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Quake First Person Shooters (Games)

Mac Q3Test Shots 69

Colossal writes "As most of you have already read, the Q3test was released for the Mac first, but never fear! I have put up many shots of the test on my page. "
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Mac Q3Test Shots

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  • Carmack just made q3 to be mutliplayered and speed is more important then visual quality in networked games. I forget where I read this but Cramck said in an itnerview that q3 detcts how powerfull your computer is and disables graphics accordingly to cpu speed and video. I believe the q3 only displays all advanced vidual code at high resolution for low end pc's with high end video cards but will get rid of cpu intensive stuff like oraganic modeling and reflections on metallic surfaces and moving objects while if your computer is very fast but you have a shitty video card, all the visual effects are turned on like reflections and relections on moving objects but advanced video stuff like advanced shadows and high resolution shall be disabled. The screenshots will vary hugely on indivudal pc's. I would love to see this demo on a tnt2 with 32 megs or video memory and on a k7. I believe but I am not sure that the resolution of the graphic textures will go up and up depending on video memory and agp speed. Q3's old engine trinity was scraped. THis engine is mostly new and has some old quake code in it but its designed to be fast and not innovative and pretty. There are stuff like organic modeling instead of nurb based rendering and advanced shadows as well as reflections. Also the new q3 engine can reflect light and colors off of moving objects so you can be looking at a pipe while running and the dents in the pipe show in the reflections as you run around parrralel to the pipe. The screenshot of this looked very cool. The screenshots of the mac page wre probably done on an old mac or one with a shitty 3d card. dont worry. IF you have an old pentium the game will run and not make yourslef obsolete. It will jsut be like quake. It will rock on a pentium2 or the new pentium3's and k7's. THis graphic enggine is a smart move for students lie myself who can't afford a new computer evey 2 years. I wish more games were liek this for old hardware. Horray for my pentium166
  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 25, 1999 @03:27PM (#1917361)
    Hmm... I don't understand why slashdot only updated with one page with screenshots from the q3test when there are like 5+ of them up now. That server is probably going to get slashdotted and everyone will get mad, etc etc. Anyhow, here some other pages with q3test screenshots...

    http://astrotek.realtime.no/quake3/ [realtime.no]

    http://hope.res.cmu.edu/ [cmu.edu]

    http://www.columbia.edu/~gks4/ [columbia.edu]

    http://linux.alphacomp.com/ [alphacomp.com]
  • I just put a V3 in my machine. WOW!!! Daryll Strauss has released a new X server for the whole like of Voodoo cards, and it screams!!! Although Glide (and thus, Mesa) isn't available for it yet, the talk is we'll likely see betas out in a few weeks.

    Having 16 megs on your video card gives whole new meaning to textures! It can also double-buffer displays at upto 2046 by 1536.

    Disclaimer: I don't work for 3dfx -- I'm just in awe of one of their cards.

  • Get Half Life. The best 3d first person single player missions I've seen, beautiful scenery, and with Team Fortress Classic, excellent multiplayer play. Or Tribes, that was a fun multiplayer only game, and didn't cause as much, $29.95 or so maybe.

    Q3 looks nice and all, but it ain't no Half Life. :)
  • This is because Daryll has been essentially wasting time making the Banshee/V3 X server so that people can at least use their cards for X. The current situation with one person developing for 3Dfx cards on the side just isn't working very well. I'm not complaining too loudly though, since 3Dfx is the only 3D card manufacturer to dat e that even gives a shit about Linux (not counting the commercial X servers. I'd rather dual-boot than shell out $100+). I'm planning on buying a V3 now, and keeping my V1 for use under Linux until the V3 is supported.
  • They still worry me (freaked me out first time too). Five rockets just ain't cheap (nor is one or two BFG shot's or 40-80 plasma shots). They're tough mothers.

    On the otherhand, I tend to panic whenever I encounter either a spider deamon or a cyber deamon (unless they're under a crusher, or fighting each other).

  • I agree. Wolfenstein 3d was a great innovation in gameplay, but most of everything else since has been rehash. Rise of the Triad is one of the few exceptions, as its true 3d movement (you can jump, fall off things, etc.) was a leap ahead. Just about everything else, however, is the same thing with better graphics and more monsters/weapons. Just write a .wad for doom with new weapons and get it over with.
  • When I'm playin...err testing, it's on my Voodoo2 under Linux.

    Any chance of getting Q3 to run with other boards under Linux using commercial OpenGL drivers? I'm thinking of the Permedia2 and i740 specifically.

    TedC

  • by TedC ( 967 )
    Here's a link from Blue's on how to get Q3 test working with a Voodoo. (Mac only, of course)

    http://perso.club-internet.fr/flory/ [club-internet.fr]

  • http://www.quake2.com/sconfig/quake3t est.html [quake2.com]
    http://www.q3arena.net/ [q3arena.net] (may have to scroll down a bit)

    I like the doom looking screen. Looks cool. Of course, I've been bragging to all of my windows friends that I DO have my voodoo2 working in linux, and of course the linux port will hit before thiers :)

    -----
    If Bill Gates had a nickel for every time Windows crashed...

  • And if you still get the "needs four megs" error, delete your q3config.cfg file from your demoq3 folder. That solved the problem for me.
  • I mean www.mesa3d.org, not www.mesa3d.got ot www.mesaGL.org.

    Where did I get "got" from "org" anyway?
  • Here's the thing: I don't think there is anjy actual single-player storyline, though I'd imagine somebody could make one.

    However, this can still be played alone. If I'm not mistaked, Q3 will support Unreal-style "botmatches" where you spar with very highly advanced bots. Also, there's a tutorial mode.
  • It doesn't seem to work with a Voodoo2 card either; q3test gives the error "You must have at least 4 MB of VRAM to play." I don't know if it's Quake3 or Mesa which is at fault for that one.
  • 1) Their link to Mesa's site is bad. It's www.mesa3d.got, not www.mesaGL.org.

    2) The 3.1b4 binaries aren't where the Mesa site says they are. In fact, I'm still looking for them.

    This said, q3test looks great. Now, if only I goould get into one of the servers...
  • Is there anyone else that thinks there is something wrong when a game demo requires 70MB of RAM? Is the code that complex or is it really that bloated?

    No, there's nothing wrong.
    Don't forget that there's many, many, many pieces of truecolor artwork, large data structures for the map, and other such things.
    I'm sure the code itself is tiny, and most of it probably fits within cache. Carmack wouldn't have it any other way.

  • Looks like this could be a good game.
    BUT: As I understand it they wont let people set up their own servers with custom worlds and rules. Bad.

    Is there any other games like this around or coming?
  • I was not blown away by the pictures. It's quite possible that it does some really smooth, neat and dynamic things that would blow me away if I saw it "live," but the pictures, while nice, are failing to make me drool. Call me spoiled.

    David E. Weekly (dew)
  • That's the one thing I absolutely hate about the various Dooms and Quakes. I really hate playing games in which everything is a shade of brown. Brown ground, brown metal, brown enemies, brown weapons, EVERYTHING looks like it got hit with the Brown stick.

    In an environment with a very limited color palette (e.g. Doom, 8bit color) I can accept this. With 32bit color it's stupid. Unreal is frequently willing to avoid brown, and use other colors instead (although it's still pretty boring in a lot of respects). I rather liked the original Marathon (not 2 or 3 so much) for their willingness to use different color schemes for stuff.

    I swear the guys at Id must be color blind or something... jeeze...
  • Of course you're not impressed by the screenshots, they look boring to me too. But this game really does rock; the way things move really needs to be seen to be believed...

    ID has raised the bar yet once again, and oddly enough it looks good even on a Mac.

  • MetroLinks has permedia2 based opengl X win servers. I wonder if q2 would work on that. I've got a pm2 (8mb AGP).

    And as for glx based cards.. erm that's when Xfree86 4.0 comes out, so everyone has to wait till that comes out. I heard g200 support is being worked on..
    --

  • If not, I dont think many people would be able to run the linxu version untill xfree86 4.0 comes out.
    --
  • guess it's time to get a rage card
  • You think I don't know? :P

    Half Life ROCKS!

    -- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

  • The screenshots look great, and I'm thrilled that Q3 will be Shrink-Wrapped for Linux. My only gripe is the Game's Design. From all of what I have read, this is a Multiplayer-Exclusive game. How much will this cost? (i.e.: I don't want to pay $59.95 for a game that ONLY does multiplayer.) Are the developers/distributers taking this into consideration when deciding on pricing?


    -- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

  • The screenshots don't show the sheer speed of motion in the game. Everything is very smooth (I didn't check my framerate) and with multiple netplayers running around in a room there are no slowdowns at all.

    All in all, I was very impressed with how well the engine performed on my system (B&W G3/300, 16MB Rage128, 64 MB RAM) even with virtual memory on. Q3Test requires 70MB of RAM and I only have 64MB real memory.

    I had one or two crashes while starting the game, but no errors at all once it got started.

    Still, it is just a 3D first person shooter. It's exactly the sort of thing that people who like this sort of thing will like.

  • I haven't tested the Banshee. I'm not sure if it will work. Depends on if Daryll has finished up the Glide support for the Banshee. I don't have a Banshee to try it out on. :(

    Voodoo2 is certainly supported. You don't want to play in a window on a Voodoo2--it's fullscreen only really (which is a good thing). When I'm playin...err testing, it's on my Voodoo2 under Linux.
  • Theoretically, yes. But you need a "real" glX library on the Linux side to forward it. Mesa doesn't seem to do this right.

    I have an SGI O2 and tried it, but it didn't seem to work. This is obviously an unsupported feature. :)
  • by Zoid ( 8837 ) <zoidctf@gmail.com> on Sunday April 25, 1999 @03:01PM (#1917390) Homepage
    Linux Q3Test is an OpenGL glX based application, so they should work if hardware acceleration is enabled. Full screen play may not work unless the X11 Servers supports the XFree86 VidModeExtensions.

    When the Linux Q3Test is out, give it a try and lemme know how it goes. :)


  • Yeah, I know what you mean. I still remember the first time I heard the scream of a Baron of Hell (?) in Doom... scared the living shit outta me.

  • I also enjoyed your enthusiasm when I finally found that same X server for my Banshee.

    But, think about it --- what good is that card going to do you without glide? They've been talking about porting it for many many many months, and still nothing.

    Don't hold your breath.
  • Quake ]I[ isn't the first multiplatform game, but it will definately be the flagship for Linux game development over the next few years. If people can see that it doesn't require much extra development effort to port to three different platforms, I think we'll see a much more homogenous application portfolio for Mac/Win32/Linux/etc.

    I'll bet you that making a game multiplatform will pay off in the long run-- less OS-specific code which is more likely to break than the OS-independant code.

    Needless to say, I can't wait.
  • Do you have plans to support glx modules such as the current (development) glx module for the matrox G200 cards under Linux, and when it comes out (july-ish, I think) Precision Insight's glx DRI? It strikes me as strange that Q3 will require a 3DFX card since it's written in openGL? Btw, as 3D accel. for Linux gets better, such as the G200 driver, will you release AXP (Linux/Alpha) binaries, since we'll have 3D hardware acceleration as well? Thanks.
  • There is currently a driver under development for the Matrox G200 cards. It's pre-alpha right now, but development is active and progressing (I'm hoping to contribute once my G200 PCI card shows up in the mail).
  • I couldn't care less about what the makers care about. I care about the quality of the game. Damn shame it's not available for your platform, though -- guess that's the price you pay for putting all your eggs in one basket. Especially when that basket has such poor application availability. :)

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

  • I hope they do not leave that backdoor they left on q1 and q2 (the one in which a packet with a forged ip source and a special password could run any console command) and avoid other bugs (like the old buffer overflows).
  • Do you have any links for info about the driver? I wouldn't mind testing out the 3D capabilities of my card (don't have windows on my machine. Don't plan on installing it).
  • brightness makes for better screenshots, i'm sure they'll turn down the brightness when the final version comes out
  • All in all, I was very impressed with how well the engine performed on my system (B&W G3/300, 16MB Rage128, 64 MB RAM) even with virtual memory on. Q3Test requires 70MB of RAM and I only have 64MB real memory

    Is there anyone else that thinks there is something wrong when a game demo requires 70MB of RAM? Is the code that complex or is it really that bloated?
  • by Cysgod ( 21531 ) on Sunday April 25, 1999 @03:09PM (#1917401) Homepage
    After playing Q3Test plenty of hours last night I found that it offered nothing new over previous versions except slightly better graphics. I congratulate id Software at getting better at making the same game, and I'm sure lots of people will buy it, because they like the same game.

    But I'm tired of it. Noone seems to be able to do anything new with first person shooters. Just more weapons, better graphics, new bad guys. The only thing moderately new was Rainbow 6, and I enjoyed it for quite a while, but even it seems like old hat now.

    I'm sure lots of /. readers are going to just love Quake 3, but I personally am not going to play it. I can go back to Quake 1 and get the same gameplay experience. Plus with Quake 1 I won't have to worry about whether I need to drop large sums of money into my machine to make it playable.

    I'd love to run around and gib people again, but I don't think I'll enjoy it. No, I'd rather go back and play NetHack or TradeWars 2002 or my current fave Myth II. All games that did something new, better and have innovative game play. And Myth II was a really good followup to Myth adding new gameplay features and modifying gameplay of the original.

    If you still play Quake or Quake 2 regularly, you'll love Quake 3, otherwise save your money until a better game comes out. On second thought perhaps the names should be Quake 1.0, Quake 2.0, and Quake 3.0 to reflect that they are all the same game with incrementally better graphics.

    Maybe I'll write my own first-person shooter in ML. Or maybe not.

    -- Cysgod
  • Ask him to post pics with a different Gamma

    Caleb Penner
    http://members.xoom.com/cpenner/
  • I fingered one of ID programmers and he said that SLI does not give any advantage at all over plain Voodoo 2 card, try to remove one card ..
  • Ok, assuming that Voodoo Banshee is supported by Glide sooner or later.. which video card should I buy? Voodoo2 or Banshee for Quake3 under Linux?
    (Voodoo3 is not an option for this P233mmx)

    I heard that Voodoo2 outperforms Banshee but... don't forget that Voodoo2 is a 3d only accellerator, it's performace must suck for running quake in a window (I think the only option of Linux users), Banshee on the other hand is better in this respect since its 2D/3D card...

    I am basically confused about what to buy ..
  • hell yeah! i love trade wars!

    actually, it's funny you should state that game specifically. last night I got really bored so I installed TW2002 on my linux box (well, using dosemu, but whatever). It's just like i remember it. addictive as hell. come join us. telnet to minipax.mit.edu and login as "tw2002" with no password. Ken aka Juggernaut

  • It looks like the graphics in my (unofficial, unlegal) quake3 alpha...

    Not bad, but not better than my Unreal. I hope it'll change when the pc version comes (read: voodoo3 and P3 version). And it doesn't look like it has as much style as Quake2 (you know, the space-metallic style) or Quake1 (like an old horror movie :-). And why didn't they leave the font. It's more effects, less style and art...

    Perhaps the effects will blow us away, when we get to see it ourself...

    ...and I would have liked to see a screenshot of the menu system...
  • What's the deal here? Bright colors, lights? what has happened to Quake, I mean really. If it doesn't make you squint really hard to see anything, I don't think it's worth it's salt. =)

    It looks pretty badass, just gotta upgrade upgrade upgrade to play it.....

  • Thanks for putting up the screamshots (that's not a typo.) Could you give us more detail about them, like resolution of your screen, video stats, etc? Pics looked really low-quality on my machine, but then I'm rather spoiled (VoodooII SLI running under Mesa3.0 on a PII -- had to build in an extra fan just to keep those bad boys cool and comfy!)

    Thanks again for the screenshots.
  • I went and had a look at Nate Fox's pics and they view much better on my machine (see Nate's message with URL in this thread.)

    Lookin' good!

  • I ran one card for a month before getting the second and my eyes say it's a big improvement. I'll trust my own eyes before I'll trust someone else's eyes, thank you.:)

"All the people are so happy now, their heads are caving in. I'm glad they are a snowman with protective rubber skin" -- They Might Be Giants

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