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Quake 3 Arena at
E3 Anyone who reads GameGirlz knows that the entire staff went to L.A. for E3. I had anticipated the trip for months and when I finally got to the show, I really didn't know what to expect. But before I start babbling about the awesome time I had there and rambling on about how cool it was to meet BostonChick, PMS-Ivy_Girl, PMS-Bobbi, and the GameGirlz staff, I'll cut to the chase. I'd just like to say once again how great it was to meet everyone in person. If you're really interested in my E3 exploits outside of Quake3Arena, check out the GameGirlz E3 Diary. The first day at E3 I didn't get around to playing much Q3A, I was busy going around to other software companies. The only time I picked up the controls that day, I started off in mid-game with a -19 defecit. The situation was 1on1 on The Longest Yard. Without going into details, by the time I had to leave, I was in first place with positive 9 (Oh hell yes!). One of the things I was very interested in comparing at E3 was the performace of Q3A on a Voodoo3 vs the performance on a TNT2 card. Note to anyone who went to E3 and wonders what crackpipe I'm smoking -- these were not the machines set up by Activision. I won't post any benchmarks or anything, because in many ways, benchmarks are pointless accounts of hardware performance. Instead, I'll give it to you in plain english. The Voodoo3 at low resolutions, 16-bit color depth (640x480 and 800x600) flies like MightyMouse. I didn't get a chance to turn on the FPS display though, so I can't give you a solid figure. I also don't know the specs of the machines that were running Q3A, but if I had to guess, I'd say they were 450 P-II's or higher. The Creataive Labs Riva TNT2 performance was also incredibly smooth at the same resolutions. I noticed that smoke trails from both the shotgun and rockets seemed to chop the V3 a bit... but very slightly. It never hurt my game performance, even when there was tons of smoke on the screen. At higher resolutions, the Voodoo3 won for sheer speed. But I could definately see the loss in image quality, especially when you compare 16-bit color depth to 32-bit. Those extra bits used for effects really make a difference. I personally run Quake3Arena at 800x600, 32-bit color depth, and max texture detail on my Viper V770 TNT2 and it runs great. But on to day two, where the real fun began. I walked up to the Activision platform in the South Wing and stood in line, waiting for a turn to play, keeping track of who was kicking butt and who was getting kicked in the butt. There were 8 players on the server and only 4 computers at the platform. So somewhere on the other side of E3 there was another platform connected to this one. The computers were set up in a circular configuration, facing outward. This was a good idea because then you could actually use sound without bothering the person next to you (or you being bothered by them). I only recognized one name on the server: Kornelia. She was leading by a fairly wide margin, so I circled around the platform until I found the machine she was using. Heh, she had brought her own mouse for the occasion, and it was certainly paying off. Realizing that she wasn't going to be leaving her computer any time soon, I waited for another machine to become available. It didn't take too long. The boys were getting upset and leaving because Kornelia was whooping their tushes. Finally... my turn! My Quake3Arena experience up to that point had been maybe 3 LAN games against my roommate that lasted 20 minutes each. But I've always been able to rely on my Classic Quake skills to give me an edge against a less-seasoned player. I like to think of myself as a "smart" player... sure, there are people that can out-skill my ass any day of the week, but I thrive on being able to adapt and counter someone's playing style. Speaking of my playing style, I'm biased towards Classic Quake. I'm not much of a QW player, even though I've been a modem user for a long time. The only enjoyment I get out of Quake2's multiplayer is through RA2, and even then, I only play with the ladies of Clan PMS or GameGirlz staff members. I have been trying to garner people's impressions of Quake3Arena on both LAN and over the modem. The general opinion is that Quake3Test rocks on LAN but is tough on modem. Sure it's tough on the modem, it's completely different than both Quake1 and Quake2's gameplay. Personally, I like the basic premise behind the netcode of Q3A: Movement is like QuakeWorld - instant to the client, but lagged to the server. It's major fallbacks are that ther are times when you "see" yourself move, when in fact, you've been hit, and you have to wait for the damage packets to get to you before you see the jolt. This is at times REALLY annoying, especially when you're racing someone to pick up an item, you get the sound and message in your inventory saying you have the item, but when you try to switch to it, you actually haven't picked it up. The weapons fire like Classic Quake - they're lagged according to your ping. Why do I like this? You can actually adjust your aim according to your ping in Quake3Arena. That's something that I abhorred about Quake2: seeing my rockets seemingly hit my target, when in fact, they're totally missing. Or the vice versa was true in Q2: I would move past an incoming rocket thinking I had dodged it when in reality, I had moved right into it. The more important of these problems have been cleaned up in Quake3, the weapon prediction. But players still seem to walk through each other due to the client movement prediction. But I digress... back to Q3 at E3. I had my controls set up in no time, and it was time to frag or be fragged. The first map I played was the Longest Yard. Kornelia simply kicked everyone's lilly ass on that map. I came in second, but that didn't amount to much since the scores of the top three were something like 20, 7, 5.... Expecting to cycle to Q3test1, I was already planning my control of the map. Well... I'm not that much of a dork, but I do think about what I'm going to do first, based on where I spawn. A completely foreign map pops up in front of me and I'm thrown off. If you've kept track of the bootleg movie releases of Q3A, you've seen this map in a RealVideo or Quicktime format. It's a fairly small, somewhat symmetrical and enclosed map with two levels. The bottom level is kind of cross-shaped, and is connected to the upper level by staircases at the four points of the cross. This is a very vague and inaccurate description, I know, but I don't have any screenshots for ya. This was certainly my favorite map. It had very strong gameplay, which, in my opinion, was a first for the Quake3 maps I've played and seen. I picked up on this map in about 3 minutes and was traversing the thing backwards in 5 ;). The map had a Quad on the first level at the very center of the map. Instead of making the quadded player incredibly strong for 30 seconds, it made them a mutual target. Everyone was paranoid of the quad guy, so whoever picked up the item got flack from everyone. Heh. Kinda cool hearing the console voice say "Quad Damage" about 8 times during the life of one Quad. At the end of the map, Kornelia was still leading in frags, but I only trailed by 4 or 5 that time around. The next map was also brand new. Jump pads were present in this one, but for functionality rather than to spruce up gameplay like they do on The Longest Yard. The map had the grenade launcher which is NOT like the one in the hacked Q3test3, folks. The grenades in the build at E3 are bouncy and fun like they are in Quake 1. Weapon placement on this map was pretty good, but the level lent more to FFA than any sort of team game, as far as I could imagine. The map wasn't symmetrical, so there's no point trying to describe the layout. There did seem to be a centeral room with a plasma gun, but I think I only met up with maybe 3 people in that room throughout the entire duration of the map. There was less armor than what you find on Q3test1, which I didn't like too much, but the map did play much better than Q3test1. At the level change, a guy comes up to me and says, "Mind if I use your machine for a demo?" With my competitive juices flowing, I really didn't want to give up the controls, but I did. Miffed, I stood aside while this short guy with glasses took my place. Then I noticed his nametag. Tim Willits. I smiled to myself as I realized I was standing next to one of the "id." As fascinating as it was watching Mr. Willits play, I was still blood-lusting. I circled the platform and saw a large guy decked out in an id jersey and cap. I walked up and read his nametag. Paul Jaquays. Noone was interviewing him at the moment so I introduced myself. He hadn't heard of GameGirlz.Com, but hey, I didn't care. I started chatting with him, remarking on the new levels. I told him how well I thought these two new levels played compared to the ones that were released with the Q3Test. I also asked him if either one were the rumored 1 on 1 level that's going to be released in the next generation of the Test. He said neither were it, so I'm looking forward to the next Test so we can see what id has in mind for 1 on 1. I asked about the footsteps, and told Mr. Jaquays one of the things I loved about Quake1 was that skilled players had to learn the sounds of the pickup items in order to anticipate their prey. Quake2 loses that element of skill with its overbearing footsteps, in my opinion. He said that they had tried Q3A without footsteps, but it really didn't work well at all. I told him that, to its credit, Q3A footsteps are less obtrusive and I've actually noticed myself using item pickup sounds again to locate my opponents. Now, Quake just wouldn't be Quake without being able to record demos and create utilities to refilm them. I was told that Quake3Arena wouldn't be released with any kind of demo editor, but it's certainly going to be possible for 3rd parties to write their own. Being the demo fiend that I am, I was very happy hearing this news. Unfortunately, according to the Quake3Test, servers need to be set with g_sychronousClients 1 in order to allow client-side demo recording. This means hopping on a server and recording a frag-fest demo won't be possible unless the server lets you. I'm pretty disappointed in this because I can't count the hours I've spent watching my own and other player's demos, learning gameplay styles and new tricks. How else are you going to show off that 3-in-one rail or gloat in the glory of an impressive rocket battle? Sorry folks, screenshots just don't do it for me. Hopefully this server-side option is only in place for the Quake3Test and it will be more of a client option in later generations and the final release. After talking a while longer, Mr. Jaquays offered me the controls of his machine, which I gladly took. We were back on the cross-shaped map, which was quickly becoming my favorite of the lot. CRT (the guy responsible for KeyGrip), Tim Willits, some guy named JohnC (definately not Carmack because he was doing interviews all day), Paul Jaquays, and some other unknowns joined the server. The fraglimit was upped from the standard 20 to about 40 or 50, and about 5 bots with ranging skill levels were added to the game. The bots were appropriately named Easy, Medium, and Hard, so there was never any problem detecting who was real and who wasn't. They all were pretty easy to defeat, and oftentimes I considered them free frags. Their dodging capabilities weren't too keen for machine guns, but they did do a better job when weapons like rockets were used against them. I know these bots I played against will be nothing like the ones in the final version, so I'm not going to talk too much about them right now. They did show promise, and that's all that really matters this far away from an official release. I don't know if it was the smog in L.A. or what, but my game was just on that time around. I'm a big fan of Q3's console voice that keeps you up current with your rankings. There's something so rewarding about hearing, "You have taken the lead!" and, "Impressive." When I started widening the frag margin between me and the second place player, I noticed a camera crew out of the corner of my eye. Actually, they were practically shoving the camera in front of me... but I didn't mind. I was having a ball. People spectating the game started to get into it too with small pockets of cheers and "Oooooooh's!" Speaking of demos, I really wish I had one of that game. I flattened about 6 people with my Quadded DBS, and got a 3-splatter rocket kill. It was a thing of beauty. I took first place that game. I don't remember who placed second because I was trying to bind a key to screenshot =). So what's my verdict on id Software's progress with the Quake3Test? The candidate at E3 was very smooth and very promising. I'm really looking forward to getting my hands on the next Test and sampling the improvements of the netcode for low bandwidth players. In short, I think it's going to rock. Send feedback to Goliath.
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