By Jim Rossignol on July 9th, 2008 at 6:42 pm.
This isn’t really news, or really even worth me posting, but I share it nonetheless. On a whim I just booted up Quake III and jumped on a public server. I used to play every night, for hours, but I’d not looked at it in a long, long time. As it happened there was a 3v3 CTF match going, so I joined in. Within moments someone I’d played with regularly, over four years ago, joined the server too.
I was astounded that I recognised his handle after all this time. Even more so that he also recognised me. After a few minutes of silent play a conversation started up. It went something like this:
bloke: Do I know you?
me: Possibly, I ran [this clan].
bloke: It is you! Do you remember my clan? [still had his tag]
me: Yes, vaguely. I’ve not played Quake on a public server in over four years.
bloke: I haven’t played for three, no *four* years.
me: Blimey, how weird.
bloke: Is Quake III still going?
me: I have no idea.
I guess it’s time to find out.
09/07/2008 at 18:47 Tanner says:
God, I love it when stuff like this happens. I really should go buy Quake III again. Good times, good times.
09/07/2008 at 18:48 Saskwach says:
What a stunning coinkydink.
09/07/2008 at 18:58 Davik says:
In other strange coincidences, I (and several friends) met a guy online, back when we used to play CS:S an awful lot. We met this guy on a random server, by chance, and he seemed like a nice fella, so he joined our group and we played online together for quite some time. About a year and a half later, I was on my way to America for a family holiday, and met a girl in the airport. A brief exchange of email addresses and a couple of weeks later, and we were going out. I was mentioning the group of friends I had at the time, and we played online, and briefly mentioned this guy’s name, to which she suddenly looked quite shocked. Turned out that she went to school with the very same guy, and had been friends for years.
Just thought I’d share that with you, RPS.
09/07/2008 at 19:00 Turin Turambar says:
Let’s wait a bit. I think id will oficially open the beta of Quake Live in an announcement in E3.
09/07/2008 at 19:10 Chris Evans says:
Had a similar experiance a few weeks ago playing Team Fortress 2. Jumped onto a server without checking the server name and saw someone with clan tags I recognised. Turned out that he was someone I knew back from my BF2 days!
09/07/2008 at 19:39 Noc says:
I know who all of you are. I’ve headshotted each and every one of you at least a dozen times, in more than one game. I have a file with all of your names, and every single handle you’ve ever used.
But I am invisible, and you will never find me.
…
In all seriousness, though, that’s pretty cool. Especially since you both got the itch and decided to hop back in at the same time, since it occurs to me that it would be a mite depressing if the conversation had revealed that the other fellow had been playing Q3 continuously for the last four years, sinking into that degenerative obsession of mastering every nuance of a years-old game, fighting desperately for a spot on the leaderboards of a forum still limping on in a musty corner of the Tubes.
Nothing tempers nostalgia for the days gone by more than realizing that some people have never left, and have clung to a brief period of enjoyment to the detriment of all else, refusing to move on.
09/07/2008 at 19:39 Charming Mr Chomper says:
PEOPLE BUMP INTO PEOPLE ONLINE SHOCKER.
This is by far the least interesting thing I’ve ever seen on RPS. And there’s some pretty dull stuff on here.
09/07/2008 at 19:42 majorbromly says:
Charming Mr Chomper is a nice man that will definatly win the nobel peace prize.
09/07/2008 at 19:46 Paul S says:
Crumbs Charming Mr Chomper – I think that was the wittiest thing I’ve ever seen on RPS! Chortle.
09/07/2008 at 19:47 John P (Katsumoto) says:
Totally bromly. I love him, and want to have his babies.
In other news, awesome. Maybe the whole thing will explode again when Quake Live launches and we can all pretend its 1999 again.
09/07/2008 at 19:48 Charming Mr Chomper says:
Really? I wasn’t in any way at all attempting to be witty or even funny. I was merely expressing my displeasure towards this particular blog post.
09/07/2008 at 19:50 fanciestofpants says:
Hey. I used to use the doomguy model too. Cranked a nifty black-and yellow skin for it.. called.. I wanna say KickDoom? I dunno. Good times.
09/07/2008 at 19:53 Lukasz says:
at least the ‘cutest’ thing here.
09/07/2008 at 19:55 Jim Rossignol says:
I actually used the Ranger model, dunno why I have a grab of Doomguy. He was my least favourite.
Mr Chomper: go read somewhere else then, cheers.
09/07/2008 at 19:59 Charming Mr Chomper says:
No. I like the site generally, it’s just a little boring sometimes. Most of the time I keep my trap shut and wait for something good to come along, but this particular post inspired whinging.
09/07/2008 at 20:01 Noc says:
Cockchomper: Well, there are two ways to take comments like that: you can either assume that they’re a bit of deadpan, dry humor, or you can assume that they’re [An opinion from someone who disagrees with me.*]. It’s generally good manners to assume the first, because it forestalls nasty unnecessary arguments that make everyone look bad.
*I think self-editing should become more common. Not only does it save people time, but it lets the mind linger on the implied insult, wondering how far the original displeasure actually went. Self-censorship as a literary device: we need more of it.
09/07/2008 at 20:01 Inglorion says:
There was this thing called ESWC that happened a few days ago.
http://www.esreality.com/?a=post&id=1577791
09/07/2008 at 20:03 Watcher95 says:
It’s a world of laughter
A world of tears
It’s a world of hopes
And a world of fears
There’s so much that we share
That it’s time we’re aware
It’s a small world after all
There is just one moon
And one golden sun
And a smile means
Friendship to ev’ryone
Though the mountains divide
And the oceans are wide
It’s a small world after all
It’s a small world after all
It’s a small world after all
It’s a small world after all
It’s a small, small world
09/07/2008 at 20:04 Charming Mr Chomper says:
I was under the impression that this site encouraged debate, even if it disagrees with the people who run the place. It doesn’t tolerate insults, but I haven’t insulted anyone so I don’t see what the problem is.
09/07/2008 at 20:08 Masterdog says:
I met someone I knew from college on a Trackmania server. God knows how I recognised his name.
Also met someone I knew from QWTF on a campsite in Benidorm. Nah, not really. It was AQ2.
09/07/2008 at 20:10 Will Tomas says:
Unnecessary whinging that wastes the time of the rest of us when we end up reading it to see if we can find any comments of genuine interest. Let’s just let it lie.
That’s a pretty cool coincidence, though. It’s also an interesting point about the acquaintances you get playing online. It’s never quite a friendship, but there is a sense of comradeship there. Interesting stuff.
09/07/2008 at 20:12 Noc says:
Well, here’s the thing about debating: you’ve got (at least) two different proposals which people argue the merits, demerits, and relative superiority of. For instance, is ocean temperature change adversely affecting the word’s fish population? Yes? No? If yes, what should we do about it? Is this a big enough issue that we should divert resources from solving other problems?
That’s a debate. On the other hand, if people are sitting around talking about ocean temperature and marine habitats and you say “This is boring. Who cares about fish? They’re boring,” you aren’t exactly participating in the debate. You’re working to the detriment of the debate, whether fish habitats are interesting and relevant to you or not.
09/07/2008 at 20:12 Charming Mr Chomper says:
“This isn’t really news, or really even worth me posting”. Going by your logic, Will, this wasted my time, I felt it necessary to complain about it.
09/07/2008 at 20:14 phuzz says:
I wouldn’t mind bumping into any of the guys who used to play CS on frog’s server at ex.ac.uk
The server was up on the university LAN 24/7, and there was always at least a couple of people on there. Best time was lat on a friday night, as half the server had just got back from the pub and the other half had been playing all night.
[BoB]Animal, are you there?
09/07/2008 at 20:14 Charming Mr Chomper says:
Noc, you’re absolutely right in your analogy. HOWEVER, it doesn’t apply to this, because I started the debate by complaining about the quality of the post. There was no debate before that, I started it. Nice try.
09/07/2008 at 20:14 Noc says:
Also, Jim’s point above: if something’s boring, you can always not read it. No one’s forcing you to. There’s a reason, after all, that I’m not going to go out and spend my afternoon reading tremendously dry reports about fish habitats.
09/07/2008 at 20:16 Mo says:
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Quake 3 Arena is the single greatest multiplayer FPS game ever created.
09/07/2008 at 20:16 Jim Rossignol says:
So you complained about something I already disclaimed as probably not that interesting to most people?
09/07/2008 at 20:16 Noc says:
Also: no, there was no debate going on. There was, however, a discussion about this sort of phenomena which you derailed through trollery. The point of my argument is this: you aren’t participating in the discussion if your argument is that we should be talking about something else.
09/07/2008 at 20:17 Charming Mr Chomper says:
BUT, I enjoy this site, and I felt it necessary to complain about this uninteresting post. By doing so, I hope the people who run the site only post interesting things in future. It’s called critical feedback, probably. Of course, it’s up to them, but shy kids don’t get any sweets.
09/07/2008 at 20:19 Charming Mr Chomper says:
I can’t believe you’re being so defensive. I’m (admittedly in what could be construed as an offensive way I suppose) trying to offer my opinion on how you can improve your site. Post less of this sort of thing, disclaimer or not.
09/07/2008 at 20:20 Jim Rossignol says:
It’s fine to complain about being bored, but change your name, eh?
09/07/2008 at 20:22 Charming Mr Chomper says:
Also, my apologies. I didn’t notice you were manually editing my username after every post I made. I thought you would edit it once and that would be it, so I’ve changed my username myself this time.
edit: ^^
09/07/2008 at 20:23 Spiny says:
I still have Q3 installed. Time for a round or two…
09/07/2008 at 20:23 Al3xand3r says:
Well you say it has a lot of boring stuff and yet you still read it so why should they stop? It’s apparently more interesting to other people anyway as, even though the discussion was derailed, people still comment on the original topic.
Why would they change it because YOU find it boring even though you apparently tolerate it because you like the rest of the site’s offerings?
Judging all the available information, it’s not to their best interest to stop posting all this type of content since it doesn’t affect people negatively enough to leave and it does affect other people positively enough to discuss.
So, you have no argument really… But nobody stops you from hoping things I guess… Not to mention there was a boring post disclaimer so you could have stopped at that…
09/07/2008 at 20:24 nabeel says:
That’s so cute. Man, I miss Quake III. Maybe I’ll reinstall …
nabeel
09/07/2008 at 20:27 Noc says:
And, in a similar vein, I prefer the comment threads in which I participate to have a lower by-post volume of trollery. Since I like to participate in such threads, and to do so properly I HAVE to read all of the comments. Thus, if the thread is populated to a significant extent by useless whining, it significantly affects my enjoyment.
On the other hand, you can very, very easily skip over articles that don’t interest you. I do it all the time! Hell, YOU do it all the time, too, or else you wouldn’t be able to navigate through the internet without being impeded by all those words that insist on showing up.
Consequentially, I’m not being defensive. I AM trying to tell you to STFU in the most polite and reasonable way I can.
09/07/2008 at 20:32 Erlam says:
I have so many memories of “Wait.. it’s you” on various Half-Life/Quake mods over the years.
Some of my fondest game-related memories are playing Rune Quake with a guy named svfox. I’ve searched the internet high and low for this guy since then, and never found him. I think we probably exchanged a half-dozen comments over 6 months, but I’d always be in a game with him on MLagg- err, Mplayer, and we’d always be on the same team, holding the flag point.
God I miss that. Oh internet, you tease me so.
09/07/2008 at 20:34 changeling says:
A few weeks ago I was playing TF2, and jumped onto a random server, just for fun. Enjoyed, it so I kept playing for a while. My brother came in, checked the scoreboard, and recognized one of the Tags. Turns out i’d run into his best friend, who lives up our road. Small online world.
09/07/2008 at 20:50 grumpy says:
I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but whining about something no one cares about is *not* the same as starting a debate.
A debate is where multiple people discuss something that is generally worth discussing.
It is not when person A says “this sucks and you’re stupid for posting it”, and person B says “So what? No one’s forcing you to read it”.
09/07/2008 at 20:57 Jim Rossignol says:
No one piping for up for UT? :(
09/07/2008 at 21:10 Lightbulb says:
Small world eh?
But why would you not remember a name from as recently as 4 years ago? I remember people from 10 years ago (ie first school).
Bit random though. :)
09/07/2008 at 21:10 lolz says:
Worth posting TBH, i love when coincidences like this happen.
09/07/2008 at 21:13 RichPowers says:
I still play on a 24/7 TFC Dustbowl server about once a week and see people I played with back in the day. Someone even mentioned that he’s played a game with me during the 2000, 2004, and 2008 presidential elections — only noteworthy because I have “for Pres” in my handle.
That active servers still exist for every noteworthy FPS from the past decade is one of the great triumphs of PC gaming.
09/07/2008 at 21:16 Charming Mr Chomper says:
“this sucks and you’re stupid for posting it”
I didn’t say that, though, did I? I’m happy to drop the discussion because it’s going nowhere, but making stuff up to prove your point gets nothing but a tut from me.
09/07/2008 at 21:17 grayheaven says:
We play q3 ctf every time we set up a LAN. q3ctf3, 3 vs 3. The only way to fly.
It’s a very good game, the last good one id did. Judging from Hollenhead’s recent publicity blitz, also the last.
09/07/2008 at 21:24 ascagnel says:
Dumb question, but now that I’m on a Mac, can I squeeze a Q3 install out of my Windows disk?
More on topic, I also found myself playing Q3 last night as well, although I limited myself to botmatches since my Windows box was having issues keeping up its net link under TF2′s strain. And now I want to play Q3 again when I get home tonight (it’s only 4:30pm here, even though my post time is 9:30pm).
09/07/2008 at 21:38 The Hammer says:
I once met someone who I used to be friends with on the Red Versus Blue site at a LAN centre.
09/07/2008 at 21:43 sbs says:
I started playing Q3 again in 06, after a pause from games altogether which lasted about 2 or 3 years.
There I was on a public server, jumping around on the empty map, playing around with some cvars when a guy I used to duel with a lot joined. He immediately recognized my nick and asked how I was doing, and after some help I remembered who he was, too, so we just stood there on q3dm6 chatting for 15 minutes catching up, exchanging IRC channels. Quite a nice moment there.
09/07/2008 at 21:49 ConstantineXVI says:
@ascagnel
Go download ioquake3 from http://ioquake3.org and pull the pak0.pk3 file off your Windows Q3A CD. Add in your CD-Key, and you are ready to go!
PS: If you’ve got a Windows, Linux, or Solaris box, ioquake3 supports them too.
09/07/2008 at 21:50 Eddie Aitken says:
Good story, and kinda weird. I had something similar with a DoD game but the number of players and the years weren’t exactly the same. Still cool though.
09/07/2008 at 22:00 mandrill says:
I will always cherish the three days I spent in the top ten Quake III players in the world. Admittedly these three days were the three days after the beta came out and I was playing it over a university connection. So not only was I playing on a very fast connection, I also had the demo alot quicker than the majority of many players out there. If anyone else was around in those heady days my handle was meatfucker (I’d just read Excession by Iam M. Banks). If I beat you it was not due to superior skill on my part I can assure you.
09/07/2008 at 22:39 spd from Russia says:
I still play q2 – my fave online shooter
and there are some ppl Iv known for over 5 years
09/07/2008 at 22:56 Duoae says:
No one piping for up for UT? :(
UT sux0rs – Quake 3 r0xx0rs!
Seriously though, i usually go back and play some quake 3 every few years or so. It’s a great game and there are still loads of people playing.
09/07/2008 at 23:06 Tom Camfield says:
I liked this blog post.
09/07/2008 at 23:18 Novotny says:
Ah Q3. I couldn’t ever remove it from my HDD – a little part of me would die. CS might have stole my attention over these in-between years but baby – I always loved you most. I ain’t nothing without mah railgun.
09/07/2008 at 23:20 steve says:
Man, every few months or so I pull out Q3A and give it a go. I absolutely love that game. I can not wait until Quake Live hits!
10/07/2008 at 00:07 Seb Potter says:
There was something so pure about the experience of Q3 with my clan-mates. I still reinstall a couple of times a year and jump into a few games. Then I get utterly destroyed because I’m so rusty at twitch shooters, and with a last pang of nostalgia I uninstall it again.
These days, Eve fulfils my addiction for running around with
clancorp-mates picking on those unfortunate enough to cross our path. It’s an elegant game for my more civilised age.10/07/2008 at 00:13 BJ Blazkowicz says:
Happened to me in Counter-Strike once.
10/07/2008 at 00:43 Monkfish says:
Quake III, in one form or another, has been present on all my PCs since I grabbed the first Q3Test in mid ’99.
As Novotny says above, I’ll never remove it.
And when Quake Live happens, I’m probably gonna party like it’s 1999… again. :)
10/07/2008 at 01:09 ascagnel says:
@ConstantineXVI: Thanks, man! You just let me rock my world (again).
no one piping for up for ut
UT was good, but with the more frequent iterations, and the snooze-inducing tendencies of UT3, I honestly don’t care about it anymore.
Unreal is pretty much dead, with the X360 version limping to its release, shunning of UT3 by the PC audience, indifference of the PS3 audience, and abandonment of the single-player for Gears of War by Epic.
Too bad on that one, because the Unreal games were damn fun for their time. I even have the Unreal pack on Steam, with UT99 still installed (yay Assault).
10/07/2008 at 01:14 Tony says:
Plus 1 for UT, but that’s because I’ve never owned a Quake game.
Can’t say I’ve had any “oh, man, I remember you from way back when” moments, though.
10/07/2008 at 01:16 teo says:
8 or so years ago my sister and I had a couple of online friends that we used to chat with. Just recently one of them started at the same college as my sister, and the other one (from Japan!) got a job in my town and now lives like 1km away
another strange coincidence….
10/07/2008 at 01:33 Kill Pill says:
Ha ha, the “this is boring” “no it isn’t” argument peters out and then the poster himself tries to fan up the old UT vs Q3 war… if you love trolls so much why don’t you marry one? *snark*
p.s. Unreal isn’t dead, 2004 still has quite a lot of players. If they want to make a UT4 they’ll have to do something special though.
10/07/2008 at 02:06 Yontan says:
Kill Phil “p.s. Unreal isn’t dead, 2004 still has quite a lot of players. If they want to make a UT4 they’ll have to do something special though.”
Like remake 2004 for modern machines? sometimes things don’t need to be improved. they are just fine as they are. Take socks for example.
10/07/2008 at 02:19 Will says:
I didn’t play Q3 much, but was in a UT clan for about a year or so. They recruited me out of a public server, and during our first match (we won! CTF-Face][) I discovered that, out of all the hojillion people on the net, they’re all blokes from Gloucester, just up the road from me.
10/07/2008 at 02:32 Coop says:
The funny thing is that more of these types of situations happen everyday without you even knowing.
10/07/2008 at 03:16 ascagnel says:
UT was good, but with the more frequent iterations, and the snooze-inducing tendencies of UT3, I honestly don’t care about it anymore.
Gotta cite myself and clarify: “more frequent iterations” means that they released more titles. UT2k3 and UT3 weren’t so good, but UT2k4 built off UT2k3 to make one of the best experiences anywhere.
I like both equally. O:-)
10/07/2008 at 04:20 Kavika says:
I commend Chomper for at least having a mostly good sense of dignity about this. This is one of many things I like about RPS. Even the trolls seem to have an okay head on their shoulders.
…even if his opinion sucks =) Bring on the nostalgia!! w00t!
Quake > UT until Doom 3 came along (yes, it is the same game).
10/07/2008 at 04:27 sigma83 says:
Reinstalled Q3. The gameplay is as frenetic as I remember, (I was always a UT boy tho)
Thing is the single player interface… well. Sucks.
10/07/2008 at 04:34 DSX says:
@grayheaven : “We play q3 ctf every time we set up a LAN.”
Ditto, it’s sort of our warm up-and-get-everything-functioning phase where seating, networking, beverage and food strategies are all sorted out for about an hour and then we get on to whatever new title we happen to be shredding that weekend.
10/07/2008 at 05:23 Top Man says:
A friend of mine from a while back was in love with day of defeat (pre-source) when it launched. I lost contact with him about a month after it’s launch.
I decided to try Day of Defeat source during the free weekend. He had a very… unique name back in the day, so when I noticed the name it was rather hard to pass off as coincidence. I messaged him on steam, and lo and behold it WAS him.
Apparently he had been playing nothing but day of defeat, and later, day of defeat source, the entire time I had lost contact with him.
Yeah.
10/07/2008 at 09:05 AbyssUK says:
I have no friends so normally enter servers with no people on them.. does this count
10/07/2008 at 09:08 Sub-kamikaze says:
Coop, how right you are! I once made a conscious effort to note down every coincidence that happened to me. There were at least ten entries a day – and these were only the ones I spotted! It got a bit scary really, and in the end I stopped. Somehow, I don’t think we’re meant to notice all these things. I think sanity eventually stands in the way and says ‘RIGHT, enough is enough!’ and turns the blinkers on or makes us forget them sharpish…
And that’s my tangent of the day, sorry!
10/07/2008 at 09:45 Mike says:
UT was better. I think we all know this deep down. But because QIII was simpler, it’s stood the test of time a little better. Even though I hated QIII at the time, I’d rather play that now than UT. UT hasn’t aged well, and its sequels made it overcomplicated. QIII’s only descendant in terms of simplicity is TF2.
10/07/2008 at 09:48 nabeel says:
I had – check this – BOTH QIII and UT installed on my computer back then. I liked both on their own terms and played whichever I was in the mood for. The whole divide in fans between the two was silly then and looks even more silly now.
nabeel
10/07/2008 at 10:11 iainl says:
What _is_ happening in the world of Q3A these days, by the way? I know id released the source simply _ages_ ago, so I was wondering if there was some “the same game, but with souped up engine doing clever stuff” thing like there is for Doom and Q1.
Not that my poor little PC could cope with anything much more complex than Q3A anyway, but I do need to upgrade it at some point.
10/07/2008 at 10:13 Flubb says:
I also had Q3 and UT on at the same time and while I played through the SP Q3, I never liked the online as much as UT, which had a much more frenetic pace and less claustrophobic atmosphere than Q3. Plus Q3 was brown…
I randomly went on a UT server last year and found someone who I had last seen in 2000. Do I win a prize? :D
10/07/2008 at 10:30 aldo says:
@Charming Mr Chomper
Are you sure you aren’t taking a somewhat inordinate amount of huff over this?
Ho hum….
10/07/2008 at 11:21 Kanakotka says:
@Chomper, debate doesn’t equal all around trolling and assholery, good sir ^^
10/07/2008 at 11:28 Gap Gen says:
I think it’s pretty unlikely to happen and so warrants an “ooh”. Before I get back to making galaxies fart.
10/07/2008 at 12:31 Manwe says:
Continuing the coincedences, I’m just reading Tolkiens Simarillion and The Unfinished Tales at the moment, when I noticed Turin Turambar‘s comment up there, after just finishing the chapter all about him in the Silmarillion.
Spooky. Great books also, if a little (well, a lot) confusing
10/07/2008 at 14:31 Kill Pill says:
Yontan – I thought UT2004 was already for modern machines; it’s only now that a standard laptop can really run it. It’s stylised so it still looks pretty good IMO, and lots of visual detail in a DM game just slows it down. It doesn’t look particularly better or worse technically than CS:S or TF2 either.
UT3 was largely a UT99 remake, we saw how that turned out. New stuff is more likely to keep people’s interest, if it’s good. I hope Quake Live at least has some new maps, a pure retro-fest won’t be interesting for more than a weekend. Although I can see it being very useful for LAN parties, no more trying to find a game everyone owns.
10/07/2008 at 14:40 Mr. Brand says:
I suggest Mr. Chomper get his money back so he stops complaining :)
I was always more of a fan of UT than any Quake. The latest iterations of either have been underwhelming, though. If you want frenetic gameplay in Unreal Tournament, there is a nice little mutator called Tally-Ho!, which I recommend to everyone. But that is Unreal Tournament. Not 2004, not even 2003. Original UT.
I want to see something like Tally-Ho! remade in the Half-Life world. It works like this: Players are divided into teams which can’t shoot eachother, competing to hunt down original enemies from Unreal. The score varies with how rare or difficult each is. Should any player kill any other player, his team loses his score, and he becomes hunted, and worth a bounty as well.
Fun even against bots, but best against people :)
10/07/2008 at 14:47 Al3xand3r says:
Only now? I could play UT2004 on a less than 1GHZ PC with a GF2mx back then. It also looked and run rather nicely aside from a few giant maps or maps with a lot of specular like some ice filled level. The GF4 ti4200 (low end at its prime) fixed that. I’m sure even older laptops can run it fine, as long as we assume they’re meant to be used for gaming at least a bit, and not just for office purposes. If the latter then I agree, only now it can be played by office purpose computers, which is pretty radical really.
It did have huge amounts of visual detail for the time however, just look how even a simple wall in the indoor parts includes a LOT of 3D geometry based detail as opposed to being a flat textured (or even bump mapped) surface. That’s why it still looks pretty good (aside from the sub par lighting techniques, but that was OK for most maps’ style).
It really was the best of the “last gen” in its time, achieving fantastic visual detail and variety without having to use shaders or other fancy effects and also running fine on the average gaming rig without sacrifising too much of the eye candy.
I don’t think UT3 is an UT99 remake, UT99 is still more fun actually… 3 just feels incomplete and way unpolished to me. Besides, he was just saying an UT2004 remake would be worthier than UT3 (and I agree). He wasn’t citing it as a general rule, that you can take something old, give it new graphics and it’ll be better than something all new.
I agree with him in that UT2004 was and still is far superior to 3 and a remake of it would have been better than what we got, assuming of course they did a good job because if 3 really is meant to be a remake of 99, they just didn’t put any effort to it then.
10/07/2008 at 15:01 Turin Turambar says:
Hey Manwe, good nick! :D
10/07/2008 at 15:09 The Hammer says:
UT2004 was excellently scaled, I always thought.
Oh, and I can’t can’t can’t wait for Quake Live.
10/07/2008 at 15:27 Spectere says:
@Kill Pill: The first system I ran UT2004 on was a laptop from 2002 (Athlon XP 2200, ATI IGP 320M [which is quite possibly the worst chipset that ATI has ever released]) and it ran fairly well. My current laptop (purchased November 2005) has a fairly low-end graphics chip, even for that time (RADEON X300), and it has no problems handling it.
My 2005 laptop can even handle UT3 if I turn everything way down. Epic definitely knows how to make an engine.
10/07/2008 at 15:36 cyrenic says:
Another “it’s a small world” story.
Couple years back we got a new intern at the office. We got to be friends and after a few weeks we started talking about games we used to play. We came to find out we both used to play tribes against each other, and even remembered each others handles.
Kind of a lame story when it’s down on paper, but it was cool at the time :P.
10/07/2008 at 15:44 Ian says:
Thing is, we call these stories sad or lame or boring but are they really? Any more so than your average oh-my-gosh-what-a-small-world-we-live-in story? Just because it’s gaming-related?
10/07/2008 at 17:35 Kill Pill says:
Yeah, I meant on a cheapo laptop with an intel graphics chipset, and with enough headroom to smoothly handle a 32 player game.
UT3 isn’t exactly a remake, sure, but it’s got the same weapons and movement style as 99 (hoverboards aside). My point of view is that a 2004 remake would not have been better for the players (although it would have been a better game), because 2004 is still just about current and there’s no reason not to play the original. Besides that, a lot of people who’ve played 2004 are probably finished with it, and wouldn’t be drawn back with a shinier version. Something truly new would have expanded our options further, attracted more attention and at least had the possibility to be better still.
10/07/2008 at 20:56 x25killa says:
It’s nice when that happens. Bumping into users you have meet before a long time ago, greeting them back with a insta-gib. Good times.
10/07/2008 at 20:57 Ben Hazell says:
No one piping for up for UT?
UT was a singleplayer game for me really.
10/07/2008 at 21:10 Al3xand3r says:
Kill Phil, I’m sure they’d still prefer it over UT3 or something truly new that was worse than that. Obviously making new stuff is always better IF they can build it up to par. If not (and they clearly couldn’t, what with warfare and crap) then they’d have been best to make an UT2004 remake and focus on making it prettier, shinier, scalable and more modable. They seem to have failed in all accounts with UT3, including how scalable it is compared to previous games in the series. The visuals options are laughably simplified (even “advanced”), ini tweaks don’t help anywhere near as much and a PC that runs COD4 flawlessly can have major issues with UT3 @ uber low res and settings… With UT3′s failure we’re left without a current gen contender for the mod community crown…
Sad really, things went downhill in regards to that after Half-Life and they keep going so… Not that amazing projects aren’t still made, it’s just they don’t get the recognition they deserve anymore so they’re bound to stop being made at some point… I guess it might be for our own good if the industry lacks something like a “mods’ choice” engine for a couple years so that when it’s back, people appreciate it more than they do now they’ve been so spoiled the last years… Anyway this is off topic…
11/07/2008 at 14:03 Cunzy1 1 says:
This happened to me the other day! I fired up Timesplitters for some two player action and my brother was playing it too! He was on the sofa next to me! THE VERY SAME SOFA we used to play Timesplitters on. Then it turned out he was the same brother that I’d had for years! We went to the same schools, had the same parents. We EVEN had the same names for our pets when we were growing up!
What are the chances? I ask ya?
11/07/2008 at 16:23 Lep says:
It doesn’t just happen online:
Last year I was watching a football match at Guy’s Bar (Guy’s Hospital student bar) with some of my mates. My housemate John turned up a bit late with a mate of his from his labs who he introduced as being quite the CS player, knowing I used to play a lot of CS back in the day. By coincidence it turned out he played on the same servers as I did and our clans played eachother. Didn’t watch so much of the football and ended up chatting about the good ol’ days of the UK CS community. A quality bit of chance.
29/07/2008 at 17:13 panther says:
Good tale, had this same thing happen to me a while back when I re-booted Quake 3. Ran into an old server I had frequented back in the day (Instagib Railonly) and upon my first death, realized that an old clan-mate from back in my actual Quake 1 CTF days had just splattered me.
Always fun to connect like that.