it's good to tell people, but i try to avoid having personal news on the front page (biff's site redesigned, qmd retiring, vondur giving birth, etc.) 

that you have a new website, i mean. 

I know this. 

what's wrong with my monthly updates, bastid? 

what's wrong with my monthly updates, bastid? 

i was facetiously implying that if you had done the job instead of phait, the links would work. 

btw, url is
http://www.planetquake.com/speedy/

[this was a followup to a news submission -Ed.] 

yes i got that, but what's up with 'giving birth' stuff? :) 

THOSE montly updates. 

I was viewing the source.. .JPE? Never heard of that.. also I noticed the text hits the border of the main content cell - sorry about that.. to fix that I/you'd have to recode all the pages :\ If you want me to do a template with that fixed let me know... 

Of course none of you downloaded and played around with it did you??

So you couldn't possibly tell me whether it showed any promise and looked like it might live up to it's potential or not, could you??

Hem.... 

just wait for the game itself

(i didn't try leaked shit tho) 

Yea it showed promise, looks like being a damn creepy game. Pace is slowed down a lot as the players walk speed is quite slow compared with Quake/q3 etc. But it works well here I think, dunno how others feel tho :)

Special mention must go to the animation of the enemies tho, they are really believeable! Fred Nihlson (or whoever) has done himself proud here... 

showed some kickass animation too, really believable stuff. That's one area where HL2 seems to lack a bit, the animation for some of the standard stuff (ie walk, run etc) looks ok but not spectacular. 

yeah, was saying the same on #tf eariler. Doom3's animation is amazing, Fred Nihlson knows his stuff good :)

Though HL2's animation isn't as good for the basics like you say, it far surpasses doom3's in terms of the facial animations. I downloaded that 600mb hl2 vid from fileplanet and that girl character and the G-man's faces were amazing;y realistic as they spoke. Cant wait to see how they use that, should be very interresting. 

God, I hope it's not like the player speed of Unreal2, I mean that was rediculous, was really frustrating.
I never tried any of the leaked stuff, or any stuff for that matter, I don't even check out any screenshots, only see the ones that are smacked on the front pages of web sites, got no choice there. I'd rather wait for the real thing. 

I'm wondering if I should start a discussion thread on mapping for Battle Mech. I really need maps for QExpo, and they are fairly easy to make (overhead view, long distance, so details and undersides of things aren't so important; plus a lot of box maps work perfectly). I thank PushPlay greatly for the 3 quality he made and sent me, but I need more. I need to have deathmatch maps, CTF, Rob The Nest, and Infiltration (offensive-defensive CTF); but, if I get nothing else, I'd be happy with a barrage of deathmatch maps.

The new Battle Mech is at http://static.condemned.com/files/BattleMech.zip
The mod is about 5-6 MB and is working on becoming stand-alone (which means I have to replace the ID textures in some maps).
The aiming has been completely redone, so it's a *lot* easier to play now, and the weapons have regained their previous splendor.

You can also see the painfully pathetic excuses for maps I've made (woods, desert, start). I'm considering turning this post into a threat: if I don't get some maps, those hideous things I made will be unleashed upon the public and people like Cranky Steve will have a hayday with them. :)

I've fixed a lot of stuff in the mod, and added things. You can make brushes transparent with alpha, define the map's gravity, and auto-load cfg files, for example.
Health items can be put in the maps now. I'll also re-enable armor soon. You can open the mapping specs text file in the download for a list of weapons that can be placed (I'll have a way to exclude/include certain weapons from the random weapon item soon), info on various tricks, and also the camera helper entity, etc.

So, should I make a new discussion thread? Is anyone interested in mapping for the mod? I know some people said they'd try it out earlier. How has your progress been? 

Hey, that rhymed.

I made a .def file for bmech which I can update for any recent changes.

I may make another map. Wazat, you never did tell me if there was any hope for that unfinished map. 

I hope the way the lighting and fog look is still a work in progress. 

I hope the way the lighting and fog look is still a work in progress.

Yea, the lighting in desert.bsp is.. umm.. there are no lights. ;) I've got a long way to go I suppose. And woods.bsp is just horrible.

That unfinished map you sent me looks good. Finish it up!

I also have been playing the others a lot lately, and have enjoyed them a lot. I like all 3 maps you gave me, even bmech01 (which is now dm1), which I initially thought was too small and crowded. It also works great with weapons stay turned on.

BTW, the jump pads in bmech02 could stand to be a different color, or to be more visible. My beta testers were fine once they knew what they were, but before that they were pretty confused about how to get back up.

Thanks! 

The problem is that no texture really suggests "I am a jump-pad" the way some do in Quake3. If you find one that you think would work better let me know.

Also, I'm still not sure what to do with the last one I sent you. I felt it was missing something besides the obvious details, but I don't know what. 

The problem is that no texture really suggests "I am a jump-pad" the way some do in Quake3

Describe what you want, and I'll make it. 

I'm taking you up on that offer!

The textures in Quake3 which signify a jump pad are all animated. Circles moving outward for the vertical one, and arrows moving away for the horizontal one. Perhaps the same techniques used in comics to suggest movement could be applied to a texture to suggest that same moviement.

You're the artist, but maybe a series of increasingly larger arrows like >>>> would work? 

If you're looking for a Q3-esque pad, there's the one I made for Contract in the knave.wad. But that's 128 square/5 frames of animation. Maybe a bit too much.

I could do a 64x64 texture with a sort of 'target' type design, where each concentric circle is illuminated in turn, from the centre out. Maybe three rings would do?
And if I set it into a metal plate or housing it might not look so odd when tiled. Thing is, in the map Wazat mentions ( the one with the blue/brown chequered floor, yes? ) the 'jumps' are strips rather than squares - several glowing targets all in a line, pulsing away in perfect sync, could be a Cranky Steve feature :P 

You know, I actually forgot that Quake allows animated textures? You don't see them often.

Even though the jump pad is mostly pushing you upwards, from the camera perspective it looks a push in a particular direction. Perhaps instead of circles illuminating outwards, it could be bars illuminating in some direction. I could orient the texture to indicate the direction of movement. If the animation were subtle and not too quick then it could look rather nice.