LINUXGAMES

Via CAG, I found this deal on Newegg.com for an eight dollar copy of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars.

We’d like to wish everyone reading a Merry Christmas. If you’re looking for something to spend that Christmas cash on, we found Enemy Territory: Quake Wars for $4.99 at Circuit City via the CAG forums.

Splash Damage has posted an interview with EnemyTerritory.tv, the Enemy Territory: Quake Wars competition site which broadcasts league matches:

What’s the idea behind EnemyTerritory.tv?

(Mattc0m) The idea is to simply bring the competitive experience to the everyday, casual ETQW player. We try to make it as exciting and easy as possible to enjoy a live, shoutcasted match. The entire idea is to make the community larger and more exciting.

A new mod project for Enemy Territory: Quake Wars has been revealed: Tribal Wars, which looks to be bringing the jetpack-skiing/disc-chucking gameplay of the Tribes series to the world of Quake:

The purpose of this project is to develop a game that is very heavilly oriented toward teamwork and communication with a Capture the Flag set of rules. Each player has an arsenal of powerful weapons at their disposal, but they also have a jet-pack as well as the ability to slide across terrain. This results in a very fast and challenging gameplay. The highly skilled players flourish, but those who work together as a team always come out victorious.

There’s a teaser trailer and screenshots available at the developer’s blog already.

Splash Damage has posted a new installment of Snap to Grid, their Enemy Territory: Quake Wars community project column. This article examines two maps for the Wheels of War action driving modification, and highlights a few other user-made maps being created.

Kikizo recently interviewed id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead and designer Matt Hooper about the studio’s next game engine iteration, id Tech 5 (Doom 3 was id Tech 4), and its showcase title: Rage. Engine licensing, framerate, the significance of the name, and racing mechanics are discussed.

Also, id has announced the tournaments slated for their QuakeCon 2008 event:

The Intel QUAKE LIVE Championships
QuakeCon 2008 will mark the debut of the first-ever Intel QUAKE LIVE Championships pro tournament.  QUAKE LIVE is id Software’s new game created to deliver the excitement and energy of a first-person multiplayer  game to a broader audience through a free and easily accessible browser-based experience.  The Intel QUAKE LIVE Championships will feature a classic $12,500 One Versus One tournament along with a $12,500 Capture the Flag Team Tournament.

The Activision Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars Team Championships
Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars™ makes its second annual tournament appearance with the Activision Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars Team Championships.  Featuring competitions on both PC and for the first time on Xbox 360, the tournament contests will enlist six-person teams to battle it out in double-elimination bracket-style competitive play, in which each squad will have the chance to attack and defend.  On the Windows PC side, 16 teams will compete for $15,000 in prize money and in the Xbox 360 competition, eight teams will vie for $10,000 in prizes.

The Alienware Quick-Draw Challenge
For anyone who’s dreamed of competing for prize money on the QuakeCon main stage, the Alienware Quick-Draw Challenge offers $10,000 in prize money to randomly selected attendees competing in special QUAKE LIVE competitions throughout the course of the event.

QuakeCon will be held July 31st through August 3rd at the Hilton Anatole Hotel in Dallas, TX.

• Splash Damage has released the map sources for Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, which can then be imported for conversion to Enemy Territory: Quake Wars maps, so I expect homage maps from the community in short order :)
• Also, the latest installment of their Snap to Grid column profiles two community projects in alpha testing: the Retake of the Andes map and the Wheels of War mod.

Wheels of War, an action driving modification for Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, has a new release:

It features a small amount of bug fixes, three new vehicles, a whole new ‘Championship Racing’ game mode, 5 racetracks for that racing mode (which include the 3 for DM Campaign matches), and web-based stats in the form of a global best-lap leaderboard.

Screenshots: [ View ] Download: [ colsoft.biz ]

AMD has released their monthly Linux ATI Catalyst display driver package for their graphics cards; the requisite release notes include these changes:

• Enemy Territory: Quake Wars: Playing the demo on a system running X no longer results in corruption being noticed.
• Quake 3 Arena (demo): Segmentation faults no longer occur when attempting to play the game.
• Quake3: Corruption is no longer noticed when changing the display resolution when the game is running.
• Running X server without a window manager no longer results in the X server flashing green for a moment, going black, and the computer becoming unresponsive.
• Clock Gating is now supported and enable under the Linux operating system.
• Audio out is now functioning after the installation of the ATI graphics drivers for Ubuntu 7.10.
• Attempting to resize a 2D application window no longer results in poor performance being noticed when composing is enabled.

Download: [ amd.com ]

Splash Damage has released their official competition mod for Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, which allows ladder and tournament admins to customize the game rules as needed (documentation). It’s also noted that the source code will be made available for other mod projects to utilize.

Download: [ splashdamage.com ]

A small-scale competition-oriented map, Valhalla, has been released at the Enemy Territory: Quake Wars forums:

• Practical/functional and battle-focused design
• Aiming improvement for headshots, follow the wall lines
• Bot support to personal trainging against experts bots
• Trickjump training
• Playable roof for advantage/disadvantage firing training

Download: [ enemyterritory.com ]

• There’s a new version of ETQWPro which establishes compatibility with Enemy Territory: Quake Wars 1.5 and fix various bugs.
• Splash Damage’s blog has a new article examining the Dusk mod and several user-made map projects.
• The authors of the Doom 3 mod project Mind posted that Last Man Standing’s calimer will be assisting them in creating a Linux version. Moreover, calimer let us know that he’s also helping the Zombie Slayer and Full Metal Jacket: Demon Wars teams.

Version 1.5 of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, a multiplayer-focused first-person shooter set during the post-apocalyptic Strogg war, has been released by id Software and Splash Damage. There’s been many changes since 1.4, including:

• User interface improvements – “new customization options for turret lock-on warnings… mine trigger warnings can similarly be toggled on or off”
• New customization CVARs – “it’s now possible to set mouse sensitivity on a per-vehicle basis… new cvars for quickly switching spawn points”
• Ranks and statistics – “in-game scoreboard once again correctly displays player ranks”
• Bot improvements – “bots now understand the battlefield even better than before and will act more like a human player would”

The update comes in patch, full, and server-only flavors.

Patch Download:[ atomicgamer | other mirrors ]

Splash Damage has a new status update for the Enemy Territory: Quake Wars version 1.5 patch:

We’re currently doing some last minute testing with id Software to track down a few issues that have turned up, but we don’t anticipate this to take too much time. We really just want to make sure that all the issues we’re aware of are actually addressed rather than pushing out an update with a big asterisk and a list of It’ll-break-if-you do-this-ers attached to it.

Distribution is being sorted out at the moment as well and if there are no further complications, we anticipate having the update out next week.

If you’re interested in getting involved with the Enemy Territory: Quake Wars competition scene, Silent Shadows has posted an introductory thread at the community forums.

Splash Damage has posted the changelog for the upcoming version 1.5 patch for Enemy Territory: Quake Wars:

• User interface improvements – “new customization options for turret lock-on warnings… mine trigger warnings can similarly be toggled on or off”
• New customization CVARs – “it’s now possible to set mouse sensitivity on a per-vehicle basis… new cvars for quickly switching spawn points”
• Ranks and statistics – “in-game scoreboard once again correctly displays player ranks”
• Bot improvements – “bots now understand the battlefield even better than before and will act more like a human player would”

There’s also a blurb about the work involved to get it out the door:

We’ve completed internal testing of the update and we’re now coordinating with all the other companies that are part of the actual release process. This is actually a tad more complicated than it sounds since we’ve got quite a few moving parts there. 1.5 has to be coordinated with id Software (Windows and Linux), Activision, Aspyr (Mac version), Valve Software (Steam version), DemonWare (online accounts), and all the game server providers to make sure they update their servers in time for release. But fear not, we’re currently coordinating with all of the involved parties to figure out the best release timing for the update. As soon as we’ve nailed down a date, we’ll announce it here in the blog.

Random Quake-related news:

• Version 1.46 of the Quake III: Arena competition mod Challenge Pro Mode Arena was released.
• ESReality mentioned this map for Q3A, Sodomia, with a unique puzzle-oriented layout.
• Func_Msgboard posted a neat Quake 1 singleplayer map, Tower of Dal Gurak.
• There’s a new alpha release of the Enemy Territory: Quake Wars zombie mod Dusk at the community forums.
• Finally, Wired pointed out that Wolfenstein 3-D was released on today’s date in 1992. The only Linux source port I’m aware of is WolfGL (edit: zakk pointed out icculus.org/wolf3d as well) (edit: The Linux Game Tome pointed out a new port called Wolf4SDL too).

Edit: Splash Damage updated their blog with a preview of two community-made ETQW maps: Comm Link and Meltdown. Also, while fighting to prevent mankind’s extinction in the game, you can also assist Splash Damage in preventing the extinction of the tapir, an endangered animal.

The second alpha release of Dusk, a “zombie” modification for Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, has added Linux support (thanks PlanetQuake). The mod pits GDF (human) players against AI-controlled Strogg who swarm the players with melee attacks in a manner similar to traditional zombie hordes. Instead of brains though, the Strogg want you for your delicious…

Download: [ enemyterritory.com ]

The Wheels of War site has an update showcasing new models and textures for the vehicular combat-themed Enemy Territory: Quake Wars modification (thanks PlanetQuake), including some examples of the undead menace I’m guessing you’ll have to run down.

ETQWPro, a competition mod for Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, has had a new release with additional functionality and bugfixes.

Download: [ etqwpro.net ]