Quake III's Magic Bus by Michael Eilers It isn't every day that a video game publisher puts its game in a giant, custom-made bus and drives it all over the West coast so people can play the game for free. And it isn't every day that said bus rolls into my home town of Phoenix, AZ. Luckily for me - and for you - that day was yesterday, when the Quake III: Arena bus rolled into the parking lot of a CompUSA and set up shop. The crowd was fairly small when I arrived; 15 to 20 people at most, and many of them had been there for hours, playing Quake III over and over again. This low turnout was probably due to the fact that the particular CompUSA they chose was about 30 miles from the Arizona State University campus; a location closer to that 40,000 student school would have guaranteed a bigger audience. There weren't any official iD representatives in evidence, so I didn't get much in the way of insider information for you, but there was a very helpful support tech named David who was in charge of setting up and running the netplay. So How's Quake III Look? I've already covered the 'look and feel' of Quake III extensively in my 'first looks' at Q3Test 1.0.5 and 1.0.8.; what I played on the bus did not differ very substantially from Q3Test in feel or gameplay, although it did look quite a bit different. The two maps I saw were interesting. One as a tournament map with a bland grey-and-white palette, featuring huge overhead pulsing 'intestines' and lots of vertical height. It was large, obviously for tournament teamplay rather than one-on-one. The other map looked similar in texture and layout to the new tournament map in the most recent Q3Test, with orange and rust textures and some 'gothic' chapel-like accents. One remarkable aspect of the tournament map I played: there were glowing 'conduits' overhead that pulsed and undulated, and not only did the intensity of the glow increase and decrease as they animated, but so did the transparency - in other words, an animated alpha channel of some kind. Obviously, as indicated by screenshots from some of the Quake III engine games in development (such as Heavy Metal F.A.K.K. 2 and Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force) the Quake III engine has a few tricks hidden away that we haven't seen yet. Carmack himself has hinted in his .plan files that Quake III: Arena's emphasis is on speed, and many of the engine's 'tricked-out' features won't be taken advantage of in this title. Player Models and Skins There were four player models in use, Visor (the default), Sarge (the cigar-chomper), a female model and Orbb, the grotesque walking eyeball. Regardless of which model you chose, your viewpoint and speed in the game was identical; I was kind of disappointed that Orbb couldn't see the game from ground-level, but I suppose that would create big gameplay problems. iD already discarded the idea of having player 'classes' (slow and armored, average, fast and weak) long ago, so having the identical viewpoints makes sense. Skins were quite customizable, including many faces to choose from and lots of default colors. It will indeed be child's play to add your own face to your model, if you have access to a scanner or digital camera. Character animation was smooth and almost too quick to see; head movement tracks the weapon's angle up and down, but the torso does not seem to rotate and sidestepping still looks like running in place. The Eyeball is really disturbing when it runs, but the levels we played were too well-lit for it to seem spooky or scary. Deaths and destruction are just as gory as with Q3test, if not even bloodier - the red puffs of 'blood' are really disturbing, giving the impression that the weapons you are firing are actually churning your opponents into a bloody mist, a gore aerosol. The eyeball of the Orbb model bounces nicely when it is gibbed. Several players complained that the body parts disappear too quickly; they wanted to see the carnage. I told them to play Marathon Infinity. Quake III: Arena will definitely earn a 17 and up rating from the ESRB. The Weapons There were two new weapons available, the Grenade Launcher and the BFG. No one really seemed to use the BFG; it goes through ammo too fast and the flash of the barrel makes it very tough to aim. Several players complained about how weak the blast of the grenade launcher was (a few felt it should be on par with the rocket launcher in damage points) but they liked the predictability of grenade placement and firing rate. Almost everyone I asked hates the long delay for reload of the Railgun. The Lighting gun was also in evidence, but most players seemed to prefer the Plasma Rifle instead; it just looks and sounds cooler. Again, there didn't seem to be any big differences between the Q3Test weapons and their Quake III counterparts, with the exception of the new ones. This is actually a Good Thing, as it means the gameplay is settling down and they can start cranking out levels and textures rather than tweaking things. The Big Black Bus The bus itself is a technological marvel; a full-size rock-and-roll stadium tour monster, it is done up in black-on-black-on black (of course) with more black inside. Inside there is a bench where one eager group of eight gamers anticipates while the another eight plays on the LAN. You play standing up, with a Logitech gaming mouse and an el-cheapo keyboard. The hardware behind the curtain is a bunch of AMD Athalon 550 processors (a direct competitor to Intel's Pentium III chips) and a VooDoo III card. Needless to say, gameplay was fast and smooth. The bus itself was very cool (temperature-wise) inside; this was due to the most amazing generator I've ever seen, a huge straight-six diesel engine hanging right out the side of the bus. It pumped out enough power to run eight hot-rod PCs, mood lighting, a stereo system (playing, of all things, Pink Floyd) and some serious AC. I spoke to David (see the video clip) who had been on tour for a while; he said he was having a blast, and noted that he had lots of 'kick-back' time to play Pokemon on his color GameBoy and visit the local malls of the towns they stayed in. Man, I thought being a playtester was a cool job... The Crowd As I mentioned, the crowd was fairly small, but dedicated Quake fans every one: they should be, if they braved the nasty Arizona freeways (perpetually under construction) and desert heat to get there. Most had played Quake I and II, thus defeating the purpose of the tour, which as David explained it was to expose people to the game who hadn't played it before. I'm sure it is much different in other towns and in locations closer to an actual mall or campus. There was a pretty predictable crowd of twentysomethings and teenagers, with two hilarious metal -heads (complete with an axe-shaped guitar and ratty, threadbare tour shirts) gawking at the big black bus - perhaps they thought Ozzy was on tour? Conclusions The Quake III: Arena tour bus was a very cool idea, but I'm not convinced it will sell a lot of copies of the game; it seems to be preaching to the converted so far. But perhaps when it hits big cities such as Las Vegas and Seattle and gets closer to college campuses it will make a bigger impact. The bust itself is also an information-gathering system; they have an exit poll people can fill out that may be used to 'tweak' the gameplay a bit or judge the game's expected audience. The game itself is shaping up nicely - it does seem to have captured that ol' Quake magic of fast-and-furious deathmatch and nothing but. I still have my reservations about the look, but there's no arguing about the feel of the game - blazingly fast adrenaline-fueled twitch-a-thon to the end. Just a few minutes of play was totally exhausting, and I've got a sneaky feeling that this is exactly what Quake/iD fans are looking for.