| Quake 3 Arena > First Impressions From Blue and Red
First Impressions
Blue's
Found this great first peak from Blue's news. He describes things like player classes, built in team play, incredible visual detail, all the things we like to hear :)
Here are some quotes:
- "There are already some sophisticated touches, like an icon that pops up over your head when you are in "talk" mode."
- "There are three player classes, Light, Medium, and Heavy, each with different hit points and movement speeds."
- "The health packs are transparent globes with 3D red crosses inside (like big glass marbles). Words don't do justice to how cool this effect is."
- "The invisibility is like a more effective version of the invisibility effect from the Predator."
- "The most brilliant effect is the Quad damage, which engulfs the Quad carrier in a shimmering electrical field of squiggly lines."
Check it out here:
http://www.bluesnews.com/articles/q3apeek.html
First Look at Quake III Arena
Red's
Red's first impressions I have here quoted fully:
- Quake III Arena First Impressions
- Luck smiled upon me last week (along with Blue, RonSolo, and GoNinzo) as we were invited to id Software to be the first external testers brought in to do a little early playtesting of Quake III Arena and give invaluable feedback. It is a VERY good sign that id is taking feedback many months before shipping. I feel confident that this will allow them to please more people, have a tighter game, and have a more unified online community (bringing in Q1 and Q2 players). In fact, based on some of our feedback during deathmatch and teamplay testing, id has already made changes to the gameplay. I obviously can?t reveal everything but here is what I feel safe talking about/my comments/what I gleamed from the John Carmack talk at the Frag2:
- * The engine/effects will easily raise the graphics standard.
- * The character modeling/animation is better than anything out there.
- * Flying/bloody gibs will be back. Paul Steed has made anatomically correct body parts to fly around. WHOOP! Paul Steed said there would probably be about 12 models, which includes female models too.
- * John Carmack says there are currently 12 weapons in the game, but that may change. Too many weapons can be a bad thing imo so taking a strong look at the number is important. We only played with a portion of them but they included a pistol type gun, carbine gun, machine gun, rocket launcher, rail gun (yes, it's still there), plasma gun (very cool effects on this one), and a bouncy weapon that has projectiles that bounce all over the place before exploding. John Carmack said at the Frag2 that currently the lightning gun is in there.
- * Some powerups (i.e. you can count on them changing as development goes on) include regeneration, quad, invisibility, haste (makes you run insanely fast), flying.
- * Simple player classes: i.e. Light player runs fast (faster than Q2, possibly Q1?) but takes more damage when hit, medium is similar to Q2 speed but takes less damage when hit, heavy is even slower but takes a lot less damage when hit. Rocket jumping height also decreases as the player gets heavier.
- * Bounceback will be somewhere in between Quake 2 and Quakeworld. You will definitely be able to knock somebody off a ledge into lava.
- * Health spheres had red 3D crosses inside glass spheres that had reflections on them (really looked like glass). Best looking mirroring around. The level with the whole ceiling mirroring the maze below is really cool looking.
- * Pretty much any type of curved surface they want to make. Gorgeous. ?Nuf said.
- * Really cool animated skies (can be turned off for more speed).
- * Auto-rate adjustment depending on network conditions so people don?t have to be intricately familiar with console commands to get smooth netplay. This is a complicated item and is one of the big items that will be tested publicly in Q3Test. Yes there will be one, I asked John Carmack. No timeframe was given for its release.
- * Trade-offs for better connection/faster response. For example, you can make adjustments that will make instant response ala Quakeworld type networking but at the cost of reliability on poorer connections or a bit slower response ala Quake 2 but more reliable networking.
- * Invisibility was really cool looking, somewhat like an improved predator effect. Really eerie and scary when you saw a blur goes by but thought you might be seeing things then BLAM, you?re dead. :o)
- * Quad damage is really difficult to describe but is not something ever seen in a game and is very cool looking.
- * The multiplayer/net interface will be a much simpler type of GameSpy thing that is used from within the browser.
- * You are shown the name of the person you are tracking when you have your target near them. Good for hunting particularly annoying players. :o)
- * Your crosshair changes color as your health changes so you don?t have to look all the way down at the HUD if you?re in the middle of heated battle.
- * It currently tells you when you lose the lead by a voice, which I like a lot, because I don?t have to keep glancing at scores (more likely to be killed).
- * When you frag somebody, the death message flashes up in easy view. I really like this as I currently have to look up at the little text in Quake 2 to see whom I just fragged or scroll up if I missed it.
- * You have a little cool looking icon over your player head in the game if you go to the menu, console, or are chatting. That way there is no more excuse when people frag you while you?re typing. They KNOW they are doing something evil. :o)
- * Walls that "breathe" and other "alive" items like an entryway I saw with realistic fangs and a long, evil tongue hanging out on the floor. The tongue was moving and looked real! To really appreciate it, you must see it.
- * The volumetric fogging looks very realistic yet subtle. It's not the "hey, there's fog thrown in for eye candy", it's used more to give a cool atmosphere that you just can?t put your finger on.
- * John Carmack mentioned the possibility of voice over higher bandwidth networks. I?m not sure I want to hear everybody screaming bloody murder as they get fragged but maybe that's just me. :o)
- In short, I think this game is going to take over when it hits the streets.
Author:
Created:
November 8, 1998
Modified:
November 8, 1998 - 10:11:01 PM
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