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August 2001 Archive

28 August 2001 - Machiavellian

Just a quick note to mention I've added a new page to the Extra section for all the Quake movies. I'm going to rate and link them as I find them. Also, it seems my earlier attempt at manipulation has fallen on deaf ears, see here. Not such an evil genius after all :).

26 August 2001 - Movie Madness

I've just watched the Clanbase movie from the Eurocup competition and I have to say it was absolutely the most stunning Quake movie I've ever seen. I only downloaded the shorter 23Mb version but now I'm downloading the full 105Mb version it was so good. It lasts a good few minutes and shows off some of the Quake 3 and CS play from the competition and really captures the atmosphere of the event. The best bit is the way they use some artificial sound effects so you hear explosions as people are railed and they've captured the cool Matrix slow-mo sound effect of the chaingun and cut it into the movie when people are using a machinegun. There's also a stunning sequence that will amaze any CS players out there. This guy takes down 5 enemies coming at him through a doorway, changing weapons in between. In short it's a masterpiece - download it immediately!

Another cool movie I've watched recently is a Quakeworld movie, called "Frags Done Extreme". I know, QW! It's cool though with some great clips of players bouncing each other up and down in the air with rockets. If you're interested in that one, get it here.

I've now uploaded a new demo, a classic duel between [UNR]Luke and [7th]Doomhammer that isn't on The Edge would you believe. Check it out. Apologies, but apparently the earlier Jay-vs-Emptyhead demo wasn't uploaded properly. Corrected now.

Finally, I'll just quickly mention that I've updated my guest column on Clan-XTC's superb clan site. It's about Quakeaddiction. Also, and even though my friends in XTC haven't bothered to link me on their new creation ;), I will pimp their new site, Demo Central, now with almost 500 demos and a cool user rating feature. Excellent piece of work. As if in response, Savage have also opened up a massive demo site of their own, SavageDemos, with massive storage space for anyone to upload their demos to. This is still in the early stages but keep an eye on it as the demos build up.

18 August 2001 - Wandering Star

Had a nice hits week this week by my standards, with my best day ever on Thursday, cheers ;). I've uploaded another couple of demos but even the vast REViLLA vaults are being tested now and I need more submissions really. No private duels or pickups unless they're exceptional though ;).

There's a new UK Q2 coverage site up that's worth checking out, Q2Gamer. It's still in the early stages at the moment with some content missing but it's got off to a good start with a preview of the upcoming Savage Q2 Cup. Seems to be a bunch of renegade Savage writers out to make a name for themselves, and why not ;). The more coverage the better in my opinion and it looks class so far. There appears to be another interesting-sounding site on the way, Q2Revival but it's still under construction at the moment :(.

I've been getting back into watching 3D demos again recently and I've come across the excellent site, Scene.org, which I've now added to my links section. Basically this site features hundreds of demos and covers all the major parties that go on around Europe. I've seen some amazing demos so far and they've now put up a "Viewing Tips" page to point you at some of the better ones. One thing that surprised me is that Amiga demos are still going strong. Not quite sure what's so good about Amigas now that PC's have sophisticated 3D hardware to work with but there you go... The picture above is from the slick demo Energia by Sunflower.

This week I've played more Quake 2 than Quake 3 strangely enough. For the past few months I've only really played RA3 but I've recently gone back to the Claranet DM servers. The game's as fast and furious as I remember it, no matter what Quakeworlders may say of Quake 2. The only problem is the slight delay I sense when trying to fire the railgun. The Q3 rail is definitely more eager to fire :). Another thing that's surprised me is the number of newbies on the servers, which is great to see. What surprised me even more however is that some of the newbies from back when I played ages ago are still newbies, hehe, reeer :). The depressing thing is the lack of personalities on the servers, there are just too many people aliasing and it makes me feel like I'm playing faceless bots to be honest, which is a shame and ruins the game for me quite a lot. No guts no glory. I would love to see name registering linked to your Quake key so you couldn't change it too often but that's prolly just a pipedream.

There's quite a cool column up on XS Reality by [Mr]E. Entitled "TDM tactics guide for newbies", it basically describes how to set up a clan and play a game. There's some amusing bits, especially where he describes the kind of people you need to form a clan and how they behave, hehe. One of the other column writers on XS Reality seems outrageously arrogant though. I don't know if you've ever read one of Onslaught's columns but he writes a piece using unnecessarily elaborate language and then rips into any negative commenters with the same kind of language to put them down. Language is indeed a powerful tool and using it well can get you a long way. There is, however, a very, very fine line between sounding intelligent and sounding pretentious. I've crossed it myself before now but not with this guy's flair :). "Paradigm" is an example of crossing it by a mile, hehe.

Doubtless you've already used CLQ before now to see how well you're doing in the world Quake rankings. Well, now there's a far superior site with support for Quake 3 called CSports.net. It's well worth registering for all the charts and statistics that you get access to. A few weeks ago I was looking extremely crap at RA3 for some unfathomable reason ;). I seem to be doing a bit better now though, which is nice. I remember reading about people suiciding rather than being killed in Unreal Tournament as a way to get better stats to protect their rank, which was a bit sad, so I suppose stats can never tell the whole story. Good job ;).

11 August 2001 - Revival of Fortunes

Quake 2 has seen a revival in international games again, which is fantastic to see. The standard of play overshadows anything that's been seen before and only goes to prove how strong Quake 2 remains.

I'm referring to both the International DM games and the RA2 Champions League. There's some great coverage of both these competitions over on the Clan XTC site along with a whole host of demos. I watched Palin's (aka XTC^Orion's) demo of the Home leg against Denmark and it's well worth the download. It's also nice to see the English team doing well in its first few games.

On the home-front, Clan Stealth have once again won the Wireplay Q2 Division 1 crown, whilst Children of Gaia have won the Savage Q2 League. Read Flake's very thorough round-up over on the Savage site. CS have a fair few demos up on their site at the moment, which are worth a look.

Another site to check, if you haven't already, is the re-launched Q2Central. Formerly a Wireplay news site, this has blossomed into something of a major Quake 2 scene site with some excellent content and columns. With the recent demise of Wireplay they are now in a position to broaden their focus to other aspects of the Quake 2 scene, which will be better :).

My own clan, Massive Killing Capacity, are now essentially a full-time RA3 clan and we're currently sitting in Division 1 of the Savage league and we've just finished 3rd in Division 2 of the Barrysworld League. Unfortunately you sometimes get in a situation where you can't find the right level. In my opinion we clearly belong in Division 2 of both leagues and we've taken some hefty beatings in Savage to be honest. However, by finishing 3rd in Barrys we're likely to earn promotion to some more beatings next season ;). Great! RA3 is going from strength to strength at the moment. There are now three leagues all of which will be running concurrently. Barrys of course, Savage and Nightstrike's new joint venture with Jolt, the Gaming Inferno - Jolt RA3 League. Must admit I'm looking forward to playing on the Jolt servers seeing as I use Nildram :). The recently concluded Barrysworld League was won by Clan Induce who have some great players on their books and managed to beat the former champions Clan-X, but only on round difference.

I've found another cool 64Kb graphics demo, which you can download here. Also, in case you missed the last one I linked some months ago, that can be found here. I might start hosting these diddy demos seeing as they're so compact :). They're amazing. Unfortunately, the brilliant demo site, Tranzmit, seems to have folded so a lot of great demos are no longer available :(.

Demos then, what have I got? :) Meltdown saw I'd uploaded his jumps demos and has sent me an updated version with even more jumps I'd never seen :). There's a very cool jump which is an adaption of the circle jump when you get out of the water but you set off from the health packs and kind of twist your way up. Nice. He's also attached a short recam with music which seemlessly links together a load of jumps as if he did them all in one go (which I'm sure he did). Zipgun has sent me a great demo of two top Swedish clans playing off in a league final, Wizards-vs-2.0. Good demo. Next up is a demo from the Croatian scene, which was sent to me recently. And finally I've prepared a collection of old classics, Memento Mori schoolings. Enjoy!

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