It has come to my attention that Stagdm3 - Assisted Suicide.(reviewed Sunday) looks horrible in software mode. I tried to look it for the review but on that day WinQuake seemed to like bombing out on me. I've now had the chance to look at it and it does look very dodgy. There are lots of little bright spots on the graphics. Very odd looking!

Dah Shambler has opened a new website, speKturm. Its a level review site for SP levels for Daikatana. Which reminds me, I think I'll finish of my MPD site, hehe.

I finally downloaded the Mortyr (single player) demo. What a complete and utter disappointment! I spent close to three hours over fours days (the connection to the ftp was that bad!) downloading all 27Mb of it, to finish it in 5 minutes! It contains just one map, which whilst there are some very cool looking scenes is for the most part very bland and boring. If you disagree with me then please do email me, you might have seen something I missed.

Quote of the day:
Did somebody say duel? Get f***ed!
This is from Spin, one of the reviewers at Inspection. It was a comment he put in the first draft of the Baldm6 review. For fairly obvious reasons I changed it to something more subtle :
Did somebody say duel? Not a chance.
The first time I read it though it did make me laugh. These teenagers, I dunno, mouths like sewers =).

Peej already mentioned it but, Thresh from the Firing Squad has a done an article on the comparison of the old version of the q3test (1.05) against the new version (1.07). Its not bad, other than it pointing out the bleeding obvious!

Kids say some of funniest things, so if that amuses you like it does me, go read Bobby Duncanson's .plan file update from a couple of days ago.

For cartoon animal violence you might want to check out Joe's Cartoons which is extremely funny. Two of note are the Frog in the blender and the Gerbil in the microwave.

The all new and improved archives are almost finished and *should* be up soon. Also Rush is working away on some Quake 2 reviews which should be up later on in the week.

About the draw the Shambler contest. Its not to draw a SHAMBLER! Its to draw him, the guy who goes by the name of Shambler.

Terrafusion has had a make over and I have to say it looks a lot better than it did before. I hear some bigs things are going on there behind the scenes so it will be an interesting place to keep an eye on.

I also see Peej is doing the Levels section on PlanetQuake whilst Geezer is away on his holidays. So we can still expect good coverage on there. I popped by Peej's page and see its gone all yellow. Very mellow I thought. I also hear Mr Excessus is going away for a whole month, lucky git!

So to get things started, there are 11 new Quake reviews. Its a mixed bag this one. There are also 3 new Quake 2 reviews by Rush, who is a new Quake 2 reviewer here at MPQ. Welcome aboard Rush! Later on today I will have 6 Your Reviews from the Fat Controller, this guy is almost churning out as many reviews as me!!!

You may notice that the smaller screen shots now look better. I made switch from Paint Shop Pro 4 to 5, and 5 does a better job of resizing images. For proof check these two shots out. Both have been resized from 640x480 to 200x150 then back up again. [PSP 4] [PSP 5]. PSP 5 smoothes things better and generally does a much better job.

I'm now running a competition here at MPQ. Basically what you have to is draw your impression of Shambler, the monstrosity which runs these two sites, here and here. There is no prize, its just for amusement. The rules are simple just draw a picture (400x450 in JPG format) of him then send it to me. I'll pick the winner and stick it on the site. Anyone that does a Mr Potato Head picture will be instantly disqualified, thats just too easy. I'm going to have ago and I'm sure I can get Kable to rumble up something as well.

I'm going to rewrite the your review page. Just to make things perfectly clear. As in crystal. Probably end up like mud though, but I gotta try.

This gets my quote of the day. From Excessus :
To be honest, i found Baldm6 very disgusting, mainly for the texture set that Bal choosed
Now you see why I'm having problems getting Baldm6 reviewed at Inspection. Incidentally that review, along with another review, are now up at Inspection. So after you've finished here, go there.

I have been told on several occasions to mention this site. Goetz's FreeStylE Page. Basically this page is full of extremely cool demos for Quake. Lots of tricks and tips done in custom maps. Some of the stuff there is amazing! I think Goetz plays maybe a little too much Quake =).

5p34k1ng 0f wh4ck a55 T3xt, you might wanna pop by TEAMGimp,.TEAMShambler Quake reviews and check the news for the 24/07/99. It appears someone sent him an interesting email =). Also as funny as it sounds, the joke email I sent isn't far off the truth. There really are people who think an A is actually a 4. I've had a couple of those type of emails.

A new version of the Q3Test came out last Saturday/Sunday. I've already voiced some comments on it. The new map is probably the most playable of the three, since its small and I prefer 1-on-1. Thing is, I just think it looks crap. The architecture is very drawn out. The high up ceilings and stupid plain criss crossing roof bars. Still its fun to play but I hope in the finished product the maps are of a different style because I'm just not taken by this high tech gothic shit.

Monsto forwarded this link to me about a review by LowTax of the Doom comic book. Very funny!

Fileplanet is really beginning to get on my tits. The amount of times it gives crap links and I get time outs is getting a little too high. We also decided that the counters for downloads on FP must be broken. There just cannot be any reason why some maps are downloaded so many times.

I finally got my LAN working. To cut a long story short I changed two of the network cards with two of another brand, booted everything up and it worked first time. Very annoying, but it all worked out in the end.

I played and finished King Pin. The SP game is very short and isn't as good as Half Life. I do however really like the style of it, the moody atmosphere and lighting. Big ass baddies and cool weapons. Some of missions are interesting, but in last set of maps it just turns into out and out gun fights. DM is also good as well. Faster than Half Life and infinitely more interesting. I rate it on par with Quake 2 as far enjoyment goes. The weapons are cool and setting someone on fire with the flame thrower is very enjoyable. Watching Kable running around screaming is so cool. I hear that online though that its complete rubbish. Patches ahoy! This review really nails how the game is good and proper, well worth reading.

I also converted a couple of Quake 2 maps over to King Pin, not that its difficult. All you do it rename the entities in the maps to ones King Pin has. Easy peasy. The hard bit is converting the Quake 2 wal files to TGA files. The only problem is with the sky textures. They don't work. The maps load up with no problems but just do not use them. So anyway, I played with a couple of maps. One was Spogs Mobieus Trip (which incidentally you can read a review of at Inspection) and here are four screenies I rumbled up. [One] [Two] [Three] [Four].

I tried Descent 3 out in DM. Wow. It looks pretty amazing. Its more of a FFA game, 1-on-1 whilst interesting isn't too hot. Whoever has the most powerful missile usually wins. Its a case of he who fires fastest gets all. The thing which pissed me of though was the fact that mouse control was such a bitch. Configuring it was a pain, then once playing it was about as responsive as... erm... something which isn't very responsive at all. Erm.. yeah.

Heres something which just cracked me up when I heard it. I was watching the World Pool Championship on Sky Sports on Thursday night. Sid Waddell is one of the commentators and just comes out with some of the funniest shit ever. Anyone thats heard him before will know what I mean. The match was Jim Rempe against Francisco Bustamante. At the time the score was 7/8 (Rempe leading). It looked like Rempe was going to win, since he just needed to win this rack. Now he was flying away with it, the camera then panned over to Francisco. He was sat in his chair, shaking his head with hand on his fac, then Sid drops in with this...
<Sid> Blue chalk smeared on the thumb like warriors blood.
I mean wtf, now thats just funny. Or it could just be me...

I saw Star Wars earlier in the week. What a load of crap. One of the most boring films I have ever had the misfortune to see. It just seemed like they'd filled the film up with CG and forgotten to make it interesting. Reminds of quite a few computer games. Anyway, I just hope the next film is alot better. Couldn't be any worse!

I noticed this interesting update on Peej 'n' Fribs last weekend.
- secondly, I've already copped some criticism from a certain ungrateful bastard who shall go unnamed, to the effect that I should post more news. Well what the hell am I to do if there's nothing to post!!? Before you complain, how about you go search for some news, and send it in to us, eh?
Frib you just can't win. Now you know what its like to be on the end of it ;).

Pingu has released Back2School.(216Kb). I'm downloading it now. Comments later.

ProdigyXL is now nicely settled at PQ with a funky new site. It took Kable ages to get that design done. He kept changing it all the time. Also Kable said you should be using the font arial, size -1 on your news updates because otherwises its using the browser default which in this case is crappy Times Scumbag Roman. Anyway he has some new screenies up on his site. I am extremely glad we'll see the Special Edition of xl1dm4 because I had a rough beta of it and the Quake 3/Kingpin texture set is so much better. The new map that he is working on also looks pretty cool.

I think we can also expect a flood of new maps in the next few days. Bal has said he *may* (that guy loves to keep us waitng) be releasing two new maps, or maybe he was joking? Then there is Mr Excessus with exdm5 in the works.

Seems like there are some weird things going on at id. Brandon James, mapper, has left. Heres what he said on the Giga-a-board.
Why did I leave id Software? I'm not going to answer that. However, I will say that I really needed time to get by myself, to pick up the hobbies (music, gaming, etc) that I had put aside for far too long. As for any other reasons, I will not talk about or answer those now or in the future.
The guys gotta work though (well he probably doesn't have to since he's most likely loaded), so it will be interesting as to where it turns up at.

Paul Jaquays then said this on the board.
Why did he go? I don't know. That was his personal decision. But he wasn't fired or anything even close to that. Let's make that clear. Frankly, we were all pretty stunned by both his decision to leave and the timing of the decision. I didn't find out until the following Monday. Brandon has a lot of varied talents and I wish him well in whatever he chooses to do in the future. How will this affect Quake 3? Brandon James's incomplete maps and other responsibilities will be divided up between us. It does mean a bigger work load for the rest of us, but that's what we get paid to do.
Maybe Q3A will be delayed a little. I do find it very odd why he left at this time almost when the game is almost completed. He is kinda shitting on the people there.

I see that sCary has changed the colours on his page. Now it looks like someone has sneezed all over it. Funky bright green links just look ugly.

The Qboard has had an influx of newbies. A couple of daft threads and messages have been posted but things will most likely calm down.

I got an email earlier on in the week from head guy at the Choas mod. I downloaded it a while back but haven't got round to playing it yet. Actually I have a stack of Quake 2 mods that I haven't installed yet. Anyway by the magic of the clip board here is the email, in its entirey, void of spelilng mistakes =P :
Hi News Peoples!,

We have got alot going on over here at Chaotic Dreams! As you may know, Major, our new coder, has debugged and optomozed our mod already. He and Spa feel that ver2 of Chaos should be out in 6 to 8 weeks. I will give you the lowdown on our new version closer to its release date, but for now, there are a couple of recent events that I'd like to announce.

First thing is a whole new site design. Spa did an awesome job on it too. The artwork is top notch. We also have several new features on our site.

•     We have expanded our online help/stategy guides
•     A voting poll will be in place soon
•     We have a live server page where you can jump on a server from.
•     We have had our 200,000th hit as well
•     Myself and BeelzeBubba have been accepted on the Chaotic Dreams team

Here is the Chaotic Dreams site...
http://www.planetquake.com/chaotic

Secondly we'd like to announce a new official Chaos mappack. The raYgunn team made it for us and they rock! Even got a kickass CTF map in there too.

We have a Chaos clan competition coming up on July 17th. If you mention this competition please direct people to the Clan TnT website as they are the ones hosting the competition. http://members.tripod.com/clan_tnt
This clan, by the way, is desperately lookin for someone to host them and get em off of Tripod.

Well thats it for now, but with all the new energy being poured into this project, you will hear from us again, I assure you. Thank you in advance for any coverage you provide.

Frag in Peace,
Spank

I saw the Matrix earlier on in the week and its good movie. The special effects are amazing and I thought the Agent Orange guy was brilliant. His accent was just stupid! Also its only 7 days til Star Wars arrives on the sliver screen here in the UK. The local cinema has 30+ showings of in on the first two days of opening!

I've also had chance to play some other computer games instead of Quake! First up are a couple of Playstation games which are Driver and V-Rally 2. Both are driving games (not that the titles don;t give them away).

Driver is set in the 70's with the big funky American cars which handle like huge bricks. The idea behind the game is pretty good. Doing bank jobs, ramming shop fronts etc.. Unfortunately the game engine stinks! The draw ahead is rubbish and pop-up is a regular occurance. Then you have the problem when you play at night in the rain, the game slows to a crawl! So avoid it!

V-Rally 2 is alot better. It has all of this years rally cars, so you are able to smash up the new Ford Focus! Wahoo! The handling is much better than the first V-Rally game, but instead of being twitchy its very happy to slide the back end out. It feels very sluggish. Other than though its excellent, lots of tracks and cars to crash.

I also have couple of PC games to mention. They are Dungeon Keeper 2 and Descent 3. DK2 looks superb and is much improved over the original. It doesn't really offer anything new but its just done better that much better. Descent 3 is good as well. The engine has such clear and crisp graphics and the level of details is top notch. The new outdoor sections really add to the game. Unfortunately I still get confused as hell when playing since the machine you're controlling have full movement on all axis. It also is one of those games that give me a really bad headache after playing it. All the previous Descent games did that. Maybe its because I'm required to think a little :P.

All of this makes me worry a little. Out of the 4 games mentioned 3 are sequels which just consist of better execution of same idea with a little expansion. Driver is fairly original but they have just screwed it up by having a crap engine for it!

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.