Q3Arena.com - The Ultimate Quake III Site

Reactive Software has released a new version 1.26b of Q3Comp. The new version of this Q3A server side only mod has a whole slew of new features added.
Here is a partial list of new features:

New Scoreboard.
Added time held msg for flag captures.
Added cg_truelightning which will remove the prediction code from the shaft. You can find this option under Hud Options in the UI.
Added -/+ actions. This allows you to have a button do something when you press it down and something else when you release it. +zoom and +score are 2 examples of this.
Added cg_crosshairColor which uses the standard id colors 0-7. Again look in Hud Options to change this value.

More information on this mod can be found at the Reactive Software site.

A new version of K-query has been released bringing it up to 2.1. This new version brings adds the following enhancements:

Half-life protocol 43 compliancy.
Master Server listing support for win2k (mail me if you have problems).
Smarter 20 server list.
Online update checker.
For all you lazy people out there.... a NEW "FILTER" ABILITY - simply right click on the master list.

K-query is a utility that returns game info (server rules, server status, players + position + score) of any server, with ability to output this to HTML for live server status via the Internet. It includes Remote Admin, customizable HTML, NotifyMe(tm) feature, and more. K-Query currently supports the following games: Quake2, Quake 3 arena, Unreal Tournament, Half-life, Half-life TFC, and Half-life CounterStrike.

Tempus from Z-Axis was able to corner Loki, the project leader of the popular Q3Fortress mod, and get an interview. The 10 question interview gives us some insight of what will be coming in the mod's future, and some other tidbits about Locki and the team.

Version 3.0 of Eternal Arena is now available. The new version adds some new things, takes away a few things, and fixes some bugs. Here is a partial list of the new enhancements to this version:

Instagib - choose rails or rockets for instant death
Haste - infinite haste for fast action
Lowgrav - for those who like to fly
Vampire - suck the life from your enemy by hurting him/her, and add it to your own
Progressive zooming
Triple-way plasma bombs

More info can be found on the Eternal Arena site.

Q3F Beta 1F has been officially released and can now be found at the Q3F website. The release covers all major platforms, Win32, Linux and Mac. The team states that this release will only work with Q3A version 1.17 and will not work with the recent beta release. They also have furnished instructions on how to change your version back to 1.17 if you have the new Q3A beta version.

The long awaited beta 1F of Q3Fortress will be released today at 9pm CET, 8pm BST, 7pm GMT, 2pm EST, and 11am PST. The Q3Fortress team has some new preview screenshots for you to look at while we are waiting.
Q3F Beta 1F will include the following new features:

5 new original maps: The Causeway, Last Resort, The Technology Of Spam, Got Duck? and King of the Castle
Lots of new visual effects for weapons and grenades based on our new volumetric explosions, particle emitters and beam generator
Completely new menu graphics, animation, music and sound effects
New models and skins for most grenades
Over 70 new audio effects for weapons, players, ambience, menu music and special FX
Complete overhaul of all class and weapon balancing through 3 months of extensive play testing by our QA Team
Over 50 game-play tweaks and bugs fixed
New commands for people on lower spec systems providing control over our new 3D visual effects
Tribes-style Radio Communications System
Improved map-voting system
Q3F Extended Entity System now extended further :)
Anti-cheat protection (both automatic and server administrator controlled)

The Daily Radar has a new article called Back To School: A Beginners Guide for Quake Newbies. It seems to be about a year late but it is still a pretty good guide for those who are not yet familiar with Q3A.

A new release of Q3Offline has been released as version 00.10.24.00. This new version integrates a new beta version of Q3Stats, a log analyzer, with Q3Offline to give the following features:

Displays statistics for map, player and team. Statistics include maps won, frags, score, CTF flag captures and returns, etc.
Statistics are automatically updated and displayed when you complete a match that you launched from Q3Offline.
You can replay the last match, either replaying maps you did not complete, or replaying both maps you did not complete, and maps that you lost.

A brand spanking new version of RTS Quake has hit the net! This interesting mod brings real time simulation to Q3A. Version 1.1 has hit the streets with multitudes of improvements over the last version. Here is a partial list of them, a whole lot more can be found on the RTS Quake site.

New Class: Monk
- 100 Health
- 120% speed
- Gauntlet does 50 damage
- can carry money like a worker but cannot build, repair or upgrade
- throws Blinding grenades (available after an upgrade)
- creates Regeneration, Haste, and Quad powerups on demand (available after upgrades)
New Buildings: Cathedral, Ice Cave, Infernal Portal
New look for Archery (a crossbow), and updated looks for other buildings
Smith is now the first building built, and unlocks the Soldier class
Armory unlocks the Knight class, and comes after the Archery
Cathedral unlocks and upgrades Monk class, and comes after Armory
Ice Cave unlocks Troll and Ogre classes, and comes after Library
Infernal Portal unlocks and upgrades Lich class, and comes after Mystic Circle

GameLoft takes a look at two of the highest profile mods in the Q3A community, Weapons Factory Arena and Pain Keep Arena. The reviews are on the latest releases of the mods and are well worth checking out.

For those of you who are interested in making textures for levels, The Decayed's Corner has just informed us that they have added a new texture tutorial on creating pipes. This new tutorial brings the total to 20 tutorials you can now get from the site. All 20 tutorials are available in one easy to download zip file. Be sure to grab them while they are hot!

Orange Smoothie Productions has released a new beta version .99 of the OSP Tourney mod for Q3A. Here's a list of improvements in this release:

Fix: Chat for coaches.
Fix: r_allready and console-based already commands now work as expected.
Tweaks: team.cfg, ctf.cfg, 1v1.cfg, clanarena.cfg configs. Please update your configs with these as reference!

Qtracker version 2.3 beta 20 has been released at the Qtracker website. Qtracker is a fully functional server browser, server launcher, MP3 streaming audio browser, and HTML server list generator supporting both TCP/IP and IPX. New in this release is a huge list of bug fixes and additions and the author says this is the most stable release yet. Check out the full list here.

There is a 11 question interview with id Software's Paul Jaquays at Addictive Messageboard. The interview covers some personal questions about Paul and id Software and then jumps into questions giving a little insite about the upcoming project, Quake III: Team Arena.

Quake3mods.net has an interview with the project leader of Dragon Ball Z: Bid For Power mod. The interview covers a good description of what the mod is, some information about the team, a projected release date, and some tidbits about the teams experience making the mod. Here's a taste of the interview:

-How long until the first beta is released?

I won't give out an exact date but we hope to release within the next few weeks. We've been very strict about not releasing dates because we don't want to miss a release date and let fans down.

Check out the interview HERE.

A new 1.42 version of Who's The Winner has been released. Who's The Winner is a log analyzer designed for Quake III Arena. It can be used on LAN games, internet game servers or for testing personal skills. WTW can be executed after all games are finished, and generate HTML pages with a lot of stats about all games played on his server and later decide to publish them on Internet.
New features/fixes added in this release are:

Fixed a severe bug occurred in CTF game type relating to clients still occupying a client slot when a new game is started.
Flag ranking and Frags Ranking tables are joined in single game stats page.
Fixed a bug in HTML code resulting in Team Deathmatch and CTF games in wrong team player nicknames colors.
Added to startup gui a checkbox to enable log "debug" mode. (see detail in readme)

The folks at Team Evolve have posted news of the release of the first public version of Pain Keep Arena. This 11 MB download includes two levels plus several weapons from the full version: a Gravity Well, Bear Traps, Nailgun, Exploding Shotgun Shells and a Chain Lightening Gun. You can grab this first beta release at Stomped.

With an ever vigilant ear tuned into the public, a new version 2.9 of Corven's Eternal Arena mod for Q3A has been released.
New additions added at the request of players in this release are:

Remote detonation pipe bombs
Sticky pipe bombs
Grapple hit causes target to drop weapon
New railgun weapon effect
Detonation bind on eternal option menu

Be sure to check out this fun mod at the Eternal Arena site.

The Full Metal Jacket team has sent word that they are needing help for their mod. They currently have two openings, an Animator, and a Sound person. Anyone interested in those positions should get in contact with leviathan@uswest.net
Here is the part of the news letter they sent us:

We're going to be working on the next progress report press release here soon, however, before we do that, we would like to announce two job openings!

Firstly, in our last press release, there was no answers to our plea for another animator. So, if perhaps you missed it, perhaps you didn't notice it, hey, its alright, this opening is still quite there. If you're a good animator, and are able to take the criticism from the whole team (both the devteam and alpha-testing team) then by all means send a copy of your work, preferably a URL to it, (since i'm not all too sure how much space per message i'm allowed by Qwest (avi/mpg/divx ;-)/qt/md3/max all work for us)), your name (Real or not, we don't care :)), and your e-mail address (And AIM SN/ICQ UIN if applicable) to us. I, Lordlev, will be yielding applications at leviathan@uswest.net.

Alright, and just at the last minute the team has re-informed me that we also seriously need someone to do sound! So this is your chance, If you do sounds, and once again are able to take a load of criticism from the team, submit a URL to a handful of sounds, your name, and your e-mail address (and ICQ UIN and AIM SN if available) to us at leviathan@uswest.net.

For both jobs, we'll announce who we accepted both on our website (below) and in the FMJ discussion forum.

Hellhound has posted three more Q3A map reviews for your pleasure today. A gothic map in space titled "Pandora's Playground" by KillerMiller, and two CTF maps, "Holy War" by Meatball, and "Tiamat's Revenge" by Suckmonkey. You can read the reviews and get the downloads at the Hellhound site.

Weapons Factory Arena v.2.0 has been released and is available at their website and the usual download mirrors listed below. The team suggests that modem users get a download program such as GetRight to grab this release as it is a whopping 83.8 MB!
Here is a list of the download site we have for this mod so far:

Windows and NT users

Linux and Mac users

More info can be found at the Weapons Factory Arena website.

The Annihilation team has posted a massive update on their site featuring featuring new in-game shots of their driveable motorcycles and a new player model. Also available for download are videos of the lately implemented controllable turrets and new player animations. Check those out and even more at the Annihilation site.

Quakeiii.com has a few renderings of a new sniper rifle which should be included in the Q3A Legacy Mod episode 2. Legacy is a Q3A mod set in many different places in time, in the future, present day, and past. Episode 1 is available for download at the Legacy site.

The Mean Arena has some screenshots and sample textures up for the upcoming Q3A mod, Bones: Legacy Of The Vadrigar.
Here's the description of the mod from The Mean Arena site:

Bones: Legacy Of The Vadrigar is an epic adventure SP/DM game based around the Q3A character Bones. The mod takes place before and after Bones possesses the power of the Vadrigar. Guide Bones through many perilous and puzzling adventures and watch the story unfold before your eyes as you discover how he came to receive Vadrigarian powers to participate in the Arena Eternal battles. The mod already resembles a cross between DOOM and Tomb Raider.

The mod looks pretty cool so be sure to check it out!

A registration page is now up at the Savage UK site for the SavageUK Quake III Arena Capture the Flag Tournament which starts on November the 2nd. Here's the press release they sent us:

I am pleased to announce that registration for the Q3CTF Savage Tournament is now up...

The registration form can be found here

This tournament will be held every Thursday night between 7pm and 10pm, running for 7 weeks and for the first season will be limited to the first 24 clans that register.

The format will be 4 groups of 6 with the groups games being played for 5 weeks. The top 2 clans of each group will go through to the quarter finals, which will be played in week 6. The semi finals and final will be played in week 7. This tournament will run alongside the Savage Q3CTF Savage league season.

There are a number of questions for clans to decide on the format of the tournament, to be completed with the registration. Registration closes on Thursday 26th October 2000.

An interesting interview with Succubus, the Frag 4 Female Tournament winner, is up at Gameloft USA. The interview covers some interesting tid bits about this never before seen player.
Here's a small taste of the interview:

-I know you went to Frag 4 and beat Kornelia, the top female player in the all-female tournament. How did that happen? How do you feel?

I was really surprised! Like I said, my clan mates knew I could do it, but I was really skeptical. I just saw an opportunity to play in an all-female tourney and I just wanted to have fun. I was just in shock when I found out that I won.

This just in from Proving Grounds in reguards to some help wanted for a map pak...

Proving Grounds is kicking off its very own Quake 3 map PAK, entitled the "PG Arenas". Consisting of DM and CTF maps, for 1vs1, 2vs2, and team styles of play, Proving Grounds is looking to add a few mappers to the map PAK's team. Map shots are available at the Proving Grounds site (www.provinggrounds.com), showcasing the latest shots from the maps being created for this map PAK.

If you're interested in becoming part of the mapping team for the map PAK, please send references of your work to jalis@provinggrounds.com. The map PAK will be featured on the Proving Grounds site, and naturally, added to the competition rotation for the Q3 DM and CTF ladders.

Two sites have checked in with some great Q3A map reviews for your enjoyment.

Hellhound has two maps, "The Way Out is Through" by BirdDawg and "Si'Metrik" by Sock. The complete reviews and the downloads can be found at Hellhound.

Z-Axis has three Q3A maps, "The Sinister Zone" by Thom Silbaugh, "Use of Weapons" by Decker, and "Skullduggery" by George "DieharD" Myshlyayev. All three reviews and downloads can be found on the Z-Axis site.

There are now 60 new screenshots of an early alpha version of the upcoming Generations Arena mod for Q3A. Most of the shots are in maps that are remakes of old classic Doom and Quake maps and there are a few shots in new maps there as well. Check them out at the Generations Arena website.

News has finally arrived of a non betaWeapons Factory Arena Release! The mod team has sent word that Weapons Factory Arena version 2.0 will be released on Saturday, October 21st. They had a huge press release on this so bare with us because it all seems good enough to print!

A lot of testing has gone on as the testing servers were packed almost every night. Testers have been trying out the new spray paint logo technology. Users can spray custom decals on the walls of WFA maps now ala Half Life. If your WFA clan wants a logo included, submit your 32x32 graphic logo before Thursday. We also are introducing 150+ wav Taunt wav files to compliment the team oriented wav files. These are kickass clips from your favorite movies and TV characters. If you find them distracting, you can mute these out easily. Bot protection has been included in the latest version, so hopefully that will quell the cries of "bot" on the public servers.

Most importantly, many new maps are being added, and we were very critical and thoroughly tested all new map submissions, and also took time to reevaluate all the official Maps in WFA. Many were found lacking and have been cut. The 16 maps (8 new official maps!) that are released with WFA 2.0 are very high quality maps, much better than the first generation maps (some of which have been retired, thankfully). So, it will be necessary to upgrade to 2.0 as soon as possible. Don't worry, its been through rigorous testing and 8 beta versions. I want to thank the WFA Mapping Committee and all the beta testers that have made WFA 2.0 the best it can be. To get a sneak peek of the new maps, visit http://www.wfamaps.com

There are tons of new graphics tweaks, like turret 'nades that are team colored, a new less laggy hyperblaster effect, and a new weapon for the engineer. This rail-like weapon repairs teammates armor and when used against the enemy, its armor piercing properties take off 20 health per shot. The weapons in WFA v2.0 overall do more damage. So the carnage is even more visceral. The HUD is still 100% customizable in WFA, and there are tons of other choices you can make, like turning off smoke trails on rockets to turning off mega chaingun trails.

Many changes have been made based on feedback from the WFA community. WFA is the #1 class-based mod for Q3a each night in terms of players and was the #1 ranked mod for Q3a in a Gamecenter q3 mod ranking article. With WFA 2.0, we look forward to welcoming more newbies into the mod, as well as die-hard Q2 WF players upgrading to Q3a. Feel free to stop by #wfa and #wfamaps on irc.enterthegame.com if you have questions.

The Urban Terror team has released one revamped map, "Ricochet" by Wetwired, and one brand new map, "District" by J.Hoffa. To get the Ricochet map to work, you must first take the old one out of your map files. The new map should play just fine without any modification. The team sends word that you should wait for a day so the server admins can get updated. Here are two places you can get the maps:

FilePlanet
Ricochet by Wetwired [Version 2] - ricochet.pk3
District by J.Hoffa - district.pk3

CrossFire
Ricochet by Wetwired [Version 2] - ricochet.pk3
District by J.Hoffa - district.pk3

More info on these maps can be found on the Urban Terror site.

Bid for Power has 10 juicy new screenshots up at their site showing off some outdoor parts of their mod. Be sure to check them out at the Bid for Power site.

After the Frag 4 event a few weeks ago, GameLoft USA managed to get an interview with female player Trillian of Qgirlz about her views on females who play. It's an interesting read so mount up and ride on over to GameLoft for some good info of what it's like to be a professional gamer from the female prospective.
(Thanks go to ShuaiGuy for the heads up on this article =)

Beta release 1.2 of the Urban Terror mod for Q3A has been released by Silicon Ice Development. The releases comes in three differet type of downloads, full install, update without .aas files, and update with .aas files (the .aas files will allow users to load bots into the Urban Terror setting, without being humiliated online in front of your peers).
Some of the new things added in fixed are as follows:

Text on screen now indicates whether your bandaging or not
Completely rewrote the recoil system
All hits are now reported properly (leg shots now work)
Models now locked to Urban Terror only models
Hand models no longer get tossed onto the ground when you die
Ghosts can no longer open doors
Made warmup timer flash red and yellow while counting down
Dead players can no longer talk to alive players in team games

More of the new bug fixes/features as well as the downloads can be found on the Urban Terror site.

The owner of quakeiiictf.com has sent word that his domain is for sale or rent.
Here's what he had to say:

I am looking to get rid of http://www.quakeiiictf.com , since I haven�t done anything with it since January. I can keep it hosted for $18 a month for 600Meg of storage, 20Gig of transfer, and a load of other features or I can just transfer the name and cancel the hosting. If anyone is interested please email quakeiiictf@teamshadow.com.

Æstats - Æon's Stats, a log file analyser for 3D Shooters with Stats/Ranking output in HTML, is now available as version 4.49.
The latest update v4.49 features (since 4.48) are:

Weapons Factory Arena 1.1 Support... In all 53 frag related obituaries and 17 suicide related obituaries are recognized.
Includes Linux object files plus makefile... Since some folks have trouble with SUSE Linux binaries, I am including all object files. This way you can do your own library linking.

The final results have been posted on Battle Top for the World Cyber League Championships held at the Everland theme park in South Korea from October 7th to the 15th. The game events included Quake III Arena, Age of Empires II, and StarCraft: Brood War and offered $300,000 in prize money. USA's Fatality is the winner of the Q3A portion of the series with second place going to LakermaN. The complete competition board can be found at Battle Top.

A big thanks goes to my girlfriend, Debbie, for pointing this news out to me =)

To give the public a general feel for the new HeadHunters 3 mod, the tarot team has released public beta HH1.665b7 and will soon set up a server to run it on. What is HeadHunters you ask?
Here's what the team has to say:

HeadHunters
Plain and Simple... kill a guy, his head pops off. Take the heads to the altar to score your frags.

Powerups
Harvester: Heads gravitate towards you. Like a hoover, you can suck em up just by getting kinda close.
Fist of the Gods: Slap people around really hard and knock heads off in the process. Oh uh. . . and a WICKED rocket jump.
Leech: Suck the life out of your target and add some of it to your own.

Weapons
Flamer: It's kinda like an acetylene torch. Replaces the Lightning Gun
Razorgun: Bounce some ripsaw blades around the map. Replaces Plasma Gun

A 2nd pak will include the map Clockwork Droid (by Scampie) and its relevant textures (by Rorshach) and the player model Boiler (by Nemesis) with his skins (by Rorshach) and ingame sounds (by Monsto). This 2nd pak is completely optional but you�ll get a smidgen of a taste of the full release.

Be sure to check out this wicked sounding mod at the tarot website.

QuakeIII.com now has 9 exclusive screenshots of a beta for the Navy Seals: Covert Ops mod. The screenshots show off a lot of level detail and also gives us a glimpse of some of the weapons and player models.

A 10 question interview with mapper extraordinaire Senn is up at the Z-Axis site. The interview covers the usual stuff about what games are his favorite, how long it takes him to make a level, and has a few tips for new mappers. Check it out at Z-Axis.

PsychoMod build 3.1 and the source for it has been released at ModScape. This Q3A server side weapons mod replaces most of the weapons in the game.
Here's a list of the features in this release:

Fully Server side (no download for client)
Physical Combat System
Bullet marks on walls
Bullet Tracers
Alt Weapon Fire Modes
Entity Fading Effects
Monster Spawning
Locational Head Damage
More...

id Software level designer Christian Antkow updated his .plan to thank people for being part of the new beta test, address a bug that the team already knows about and offer a fix for it.
Here's what he has to say:

Quake 3 v1.25y Beta Stuff

First off, thanks to all of you who chose to download and help test out the latest beta release.

An annoying issue was brought to light as a result of testing this evening, and rather than have bugs@idsoftware.com be inundated with e-mails about this bug, I thought it best to post an acknowledgement of the issue, and a temporary solution here.

There appears to be a problem with your baseq3/q3key file being reinitialized to a virgin state when you connect to an original 1.25p server with your 1.25y client (they are incompatible.) The result of this bug is that Quake 3 will print "Invalid CDKey" when you exit the game, reload it, and try to connect to servers on the net.

I was able to replicate this issue in-house and have mailed the programmers.

If you wish to save yourself some aggravation while testing this release, I would suggest the following after you've ensured that q3key contains your valid CD-Key;

- If you are an MS-DOS h4x0r, CD to your quake3baseq3 directory and execute "attrib +r q3key" at the command prompt. This will make the q3key file read-only (after you are certain that it contains your valid CD key.)

- If you are not comfortable using the command prompt, open up "My Computer" and head over to the directory where you have Quake 3 installed. Open the "baseq3" directory, right click on the "q3key" file. Select "Properties" and on the bottom of the panel, you should see a "Read-only" check box. Check that, and hit "Ok" to apply the changes.

We'll get this issue resolved in the next release.

Thanks again for helping us test out this release, and please remember to mail bugs@idsoftware.com if you come across any further issues.

Cheers,

-Xian

There's a new clan on the server, ready and waiting for all challenges. Check out Q3Arena.com's newest clan, Clan UF (I cant print what UF means on this page...).

id Software has released beta version 1.25y for the public to test. As before, this release probably will not run any mods based on the 1.17 version of Q3A so if you want to play them, you should not install this new beta.
Here is what Todd Hollenshead had to say about it today in his .plan:

A new beta release is forthcoming. We intend to release 1.25y within the next couple of hours. There are a few things that should be mentioned in advance so that users can decide whether to download the release or not. You should only download and install this release if you are interested in providing feedback to id.

Please send all feedback and bug reports to bugs@idsoftware.com.

The major change for this release is the physics code, which should make the game feel like 1.17. We're looking for feedback from players specifically on this issue. There are a number of other fixes, which are detailed in the readme.

Mods based on 1.17 are not compatible with this release. If you play lots of mods, you may not want to download this release. Mod authors will need to update their mods once we upload the game code for the final release before mods are playable with the new executable.

Players should also be aware that we plan on releasing another update sometime next week once we've confirmed that the new physics changes are in place and working. Therefore, players may prefer to wait until the final release before downloading.

The release should start showing up on the usual mirrors and at http://www.quake3arena.com/news/index.html once it's out.

The XTGL site has posted the results of the first week of their Quake III Deathmatch Team Playoffs and have released the week 2 schedule. This $1500.00 prize competition, sponsored by D-Link, started with 8 teams. After week 1, the 8 qualifying teams have been whittled down to 4. The second week will see clan cK go up against god and team abuse will take on r3v. The winners of those events will go on to win their share of the prize money. Check out the XTGL site for more information and a chance to vote for your favorite team.

The results of the on going Savage Super Sunday Q3ctf Cup competition have been posted. Thus far, the following clans have made it to Round 2.

Dominion
Kartell
Revenge
GM
VoodooSlayers
Prince of the Zorgons World
Sector 5
Clan Mexicans
Chopstick Ninjas
International Quake Squad
new European order
The Suicide Squad
Inferno (best 3rd)
Wolfclaw (best 3rd)
vicious fruit clan (best 3rd)
Bring It On (bye)

Remember that as well as Round 2, the Quarter, Semi Finals and the Final will all be played on the same night (this coming Sunday). You can check out the fixtures here.

Does your clan need a home on the net? Get your clan hosted right here at Q3Arena.com! We currently have plenty of room on our servers for all of your clans needs. All clan accounts include all the space they need, server side support for just about anything, web based and ftp access for site management and every member can have their very own @Q3Arena.com web address. If your clan is looking for a place to call home, sign up here.

Hellhound has two new Q3A map reviews on tap for your pleasure. Check out the scoop on Morcalavin's Sanctuary by Sock and OverWhelming Hostility by Auhsan and get the downloads today.

Today has been a rather slow day for news in the Quake community. Hopefully things will liven up tomorrow!

I'd like to congratulate our friend sCary on getting engaged! You can read more at the ShugaShack. :)

Mike George, the InstallShield maker for the Coliseum2 mod, has sent word that he is willing to help other Quake mods with his services. Here's what he had to say:

I have enjoyed playing the many different MODs', Maps etc of Quake out there and I would like to give a little something back to the Quake community for all their hard work. I code for a living and I also write windows installations using InstallShield 6.2, therefore I am offering my installation services, free of charge, to anyone needing a professional installation.

I have written the Coliseum2 v1.8 and v1.9 windows installations and am currently working on a couple of others, in the meantime if you need an install please feel free to contact me at aphextwin@carolina.rr.com with the specifics of your installation needs.

If for some reason his email address does not work he can also be reached at gescom_@hotmail.com.

The Eternal Arena team has updated their site with a new version 2.8. It now includes a motion tracker, new weapons models in the form of a flame thrower, new minigun, and a sentry turret, and the team has even added a few easter eggs. As is the case with almost all of the mods out there, this new version will not work with the new beta point release id Software released last week. Check out the Eternal Arena site for more info.

eKSeL at Quake3mods.net has started a new series of tutorials for Q3A map editing. So far, he has 5 new tutorials with more to follow shortly. Here's a list of what is up right now:

Getting Q3Radiant Up and Running
Moving Around in Q3Radiant
Working With Brushes
Texturing Your Map
Getting Light Into Your Map

Rog3D has sent word that his Q3A Weapons Pack is close to being released. The pack is fairly small and will replace all of the weapons models and sounds except for the BFG. To find out more about this mod, check out the Killer's Hardware Weapon Pack site for all of the details.

Z-Axis sends word that they have a couple of new map reviews ready for your consumption. Full reviews, including screenshots and downloads, of Short Circuit by Binaryshi and Mister Rocket by Robert "Dross" Titland are available on the Z-Axis site.

Todd Hollenshead has updated his .plan to announce that the auction has been posted on eBay for the SGI Origin 2000 machine they used to compile map data for Quake II and Quake III Arena. Last time I looked it was going for a mere $10,100 USD with over 5 days to go. Anyone interested in bidding on their old machine should check out the auction site.

PsychoMod build 2.8, the Q3A server side only weapons mod, has been released. There are quite a few fixes and features added to this update, here is what the author had to say about them:

This one is a big one...I fixed a couple bad bugs, speeded up the grapple, added entity fading effects with help from Lazarus' Hyde, and added some gun effects. Also cleaned up a lot of other stuff so go to the files section now and DL PsychoMod 2.8. Oh and if you want to change the 2nd line in the motd, add a line to your autoexec.cfg -- ste motd "My MOTD Message...".

Get off your duff's and win an 18" LCD Flat Panel Monitor just for signing up for our @Q3Arena.com mail!
Here's all you have to do:

Sign up for an email account with Q3Arena.com on or after 12:00 a.m. Pacific Standard time on October 1, 2000 and be registered to win an 18" LCD Flat Panel Computer Monitor. This contest is limited to 1 entry per person, and the on-line email sign-up form must be completed in full, with accurate information including the entrant's address, city, state, and postal code. The contest ends at 12:00 midnight on October 31st, Pacific Standard time.

The Navy Seals mod team have sent word that their site has been updated with some new concept sketches showing off their models. Also on the site since the 1st of this month, is a new site design and some more weapons models.

The Coliseum2 team has announced a new installer for their mod for to be used with the last version 1.9. The installer is for windows and should make it a snap to install the mod for those of you who haven't already. Both a full install and an update is available and both includes updated documents, optional Win32 DLLs and configuration files.

Hellhound's IceStorm has an interview with Team Reaction talking about their very successful Jailbreak mod for Q3A. The interview covers the mods beginnings, the teams views on the new point release, and what might be in store in the future for the mod.

The WTW (Who's The Winner) team have released version 1.41 (build 104) of their Q3A log analyzer. This new version fixes a "stuck" occuring in game dedicated RA3 server log processing and fixes the vertical size on the enhanced modes list.

Another release of ever evolving RTS Quake mod that adds resource gathering and unit upgrading concepts to Q3A, has hit the net. Version 1.0 has many features and changes added since last Sunday's release.
Here is a list of changes:

3D models for all of the buildings.
Setting cg_simpleBuildings to 1 will revert the display of buildings back to 2D icons for a speed boost.
Building explosions. The number of pieces that fly can be changed with cg_buildingPieces (the default is 25).
Data on a building shows up next to the crosshairs when you're looking at one.
"xxxx killed himself" messages are now suppressed.
You can no longer see what class the opponent's team members are in the scoreboard.
A countdown telling you when you can respawn has been added.
Setting cg_showIceLight to 0 (default is 1) turns off the icy blue light given off when ice shards impact the wall.
Minor gameplay balance tweaks.

The RTS Quake site also has posted 7 new screenshots and has information on what we can expect in future releases.

The Urban Terror mod team has sent word that their next release, Beta 1.2, originally intended to be a server-side only patch, is growing into a full client build and will be available as soon as id Software gives up the source code for their last point release. Up on their site you will find new screenshots of the new sniper rifle scope, the scoreboard and the night vision goggles. The site also lists some of the new features they have implemented.

The XTGL has sent word of their Q3 TDM playoffs. Here's what they had to say:

The Xtreme Tournament Gaming League's Quake 3 team deathmatch tournament sponsored by D-Link has gone into playoffs. The playoffs consist of 8 teams, the top 4 from the east coast ladder and the top 4 from the west coast ladder. These teams will battle it out in a single elimination bracket to fight for the $1500 in prizes from D-Link. The teams that made it to the playoffs include:

Clan Kapitol, Recreational Malice, Gods of Death, The Wretched, r3volution, pure Insanity, Species, and team abuse.

Check out the playoffs page at XTGL to vote on your winners and view commentary at http://www.xtgl.com/servlet/q3playoff. Go to the #XTGL channel on irc.enterthegame.com before match time for QTV coverage!

In the past week or so, MODScape has released a new server-side weapons mod from scratch called "PsychoMod". Version 2.5 is on tap on their site and has the following features:

Fully Server-side
DM Monster Spawning
Changed weapons
Weapon alt-fire modes
Added headshots
Added grappling hook
Added laser targeting system
Changed monster weapons

The Holy Wars for Q3A site has some bad news concerning the state of their mod. The team has announced that the mod has been put on hold indefinitely, they do not have enough time to complete the mod and its particular future is uncertain. The mod team has announced that it has decided to pursue a new project which will be announced sometime later. For more information, check out the Holy Wars site.

Eurogamer has an editorial titled "Stop Fiddling" that brings up all sorts of questions on the motivation of id Software for introducing the new beta 1.25 point release. Here's some of what the author of the article, John Gestalt, has to say about the release:

What has been changed and why? Are the "errors" that they have fixed really bugs? How does this effect the growing sport of professional gaming? And shouldn't they be getting on with their next game, instead of endlessly tinkering with one which was released almost a year ago now?

Does John miss the whole point of the release since id Software has told us it is a beta and it will help implement new features for the upcoming Team Arena add-on? You can check out the editorial right here and decide for yourself.

A new version of Quake 3 for Mac OS X 1.1.7 has been released on the Mac Game Files site . Here's what they have to say about the release:

Quake 3 for OS X Public Beta. Internal testing done by Omni Group shows that framerates in MacOS X Public Beta are improved by up to 20% over MacOS 9.

Also, you can find a 4 questions and answers article about the new release at the Inside Mac Games site dealing with what hardware is supported and plans for support for other games to the Mac platform.

After a long fun weekend in Dallas, the CPL's Frag 4 competition is now over.
Here are some of the final results:

Quake 3: Arena Team DM

1st - Clan Kapitol
2nd - r3volution
3rd - Eyeballers
4th - The Stickmen
5th - Schroet Kommando
6th - Ichorvile

Female Tournament

1st - *69|succubus
2nd - Kornelia
3rd - QGz|Trillian
4th - shakes
5th - NBL-Kitiara
6th - Mokie[er33t]

The Tribal CTF team has opened a new website and as part of the opening ceremonies, they have released a new promo video that shows off their cool maps. So, point your browsers to the Tribal CTF site and grab the new promo video. It's only 9.3 MB and looks pretty good!

Kamist and Markand have released Q3Launcher Pro 2.0. This handy utility makes it a breeze to launch your favorite Q3A mods and this new version adds map cycling to its features. While you are at the site, you can also find some good Q3A maps for your enjoyment as well as some wallpapers.

As promised, the team for Coliseum2 have released version 1.9 and the servers are ready for action.
Here's part of the news release they sent us:

This represents a major milestone for the mod that includes referee, captain and other teamplay feature that people have been asking me for. A new spiffy voting/referee menu is also present that will make things much easier to administer. Also included with this release is a revolutionary voting and referee system where the server admin can choose to expose over 100 server variables for voting and/or referee control. But not to worry, a new powerful help system is also in place to make this all easier to manage.

Server admins rejoice! You now have a new command called export that will allow you to make server tweaks and write the variables out to a file without having to manually edit them by hand.

So what are you waiting for? Go over to the Coliseum2 site and grab it!