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June 2001 Archive

24 June 2001 - Death of the Artiste?

Heartaxe has posted an interesting column over on Quakenation where he takes a very analytical look at Quake players today and the way they play. It starts off with what seems a rather sneering swipe at what other people see fit to write about in their columns, but gets better after that :). Basically he looks in detail at the two main things that give us pleasure when we play, citing both winning and performing artistic and fancy moves and shots as another. The crux of the article is him lamenting the fact that the majority of players are all out to win at any cost and don't do enough fancy or risky moves, preferring to sit back and camp. I think he's hinting that playing to win causes people frustration because winning is, by its nature, not all that common and is ultimately self-defeating as a playing philosophy. "Playing philosophy" hehe :).

Not sure I agree with all the column to be honest though. I've always tried to be fancy and I take far too many risks. I'm certainly not the only one from what I've seen either. In RA3 publics I never really play to win (Red beats Blue, Blue beats Red, who cares to be honest), I only play to improve my skills. In Q2 deathmatch I do play to win but I don't adopt the winning tactics of camping (in the less obvious way of the professional) the most strategic area and whoring particular weapons, mainly because I hate being in the same place for too long.

Loads of players are aggressive, some annoyingly so :). That's not the sitting back and camping style that he claims the majority of players adopt. However, it is very true that winning is everything for a lot of players and being seen to lose or not "own" is an unbearable disgrace :). I also agree with some of the points about pickup RA3. When you've the last man standing and you're up against 7 opponents you really ought to go to the middle and try to go down in a blaze of glory rather than wasting everyone's time by running half way round the map. Just my opinion. Also, it is true that some people do sit back, or run off at the start and try to conserve their health. But I don't think that's the rule for most fortunately.

Also, the sitting back approach isn't always the key to victory. Clan X, the UK's top RA3 clan, are well known for attacking very strongly and don't really camp at all. If you watch any of the Clanbase demos of the top level matches there wasn't a lot of camping going on.

Anyway, it's a good read (though I skim read some of the early preamble) and it's nice to see someone writing something a bit intellectual and writing an attacking piece that at the very least might make people to think about the way they play :).

22 June 2001 - Only 5 Years Old?

I've just plowed through Methos' Anniversary update (linked by Barrysworld), which was written to celebrate Quake being 5 years old today. It's a good, indepth and well-researched read with interviews of John Romero and Tim Willitts and a full 5-year history of the Quake games. The low point of the article is him describing Quake 2 as one of the low points of Quake. Sounds like some-body got railed one too many times >;).

22 June 2001 - New DUN for Windows 95/98

While preparing the links I spotted a news piece on optimizing.net which mentions Microsoft having released a new version of the Dial-Up Networking software for those still using Windows 98 (or even 95). This brings us up to the same standards as Windows ME/2000 users. I've installed it on my system without problem and apparently it is now delivering me "significant improvement in TCP/IP performance". Maybe :). Still, it's always best to be up-to-date and it might help your particular connection :).

19 June 2001 - Just a Click Away

I've redone and updated the whole links section so check it out for some cool new links.

18 June 2001 - Demo Links

After linking Cineplex at weekend I thought that a better idea would be to have a dedicated demo links page, which I've now started. Couldn't find as many as I thought though surprisingly... Send me any decent links please.

I've recently got back into playing Quake 2 again, just as a break from RA3 really. The intensity of a good FFA on a top map like Q2DM3 or Q2DM8 is still brilliant :). However, I have noticed there are a lot more bots about than there were six months ago, especially on Claranet!. An awful lot in fact. And it's not just me being rusty before you start chuckling knowingly ;).

One problem I had at first was that I tried to use my Intellieye Optical, which I've happily been using with Quake 3, but Quake 2 doesn't seem to cope with it and judders and skips a lot. I've had to go back to my Logitech Mouseman for both games, which is no bad thing as it's still perhaps the best mouse ever. I've heard that the newer opticals are more sensitive than the originals but at £50 a time I don't fancy taking the chance :/.

16 June 2001 - I only sing when I'm winning

Played a very enjoyable game with my clan MKC this afternoon against Brother. It was enjoyable mainly for the fact of winning. Sorry to be shallow but after a few losses on the run to clans like Defiance, Clan X and MsR, we were more than ready for a win to try to keep alive ours hopes of remaining in Division 2 of the Barrysworld RA3 League.

RA3 games seem to go one of two ways. Either both teams pick the same target area and head there in a frenzy at the start killing each other on the way. These generally end up with maybe one guy left alive against 3 enemies who eventually pick him off. Or, one team holds off or even picks a completely different campground. These games are campier with neither team leaving their camp and both spamming the exits. This game was of the latter variety and the stalemate was tense at first until we started to pull away with a strong lead. Brother had picked the Gargoyle Room (ra3map3) and had all their guys in there, whereas we picked somewhere better ;). In a way we were fortunate to win seeing as we only had myself and Warchild on Gamevoice, but fortunately we all knew "the plan" in advance. Now that I've played with Gamevoice it's frustrating playing without it. At one point I'd peeped around the corner into the Gargoyle Room only to see three Brother entrenched in a lined with rails pointing at me. I managed to get round the corner only to see Orion on his way round. No! Couldn't tell him tho :(. I cleaned up the mess :).

Last week though I was fuming over how crap the game was and how useless my connection is after being forced to drop from a game versus MsR due to a 999 ping. This week I was singing though :). Winning is habit forming, as is losing, so I hope this game marks the point where we turn the corner :).

I've just read Teaser's coverage preview on the Clan-X site and he didn't make any prediction at all for our match versus Brother. In fact he appears to have overlooked us both completely. Charming :). As you'll have no doubt read in my Clan Sites Chart, the Clan-X coverage of the RA3 scene is second to none and well worth a look. Also read on their site about how the Clanbase RA3 final ended. It turns out that Xe fielded two illegal players in the first match, but rather than take a win by default, X very sportingly decided they'd rather try and win by having another crack at Xe. Demos up on the Clanbase site. Also, the Savage RA3 Cup ended this week with Clan-X coming out on top of both ! and Fury. At least we can say we lost to the eventual winners :). There's a good write-up of the three-way final night on the Savage site, here.

I've just spotted an interesting feature over on the Clan-Induce site. They've listed a load of Quake 3 movies for download. I've never actually seen a Q3 movie so they should be worth a look. Good site too, might review it :).

After some demos? Well, rather than trickle some through on my site I've basically linked one of the best movie sites around on my demo page. There are some real classics on there and it's been the source of many of my demos over the last couple of years.

FInally, not Quake related but if you've got half an hour or so to spare and you'd like to boggle your mind for a bit you could maybe have a go at some of these puzzles. Most of them are pretty clever and rely more on logic and lateral thinking than straight number-crunching. I saw the link in some b0rk column, can't remember which.

10 June 2001 - Sweet as a Little Pie

Had a few hours spare so I decided to revamp the design and graphics on my site. Again :). Whilst I did quite like the colourful main title I had previously, I never really liked the fact that it didn't say "Quake". I think it's pretty clear now ;). The two models are the ones I use when playing, "female/r2dgre" in Quake 2 and "crash" in Quake 3. My favourite weapon's on show, the railgun, and there's a picture of me showing some amazing skills in the background. It was a stunt double actually but I shouted instructions.

For a while I've been debating the prospect of learning asp or php and uploading a new automatic site but I simply don't have the time or patience to learn it so it's ordinary HTML all the way with a little javascript on the buttons at the top, nothing complex of course :). I've tried to hint at earlier designs with the orange letters (anyone remember my first site, hehe), and the "R" dividers hark back to the early designs too. By the way, you can click those to get back to the top of the page. I've also heeded a basic design rule and I've uncentralised a lot of the text. The old formatting could be difficult to read at times so now it's all left-aligned. The title's more graphics intensive than the old one, but it's a jpeg so it's as small as I could make it. Hope you like it anyway. Any problems with any formatting then please tell me. It's largely untested :).

Some sections need some major rework but everything's still available with the notable exception of all my old column updates. All the material will filter back through though. While I was at it, I uploaded a couple of new demos so download 'em. There's also a new entry at the top of the clan sites chart, something else which needs updating and expanding. By the way, due to caching some pages may appear in their old form so just press refresh a couple of times. All the pages you can access are updated.

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Site Created on 1 January 2000. All Content, Design and Graphics by REViLLA.