i was going to do a big update on how i got playing quake online like saik and rapier and jay... but i remembered everything. every single detail, so my column was going to be 20 pages long. i remember all the regulars from quake3-1.ign.ie and the models they used, everyone who played for the other team in my first league games, and what their positions were, etc. so i won't write any of it since it will probably crash the quake.ie database.

lately though there has been other stuff worthy of an update. its been awhile since i wrote about how gay isdn is... just because i'm not moaning, that does not mean the problem no longer exists. but in the past i have always been able to return to the irish server for a relatively lag free 1v1 or 2v2. now the irish server is shite.

playing pracs with team.ie, we've been on some very bad servers. the irish isdners would be hitting 300 ping or whatever, but occasionally anarchy's conn would just get completely flooded. he'd be 999 for awhile and it would take a good 10 seconds+ to settle down. i had never seen it happen before, but now its happening to me also, on vishnu. its bad enough having to cap my fps at 76 because q3 is gay, but now, even with 76 fps i'm lagging out completely everytime i go to quad or when someone fires plasma. even if someone spams binds a lot and my connect is frozen for 15-20 seconds. i think you can tell how bad a server is going to be for isdners by noting the rise in ping when someone joins a team. bw servers do not look good this season.

i was playing on an american server, com_maxfps 76 gave me a good solid connect in a 1v1 (ping 200, but very solid netgraph). com_maxfps 125, same thing - no problem. when i raised fps, com_maxfps 150 or whatever the next value is, the netgraph changed a bit, tiny bumps on it, but no real problem. com_maxfps 200 gave me tiny connection interrupted spikes, about 4 per second. com_maxfps 333 and i couldn't do anything, just one long lag spike (even though i was moving around the map because my location on the team overlay was changing). this is something i have noticed many times in q3 1.32, playing on american, eastern european, and scandanavian servers, but i had never encountered this problem before 1.32.

as soon as team.ie stuff is over i'm going to start playing qw more. theres a good crowd of irish people playing now, and thanks to the phishynetters there are enough players around my level that i can have a good game and not be utterly raped like it always has been when i went to play qw (would always end up just duelling sam on dm4).

i will keep playing q3 ctf though, despite the frustration with the connects. at least i get the satisfaction of seeing an all broadband team playing for team.ie. i hate when people assume that our team is shite just because they don't know any of the players on it. if we can get some results in cbnations, hopefully people will realise that there is a q3 scene in ireland, but we are isolated from european q3 by our connects. i know we have the players to be a real competitor both nations cups, the main problem is that we have no means of training. 6 days a week, almost all of us are on unplayable isdn. theres almost no point in playing since it means we'll have to adjust our style completely to suit our connects, and then if we do get some broadband for the official games, we're effectively starting over.

collie moved to australia like 8 months ago. i was sure that by the time he'd be back we would all be on esat dsl. but i was just talking to him there... and almost nothing has changed since he left. fh have given up league tdm completely since (because its just so pointless) but we're still running a treadmill in ctf. he'll be home in 6 months probably, if none of us have broadband by then i'll probably give up completely.