December 2000 Archive
29 December 2000 - Everglide Attack Pad I recently bought an Everglide Attack Pad and I've been using it for about a month now. I have to say that I'm very impressed with it. For the last year I'd been using the 3M Precise Mousing Surface but these pads, whilst admittedly very smooth, aren't perfect. The main problem with them is that they only really last a month or so before going quite shiny and losing grip. At 6 or 7 pounds a time it's a bit steep to keep buying them and buying them as I had been doing. The Attack Pad cost 15 quid and it was delivered pretty quickly so no complaints there. The pad is rock solid and very thick and hard-wearing so it does feel like it's worth the money :). The surface itself is brilliant for my mouse with practically no friction and I found it easier to do circular jumps and other manoeuvres in Quake. Aiming was also made easier because that lack of friction makes making small movements very smooth. The Attack pad isn't very big though and I now think I should have gone for the larger pad. It doesn't affect me too much because my sensitivity is high enough that I don't have to move the mouse too much. The only problem I've found so far is that my mouse rollers get very dirty using the pad and I'm having to clean them every couple of days! This doesn't bother me too much as I usually do it when I'm connecting to a server or something, not a problem really. I have heard some reports that the rough surface can actually erode the mouse ball over time but I can't see any evidence of this yet. The black pads also work with optical mice apparently so I may dig out the Intellieye Explorer I bought and dumped due to it being erratic on every surface I tried. I also bought the gel wrist rest which fits snuggly against the pad and is great for Windows use, but I found that I lost decent control when playing Quake so I just remove it when playing. All in all a good purchase and I would certainly recommend the pad if you're fed up of your 3M's, or certainly if you're using a bog-standard foam one!
28 December 2000 - Quake 3, Time to Take the Plunge? This time last year my previous clan of only 6/7 months, HooD, finished playing Quake 2 and T2C was formed by the ex-members to play Quake 3. This was why I dumped Quake 2 the last time. I played Quake 3 for three months straight even after T2C folded, but it was the disadvantage and frustation of playing on a modem that made me return to Quake 2 in March 2000. I had actually preferred the feel of Quake 3. I joined MKC and more or less gave up Quake 3, only going back for the odd game of Deathmatch, or, more recently, RA3. Now though, as the new year is upon us, my current clan, MKC is to stop playing Quake 2 and concentrate on RA3 so I am once again in the position of having to make the decision over which game to make my Number 1. On the one hand there is Quake 2. This is the game that, over the last two years, has brought me more gaming hours than all the other games I've ever played combined, and I've been playing computer games for 15 years. It is the best £30 I have ever spent, and probably ever will spend. For me at least, it's the best game ever. I'm not quite as jaded as a lot of players and still enjoy vanilla deathmatch above any other mod. Or maybe it's just that I'm easily satisfied ;). However, various things about the game and scene have been getting to me, many of which I have discussed or alluded to on this site over the months. The standard eight maps are so well known that there are hardly any new tricks to learn. Clans are now so expert at playing that the sense of learning how to play a map has gone. All clans are immensely skilled and the majority of players are veterans. The main thing that annoys me though is the lack of interest in the scene. As I highlighted in a previous update, earlier this month, there are no decent news sites. The leagues are run in a lack-lustre and unenthusiastic manner. Winners are not congratulated, losers frequently fold before being demoted and no one knows anything about the clans on the scene because clans don't promote themselves by way of their websites. There are no real personalities either. No great players that people can look to. Remember Warforge's site? It had the largest collection of interviews anywhere. Sadly it's over a year out of date, but would the same site be as popular if it were done again? Personally I don't think so, for the simple reason that very few of the current crop of Quake 2 players demand any kind of respect or interest. Don't get me wrong though. There are plenty of players who I think are cool people as well as those who I think are complete nobs. That will always be the case in any game or in any walk of life for that matter. But the lack of real, let's say, popular or even notorious players/clans has made the scene very, very dull. A few months ago the team behind the Minos server quit and we lost the best deathmatch server in the country. Barrysworld have been asked to replace it but they don't care enough about Quake 2 to make it a priority. Unfortunately they are not alone :(. Quake 2 was really at it's peak in autumn 1999 when the first UK Team was being put together. Since then the interest has steadily declined. This week I've been playing Quake 3 deathmatch and Rocket Arena 3. The learning curve for Quake 3 is very sharp indeed and you really need to put the time in to get good. It's really quite amazing how much better the very best players are over the regular players. The clan scene is actually interesting. There's real rivalry between the top clans. For example, the rivalry between DC and 4K at the top has been going on for years now. The interest in the Clanbase Eurocup is also a very attractive feature of the scene for me. I want to play a game that people are genuinely interested in and enthusiastic about, and Quake 3, whilst not having the player numbers of Counter Strike, say, certainly does generate interest. The clan websites and news sites are buzzing with news and information and the scene seems far more alive than the apparently dreary Quake 2 scene. Quake 3 isn't without it's problems though. Aliasing, which I despise with a vengeance, hehe, is probably even more rife in Quake 3 than it is in Quake 2. This is partly a product of the egos generated by the intense competition. Due to the lack of weapon drops, effective team play requires you to camp, er, sorry strategically dominate key areas :). The BFG sucks. Railing is easier than Quake 2 and so is perhaps less satisfying? Connections are all important. ISDN'ers like myself are no longer the elite, it's those on DSL or cable connections that dominate. Players even travel to LAN cafes to play important matches such is the advantage of the better connection. But these problems do not outweigh the attractions to the scene and I now intend to give up playing Quake 2 as my main game and switch to Quake 3 for the second time. I have the tools, I have the motivation but I don't yet have the skills :). What does it mean for this site? Nothing really. I will still post the same content, certainly more Quake 3 stuff and maybe I can finally give away everything I know of Quake 2. I'll need a team of writers for that feat, um... who am I trying to kid ;). Anyway, cyas on Barrys RA3 1-4, or the Demon UK Deathmatch servers....
23 December 2000 - Quake 2 Leagues There have been two major news items for the Quake 2 scene this week. Firstly, the Barrysworld Quake 2 Leagues have died because there's no one left to run them. This is annoying for a lot of clans because it's happened while we're all half way through a season! Then, Barrysworld posted a news item yesterday telling us that the UKCCL have lost their sponsors and hence their servers. The UKCCL is too big to die just like that, of course, so I don't doubt that servers will be found eventually. The stable league at the moment is in fact the Wireplay league, with stable support from Gameplay.
23 December 2000 - The Perfect Sensitivity If there's one setting I've changed more than any other since starting playing, it's my sensitivity. It just seems impossible to find the perfect blend of aiming control and manoeuvrability. The higher you go, the easier it is to do jumps and spot opponents, but then the lower you go, the easier railing becomes. When I'm playing poorly I generally look to my config or equipment to sort things out. Not to myself of course ;). However, changing your sensitivity all the time is a bad thing because you lose the consistency of knowing exactly how much to move, which is so vital for snap shots. The reason why I mention this is because there are a couple of interesting columns up on XS Reality where Thorian describes a method of setting your sensitivity as a measure of your fov and a comfortable movement of the mouse. I've set it according to his advice and dropped down to 8 from 12 and I've been getting some results. It does feel very natural. Give it a try anyway if you're frustrated with your own setting. His second column details a method of controlling your mouse so that it's in the middle of your pad at all times. This makes a lot of sense and I'm going to give it a try. The use of the mouse is something that every player should have an opinion on and his two columns have generated a lot of discussion with over 300 comments posted! Here are the links: The Art of Railing (part I): Sensitivity || The Art of Railing (part II): Mouse Movement
17 December 2000 - Rocket Arena 3 (This is an article has been written for people who haven't played I've been playing RA3 now for several months and now that's it's been around for a while and the clan scene has developed around it, it's about time I finally reviewed it! Rocket Arena 2 was the second most popular mod after CTF in Quake 2 and the original Rocket Arena was also very popular for the Quakeworld community. In fact, for many of the Quakeworlders, RA2 was the only good thing about Q2 ;). RA3 was obviously eagerly anticipated and the hype and excitement was intensified by some amazing screenshots of the maps to be included. Shots like the one below that I put together from a few screenshots in my arena directory show how easy it was to hype the game :).
For anyone who doesn't know about Rocket Arena, there are essentially two options when you join a server. Each "map" contains a number of "arenas" to play in. One is a large arena for a team game of up to 8-a-side, the others are for duels or even 2v2's. The defining aspects of the Rocket Arena games are the fact that there are no items to collect, you start the game fully tooled up. Also, the team games are played in rounds. If you die you have to wait until the end of the round to respawn for another attempt. This combination of a very precious life and no health or other pickup items means that the gameplay is very pure and concentrates on fragging and dodging. Real Quaking skills if you like :). Regulars tend to get very skilled, very quickly, far faster than those spending time on deathmatch servers. Deathmatch is very different and emphasises different skills. If you die it doesn't matter which encourages recklessness. Also, you might spend half the game using crappy weapons which doesn't help you develop a killer aim. In RA3 have to survive and if you miss your rail you could well be dead the next second so you're forced to train yourself to become a slick, quick-dodging player with a superior aim and more instinctual style. This is all old news to people who've played the game before though, so I'll leave the description there :). The main question to consider is, how does it compare to RA2? First off, there aren't as many maps, only eight in fact. Many people were quite disappointed by this. Another major problem is that a couple of the teamplay maps are rather weak, specifically ra3map2. This has lead to an unfortunate tendency for players on public servers to repeatedly vote to restart the map while on ra3map1, so that it never changes. Playing one map over and over gets dull very quickly :(. However, there are some real classic maps in there. ra3map1 is immense with huge wide open areas perfect for railing sessions. ra3map4 is an amazing castle level with fortifications, halls, a tower and even a garden with a statue. This is the most attractive map I've ever seen, bar none. The last map, while considered by some to be a bit of a cop-out since it's a replica of one of the RA2 maps, is also one of my personal favourites. The interface itself is far better than that of RA2, which was cumbersome to say the least. It's very easy to see who's in different arenas, to enter an arena and spectate and then join a team at your leisure. There aren't many bugs either, most of them having been erradicated with a server side patch that came out very shortly after the mod was released. The gameplay itself has been altered a great deal by the sheer scale of the maps. The extra space leads to more running battles, more rocket jumping and more long distance railing. There are some niggling aspects though. One of the major problems with the format of the game is that it encourages you to camp. As I've said, if you die you have to wait for your next turn. Because of this a lot of players will spend time hiding and running away and letting their teammates die early on only to emmerge as the lone soldier at the end of the round :(. If they die at this stage it doesn't really matter to them because they're the last and they'll get to restart straight away. The camping aspect is also encouraged by the abundance of ammo with which you start each round. It's rare to actually run out of ammo so players tend to spam rockets or grenades repeatedly and a lot of deaths are more the result of luck than design. At the league level this spamming can reach epidemic proportions and it is not unknown for matches to take up to an hour, as teams find themselves in a stalemate, entrenched behind their spam :(. On a more positive note however, team games can be very satisfying, especially if you play in a clan, as I do with MKC. The tactical aspect of the game is very limited. There are really only three rules to success in RA3: 1. Survive the initial melee. This means that you can just get on with playing and don't have to worry about the intricacies of timing weapons or controlling areas as you do in Deathmatch. The teamplay tends to be more natural. You see a team mate and you wander round together, one of you taking point, the other covering the rear. I find this very satisfying myself as you really feel like a member of a combat team ;). You can also live out your combat fantasies, diving into an enemy-packed room and drawing their fire in a blaze of glory, while your teammates follow and attack the distracted adversaries. Erm, OK maybe I get a bit carried away ;). Games are very tense as players are slowly picked off one by one and as each player dies they become a spectator. Sometimes you'll end up in a duel situation at the end and you can really feel your teammates eyes drilling into the back of your head, because they're all watching you and willing you to win. That kind of pressure, if you like, makes the game very exciting at times. The main league is the Barrysworld RA3 League, run by the very experienced and professional, Fixer. The other league is run by Clanwars, which is smaller but apparently very well organised. Rocket Arena 3 broke the tedium of vanilla Q3 and made the game exciting again. The RA3 team can't, and won't rest on their laurels though. The situation with the maps is quite serious as people won't want to play the same two over and over for too much longer. Several customs have been released already, but the likelihood of actually playing them is pretty slim until they're included in some kind of RA3 update, so that server administrators are happy to add them to the cycle. If you haven't tried RA3 then what are you waiting for? If you're a HPB who's given up the ghost in Q3DM then give RA3 a go. The playing field is far more even and HPB's can get a good game. Head over to the site and download it. Now mister!
15 December 2000 - UKCCL Cup Champions This week was the clash of the titans, the two best Quake 2 clans in the country going head to head over two legs on the classic map, Q2DM1. On the one side was Clan Stealth, a clan who have won everything there is to win in UK Quake 2, and on the other was Acura, a new clan formed by several highly experienced and skilled players, some from CS itself.
Both legs were extremely close with quality play from both teams, but in the end Acura pinched it, winning by just a few frags in each leg. Well played all and congratulations to Ac for winning the Cup on their first attempt. Thanks to Jay for providing his demo of the second leg which you can download here. Nice 1 :).
15 December 2000 - Jay's Page Just wanted to point you in the direction of an excellent Quake 2 player site created by Jay. It's packed with useful material including configs, paks, and Q2-related files. There is also a collection of duel and 2v2 demos mainly of Jay himself. One of the best features of the site, though, has to be the Rail Guide. This is similar in many ways to the DooWahDiddy rail guide that I've mentioned on several occasions in the past, but I think Jay's guide is even more comprehensive and informative, even for a veteran player such as myself. Erk, veteran :). Head on over to the site by following this link.
15 December 2000 - Q2, What Press? The lack of any kind of press coverage of Quake 2 events is getting very annoying. This week we had one of the best matches of the year between two of the best clans but you'd be hard pressed to find information about it :(. In #clanmkc we watched from Gamespy after our BW league match that night. From this and news from the #ukcclq2 channel we found out that Ac had won. But, what other coverage has there been? This is the UKCCL's premier trophy and Ac don't even get a news update to congratulate them. CS were treated in the same way recently after winning the league for a record number of times. Just because it's not the first time they've won doesn't mean it isn't worth mentioning. I update two sites and I don't have any kind of fancy asp updating system. I have to type updates in Dreamweaver and upload the pages manually. However, it doesn't take long to make a quick update, it really doesn't. You're talking five to ten minutes maximum. It's even quicker and easier now I have ISDN. So why is there no mention of it anywhere? But it's not even just a case of the UKCCL site being barren of any information. You might not expect CS to update but surely Acura should post a little something? :) But no, they can't be bothered either, hehe. The most updated Quake 2 site at the moment is the Q2Central site but this is focused exclusively on the Wireplay scene and doesn't cover "the Net" at all. The other main source of information *should* be one of the major messageboards perhaps but no, they're pretty useless. The Barrysworld MB is hardly used whereas the UKCCL board is simply a bitching board, with any simple post people attempt to make being jumped upon by 5 or 6 boring and tedious board regulars who turn every single post into some kind of childish name-calling session. I think the whole lot of them need to get a room or something to be honest ;). So, that's it, a pretty dire situation and perhaps endemic of Quake 2's decline. If you look at the Q3DM scene there's a tonne of coverage. Bigfoot regularly writes up reviews of the league at various stages in its progress and Quakenation provides further coverage of the league with demos, scores and interviews with players. If only there were a site that had the same interest in the Quake 2 scene....
8 December 2000 - UK Team Demos As I'm sure you will know, a new UK Q2 team was formed to take part in the North Sea League, a DM and CTF league competition between most of the Northern European quaking countries. The team was selected following a trial process similar to that run for the UK team that travelled to France last year. Games were played on several maps and the best players for the team were picked.
The final squad resembles a mixture of CS and FED, not unsurprisingly since these are (or in FED's case were) the best clans in the country. The final squad was Rob*, Tres, Adam, Fuze, Puppetmaster, Jecks, Hell and Liquid. It's hard to argue with any of these selections tbh. FED subsequently ceased to be a Q2 clan and dropped from the Barrysworld Q2 Free League. This paved the way for a new clan, Acura, who formed as a direct rival to CS. It is quite refreshing to see another top clan with some top names in actually, because, of those currently in the top flight, there has been no one to touch CS and it really wasn't right that one clan should hog all the best players.
Tres has created a very stylish website for the UK team, which can be found here. He also designed the Acura site linked above. Unfortunately, designing a site is one thing, and for many the interesting bit. Maintaining a site is quite another and both are severely neglected. Because of this I have uploaded some demos to my filespace. Firstly there are a total of 7 demos of the trials from the pov's of CoG>E^Z and <WDB>Cesur. Then there are 5 demos of the UK team's first match against Sweden. I've run out of file space for the time being so I've had to upload them to my Xoom space which can be a bit slow. Sorry, I'm going to try and relocate them somewhere faster asap. If you download only one I'd recommend the Liquid pov demo of game 1. Find all the demos in the, wait for it, demos section :).
8 December 2000 - Fatality Secrets Not so much secrets as config and graphics setup tips really but it's still worth a look at what the very best Quake 3 player in the world has to recommend to improve your play. Find the article on Stomped, here.
3 December 2000 - CPL Qualifier This weekend another CPL Qualifier is taking place, similar to the one held back in April. Once again the event is taking place at The Playing Fields who've apparently fitted themselves out with top of the range 1 Ghz machines and GF2's so everyone will be on a level playing field :). The prize money isn't amazing with a prize fund of only 5 thousand but the event is unusual in that every single competitor will walk away with at least £30 in their pocket. The top three favourites to win are all UNR players, Timber, Blokey and Luke but Silent from 4K is also expected to do well. Quakenation and UK Gamer are covering the event but the best coverage is available from XS Reality and Eurogamer. Early news is that DC.Mozilla is top seed for the duels after playing the customary FFA deciders. Another strange thing is that Logan is expected by some to be a potential surprise winner. The thing is he's actually a Spanish student over here so I can imagine the reaction if a foreigner were to win our UK Qualifier ;). XS Reality have posted five FFA demos from the pov's of the top players at the event - Timber, Luke, Silent, Logan and Blokey. Find the demo links here. I have watched the Blokey demo and he plays amazingly winning by a clear margin.
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It's now a year since Quake 3 came out and the scene is well established with a fantastically well organised DM League run by Barrysworld, European competition from Clanbase, and even international competition in the form of the recent Barrysworld European Championship. And let's not forget the duel scene where the very best players can make a living from the game and travel the world playing at tournaments.
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Contact Information - E-Mail: REViLLA, ICQ: 21345065 Site Created on 1 January 2000. All Content, Design and Graphics by REViLLA.
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