| Saturday, May 22, 1999 |
Kuin Takes PGL Finals [8:30 pm] - Jack
Thanks Blue. The Professional Gamer's League
page annouced Kuin as the winner of the PGL finals in New York City for the Quake 2
tournament. Here are the finals
brackets.
What a media blitz, huh? All I kept hearing about all weekend was PGL this and PGL that. Man.
That's sarcasm, btw. :)
This Weekend's Discussion [8:30 pm] - Jack
Since Steve's not around to start the discussion of the day, I'll make one up. And
let's make this one last the whole weekend.
This one is a question on the whole fandom and loyalty surrounding 3D accelerators. Personally, I think it's trite. What do you think? Read my post and reply here.
Q3Test Benchmark Analysis [3:25 pm] - Jack
Well, I'm feeling pretty sick and bored today, so I made a weekend present for you all.
It's a nice, pretty, in-depth Quake3 Test Benchmark analysis! Yeppers, I put some of
Hook's data into Excel, spit out charts, and started blabbering about it. I look at
the 32-bit performance penalties, the dlight penalties, and some of the framerate numbers.
I think it's a good read, but I wrote the thing, so what the hell do I know? One thing you can count on is that I know what the hell I'm talking about, being that I've worked at a hardware company :)
Here's a link to the article. Email me and let me know what you think.
GameSpy E3 Awards [3:35 pm] - Jack
Chris B has posted up the awards
that the GameSpy Industries (read: PlanetQuake)
people are giving to various games at E3. Best of show? Nihilistic's Vampire, of course. Best
action/adventure? Why, Ritual's own FAKK2 of course.
Here's a link to their in-depth coverage of Heavy Metal: FAKK2. They really payed close attention during the demo (except for the fact that I was there too... grr :) ). Check it out!
Australian Quake3 Master [3:35 pm] - Jack
Thanks Blue. There is a new Q3Test master
server for Australians. Point the servers (and server browsers) to q3.golsyd.net.au
(203.57.20.3) to get in on the action!
Views [3:35 pm] - Jack
AVault: What specific things will you be re-evaluating for the next-generation engine?
Sweeney: We’re going to be deciding on the things that are critical to our next project. It will certainly be rendering, and we’ll also be doing some more stuff with networking, so we’ll probably replace the renderer and improve the networking code. We want to have interconnected servers and lots of players seamlessly seeing and traveling between servers, so the networking code will probably be about 50 percent redone. Other components, such as the scripting systems, are good as is, so we’ll add a few features, but it will essentially remain intact. Overall, from generation to generation, about 50 percent of the engine will change. It’s such a huge help to have a strong foundation to start from. Unreal was a huge, three-and-a-half year project. At first, it was three of us creating the code and the first levels and animations, then, as we built up to a full team, we started creating more of the game, but it was still a challenge because we were creating the engine at the same time we were building the levels, and each time we added more features to the engine, we would have to redo huge portions of the levels. It was just a huge, iterative process that required a lot more time that we expected. In contrast, Unreal Tournament has been a much better development process.
"Yay, more benchmarks! Wheee!" [5:05 am] Marcus 'Majesty' Yam
Those words straight from Brian Hook's .plan
that Jack mentioned earlier. Stuff about "performance penalty for 16-bit vs. 32-bit
for each accelerator" and "whether hardware is being saturated, and by
inference, whether a driver could use more optimization" BTW, I saw the G400MAX in
action at E3, and I was impressed. We'll see more when Matrox gets around to sending one
to me eh? First, check out the
stuff on the benchmark page -- it makes this oh-so-easier to understand. Here's the
gist of it:
[update - Jack]
More snipped, as I've posted a more in-depth analysis...
<SNIP>
We also have some new additions, including a Riva128ZX, Savage4, V3 2K, and a Matrox G400 MAX. We didn't test the ZX or V3 2K on the PIII/500 due to time constraints.
<SNIP>
If dlights are disabled, then the V3 actually pulls ahead of the Savage4, likely due to faster texture upload performance on the V3 and its drivers.
Performance Gain from Celeron 400 to PIII 500
---------------------------------------------
<SNIP>
Note that these are tested at 640x480x16bpp, since this mode emphasizes
throughput.
RivaTNT2 +33.3%
G400 MAX +32.7%
RivaTNT +31.6%
Voodoo2 +30.3%
Rage128 +16.4%
Voodoo3 3K +9.8%
S3 Savage4 +8.6%
Voodoo Banshee +6.8%
G200 +6.0%
V2200 +5.3%
RagePro +2.6%
S3 Savage3D +2.3%
Intel i740 +2.0%
<SNIP>
For those who love it as much as I do, grab the rest.
SMP in Q3A, ok? [4:55 am] Marcus 'Majesty' Yam
John Carmack updated
that ole .plan about having implemented SMP for dual CPUs, the old plan for SMP, the
current SMP, and the way Q3A is being programmed. Pretty straight forward read...but
seeing as the sun is rising and I'm almost falling off the chair, I'm going to pass off
(and out) the translations to Jack...if he feels like it.
[update - 3:10pm - Jack]
Man, Maj needs to learn the art of brevity. Instead of posting the whole damned .plan update, I'll do a short(er) translation:
Multiprocessor works now in Quake3, the work for it sped up non-multiprocessor a bit too. For average use, the speedup is about 30-40%, for situations with lots of dlights and complex scenes, the improvement can be up to 90%. This only takes advantage of 2 processors, so more processors won't get you much.
The difference between the method used now and before is that this one sits farther up the pipeline. It also greatly reduces the amount of data copied (memory bandwidth requirement).
John then explains why Quake3 wasn't threaded in the first place, and why threaded debugging can be a hassle.
Yam not a fruit [3:55 am] Marcus 'Majesty' Yam
Okay fine, I live for cool .plan updates...so sue me too :-) In other news, I'm trying to
get some TNT2s (and basically anything else) in preparation for the onslaught of Shack
Q3Test timedemoing. It's proving much more difficult than I would care for...hopefully it
will be worth it after all this hoop jumping :-\ (note to self: write up suckage about
this)
Fruit of the Jack [1:15am] - Jack
So I'm copying loonyboi, sue me :) Anyway, I
was about to make an update for tonight, but I can't connect to the stupid FTP site with
my computer, so I have to update with Steve's. And to think, my update was going to
be the best update in the history of man. Que sera sera.
Tomorrow, I'm going to be a bit bored, so I'm going to do some analysis of Hook's benchmark results that he posted yesterday. If you guys are lucky, I may even dust off Microsoft Excel and get some charting action going.
| Friday, May 21, 1999 |
I Wish Updated [10:00 pm] - Jack
Since Steve's out for the weekend, I'll be your host for the next few days. As my
gift to you guys, since ya'll so deserve it, is the first-ever update to the I Wish weekly section. Steve'll probably be doing
the updates to that section from here on out if you guys are lucky. :-)
I may make an early morning update tonight, haven't decided that yet. I also have a small contest I'll be doing on here, but that'll probably have to wait till Monday. More details tomorrow.
Shack E3 Reports [3:55 pm]
Ok I've been up for way too long so I'm certain there are some glaring typos and grammar
errors, but I wanted to get the ball rolling on the Shack E3 Reports. Today features my own look
at Anachronox from Ion Storm
and FAKK2 from Ritual
Entertainment. I'll be adding more games through the week next week, as well as hardware
stuff from Marcus coming down the pipe.
Star Trek Voyager Shots [2:15 pm]
BluesNews has posted 5 new screenshots
of the Quake3 engine based Star Trek: Voyager title from Raven Software which just look astounding. 4 of the
shots are from the federation ship, and 1 of the Borg. I personally didnt like the Borg
stuff much, but I'll get into that more in my E3 report on the game next week :)
Newer SIN Patch [2:15 pm]
There was a small issue with the camera system in the original v1.05 SIN patch
so if you're going to be using that you should probably get the new version, otherwise you're just fine
with the original v.105 patch.
Unreal Anniversary [2:15 pm]
Well, Unreal had it's 1st birthday recently and this article
celebrates the event and talks about the future games coming from Epic (Unreal
Tournament..) which should interest a lot of the Unreal fans. Sorry though, no Unreal
shareware just yet.
LithTech2 & Curves [3:55 am]
Rob Jellinghaus over at Unrealities in response to this LithTech2 screenshot
sent out email to myself
and a few others which prompted a response from Jason Hall of Monolith that most of you tech-heads may find interesting.
Here is a bit of Mr. Hall's clarification:
Quake 3 can tessellate its curves and LithTech 2 can't. That statement is entirely true. LithTech 2 can't tessellate its curves dynamically. It doesn't need to.
I must point out that being able to tessellate curved looking surfaces, and being able to have curved looking surfaces within your game are 2 different things.
[Marcus' Note]: I had a chance to check out the LithTech2 back room demo at E3, I'll have something on it soon.
Topic of the day [3:55 am]
So, I'm thinking this might be an interesting thing to add. A "discussion of the
day" which basically means I'll pick random almost related topics and just throw in
my 2 cents, and see what the rest of you guys think. The Star Wars movie thing
yesterday seemed to be pretty popular. So here we go, lets try it again!
Do you guys think Quake3 in it's current form will work very well for clan games? Here is my 2 cents
Views [2:15 pm]
Tech [2:15 pm]
Gaming [3:55 am]
werd
Hope you guys like the E3 reports stuff. I've got about a
dozen different games previewed, and have a extra lengthy article on Soldier of Fortune
courtesy of Zith who payed a visit to Raven HQ. RIX tells me he's just about done with the
Quake3 strategy guide so that will be going online next week as well when I return from
one of my last MIA's for a while this weekend.
| Thursday, May 20, 1999 |
TF2 Screenshot & Video [6:05 pm]
Capt. Gibb sends word that CFTF has gotten some video footage of TF2 in
action which should dazzle you guys. (Aside from the extremely annoying screen lines)
Midwest T3 FTP Server
Canadian ADSL FTP Server Provided by DeadPool2
Texas Dual T3 HTTP Server
Also, Jenni over at Valve Software sent out this new screenshot of TF2 giving a great up close look at one of the scenes you'll see in the movie footage. Here's her description:
One of our main goals with TF2 is to give teammates a lot of opportunities to work together. This screen shot shows a medic loading ammo for a soldier -- which makes the soldier's gun shoot faster and more accurately. We also demoed the real-time voice communication system (with lip sync), the new MRM models, our parametric animation system, volumetric fog, etc.
Some Previews [4:05 pm]
A few articles for you guys to read in the afternoon waiting
for games that you cant have yet. Check out the GameSpot UK look at Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
You can also read Pete's Hardware preview
of FreeSpace2. Check out the Soldier of Fortune preview
over at GamesMania too.
SIN Camera [4:05 pm]
Mark Dochterman over at Ritual Entertainment has a .plan
update with a few tips on using that new in-game camera system that was included in the v1.05 patch for SIN
SoF Characters [2:25 pm]
A .plan update from
Eric Tuman of Raven Software gives quite a bit more detail on the complex animation
system (codenamed GHOUL) they are using over there in Soldier of Fortune. There is also an
update from
Scott Rice as well.
GHOUL is an amazing system that gives us a lot of possibilities, and yes we did use motion capture. But GHOUL is NOT responsible for the look of the ANIMATIONS. GHOUL's features include, but are not limited to:
Model render system
Model lighting system
Special effects
Skinning tools
Control over part visibility
Bolting separate models together
Etc...
New Stuff [2:25 pm]
Time management is not exactly my strong suit. Oh well. I've
finally posted the suckage and wack links and have been
plugging away on these E3 articles. Bug Huntsman about Shackware. I figure I'll just
post 2 games per day on the E3 report starting late night/tomorrow. This weekend will be
my last MIA for a couple of months.
Oh yeah, and after nearly 2 months of non-profit, I'll be attempting to pay my rent again with showing ads here on the little old Shack. Feel free to email me calling me a corporate sell-out, just include a check. :) The good news about the advertising is it affords me the luxury of being able to cover costs of a fully databased searchable / indexed etc page. It's still 3-4 weeks away, but I'm excited ok?
Dual Voodoo3 Followup [12:25 pm]
Amer over at GameSpot pointed me to this article on his
humble little page giving a bit more clarification to the whole dual voodoo3 thing:
...3dfx will not allow Alienware to ship its dual Parallel Graphics Configuration Voodoo3 2000 boards to the retail channel. The Florida-based systems integrator originally intended to bring the boards to market via a three-pronged approach
<snip>
...gamers interested in PGC will be able to purchase the dual boards directly from Alienware when they become available sometime next month.
Original Post: Saw on BluesNews a link to this bit of news stating that we wont be seeing Voodoo3 cards in pairs after all contrary to prior Metabyte/Alienware plans.
More Soldier of Fortune Shots [9:45 am]
To round out the set of Soldier of Fortune shots I scored from E3, here are a couple more
for you guys to take a look at. I'll be including about a dozen more (!) in the ever-late
SoF article I keep thinking I'll get done. I'll skip the captions since they are just too
cheesy. Dig em:
Unreal Updates [9:45 am]
Tim Sweeney has a new update going on the Unreal
Technology page which should please just about everyone who is running or thinking
about running an Unreal server. He's busted out some optimizations that increases
replication by up to 50% (!). Also pointed out by Mackey was the mention of the "Make Something Unreal" contest offering up
some serious prize action.
The recent work on 225 has been focused on improving server performance and stability, and it has been paying off really well. It turns out that 224's server code was noticeably slower than 220, as a result of some code improvements I made but didn't test and time rigorously. The two bottleneck routines in the server are the visibility tracer and the actor replicator. I've been making the visibility tracer faster by processing all actors simultaneously and optimizing the code for a pure "yes/no" visibility test, rather than using the more general (and slower) line trace routine built into the engine.
That Star Wars Thing [9:45 am]
Since so many of you monkeys are sending email about Star Wars I just opened up a thread on the
msgboard for you guys to share your opinions on the movie. I put in my quick 2 cents
in there to start it out.
LithTech2 & Curves? [9:45 am]
Just to show that Quake3 isnt the only game with curved surfaces, Jason Hall over at
Monolith sent out this
screenshot to Billy showing off a curved ceiling as well
as a big spanking sphere in the middle of a room.
shows 3 different gradients of curvyness in LT2. On the right you see an arched doorway that is not too curvy...down the middle of the screen you see that the hallway you look down is more curvaceous than the hallway on the right... AND in the middle of the hallway you have something that by definition is as curved as you can get - A SPHERE
Views [9:45 am]
Tech [9:45 am]
Gaming [9:45 am]
werd
Bah.
| Wednesday, May 19, 1999 |
Q3A Tutorials [7:25 pm]
Jitspoe put together a couple Q3A tutorials. One deals with exploring .PK3 files,
and the other tells how to edit Q3 HUD graphics. You can check 'em out here: tutorials, and HUD configuration
help
Sin 1.05 [7:15 pm] - Jack
My company Ritual has put out Sin 1.05, which is hoped to be the final version. Only a
couple things are fixed in this version, and you need the 1.04 patch applied to use it.
Mark D updated
his .plan about it (and some E3 stuff, which you can read by clicking the link):
General
- An in game camera system has been added similar to the one we were showing at E3.
- Extensive 3DNOW! optimizations have been made to the renderer
- demos work again
CTF
- ctf_forcejoin now works correctly.
- dropped weapons no longer allow you to carry too much ammo
- the quantum destabilizer is no longer such an unbalanced weapon in CTF.
You can grab the file from over here, which also has links on where to get the 1.04 patch.
The Wacky Hex Edit Screenshot [6:25 pm] - Jack
By the way, the image that someone found (here) when hex editing
Quake 3 should be of no surprise. That's because it's in fact, the Quake 3 icon. It just
happened to line up nice in the editor because Windows 16 color 32x32 icons are 16 bytes
wide. That's also why it's upside down, because that's how Windows stores bitmaps. So
don't be going hunting for other "hidden hex symbols" in the EXE, as that's the
only icon in there. :)
ION's E3 Broadcast [5:45 pm] - Jack
Thanks Blue. Apparently ION Storm made a bunch of broadcasts during E3 and posted them to their
website. Unfortunately, the videos of the Eidos booth babes are of pretty low quality,
otherwise I would have just linked them right here :) There's 10 broadcasts to listen to,
with plenty of interviews with ION folk.
What Avault Liked at E3 [5:45 pm] - Jack
Thanks Blue. Avault has posted all of their E3 1999
awards right here. They
have a lot of "bests" in the list, which is odd. Who won best of show? Digital
Anvil's Freelancer. What's that you ask? I don't know either, I didn't get to check it
out. But, in the post they have a nice description.
Messiah [5:45 pm] - Jack
Thanks VE. Here's a couple news items from the
cool game, Messiah:
Deep Space Nine [5:45 pm] - Jack
Thanks VE. Avault sure is getting lots of
previews lately! This time, they've snagged a preview at a game I'm waiting for after
seeing it at E3 - Deep Space Nine: The Fallen. Here's a link to the
info. Here's the game's setting:
Simon & Schuster at E3 demonstrated its game based on the Deep Space Nine television series, Star Trek Deep Space Nine: The Fallen. Due to ship this fall, it uses the Unreal engine along with numerous in-house enhancements. Set between the sixth and seventh season, is the first part of the Millennium saga, a multi-part storyline that will play out over the next two years in novels, audio cassettes and additional games.
The story does well in setting up the action. The Pah Wraiths, a race of ancient, powerful aliens, are on the verge of returning. The means to unleashing and harnessing their power are three archaic Red Orbs. The race to find the orbs occurs between the gamer, playing one of three characters from the show, and a host of opposing forces that aim to annihilate the Alpha Quadrant and its inhabitants.
Carmack Speaks [10:45 am]
John Carmack over at id Software has another interesting
.plan update for us folks to read talking about the server hax0rs, working on dual-cpu
stuff, and some porting action which will excite a few of you. Here's a bit:
I finally got around to implementing dual processor acceleration today. I still have a couple issues to resolve and some more rearranging to do, but it is giving 20%+ speedup right now in a worst-case situation for it.
When completed, I expect the average speedup to be in the 40% to 80% range, depending on what is going on and the video configuration. Scenes with lots of dynamic lighting and lots of sounds and other client processing going will show the largest speedups. It helps the slow scenes more than the fast scenes, which is basically what you want.
I am going to shake this out with the Windows (NT) code first, but it should definately make its way to the linux port eventually.
Oh yeah, and crazy hax0r stuff of the day. Eric Walker was looking around in the Quake3.exe and dug up this image when looking at the code in a hex editor.
New Quake3 OSX Server [10:45 am]
The guys at Omni development sent
word to loony on the changes they are making to the
official OSX port of the Q3Test server progs. Here's a bit of it:
The top 3 scorers are eligible for handicapping points. The maximum total handicapping points handed out to them is the smaller of 6 or the number of players. The first place player gets up to 3, then second place players up to 2, and the third 1, until the points run out. (So, for example, if there are only 4 players, then the first place player gets 3 points, and the second place player gets 1.)
Every match, one handicapping point is removed from every player, down to a minimum of zero, before new handicapping points are added to the winners.
Unreal 225? [10:45 am]
Billy over at VE fired some email to Tim Sweeney at Epic asking about the upcoming v225 release of Unreal
which was recently leaked according to the folks over at PlanetUnreal. Here is what big Timmy had to say:
What kind of net performance increase, if any, will we see, in 225, - or our we as far in Unreal as we'll see? Can expect the net performance increase to be substantial with Unreal Tournament?
Sweeney: Unreal server performance is still improving, though bandwidth usage won't improve significantly for Unreal 1. (Unreal Tournament's new weapons are designed with more client-side simulation, so the bandwidth is better now).
E3 Reports [10:45 am]
Got a few different E3 reports still trickling in after the big show. Have a look at what
the GamersDepot guys did. Also
check out the FiringSquad
report from Calbear. The guys at PCGameREVIEW
have an article up as well.
Views [10:45 am]
Tech [10:45 am]
Gaming [10:45 am]
werd
Star Wars Episode1 was "ok" I suppose. All hell should be breaking loose this
evening, assuming I can get all this work done. :)
| Tuesday, May 18, 1999 |
Quake3 Net Code [8:45 pm]
John Cash over at id Software has a .plan
update talking about the various network code implementations in Q3Test which might be
of interest to some of you guys:
IPX: The current build of Q3TEST's IPX support is broken. I have fixed it for the next release.
SOCKS: My early testing was using a Linux based SOCKS server. I had to make a fix to work with Cisco's implementation; it seems I had a preliminary version of the RFC. So if your one of the small handful of people using Cisco equipment to connect to the net <grin>, this should work for you in the next release. I'm sure this will make Q3A work with other vendor's SOCKS servers too. There is one more case where it isn't working (WSAEAFNOSUPPORT errors) that I'm looking into. The username/password authentication has been added.
To save on email... there is not a date set for the next release.</GRIN>
Quake3 Shots [3:55 pm]
Looks like GA-Source and Blue beat me to the punch on this one, but oh well. The
Activision press CD contained a few new images of Quake3 which you cant find in the Q3Test
demo. Dig on shot1 shot2 shot3 shot4 shot5 shot6. I've resized
all the shots down to 640x taking the cue from GA,
for the bandwidth impaired. There are a few other shots but those are all repeats. Oh yeah
and here is a Quake3 screensaver to boot.
Oni [3:55
pm]
GA-Source has done
up a preview you guys should look at featuring a look at the Bungie Oni 3D
action/adventure game. I've actually got about a dozen screenshots of the game which I
will make a feeble attempt at including in the re-vamped screenshots page in the near
future. Yes, I'll be doing thumbnails...
The gameplay is divided 50-50 between hand-to-hand and weapons combat. While Konoko will have an arsenal of weapons at her disposal, from pistols to rocket launchers, realistic quantities and placement of ammo in the environment means that the player won't be able to tear through the game with guns blazing. Instead, Konoko's punches throws and kicks will be critical for attacking silently, saving ammo, and simply enjoying the visceral satisfaction of hands-on punishment.
Loonygames [3:55 pm]
The latest issue of loonygames has gone live.
Check it out:
- loonyboi's E3 Report: serialized in two parts, it's loonyboi's look at all the games at E3! Featuring TONS of screenshots (over SIXTY in the first installment alone!) and more! [Tuesday, Friday]
- Penny Arcade: The kids are back from E3, and they've got a bunch of mini-comics from the show! [Tuesday, Friday]
- E3 in Black and White: loonyboi's black and white pictorial from the show floor! [Thursday]
Ping? [2:05 pm]
Sorry about the server down-time, as always.. no idea what was wrong. Cool though huh?
I've gotten a hold of a couple more press cds with a ton of screenshots. Will be firing
those things your way either tomorrow or Thursday.
Soldier of Fortune Shots [11:05 am]
I just got my hands on these new screenshots of Soldier of Fortune thanks to Lithium over
at Ritualistic and figured you guys would want a
look see. Check em out:
And here you go, the extremely bad cheesy press talk:
shot1 - Infiltrate the ranks of the Internet via Deathmatch or innovative multiplayer games, including Assassin, where gamers track and kill a pre- determined player while someone else hunts. All this in Activision's upcoming first person shooter, Soldier of Fortune?
shot2 - Based on the popular magazine of the same name, Activsion's Soldier of Fortune? is the all-new, explosive first-person shooter created by Raven Software. Like a blockbuster action-thriller, Soldier of Fortune plunges players into the secret and deadly world of the modern-day gun-for-hire via dozens of real- to-life missions spanning five continents and innovative multiplayer modes.
shot3 - Activision's Soldier of Fortune?, features revolutionary shooter technology. Reap the benefits of the 3-D accelerator-optimized Quake II engine, upgraded with Raven's new GHOUL rendering system for unprecedented enemy detail and violence, faster gameplay, and the most amazing 3-D graphics to date.
Ritual FAKK2 Shots [10:35 am]
Ritualistic has gotten a hold of 4 new
screenshots of the Quake3 engine based FAKK2 project from Ritual. They also encoded the
preview trailer I sent Lithium yesterday into RealVideo format. Check out shot1
, shot2
, shot3
, shot4.
Make sure and check out these Fakk2 photos at WickedPC
too.
Game Violence [10:35 am]
That whole violence in videogames thing seems to have calmed down a bit thankfully. Check out this
LATimes article on the subject featuring a few questions with John Carmack of id Software.
Wheel of Time [10:35 am]
GA-Source has put together an extensive
preview of the Legend Entertainment Wheel of Time game which I checked out at E3 for a
bit and it was looking sharp. Here's a bit:
The game will have a single-play component as well as a number of multiplay components. In the single-player game, the player will assume the role of Elayne (the Amyrlin Seat), the leader of the Aes Sedai -- a group of women who can control the One Power (similar to mana) to perform various "magical" acts. The player's task will be to recover the five cuendillar Seals that keep the Dark One imprisoned before they are recovered by the Dark One's servants. There will be approximately 18 single-player levels for the player to search for these Seals.
Views [10:35 am]
Tech [10:35 am]
werd
Ack! Overload! During E3 was pretty damn quiet but the moment I get home there are like
50million trillion things to post at once. I'm gonna get breakfast and touch up the habitually late suckage as well as
get some wack-ass links for you
guys done.
| Monday, May 17, 1999 |
LithTech2 [8:45 pm]
Got a few pieces of info on the Monolith LithTech2 engine. I didnt get a chance to check
it out during the E3 show though so I'm sorry it wont be in my E3 feature which goes up on
Thursday morning. At any rate check out the EvilAvatar
page which has a couple of screenshots, also saw on Blues
that E3.net has a "LithTech2 the next big
engine?" article, as well as VoodooExtreme posting
a couple of screenshots.
Matrox G400 Q3 Shots [8:45 pm]
MatroxUsers has posted some images of
Quake3 running in 32bit on the new Matrox card. Looks damn good.
AMD Prices [8:45 pm]
Thanks to Redwood for word that the AMD CPU prices are dropping once
again. Just wait on that K7 for your Quake3 box though kids really.
Unreal Tournament [4:05 pm]
Got a couple of Unreal Tournament articles for you guys to check out. CGO takes
a look at Unreal Tournament featuring a couple of screenshots I don't recognize. Also
the Stomped folks have a preview of UT
as well.
The game is split into sub-games of Deathmatch, Team Play, Network Play, Assault Objectives and Capture The Flag. Within each are a myriad of maps that are specifically designed for that type of play. The player setup is very intuitive and allows you to select a combination of player models and skins
Onicore [2:50 pm]
The new Onicore website is now open for business and
features some footage in big & small sizes from the Bungie 3D action title. There are
also a few images from the E3 booth there as well.
3D Roundup [2:50 pm]
Gotta love these things, check out the latest 3D video roundup over
at FastGraphics.
Finally, the roundup is on-line... Some more cards will be addesd later this week, but for now I've got TNT, TNT Vanta, TNT2, TNT2 Ultra, Savage 4 Pro and all kinds of Voodoo 3 favors lined up with a huge amound of benchmark results...
TRIBES2 [11:50 am]
The PlanetStarsiege page has posted an interview
with Tim Gift of Dynamix asking a number of questions about TRIBES2. Also I saw over
at VE that there is a CGO preview of TRIBES2
featuring some new screenshots.
Unreal Tournament Bots [11:50 am]
The Unreal Universe page has posted some information and shots talking
about the behavior of the bots system to be featured in Unreal Tournament.
I've rewritten most of the bot AI for Unreal Tournament. I was only able to spend a little over a week focused on the Unreal I bots (although they also shared a good bit of their AI with the Unreal I monsters), while I've been able to devote a substantial part of the last 10 months to the Unreal Tournament bots. As a result, I've been able to really tweak and improve them in a lot of areas.
More Views [11:55 am]
Quake3 Teamplay Settings [1:30 am]
Yarn was kind enough to send along these console settings for those of you interested in
checking out a bit of teamplay action in Q3Test. Also don't forget to use "team
s" to go into spectator mode if you wanna watch. Dig it:
Hi, I've played around with the server enough to get teamplay working, its great fun, and already quite well implemented. Heres what to do:
1.Start a Q3 server
2.set teamflags 1
3.set dmflags 1
4.type map <mapname>
Now players can team red/blue and use messagemode2 and say_team for teamtalk
Speaking of console commands, you can check out the Gameaholic console command list. There is also a list over at the Captured.com flagship. Don't forget to have a look at Niv3k's list as well.
Quake3 NameFun [1:30 am]
I've gotten an insane number of emails from people who have setup web based Q3 namefun
scripts. Here you go: LordP - Redix - Mike Dowell - Borderfield Software. I havent had a
chance to mess with them yet but judging from the number of colored names on Q3 servers, I
imagine a few of these should work for you.
Also, RA2IO has some info on how to exec custom config files. It's a bit of a hack, but if you're desperate...
New Server Browsers [1:30 am]
Hot on the heels of the Beta4 release, this new
version fixes a problem in the Quake III Arena connection code which prevents you from
actually connecting to a game. You'll also find a few bugfixes, and integration of the
Quake III Arena character set for player names. You can also check out the latest X11Spy for all you Linux
folks. Lastly Q3go
is a menu driven server finder that will find the 15 fastest Q3test servers and
launch any of them just by entering the server's ID number (1-15).
New 10 Questions [1:30 am]
SamHell's latest 10 questions is now online.
This week he features an interview with Billy Wilson from VoodooExtreme.
Have a look at the interview and try to figure out what in the SamHell makes Billy tick.
Views [1:25 am]
Tech Etc [1:25 am]
Gaming Etc [1:25 am]
werd
Ahhh.. home sweet home. I'm sure a few of the things I post today are probably repeats of
things that Huntsman may have posted earlier in the week during my E3 trip, but what the
hell. I'll be spending the day catching up on more email and working on my lengthy E3
report covering most of the 3D action games I saw at the show. Oh if someone is on a fast
net connect and has one of those Eidos press CD's drop
me a line? I cracked mine from sitting on it.. hehe
Wacky Quake3 images of the day? Check out this shot and this shot sent along by Brian Beaton.
Oh yeah, and here is a Car&Driver article talking about John Carmack's Ferrari's being just way too tweaked out and sent overseas for some performance pushing. thanks Geoff.
I've decided to kick up the level of content here at the old Shack a bit here for you guys. I've felt that I was being just a little bit too anal about stuff that I posted and hopefully you guys will like things a bit better now. Today is a bit heavy since I'm playing catch up though. Reserve comments for later this week if ya got any :)
| Sunday, May 16, 1999 |
More Quake3 Stuff [6:15 pm]
The crazy flood of Brian Hook .plan updates
continue. His latest update is some tips for you guys with VIA chipset motherboards
having issues, and a few other things. Oh yeah, and listen to Brian and make sure you have
your email return address correct. Believe me it's a pisser to answer some guy feeling all
friendly like and finding out it bounced. Bah
You should also have a look at this update talking about Win95 users as well as the always fun accusations of "obvious bias"
Mech3 Gold [6:15 pm]
The guys at GameSpot
have word from E3 that the Mech Warrior3 title has gone gold. Meaning the final build
of the game has been completed and it's off to the CD plants for mass production and
shipping to stores. Turn around times can be as short as a couple of days, or it may be
closer to a week before you can buy a copy in stores.
werd
6:15pm : I do believe it will be crazy record-setting Monday of news when I'm done sorting
through all this email. Sorry I was MIA for so long but a dude has to get drunk and have
silicon titties bounced in his face at least once in a while right?
4:00pm : So, I miss anything? Had a great time at E3, and already have several pages of my impressions of the games that were on the floor there at the show. I'll probably be spending the next 10-12 hours going through e-mail. I havent had access to mail since Monday night of last week. I missed you guys!
Carmack Likes TNT2 [10:50 am] - Hoonis
Gamecenter has an interview with
John Carmack (the guy who wrote Commander Keen). John leaps right out with a straight
answer to the big question, "Who makes the fastest 3d card today?" John
Says:
The fastest 3D card today is the TNT 2. I don't think anybody will even question that. You'd be hard-pressed to find an ATI or a 3dfx engineer who, if you really got them into a corner, wouldn't admit that.
So there you go. We already knew it has some of the best visual quality, but now you've got it right from the tallest cow in the barn, TNT2 = fast. John also goes on to whack 3dfx, saying
It's unfortunate that 3dfx supports only 16-bit color--which is a pretty significant limitation. I have a harder time recommending a Voodoo 3 to people... They kicked so much ass with the Voodoo 2, but right now you just can't call them the best accelerator any more.
Now is it just me, or does the 1.8 FPS difference between TNT1 & 2 seem odd (See Hook's Benchmarks below)? I'm pretty much assuming that the drivers used for the TNT2 in those tests must not be conisidered "the best drivers you can get" yet. I'd actually go so far as to call the drivers "really crappy" if all they seem to be able to right now is make a TNT2 run like a TNT1. Hmm. TNT2's are starting to show up on pricewatch for around $110.. mercy!
Oops again [9:50 am] - Huntsman
doh, I'm gonna be gone for a bit so Hoonis will be handling anything major (carmack swears
off 3d gaming, the earth exploding and so forth). cya in a bit.
| 3DNews.net | News Archives | copyright Steve Gibson 1998 |
