Thanks to the New York Times (free reg. req.) for their article on the growing world of pay-to-play Internet FPS gaming, concentrating particularly on the YouPlayGames and Ultimate Arena sites, the latter of which is run by former Quake world champion Dennis 'Thresh' Fong. The article points out that "...groups concerned about the impact of computer games say that what these sites offer is gambling, which can make the games even more addictive." But according to pay-to-play FPS-er Tyler Hatton, the cash aspect is a positive thing: "Without money, if you're down a few kills, you might get lazy and accept defeat. When you're in a serious game for money, you put all you have into it. You start doing things you didn't know you could do, pulling off great moves."

An anonymous reader writes: "FootNotes is reporting about what might be the coolest thing since textmode Quake: a curses-based GTK-2.0 port called Cursed GTK. This not only makes it possible to give Gnome the look and feel of Contiki, but also brings many real opportunities, such as remote logins where X forwarding is not possible, or remote logins over very slow modem lines. Screenshots here, here, here and here! Patches for bugs are welcomed by the authors."

boschmorden writes "In conjunction with IBM, a group of college students from the University of Wisconsin developed GameGrid, a derivative of IBM's OptimalGrid effort. The students adapted the open-source version of id Software's Quake 2 first-person shooter, and attempted to scale it across the grid to stress the system." IBM is also planning on developing Quake 2 bots to take advantage of the system.

Thanks to GameSpy for their interview with id Software's John Carmack, as part of their continuing QuakeCon coverage. Subjects include whether he'll retire after Doom 3 is done ("No. I've got at least one more rendering engine to write"), what id will be working on next ("Our next game is not going to be a DOOM, Quake, or Wolfenstein sequel, it's going to be something new and that is a foregone conclusion"), and smaller ideas they're considering, but not necessarily working on ("...[to] take Quake II, and just use the DOOM engine to make brand new graphic models and everything. But don't spend time messing with the gameplay because we know that is pretty good. Just release it as Quake II Remix with brand new graphics technology and sell it at a middle-level price.")

Thanks to GameSpy for their interview with Rick Johnson of Raven Software, the lead programmer on Quake IV. Although the game isn't being shown at QuakeCon this year (Todd Hollenshead of id says "Quake 4 and QuakeCon 2K4 sound pretty nice together"), more details are revealed: "Quake IV is primarily a single-player focused game which will be continued on a near storyline from Quake II. That's not to say that we won't have multiplayer, but our primary focus is currently the single-player experience." It's also confirmed that the game is using the Doom 3 engine, and elsewhere at the show, "Tim Willits of id mentioned that work is being done on vehicles for the upcoming Quake IV."

nukem996 writes "The Silicon Ice development team has just released Urban Terror 3.0 Beta, a great realistic team-based urban warfare Quake III total conversion." The 322mb download includes "...completely new code for lag compensation, hit detection, physics... and a fully integrated UI", and there are multiple download mirrors listed on the official site, plus a BitTorrent link from Filerush.com - good to see there's still some quality Quake III mods, even after Epic's financial inducements to mod Unreal Tournament instead.

Simon Bysshe writes "I've just released a new film for free online download, which I hope illustrates to the public how far professional gaming has come.The film was shot at the ESWC gaming championships in July, and includes in-depth interviews with many world-class Quake, Unreal, and Counter-Strike players. My intention for the film was to help potential sponsors of electronic sports realise the value of gaming as a spectator sport. The film can be downloaded from the ESReality site - in the past, Slashdot also posted about my last film, called 'Modern Day Gamer'." Update: 08/06 00:39 GMT by S : Thanks to andrewvc for a BitTorrent link to this 338mb DivX 5 movie.

gorgon_123 writes "GameSpy has been running a feature on the 25 Smartest Moments in Gaming. The feature has been in progress all week, and comes exactly one month after another special series, the 25 Dumbest Moments in Gaming." This set of accomplishments are shrewdly divided into 'Smart Move!' ("This is your standard issue smart business decision."), 'Good Prediction' ("Someone had a vision."), and 'Blind Luck!' ("Somebody was in the right place at the right time and did something that just clicked.") Quake's multiplayer innovations, the Playstation, and, of course, Nolan Bushnell and Pong make the Top 5, but what's missing from this list, and why?

Slashback tonight brings you more information on homemade railguns, the future history of SCO (seen from the past), one website's response to alleged RIAA mendacity, a legal victory for famous web jerk Tucker Max, and more -- read on for the details.

Ant writes "According to an article at Blue's News: 'Though id Software basically invented the idea of using "when it's done" as a release date, and thus did not specify a release date when DOOM 3 was announced, many have been assuming that the game would be available for this year's holiday season. Now a report on HomeLAN Fed cites Activision's 2003 release calendar and quarterly financial conference call... [saying that] Activision admits that this matter is entirely in id's hands, but that they are not expecting the game this year, and have it "penciled" on their calendars for fiscal Q4 (Jan-March) 2004.' Additionally, Quake IV is now due in Fiscal 2005 (which begins April 2004)."

p0z3r writes "Following a recent story about Endorphin (from a previous Slashdot post), I came across the newly released Quake 4 renders. Hope you like them!" They're still lacking in the color department, but man oh man are they full of detail. I'm betting Quake 4 requires me to upgrade my hardware again, but I'm inclined to say it's worth it for graphics like these. Update: 07/19 17:54 GMT by S : It seems the images have now been removed from the Quake3World site.

MSwanson writes "It seems that Vertigo Software has ported the Quake II source code to Microsoft's .NET platform. Not only did they add a heads-up display in the .NET managed version, but they also say that the managed version initially ran faster than the native version. After changing some optimization settings, the native version now runs 15% faster than managed .NET code. Still pretty impressive. Download the ported version along with source code at the Vertigo site."

Thanks to GameSpy for pointing to the new 1.5 Beta of UnrealSpeed, which describes itself as "..a racing mod for Unreal Tournament 2003. Drive a car, gliding through the twists and turns to win the race. Your car is (optionally) heavily armed, so shoot your opponent into pieces if he isn't letting you get past him." This mod, using similar re-appropriation concepts to the classic Quake Rally mod, has added "..new camera views like driver eye cam, bumper cam, roof cam and rear view camera", as well as swapping out all the car models due to copyright concerns. How many other game genres can people make from clever modding of an FPS?

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to the GameSpot story interviewing Lineage II's lead designer, Raoul Kim. This Unreal-engine PC MMORPG from Korean publisher NCSoft is the sequel to the world's best-selling massively multiplayer game, and the discussion centers on subject such as engine choice ("We looked primarily at three engines to use for Lineage II: the Unreal engine, the Quake engine, and the Lithtech engine.. the Unreal engine was the most attractive to us because of its powerful editing features and its outdoor-rendering ability") and continuing the signature large-scale battles of Lineage into the sequel ("..one of the main features of Lineage II is siege warfare.. it is now possible to attack the enemy during a siege by using a flying unit such as a dragon.")

Rooked_One writes "For people, that to this day, swear by the quakeworld physics where you could "bunnyhop" through huge maps in a matter of seconds, but were lured away by better graphics, your day has come. Fortress Evolution has been announced with a couple of groovy little movies to drool over until they have a release. Many of you will remember Quake Team Fortress, well, this mod for Quake3 is made by players primarily of Mega Team Fortress, which i'm sure some of you will remember in poor regards. But we won't get into that. What is needed to know is that you will be able to play QW in the quake3 engine."

Thanks to Wired News for posting an article discussing the rise of machinima, which are "animated movies.. utilizing the [real-time] 3-D graphics engines of games like Quake or Unreal." The article cites prominent machinima such as Jake Hughes' Anachronox: The Movie and the machinima-created music video for Zero 7's 'In The Waiting Line', and according to Bill Rehbock of Nvidia, "..machinima methods, in addition to providing a hobby for aspiring filmmakers, are starting to be used in the creative industries far more than is apparent. For example, George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic is using the Unreal engine to storyboard Star Wars movies." There's also a significant cash prize for machinima makers as part of Epic's Make Something Unreal competition we mentioned a few weeks back.

Thanks to Wired News for their story discussing the forthcoming book, Dungeons And Dreamers, which is subtitled 'The Rise of Computer Game Culture From Geek to Chic', and "..documents the manically creative lives of gamers by tracing the career of eccentric 'Lord British,' as [Richard] Garriott is known to millions of fans, and panning out to explore the social anthropology of computer game culture." The article points to the book's official website, where you can also find a copy of the book's first chapter, and, as for the wider implications of success stories like Ultima creator Garriott's, co-author John Borland says: "..history matters, and we want people to realize that Quake isn't an isolated phenomenon. Games back in the 1870s had similar themes, so did mid-century toy soldiers and H.G. Wells novels."

An anonymous reader writes "QExpo 2003 has opened its doors, and this week-long virtual fair is the center of activity for the classic Quake community. From July 5th to 12th, exhibitors will put new maps, mods and engine improvements on display for the online crowd. All work is based on the original Quake (Quake 1, NetQuake, QuakeWorld). Several competitions are scheduled throughout the week, including speed mapping, modding and running, and the expo builds on the experience of the successful 2001 event in a community which this year celebrates the 7th birthday of Quake."

a-freeman writes "I frequently play Everquest and Quake III with some close friends that (now) live far away, and we've been looking for a solid voice-chat package to encourage trash-talking and taunting during our raid/frag sessions. We have variously tried Roger Wilco, TeamSound, TeamTalk, and Microsoft's Sidewinder GameVoice, and all of them have various limitations. TeamTalk has the best latency and sound quality but poor compatibility, TeamSound has terrible latency and requires lots of firewall holes, GameVoice requires a .net passport and Windows Messenger, and Roger Wilco is horribly unstable. This is a fairly simple problem, and I refuse to believe that these are the best-of-breed solutions. Can anyone recommend a solution that they are pleased with?"

Peter Wayner writes: "If you're a handicapped Windows user, Microsoft offers suggestions and assistance -- but XBox users were out of luck until Andrew 'Bunnie' Huang finished his book Hacking the XBox. Don't be fooled by the title. Officially, Huang's excellent book is not about helping the differently-abled. That would be against the law. Huang was forced by the DMCA to hide his humanitarianism under the cloak of 'reverse engineering' because this is one of the few legitimate uses given a small amount of protection by the law. But if you've got an urge to help the handicapped or any other reason to tinker with your XBox, buy this book before the Man sees through this ruse." Read on for the rest of Peter's review.