Bif must not have much to do, as it's only tuesday and the review of the first week's action in the Jolt Q3CTF league is already here. As always, each game gets a writeup, and Bif picks his favourites of the upcoming fixures.

As always seems to be the case Division 1 started the season off in a bumbling manner with sh, for the second time in three seasons, failing to get a team for their opening fixture. Whereas back before Season 17 they were able to give us a day notice, being removed from the league and replaced by subsequent champions MobacH, here they turned up on the night only to have 4 players at their disposal.

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Thresh is probably swimming in a massive pile of money, Scrooge McDuck style, at the moment, as media monolith Viacom have bought Xfire, the server browser chat thingy he co-founded, for $102 million, to become part of their MTV Games business.

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The invitations for the 13th Eurocup season were announced on Sunday. Q4 TDM and 1v1 were both featured. For Q4 TDM, the following teams got a direct invite:

• GUNK
• Dignitas
• fnatic
• deluxe
• aAa
• a-Losers
• Alientgaming
• mTw
• starComa
• LKFF
• Pentagram
• aCtion Ligan
• FOE
• ice climbers
• Legacy of the Mob

There are also a number of qualifiers, though it should be noted that the rapid-gaming vs 4k qualifier has already gone to rapid-gaming as 4K are blokey-less for the time being, and hence unable to compete. The only other UK team playing for a spot is Reason, who feature Kreaturen, though there are some other major non-UK teams, including x6stance and Tulls. And a clan called "RUSSIAN SERIAL BOMB" which is the best clan name ever.

The Q4 1v1 invitations are on the site. Two UK people are in the direct invitations list, Garpy and Zaccubus, while in the qualifiers HELL is to face K1cker and dozo takes on Brescia for a spot. There are quite a few notable names not involved, including TooGoood, voO, fox, Ztrider and Purri (who forgot to sign up allegedly \o/)

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Oxi has announced that signups are open for the first season of Q4 TDM, and will remain so till the 6th of may. The league will be using X-Battle, games will be played Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and the irc channel is #q4.jolt (which is sure to cause confusion for #joltq*dml'ers). You can sign up on the site.

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The league actually started last night, but to tide you over until Bif's week one review, his season preview is available, covering each team in each division, with predictions for final placings.

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All of the above have been expressing their opinion on the interweb this week. Nate Borland, director of competitions at QuakeCon, answered some questions over on PlanetRTCW on running quakecon's tournaments, and choosing which games will be played. Carmac has been spouting off (presumably as part of some spouting contract with the GGL) about Q4's lack of new players, and a possible solution:

But if they do, for whichever reason (and I can name a couple of valid ones), the only way to save the game is to release it anew. Do exactly the same thing they did with Enemy Territory: give the people a free, downloadable multiplayer-only game that has improved gameplay, good maps and the features it needs.

Finally, cha0ticz laments the lack of a GTV in Quake 4, and calls out to the community for someone to implement it, even going so far as to get some suggestions from arQon on how it could be done:

The trick could be to not use the netcode of Q4 like Q3’s version of GTV did, but to use the OS-level calls that are now exposed and useable within the Q4 code. Using these you could create a generic stream to push packets to a client’s machine.

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The 1.2 point release is out now, fixing the widescreen bug from the 1.1 patch. There isn't much else in the way of changes, bar a couple of other bugfixes (thanks kleeks):

• The Screen Size setting will only display resolutions supported by Windows and your hardware
• Shotgun reload animation will now play correctly.
• Muted icons now display properly on the scoreboard tab of the End-Game Summary window.

Hopefully we should see 1.2 compatible versions of the mods (other than GTR) soon, and the servers getting updated. The patch is available as a (much smaller) upgrade from 1.1, or the full patch with all the maps and whatnot from 1.1 included. There are torrents available, or direct links below.

1.1 -> 1.2 Windows (21MB)

• id
• levi
• jolt
• PlanetQuake4.net

1.2 Full Windows (117MB)

• id
• levi
• jolt
• PlanetQuake4.net

1.2 Full Linux (114MB)

• id
• levi
• jolt

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As posted by dallow on ESR, forever has arranged a tribute Q3CTF match in honour of shoutcaster Lun, who passed away in an accident last month. TosspoT and ReDeYe will be casting, while forever, thedutchone, erazor, deus, ooze, appleseed, vertex, chewie, raoul and sifer will be playing in a best of 3 maps game. It's happening tonight at 8pm, check out #<3lun on qnet for the details.

UPDATE: It was a fantastic series of matches, good job to all involved. There are some GTV demos, and some from Raoul's pov, and the itg guys should be putting together something with the shoutcast recordings soon.

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An update to the multi gametype (though CTF focused) Expert Quake 4 mod is available now, and you can download it from the expertctf site. Here, nicked from the forum post, are some new features (well mod features, I think they're the same as the previous version otherwise):

• Silky smooth off-hand hook for true 3-dimensional combat
• Balanced Weapon damage
• All weapons given upon spawn (no scavenging around picking up weapons when you could be fighting!)
• Ammo and Health regen (no scavenging around picking up ammo and health when you could be fighting!)
• All-new Q2-style hand grenade primer weaponv
• Triple rail shot
• Balanced scoring bonuses that award team play in CTF mode
• Timed flag runs
• Increased movement speed over Q4 defaults (who wants to play as if they're wading in knee-deep water?)
• 2-bounce Grenade-launcher (no more laying minefields of spam)
• Increased visibility skins

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Same ol' thing, with the 3rd inGame.de Q4 cup of their spring season to be played this coming Sunday. 200 sign up spots available, Q4Max, best of 3 maps, with players like dozo, sombra, garpy and forever signed up so far.

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