After Friday night, we honestly didn’t expect that we’d have any other experiences of note. That was until we met Robert Duffy in the Exhibition Hall and he suggested we come out with them on Saturday evening as well! I decided at this point that there was absolutely NO WAY Graeme Devine would catch me off-guard with the offer of a ‘Royal Fuck’ cocktail again :)

The first seminar of the day we attended was a talk by Jake Simpson from Raven Software all about their progress with the new Quake 3 engine-based Star Trek Voyager title. Wils took notes thoughout all the seminars we attended, so if they havn’t already been written up on the official QuakeCon 2000 site, we’ll do our best to post them here shortly.

We then attended a Mod Team Discussion, which took a little while to get started, as being a rountable, it had no actual host! Luckily for us Helchick and Sal jumped in to help push things along, and before you knew it, the whole Jailbreak team were waffling like mad. Also in attendance were Static from WFA and a couple of members from Half-Life mod teams. The whole thing went down fairly well, and ended with surprise for most people as a guy sitting somewhere at the back, who’d been very chatty throughout turned out to be none other than John Carmack!

I still can’t believe I talked over him several times :) That said, his grasp of the mod community was excellent, and I must say I agree with his views on the negative aspects of commercial mods. Once everyone had realised who he was, he started to talk less in third person (I’ve no idea if he’d planned on being inconspicuous) and more as a representative from id Software - explaining the plans to ensure that the SDK for Doom 3 is available as soon as the game is. Refreshing news since the delay in mods for Quake 3 is due in my view to the delayed delivery of the SDK.

In the same room, John Carmack then took over to give a Seminar on all things engine based. Centring initially on the pros and cons of console gaming, he then talked for one hour and ten minutes non-stop without a single break, covering ideas that demonstrated and incredible grasp of the games industry and emerging technology - the man is a genius.

The only downside to the whole talk, was Tim from NOW TV telling his camera crew to point their camera at me for what seemed like 30 minutes solid! I had the worst headache in the world, and couldn’t even scratch my nose - now I’m sure "Locki watching John Carmack" might make great television - but I doubt the bit where I fell asleep while massaging my temples hoping to cure my headache is gonna look good on international TV :)

5pm and starving hungry, we grabbed a late lunch at ‘Jack in the Box’; standard Burger fair, though still huge by UK standards - I had ‘fish and chips’, Texas style - an experience I hope to forget as quickly as possible :) That said, American milkshakes are excellent and should be partaken of whenever the opportunity arises.

After a quick walk around the Exhibitors Hall, we jumped in a cab, accompanied by Tim from NOW TV, and headed off for more beer with id Software.

Our fantastic waitress for the night - Gloria

Also there this time were the Urban Terror Team, plus a whole bunch of people I can’t remember, except Hellchick who we’re now sure we’ve all fallen in love with :). At a last count I’d drunk around 12 assorted beers, and though I escaped the ‘Royal Fuck’ cocktail, I ended up being talked in to drinking something called a BFG instead! Though to be honest, Texan beer is a bit weak, and in fact Fluffy had simply given up drinking after about his 5th pint because he wasn’t getting anywhere.

We decided to call the evening "in search of a buzz", which I finally found at around 01:00am with a half pint glass of BFG :) Oswald, publicist for the Urban Terror team was even more drunk though. He’ll tell you in defense that he drank 3 pints before I arrived - don’t believe a word of it! :)

We also met SPOG (one of the best mappers in the world) and TTimo of qeradiant.com at the bar - both top blokeys, who between them probably know more about level design for Quake 3 than er... any other two people who were at the bar that night :) Both have offered to give us some feedback on Level Design in Q3F if they can get the time.

Back at the hotel we decided to rename RR2DO2 to Arnout ‘Sure!’ Van Meer, since he’d so far been keen on just about every suggestion anyone had made. If you ever want an easy date, Arnout’s ya man :)

RR2DO2 burns the midnight oil, working on a B-Spline implementation (whatever the hell that is!)

I crashed out at about 3am, leaving RR2DO2 coding something very complex which I didn’t quite understand.