?

Challenge:
Home
News Archive
Forums
CPMA
Maps
Smackdown2
People
Coverage
Features
Interviews
Links
Help Wanted

Powered by:

Columns:
Jjonez 26 Jul
Hoony 06 Jun
Khaile 28 Apr
PhaNToM 20 Oct
dethkultur 14 Sep
CHiNX 20 Aug
Mr.CleaN 24 Jun
twoAM 23 Aug
Wiebo de Wit 08 Aug
RooS 31 Jul
jude 19 Jun

Hosted
3.A.C
Interfaced
QWF

Affiliates:
Cached
Methos
Killer Instincts

CPL Europe

Friday, July 3, 1998
Weekend Games:
If all goes well, we'll have some games between Australia and New Zealand this Sunday, with Wolph and Dynamop [VOID] squaring up against Webby and Knight [Mohicans]. Full match coverage will kick-off from Monday and, unless there is some big news over the weekend, I'm going to take the time to get some other stuff done. The big news of the moment is that Quake2 v.3.17 is out and I'm going to give it a try as well. So, have a bonza weekend mateys (we Australians don't really speak like that ;-).

Now, as promised last night, Schroet Kommando tell their story of the incredible Quake battles at Holland's recent Qday3 tourney, where they met the extraordinary Swedish Clan Disney Devils.

Schroet Kommando Report on Qday3:
If you've tried clicking on the Schroet Kommando link, you'll have noticed that it's been broke :-(. Griff, the [SK] clan leader, emailed me to say they have a new temporary home at http://www.starbase.de/sk:

"Hope we will get our url back again, but i dont know when so inbetween please mention maybe some links won't work now... but they will work in the next days. Have a look at our demo section. There will be some regular updates for the demo page..."

This means the news that I was going to report can be accessed there, at http://www.starbase.de/sk/news.html. I recommend you go check it out, it's a good read. Here's an example"

"This long awaited finals should become a thriller. DD choosed DM2 (yeah we like this one) and we choosed DM6 (and this one too..). The tournament default was DMM3, TP2, no powerups. All the crowd was standing behind those DD guys, awaiting that they will crush us. But everything went different..... We won both halves with a comfortable victory, shocking most of the Quakers at QDay, especially those DD guys :P. Great victory in a very hard match against one of the top clans in Europe. Fun!!!. The 1o1 Compo went fine too, to bad that the Swedisch Norwegan guys had tp leave after quaterfinals. So Kane and Therion made it through the finals, where they fought 2 hard matches. The score was 1:1, time was short and so they decided to just let SK win 1o1 compo 1st and 2nd place :). The officials decided that Kane won after frags but this doesn't matter......".

These guys are looking forward to challenging Clan 9, and DR if/when they come to Europe, and the way they're playing you'd expect to see some close games :-).

QW 2.21 Modified "Eyes" Warning:
Confirmation from Frog, the creator of the fantastic FrogBot, that some of those invalid "eyes" messages QW 2.21 has been producing can be due to way it reacts to the Omicron and Frogbot Bots. Newer versions correct these problems.

"The latest Omicron fixes the invalid skin # error. The next Frogbot does too by a different method. In this latest version of the Omicron I'm not sure if extra eyes models are included (since these are no longer needed for the fix), but maybe it's just the numerous player models that are affecting QW 2.21. The reason for an invalid # error is the following: If you set skin for a player model back to 0 and then set the eyes model (ie. using a special player skin but normal eyes) then a bug in Quake means that the change model message gets read first meaning a non-zero skin is tried to be used for the eyes. Hence the error message. Mr Elusive and myself each found a workaround to this Quake bug. He solves it by sending network signals for bots and player manually via the WriteByte command. I use the faster method of using a separate entity for eyes and blanking the player entity model when eyes are used".

Thursday, July 2, 1998
[SK] Kane Vs [QPD] Timber, DM4:
There are so many good demos around, that I have now got a huge backlog to get through :-)). This one jumped up the queue, though. It's [SK] Kane, from Germany's clan Schroet Kommando, playing against [QPD] Timber, on DM4. The sparks do fly :-).

Our German reporter, DocSnyder, sent me the following match write-up:

"I watched Kane playing 4 games against QPD-Timber on Saturday, very exciting to see. The first two were played on a UK server Kane with a Ping of around 100 and Timber of around 50. They played DM4 (what a surprise :) ) with Timber's favourite DMM1 with Quad which Kane really seldom plays. Both games ended in a 14:14 tie, the second one with Kane jumping to a 6:-3 lead, then Timber came back to control the map up to a 14:6 lead for him but suddenly the tables turned again and Kane pulled out the draw in the last few minutes.

The other two games were played on a German server with the pings the other way round. They played DMM3 without Quad here and accidently TP1 (but they left it that way for the second game as well). Timber was lagged sometimes during the first game which Kane won comfortably about 15:4 (can't remember exactly). The second game was a demonstration of Kane's skills, Timber nearly wasn't lagged here anymore but still didn't have even a slight chance as Kane dominated from start to finish winning about 31:1".

This is the demo from the last game - kane_vs_timber_dm44.zip. Doc also added:

"in my opinion I can see really no one who can beat him on DM4 DMM3 with equal Ping, he's just so hard to play never making strategic mistakes, always knowing where his opponent is, what he does next and his aim with RL and Shaft is simply stunning. With Timber he's beaten all great european players, he hopes he can have a shoot at a death row player if they visit sweden to play [9]. (the game SK-9 will probably be in August as Therion then gets holidays at last. Envy of sunny Australia (raining here this evening) :)".

Tomorrow night, Schroet Kommando tell their story of the incredible Quake battles at Holland's recent Qday3 tourney, where they met the extraordinary Swedish Clan Disney Devils, the hot pick of the tournament (DD featured Sniket, Sectopod, MrKill and DaFFla ).

Sujoy Falls Up:
Sujoy has revamped his website with a totally fresh look, as he puts it:

"The whole fallen over thing was getting very silly and apart from being a nightmare to update, I don't think anyone could take me seriously with that wacky design. So here's the new layout for Summer - bright, airy, an excessive amount of geometric shapes but most importantly, vertical! A few people pleaded with me not to kill the fallen over look but there's no stopping progress".

With three month's summer holiday, Sujoy plans to spend a lot of time with the new site, which now has a broader focus than just Quake. The Quake section provides balanced news on Quake in the UK. Here's what Sujoy had to say about the recent 5 Nations games, for example:

"The Ireland-Scotland result from last week will stand. There was controversy about server and connection conditions for the game causing a large number of outbursts from both sides, but the final result of Ireland 5??, Scotland 2?? will be kept. I expect Scotland may feel a little disgruntled about it, but the Irish team also had a bad time when they played the England A side on servers in the UK. Since that result stood it's only fair that Ireland keep their win against Scotland. The Irish team are keen to prove their skill on the international Quake scene and are currently working hard to find a way to get better links over to the UK for the remaining games".

There is a helluva lot in this site, much more than you might at first imagine. Some of the other sections highly recommended are the demos page at http://www.sujoy.com/quake/demos.shtml, the Links page at http://www.sujoy.com/links.shtml, the Features page at http://www.sujoy.com/features/index.shtml, and the About page at http://www.sujoy.com/about.shtml.

Ewan's story:
Ewan kicked Kaile from the Scotland Vs Ireland games, this is his story:

"He was the one player who hadnt typed ready, we were around 30mins behind schedule, had managed to get all 20 players on the server at once, and had 19 people readied. From the playerlist command i saw who wasn't ready, saw it was him, informed him a number of times to which he didnt respond in any way (he didnt even try and say he had readied). I assumed he was either timing out or going out of his way to delay us for some reason. I kicked him, the timer started, and the game began".

sCary Naked Again:
sCary was naked again at 2:05am, somewhere in Texas, this is his story:

Wednesday, July 1, 1998
World's Best Library of Demos Threatened:
Know of a better site for Quake demos anywhere in the world? Methos reports that a new agreement between Barry's World and Llamanet came close to limiting his available space to 25 megs, a move which would have forced him to cut his demos "by about 55%":

"25 megs would cut down my demos significantly to approx. 12-15 demos plus my site files. This would pretty well defeat the idea of having a demos section on the site".

Currently Methos takes up 2 megs for the site files and 109+ megs for the demos / downloads. Thankfully, a "win/win" compromise was reached although the space limitations (Methos has not announced the figures agreed on) will still require difficult choices.

"I wanted Methos Quake to have the "biggest and best" Quake demos section in the world. This probably won't happen but it can still be the best selection of demos found anywhere on the internet. I'm not very happy with the turn of events but I will live with it".

If there is any way of providing Methos with the space he wants, surely it would be well worth it. That library of demos is a treasure.

Mission: To Be the Best Clan in the World:
Sweden's Clan 9 have been in the news a lot lately, having recently won 4 out of 7 games against R3V (they won one out of the first three, and they count only the first three out of the last four :P), while DOOMer and Nikodemus lost against Unholy and Thorn at E3.

sCary has posted demos from the first round of games over on his demos section. He writes:

"Clan [9] from Sweden has been soliciting a lot of matches lately with the American clans. They all play from the same room which is a HUGE advantage and makes them tough to beat, even though they ping about 130 to US servers. These guys are the "Swedish National Champions". This was the first set of games we played with [9]".

Check out their "Internationals" page and you'll find that they have played 9 internationals to date, and won them all.

"Our mission is simply this: to conquer everything there is to conquer, and prove ourselves to be the one and only clan, the best of them all. Once we are done, there will be no doubt which clan is the leading one, and which one will remain in that position for all time. We will dazzle the world with our grace as well as our thirst for blood. These are our humble plans...".

RealQuake Vs QuakeWorld:
Controversy continues to surround DOOMer and Nikodemus' loss to Unholy and Thorn. The Clan 9 Players were playing what they call RQ ("RealQuake") while their preferred platform is QuakeWorld. Over on the GX MB, Jimbo presents one side in the debate when he writes:

"Qw or not, Usa wooped them pretty bad. To beat 2 of Sweden's best, also considering Unholy and Thorn have never played before, and to beat them by 50 frags, they beat them up pretty bad. The difference between nq and qw is not 50 frags..."

Frick wrote:

"We know we can make excuses for pretty much anything.. I for one, can vouch for the fact that Unholy was playing without his keyboard, without his mouse, and without his mouse drivers, playing on WinQuake instead of what he usually plays on, DosQuake. Yes, it sounds pretty lame to make excuses like these, but things like these do matter, like QW vs NQ... ...My bet is that DOOMer and Nikodemus practiced on LAN prior to the event, because it would be pretty foolish of them to expect the US's top players to only play them on QW, especially when they are the ones issuing the challenge".

Another side in the debate can be found over on Clan 9's Gibberish page:

"Well some comments about those demos on the PGL page. We sure played bad but we took it as a friendly fun game, we dont wanna whine or something but we gotta say how it really was for us, first of all they played their PGL all star game, when they where finnished doomer asks them for a 2on2. So now they sit down unwarmed without their mouses and cfg?s and are gonna play NQ/RQ witch they havent played in alot of months! and meets 2 US-all star players who are used to NQ/RQ and also warmed up. Ofcourse we knew we where gonna lose but when you make a trip around to the other side of the world ofcourse you wanna play vs players you normally cant play via Internet. I hope none took this friendly game serious atleast we didn?t. If you have seen the demos you can clearly see how doomer and niko "glides/slides" into almost every wall".

Australian Connection:
One of Clan 9's Players, [9]Xenon, was born in Australia. He's a "chip off the old block", having beaten many of the Greats such as Sujoy, Timber and Sniket in 1-on-1's. He kindly took some time out to answer a couple of questions:

How long have you been in Sweden? How did you end up there?
Ive been here about 3 years now, me and my folks move around a lot...they work in Ericsson :P
Where are you from in Australia, did you play Quake here, did you belong to any Clans here?
I left Australia to go to Spain when i was 8, I didnt even have a pc then :)
What do you think of life in Sweden? Is the beer too expensive?
I like Sweden a lot, the cold weather suits me...beer ? Although im only 15 I dont find it too expensive :)
What's the Quake scene like in Sweden? Do the Swede's still play Quake as much or are they shifting to Quake2?
About 1% of all Quake players play Quake 2...I think Quake still rules Sweden and the whole of Scandinavia.
How did your recent games against r3v go? Are Clan 9 planning any more internationals soon?
They went great, we won all 3 matches and we hope to play them again soon. Yes, we will play any good international qw2.21 clans if we can find a good server where the pings are equal :)

Quake A Sport?:
Over in the FEATURES section one of the articles waiting to be written is What International Quake means for Gaming as a "Sport". Pestilence wrote in to say that

"This is nothing important but Quake is not a sport, nor a Cyberalthetic sport, it is a game, like chess. A sport (by my definition) is a game which requires physical ability. I'm writing this because I was looking at your features section and you were refering to quake as a sport as topic's for quake. Quake does have the level of involvement that a sport does, I'm not taking that away from it, but it is not a sport".

This is one of my fav debates, and I know that I'm in the smallest minority by calling Quake a sport. But let me ask, at what point does the physical ability become enough to qualify? Why is Olympic Shooting a sport, since they only use their fingers and eyes to shoot (:-?)? Do you not do a hell of a lot of running and jumping in Quake? Do you not use hand and eye coordination, sometimes quite violently? Also, in Chess, you don't win by how skilfully you move the pieces, but because of where you move them. In Quake, it's not just where you go but how skillfully you move to get there. heheh.. I know I'll never win this argument ;-).

The Omnicron Bot Cheats:
Vertical emailed me with more info on the "dreaded" modified eyes.mdl message. Check it out, maybe this has happened to you.

"Here's the story- when qw2.2 arrived I discovered that when I connected to a server I received the dreaded modified eye's.mdl message & was promptly accosted, not that that bugged me .What did bug me was that I knew I had not modified any of the models in any way (I don't even have vised maps), my pak files were original. So I knew it had to be the omicron bot (which I luuurv ), as the omi has several modified models, the player model has a skin pack embedded & Im not sure what's different about the eye's model (looks the same to me). So I moved all models out of my id1,arena & qw etc directories & the "modified eyes.mdl" message was no more. Beware those using the omicron for rocket arena as you will have to make separate directories for this as well".

Kaile's Story:
Kaile was kicked from the Irish Vs Scotland games, this is his story.

The Bots Never Misses:
Malekith sends word that I need more Swedish lessons: "I really liked your translation of "De f?rst?r helt f?r alla andra anv?ndare, och g?r det i princip meningsl?st att ens f?rs?ka spela, eftersom bottarna aldrig missar" which really means "They ruins it completely for all others users, and makes it really pointless to even try to play, since the bots never misses"".

And I thought it said: "the forest hills for all the android avalanches, of those gory meaningless principles of the forsaken spectacle, is ever a botty always mister".

Tuesday, June 30, 1998
5 Nations Update:
Some more news on the weekend's 5 Nations matches between England A Vs B. Ewan, the tourney organiser, kindly emailed me with the following report:

"Last nights 5 nations went pretty well, with the England A vs England B game being the game of the tournament by far, with the England A team showing just how to take all of D32c with only 10 players, something which i thought would be impossible against a very strong England b side. In the end, the final score was massively in favour of Eng A, 557- 207

Unfortunately the Welsh team have pulled out of the last week of the 5 Nations due to a lack of players and were unable to field a full team for last nights game against Scotland. Therefore the last week will consist of only 2 games, All Ireland vs England B and England A vs Scotland.

A demo of the England A vs England b game is available at http://www.llamanet.net/5nations/ena-enb.zip , sorry no demo of the Wales Scotland game as i had to reconnect a number of times".

Calling All DM4 Gods:

A site worth checking out if you haven't already is the Irish DM4 Duel God Competition, which looks like it may be starting up soon. I saw over on the Irish Message Board that Earthworm Jim is keen to get going, with the following draw suggested:

1) ewj vs rhob
2) mouserat vs kobra
3) chaos vs reaper
4) dest vs ser
5) bunny vs mp
6) koopa vs bc

Earthworm Jim also has the right idea for the post-match celebrations:

"Afterwards: lots of hot lovemaking with attractive dm4 groupies for the winner. The losing finallist gets a laminated issue of Playgeek".

Reaper Interview:
There's an interview with Ireland's Reaper over at the Clan uNT pages, which you can find here, which makes for a good read. Here's a sample:

"What's your meaning of the word scobe??
Scobes, where to start!!! Well, puff jacket, Adidas tracksuit, In-Bred facial features, u can spot them a mile away and most of them live near me!! Common fools? They can be quite smart actually! Its better to be friends with them, trust me.... I know many, here Johno! ".

New Clan Powerhouse Formed in Oz:
So much cool stuff happens with Clans that you don't ordinarily hear about. Like every week there are loads of Clan matches here in NSW, and there are quite a few Clans always ready for a dust up. Anyway, I saw on Malby's Message Board that Warhammer has reformed the classic Australian Quake clan, Dark Nemesis. (Check out their web page, btw).

The line-up in this new clan is particularly strong, with Players like Warhammer, Reload, Insane, Mallanox, VuduChild, Seven, Pyro, VomitGod, and Malby. I asked Warhammer when/ if [dN] planned to take on [ao]:

"Never hopefully =) Hehe, the AO members are still in AO. Dark Nemesis = Net .. AO = Lan.. But you never know, Reload, Insane, mallanox and myself vs AO at Gibcon might pull a bit of a crowd :)".

Yer baby! Sounds like one for the big screens :-).

Spookie Reviews PGL "All Stars" Games:
XP-Spookie has posted some new stuff over at Methos, including an interesting review of the recent PGL All Star Games. If you haven't watched those demos yet, they feature U4-Gollum, U4-Thorn, D8-Reptile-POST ( ;D ) and Kornelia.311 (Blue Team) Vs D11-Thresh, D13-Unholy, D2-B2 and Dmann (Red Team) (Spookie adds the ;-D). Get them from the PGL site or from Methos.

Kind of reminds me of a pet love - the possibilities of commentary during a great match. How would it work? Would it be soft, like in Snooker - "ooooaaaah, yes, he's taken the RA, we might be in for a game now" - or loud, as in football - "HE'S TAKEN THE RED ARMOUR, HE'S TAKEN THE BLOODY RED ARMOUR, THIS MATCH IS WIDE OPEN NOW!!!". And when they show the game on "Sports on Sunday", will they have a "fly-over" of the map, as in Golf, with some guy saying in a deep voice accompanied by music: "DM6 is known as the "thinking player's map", characterised by open spaces and hallways, and focused on control of the RA area, the three main areas are...". And how will spectators keep track of both Players in the one map (or more)? But I digress...

XP-Spookie also provides a cool link to Spectra's homepage, where you can find many interesting photos of US Players, including this one of Deathrow discussing strategy following their first round defeat by Unforgiven at the T3 finals at Slam Site, USA:

KIllmore on International Teamplay Match Settings:
Happy Killmore has written a new article for Killmore's Korner. Head on over to check it out in the FEATURES section (if you dare :P).

The subject this time is the rules for teamplay games, especially between countries where different standards are used. This is a really important subject, imho, and finding a solution is not easy. Killmore proposes a solution and makes his case for it. Here's an example of what he writes:

"In a dmm1 tp2 game, the idea is to control the rl's early on, and then move out to take position near the respawn areas. In my opinion, this method of play is boring, and contains a high element of luck (obviously if you spawn next to a rocket launcher and red armour, you have control of that area instantly). It doesn't prove anything about team play, all it proves is that said team sat down for five minutes and worked out who was going to go where depending on who spawned where, and who's gonna be quad slut, and suddenly you have a boring game where unarmoured foes run into rockets for 20/30 minutes. I couldn't think of a better way to spend an hour than run headlong into rockets because I have bad luck".

If you have a view on this, feel free to share it with us. I'm going to create a section in the FEATURES area where some of the arguments for different positions can be looked over.

I'm Flying:
Local Player Vertical sends word on the air movement-physics of Quake2 v.3.17: "I have bin using a beta vers of 3.17 & they have added the air movement". Fingers crossed eh.

Monday, June 29, 1998
Fixed up Therion Vs Reaper on DM6:
Sorry, got the link wrong (ta Von Swine :-) :-P

therion_vs_reaper_dm6.zip - Therion - playing as [ANA]Ytziack (29, POV) Vs Reaper (0); DM6. This match is a bit one-sided, perhaps because both are playing on a German server on ISDN and Reaper is from Ireland (average ping for Reaper was about 100, compared to 50 for Therion). There is a funny moment when Therion bounces Reaper onto the "V" of the teleporter in the 200 health room, and trys to hit him with a grenade while Reaper just stands there.

When time permits, I'll make a separate page for these great demos.

Please Gimme Quake Gameplay:
There have been a lot of interesting discussions around lately about Quake 1 and it's gameplay. Most notably, there was Sumfuka's PlanetQuake editorial, which argued (in part) that Quake players didn't like Quake 2 because they couldn't dominate the game the way they could Quake.

Then there was sCary's poll, which found that a sizeable majority of his visitors preferred the air movement-physics of Quake to the realism of Quake 2, an issue to be decided in the upcoming v.3.17 version of Quake 2.

We had our own discussion here in Australia on Malby's Message Board, an edited transcript of which you can find here.

On the same theme, I asked Kornelia if she thought enough new US Players were coming into Quake now or whether it may finally be being overtaken by Quake2. "I think the majority of the new players are playing Quake2", she replied, "Also people who weren't very good at Quake1 they also play Q2".

I asked her if she'd been playing both or not, and she said:

"I try to practice and be good at one game. I also hope that Quake1 will be around for a while. A lot of the pro players don't like Q2 unlike the newbies. I still like and prefer Quake1. I played it for a very long time so I'm really used to it and know how it handles".

(Btw, the big New Zealand LAN in September, the AGN, has announced that Kornelia is coming to Wellington - kewl guys :-).

I also asked sCary pretty much the same questions, including whether he thought it was the case that Deathrow were mostly playing Quake2 now, and that Mikej [EG] was playing Quake2 exclusively. He replied:

"It still seems really up in the air. Recently EG [Mikej's clan] just resumed their Quake1 team after quitting for Quake2. They realized that the teamplay in Q2 is just non existent. I think that the clan scene in Q1 will remain for probably another 6-8 months but will die after that.

DeathRow and Q2 is kind of a joke. Last time I talked to Unholy and Reptile, they had never even played Q2 when that "decision" was made a little while back. DeathRow switched due to pressure from their PGL sponsors. Totally sad".

Kornelia confirmed:

"Thresh has been practicing Q2 but there are DR members who haven't really played Q2 much at all. They are in the PGL so they have to practice Quake1 for the finals. (Maybe some of them are really switching over)".

Also, one of our local Australian Quake Players, Knight [mhcn], emailed me with some interesting stuff, from a cool section called the Spookie Side over on Methos. Spookie, whose name is a combo of sCary and Pookie, is a 30-something martial arts medical assistant from LA, Kalifornia (go ahead and read his profile :P). He writes interesting stuff over at Methos.

As Knight writes:

"The Quake vs Quake 2 debate will never be decided. With both parties having valid comments and suggestions. But what I saw on Methos, I thought, really took the cake..

[Spookie says:]
"Maybe John Carmack could give us with "Quake Arena" more of that classic Quake feel but with souped up graphics? No, I don't mean Quake2 all over again. Quake2 has been out for quite sometime now and even though it's a very good game, it hasn't sparked intense Clan rivalries or great 1on1 matches at dm2, dm4 and dm6 that take place at 3am in the morning like Quake did! I have yet to see MikeJ (who was QW's leading fragger back when id kept frag stats) play Thresh in Quake 2. Quake's clan matches and 1on1 games were (still are) so exciting. Where is that great Mancer vs sCary demo at dm4 in Quake2?"

"My point being that something is missing from Quake 2. It's Quake's solid DM play! Seen many Quake2 demos lately? heh Come'on Carmack, let's get real DM back and don't forget to bring the Quake RL and Shaft back too! :) "

Ive been playing a fair bit of lan Quake lately, and I have something to confess. I have fallen in love with the shaft, the Lightning gun or what eva it is called. i just dont get that same kind of feeling in Quake 2. The feeling of totally dominating a level with the LG, the satisfaction LG'ing someone to death as they come out of the RA room on Dm4. The railgun in q2 comes close, but, it just isnt the same".

5 Nations News:
Over the weekend England A played England B on Death32c and the A-team won, by 557-207 (with no help from Mr T). A demo is available at Hakeem's. Von Swine sends word that the Welsh have pulled out, for reasons unclear at the moment. Coerj has some interesting reaction to the Irish guys, and Cheeky laments missing the England A Vs England B match.

ZoSo stricken by Real Life:
New Zealand Quakers said goodbye to ZoSo today, whose Q&A Page and updates to Abaddon's News will be sorely missed.

ZoSo - Sun Jun 28 20:37 PST
Email:
Topic: Game over man..
Comments:
Well, as the topic says.. It's game over for me. Real-Life? is hitting hard, so Quake is for the chop. Sorry I was unable to carry on with the Q&A page.. I had intended to keep that going and do a good job on it. As well on carrying on helping out with the NZQ news. But thems the breaks. Cheers to all the great players and clans I've had games with alongside the awesome HO guys. Good luck with BR3 and any future comps. Cyas later.. Cheers, ZoSo.

Malby Impersonated:
That's right, somebody else was pretending to be Malby updating Quake.AU on Saturday and Sunday. All the time Malby was in Canberra visiting his mum, and I thought it was him slagging off Microsoft and cracking up at Steed's latest Steedisms. As soon as I find out who the culprit was, I'll let you know.

Sunday, June 28, 1998
Wolph and Dynamop Profiles are Up:
Check out the Players section for a bit of info about Wolph and Dynamop, the always dangerous doubles team from Wellington, New Zealand, who have had a strong series of games against Australia's NSW Players thus far.

Here's what Wolph says about his favourite maps, for example:

"My favourite map would have to be DM6, it's the one I'm best at. I don't know why :) it just happened. I guess I like it because of the brains required to play it, you need to think quite a lot when you're playing (if you're playing someone worth the thinking, otherwise you just toy with them :)

I like Dm4 next. I'm not as good on dm4 as I am on dm6, but still it's a good level. and my least favourite level is Dm2, I used to love this level because it was so balanced and usually meant that I could actually get close to winning :)".

And here's what Dynamop says about NZ rules for teamplay games:

"NZ rules... umm... Well 1on1's we use deathmatch 1 and nopowerups and for teamplay games we use deathmatch 1 and powerups. I think deathmatch one is better for teamplay because you have to work for the weapons. You can't just wander in there and grab it. Deathmatch 3 just makes it too much like a free for all".

Dice Gets Good Ping from Sydney to NZ on Cable:

Dice[AOD] sends word that on Saturday he gave the NZ servers a bit of a go on his cable connection from Telstra:

"Surprisingly it was very playable in particular the Gen.nz rocket arena server which I was pinging 130 to with 3% PL ... note the ping on the ra server!!! [On DM3] arcane stopped by as well as a few others.. (grive etc )... on the whole they were very polite and while finding it hard to belive someone from aust was pinging lower than them... it was good ( could be good for AU matches.. cable that is.. PL was still a bit of the problem tho)".

PGL "Allstars" Games and Clan 9 vs USA Exhibition Games, plus More at Methos:
If you haven't seen this already, over on the PGL website they have demos of Deathrow (Thresh, B2, Unholy and Dmann) getting beaten (playing too much Q2 guys?) by a team which comprised Gollum, Kornelia, Reptile and Thorn. Not once, but twice, with the final scores at 91 - 59 and 117 - 52 respectively. Also, the "Exhibition" game where DOOMer and Nicodemus were beaten by Unholy and Thorn is there too - go gettum!

Once you've waded through all those demos, Methos has uploaded a whole heap more so put your life on "hold" ;-).

Saturday, June 27, 1998
New Logo by Catnap :-)
Thanks Catnap for the cool looking new logo :-). Check out Catnap's new site at http://www.wantree.com.au/~catnap. Catnap won Malby's logo competition over at Quake.AU and he kindly offered to do something for us here.

Therion - Deutsch Quake Demos:
Some more kick ass demos for you to check out, this time 1-on-1's featuring Therion of the German clan Schroet Kommando [SK]. Therion is one of the top Players in Germany, and after watching these demos you'll have a fair idea why:

therion_vs_mastah_dm4.zip - Therion (5, POV) Vs Mastah Killah (2); DM4. This is the first of two matches that were played on this occasion. Therion wins although most of the match he plays defensively due to fine play by Mastah Killah. The game was played on a German server, with Therion on ISDN and Mastah on a T1. The second match Therion also won, 15:4, but he forgot to record a demo.

therion_vs_reaper_dm6.zip - Therion - playing as [ANA]Ytziack (29, POV) Vs Reaper (0); DM6. This match is a bit one-sided, perhaps because both are playing on a German server on ISDN and Reaper is from Ireland (average ping for Reaper was about 100, compared to 50 for Therion). There is a funny moment when Therion bounces Reaper onto the "V" of the teleporter in the 200 health room, and trys to hit him with a grenade while Reaper just stands there.

R3V Vs Clan 9 International Quake Match - Take 2:
Saw over on Methos that Clan R3V had a rematch with Sweden's Clan 9, only this time 9 won all three matches.

"For the second night in a row. I saw clan [9] take on clan R3V (sCary's clan) and [9] defeated them 3 matches in a row. The pings to the USA server were bad for everybody. In the final match, clan 9 defeated R3V by a score of 137-30. It was a complete victory for [9]. Well done guys. To the credit of everybody playing in R3V, even after the 3rd loss in a row, not one person bitched or whined about anything. That's always great to see".

Another spectator to the match, Henrik, kindly sent me the following match report:

"Regarding the ping: all R3V players had better ping than 9. No 9 player had same or better ping than any R3V player. The difference in ping was 70 on average. First three matches was won by 9 with 70-80 more ping. The last match ( which Methos didn?t see ) was played on a different server and won by R3V. Ping difference was even higher, probably around 100 better ping on average in R3V?s favor. Matches where played between 3am to 7am local Swedish time".

English Write-Up of the 5 Nations Match Last Weekend:
Nightwing's take on the first matches of the 5 Nations is up at his page on Methos and Sujoy's is up on his Diary page. For another take on the [sic] Northern Ireland Vs Scotland/England matches, take a look at Coerj's page. For the Irish reaction to all the English news, always check out the Quake.ie Message Board. Are there any UK message boards out there?

Aside from reacting to the Brits, the Irish were preoccupied with the retirement of one of their legends: Cloud Warrior. Von Swine wrote this on the Irish News page:

"Due to the enormous drain on his personal time, Cloud Warrior (John Breslin to his mum) has decided to give up his position as admin of Quake.ie. The amount of work John took on was huge and was always done to perfection. He told me last week when we were preparing for the Hibs games that he was leaving and I was shocked. Cloud IS Quake.ie as far as I'm concerned. But since his health began to be affected, it hardly seemed worth carrying on. Hopefully he won't give up playing the game totally as well."

I counted 44 replies to his message of resignation. GL John.

Just in case you think:
That I mention Methos too much in tonight's news, you're right. But he mentions Challenge.AU twice today so what the heck, it must be an occulation of the planets:P~.

"Received an e-mail from Richard that runs the Challenge.AU site that I mentioned in the news page. He seems like a very nice guy and we tend to think along the same lines. (oh no!) Anyway, go visit his site when you get the chance. If you're a Quake fan, it's well worth the visit".

And just because I know you are wondering about this, the name "Methos" is from the television series version of "The Highlander". He is known as the oldest and wisest immortal. I'm not sure about the last bit, but Methos is old (like me) and he seems like a very nice guy and we tend to think along the same lines .... freeaaaky~~~~.

Yer Baby, Give It To Me:

Sumfuka over at PlanetQuake has written an editorial which argues that the Pro-Rocket Mod is a step in the wrong direction. Instead of trying to change the new games so that they are more like Quake, he says, we should be changing ourselves so that we learn to play the new games. In fact, Sumfuka goes further and says that the reason a lot of gamers are still happily playing Quake is not because, (as he puts their argument), they think that "Quake2 deathmatch sucks compared to Quake1. The RL is different - the weapon balance sucks. I've gone back to Quake1. Quake2 dm is just not as fun". Nope, it's rather because "These players cannot dominate Quake II the way they could dominate Quake".

Whether or not gamers slowly stop playing Quake as they move to the more modern games, or whether or not it is a sin to remake these modern games in the image of Quake, it seems a fact that many of the old legends of Quake are playing more Quake2 these days. As Methos said in a recent email:

"Most of the best USA players are switching to Q2 or Unreal. Even DeathRow plays a lot of Q2 these days. One of my favorite players named MikeJ and his top rated QW clan in the USA, EG/UT (the same clan that destroyed clan [9] with much worse pings) have quit playing Quake and they're now playing Q2. I never thought I'd see the day that MikeJ stopped playing Quake. For the first 5 months that QW existed (where you had to log onto a main qw server and it kept stats) MikeJ was in the lead the entire time (yes, even ahead of Thresh)".

What do you think? Will Quake go the way of Doom and become a historical treasure, but not a current arena for top flight Gaming?

In Australia, we had some discussion on this on Malby's Message Board recently, and I've posted the comments here for you to take a look at. If you have anything really really interesting to add, please .

Friday, June 26, 1998
New Zealand Quake:
Hey, meet Wolph and Dynamop, two top blokes and excellent Players from Wellington, New Zealand, who have been giving us Australians (OK, Players from NSW :P~) a very competitive game. The best we have done so far is a draw in 1-on-1 on DM4 (Malby) and a win in 2-on-2 on DM6 (Knight and Wargel).

We're working on the concept of 2-person Player teams, consisting of a Duel specialist and his/her Doubles partner. You can check out the sort of match rules we have in mind in the GAMES section, under NZ rules. Meantime, here is a logo I pulled together for Wolph and Dynamop, who are in Clan VOID.

Later on this weekend, I'll get Wolph and Dynamop's Team profile up in the Players section. We are about ready to announce a new Australian doubles team which will take them on, soon as we have the date for the match finalised.

Now for Some Real Art:
Check out Catnap's new site at http://www.wantree.com.au/~catnap. Catnap won Malby's logo competition over at Quake.AU and, well, he's working on a new logo for Challenge.AU :-).

Quake Democracy:
There are a couple of cool online surveys out there. One concerns the issue of what Players define as cheating, and can be found over at the Duel Manifesto. The other concerns whether or not Air Control should be left in Quake 2 version 3.15, and can be found over at the Shuga Shack.

Aim Proxies:
How common is the use of Aim-proxies in your neck of the woods? What do you think will happen if it becomes widespread? Malekith sends word that in Sweden it has been enough of a problem on some servers for the Fragzone to consider shutting them down:

"It was a news-item on www.fragzone.se about it. Apparently there are a lot of people using these proxys on Fragzone servers (I rarely play these two - Fragzone HPW and Fragzone Gibfest - which the issue was about, Fragzone also has a lot more servers), so Fragzone are thinking of shutting these servers down if people continue using them. It didn?t say anything about people using aim-proxys on any of the duel, ctf or the other servers".

According to Fragzone, "De f?rst?r helt f?r alla andra anv?ndare, och g?r det i princip meningsl?st att ens f?rs?ka spela, eftersom bottarna aldrig missar", which, I believe, loosely translated, means something like: "the forest hills for all the android avalanches, of those gory meaningless principles of the forsaken spectacle, is ever a botty always mister".

Connections Improving for Hibs?:
Von Swine sends word that the guys may have found a solution, albeit an expensive one, to the challenge of getting a playable connection from Ireland to Barrysworld for the 5 Nations matches:

"I tried out a Barrysworld dial up account and it was fine. Steady 180-200 ping with my 33k modem and no packet loss. One or two of our players have offered to foot the (large) bill to have our ISDN and modem players call the UK using Barrysworld accounts for the remaining 5 nations matches. This is one option we have to get playable connections to the UK and avoid any more slagging matches. We need to do more testing but it looks good".

In case you haven't seen this already:
Some demos of top American Players in action are available from the the recent US Lan event, iCON. The final was an amazing game between Gollum and Thorn, and you can download the demo (Gollum's POV) here.