I'm so old school I ported Quake II to PDP8e assembler and used the toggle switches on the panel to play the game while watching an oscilloscope display.
It was interesting to see that many people on the dm maps.
Interesting? More like INSANE. The one map I won, I was surprised at how I was able to rack up tons of consecutive quick kills in the mg room using nothing but a machinegun and the ammo left by the endless succession of dropped mg's of the scores of people I repeatedly fragged. Couldn't move 5 feet without constantly bumping into someone. "Excuse me, pardon me, excuse me, pardon me, coming through, pardon me, excuse me."
releases weren't as big a deal back then. It could very well of been sent to stores, but it didn't come out until the following Tuesday. If it were then PQ would of said people were getting it three or four days ahead of time.
The first patch was released on release day, but since it's '97 I'm betting 95% of the buyers didn't even know as internet wasn't that prevalent and bbs's wouldn't of had it yet.
I don't know where you get this Tuesday thing, that may be the case today but I don't even remember it being the practice 15 years ago. Please present your evidence for that being in effect in 1997. I see none. Absent any positive evidence of a true release date, I will personally observe it on Dec. 1 since that's the only sure date from the horses mouth about when the code went Gold. It's also universal since it doesn't matter what country you live in.
As far as the prevalence of the internet, I was doing internet stuff on 300 baud modems back in 1980. In 1997 I was reading John Carmack's .plan files directly on a Unix box and on a Windows box in Netscape on 96kbps modems, perhaps even a 128k ISDN line, I can't remember the specifics off hand, I'd have to look for the ISDN bills and I'm too lazy right now. I seldom used BBSs and I know the plan file wasn't distributed that way.
I also know I was downloading the 3.06 code directly off the idSoftware server that day after I had purchased the retail CD in a store so I know that had to be between the 1st and the 6th.
I don't know any store that would have let a popular product like the much-anticipated Q2 sit in their stock rooms for three days waiting for a Tuesday when they could have all weekend to sell it off the shelf. I don't know anyone who would sign a contract to embargo it for that long either.
I just checked my Quicken reports. I was doing 128k ISDN in December of 1997. Prior to that it was 96k dialup.
Where do you get US release on the 6th? December 6th, 1997 was a Saturday, games are normally released in Tuesdays, movies Thursdays in North America.
The party was the evening of the 5th. Presumbably it was delivered to stores by that date for display Saturday. Preorders were commenced on the 4th. He wrote nothing in his plan file about Q2 between stating it was gold on the 1st and stating the 3.06 point release was available on the 9th. The stated goal was that the CD would be released and the first point release "within a few days". I assume he was a busy guy between the 2nd and the 9th.
I went looking @ PQ's news archives at the time: *Q2's EU release day was 12/12/07 *Q2's US/Canada was 12/09/07 (I was at EB games that day, btw. ) *Denmark was selling it in 12/7/07 *Q2 copies available at the release party on 12/05/07
Where we go from here: Point release. We should have a Quake 2 point release out shortly after the game gets in your hands. We intend to fix any bugs that turn up, improve the speed some what, and optimize for internet play in various ways. We will also be making several deathmatch only maps. Deathmatch in Q2 has gotten a lot of lan testing (Thresh, Redwood, and Vik Long helped quite a bit the last week with tuning), but not much in-ternet testing. There are probably gaping holes in it, but we will address them soon. The deathmatch code in the shipping Q2 is also not designed to hold up against malicious users - there is no protection against clients being ob-noxious and constantly changing skins, chat flooding, client-side cheat-ing, or whatever.
This source code distribution is only for hard-core people that are going to spend a lot of time pouring over it. This is NOT a how-to-make-levels-for-q2 type dsitribution!This should keep a bunch of you busy for a while.
You can say Q2 was shipped for mastering on Dec. 1, 1997, so that was the code that shipped on the retail CD. The 3.06 point release on December 9 was the one I remember as being the "official" multiplayer version. All my historical memory of the game stems from that 3.06 release. Happy Friar's LAN test on October 19 was a test of incomplete Q2 and there were many changes before the release. It looks like that December 6, 1997 date from Google is correct but there is no post from John Carmack on that date. No doubt he was busy coding the point release.
From what I know from some of the documentation out there when the game was still being developed, the monsters were modeled and the headers were created by the ModelGen tool. You'd have to go back into that source code to figure out how to extract it yourself or else just do as you proposed and derive the information from the header file for each monster.
So how does the 6,000 years ago thing work in all this?
This must be some string theory type of shit, binding different points of time together. Quite possible, in fact, since we're fairly confident that time itself is simply another dimension, easily manipulated by bends and folds.
If you haven't gotten the hint, we're making fun of creationism.
If you haven't gotten the hint, you don't understand complex humor.
Apparantly there was a back story. From the context of this thread I got "trouble with linear equations" / explanation of factoring higher-order equations. I've always thought solving linear equations was pretty straightforward.
If you have a TI-83 or better, here's a little trick in case you didn't know ex. Teachers certainly don't show you or want you to know this function...
press the button math, then scroll down to 'solver' or hit 0.
It displays the equation 0= so, to equate it to zero you would do this...example:
3x^3 = -13x^2 + 10x
so you just make it = 0 by doing this:
3x^3 + 13x^2 - 10x = 0
you can enter that in the calculator's equation solver function and it'll solve for X, but there's a catch. obviously there's going to be 3 values for x given the polynomial. so after you enter the equation and it prompts you a "Guess", it's going to display the closest value for X to that guess. If you can imagine what the graph looks like for something like that it's easy... and just from looking at it, you know 0 has to be one of the x values(plug 0 in for x, you obviously get 0)... the others are 2/3 and -5(don't forget to put negatives in your guesses... you could have gotten both of those by using -10 and 10 as your 2 guesses).
factoring it produces the same results obviously,
x(3x - 2)(x+5) ... then set them individually to 0
x=0 , 3x-2=0 , x+5 = 0..
0, 2/3, -5 , same answers
I got some news for you. These are not linear equations. If your intent was to help ex, I think you failed.
The earth WAS created in seven days. It took another 4.5 billion years to pile the fossil record onto it and prepare it for God's supreme achievement: Cats.
Written by Mark Twain in 1909, when the Theory of Relativity was brand new and Quantum Mechanics had not yet been described:
The Creator sat upon the throne, thinking. Behind him stretched the illimitable continent of heaven, steeped in a glory of light and color; before him rose the black night of Space, like a wall. His mighty bulk towered rugged and mountain-like into the zenith, and His divine head blazed there like a distant sun. At His feet stood three colossal figures, diminished to extinction, almost, by contrast -- archangels -- their heads level with His ankle-bone. When the Creator had finished thinking, He said, "I have thought. Behold!"
He lifted His hand, and from it burst a fountain-spray of fire, a million stupendous suns, which clove the blackness and soared, away and away and away, diminishing in magnitude and intensity as they pierced the far frontiers of Space, until at last they were but as diamond nailheads sparkling under the domed vast roof of the universe.
At the end of an hour the Grand Council was dismissed.
They left the Presence impressed and thoughtful, and retired to a private place, where they might talk with freedom. None of the three seemed to want to begin, though all wanted somebody to do it. Each was burning to discuss the great event, but would prefer not to commit himself till he should know how the others regarded it. So there was some aimless and halting conversation about matters of no consequence, and this dragged tediously along, arriving nowhere, until at last the archangel Satan gathered his courage together -- of which he had a very good supply -- and broke ground. He said: "We know what we are here to talk about, my lords, and we may as well put pretense aside, and begin. If this is the opinion of the Council -- "
"It is, it is!" said Gabriel and Michael, gratefully interrupting.
"Very well, then, let us proceed. We have witnessed a wonderful thing; as to that, we are necessarily agreed. As to the value of it -- if it has any -- that is a matter which does not personally concern us. We can have as many opinions about it as we like, and that is our limit. We have no vote. I think Space was well enough, just as it was, and useful, too. Cold and dark -- a restful place, now and then, after a season of the overdelicate climate and trying splendors of heaven. But these are details of no considerable moment; the new feature, the immense feature, is -- what, gentlemen?"
"The invention and introduction of automatic, unsupervised, self-regulating law for the government of those myriads of whirling and racing suns and worlds!"
"That is it!" said Satan. "You perceive that it is a stupendous idea. Nothing approaching it has been evolved from the Master Intellect before. Law -- Automatic Law -- exact and unvarying Law -- requiring no watching, no correcting, no readjusting while the eternities endure! He said those countless vast bodies would plunge through the wastes of Space ages and ages, at unimaginable speed, around stupendous orbits, yet never collide, and never lengthen nor shorten their orbital periods by so much as the hundredth part of a second in two thousand years! That is the new miracle, and the greatest of all -- Automatic Law! And He gave it a name -- the LAW OF NATURE -- and said Natural Law is the LAW OF GOD -- interchangeable names for one and the same thing."
"Yes," said Michael, "and He said He would establish Natural Law -- the Law of God -- throughout His dominions, and its authority should be supreme and inviolable."
"Also," said Gabriel, "He said He would by and by create animals, and place them, likewise, under the authority of that Law."
"Yes," said Satan, "I heard Him, but did not understand. What is animals, Gabriel?"
"Ah, how should I know? How should any of us know? It is a new word."
[Interval of three centuries, celestial time -- the equivalent of a hundred million years, earthly time. Enter a Messenger-Angel.]
"My lords, He is making animals. Will it please you to come and see?"
They went, they saw, and were perplexed. Deeply perplexed -- and the Creator noticed it, and said, "Ask. I will answer."
"Divine One," said Satan, making obeisance, "what are they for?"
"They are an experiment in Morals and Conduct. Observe them, and be instructed."
There were thousands of them. They were full of activities. Busy, all busy -- mainly in persecuting each other. Satan remarked -- after examining one of them through a powerful microscope: "This large beast is killing weaker animals, Divine One."
"The tiger -- yes. The law of his nature is ferocity. The law of his nature is the Law of God. He cannot disobey it."
"Then in obeying it he commits no offense, Divine One?"
"No, he is blameless."
"This other creature, here, is timid, Divine One, and suffers death without resisting."
"The rabbit -- yes. He is without courage. It is the law of his nature -- the Law of God. He must obey it."
"Then he cannot honorably be required to go counter to his nature and resist, Divine One?"
"No. No creature can be honorably required to go counter to the law of his nature -- the Law of God."
After a long time and many questions, Satan said, "The spider kills the fly, and eats it; the bird kills the spider and eats it; the wildcat kills the goose; the -- well, they all kill each other. It is murder all along the line. Here are countless multitudes of creatures, and they all kill, kill, kill, they are all murderers. And they are not to blame, Divine One?"
"They are not to blame. It is the law of their nature. And always the law of nature is the Law of God. Now -- observe -- behold! A new creature -- and the masterpiece -- Man!"
Men, women, children, they came swarming in flocks, in droves, in millions.
"What shall you do with them, Divine One?"
"Put into each individual, in differing shades and degrees, all the various Moral Qualities, in mass, that have been distributed, a single distinguishing characteristic at a time, among the nonspeaking animal world -- courage, cowardice, ferocity, gentleness, fairness, justice, cunning, treachery, magnanimity, cruelty, malice, malignity, lust, mercy, pity, purity, selfishness, sweetness, honor, love, hate, baseness, nobility, loyalty, falsity, veracity, untruthfulness -- each human being shall have all of these in him, and they will constitute his nature. In some, there will be high and fine characteristics which will submerge the evil ones, and those will be called good men; in others the evil characteristics will have dominion, and those will be called bad men. Observe -- behold -- they vanish!"
"Whither are they gone, Divine One?"
"To the earth -- they and all their fellow animals."
"What is the earth?"
"A small globe I made, a time, two times and a half ago. You saw it, but did not notice it in the explosion of worlds and suns that sprayed from my hand. Man is an experiment, the other animals are another experiment. Time will show whether they were worth the trouble. The exhibition is over; you may take your leave, my lords."
Several days passed by.
This stands for a long stretch of (our) time, since in heaven a day is as a thousand years.
Satan had been making admiring remarks about certain of the Creator's sparkling industries -- remarks which, being read between the lines, were sarcasms. He had made them confidentially to his safe friends the other archangels, but they had been overheard by some ordinary angels and reported at Headquarters.
He was ordered into banishment for a day -- the celestial day. It was a punishment he was used to, on account of his too flexible tongue. Formerly he had been deported into Space, there being nowhither else to send him, and had flapped tediously around there in the eternal night and the Arctic chill; but now it occurred to him to push on and hunt up the earth and see how the Human-Race experiment was coming along.
By and by he wrote home -- very privately -- to St. Michael and St. Gabriel about it.
Sounds like management by consensus. The project that gets the resources is the one that engages the majority of or the most skilled team members. The members engage the difficulties along with the successes or the easy stuff for the greater good of the project. I wonder what happens in project phase II.
From my point of view, faith is not a virtue. Faith is an abdication of reason and a suppression of one's critical faculties of the kind that allows people to believe things on bad evidence, such as the claims of noted fraudster Joseph Smith about seer stones and golden plates and the Garden of Eden being located in western Missouri.
Anyone who's been to Missouri knows Eden isn't there.
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