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moo
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Test.
Will be removed when LuckyHands updates his column :)
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Tuesday
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A busy night, with rescheduled Wireplay (nice of them to give us some warning... :/) and Barrysworld versus 'G', or n2s as they were last week.
In WPDML we (bob, djuhn, coda, blowfish) beat [LL] on dm7 (105:58) and cpm4 (123:30). Pld... better than last time :)
In BWDML, an alternative lineup of bob, coda, blowfish and z3on took on n2s, sorry G, on mexx1 and then dm14tmp. Our nice tactics on mexx1 secured us victory 71:50. However, our lack of tactics on dm14 caused us to lose the game 63:86.
So we split the points with... ah sod it, n2s, giving them a cheeky ankle tap on their dash for division one, and securing us a top 4 finish in the league, assuming there are no hiccups along the way :)
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fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.
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Ok, this morning's exam didn't exactly go well... i doubt if i've passed it. My cramming sk1llz obviously weren't up to EK's standards. This means i need to pass the rest of my exams to get into the 2nd year (i am allowed to fail one). So for the next 2 weeks, no IRC, no ICQ, and definately no Quake 3 for me.
I will hopefully return on the 18th.
ps Hi to Luckyhands, welcome to the clan etc
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Let me introduce you to the future
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And in more important news... a warm welcome to LuckyHands to EK :) Great to see that we'll have a strong squad over the coming seasons of the leagues despite a number of regulars taking a step down in gaming.
Hope your hands are luckier than Blowfish's, LuckyHands. You don't want to know where they have to go :/
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i8 signup booth opened
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Multiplay have announced that signups for the 8th event in their popular Insomnia series of Lan events has now opened. i8 will be a 4 day lan event held at Newbury race course (same place as before), and has a total capacity for 840 PCs.
The event will start at 9am on August 24th (Friday) and carry on until 6pm on August 27th (Monday). The cost for participating tickets (ie. to bring a PC down) is 70 quid (or just under 60 if you don't pay VAT). It does seem a hefty price to attend a lan but due to the event running time, it can be expected. Although it is 4 days this time!
Price for spectators are 5 quid per day.
To signup as a partcipant go here and to signup as a spectator, go here.
Would be great to have a strong EK presence there! :)
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BWQ3DM League S5 Week 6 Review
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[snip]'Coming with a late surge EK continued their good run by defeating one time title challengers XPd, allthough things were close on CPM4 the EK'ers easily took dm6tmp and perhaps with a bit of fortune in other result EK could find themselves playing in Division 1 next season, allthough perhaps they will prefer another season at this level.'[snip][sic]
Read in full here. EK v XPd - CPM4 & Q3DM6TMP
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New Point Release on the way...
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'We will be releasing a point release beta early next week. This one has taken some time but it addresses quite a few things. Graeme has been very busy with the network stuff and net traffic is now being compressed at about 4:1, this should make a huge difference for modem players. There should be a substantial FPS boost for most people and there are a bunch of fixes/tweaks in place. This release will also contain an auto update system so you can check for new updates at any time. If you get the beta, the final will be offered via the auto update. This addresses all of the cheats and hacks we know about as well. That is an ongoing battle. This point release will utilize a different protocol as a result of the new network compression.' says Robert A. Duffy of Id software.
It also seems to include a large number of map revisions :- here. You have to question why they only intend to 'tweak' the most popular maps.
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New Point Release - Map Changes
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So it seems another three months have past and yet again we're about to be put through another Point Release by Id. It was only a couple of weeks ago that I noticed a large community still playing on 1.17 servers. This is my main concern (apart from the actual changes to gameplay) that each Point Release fragments the gaming community even more. Yes I understand Time-To-Market and consumer feedback (the former probably being the main driving force), but backwards-compatibility is such a nice thing.
The next major issue about the new point release is the re-working of the most popular original maps. As these seem to be part of the point release I can only assume Id commissioned this work in some way, but the questions have to be asked 'Are they trying to fix something which they believe is broken?' 'Why are they only touching the most popular maps, when surely they should focus on improving the other maps?' and 'Is this a cop-out for not coming up with some new maps?'. The phrase springs to mind 'If it aint broke dont fix it', although some who don't like the current maps would argue this. Is it just me, or does it seem obvious to come up with something new entirely?, q3tourney7 or something? rather than f*cking around with the one bit which many people like? Hmmm.
Anyway taking a look at what has been done over on XSR starting here. Firstly we note weapon respawn times have been increased for these new maps from 5 to 15 secs. I do favour this since it makes the game more about weapon control AND armour control - wasn't it Id themselves who pimped q3 originally with the tag: 'One player with a machine gun and armour, the other with a rocket launcher, who will win?'. It seems for dm6, the only major change is a few item changes including mega in the centrecourt. This does seem a bit of a joke when you consider dm6tmp was basically set up for improved item placement. I do not consider a great deal of extra thought has gone into this one... However we move on...
Next up is q3tourney2, one of the few original maps which is still favoured all the way to the current CPL.
One of the nicest things about the original map was its symmetry, leading to some great cat-and-mouse style play. Hmm, the map now has a lg porch on one side...
The main inclusion which will change the map entirely is the inclusion of the railgun. Personnally I liked t2 a lot for the fact it didn't have a railgun, which always tends to dominate the duel maps it is placed on. However t2 could always turn into a run-away-tactics map easily, so perhaps this might help.
Having a look at dm13, in my view probably the best original duelling map, it involves a number of item changes; mega at quad, ra at lg, lg at ra, rl at mega. Certain parts of the crampt map areas have been re-adjusted. Not that any of this should distract from the question of why any of this has been changed at all rather than coming up with something new.
T4 has some better features now. Before it was a case of a player getting kitted and camping at the top next to the ra. This was made even worse by the floor-bug being removed in 1.27g. The most striking feature here then is a teleported from the bottom to the top level.
A second lower jumppad below where the mega used to be also adds this. This distribution of YA's instead of one RA means that the controlling player needs to move to stay in control. Again though, why not start with changing some of the other maps which are less popular? Surely if you make more of the other existing maps more 1v1 friendly - which are the ones which really need fixing, rather than tweaking those which are already half playable.
==================================================================
As for the rest of the point release, it seems Id have finally got around to improving the netcode. 'This one has taken some time but it addresses quite a few things. Graeme has been very busy with the network stuff and net traffic is now being compressed at about 4:1, this should make a huge difference for modem players. There should be a substantial FPS boost for most people and there are a bunch of fixes/tweaks in place.'. Oh well, one would think that with Dreamcast on modem, and past-experiences from games such as quakeworld, that they might have fixed this sooner? I hope this only benefits the actual gameplay.
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WPDML stuff
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This week we had to play Elite Alliance but as they did not have a team, DJack (top m8) asked to postpone. Having had the spot free, TP suggested we play them instead on dm6tmp and ngiarena2, game postponed from the start of the season.
As we had not practiced for those maps and some superior TP pausing skillz on dm6tmp, we lost both.
2 clans left to play, EA and LL (game vs them has to be replayed although we won the first time around 2:0), hopefully we will secure the title next week.
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Quake 3 and more Quake 3
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having built my fast PC and being unable to get decent download speeds for movies I have had to use my dsl connection for quake only :-/
playing about 2-3 hours a day and can definately feel myself improving online. It's been a long time since I have been called a bot. I don't know but it's a nice compliment when one is called a bot (as long as it's not persistent...) following is a condump from a game...
King Shepperd: iS dEVIL A BOT
Bullit: no he's an expert picking on your everyday avg q3 player
King Shepperd: Everyone go after the devil of EK
CEOStyle: devil
The Devil of EK: yup?
CEOStyle: k
The Devil of EK entered the game
CEOStyle entered the game
R0cK3R-$h0cK3R entered the game
King Shepperd entered the game
Bullit entered the game
[Doh!]a Bad Man entered the game
[CP]PIXELBANDIT entered the game
VanHalen entered the game
R0cK3R-$h0cK3R almost dodged The Devil of EK's rocket
Bullit killed himself.
Brainworm entered the game
CEOStyle ate The Devil of EK's rocket
Yogi entered the game
King Shepperd ate [Doh!]a Bad Man's rocket
Matador entered the game
R0cK3R-$h0cK3R almost dodged [Doh!]a Bad Man's rocket
Brainworm almost dodged CEOStyle's rocket
VanHalen was melted by The Devil of EK's plasmagun
[Doh!]a Bad Man was melted by The Devil of EK's plasmagun
CEOStyle was melted by The Devil of EK's plasmagun
VanHalen almost dodged The Devil of EK's rocket
King Shepperd ate [CP]PIXELBANDIT's rocket
Matador ate [CP]PIXELBANDIT's rocket
R0cK3R-$h0cK3R almost dodged The Devil of EK's rocket
[CP]PIXELBANDIT ate The Devil of EK's rocket
CEOStyle was railed by [Doh!]a Bad Man
Brainworm was machinegunned by VanHalen
R0cK3R-$h0cK3R almost dodged The Devil of EK's rocket
Yogi cratered.
[Doh!]a Bad Man almost dodged The Devil of EK's rocket
VanHalen almost dodged [CP]PIXELBANDIT's rocket
Matador was railed by The Devil of EK
AwDawg connected
MYST connected
[Doh!]a Bad Man ate [CP]PIXELBANDIT's rocket
The Devil of EK blew himself up.
King Shepperd almost dodged The Devil of EK's rocket
VanHalen was melted by [Doh!]a Bad Man's plasmagun
Matador was railed by [CP]PIXELBANDIT
AwDawg entered the game
R0cK3R-$h0cK3R almost dodged The Devil of EK's rocket
Yogi was melted by [Doh!]a Bad Man's plasmagun
[Doh!]a Bad Man was railed by The Devil of EK
CEOStyle was machinegunned by [Doh!]a Bad Man
[CP]PIXELBANDIT ate The Devil of EK's rocket
R0cK3R-$h0cK3R almost dodged Brainworm's rocket
VanHalen was railed by The Devil of EK
Brainworm was machinegunned by CEOStyle
King Shepperd: iS dEVIL A BOT
[Doh!]a Bad Man was railed by The Devil of EK
Matador was machinegunned by [CP]PIXELBANDIT
Brainworm almost dodged The Devil of EK's rocket
The Devil of EK was machinegunned by R0cK3R-$h0cK3R
Matador was melted by Yogi's plasmagun
[CP]PIXELBANDIT was machinegunned by The Devil of EK
MYST entered the game
Matador almost dodged The Devil of EK's rocket
Yogi was railed by [CP]PIXELBANDIT
[CP]PIXELBANDIT was melted by [Doh!]a Bad Man's plasmagun
Bullit: no he's an expert picking on your everyday avg q3 player
AwDawg almost dodged R0cK3R-$h0cK3R's rocket
Yogi was machinegunned by The Devil of EK
R0cK3R-$h0cK3R almost dodged The Devil of EK's rocket
MYST ate VanHalen's rocket
VanHalen was railed by [CP]PIXELBANDIT
The Devil of EK ate [Doh!]a Bad Man's rocket
Yogi disconnected
R0cK3R-$h0cK3R almost dodged [Doh!]a Bad Man's rocket
VanHalen almost dodged CEOStyle's rocket
[Doh!]a Bad Man was gunned down by Brainworm
MYST disconnected
Gambit connected
CEOStyle was in the wrong place.
VanHalen disconnected
R0cK3R-$h0cK3R ate The Devil of EK's rocket
CEOStyle almost dodged The Devil of EK's rocket
bilCliTon connected
The Devil of EK was railed by [CP]PIXELBANDIT
[CP]PIXELBANDIT was railed by [Doh!]a Bad Man
R0cK3R-$h0cK3R was in the wrong place.
Brainworm was machinegunned by The Devil of EK
R0cK3R-$h0cK3R cratered.
The Devil of EK hit the fraglimit.
CEOStyle was railed by The Devil of EK
bilCliTon entered the game
Gambit entered the game
King Shepperd: Everyone go after the devil of EK
/dev/null connected
[Doh!]a Bad Man: Doh!
CEOStyle: devil
The Devil of EK: yup?
CEOStyle: k
Matador: i'm getting better
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