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        <h1><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b><i><a href="../../index.html">loonygames</a><br>
          <font size="1">a <a href="http://www.bluesnews.com">blue's news</a> 
          publication</font></i></b></font></h1>
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<p>&nbsp;</p>Vol. 
                2, Issue 2<br>
                November 15, 1999<br>
                </b>
              <b> 
                </b>
               
                <b><i>End 

                  of the Line</i></b></p>
                A report 
                  by Russell &quot;RadPipe&quot; 
                  Lauzon</p>
              
              

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               <i>R</i>adPipe 
                has a vision. It's the id Software annual marketing meeting, where 
                all ideas for the coming year are discussed and hashed around. 
                There's a big table. There's lots of chairs. The owners of the 
                company are there, as well as the biz and marketing people. Perhaps 
                they're having danishes and coffee. Perhaps not. Anna Kang is 
                talking.</p>
            
             
              &lt;Anna&gt; 
                It'll be great! We'll buy a big bus, design it up all cool like 
                with big <b>Quake III </b>logos everywhere, we'll put really fast 
                computers on it, network them up, and drive the thing from city 
                to city and let people try the game. It'll be a big roving lan 
                party! It'll be great! Why is everyone looking at me so strangely?
            
             
              I haven't 
                a clue who was the first to propose the idea of the<b> Quake III: 
                Arena</b> bus, but Anna sure deserves credit for making it happen. 
                And seriously, I bet whoever came up with the original idea got 
                some strange looks before the dream was finally realized. (Personally, 
                I like to think it was my Road To QuakeCon series on QuakeCon.org 
                that brought it about, but I'm told differently. But that would 
                have been cool.)</p>
              I had 
                the wonderful privilege of doing interviews for the Quake 
                III Arena site. Which was rather odd, because I never got 
                on the bus until the final stop, in LA at Activision HQ. It was 
                there that I finally played on those very cool Athlon machines 
                with the flat screen monitors, and I kicked me some Activision 
                employee butt. Ok, some of them had never played before, and they 
                were having problems getting the controls just right, and I kept 
                kicking people behind me, and most of them had never played any 
                sort of FPS game before, but I still won myself a glorious battle 
                and smack-talked them into oblivion. When in Rome, do as the Romans, 
                right? Of course we were nowhere near Rome.</p>
              At least 
                half the id Software folk were on hand and we retreated to a secret 
                Activision room where more machines were setup and a special build 
                of <b>Q3A</b> was loaded and raring to go. So what did I do? I 
                sat down at one of the machines and we played on q3test2, The 
                Longest Yard. Not the brightest thing considering we had new levels 
                to play with, but I wasn't about to stand up and suggest we do 
                something else in a roomful of id and Activision people. Someone 
                else soon stood up and suggested we play a different level and 
                everyone applauded and commended his initiative. I was tempted 
                to throw something, but I didn't. (And by the way, it was Christian 
                &quot;Disruptor&quot; Antkow of id.)</p>
              We dropped 
                into one of Disruptor's maps and he proceeded to mop the floor 
                with us. I got my first look at both the Klesk and Orbb models. 
                I got fragged a few times trying to check them out, especially 
                when I was laughing my ass off at the &quot;testicle on arms&quot; 
                model (as described on Blue's msgboard one day). Don't get me 
                wrong, it's definitely a cool model once you get used to the obvious 
                strangeness of it. Paul Steed did an excellent job animating it, 
                which leaves me to wonder who at id he used for the motion-capture 
                filming. I can see it now&#133;</p>
            
             
              &lt;Paul&gt; 
                Hey Tim, can you walk on your hands? Great, now can you do it 
                holding this basketball between your legs?
            
            
              No, that's 
                not a quote. That's my cracked mind creating reality out of fiction. 
                Cool huh. </p>
              <br><br>
              
              Back to 
                Activision. Dinner was held at the swanky DC3 restaurant which 
                was steps away the office. The buffet was a passing memory because 
                I was anxious to start gambling. Yep, that's right. They had one 
                of those kooky fake-money casinos going and we each got $300 to 
                blow. Well, I sidled up to a blackjack table and went through 
                my money pretty quick. Ah but, &quot;it's just fake money!&quot; 
                I kept screaming to myself. </p>
              Some funky 
                DJ appeared and the dance floor lit up like a Turkish bazarre. 
                I hit the floor with Anna Kang, Lowtax (formerly of PQ), David 
                (id Software's tourmeister), and a couple other hip Activision 
                people. Lowtax and I showed `em what dancing is all about. We 
                were up, we were down, we were all over that grooving scene in 
                what was either the most fantastic demonstration of hip hop ever, 
                or the most embarrassing display of two grown men trying to look 
                cool. But Anna kept laughing so I think we were doing okay. </p>
              Here's 
                a funny tale. I asked one of the waitresses if she would be dancing, 
                and when she responded that she had to work otherwise &quot;would 
                love to!&quot;, I grabbed her tray, shouted, &quot;Ok go!&quot; 
                and proceeded to race around the tables collecting empty bottles 
                and glasses. Well she almost screamed but chased me for a good 
                2 minutes before she caught me and her tray (I was going pretty 
                fast). But now she knows. Never bluff the Radmeister.</p>
              Somewhere 
                I dug up another $300 (now THAT doesn't happen everyday does it) 
                so I hit the blackjack tables again. With only minutes to spare, 
                I decided to see how quickly I could lose the money. I kept dropping 
                $100 chips on other folks' bets, including loonyboi, Blue, Sharky, 
                and a few others, but danged if I just could not lose everything. 
                </p>
              At the 
                end we got tickets based on how much money we had won, and there 
                was this big prize giveaway, but for some reason I can't remember 
                much of it. I talked to Todd Hollenshead for a bit and then Christian, 
                and things were pretty much coming to a close. The rest of the 
                night was pretty hazy, but I do remember walking for miles and 
                miles down Sunset Blvd at 2:00am in the morning. What a great 
                town LA is.</p>
              Saturday 
                morning was kind of neat. I managed to make it back to my hotel 
                just as David was getting up, and we jumped on the bus and drove 
                it back to Activision. There I had the distinguished honor of 
                helping to pull the guts out of the bus. We pulled out the machines, 
                the nifty Q3 eye-pleasers, all the black padded foaming, and quite 
                a bit of the wooden frame holding most of the innards together. 
                It was fun but kind of sad. I think it was worse for David though, 
                because he had ridden the thing since launch, a couple of months 
                earlier.</p>
              I managed 
                to grab a couple of hours of sleep and then hit the town with 
                two wonderful folk. Paul, the Office Manager from Activision and 
                his friend, shoot can't remember her name, took me through LA 
                and we had a wonderful day together seeing the sites. I got to 
                walk the Promenade, the Santa Monica peer, and even dunked my 
                head in the ocean. Kind of a geeky touristy thing to do, but hey, 
                I'm a computer nerd. What do you expect?</p>
              That was 
                pretty much the end of my stay in LA, but I can't end this without 
                sending a huge thank-you over to Anna Kang of id, who asked me 
                to be apart of it. Um, so, thanks Anna. Was fun.</p>
              <i>- 
                Russell &quot;RadPipe&quot; Lauzon is some guy who just walked 
                into the loonygames office and started calling himself Features 
                Editor. The position wasn't filled so we kept him.</i></p>
            
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<p><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-2">Credits: Print CGI is 
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