of the Quake map Ultraviolent. The conversion is done extremely well. The lighting is very moody. I personally would like to see a conversion of De Bello Quakero or Razzi Amari.

Gamespyder was launched earlier this week. To explain what it is I did a cut and paste from their site:

GameSpyder is a complete categorized and searchable index of gaming web sites -- just what you're looking for. Built from the remains of the late great "SlipGate Central," we think you'll dig the new system.

Well I sort of dig it... I've added MPQ there. Tried a search for it, came up with 456 matches. It could take awhile to get too. Oh well.

The Adrenaline Vault has had a re-design. Its miles better than the previous look, which took ages to load.

Just read this on sCary's. AMD losing money. Thats funny. Go read this CNN article on it.

Got hold of Simcity 3000 and F-Zero X earlier this week. SC3000 is damn cool. I think I'll end up playing alot it of. Same goes for F-Zero X. It may lack trackside detail but its one fun game!!!

Finally played more Zelda. I'm now in the Forest Temple. Will this game ever end?

I've updated the "How they map article" since the thread on QBoard had more stuff in it.

Xori creamed himself earlier today when it found a server running his lovely Quake 2 map, Mortal Comeback (lt_dm1). So pop over to the Hairball Hell q2 server which is at 216.160.8.113:27910.

For all you IRC jockeys out there you'll probably wanna check out this place. Its irc.bOrk.co.uk #mappers.uk. Loads of people go here ranging from the UKPAK peeps to Peej and co.

Uploaded the new improved archives. Took me awhile but it was I think it was worth it. If you find any mistakes in there email me.

Also archived last months news.

Programming. What fun. I hate it when I spend a good couple of hours fixing a bug, writing loads of code, deleting when it doesn't work. Then suddenly realising I should remove "- 1" from a big calculation and the bug is fixed. Dammit!