by Michael Eilers Wow, it is finally here. As we bask in the glory of having our platform be the very first to see Quake III: Arena in action, we must also feel the bite of John Carmack's scorn; he picked us because we have a small installed base of graphics cards and OpenGL drivers, not because he likes us. But at least he admits we exist! That alone is progress... Now, before I begin let me emphasize that this is just a test release designed to troubleshoot networking issues. There is no AI, no solo game, no monsters, only 2 maps and only 1 player skin. This is only a rough estimate of the final version of this game, and this does not constitute a preview or review of Quake III: Arena in any way. So, what is it like? I'm glad to say that Quake III: Arena has retained the classic "feel" of Quake: barreling down hallways filling the air with rockets while feeling a tingle in the back of your neck as a dozen players try to put you in their crosshairs. In fact, Quake 3 is a greatly simplified version of Quake in some respects: the weapons have no alt-fire; the ammo and armor system have been simplified and are represented with large, graphic icons; and helpful "low ammo" and "low armor" warnings tell you when it is time to hunker down and look for some power-ups. How does it look? Fantastic. I'm running the test on a new Blue G3 400 MHz system with Apple's OpenGL Drivers and the built-in Rage 128 chip. The textures are smooth and extremely detailed, the 32-bit lighting and effects are splendid, and the frame rates are very good—in fact, the game seems markedly faster than Unreal at similar settings. Curved surfaces are used only sparingly in the two supplied maps, but you can definitely see a difference, and possibilities for future map designs. Quake III: Arena has also learned a few tricks from Unreal, with the addition of colored fog, lens flares and the like; honestly, I much prefer Unreal's versions of these effects. Overall, Q3Test's visuals do not blow me away. I am disappointed that the iD designers still seem obsessed with "gothic" images such as upside-down crucifixes, grinning skulls and pentagrams—please, that is so '80s. The graphics are a step above what I have seen of Quake II, but do not put Unreal (nor the screenshots of Unreal Tournament) to shame. In fact a recently released Unreal map demonstrates that the Unreal engine can do a lot of the "tricks" shown in the Quake III: Arena movie, such as moving mirrors, colored fog and curved archways. It is obvious that game play will be the deciding factor in the success of these two games, and not graphics. The market for 1st-person shooters is so huge I'm sure both games will do quite well. The player models are extremely detailed and well-animated; especially impressive is the way the player's head movements "lead" the body movements—very eerie when someone is zeroing in on you at close range. While the infamous "moonwalking" effect is still present, the character actually sidesteps instead of just hovering on his heels as you "strafe," and the "backflip" when you jump while running backwards is a sight to behold. Still no damage for falling, however, a minus point in my book. The "Quad Damage" (which is now only triple damage) effect is not as cool-looking as I expected. The weapons are a modified set of Quake II weapons: gauntlet (default weapon), machine gun, shotgun, plasma rifle, rocket launcher, railgun. Overall they are quite fun to use, and seem well balanced—I made as many kills with the machine gun as with the railgun. However, the plasma rifle and rocket launcher make so much flash and racket that they are very tough to be accurate with. Obviously, I just need some practice. There seems to be a limited version of "shot accuracy," meaning that a head shot does more damage than a shot to the knees, but the effect of this is not as profound as in Unreal—there are no beheadings nor 1-shot kills. In fact the weapons have such large area of effect that there is no real point in going for the headshot when a nice blast to the chest does the job. The weapons blacken the walls and leave transparent smoke trails in the air, a very satisfying sensation. As we have come to expect from the Quake series, the sound effects are excellent and really put my subwoofer to the test. Internet play was very interesting. I use an asynchronous cable modem, 56k upload/ 1.5kbs download; effectively a 56k modem for netplay. Even with a ping of 716(!) I was able to dominate several rounds of play, winning one by 5 kills. It seems that Q3Test has built-in "hinting" features like Quakeworld has, anticipating player movement to even out the accuracy and speed difference between those on a T1 and those on dial-up modems. In fact, it seems like the scales have tipped slightly in favor of those with slower connections! The correction/prediction got so out of whack at one point that I was actually able to outrun my own rockets, allowing me to fire point-blank and escape without getting caught in the blast. Obviously the very purpose of this test release is to tweak these very variables to improve gameplay. iD testers were in all of the games I played, presumably monitoring the combat and looking for anomalies. Overall, for having such a high ping I was amazed at the smoothness and reliability of gameplay. iD has obviously figured out how to get the network traffic down to a minimum and the prediction routines seem solid, if a bit exaggerated; gone are the abrupt "jumps" of Quake and Quakeworld. I did get disconnected from the server a few times, twice out of eight games. Not having two Blue G3s, I was unable to test LAN play. For a "test" release Q3Test is quite impressive. The first solid use of Apple's OpenGL drivers for ATI chips, it looks great, runs very fast and provides megadoses of terrifying fun. iD has taken many steps to simplify the learning curve for this game, from the oversize crosshairs and icon-based ammo system to weapon use itself. If I can get good game play on my bizarre hybrid net connection, then the majority of players out there can have some fun too—and maybe even be able to challenge those Low Ping Bastards on those T3 connections. And remember, you heard it on the Mac first!