go to www.shugashack.com for up to date news.
| Saturday, April 10 |
Q3Test Notification E-mail [10:35 am]
The guys over at Quakefiles.com have come up with a nifty system
that will automatically email you the moment Q3Test has been released.
QuakeCon99 [10:35 am]
Well, in case you guys didnt notice QuakeCon registration has been delayed a week. Look for
them to open up registration next Friday instead. The QuakeCon staff as well as Anna Kang
have been quite nice about answering questions on the QuakeCon messageboard. Thanks to AMDZone for the first word of the delay.
No More USA GT Titles? [10:35 am]
Looks like GT Interactive may be pulling out
the the USA game distributing market. Probably most famous for publishing Doom2, and
Quake. (Quake Shareware was self-published by id) Check out the CTW page for more details.
Spotted that on Blues
Monolith [10:35 am]
PlanetBlood
has a fairly lengthy interview with Jason
Hall of Monolith Productions asking about a number of issues surrounding their Blood2
title, reaching from the source release to the tools and what the heck end users will be
able to do with them.
As much as it seems that you want me to say it, I can't 100% guarantee you that there will be no more Blood 2 patches. Are we working on one now? No. BUT - in a few days the tools and source will be released and we are going to try to support the community as best we can in helping with the MOD scene for Blood 2.
Views [10:35 am]
Tech [10:35 am]
Gaming [10:35 am]
werd
Looks like things are finalized for a trip to
Raven Software. Gonna see what those guys are up to in a couple of weeks. Should be fun
stuff and I'll get to do another preview for you guys.
Also, been playing around with the TNT2 a bit. Can you believe that incredibly annoying desktop icons bug in the 2D driver is still there from the original TNT? Grrr.
| Friday, April 9 |
Duke4 Sound [7:35 pm]
The Ear on Games page has an interview with Lee Jackson, the
man behind all those (hopefully) cool sounds you'll be hearing in Duke4Ever from 3DRealms.
The 3DR guys are using the Unreal engine now days, after having started out with the
Quake2 engine and decided otherwise a few months into development.
Messiah [7:35 pm]
U-Games takes a look at the Messiah project
from Shiny Entertainment. It's a few pages long an includes a number of quotes from
Dave Perry talking about the game and technology of course.
Quake3 & Mac [7:35 pm]
The MacGamers
Ledge has gotten a hold of some recent
benchmarks of Quake3 running on a Mac G3 paired up with one of them Rage128 cards and
the latest ATI drivers. Even including a couple of comments from John Carmack:
Two days ago, Beta 1 OpenGL drivers for ATI's graphic accelerator cards (Rage II, Pro, and 128) were released by Apple. id Software's programming guru John Carmack picked up the drivers and ran some tests on the soon-to-be-released Q3Test. Here are his comments on the drivers and the scores
<snip>
Unreal Tournament [7:35 pm]
Remember those cool bots in Unreal? Well Stephen
Polge (who originally started out coding the infamous Reaper bot for Quake1) ended up
working at Epic and now has an interview over at
CGR talking about his work on Unreal Tournament. I can't get to the website now
though, but here is the blurb that VE snagged:
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. Their navigation is much more polished. They feel a lot more human, in terms of how they make decisions about what to do, how they use weapons and inventory items, how they hit or miss targets, and how they have different personalities.
Also, speaking of UT there are even some more new images of the game in action at the official website. Check em out.
V3 & TNT2 [7:35 pm]
The guys at GamersDepot have slapped up some comparison shots
between the image quality of a V3 and a TNT2. Also thanks to Ars-Technica for pointing the way to these V3D benchmarks taking
a look at the color depths as well.
More Drakan [8:25 am]
Another preview of the Surreal Software Drakan title
has shown up, this time over at
GameCenter.
NetGuy at id [8:25 am]
NetGuy over at Q3Arena.com
scored a little visit to id Software last week and has put together his story of the
visit having played Quake3 with a few members of id Software.
After this second match, Graeme had asked me a few questions about what I was thinking, and such like that. Since I'm only on a 28.8 connection at home (ok cable modem users, you can stop laughing now), I made sure to stress the importance of Quake3's network (especially Internet) performance. Graeme told me that they had been testing Quake3's network code quite a bit, and that at the time it was performing very nicely on rather high-ping speeds, even up to 600ms of lag. Naturally this made my day.
QuakeCon99 [8:25 am]
As I mentioned last night, QuakeCon99 registration will be opening today at 9pm
EST. You gotta decide if you're gonna lug that PC across the country, plus you better
reserve your ass a hotel room because there is no sleeping allowed at the event!
Daikatana Shot [8:25 am]
Have a look see at this new Daikatana shot that
showed up on the Burpfish network. Someone
sent me the screenshot (Thanks Platinum) as well but it didnt come from Ion so I imagine
he just mooched it from those guys.
Where is Quake3? [8:25 am]
If you have been following the shack.quake3 messageboard (Yeah, it's
a lot of crap to wade through.. I know) then you may have spotted a couple of posts from
Christian asking everyone to just take a chill pill and relax. Go do some yard work or
something. What's that mean? Quit refreshing the quake3arena website all day because it's
not coming out just yet.
Views [8:15 am]
Tech [8:15 am]
Gaming [5:15 am]
werd
Hi :)
A TNT2 arrived on my doorstep today. Benchmarking time! I'll be grinding away on benchmarks for the day. Will shoot for having some results posted for you guys to mull over during the weekend.
| Thursday, April 8 |
PGL Finals [9:15 pm]
The latest PGL Season finals have been
announced and will be held in New York on May 21st. Check out the PR from PGL. They also have a
bunch of bios on the players who made the finals this season.
QuakeCon99 Registration [9:15 pm]
Tomorrow evening is the big day for
registration to get into the biggest LAN party ever conceived. Check out www.quakecon.org for the details. The doors for
registering open at 9pm. The event however isnt until August. :)
More Quake3 [7:15 pm]
The guys at CGR posted a short Q&A with id's Graeme Devine:
CGR: How will Quake3 Arena's bots raise the bar in terms of AI and performance over exisiting bots?
Graeme Devine: Our bots don't follow set paths or "waypoints", they have the luxury of being able to work with the level designer's map data directly to preprocess their data, something existing bots cannot, and that gives us a database which has superior information.
Unreal Stuff [4:25 pm]
The guys at FGNOnline
have word on the mystical Unreal patch (Hey, where is that Unreal demo? heh) as well as
word that Unreal Tournament will not be shipping before E3 next month. Check it, Thanks
Marcus
The release of the 224 version of Unreal in nearing. In addition, despite a tentative March or April release expected for the obviously excellent Unreal Tournament, Epic has confirmed that the game will not ship before E3. Mark Rein, vice president of the developer, has given details as to a demo release, as well as the emergence of the latest version of Unreal. "There will be a demo of Unreal Tournament sometime prior to it's retail release," he confirmed. "I don't know if we'll do a public beta or not. We'll be releasing the 224 update for Unreal sometime soon and it's got a lot of the same underlying code as the current build of Unreal Tournament, so it should serve as a pretty good test for shaking any engine-related bugs out of Unreal Tournament. We'll certainly be watching for bugs with much enthusiasm.
TNT2 Release [4:25 pm]
I've gotten word from a couple of people that the
TNT2 should be shipping and/or available to the public on April 25th, that's just a couple
of weeks and some change from now. I'll have a TNT2 in my "testing lab" tomorrow
and hope to get some head to head benchmarks for you guys next to a Voodoo3 by this
weekend.
200mh FSB? [4:25 pm]
Overclockers rejoice! check this out from the guys at
HardOCP:
HardOCP'er Tokumei No, did us a huge-ass favor, and got with those Japanese OC freaks to do a translation to English for us. What is this about? It is about a deal they got overseas that will allow you to use FSB's from 50 to 200 MHz on almost any mobo. This is still all unconfirmed, but even if it is a bunch of crap, it is still cool to check out. LINK LUV HERE. Still dont understand much more but.......
MIA?
[4:25 pm]
Yeah, didnt get to update most of the day but my
house is clean, a brother has to have priorities ya dig? Don't worry I didnt clean the
house because I wanted to.. (Actually Mike did the majority of the work, but I cheered him
on and made "wide open ass" jokes about the smell coming from the kitchen)
parents coming to town. At any rate new Wisdom is online.
Quake3 [4:15 am]
What? A Quake3 headline? Here? yeah call it amazing. PC Zone has fired up a great
preview of Quake3 which features quite a bit of quotes an information from id Software
themselves talking about the improvements and changes being made to our future addiction.
It's kinda like describing a wine bottle to an Alcoholic, but here you go. Blue dug up this interesting quote from John Carmack
talking about the net code:
Carmack: "Jerkiness is the characteristic of Net play that has been most improved. Almost all visual effects are either cued for local running, or presented in a parametric or other extrapolatable form, so that when packets fail to arrive on time, most of the world continues as expected without a visible hitch. Of course, if your Net connection really craps out and you don't receive any new packets for several hundred milliseconds, the action will reach the reasonable limits of its predictability. Perceived lag has been decreased by allowing more actions to be handled completely on the client side, without having to make a round trip to the server. Weapon cycling, falling/stepping/ walking view feedback, and weapon muzzle flash/sound feedback are all done locally now. The actual effects of your actions on the world and other players still requires a round trip to the server, so lag isn't gone, but it is improved over all previous efforts
This sounds great, but leads to one concern. In Quake2 and QuakeWorld, having your actual weapon effects lagged by the server. Although this was irritating, it was also helpful to the competitive player. Using the lightning gun for example, you had visual feedback of the amount of lag you had because the shaft was lagging to one side or the other. Making it easier for a player to compansate for lag. and "over aim" in a particular direction to catch up on a strafing player.
SIN introduced client side weapon effects, which as many players noticed although it was nice to fire your machine gun and instantly see an impact on the wall, your lag was not being represented. Try to machine gun down a player with a 300ms ping, having no actual visual feedback of how much you are missing a player by and it becomes a real pain in the ass.
Of course, possibly I dont really understand what Carmack is doing, or perhaps he has already taken this concern into consideration as well and has a plan for that. Ya dig? Oh yeah, and I added those 3 new screenshots to the screenshots index.
Duke4 Tech [4:15 am]
The guys at GuruTech
send word of an email from George Broussard concerning the announced usage of
multi-resolution geometry technology (yeah, that stuff)
in Duke4. Here is part of his reply:
We've had the stuff in for something like 5-6 months. It dropped it in initially in a couple of days. We tweaked things over a couple of weeks and have had no problems. The game will benefit from drawing less polys than it needs to. DNF is a test bed for the technology for us
Love Doll Challenge? [4:15 am]
It looks like Murphy Michaels of Ritual Entertainment and Paul Steed over at id Software are going head to head on creating the
best sub 1,000 poly female model, and decided to make it an open voting competition to
boot. Check out LamingInsider for the details and rules.
Winner is determined after round two. If I don't win then I'll convert, animate and deliver the winner's model as a Q3:A md3 before the game ships. Note, this model will be game-ready but not ship with the game.
ps
Views [5:15 am]
Tech [5:15 am]
Gaming [5:15 am]
werd
Magic Shell is the bomb. Ice cream is just an excuse
to eat Magic Shell. The guys at Smuckers rock my world, that combination peanut butter and
jelly stuff is pretty damn good too.
| Wednesday, April 7 |
Matrox & G400MAX [6:25 pm]
GA-Source interviews Dan Wood of Matrox on
the freshly announced Matrox G400MAX 3D chipset which is boasting a 333MTexel fill rate,
which in fact is right on par with the top line products from nVidia and 3dfx. Originally
I wasnt really interested in the G400 much given the specs, but the G400MAX looks like it
will be worth some attention. Of course... Matrox? OpenGL?
Deus Ex [6:25 pm]
U-Games has a preview of the Unreal engine based
Deus Ex project from Ion Storm.
New Kali [6:25 pm]
The Kali.net page
has been updated with a new version for you to play your favorite multiplayer games over
the net. Tell Mr. Cotton I said wassup.
More UT Shots [3:25 pm]
The folks at PlanetUnreal
have a few more screenshots of Unreal Tournament in action. Check out these shots of the
"Enforcer" and "Translocator" in action. shot1,
shot2,
shot3,
shot4
Oh yeah, and thanks for the nearly 100 emails on "Strooth" (no kidding) I think I got it now :)
TFC Released [12:45 pm] - Huntsman
My buddy Radpipe let me know that Team Fortress
Classic has been released. There are 2 different upgrades, one for 1.0.0.5 to 1.0.0.9 and
one for 1.0.0.8 to 1.0.0.9. If you don't know which version you have (hey, I didn't) go to
your Half Life directory and check out readme.txt and it will tell you which one you have
on the second line. The SDK has also been released. Not sure which is which, but they are
over at Stomped: Standard SDK Source and Half Life Standard SDK.
Heres some mirrors:
Planet Half Life:
1.0.0.5
Update | 1.0.0.8
Update
HalfLife.net: 1.0.0.5 Update | 1.0.0.8 Update
3D Gamers: 1.0.0.5
Update | 1.0.0.8
Update
3DFiles: 1.0.0.5 Update | 1.0.0.8 Update
AGN3D: 1.0.0.5
Update | 1.0.0.8
Update
Stomped: 1.0.0.5 Update | 1.0.0.8 Update
Shackware! [12:45 pm] - Huntsman
I am currently extremely sick, but I pulled myself
off the couch in order to give you guys your weekly
dose of hardware fun. Whats new this week? An actual video card with price and where
to buy it in the Balls Out, and a 19" monitor in the Briefs that actually helps in
the never ending quest to get the Briefs under $1K. Oh, If you have questions or comments
about the Shackware email me (Huntsman) so
sTeve doesn't have to forward stuff to me all week long :)
V3 in stores? [12:45 pm] - Huntsman
Saw over at Blues
News that the Voodoo3 2000 and 3000 are already in stores! Here is a link to the press release on
Blue's. 3Dfx also reports that the V3 will be integrated with the motherboards on the next
line of Packard Bell computers.
Win98 Service Pack? [12:45 pm] - Huntsman
The guys over at BetaNews
seem to have discovered that there actually WILL be a Service Pack for Windows 98. It
won't have all the new features that the "StepUp" version will have, but it will
be freely downloadable. Bah. I'm really pissed at Microsoft for this crap. I already paid
for thier bug fix cd once. What a crock of poo. Run over to BetaNews and get the whole story.
TFC & HL SDK Today [5:15 am]
By the time most of you guys read this the Half-Life Team Fortress Classic patch from Valve will
have been released. As the press
release that was sent out yesterday indicates, GameCenter
should have the files in the early morning (like 9am PST) In the mean time just stare
at the new Quake3 shots for a bit and wonder when the suffering will end and they release
it. :)
Patience, Grasshopper [5:15 am]
Paul Steed of id Software made a post to shack.quake3 late yesterday which
sounds pretty good for the "big payoff" which we're all hoping for. Here is what
homecut had to say.
Hey, you guys suck it up and tough it out. The wait will be well worth it. To give you some perspective, the changes we've implemented in the past 48 hours are more profound than in the las 48 days. That's how this biz works. 2 days worth of brainstorming can make that big of a difference in the game you get your grubby little paws on. We are all stoked about the game and the progress and quality jumps are indicative. Just hang in there a little while longer and you WILL get the big pay-off. Strooth.
Windows98 SE [5:15 am]
Well, kind of related to 3D gaming. You guys are
mostly using Win98 right? Well the rumors about Microsoft charging for the service pack
for Windows98 which they are cleverly calling Windows98 SE now have come true. Here is the
blurb I spotted on Ars-Technica which was
originally on BetaNews.
Up to this point, Microsoft has not made it clear how current Windows 98 users would upgrade to the new version of the OS, recently dubbed Windows 98 Second Edition. The planned Windows 98 SP 1 was killed off in beta due to many factors including its large size, but most in the IT world still assumed some sort of upgrade patch would be released for Windows 98 users. However, just today Microsoft announced to testers that a special version of Windows 98 SE would be released for current Windows 98 users. The 'StepUp' version will be available via retail stores like the Full and Upgrade versions, although it will be only for Windows 98 users who simply want to 'step up' their machine to the newest version. Windows 95 and Windows 3.1 users will still need to purchase the Upgrade release
You can also check out this news.com article while you're at it.
TNT2
[5:15 am]
CGO has gotten a hold of the TNT2 which we should
hopefully be able to actually find on store shelves in just a few weeks. Have a look at what the
spanksters over there have to say about it. There is also a preview on HotHardware as
well. Thanks Ars-Technica for that one too.
Enter the TNT 2. There are very few differences in the actual architecture between the original TNT and the TNT 2. The die size has been shrunk to .25 micron from the TNT's original .35. This near 50% reduction in size allows the chip to run much faster and cooler. NVIDIA has also added support for digital flat-panel displays and up to 32MB of memory. There have also been small, basically transparent, tweaks to the rendering pipeline. In the end, NVIDIA claims that a .25 micron TNT 2 processor with 16MB of RAM would be about 10% faster than a .35 micron TNT processor at the same clock speed.
Views [5:15 am]
Tech [5:15 am]
werd
Well I guess whining does in fact pay off. A great
man at one of the vendors who will be releasing a 3D card based on the TNT2 chipset
offered me the chance to check out one of their cards. Looks like I'll be able to line up
the 3dfx, ATI, and nVidia cards for some side by side benchmarking once Quake3 hits. My
Voodoo3 3500 is actually flaking out though so hopefully 3dfx can get another one sent out
here soon.
Speaking of hardware, Shackware should be updated today by the man Huntsman.
| Tuesday, April 6 |
New Quake3 Screenshots [5:15 pm]
Genario Higgins over at aCtivision was kind enough to send me these 3 new
screenshots of Quake3 in action as a little "warm up" to the big Quake3 showing
we can expect at E3 next month. I've got an index of all the other screenshots as well which I will thumbnail of
course once the fabled new Shack design arrives.
shot0932 - The Doom Marine (collapsed on the floor) has just been decimated by the female warrior wielding the triple damage force (the blue glowing effect signifies triple damage effect). As the female warrior moves into combat, the Quake Marine shoots from above (on top of stairs).
shot1053 - The female warrior blasts into head-to-head combat with the Quake Marine. While the Quake Marine yields the deadly triple damage power-up, the female warrior has a no-miss shot to the head.
shot2697 - Light shines from above as the Doom Marine blazes munitions at his adversaries.
Valve's TFC & SDK [5:15 pm]
All kinds of stuff going on over at Valve. Looks like TFC (Crossing fingers) will be
released within the next 12 hours. Also the full SDK for all the mod makers is available
as well. I'll just let Jenni from Valve cover it for you guys. Here you go. Here is the full press release.
I am very pleased to announce that the Primary Server Program download for Half-Life v.1.0.0.9, with Team Fortress Classic, will be available at 4:00 p.m. PST today. The customer download (i.e., the general release of the update) will be released tomorrow (Wednesday) at 9:00 a.m. PST.
PSP DOWNLOAD (4:00 PST today)
The Primary Server Program download will be about 75 MB. This is everything necessary to run a Half-Life/TFC server even if you don't have a copy of the retail game. We have added an auto-update capability to the PSP release so that we can incrementally update server operators in the future.
To qualify for the PSP you must operate a server with a high bandwidth connection (cable modem or better). To download the PSP, go to http://www.gamecenter.com after 4:00 p.m. today and fill out a brief application. If accepted you will then be given access to the download.
CUSTOMER DOWNLOAD (9:00 a.m. PST tomorrow/Wednesday)
The 1.0.0.9 customer download is going to be about 19 MB (as opposed to the 75 MB download for the PSP). We know demand for this is going to be very high, and we would greatly appreciate your help in getting this out to as many people as possible. In order to facilitate this, we will be setting up a private FTP download site for TF and HL fan sites early tomorrow morning for you to download the update yourself to make available on your own site (and incidentally allow you to start playing sooner). Erik Johnson will send out details later on how to access this FTP site.
HALF-LIFE SDK:
The Half-Life SDK is now available. For more information about the SDK go to: http://www.valvesoftware.com/HLSDK.htm
LINUX SERVER
The Linux server is in the final stage of development and will go into testing later this week.
Ravages of Radiant [5:15 pm]
Here is an interview with Steve Tietze of
Nihilistic asking quite a bit about level design which some of you designers out there
should be interested in, the rest of you guys will probably be interested in a few details
Steve gives out about the 3D game they are working on over there in sunny California:
We are currently targeting our game engine for 3D-hardware acceleration. This has allowed for a higher polygon count in our levels, but that doesn't mean we can go nuts--as with any game, there is a low-end system that the game has to run on. I think the most time spent on optimizing currently is for visibility. We use a sectoring method, which creates a portal along the shared edges between two sectors.
Performance issues arise when sectors see into too many other sectors and so on. Finding ways to cut down on this sort of visibility in a town becomes a daunting task at times. In interiors, it's a lot easier to deal with.
Rage128 PRO [4:15 pm]
Well it looks like everyone is busting out with new
3D accelerators just in time. Have a look at this press release that ATI sent out announcing the Rage
Pro which they claim will be an amazing 50% faster than the original Rage 128 card. I
couldnt find any spec on fill rate but even the current Rage128 is quite the performer due
to some great OpenGL drivers. Thanks to the Rage3D
guys for the heads up.
Oh yeah, Jenny Jones show was excellent today, "My teenage daughter dresses too sexy"
Unreal Tournament [1:35 pm]
The PlanetUnreal
guys spotted a pair of new screenshots from Unreal Tournament on the official page. It's a
real pain in the ass to dig up shots off their page though so just check them out at
PlanetUnreal. Here is shot1 and
shot2.
Also there is a great preview of the
RealCTF project with information and and screenshots of all the powerups etc.
G400 Max [1:35 pm]
Just got a hold of this PR
announcing another 3D chipset from Matrox. The G400
itself isnt out the door just yet but the Matrox boys sound like they wanna compete. Here
is a bit of it:
Today at WinHEC 99, Matrox Graphics Inc. announced the launch of the new Matrox G400 MAX, a higher speed version of the already blisteringly fast Matrox G400 graphics chip. The Matrox G400 MAX benefits from an increase in raw speed of more than 30% over the Matrox G400 and can achieve peak 3D fill rates in excess of 333 Mtexels/second. On industry standard benchmarks, the new Matrox G400 MAX comes close to maxing out Ziff Davis' 3D WinBench 99 test with a score of 1080 at 1024 x 768 resolution. The Matrox G400 MAX graphics chip also includes an industry-leading 360Mhz UltraSharp RAMDAC capable of driving high-end monitors at resolutions up to 2048 x 1536, 32-bpp at 85Hz.
At 333 Mtexels this card is actually up there able to compete with the TNT2 / V3 cards. Also that 360mhz DAC is the fastest one I've seen yet, the voodoo3 cards are shipping with a 350mhz DAC. Not a big deal but it's always nice to see.
Digital Anvil [1:35 pm]
GOL has posted an interview with Chris
Roberts of Digital Anvil which is pretty interesting. Did you guys see that Wing
Commander movie? It stunk... bad...
Ass-Wack Links [1:35 pm]
Yeah, it's a rough job but someone has to do it. I've
finished sorting through the e-mail and dug up a few more
links for you guys to check out this week.
On Q3Test Release.. [6:15 am]
Graeme Devine's recent comment about the planned
release of Q3Test
just being uploaded to the id software ftp caused quite a reaction, so much so that
Christian Antkow of id Software made this post to the shack.quake3 board. Hopefully it
should calm you guys down, now you can just get your panties in a wad over just when this
release is gonna happen? :) Oh yeah and check out this John Carmack
interview (joke) originally posted on the board as well.
Don't worry about the Q3Test availability. We'll make sure to have mirrors set up ahead of time. Traditionally, I've dealt with a number of sites and arrange for them to mirror it off a private FTP site when we do big releases.
www.quake3arena.com will have a full list of mirrors when we release as I like to set up big releases at least a few hours ahead of time.
Wheel of Time [6:15 am]
The Legned Entertainment guys updated their website with more development info.
There is also mention that you can catch a glimpse of WoT in the latest 3dfx commercial
funny enough.
All of the programmers continue to work through their task lists, containing jobs that range all over the map. Mostly, Jim is toiling on the citadel editor and Ryan, Mike, and Jess continue to work away at AI. The artists continue to pump out UI-related stuff, although Robert is finishing up his list of decorations and traps, Marc is slamming out some last-minute required textures, and Joel continues to kick ass optimizing and touching up the character skins.
No Mo Slot Fo My Celery? [6:15 am]
Ars-Technica
points the way to this article
talking about the upcoming 466mhz Celeron CPU (w00) but dissapointingly it sounds like
there will be no Slot1 version of the CPU. That's ok though cuz the PPGA to Slot1
converters will still work and you can plug that monkey right into your BH6.
TNT2 This Month [6:15 am]
Well it is in fact April now, the announced scheduled
roll-out month for nVidia's TNT2 chipset. I'll just
quote Jeremy over at AGN3D. Oh yeah, and nVidia ignored me
when I asked for a card to benchmark. I was crying for a couple of hours but I'm ok now.
...The biggest question on everyone’s mind is when we will see cards based upon this speedy chip. Originally supposed to ship in the middle of April, people have been starting to doubt if that is true because of how quiet NVIDIA has been. Rumors have popped up about them having yield problems and more, saying that we will not see this chip until May at the earliest. I was assured by NVIDIA that none of these rumors are true, and that we will see cards based upon this chip on retail shelves as early as the next few weeks. We will be talking with NVIDIA more on Wednesday’s Hardware Show.
Views [6:15 am]
Tech [6:15 am]
Gaming [6:15 am]
werd
I ran out of Ande's mints...
Oh yeah, and import this .reg file for those of you who dont know how to make an IE homepage and tell me if your computer blows up. I read some stats the other day on just how many people know how to do stuff like that, and it was amazing...
| Monday , April 5 |
Official Announcement [11:35 pm]
I'm almost out of Ande's mints.
Monolith Stuff [6:55 pm]
A couple of things on the Monolith front, John Jack
who was a producer there on Shogo is leaving for a job
at Infrogames, also Jeremy Blackman has a .plan
update talking a bit about LithTech2 and failing to produce an April 1st gag.
Human Head [6:55 pm]
Mike Werckle of Human
Head (You may remember him from Ritual, and prior to that Raven also) sends word that
they have picked up another member to work on their Unreal engine based game. Jeff Dewitt.
Daikatana [6:15 pm]
GameLinks has done up another preview, this time they
take a look at Ion
Storm's Daikatana.
Also, PlayDevil's Devlish Screenshots of Daikatana are now online starting out with seven new shots of Daikatana (The full game, not just the DM demo) and they plan on posting more shots that they have gotten in the coming days. Thanks VE
update: Oh well they are old shots..
OutCast [4:15 pm]
PCBlitz has some new footage of OutCast from
Infrogames.
Suck!
[5:35 pm]
The weekly suck has been
posted, feel free to flame me because I dont like Futurama. :)
AMEN
[4:15 pm]
The Afflicted.net
website dedicated to CaveDog's AMEN: The Awakening 3D
action project is now open. They have a brand spankin new screenshot courtesy of the
CaveDog guys. They of course have some good information on just what AMEN is as well as a
bit of new stuff which you may have not been privvy to.
AMD Stuff [4:15 pm]
News.com has word of a new K6-2 running at
475mhz which is indeed a higher clock than the top end Intel P2. Also there is an interview on
HardwareCentral with an AMD exec talking about pricing on the AMD K7 next-gen CPU.
SpecOps 2 [4:15 pm]
GamersDepot has a look at the sequel to SpecOps
which was pretty damn cool, if you havent had a chance to check out the original I
recommend spending an afternoon and having a look.
Messiah [4:15 pm]
Review-Zone sends word of a new preview of Messiah
from Shiny Entertainment. Havent checked it out though since I'm in a rush. :)
More Quake3 Footage [4:15 pm]
A bit late but oh well, AGN
has possted a bit more footage of the
Quake3 demo which was showing on the GDC floor a few weeks ago. The first 45 seconds
or so of the movie is new footage though. Thanks fRy.
.WAV Of The Day [5:15 am]
It would be a crime for you guys to miss out on listening to this .wav
file that SailorScout and a
friend put together depicting the meeting of a scientest from Half-Life meeting up with
the Crack Whore from Quake2. Samples from KingPin were used for the whore. :) Also
speaking of stuff like this the 3rd 3dfx
commercial is available online. Thanks Michael
Q3Test Details [5:15 am]
Well as we all know Q3Test still isnt
out, In addition to the details on
maps and weapons I posted on this Q3Test article, Rob Watts got a couple more details
and fired them off to VoodooExtreme Here is the quick
summary:
Q3Test will be about 16.5 megs to download
The planned release is just to upload it to ftp.idsoftware.com and let it spread from there
Most of the screenshots out there were taken on Intergraph or TNT equipped machines
Unreal Tournament Skins [5:15 am]
Shane Caudle, an incredibly talented contract worker
for Epic Games who does art, levels, and anything else you can think of has put together a nice article
taking a look at the technology they are using for the player skins in Unreal
Tournament and what you the user would have to do to go about creating one.
Views [5:15 am]
Tech [5:15 am]
Gaming [5:15 am]
werd
So I did a late night poll last night asking for some
feedback and ideas on directions I should be taking my little stop on the internet.
Basically the suggestions (aside from the pleads for porn) were fairly evenly spread. A
lot of good points and ideas were brought up, and assuming things go smoothly a couple of
them will be available before the end of the month.
Oh yeah, looks like that Romero Interview didnt go over so well on the Daikatana Messageboard.. ouch.
Lastly, as I've been having "creative issues" coming up with RTL.. it's time for a change! The new topic will be "I wish I could..." this Friday.
| Sunday, April 4 |
John Romero [7:35 pm]
Beyond3D sends word of a new interview which John Romero talks
about the state of affairs at Ion Storm and of course Daikatana which we saw a DM only
MPlayer demo released a few weeks back.
3.Daikatana seems very promising, and from what we've seen of it at the shows, it is. However, some of the response from the multiplayer release wasn't the greatest. In the final game, what will make Daikatana rock?
Daikatana is a huge FPS game that takes place in 4 different time periods, each with its own complete assortment of environments, monsters, weapons and artifacts. This massive variety will be something no one has experienced in an FPS in addition to the sidekicks Superfly and Mikiko. The only real negative we have heard about the multiplayer is the fact that people wished there was an Internet/LAN version in addition to the MPlayer version. However, we released that version exclusively for use in the MPlayer tournament.
TGI Results [2:15 pm]
Well it looks like Lakerman has indeed won the TGI Tournament. The TGI coverage and
information hasnt been exactly plentiful, however FPS
Spectator got an email from Dohnut who was at the event and forwarded a great summary
of all the results, here is a bit of it:
I agree about TGI coverage, I can't believe how slow they are to post stuff, plus they only post like half the information anyway--there are several matches from day 1 they haven't got around to posting the results of anywhere (and probably never will, knowing how such things go...), they're like "you should be in IRC, that's the best place to find out"--but of course if you miss it, nobody can be bothered to tell you the results after the fact.
As you know there were two brackets of 5 players each. The games were 15 min with no powerups. DM2 and DM4 were DMM3, DM6 was DMM1. The top two finishers in each bracket would go onto the playoffs. For each best 2 out of 3 matchup, each player had their choice of level, and a coin was flipped to see whose level would be played first.
Savage4 [2:15 pm]
Wondering if the S3 guys can compete with the TNT2
and Voodoo3? Check out
the new preview at this Savage page which lists of the specs of the card which looks
to me like it will probably compete with the V3 2000 but not the TNT2 or V3-3500. Saw the
link on VE
No Quake3 This Weekend [1:45 am]
As a follow-up to the .plan
update tease from John Cash which seems to be getting everyone up in a huff, fRy a
frequenter of the Quake3 messageboard
was kind enough to forward this word from Graeme Devine of id Software saying you can
relax this weekend, cuz Q3Test isnt coming out just yet.
It's not tonight or this weekend, we're almost there, but not yet.
Graeme Devine
True Gamers Invitational [1:45 am]
The largest international Quake1 1on1 tournament ever
is going on right now (Minus Americans, oops my fault). I suggest you guys head over to
the Truegamers page and check out their
coverage on the event. Here is a bit of just what is going down. Also speaking of
Quake1 check out Jokey's remake
of DM3.
Despite almost all games was played Xenon still got two left and if he should win both of them (against Lakerman and Reload) we would have three players at a tie in Group A. However, if he'll pull it off against Lakerman and not Reload the situation is totally opposite. Only time will tell who will come out on top in this group.
Group B is alot different since the winners of that group is already decided by shear skills. Kane came out on top today with zero losses and is without doubt very likely to take away the TGi trophee tommorow afternoon. Sectopod is the runnerup and has slowly been progressing ever since his first game today, people refers to him as a "sicko" and "fucking wild norwegian", which are so very true in this context.
New QTracker [1:45 am]
Word from QTracker
is a new public beta of the server browser has been released with the as-always
bug fixes plus some extra work done for people who use multiple subnets on their LAN.
Views [1:45 am]
Tech [1:45 am]
We’re ready to go mainstream with this. From a technology standpoint, it’s all complete. There’s no tearing on the screen, it is to the point where it appears seamless right now.
Gaming [1:45 am]
werd
Sorry about not getting an update done before I took
off yesterday, ended up leaving a lot sooner than I had planned on. Grrr. I'll be picking
up a lap top and cell modem some time before E3 though. Stuff like this should become a
thing of the past.
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