0x4B writes "Some researchers from Vanderbilt University have used id Software's Quake III Arena to test a model of the human prefrontal cortex. The model was injected into the control systems of a Quake Bot, allowing it to flexibly adapt to changing enemy characteristics. The bot was required to identify the vulnerability of its enemies to different types of weaponry through repeated combat trials. Not only are the bots busy shooting each other relentlessly, but you can catch the action by joining the battle as an observer. Source code and Quake virtual machines are available for download."

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing out that the official Unreal Technology page has been updated with a software renderer for Unreal Tournament 2K3. This is an interesting step for those gamers with fast CPUs but inadequate 3D cards. The Pixomatic technology powering it was co-developed by Michael Abrash, John Carmack's right-hand man during the development of Quake, and a famous programmer and writer (at Microsoft and elsewhere) way before then.

rekrutacja writes "Soldat is a multiplayer action game which takes the best from games like Liero, Worms, Quake and Counter-Strike, and gives you fast action gameplay with lots of gibs and gore. It only requires a modem and a PC with a 333mhz processor, since it was written to meet the reality of the Polish Internet, still dependent on modem connections and cheap computers." For those countries and locations where you can't get broadband, and PCs just aren't that swift, what other action-based shooters are still reasonably playable?

Sim9 writes "Recently, Anachronox: The Movie released its final episode. The movie is based on the PC game, and is actually rendered using the Quake II engine! (Note that the official mirror is usually full, so also try: Fileplanet, The Archive, AusGamers, and Fileshack. Enjoy!" Update: 04/12 04:58 GMT by T : You can also find BitTorrent files at f.scarywater.net.

Obiwan Kenobi writes "Online Journalism has an excellent article on video game reviewers and the ethics of such a position. It includes comments from the editor of gamespot and insights from well-known movie critics who are subjected to the same junkets that try to influence reviewers into writing good things about terrible products (or just mediocre ones). Inside I talk about my limited experience in video game reviewing and the influence free stuff can have."

An anonymous submitter writes: "The NYT has an article - Do Cheaters Ever Prosper? - Just Ask Them. Hmmm.. Wireframe walls in Quake?"

A reader writes:"I just read this very in-depth interview with Brian Hook on a site called Curmudgeon Gamer. Hook used to work for id Software (Quake 2 and 3) and later for Verant (Everquest) and he apparently worked on Glide for the old 3DFX cards. Now he runs his own smaller game company called Pyrogon. In the interview he talks about development styles of Q2 and Q3, MMORPGs, the lessons of 3DFX, and development of cross-platform games like his Candy Cruncher (which is available for MacOSX and Linux!). He even gets into some criticism of modern games and the life of a smaller game developer. Lengthy read, but lots of stuff to think about there since he tells it like he sees it."

Michael Buhrley writes "I felt a pretty good earthquake this afternoon in Tokyo. I immediately went to the Japan Weather Association earthquake information page to see if it had registered the quake, which it had not (the ground was still shaking at this point.) 20 seconds later when I refreshed the page the server had slowed to a crawl. I had been looking at traffic graphs for one of my servers earlier and thought it would be neat to correlate the traffic data with the seismic data for the event. I wonder how quickly a noticeable traffic spike could be detected and what other information could be gleaned from the web behavior. Lots of traffic = big quake or quake in big city. The U.S.G.S. Pasadena Field Office has a page that compares this phenomenon to the Slashdot effect."

gleeklet writes "Has anyone else seen that there is a need for inexpensive 3D visualization software for presentations and classroom lectures? There is a Chemical Engineering package available but compared to video game software, the graphics are a bit lacking. My goal was to create a chemical plant with the process control algorithms coded into the Quake II source. As a short demo I spent several hours creating a unit cell demo Quake II level to demonstrate the use of open source video game technology, which I found was well received by undergrads. Has anyone used video game technology as an education tool for science or engineering?"

Most of the questions we got for LinuxWorld exhibitors were pretty general, with no specific exhibitor attached to them. I did my best to get appropriate people to answer them. Here are the results. (And for those who wonder... Kevin Mitnick emailed - he's been traveling and busy, but hopes to get his answers to us shortly.)

ctwxman writes "There's no doubt governments around the world have built a fine network of sensors to monitor earthquakes. Yet, when I want to see what's happening, I go to the Redwoood City Public Seismic Network, http://psn.quake.net/. Within five minutes, amateurs, most far away from Redwood City and using homebuilt equipment (yes, there are links to instructions on how you can build your own), have posted their seismogram plots http://psn.quake.net/cgi-dos/event.exe. It's astounding that 'just plain folks' can sense the Earth move halfway around world. And, It's neater to see with your own eyes."

Obiwan Kenobi writes "Looks like they guys at Maximum PC got lucky -- they scored the first ever GeforceFX benchmarks via an Alienware prototype machine. Two 'marks to notice: The Geforce FX scored 209 FPS in Quake 3 (1600x1200x32) and 41fps in 3dMark Game4 demo, while the Radeon 9700 Pro attained only 147fps in Quake 3 yet came back with 45fps in the 3dMark test. It seems that the GeforceFX is the clear leader in pure processing power, but in memory bandwidth the 9700 Pro is still king."

nilesh writes "Yesterday, Reliance Infocomm launched one of the largest CDMA networks in the world [Google news]. This wireless network will cover 90% of India's population on a backbone of 60,000 kms of optic fibre. They have dreams of providing an Internet-enabled Java-powered CDMA2000 1x phone to almost every Indian citizen for around tariffs as low as 40 paise per minute or 0.8 cents per minute. The Samsung/LG/Kyocera phones will be replete with applications ranging from internet banking to video on demand and online gaming. Now all we need is Quake for Java and we'll have college kids playing deathmatches with each other in classroom at 144kbps. The next game revolution is in sight."

dOxxx writes "Sharp is bringing out a 3D monitor next year that requires no special glasses. It took them one day to convert Quake to work with the monitor. They are already selling cellphones in Japan for the NTT DoCoMo network with scaled-down versions of the screen."

geyser writes "What stuff matters more than a device that can tear things apart? Frank Polifka has a patent on his Windhexe device that creates a tornado force wind. Besides pulverizing concrete, it can pulverize small objects including jelly fish, and chicken feet without destroying the organic compounds. The chickens don't like it. Is this really a prototype Quake weapon? I could only find newspaper articles about the device. Has anyone seen it in action and can you give us a first hand report?"

DaytonCIM writes "Honduras has issued a blanket ban on all violent videogames and toys, which is set to come into effect next June - giving retailers in the country a six month grace period to clear stocks of the games from their inventories. Among the banned games named are Resident Evil, Shadowman, Street Fighter, Turok, Perfect Dark, Quake and Doom. Read more here."

Let's shoehorn a few gaming submissions together: tabby writes "For those not in the know here's the most amazing game I've played in ages. Its a Half-Life mod called Natural-Selection. Try to imagine CounterStrike + StarCraft. Its essentially a multiplayer First Person Real Time Strategy game." real_b0fh writes "I'm surprised no one mentioned it here yet, but Silicon Ice Development has released the beta 2.6 for their very cool Quake 3 Arena mod Urban Terror. Have played it a bit and it features cool things like better weapon hit model, some anti-cheat features, improved maps and some new nasty bugs. Well worth a try if you are into FPS games." And on the lighter side, LSDsmurf reports that there's a patch for Doom III Alpha. Yes, you read that right.

axehind writes "Carlo Daffara posted to the openMosix mailing list about his game cluster. It's a 6 node cluster using Athlon XP cpus and running linux & openmosix (with some qdisc trickery) for the OS. It is used to host approximately 1000 users playing online games, like Jedi Knight and Quake III. Here's a link (italian) to the pictures."

If you have fond memories of happily donating quarters to the Konami corporation for hours on end, or thinking how cool the Dragon's Lair graphics were, or better yet can remember when Pong was hip, you may enjoy Alex McLintock's review below of High Score: An Illustrated History of Electronic Games. Update: 10/04 16:17 GMT by T : Yes, this is the same High Score that Jon Katz reviewed a few months ago.

MrFreak writes "Have you ever wanted to grab a sound from DVD Player or record a RealMedia stream to AIFF? It's previously been impossible to do this digitally, but the folks at Rogue Amoeba have released a piece of software called Audio Hijack that allows you to record audio from any OS X application. Additionally, it can apply live audio effects to any application, so you can add an equalizer to MAME or play Quake 3 with a live echo or flanger effect."