Wirehead Studios

Id has went public with the beta of Quake Live.  It's basically Q3 with modified arenas, Team Arena weapons and models included, stat tracking, and a web interface that also functions as a server browser.  You can take a look at www.quakelive.com if you like.  Anyone participating in the beta that wants to friend me I'm under the username Phoenix9000.

There are a few changes from standard Q3 gameplay.  First, there's no blood or gibs, period.  Second, some weapons have been tweaked.  I believe the lightning gun has a range-based damage falloff, and the railgun appears to do 80 points of damage.  The Q3 BFG has a much slower refire so it's not as "spammy".  They've included a RA3-style "Clan Arena" mode where you spawn with all guns except the BFG, 200 health and armor, and each team fights until only one team is left standing.  There's also a built-in instagib mode, and "practice" mode where you play against Q3 bots.  There are several bugs in it still.

As for mod compatibility, as far as I know there is none just yet.  As for whether Generations will be compatible, at this point it doesn't look possible, especially since we're moving to a stand alone executable, so don't put that Quake III Arena CD away just yet.  Either way, Quake Live is 100% free, so check it out if you want.  You might like it, you might hate it.

I like it a lot. I was involved in the closed beta so I've been playing for about 7 months now.

It's netcode is "unlagged".  That doesn't mean it's using haste's unlagged netcode.  It's very odd.  For a while during closed beta, I tried playing with 15 ping in virginia.  Most of my rails just looked like they went straight through, but the lightning gun worked great.  On chicago, with 40 ping, I could easily hit rails whereas lightning gun was good but not as good as on virginia.  It seems it suffer the same weird problems that CPMA (the last time I played CPMA was a while ago) does with it's "unlagged" code.

After the first week of open beta, they seemed to fix virginia, and I could actually rail there and not watch all my rails go straight through people. 

I don't play it often, but the last time I did it seemed like chicago and virginia felt about the same as far as rails hitting or going through.

A tad :offtopic: but can you explain what you meant by stand alone executable? Or point me to a thread with some info? Just curious if X-Fire will still track it as Q3 like that.

As for the beta, how could Quake not have blood and gibs? Sounds like fun though.

That means that Quake3.exe will not be able to run Generations Arena v1.0 and onward.  When you download the mod, it will come with Generations.exe, which is a modified Quake3.exe compiled from the 1.32 GPL source.  Generations.exe, unless there's a problem I run into later, WILL be able to run all mods that normal Quake3.exe can run.  You will still need the retail version of Quake III Arena to play Generations Arena, it will just launch with a different program.  In short:

Generations.exe can run Generations 1.0 and anything Quake3.exe can run.
Quake3.exe cannot run Generations 1.0.

In addition, Generations.exe will be open source, which means the source code will either be included with the executable, or else made available as a separate download.  The game source, which is compiled under the Quake III Arena point source license, will remain closed source.  If any of that is confusing, don't worry.  The main point is that Generations 1.0 needs stuff that normal Quake3.exe can't do, so we had to compile our own version.

As for visibility, yes.  I had a problem with server visibility when I changed the executable's net name, but I changed it back and it seems to be working fine.  I just tested it on XFire and you can see Phoenix's Generations Server, which is actually using generations.exe to host a Generations .99f server.  The only problem with using a browser like Xfire is that I don't know if Xfire or other services like that can be told to use a different executable to launch the game.  That's something I'll have to deal with later.

Fourier:  I saw something in the message boards for Quake Live about using CPMA netcode.  The railgun feels "off" to me as well.  The visual effect is instant, but I've put plenty of rails through people and miss, and I've shot ahead of people and had the railgun draw through air but register a hit.  I know the machinegun and shotgun are not unlagged, or if they are then something is wrong because I've had to lead targets with both.  I also think I read somewhere that the railgun's trail has a prediction toggle.  I'd have to go back and try to find the cvarname.  If the hitscan guns are supposed to be unlagged then something is wrong if I'm having to lead targets like in normal Q3.

uhm well while quake live looks cool i dont really know the point with it cept leader system, it feels more like an frontend for quake3.
And no gibs? well thats one of the point of playing quake!

Essentially, it is a front-end for quake 3.  The hype, the wait, the closed beta -- all things which are designed to get people interested in a 9 year old game (which isn't a bad thing).  However, it, so far, has removed any future of community development (mods and maps).  It adds in the features of web applications for managing servers, friends, and stats.  This appeals to the general user.  Could anyone have done something similar?  Sure.  It's not hard to write the applications which do all of the things on the site; nor is it hard to write a plugin to launch an exe.

As for gibs, I always turn that stuff off anyway.  Can't see my target through the remains of my previous one.

@Phoenix: As far as I know, ql doesn't use CPMA netcode.

I've experienced the same things.  It isn't pure unlagged.  Pure unlagged, as in haste's code, keeps a history of states going back about 400ms.  This is what creates the hitting around walls or getting hit around walls involving someone with a high ping (although technically it can happen involving only lower pings, it's far harder to perceive by the client).  You never have to lead, and you never aim anywhere other than the hitbox.  Some people seem to think you shoot behind, but the majority of those people are ones who play on lcds or have other extra latency between display and the client states.

CPMA's netcode, at least so far, is not in quake live.  However, arQon was hired: http://www.quakeunity.com/article=25
And it says that the CPMA netcode will be included.  If that happens, I won't be bothering to play it again.  I consider its netcode to be far too inconsistent for real play.

I have heard about the prediction toggle, and I believe that may have something to do with it.

They hired arQon?  Nobody can even seem to get the stupid muzzle flash bug fixed, and they hired him to implement stuff like Clan Arena (which is just ripped from RA3) that takes absolutely no skill to code...?

Ok, so no official mod support, and CPMA netcode is going to go in...  I guess I don't have to worry about people wanting Gen ported then, and if all the drooling, inbred chocobos that worship CPMA are going to Quake Live, well I guess I won't have to worry about them either then.  I'm probably not going to worry about playing Quake Live much anymore either if it's just going to get turned into CPMA Live.  I'll just continue working to make Generations the best damned Q3 mod ever made that nobody ever plays.  :shout:

Boot:  About the gibs, blood and gibs make games have a "mature" rating.  Since Quake Live is free and "all ages"... despite the fact that you're still assaulting people with rockets and other weapons... they took the blood and gibs out.

Well so shooting ppls makes it viable for all ages? :)
hehe I like more what they did before when they made stuff bleed green blood and so on!

I signed up for an account just for the heck of it. You can find me under the same name that I use here.

Bah, pay no attention to my ranting.  I'm always a bit crabby this time of year.  Everyone try it and see for yourself if you like it.

I'll look to add you, Visy.  :doom_thumb:

CPMA is awesome, and I am not an inbred, at least I hope I am not. I'm glad they hired arQon, he is quite skilled and a good guy who works hard, he deserves it.

The gameplay itself is not CPM, all though you'll never be short of fanboys who tell them to change the whole game to CPMA which they don't realize that it's a mod and not Quake.

Well, hopefully you're not a chocobo either.  :smirk:

I don't know arQon personally, I've never dealt with him, but I have heard from several people who have that he has a bit of a reputation for thinking too highly of himself and that he tends to look down on others.  In other words, he's been called a self-important arrogant ass.  He kind of comes off that way in interviews too.  If this is not true, that's fine and good.  I'm not out to question or attack his character, my question is why he was brought on if the goal is not to include CPMA-style elements in Quake Live.  The article indicated that he was brought in to add things like Clan Arena, which is not difficult to code at all.  If that's all he's doing then it doesn't make sense, hence my reaction.  People getting hired by Id out of the mod community does not happen very often, so it's just a bit surprising is all.

I know CPMA is very popular.  It's popular to the point that I've been pestered by some in the past to make Gen "more like CPMA".  I flat out refused to do that because Generations Arena is not CPMA, nor can it be, nor should it be.  The lack of mod support in Quake Live, and the popularity of CPMA means one of two things.  Either Quake Live will become like CPMA to appease the "pro" crowd, or it will not and thus the CPMA fans will be disappointed.  With the coder of CPMA on the project, which way does that seem like it will go?  Like I said, if Quake Live becomes CPMA Live in function if not in name, then it's a totally different game.  Right now it still plays a lot like Quake 3.  I'd rather that not change.

Now as for the "drooling inbreds" comment, you know the kind of players I'm referring to.  You must have encountered some at some point.  Do I really need to explain that one?  Every game has them.

There was a fantastic post somewhere about the release of UFT.  I believe I'm repeating myself, since I think somewhere on this forum I've discussed it.  Anyway, UFT was a long time ago, and the article is gone along with the comments.

The release article briefly says something along the lines of "UFT x.xx is released!"  It then just has certain parts of the included readme verbatim.

arQon, who for whatever reason was trolling around, criticised the site for some of the things in the article, the things which came from the readme.  The writer of the article tried to explain that it was from the readme, and that he personally didn't write any of the text in question.  Apparently, that wasn't good enough for arQon, who continued to rant in the comments.

This was all over two lines; something such as:
Special thanks goes to arQon for letting us use his pmskin files.
Thanks to arQon for his contribution to the unlagged code.

First things first: the unlagged code has absolutely NO cpma influence or assistance from arQon.  haste, the author of the unlagged and uft code, was being extremely generous to him.  I've talked with haste more than a few times, and, aside from being a great guy, he outright said that the only thing they ever did together was briefly discuss possible solutions to the lag issue -- no code, no specifics, nothing more than a brief abstract discussion.

Second: what more did arQon want?  I really wish the article was still around.  There is a very clear picture of arQon painted in it.  He begins making some wild accusations about the unlagged code, and how certain parts of the q3 netcode functionality works in order to attack uft and unlagged.  He was doing this to people who knew nothing about coding, and being very arrogant about it.  Unfortunately for arQon, haste happened upon the site as well.  And in a fantastic display of his character, politely refuted every one of arQon's claims about both the unlagged and q3 code, since they were completely fallacious.  arQon then quitely backed out of the discussion.

Most likely, phoenix is right; although I hope to a lesser degree.  Any decent game programmer can code clan arena.  It is already in the ql, although they need to add pre-match telefrag protection.  arQon is being brought on for the CPMA netcode.  I hope that's all, but he might also bring in his warped q3 physics (I'm talking his VQ3 physics, not the CPM ones -- I don't mind them as a separate gamemode).  The netcode is enough to get me to lose all interest in it.

Unfortunately, with the addition of arQon, it's very likely it will be turned into CPMA live.  Why else would id hire him?

Well, I played it again, and I think I'm done with it as it is.  I do very well in it, and am able to play with the upper echelons of the community and mostly have the most damage/most points (in CA, since that's all I'll play).  However, I just can't stand the inconsistencies anymore.

The cg_predictlocalrailsometime command does help resolve those shots that look like they go right through, since it will show that maybe you had a lag spike and the trail will be delayed.

Mostly, it's just that there is a large variance between servers and sometimes even times of day.  With the local rail prediction off, I found that at during a period of about 40 mins I had to aim a good deal behind players to get a hit.  Now, why that should be, I don't know, yet it reminds me of the CPMA style netcode.  Although I doubt it's been implemented yet, it still too similar and too inconsistent to me.

Also, I find it ironic that one of the biggest qualms with unlagged among the "pro" community is the railing around walls.  This happens in quake live and in CPMA, so why do people prefer it?  You also have to either hit dead on, lead or trail to get a hit in CPMA and quake live; however, you can never know which it is.

The funny thing is that if haste was given OSP and was the developer who continued it, everyone within the pro community would praise the netcode.  How do I know this?  Because I've fooled "pro" players into thinking I've written a CPMA based mod with similar netcode but even further optimized, and had them even say, "wow, this is even better than CPMA's".  Funny how if I even mention the unlagged code they say it's "noob" and weird.

I don't know.  I'm just ranting about the ridiculousness of the majority of the quake community, what drives it, and people's general lack of the ability to think and reason for themselves.

There's the "drooling, inbred chocobos" I was referring too.

I've noticed Quake Live does feel odd with rails.  I've played some Clan Arena and Team Deathmatch a few days back, and ironically the best weapon I've had success with is the freaking gauntlet.  It's a shame Quake Live doesn't track the normal Q3 awards, as I've got quite a few humiliations in there.

Now as regarding the railgun...  one game was on Cobalt Station (Bouncy Map remix) and I was outrailing everyone on the server.  That's no testament to my skills, I miss a lot of rails even on the best of days, but I felt the same inconsistencies with the railgun that you're describing.  I don't get that with Gen or normal Q3A - a hit is a hit and a miss is a miss there, lag is consistent and feels like it should for normal netcode.  The other day I loaded up a conversion of 2box4 aka Railgun 101 in Gen, and railed the snot out of a skill 4 Xaero playing as a Strogg Trooper.  It was a local game, and the railgun felt spot-on, my accuracy was up in the 64% range.  I played some Team Arena single player yesterday, and on Vortex Portal I just played Defense, and railed with the Doubler.  It was like instagib.  Railgun felt really, really tight.

Aww, what's wrong with chocobos? They're cute and rideable.  :slippy_love:

As for the rubeish masses that were once termed "llamas" long ago... I prefer to call them Halo players.  :P

Nothing wrong with regular chocobos.  I guess you've never seen the web comic where they tried breeding a golden chocobo with bad results.

Think enough maps have been made since the last gen release for a new map pack deal or would it be better to wait for the final?

Having read down the page, I'm not sure about this. I'm not a massive fan of CPMA which is why it kills me that so many great maps are wasted on it.

I just want id to release those extra player skins for regular Q3 (no mission of that happening).

Pho: I still play Gen, just don't get much oppurtunity to hit the servers these days. I spread the word as much as I can, but there's just too many damn graphices ho's round my neck of the woods. "What? No bumpmapping? No cutscenes? No ragdoll effects? No stupid earpiece? Not interested!"

I second the map pack idea too. :doom_thumb:

PS Halo sucks. There, I've said it.

Actually we are planning on adding new maps, and possibly re-adding some old favorites that got cut in the .99e mappack.  Tabun, myself, ReBoOt, and other team members have been reviewing maps systematically behind the scenes.  Odds are, if it's on LvL, we've looked at it and/or have plans to look at it.  :doom_thumb:

I'm interested in all of your opinions on this game nowadays. Rumors are going around that it's coming out of beta relatively soon, and a whole ton of new content is going to be released just before QuakeCon. The rumors include having a monthly subscription service, which I'm not so big on, but whatever.

Also, I love CPMA, a lot. Haha

A monthly subscription? Kind of defeats the purpose, doesn't it?

Honestly I haven't played Quake Live in about a year.  I'm not sure what changes have been implemented since then.

Subscription?  I don't like the sound of that.  Subscription-based gaming is what killed online FPS gaming in the first place when everyone got hooked on WoW.

I got hooked on it =/ Thats why I haven't been the best tester =P

ahh WoW..farm gear, farm moneys, farm exp..with abit of lore, and social screaming on ventrilo, who could ask for more? :P.. Thoguth i have to agree wow was abit fun pre-tbc expeansion but nowdays i just feel sick when i see WoW.

WoW and Farmville always looked to be much the same to me. And I consider neither worth a second of my time.

To quote the TF2 Soldier: "... UNLESS IT'S A FARM!!"

Which is ironic, because in Valve games people "farm" achievements.

I never can get into doing the whole achievement/trophies/othercrap. I'm not that anal about games..

I think that achievements could be fun if they were for obscure, rarely presented moments. Having an achievement for just doing what you should already be doing in a game (Completed Level One!!!) is pretty bland however. To me, it should be one of those challenges that you go back for after completing the game... like high scores and speed runs are.

To me this is the new "kills/items/secrets" challenge.  Playing games like the original Doom, I was not happy unless I found everything.  It never felt like I really "beat" the game unless I had 100% of everything on the highest difficulty short of "Nightmare".  I kind of miss that in newer games, so it's nice to have extra challenges.  For single player games I'll try to get everything I can.  So far I have all of the HL2:  Ep 2 achievements, and all of the Portal achievements.  They added achievements into HL2 and HL2:  Ep 1, so I'll have to go back and get those.  Some of the Portal achievements were ridiculously hard, the footstep ones in particular.

The only achievements I really dislike are ones that require you to play with X number of people online.  It's extremely hard to organize a 7+ player game of TF2.  A lot of multiplayer achievements are a result of dumb luck.  I don't worry as much about multiplayer achievements for this reason.  It's more fun to just blow stuff up.

I take note of achievements in games like TF2, but I don't obsess over getting them.. like the one Engineer I was playing on a server with last night who was begging for a Heavy to stand next to his dispenser and get 5 kills. That said, I doubt I will ever get some of them.. like Photostroika for the Heavy (and also the ones Pho refers to in his post). I spend 95% of my time playing as Heavy, and I know this one is most likely easy to get.. but it just seems like a complete waste of an ubercharge to provide someone you killed with a screencap of you taunting while invulnerable.

I kinda treat single player achievements the same way, really. I might try a bit harder to get them at times, but I have more fun playing the game how I want to play the game.. not how an achievement tells me to.

I'm not against achievements by any means. I mean, they're better than hats at least..

The TF2 hats don't bother me too much, but I'm not obsessed with getting any.  I'm just taking duplicate weapons and crafting them when they show up to save up metal.  Then I might see about crafting something, but I'm not in a huge hurry.  I'm actually hoping to get some specific item drops so I can craft the Homewrecker, Southern Hospitality, etc.  The Homewrecker looks especially appealing.  I'm not really looking to destroy enemy structures with it so much, but I do play Spycheck Pyro often, and being able to remove sappers if the Engy dies or is going for health or metal and has to leave his stuff would be a nice way to help the team, and making Spies bleed by wrench whacking them as en Engineer sounds just too appealing to pass up.  I hate Spies!