So where to start? Well big news at the moment is the step up in the Unreal Tourney vs Quake 3 Arena battle, with the recent release of the Quake 3 demo test (read as just another test made to sound a little less dull *cough*) and the announcement today that UT will be available world wide by the 22nd of this month. And for lots and lots of reasons, the race between these two has never been closer.

Now I'm not gonna sit here and spew forth my opinions of the new Q3a test and the latest release candidate of UT floating round the net as many others have been, cos basically, with so many people preaching about what's good and what's not and which is best you must be sick of it all by now. I know I am. J But there are some very important things you need to know, most of which don't effect what you'll like about either game, more how likely it is you'll be able to find anywhere you can play it online, and what state it will be in when you do actually get on a server...

See it's long been obvious that although both games are technically new releases, neither actually bring anything new to the genre that we can't find in any of the other FPS games currently available or in one of their many modifications, except a pretty new engine and the convenience of having it all in one exe. So although both games have their own individual quirks and one may be better than the other at one thing and worse than the other at another, neither, in terms of game play, is that far ahead of the other. Now many people will disagree with that I'm sure, but tbh, I'll be frank, I'm not one for religiously following a design company now. After having met a large proportion of the game development community I`ve come to the conclusion that none of them are the Messiah`s that they are described to be by the press, and there is no one individual alive that makes or breaks a new game. Many people worship Carmack for being miles ahead of everyone else in terms of his technical mind, but a good game engine is only 30% of a game, as he himself has said. Many people think Steed is the greatest modeler alive, but good models on a crap engine still look poor cos only a fraction of their total frames are seen. So through the laws of the collective, although both id and Epic have particularly outstanding individuals, the effect of these individuals is watered down by others weaknesses, and blow for blow, both teams have created very equal games in terms of gameplay. They both offer all the mods you'd expect people to ask for, strong team play, a good, situation orientated weapon selection and good graphics and presentation. In terms of game play, which release wins over the other will come down quite simply to personal preference. And if it weren't for a couple of things that have come to my attention of late, I'd quite happily sit on my fence for good. See there's some problems. And they're quite serious.

Unreal Tourney`s netcode being one, and Quake 3 Arena`s memory requirements being the other. Now when the first couple of demo builds came out for Ut I ranted about how poor they were and after a while Hakeem and myself came to the conclusion there was a nasty bug somewhere which Epic eventually acknowledged and promised to fix. Only they haven`t. At least if they have, it`s not done the netcode any favours. Big UT games just don`t work. Infact, games with more than just one opponent on the server, don`t work. At all. The latest build we`ve messed with ran like a dog with anymore than about four players on the server, and that`s on a 100Mb switch on a nice P3 450 box. And although you can quite happily fit two or three servers on the average specifaction server machine, the net code as it stands won`t ever allow for good, clean matches of the kinda of standard we`d be expecting with the forth coming season of US PGL and Euro PGL next year. Ut atm just isn`t competition standard, and because of this won`t develop the same league following that say, Quake 2 id CTF has, because the average joe won`t be able to get a game in without lagging out at some crucial point or being flattened by an lpb fps wh0re.

And whereas Ut will prolly just be too frustrating to play seriously, Q3a as it stands will just be too damned big to run a decent amount of servers. The current build uses a staggering 70Mb per server instance at it`s default hunk size, and at lower values causes multiple server instances to page continuely, the lowest setting for which Carmack has admitted will rise in the next version.

John, is there a reason the memory usage on the demo server jumped up so dramatically from q3test 1.08? I can no longer run multiple servers on one box because it`s so big and at least one gaming ISP I know can`t either, effectively cutting the servers available in half. I did some comparisons of memory usage below:
Q3Test 1.08 40,612K
Q3DemoTest 70,104K
Unreal Tournament Demo v348 Dedicated - 18,444K
Also, I heard a suggestion of using com_hunkmegs 8 instead of the default 48. What exactly does that do? Thanks.

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To efficiently pack memory, we allocate a single block at startup time. By default, it is 48 megs, which is how much is needed to run the largest map and load all the models. A dedicated server doesn't need most of that, so you can get by with a lot less.

Com_hunkmegs 16 should be safe. 8 might work with the current build, but won't in the next one, because I have moved something from a separate memory space into the main one now.

(Ta Sean)

Now that all sounds annoyingly techie but what it means in plain English is the largest of the reasonably small deathmatch maps in Quake 3 Arena will require around 70Mb of memory to run on a server without having the server use virtual memory, which for those that don`t know, would require the server machine to access it's hard disk, which makes play jumpy and laggy. Now the last test allowed us to run perhaps five or six servers on one box here at Barrysworld, and we have fairly well spec`ed machines. However, at 70Mb a server and with memory prices through the roof since the earthquake in Taiwan, no ISP will be able to justify running more than a handful of Q3a servers because it will mean only having one server per box as opposed to a half dozen of any other game. Hence for instance, the lack of Bw servers while we wait to hear from Xian if the paging situation can be changed. And that`s with just the fairly small dm maps. I`ve had the privilege of seeing some preview shots of maps that CTF mastermind Zoid is working on for possible release prior to Q3a going on sale, and they're huge. And I don`t mean just big, I mean h00ge. Vaguely reminiscent of the two Contest Arenas in Ra2 they sport gorgeous architecture mixing twisting turning close combat corridors with vast cavernous rooms perfect for rail nets that you just know will reduce your fps to rock bottom in a big fire fight... And if Dave is gonna set a standard like that it`s obvious that 70Mb is gonna rocket as mods push the map size higher and higher. So although the netcode in Q3a is miles from the laggy and unpredictable UT we`ll be lucky to find a free server to play it on. Sommit is giving me a nasty feeling these two are gonna be famous for being great single player games...

Prior to monday morning`s release of the Quake 3 demo (test, soz almost forgot that ;-P) in my vegitated state I was frantically searching for sommit less sad than irc to occupy myself with whilst I wound down from my course work and my actual job, and in a desperate plunge I found myself playing a large amount of Quakeworld again. At first it was largely fueled by my good friend PsyGrrl`s hatred for Quake 2 and a vague curiosity as to what was keeping people playing a game I had got bored of and quit almost two years previously. It then turned into an epic quest to stop ppl stomping on me so hard after having lect and bif cane me on levels I used to rule with an iron fist. Frustration setting in lect eventually caved to my constant requests for help with my config and I eventually found out what was keeping Quakeworld alive so long after code development ended.

You see, it`s the proxies. Now to most Qw players I`m gonna sound exceedingly dumb and behind the times, but in the days (*cough, shutit, I`m not *that* old yet J) when I played Qw we were too busy creaming ourselves about the ability to use the mousewheel and just how cool death32c and base32b were to worry about the rather lame and disfunctional proxy programs that were appearing. So when lect sent me my new config and had me install a copy of Qizmo 2.8 I got a rather nasty shock.

Now time and time again I`ve heard Qw players waffle on about how much more solid Qw felt that it's following incarnations, and from my experience of the classic at the time, I found it difficult to see what I meant. But after firing up Qizmo, connecting to the Barrysworld terminal and activiting the client to server and server to client compression I suddenly understood. Possible rate settings almost double and suddenly you`re playing on a lan quality connection on single channel isdn. It's more than solid, it's amazing, and in an instant I found myself transported into a world of precision playing a world away from the one in five on target rails you get in Quake 2. You can times everything. Perfectly.

And suddenly my playing improved just as remarkably... Donning my l33t #quake.uk inspired alias of Fish I spent a good three hours on the top of the BarrysWorld FFA server scoreboard, disrupted only by Qizmo dumping me for running an unregistered copy of the proxy. Old skillz, such as bouncing players in the air and skewering them to walls with the lightning gun and grenade rocket jumping tremendous heights into the air washed back to me, and once again I was lost in that blur of frantic rocket fights and nailgun showers that kept me playing the game for the first year odd online. Similarities between that and the faster playing Quake3test became evident and old skills that were long redundant in Quake 2 are once again applying muchos fragging power in the new game. And for those three hours I was completely consumed.

Until that is, I stopped for a cup of tea. And I starting thinking again. Curiosity and journalistic rationality taking over I deleted the proxy and reconnected to an attempt to distinguish the actual effect of the higher rate, and suddenly I found myself back on the bottom of the score board and splattered across several walls. Kinda annoyed I should be forced to use an external program just to be able to compete on even terms with the opposition, and suffering from a minor dent in my shield of steel ego, I wandered back to irc pondering the whole experience.

Nostalgia being what it is, my interest in the game quickly disappeared as the old maps became familiar again and admittedly I was all too happy when I got word to wait up Sunday night for the Q3a demo release, but at least now, when people like bigfoot rant on about how much more solid Quakeworld feels than newer releases I understand what he means. But if they expect to see games that require so little data per client that they can update at that rate again then they're fools if they expect them to look any prettier or include more complex features or gameplay. If that's what you call "solid" in terms of connection quality then until the average personal bandwidth increases, Quakeworld I'm afraid, is what you're stuck with.

But enough ranting, I`ve more than abused my waffle quota for this update, so time for some shouts.

A muchos gold chain and puffer jacket bigup to Mockler for informing me that the For Legends Only lanparty is drawing close and looking for entrants. Featuring names such as Momento Mori`s Shub-Nigga and sponorship from Diamond, Guillemot and AMD it`s shaping up to be a classic, similar to the recent EuroQuake event. Worth a look.

A 80`s retro w0rd to Kia and Durzel (who I might add needs to find some content of his own rather than leeching other people`s... J) for finally activating the #quake2.uk website columns. Including words from an assorsetment of familar faces you`ll find much less family orientated rants (*evil grin*) than you would on the BarrysWorld page. Again, worth a look, esp if you fancy laughing at how lame some of the regulars are... (Six days login Kia, wtf are you like? J)

Regular readers to the column will remember a while ago I passed on LinX`s thoughts on the new m$ Intellipoint Explorer mouse, which was quickly commented on by the community which led me to promise to test one myself. So finally I`ve got round to doing so.

Now I`m sure you`ve all read various reviews of the laser based mouse that drops the traditional ball and roller method of tracking movement and ops for high tech digital emulation. Retailing for as little as £25 I picked mine up for an extortionate £45 at PC World out of laziness. Having got the beast home (and believe me, if you're used to the midgey Intellipoint mouse this will feel like you're holding a brick for the first couple of days) and plugged it in, (which I might add, is all you need to do to install it bar putting the CD in the drive first...) I spent a good two or three days playing solidly to get used to it. Now admittedly I had to struggle with the change in sensitivity setting that the upgrade to mouseware 3.0 caused, which had a large effect on my ability to use the mouse for a while, but after a few days practice I can safely say this is the one purchase I`ve made for my PC I can say I'm completely happy with. It's a blinder, fast, responsive, light in the hand and fast to react. The solid 125Hz USB rate makes for ultra smooth movement, making tracking the enemy stupidly easy on a good network connection. The extra buttons once bound to unused keys can be utilized in any program, giving you access to more crucial binds and weapon switches without moving your hands away from their default positions, and the ability to hold all five buttons down without slowing or altering the tracking makes the mouse stupidly easy to use, especially in Quakeworld where it's possible to bind a different key to switch to, and fire each weapon separately.

And then, there's the fact it glows. Yes, my mouse F'ing glows!!! J And you can't begin to understand how satisfyingly f"+"r3 a glowing mouse is till you've tried it. All in all, a struggle to adapt to, but one of the best buys available this year. And look for bigger and better versions in the future as m$ convert the more popular of their range to the evil eye technology...

Anyway, life being what it is, I'm well overdue for bed. So I think I'll wrap this up for now. I'll leave you with a rather lush picture from the recent Quake 3 Arena demo for those of you stuck in the lower system settings wondering why the fuss about the new graphics engine... Come V5 and it's own personal power brick, you could all be looking at this kinda pic as you cruise around fragging at 60fps. Click for the .bmp backdrop ver currently residing on my OS...

Track of the Moment Miranda, Mars Needs Women
Slamming trance beats with a catch line that seems to make so much more sense at 142mg of the good stuff. J (And no, I still can't get over you spending two days on a bench in Paddington station after a night at the Fridge. You ever triple drop again I'll kill you...)

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