VoodooExtreme is reporting that someone by the name of "Q]Strider" has released a utility that converts Quake 3 v1.17 demos to v1.27g demos. As youmight remember, the new version of Q3A doesn't include the two key 'demos' (recorded games) used so commonly in benchmarks of this game, and it is alsoincompatible with any demos from preious versions. This utility is only for the PC, but VoodooExtreme has done the work for us by converting the classic demo001 and demo002 tyo 1.27g compatibility and making them available for download.

To use the converted demos, download the .zip file linked below and uncompress it. Place the "UCGuide117.pk3" file into the "baseq3" folder in your Quake 3 directory. Next, fire up Quake 3 and bring down the console with the tilde key and type "timedemo 1," then hit return, then type "demo 117demo001," which should run the timedemo. Wash, rinse and repeat for demo002.

We took the liberty to run our own comparative tests at the default Normal and High Quality settings. To make things interesting we also benchmarked with the sound off, using the "+set s_initsound 0" command. The test machine was configued as follows:

Power Macintosh G4/450 PCI

Voodoo5 5500 PCI in 66 MHz PCI slot

MacVoodoo 1.1.3b Drivers

256 MB RAM (default amount allocated to Quake 3)

MacOS 9.1, VM Off

Quake 3: Arena Demo001

	Normal	High Quality	Normal (Sound Off)	HQ (Sound Off)
v1.17	41.9	41.6	51.8	50.7
v1.27g Beta	38.1	37.8	52.9	51.1

Each result was obtained by running the demo three times and averaging the scores. Prior to each demo run, the machine was rebooted and the "q3config.cfg" file was deleted.

As you can see, the timedemo scores in v1.27g were actually slower than in v1.17, even though many people reported that actual gameplay was smoother and more fluid. With the sound disabled, v1.27 scores slightly higher than v1.17. This leads us to believe that non-sound performance enhancements were made. Keep in mind that this is a debug version, and Graeme Devine has promised a final version with AltiVec optimizations.

Download the converted Quake 3 demos and feel free to post your results in the IMG Forums.

IMG Hardware Forums

Download Quake 3 1.27g Demos (178 K)

Quake 3 Demo Converter at VoodooExtreme

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