Shuriken and BirdDawg competing in the Apple tournament.

Fluffy and I (doing the gentlemanly thing) bowed out and concentrated on the portfolio. Even though we send id regular updates to our in-development betas, We wanted to show it off ourselves and so as we'd mentioned earlier, we'd created a bunch of folders with portfolios in them before leaving London and only now had we realised the number of typos in them! Ahhhhh!

We spent an hour fixing these and printing up replacement copy before the other 4 came back and would you believe it? They won! 5 bloody nil too! Madness. I reckon they were playing versus the Hooters team :)

BirdDawg, Vorrik and Shuriken jumped in the truck and fired back to Hampton while RR2DO2, Fluffy and I dived over to id's offices for a brief chat with Duffy. We got a chance to show them our Stuff™, drop off a media CD with the latest build of Beta 2 on it before (attempting) to rush back to Hampton for the Mod-Makers round table. What a disaster that was! And no I don't mean the round-table!

To her credit, Miss Donna is a life saver - at the drop of a hat she managed to locate a taxi for us and it was only going to take 15 minutes! Exactly enough time for RR2DO2, Fluffy and I to challenge each other to 3 balls each on id Software's pinball machine :)

Now it's true I suck at pinball, but it really seemed like I was doing ok - one of my balls was jumping around the machine for what seemed like hours, and so when, at the end, I was presented with my score, I felt I'd done great!

Things were going even better when already on his third ball, Fluffy had completely failed to beat my score, so imagine the luck he'd need to overtake my ENTIRE score with his final ball? It's unthinkable really, it's the improbability drive itself... Douglas Adams couldn't have predicted a less likely outcome, yet would you believe it the git not only overtook me, he hammered my score! Pounded it! Bastard! With one ball! Grrr.

So along comes RR2DO2... no confidence, not a great pin ball fan, not really played pin ball much at all as it happens and he flunks both his first two balls too. Not a dicky-bird. Nothing. Neegit (I just invented that word too, to represent something very small, in this case RR2DO2's score as of his 2nd ball). Zilch. And what does he do? Annihilate Fluffy's score with his third ball!.

I give up. Where's my taxi?!?!

We arrived back at the Hampton 30 minutes later, a strange journey with a taxi driver that managed to get lost, between two exits of the same freeway, and I'm not joking either! We did get a great tour of Mesquite's residential areas (which we'd never seen before) so in that sense it was an experience.

Sadly though we must have looked like 'Neegits' when we arrived at the Mod Makers round-table, almost exactly 5 minutes before the end. Luckily for us Sal from GameSpy could tell that there was more ground to be covered and arranged a second round table for the following day.

As the same room was being used for id Software's press conference we were all asked to leave while they setup for the event, so we did the clever thing and left last, thereby seeding ourselves at the front of the queue! How clever is that? I might suck at pinball, but I rock at crowd avoidance :)

Queuing in almost exactly the same place as we had for the Jedi Knight II, we bumped in to AnimeMan from Spam Inc. It's always nice to put a face to a name. The shame perhaps of the entire event was that Lavagod wasn't able to make it down. Meeting AnimeMan made me think of Lavagod and PlanetQ3F and especially of what a shame it was that a second year had passed without us meeting him. Oh well maybe next year.

Id's press conference kicked off with a suitable 'woop!' inspiring video showing the progression through their various engines - anyone present who like me has been playing their games since Wolfenstein will I'm sure have felt the same neck-tingling sensations that I did. Especially if like me you've been as involved in the competitive clan scene and all it entails.

The major news of course was that Quake 4 was to be developed by Raven Software. This is of course a natural choice for id, though the same half of me that would congratulate Raven for the soulful production that is Jedi Knight II, feels a little worried about the potential loss of soul Quake could see if it becomes 'another' licence. No actually that's complete toss. There's no way on earth id would let any harm come to their Quake brand, so what the hell am I worried about. Hell it's just a computer game right? My neck's tingling again.

One point made by Carmack reinforced my view that I have all the best ideas, and then somehow telepathically pass them out to other people who publicise them themselves (hehehe). For what could possibly be the hundredth time this year, I've heard almost exactly one of my own ideas or opinions represented by someone I have no connection with whatsoever! In this case a few months ago I ranted at RR2DO2 and Fluffy (as I often do in the early hours) about the real-time 3D engine being a fraction of an infinite reality, and that the real measurement by which it should be seen was that of it's closeness to render-ware used in movies. I topped all this with an exposition on my feelings relating to the closeness of the movie industry with real-time 3D gaming, and that while huge synergy existed between the two industries, it was clearly (perhaps sadly) purely a one-directional valve because while games will get more compelling plots and more renderlike graphics, movies will NOT get more interactive. Arguably the only genre of movie that's worthy of interaction in any sense, such as multiple viewing angles, is not the kind of movie genre we here are concerned about :)

So what of this anyway? It means there's a whole-load of potential games company recruits in the movie industry. And guess what I'm told next? Fred Nielson (of Shrek fame) was just hired by id. Fast forward a couple of months and I hear John Carmack talking about each step in development being a greater fraction of an infinite reality. I give up :)

No I take that back. I'm going to start a games development company.

That aside, and take my word for this... The leading edge of computer gaming - by that I mean the real-time 3D (first person and third person) world of gaming is on a collision course with the action movie industry. It makes perfect sense to share development talent (especially artistically) and shared performing arts talent too. Co-branding, co-marketing and what does a game really cost a film studio if it's developed in-step with the movie? 1% of their overall budget? 0.5%? You can see what I'm getting at. I wish I could say I was famous for my disinterest in business like John Carmack but it wouldn't be true. The games industry is fascinating - not just the business but also the people, the games, the politics and the lifestyle.

Man I waffle sometimes :)

5pm and our courageous Apple tournament team were set for the semi-finals! We KNEW our team was going to win - there was no doubt in our minds at all. Maybe it was just the way RR2DO2 was standing but something about the way he held his frame spelt confidence, confidence with a capital C!

RR2DO2 and Vorrik compete in the Apple tournament under the supervision of a fellow Brit. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!

5 - 0. 5 feckin 0. 5 oh my god 0.! How could they lose by 5 - 0! Unbelievable! Less probable than a 6th Hitch Hikers book! I can't believe our team sucked so badly. I could almost feel the blood draining from my body as I realised that our chance of victory had gone. Deeply, deeply, affected. Worse still I was away having a coffee while they were playing, so missed the entire defeat. Muwahhaha! Losers! Hehehe :)

At 6pm we were due at id's office for a quick tour. BirdDawg, Vorrik and Shuriken had missed out on our visit earlier, so we all headed over to their grand office building.

Sadly we'd arrived too late, but Graeme Devine was just leaving as we arrived and invited us to Friday's for a beer! Naturally we accepted the invitation, and before we knew it we were sinking Guinness and eating fire-bites. Timothy (known online as TTimo - id's Radiant coder) came along too and RR2DO2 was able to glean a little extra information on MD4 from Graeme before he headed home. Most of id had family down during QuakeCon so getting any of them alone for more than a few minutes was pretty tough - we were glad of the 30 we had with Graeme though - especially as it's lead to some progress on the MD4 animation front.

Funnily enough when we'd met Graeme earlier, he'd been clutching a Tesco's carrier bag full of Guiness and a bunch of flowers. Weird combination you're thinking I'm sure, except that I'd smuggled the Guiness in to the country in RR2DO2's suitcase as a present for a fellow Brit (Graeme's Scottish for those of you that don't already know), and sent the flowers to Miss Donna (id Mom) to say thanks for her help - weird how things turn out :). THE POWER OF LOCKI RUNS DEEP IT DOES!

Speaking of Jedi, and sidetracking as I do, there was recently a national census in the UK upon which you could, if feeling rebellious, state Jedi as your religion. Had 10,000 people done that it would have become an official religion of the United Kingdom! How cool is that! Next time they do a census (and if you're British) don't forget to use the force!

T minus 18 hours until our Q3F presentation and we still weren't completely sure how to handle it. We'd spent some time at Friday's putting together an agenda, which Shuriken had kindly noted down on his PDA, so we headed back to the hotel to start organising all the components we'd need if we were to make it stand out.

My Jedi skills are used to create a panoramic shot of amazing Mesquite vista. Only a Jedi can get this close to nature!

We knew we wanted to show off Beta 2 and that was problem number 1 - the latest build only existed on my Laptop and even though BirdDawg had brought his entire PC with him, meditation alone was never going to shift 400mb of data between the two machines. Not having a network cable with us was a major mistake in our planning :)

RR2DO2 and BirdDawg try to ignore the camera

Now we knew Shuriken was well connected, but we really had no idea quite HOW connected he was, until that is, a guy called Nas hand delivered us a hub and network cables at 11pm at night! What a decent guy! Nas that is... Shuriken just made a phone call :). Ok, ok - Shuriken deserves the credit too :)

RR2DO2 and BirdDawg work hard on content for Saturday's up and coming presentation

But more importantly we were rolling! Now all we had to worry about was that we'd had our presentation double booked alongside Urban Terror. Aside from the fact that we wanted to attend their seminar, we knew we probably shared a similar audience. Visions of 1 lost old lady and a blind dog being our only audience if we didn't change schedule were looming large!

The group shot (the money shot!)

Oh well, we'd have to wait till tomorrow and see.