A new set of textures was released for Quake 3 today on the website of Yves evillair Allaire, EvilLair.net. This new set of textures, called the eCell, are all based on cell shading technique.. Very beautiful, check out this screenshot of the textures here. Quick note, in order to use these textures you will need to use the compiler tool of Ydnar, Q3Map2.

The staff at Q3Arena.com wish each and everyone a very merry Christmas and a Happy Holiday Season!

Yep, today is the day that it has been 2 years exactly since I've started posting on this website. Lemme tell ya, time fly for sure! Have fun gang!

The newest version of GtkRadiant in the stable release is out, making it version 1.4.0. Nothing too new for this release, hit the webpage of GtkRadiant for your download needs!

Just like last year, the Jolt servers (located in the UK) will feature, again, a game of 64 players of Threewave CTF with the Kineterra map. The IP adress is: 195.149.21.141:27960.

Evenbalance just release a new update for Punkbuster, no major change only a maintenance release. On the other hand, there seems to be a software that will generate a violation error for Punkbuster, here's what EvenBalance has to say on this:

We have confirmed that new software (Bigpond Toolbar used primarily in Australia) has recently been released which raises pre-existing PunkBuster violation #60045. This violation number has been removed from our system. We encourage PB Admins to give the benefit of the doubt to players and ignore instances of this violation occurring after December 3, 2003.

So there we go!

Kilderean, develloper on my favorite mod, Threewave CTF has now some spare time to code for threewave and he announced at the end of november that he will fix some small bugs that are still left in Threewave CTF. So far the changelog look like this:

add: offhand grapple (g_offhandgrapple 1 on server, clients use +button5 to use).

add: added matchmode, lockteams and coaching to votes, you need to enable "matchmode" votes by adding 128 to the g_allowVote cvar on the server.

fix: fixed timers when pausing the game and connecting/disconnecting afterwards.

fix: not all players sent to spectator when matchmode is toggled.

fix: removed prediction on shotgun hitting other players shotgun should only draw blood if it actually hits the player.

fix: holding fire button with gauntlet doesn't work any longer after respawn.

fix: powerups cannot be disabled in portal area any longer.

fix: jumppad crashing damage when someone jumps over you.

fix: specred and specblue now set the correct forced team model.

fix: spectators are now allowed in the portal (for punkbuster).

fix: exploit where someone could do follow1 and follow2 in ctfs and arena and not be on a team.

fix: promode (pm) model icons are not loaded in team gametypes (uses correct red/blue icons).

fix: only failed votes are counted for maximum number of votes- chg: teamed spectators will now hear the last player alarm and the teammate death sound- chg: ripped out the anticheating code, gameplay should be smoother.

chg: teamed spectators will now hear the last player alarm and the teammate death sound.

chg: ripped out the anticheating code, gameplay should be smoother.

chg: improved networking of CTFS and ARENA events (no more double restarts).

No word about the release date on the next version of Threewave CTF, but rest assure that I will let you know about that.

A new update was just released for the New expert Quake 3 CTF mod. Since that they're so many changes, you will need to delete you existing installation of XCTF and install the new one after that. If you never installed this mod, I suggest you to give it a try (if you are a CTF addict, it's a must to try it out). Here's the changelog:

Added some player Effects for 4 levels of health for all players, all game modes.

Made crosshairname show health for enemies ,teammates, and spectators, all game modes.(Now you'll know when to fight, and to run!)

Improved bot grappling a bit more, made them tougher to play against and less predictable while grappling(try a team game, you'll be surprised). They arent perfect, but pretty darn good offhand grappling bots.

Added "lethality" cvar for new instagib style play.

Added "railonly" cvar, which when enabled, will disable freegear, except triple rail. With this there is no gauntlet, but you still have a grapple.

Adjusted the health statusbar to show over 999 health, as playing a few bot only games i saw a few bots able to make health they had over 999.

Increased weapon firing speeds, and weapon switching speeds to smooth weapons out a bit and to not leave a player with a time where they wouldn't be able to fire for to long a period.

Adjusted the grapple to do damage and when colliding with players do damage and pull you around.

Added some new configs to run a few different gametypes.

You can get their download page here.

Planetquake3.net is hosting a new video of trick jumping from the clan JatS. A lots of cool jumps and teamtricks. This is not a video of frags so it's only for those of you who like tricky jumps in Quake 3.

It's that time of the year where map pack are hitting us everywhere! Now we gotta mappack for Urban Terror itself with words from Oswald, lemme copy/paste you the presentation of what this map pack contain:

Dragonne and QueenBee recently released the first post-Urban Terror 3 map pack which include updated versions of Druglord 1: Airstrip, Druglord 2: Harambique and Proving Grounds (night and day) from Dragonne and Desertville, Fort Dicks and Nuclear Plant from QueenBee. These new and updated levels support the current 3.1 release of Urban Terror. You can download the map pack from the Urban Terror Map Depot or from Urbanbase.DE.

Nice work!

Q3Speech is now available for Windows! Weee, the software was only available for Linux before that but now a version for Win32 has been released. This software will take the text in the console from Quake 3 and play it with a voice on your speaker. Hey that's why it's called Q3Speech. Thanks to PQ3.net for the update!

Update on the Generation Arena mod, bringing it to version 0.99d. The download page is here. Notice that this is an upgrade only, you must have the previous version installed before getting this one.

For those of you who didn't noticed, there was a small update on the official webpage of Doom3.com last week. Wallpapers has been added, a new trailer is there (well it's an existing trailer with new shots in it) . At the sametime, you may wanna check the Gamespy special on the 10 years of Doom (yep, that's right, the first Doom game is now 10 years old). The IDsoftware store has also been updated with new stuff (check out their new Doom t-shirt).

New update to DarkPlaces for Quake 1 from LordHavoc. This time fixing some small bugs and also removed the limits on the 20 FPS when in the console. Lemme copy/paste his complete update here:

Added r_wateralpha cvar to the effects options menu.

No longer limits framerate to 20fps while in console because I got so many complaints about this (no REALLY that was not a bug like everyone assumes, that was a feature, just a very misunderstood one), so no

w it only drops to 20fps when not the active window (it already did this).

Changed hardware gamma handling in glx to no longer turn on/off based on mouse being in the window or not, but simply whether it is the active window.

Fixed 16bit video modes in Linux support. (oww this was broken, I only use 32bit :)

Fixed a bug with console parsing that existed in almost all versions of quake except quakeworld by switching to the qwcl COM_Parse for console parsing (in english: fixed connect commands involving a port, like 127.0.0.1:26000), thanks very much to Fuh for mentioning this bug.

Removed need for gfx/menuplyr.lmp, some old unused code required it, no idea why that was still there (in english: this has no importance to quake players, only modders making standalone stuff).

Pheew there we go. Hit the webpage of DarkPlaces in order to download this new update!

New levels were reviewed @ ..::LVL, take a look at:

Heart O' The City by Seremtan (CTF 6-14 player)

Lost World - Tourney Edition by TymoN (DM 3-7 player)

Anguis in herba by dAde (CPM/DM/Tourney 2-6 player)

DM17 Egyptian Redux by heffalump (DM/Tourney 2-6 player)

A fresh reviews for fresh maps, hit ..::LVL for your mapping needs!

Planetquake.com was kind enough to remind us that yesterday, Quake 2 hit a year and is now 6 years old. Geee time fly so fast sometimes and now today, Quake 3 has reached 4 years! Happy birthday to both games! Am I gonna play Quake 3 even after 6 years? Probably!

Small update for Ultimate Deathmatch, fixing some small bugs. The newest version is now version 1.82 (available as a patch). Check out the webpage of Ultimate Deathmatch for all the details!

The Quake 3 mod, Generation Arena has released a new map pack, (pack #3) last weekend featuring 10 new maps with an update version of Bad places (from the first map pack). The pack is about 50 megs and you can get the download page here.

New update, again, for the modification for Quake of Darkplaces from Lord Havoc mostly related to scripts and shader files. New screenshots of e1m1 with realtime lighting mode has been put on the website under the screenshots section.