The Mailbag

Remember, if you get tempted to send me a question or problem, DON'T! Check The Unofficial Quake II FAQ which is written and maintained by Richard Connery. He's worked very hard on it so people like me don't have to answer dumb questions. What's that you say? Your question isn't in the FAQ? Well, try the messageboard! There's a link in the frame. Lots of people will read your problem and try and answer it. Another good resource is the Gamer's Guide, which can be found on Blue's.

What is there besides Quake II?
top

Other 1st pp games...
submitted by Richard Connery

Hello Paubo,

Hmm... it's hard to find 1pp games if you think about it. A lot are promissed but they kept being delayed. Sometimes I install Duke and play for a bit. Other times I play Ultimate Doom / Doom II with the Legacy patch (www.frag.com/doomlegacy/) since it adds hi-rez, +mlook, a lot of Q2 features like transparent water, several crosshairs, etc. I don't get tired of playing Classic Hexen. Quake I haven't touched for a long time.

I'm now playing through Hexen II: Portal of Praevus and it's very good. I've played Chasm a couple of times. Apart from that, hmm... waiting for Sin... that's the game I'm looking forward the most in the short term. Of course, Heretic II should be a blast (hehehe, I know, I know...).

Btw, speaking of keep getting delayed, how about a new conversation thread? Unreal is "almost, near finished, here"... what's up with that? Any blind followers of Epic out there wanna defend their still un-released game? Let me kickstart this: From the pics it looks good but it still isn't here and I want to play it, not see pretty pics. Oh and btw, before you talk about other games that were delayed Unreal has been in development for over three years, I think it's a record...

PS. "Tabu" is portuguese for Taboo... =)

Richard Connery
http://www.planetquake.com/q2faq/

Well, I would know about delays (cough, cough). At least Unreal is here, now, but I can't play it, because my system is too damn old! Sucks, don't it. Half-life is looking much more promising...
If anyone wonders, I personally didn't play anything but QuakeII for quite some time, but I recently got bored with it and I am back to playing Team Fortress (for the first Quake). It is just so FUN (Another reason to look forward to Half-Life - TFII).

Quest. of the Week
submitted by EvolFish

I play Duke Nukem,Shadow Warrior, and sometimes DOOM. These are not played to often because I play Quake 2 too much. I was at the end of the game(no codes) and I installed v3.12 and lost the game!

Ha ha.

May the Force Gib You.
submitted by Eva-Unit01

I'm a big fan of Jedi Knight, mostly because I feel it requires a different set of skills in order than to compete than Quake2. Q2 requires basically three things in order to do well. Aim, knowledge of the map and weapons in it, and the mechanics/firing time of the weapons. If you can measure in your head the amount of time it takes a rocket to fly from point A (his RL) to point B (your face) then quickly decide what do to (Shoot, run, or die) you're on your way to becoming successful. These types of mental gymnastics are invaluable in situations like railgun fights.

Jedi Knight, on the other hand, requires a lot of strategy when it comes to using the force powers. If you can't master good combinations of powers/weapons, you're just a lightsabre training dummy. The sabre itself lends a whole new dimension to the game. having good aim with a concussion rifle means nothing if you can't duel it out with some guy hammering on you with a sabre, especially with the wide use of force pull. I myself play almost entirely with the sabre, and only default to the big guns when out of hacking range.

I'd love to see a good coding job done on a quake2 melee weapon. Know any good mods?

I actually haven't seen any melee mods yet, which is surprising.
I played the demo of Jedi Knight, and I was impressed, to a degree...the graphics, models, animations et al simply can't compare to Quake2's, but JK had an amazing feel of atmosphere which I really liked. If I'd had enough money/hard drive space, I might have bought it.. however, I liked Quake2 better than JK for the same reasons you like JK better than Quake2. I prefer the intense adrenalin feeling of a 1 on 1 rocket battle, and the lightning-quick reflexes, splash damages, etc... it's just a personal thing, but I find Q2 more fun.

First Person Shootem Ups!
submitted by itchi

I am an avid Doom 2 player over the network in work we play about two hours a day I love QuakeII when I can get in a Deathmatch!

It must be cool to play Quake2 over a LAN. The only LAN I have access to is the network of 486's at my school... 8mb of RAM doesn't leave you very many options. Someone smuggled in a copy of Duke3D onto the network, so we play that occasionaly during Computer programming class (which is boring as hell, since only me and my friends know what we're doing - the class moves SO slowly). But still, even on a LAN, it is laggy as hell due to the crappy framerates.

What first person shooter game do you play regularily besides Quake II?
submitted by AggroNaut

I play one other FPS game besides Quake II and that's Hexen II.

Now that Hexenworld is out although still in beta, it's playable like Quakeworld was in it's early stages. I average a 300 ping on a good modem link, the same modem link which gives me near flawless Quake II playability on the net. Although that's not a great ping, it's playable. Everyone out there that hasn't given Hexenworld a try go download it and try it.

I like Hexen II because it has a good variety of things to frag your opponent with. There are lots of artifacts to use. I like coming up with deadly combinations of these artifacts. That's part of the fun for me. The special effects are really cool because of the variety of weapons going off in a deathmatch. Also, it's got the fantasy type theme which is a refreshing break.

I play Q2 religously but Hexenworld is pretty fun so go give it a try. Oh and get Siege too while you're at it.

Hexen II: played the demo. Thought: not bad, but not great. Conclusion: considering limited cash/hard drive space, not worth it. Perhaps you like it, but it didn't really appeal to me a whole lot.

LPB's, cheaters and other things that suck
top

LPB's and HPB's
submitted by ^Storm^

Haven't written here in a while, so I'll think I'll comment on this :)
Let me establish first, that I'm on a 28.8...
Latency between clients and a server is a natural part of the game - and I don't think ID will write a lag-equalizer option for quake2 that calculates the lag from each client and dynamically buffers commands so they are sent more slowly to players with lower pings and more quickly to players with higher pings (oh shit I feel the urge to write one now, somebody get me a quake2 coding guide quick!! :)) Personally, I don't have anything against LPB's, they play fairly, its just that they have an unfair advantage over people with higher pings since they get game updates exponentially (in some cases) faster then the other players. Its not fun when I'm flying down a hole with the enemy's flag in CTF just feet away from my flag and stand over my flag thinking I captured it, and then 7 seconds later I find that I actually died by a slug down my throat in the hole - you should see the sad look on my face when this happens :) And those that bitch about their high pings and yell at the LPB should stop complaining, its not the LPB's fault their ping is lower then yours... next time try a server closer to you or join the team with the most LBPs :P
Allright, I'm done, my keyboard is developing burn marks from excessive typing heh
Go Gib!
-^Storm^ (Yeah, that guy that wrote here a month or two ago :P)

LPB's are like the weather: everybody complains about them, but nobody does something about it. Well, not quite. If you are unfortunate enough to be a modem player (like I am), then you'll just have to play harder to prove you're better than an LPB. You can't do much about it... but on the plus side, you'll always have an excuse if you lose (If I had your ping I'd...) :-).

LPB's and more fun
submitted by [RKB]NiKKiTa

LPBs are just fine.....as long as they dont think they the best....most of them suck...they got no skills.....the only reason they any good is they got a good ping...but they sure let people hear how good they are....and dont realize if they didn't have a 30 ping against a 400+ (like me) they wouldnt get a single frag :)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
i love killin LPBs who think they so good and i got a 400 ping hehe
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
on another note:cheating.i've found someone using some kinda cheat on a lithium 2 server......sgt crush was his name......he had a 300+ ping me 400 *as usual* and in 1 game i killed him every time i saw him...he finished on the bottom......me on top ;) then the next game.......in the warehouse DM map.....i pumped him full of like 150 cells from my hyperblaster...he didn't die!!.....he claimed to have a good armor......funny that armor never ran out.....then the next map was the lava tomb.....i backed him into the lava once.....and he lived at least 30 seconds in there before he used the hook and got out.......AND STILL KILLED ME AFTERWARDS!

So you met a cheater. So what. Leave, don't let it bother you.

Cheating and LPB
submitted by Ghost

When you have a 28.8 and someone comes on with something much better, it's like you're fighting the Predator. By the time you see them, they are already gone and then you are respawning. You take comfort in the fact that they (the Low Ping Bastards) will occasionally walk around a corner into a rocket fired at random. You just learn to live with. The same goes if you're playing and Thresh or Killcreek are out slumming and you just die, die, die. It would seem like they were cheating. That's why I NEVER accuse someone of cheating, though I have been suspicious a few times. The way I look at it, if they win by cheating, they didn't really WIN, they just wasted your time and theirs. It's like the clowns who play single in god-mode and then complain that the game is boring. What a joke, of course it's boring in god-mode, there's absolutely no challenge and the same goes for clowns who cheat in multiplay. They aren't winning a thing, they're not getting better at the game and they are wasting everyones time. Let's hope they bore of easily and move on to something more exciting for them.

P.S. Note to id Software-cheats were a novelty in Doom, now they are old and unnecessary. PLEASE LEAVE SINGLE PLAY CHEATS OUT OF FUTURE GAMES>PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Good philosophy on the accusing part there, many people could learn from you. However, I think Single Play cheats are necessary now. Many people who lack the skillz to get past a certain level might never get to see the end, and that's a shame... also, if you really really need a screenshot of a specific area/monster for your webpage (I was in that position many moons ago), then you tend to rely on cheats...

Cheating
submitted by Arcanus

I wanted to comment on the cheating issue. (is this the right address to send it to?) In particular the letter from immortal has two anecdotes, the second of which seems to be an example of cheating (if it's true), but the first of which is not necessarily cheating at all. A good player on a level like q2dm8 where there is power armor and red armor can manage not to die in 25 minutes. And quad damage doesn't affect the BFG, so it is unsurprising that he would survive a BFG blast if he had survived that long. I get accused of cheating quite often simply because I've practiced a lot with the railgun and so am halfway decent with it. Then people whine about me using an autoaimer. I've never seen a real autoaimer. I can't say I've been looking for one to use myself, but I've never seen anyone else using one. My point is, in many cases skilled playing can be mistaken for cheating.

True, true. Someone once told me about the time he was playing CTF, and had 250 health, then dropped the autodoc (due to a bug he kept the health while not having the autodoc rune). He then got 200 armor, 300 power armor and the disruptor shield. EVERYONE was calling him a cheater.

Here's where the REAL fun begins
top

RE: Er...whatever
submitted by r0tfish

(snip from last issue)About the 'heat I took while I was Satanic'. Yes, it was just seven letters thus a name. People have the right to be offended, it's just our decision to keep it or find another one, Nosferatu, Beelzebub, Rotfish (Hi again) is changing is nick. I changed, many will not. Christians say "we welcome any different religions so we can enlighten them" but by the reactions some of us got they don't seem very friendly at all. Yes, religion is a "VERY touchy subject" and that's why I think it should be discussed, otherwise we'll always have this tabu subject in our lives.(/snip)
============================================
I honestly can't believe you allowed people to bug you enough that you eventually changed your name. Piss on those bible pushers. (pardon my harsh words, but I was pushed like Sat was as well) I'm probably going to offend a ton of people in saying this, but Christians tend to speak of themselves as the master race. I was talking to a guy in school the other day, and I said "GOD DAMNIT" because my pen was leaking, and he told me "Never use the Lord's name in vain." I told him that didn't mean anything to me because I was an atheist, and he started telling everybody around that I was a satanist. So what does this mean, there's Christianity, then there's Satanism?
============================================
(snip)Americans, spelling, etc. I like correct spelling, many ppl do not. Hey just drop it, okay? Don't rub at someone's nose he's a bad speller or you'll be an annoying bastard. And for all you know-it-all-smarty-pants I always criticised the spelling when I ran the mailbag but because of fun not at personal attacks. And some of us (like we Europeans) learnt UK English not US so we do spell colours, favourite, armour and say lift instead of elevator, I can't imagine a more pitiful world where everybody spoke the same way. It's like making fun of a particular accent your very own country has.(/snip)
============================================
I like correct spelling too. I generally try to stear clear of correcting people if they make a mistake, except if they do it excessively, like they're just lazy. This type of thing pisses me off. It gives the U.S. a bad name (which I'm sorry to say it kinda deserves). These people DO deserve to be corrected when this is the case.
============================================
(snip)Oh and btw, America is the domination power in the world (I agree) but remember if it wasn't for the rest of the world America wouldn't be as strong as it is now. I'm not even going to bother to mention the problems US ppl have to deal with for being "at the cutting edge of civilisation".(/snip)
============================================
Oh, you mean being a country full of fatasses with IQ's lower than our age? Ah, don't worry about it. We already know. :-)

It must suck to be American (whoa, let me finish)... you have to contend with the international stereotype that you're, as r0tfish so eloquently put it, 'a country full of fatasses with IQ's lower than our age'. I'm sure most American's aren't REALLY like that :-).

Capture the Flag
submitted by Maven00

Well I've been playing capture the flag since the day's when quake 1's threewave ctf came out. Since then many other's have formed some modifying it and some compleatly new. (I liked creepers thunderwalker ctf the best). Then came one of the giants to narrow all of the confusion into one simple answer. All-Star CTF was formed. It was great. No more looking for a mod or level or anything just downloaded this and you hadd all of the features combind. Wonderfull Idea. Then came Quake 2 :) No CTF for it though :( but it was released and boy was it spectacular. Everybody had to have it. Id's servers were loaded for day's. And since then more mod authors advanced the allredy amazing mod with even more amazing features. Loki Minions CTF was made. It enlightened many it amazed players around the world. It became a great mod. Later the amazing Thunder Walker CTF had an added symbol to it's wonderfull name; they added a 2. Yes a sequel to the first. Now what happened to All-Star you ask? They are makeing !ALL-STAR 2!. Woo hoo you say. You jump with glee. You travel over to http://www.captured.com/allstar2/ quickly with joy. You read the text written on the web page which lists what will be included in it and you are struck with shock and dissapointment. It has not included any of the Quake 2 CTF mods only upgrades of the Quake 1 mods. BOOOOOOOOOO HISSSSSSSS. Bye-Bye Loki Bye-Bye Thunderwalker 2 Bye-Bye Threewave 2. None of the ultimate CTF level's in Current Quake 2 Mod's will be added. Nothing Nada Zilch Zip Zero. Such a dissapointment. OR is it? Maby if we all gang together we can convince all of the great CTF authors to meet and create a truely incredible All-Star CTF! Think of it all the new levels all of the clasic levels, that many veterins of CTF have come accustomed to, in one MOD! There will be problems with makeing it, there will be chaos. But in the same way the earth was created so will the ultimate Capture the Flag Mod form. Ok my moment of inspiration is over d:-7
One problem will be the weapons. Their all different but that can be worked around. Hyper blaster is much like the nail gun etc.. Send comments to Maven00@aol.com and if I get enough I will post a web page about it. Check back frequently here to see the address. No I'm not a writer I do make spelling mistakes and Im still in school. Think of all the levels in All-Star CTF and all of the levels in Loki's alone all in one mod. You can even have voting on which level to play next. Since their are so many the voting would have to be separated into groups. The mod woul dbe around 20 megs at least. But would you download it? I know I would.
Go USA!
Andy "Maven" Jurcyk
Organizer of:
Metroid TC http://grc.quake2.com/metroidtc
SAFE http://www.angelfire.com/oh/twhssafe
and Maven's Page-O-Stuff http://members.aol.com/maven00
Maven00@aol.com

TF rules! Death to the CTF freaks!
(Please ignore the last sentence. Don't know how that got in there.)

Cool rocket jump
submitted by Lun@r

I was chasing this guy on a level on King of the Hill i was bottom of the ladder having just joined the server and conciosly deciding to pull off something cool I ran around the leval for a bit and found the BFG coupled with the Invunerability. a lethal combination. I got to the hill and preceded to perform a very cool BFG jump in the middle of a fire fight I killed four guys and in the air with one of my aliases I whiped out a rocket launcher and killed the last guy guy running around below me. I preceded to dominate the server and two maps later the server was deserted. One guy said that he was SCARED to go anywhere near a bloke who could stunts like that one!! I insisted that it was only a fluke but he didnt beleive me!!!!!

You know, you don't need invulnerability for a BFG-jump, just very good timing. It's actually less damaging than a Rocket jump, most of the time...

Poem
submitted by Glen "Zipp" Watson

Quake2
by Glen "Zipp" Watson

I know of a world where lights swirl,
And men of pixels make rockets whirl.
Take a launcher and make a gernade fly,
To gib an Alien Strogg and watch him die.
Sometimes they will fall and act dead,
Don't turn around or they'll blow off your head.
They come from a real dark mysterious planet,
They are Human, part machine, Oh damn it.
Our only hope is a fully equiped bot marine,
His weapons are a hyperblaster and a BFG9000 machine.
This is a total warning, not just some advice,
Do not play sweet, kind or fair, and definitely not nice.

I would like to share it with the rest of the Quake2 community.
Thanxs, Glen

There you go. Thanks for the effort in writing the poem.

And a word of advice to all would-be poets: if you're going to make it rhyme, you might as well get the rhythm right too. Count sylables and account for word accents. It helps a LOT.

And that, my friends, is that. Let me take another minute to apologize again for the huge lack of updates and all that. If I didn't post your mail, then you didn't read the guidelines! Remember, technical questions will go straight to my trash can. I will try to post submissions which contain ONLY VALID OPINIONS. Read on for the guidlines...

Guidelines

Don't send me specific hardware questions; mail them to the respective companies' technical support.
Don't send me specific gameplay questions like how to finish a certain level.
Don't send me specific problems you're having; mail them to id Software instead.
Don't send me questions about a specific mod; mail them to the mod author.

The Mailbag deals with opinions, not specific questions. Also, I don't reply directly so you'll need to check The Bag each week. If I happen to grin at your submission you are free to send another. Use it to show I was wrong; if you don't send other logic arguments or facts I will grin a lot harder. Send them to mailbag@quake2.com.

Top