Quake 3 Test 1.0.8 First Impressions by Michael Eilers Well, we had a longer wait than usual, and skipped 1.0.7 altogether, but the Mac version of Quake 3 Arena Test has hit the servers. Here's a few tidbits, tips and screenshots to tide you over through that long, long download... The most obvious change is the new interface; much improved over the original, you can now use the mouse to navigate and select options, and the preferences have been grouped into relevant sets. A nice touch: your player model acts out the moves as you select your movement keys, a nice way to "showcase" your player skin and see how it looks to other players; of course this won't be useful until we get custom skin support. The built-in server browser has improved, but why use it, when GameRanger exists? The Q3 browser still uses an ugly font and looks like a bad PC hack of an old TTY terminal. Ditch it and go with Scott Kevill's masterwork. The other big difference is of course the new Tournament map: this map is designed for 1-on-1 tournament matches, similar to the bot matches you will be fighting if you chose to play Quake 3: Arena solo. Here's how it works: two players go head-to-head; anyone else who joins is an invisible spectator, who can either float freely around the game or follow one of the two players around. When one of the two players wins the match, the loser is kicked down to the end of the queue and the next in line plays winner, and so on. The map also supports teamplay tournament, Red vs Blue. However, this isn't a good idea, since the map only has 1 respawn point for each weapon(!) so more than 4 players end up scrambling for weapons the whole time. The Tourney map also features the Lighting Gun, iD's updating of the Quake classic. Frankly, I wasn't very impressed; the sound effect is extremely poor and it doesn't handle or damage that much differently than the plasma gun. The Flamethrower is officially gone for good; there are now slots in the inventory for the BFG, Grenade Launcher and Grappling hook, but these aren't available in the current maps. The Tourney level is done up in what can only be described as Ultra Cliché Neo Gothic. While it is a nice, compact map, and has some really pretty lighting effects (which I think were faked with textures) it is just painful on the eyes; more skulls, upside-down crosses, and chapels with eviscerated things hanging on the walls. It is as if iD freeze-dried their texture artist after Doom and thawed him out a few weeks ago. Ugh. However, the Tourney map does feature ambient sound, and some very subtle music in spots - you have to stand in the right place. Play the map solo for the full experience by starting a 1-player game server. How Does it Play? Tourney mode is interesting, but frankly 1 on 1 contests are pointless if there is a big difference in ping (responsiveness of their internet connection) between the two. The one on the server/T1 will always beat the one on the 56k modem. Quake3Test's network play does its best to level that playing field, but there is just no substitute for actual bandwidth. Make sure you have the correct connection speed selected under the System settings before you play. It makes a world of difference. Teamplay is more successful. While friendly fire is a big problem (especially with everyone blasting away with machine guns) on the smaller maps, generally teamplay works as advertised. You can 'talk' to just your teammates, and a generic "oh yes!" gesture has been added to the player models, so you can communicate with body language. Only two teams (Red and Blue) are supported at the moment; more than 2 teams would be very interesting indeed, but I doubt this will happen, because the scoring would get really tough to track. A Zoom key has also been added, allowing any weapon to be used as a sniper weapon. I didn't use this much, because the maps are too small for it to really be necessary! Network play overall is buggier and a bit more prone to crashes. I wasn't able to successfully host a game at all. If you get stuck in a situation where every server you try just freezes on "Waiting for Snapshot..." try quitting the game and restarting, to re-load Open Transport. This seems like a brute-force approach, but it worked for me, and this is after all beta software. Other Tidbits There is a new player model, 'Sarge," included in the game: just bring down the console (hit tilde or '~') and type model sarge to access it. In general most people hate the new model, and declared it quite ugly and 'unfinished. I just like how his cigar glows in the dark :-). One good thing about the new model is the hilarious sounds he makes when jumping, getting hit and getting gibbed - quite grotesque, and a refreshing change from the 'hoik!' sound the Visor model makes when you jump. Overall, almost every aspect of gameplay feels like it has been tweaked a bit; the shotgun is actually useful, the Railgun reloads much more slowly, the rocket launcher is easier to lead with and the machine gun is still a formidable weapon. The new lightning gun is too similar to the plasma gun, as I have noted, and I doubt they will ever appear on the same map. My ping seems to be less consistent with this version; overall I found most matches playable but when I suffered 'lag,' I really suffered, sometimes crashing right through floors and walls and experiencing all sorts of visual anomalies. With my Rage 128 card in my Blue G3, the game runs faster than ever before and looks fantastic; all of the screenshots below were taken in 32-bit color with all options on. I never drop below 30 fps, even in heavy gunfire. The Quake 3 Engine is obviously a cutting-edge piece of software, and definitely gives the Unreal (and Unreal Tournament) engine a run for its money in speed - but still can't match Unreal's visual quality. Perhaps with a better texture artist... Since I have a Voodoo2 card as well, I used the latest version of Mesa3dfx to run Quake3Test on that card. The results were horrible - the texture quality, even with all settings on, is pathetic, and the overall screen picture seems washed-out and blurry. Shadows and dark areas have a visible horizontal grain. Quake3test is really designed for 32-bit cards, there is no doubt of that. While the frame rate was so smooth it was eerie, it looked so terrible I was willing to sacrifice the frame rate and stick with my Rage 128. Adding injury to the insulting visuals was the fact that the game crashed extremely hard on quitting after use Mesa3dfx, every single time. Conclusions Quake3Test continues to evolve. I like this version much more than I did 1.0.5 in terms of overall gameplay and 'feel'; they are getting closer to a game I would buy. The networking is definitely more flaky than last time, but the overall stability is great and even 56k modem matches are playable as long as you don't mind losing a lot of matches. I've already said my piece about how the game looks, so I'll just say I hope the texture artist is forced into retirement before the final game ships.