The World Tour stop in Sweden is well under way with most of the field now eliminated. fnatic.Vo0 and Fatal1ty remain the only individuals in the Winners bracket while fnatic.Ztrider, 4K^Zaccubus, fnatic.gellehsak, check6\lexer, SK|zyz and stermy remain in the lower brackets.

Its anyones tournament but the sensible money has to be on yet another Fata / Vo0 final. Who will it be?!? Catch the excellent coverage (as always) from TSN via TVSN HERE. Brackets for all the matches HERE and HERE. GL to All remaining!

Spotted on Blues News. It seems that Dreamcatcher may be facing some trouble financially and is also now going to be embroiled in a dispute with 3000AD (Read more HERE). This is the first we have seen/heard of DreamCatchers financial situation and certainly asks questions as to whether we shall ever see PKTV. I personally hope the situation is better for DreamCatcher than Mr Smart alledges and that PKTV does make it out sometime soon for the rest of the CPL WT. Time will tell…

The sign ups have now closed for the first season of the PKEURO 2v2 League. 17 teams came forward which unfortunately means only 2 divisions were filled with 5 waiting teams. I have exercised my excel skills and whipped up a page with the teams per division, results per week and each divisions respective table. We have a nicer system in progress and hopefully will move to this in the future. But for now, this will work 🙂

You can find the page HERE. The rule set can be found in our forums HERE. Any comments are appreciated. We now need a few admins to help watch over the games and as we only have 2 divisions, this will only take up 2 hours of anyones time maximum. If you would like to help, get hold of me in IRC on our channel #painkiller.euro on quakenet and let me know.

We look forward to some good, fun games next week. See you all then!

PKEURO needs some new logos for advertising on other sites. If anyone out there can create some relatively high standard work in the standard banner sizes including 140×60, we’d be very grateful 🙂

email any banners you create for us to w4rh0g@d3euro.com. We’ll be sure to post the banners here with kudos to the authors for all to see.

Thanks in advance!

A second new map from K3rn! has been released that harks back to the good old quake3 days where FFAs were a plenty on DM17. Anyone from this genre of play will remember the open, outer space setting of DM17, and the huge satisfaction of railing the crap out of your opponents from the other side of the map.

DM_K3Inzane has this feel to it with no walls seperating you from your opponent, and plenty of holes to plummet to your death through. A small selection of weapons, armour and ammo is available, along with the obligatory jump pad to fire you into the air ready for my stake hehehe….

Lots of fun with PK++ bots although they seem to enjoy leaping into the void at the moment as the waypoint files are not available for the map as yet. All in all, well worth a download. You can grab the map HERE, and below are a few pictures to wet your appetite. Let us know what you think in the comments.

Just a quick update on where we are with respect to sign ups for the 2v2 league. 7 teams have signed up thus far. These are:

**updated**

D&M – Akiles / SombrA
S² – SaxonBeast / ScOoBzOr / eSrem
First-Gaming – Clains / Xhep
VGA – ChOu / BiChO
unlucky – flo / nOs
xplosionZ – God of Shaolin / TelekilleR / iNzaNe
GNFOS – [VIP]Radical / team9|tRONic / ([VIP]dREk)
kaszanka squad – Stork / Hitman
2ofakind – u4ea / koshiko
myhavoC.pk – myhavoC|aLx / myhavoC|clarkY / myhavoC|Ju7i
noobs.at – Orion / Smubob / mETa
Team Matrix – TM|Crazy / TM|Rospo
Kippari Kallet – eizid / beam / kahoona

5 spots left open…

If you think you can defeat any (or all?) of the teams above, and fancy some organised 2v2 competition on a Wednesday evening, read the news post below and drop me a mail. I foresee the league kicking off in a week or two.

Thats right, PKEURO is happy to open up the sign ups for our 2v2 league to be ran on a Wednesday evening 7pm to 9pm (start times). DreamCatcher has sponsored the tournament via the usage of its official servers hosted by Jolt. Many thanks to them!

The league is set to be 3 divisions of 6 teams to begin with. A forum post is open HERE to discuss the rule set and we would appreciate any opinions/thoughts you have.

I will be gathering the names of the teams signing up offline and will start to assemble the tables ready to post in a week or so. You can sign your team up by emailing me HERE. Note, teams must be a minimum of 3 players with one designated captain. Whomever emails me the names of the team is deemed captain and will be the contact henceforth.

I’ll keep you posted on how many teams we have signed up as time goes by. We are also requesting support from the players via admins. As 3 servers will be used, each for 3 hours, we will need some support in admining the games. If you are interested, also please email me.

Any company wishing to sponsor the league with prizes can do so by getting in touch with me via the email link above. At this time, no prizes are available for the winners except prestige 🙂

SK|Stelam has just defeated Fnatic`Vo0 in the Grand Final of CPL Spain Painkiller. In one of the best matches ever seen, the lead went back and forth with tremendous comebacks from both players during the course of the 5 map match (Vo0 winning the first match 2 (Absinthe/DM_Meatless) – 1 (Sacred), and losing 2 (Sacred/Meatless) – 0 in the second). (Sacred 22-14; Meatless 19:25; Absinthe 21-25)(Sacred 15-14; Meatless 21-16)

Congratulations to both players for a fantastic match. TVSN was provided by TSN during the event and they overcame some bandwidth and technical issues to once again save the day coverage wise. Shout outs to those guys.

With CPL Brazil only 26 days away, Will we see yet a new champion emerge from the plethora of good players out there? Time will tell!

*UPDATE*
vo0, stermy, zyz and fatal1ty have qualified for the wt grand final based off of CPL Turkey.
stelam, ztrider, lexer and forrest have qualified for the wt grand final based off of CPL Spain.

Mortal has been busy and has created a new waypoint file for the PK++ bots, this time for DM_Absinthe. Mortal tells me that his motivation for this map was to get the bot to hop to the shotgun pillar and get the Gold Armour. Why don’t you try it out and see if he succeeded 🙂

Thanks again to Mortal for his efforts. I’m sure we all appreciate it. You can grab the file HERE. Don’t forget to grab Mortals DM_Sacred waypoint file HERE also.

In order to help keep PKEURO updated with the latest and greatest Painkiller news out there, we’ve decided to open up the posting of Front page news to all members. To submit a news posting, simply login and click the add/edit News link on the right hand side bar.

We open access to the front page with certain constraints in that if we feel a news post is either irrelevant, abusive, or simply “not really that important to the community”, we reserve the right to delete or move the news post to the Minor news section on the right hand side bar.

PKEURO appreciates any news posted by our members and will try its best to make fair decisions on this subject. We look forward to your first (and hopefully many) news posts 🙂

Note, this does not mean we will be not updating the news ourselves anymore. Just that we feel it’s time to open the front page to more writers.

Mortal has kindly emailed pkeuro with a new waypoint file for PK++ bots for the DM_Sacred map. As you may be aware, along with PK++ came a new bot system allowing offline play vs computer controlled players. This system requires the use of waypoint files to lead the bot around the map. The PK++ team have not had the time to optimise the waypoint files for many of the maps we all love to play and appreciate any help provided by the public.

You can download the file (rard) provided by Mortal HERE. Let us know in the comments if you think this is an improvement on the current setup for DM_sacred.

Again, lots of thanks to Mortal for his efforts.

After announcing in the IRC channel a little while back that I was thinking of running a 2v2 league, we now have DCs support in terms of servers which means we can kick things off a little more. I’ve posted some musings on our forums HERE. Feel free to add your thoughts. I foresee sign ups kicking off in a few weeks time (once the dust has settled on CPL Spain), with the league starting shortly afterwards.

In order to gauge interest, please reply here if you have a 2v2 team interested in participating. Bear in mind this isnt a sign up 😉

I’ll check out the servers (Jolt) once they roll to PK++, and trial them once ready for use. Only then will I open up sign ups.

Courtesy of Tectonic in Minor News:

Days after the announcement of meatless being added to the CPL World Tour maplist, we bring you the final release of DM_1v1_meatless! For those of you who never looked at the map in its beta stages, here are some screenshots of the final product and a list some of the map’s features:

-Thoroughly tested and largely approved 1 versus 1 gameplay
-Amazingly fun for 2 versus 2 gameplay as well
-Varying artistic theme which allows spectators and players to easily distinguish between different areas on the map
-Fast-paced gameplay which still manages to make for close, intense matches
-Allows for effective utilization of both firing modes on every original Painkiller weapon
-Enough space to show off your movement during fights without degrading the importance of aim
-Unique double-jumppad setup in the Silver Armor/Mega Health room allowing for varying combinations and ways to trick your opponent
-The only custom map thus far to utilize the original Painkiller teleport effect
-Fun for all skill levels

Changelog:
Version: 1.0 (4/12/2005)

Updates:

-Lightmaps added to the entire map
-Changed and tweaked some textures
-Added real-time lighting for pickup items and first-person gun models
-Fixed sticky wall bugs
-Fixed exploitable geometry
-Added original Painkiller teleport shader
-Added other visual effects

pha3z and I hope you enjoy the map! We look forward to seeing it played in the World Tour! Our thanks to everyone who helped provide suggestions, supplied bug reports, and helped further the map in the community!

Download the map on steamfish or from:

http://tectonic.wgohosting.com/downloads/DM_1v1_meatless.zip

If you catch this news early enough, you won’t be able to update via steamfish. Blowfish still has to update steamfish to recognize the new release.

*UPDATE* He has now. 🙂

v1.0 of PK++ is now available for download via your friendly SteamFish Updater tool. If you dont have a previous version of PK++, download Steamfish installer first and run it.

Version 1.0 has only the following change:

CHANGE: Minor alteration to rocketfix based on mass public testing. Tweaking now locked.

Hopefully this locking of the rocketfix variables will allow a standard to be set for all play in the future.

If you have questions/suggestions, contact us at mods@pkeuro.com.. Also take note of a very handy shell script created by i365-klaude for updating Linux servers with PK++. You can find the thread where Klaude releases the shell HERE, and the actual shell for download HERE.

*UPDATE*

ADD: \MOTD – sets the server MOTD from the console (intended for use with rcon)
ADD: \PitabotEnabled [1/0] | Cfg.PitabotEnabled – sets pitabot server component active/inactive.

Doing some browsing, I came across an interview today between Sujoy Roy and Hexus.net. For those old skool players out there that remember the classic Quakeworld battles between the US and EU, I’m sure you’ll remeber ole Sujoy. Check it out HERE.

N: Why is it that some games go on to the pro gaming “scene” despite being naff? (Painkiller being an example)
S: It’s all about money at the end of the day. Who’s got the money? The publishers have… they’re the ones who can invest in the gaming market as that’s what they do. It’s down to them which games will be played in tournaments as they’ll pay for the prizes to be won playing their game. Painkiller is CPL’s game of choice as CPL wanted an exclusive license, so Painkiller is what they got. DreamCatcher are willing to put money behind it and push it as the CPL official game, which in turn makes people buy it to then be able to compete… That’s how it’s going to be in the future. The hardware sponsors will provide the kit to play on, but the actual prize money is going to come more and more from publishers. Look at how huge EA are, they can afford to spend money purely on prize pots for competitions.

Dreamcatcher have released the v1.64 patch for painkiller today. The patch is pretty much the same as the v1.63 patch and has the following readme:

MULTIPLAYER:
– FIX: Freezer bug
– FIX: Dead bodies bug
– FIX: Gold Armor bug

SINGLEPLAYER:
– FIX: If a certain path is taken you cant proceed (Docks) is fixed.

DEMO RECORDING:
– FIX: Items now disappear correctly.
– FIX: Demon morph mode is recorded in demos.
– FIX: Sometimes demos were playing with incorrect speed.

NOTE: Version 1.64 can be installed only on PK ver 1.62 or 1.63.

We had expected v1.64 to be a standalone install to support installs from v1.0. The release of this ~6MB patch is a little puzzling as no changes above and beyond 1.63 are obvious. The official servers in the US are rolling to 1.64 shortly (if not already) and we expect the European servers to follow suit soon. At this time, we do not believe PK++ will work with v1.64 but will look to remedy this in the near future.

*EDIT* PK++ now supports 1.64, current version is 0.9.1.64. Run Steamfish in the usual way to update. Standalone installer will follow shortly.

Grab the files here:

3DGAMERS: PATCH WINSERVER LINUXSERVER

WORTHPLAYING: PATCH WINSERVER LINUXSERVER

FILESHACK: PATCH WINSERVER LINUXSERVER

Vo0 has come through the field to win yet again! In a nail biting final, SK|Zyz defeated Vo0 in the first match to bring it head to head for the title. The second match then swung in Vo0s favour and he clinched the title in two straight maps. The final Standings look as such:

1st fnatic.Vo0 ($15k)
2nd SK|Zyz ($10k)
3rd Stermy ($7K)
4th Fatal1ty ($5K)
5th fnatic.gellehsak ($3.5K)
6th x6.Lexer ($2.5K)
7th SK|Stelam ($1.75K)
8th Daler ($1.25K)

Looking through the predictions made by you all, only Anon from Germany got the top three guys (but in the wrong order). A few of you predicted Vo0 1st and Zyz 2nd but missed Stermy out for 3rd. …and I thought you were all experts 😉

Congrats to the top 6 who all recieve free trips to the next World Tour stop along with oodles of cash. Apologies for our very limited coverage but Easter weekend is never best for getting reporters at their keyboards. Well try better next time! 🙂

DreamCatcher have released a new patch for Painkiller today bringing the version upto 1.63. The patch includes the following changes:

– New version of the Linux server to fix custom maps/finding and manualIP issues with certain Linux versions
– Freezer re-work
– Gold Armor visibility issues
– dead-bodies bug

As we do not have the official readme for the patch, this information comes from a post made on an earlier news item by [DC]Robert Stevenson.

You can download the patch from:

FileShack PATCH Linux Server
Fragland PATCH

**Update**

TSNCENTRAL have the list of seedings up now. You can find these HERE. Still no news on matches.

*****

Thats right.. The long awaited first world tour stop has finally arrived. Players vying for the first $50,000 competition have been arriving all week into Istanbul, all hoping to kick Vo0 from his number 1 perch and get their hands on the $15,000 first prize.

The player list is rather long, but some of the more well known names include:

Daler
fnatic.gellehsak
fnatic.Vo0
Stermy
SK|Stelam
SK|Zyz
D.Dragon
Fatal1ty
riZe`Aim
serious|Zhrance
x6.Deatz.de
Zen

There are many other excellent players in the roster, and anyone could take it if they have been practising hard enough. Of course, Vo0 will be the favourite at this time, with a pretty much undefeated record across every tournament he has played. Some of the others have come mighty close however and perhaps this time, well see an upset. Cmon the underdogs!!

We asked some of the players who join us in our channel (#painkiller.euro @ quakenet) to give us their predictions for the first 3. Heres a few of those:

d`Odee – 1. Stermy 2. Fatal1ty 3. Vo0
Cubik – 1. Stermy 2. Vo0 3. Fatal1ty
Dom1n – 1. Stermy 2. Vo0 3. Fatal1ty

Think you know better? Put your top 3 in the comments and lets see who gets it right 🙂

Good luck to all who attend! Well try to keep some kind of update going but as its Easter, a number of our reporters are away. Hopefully Aphextwin who is attending the event can keep us all posted here on pkeuro while performing his other numerous endevours. (thanks Aphex!)

Spotted first by CP84 and posted in our minor news section HERE (open to all members), The CPL and TSN have joined forces once again to create a new Painkiller World Tour website. The website is set to be crammed with journals and information from each of the stops and should provide a great resource for all those interested in following this years competition.

Along with blogs from various members of the community, TSN will be posting schedules for transmissions direct from the events, along with hopefully recordings for those of us not willing or able to stay up all night to tune in.

The website can be found HERE.