Quake3
CLICK HERE FOR UP TO DATE NEWS
| Friday, August 14 |
Still In Seattle [2:11pm]
Made a visit to Monolith yesterday to check out SHOGO
along with a few other of their titles, also had some lengthy talks with Steve Bond about
AI in Half-Life along with a chat with Yahn about multiplayer stuff. (Fear not, Half-Life
does not do that wretched 10tics per second server stuff like Q2) Here be "news in
the raw" for you guys again.
As most people know the recently held Death Row vs Clan [9] match did not represent the best players from both countries. ClanRing is looking to remedy that and is putting together an effort to form the best teams from different countries. NetQuake or QW though is still a question, but selecting the best TEAM players in America is an even tougher one. Representatives of the various countries will be meeting within the next week, to finalize the rules and platform. If you have a company interested in sponsoring the international event, or have input / suggestions. Drop Ignatu a line at ignatu@idle.com
Zoid of id Software made a .plan update yesterday that is of interest to just about all of us.
I've been doing some work on the Linux ports of Quake and Quake2. There are several different versions floating around out there with some problems in each and some outstanding bugs. I'm ratifing all the ports to use a common set of code for video, audio and input.
The www.unreal.com website has been revamped.
GamesMania has posted a new review of Dungeon Keeper Gold
The Direct 3D version of DK is great, particularly when you possess a creature for a 1st person look at your dungeon.
Next-Gen has posted a new preview of Klingon Honor Guard which uses the Unreal technology.
The game is from Microprose, and uses the Unreal engine to create a first-person Star Trek experience. Gamers must thrust themselves into the political upheaval of the Klingon Empire, where an assassination attempt on Gowron, leader of the High Council, has left the Empire vowing revenge.
Although pretty old, (from February) some people may have not seen this Daikatana movie which shows quite a bit of footage of the characters from the game over at Daikatana.com
This is the Daikatana promotional video that Jake Hughes made for ION Storm’s office-warming party this past February. This clip, Jake says, "is half Quake I, half Quake II (engine) stuff. We had just changed over."
Some of the concept art from Trespasser has shown up at Trespasser Central for those of you interested in the origins of the game.
A lot of people still don't know what Anne will probably look like except for her arm :) well Brad posted in the Forum links to some concept art of Anne from a issue of NextGen which some people may not have seen. Here they are (click on them for larger versions):
Here is a .plan update from Scott Miller discussing recent developments with Duke4
Duke Nukem movie make a big leap yesterday. The most recent story draft is finally something that represents what we've been looking for. We (Threshold and 3D Realms) have been molding and rewriting this thing for six months, but now we have a concept that excites us, and therefore we think will excite Duke fans. Can't talk about details this early--sorry for the tease. ; )
OGR has gotten a hold of 8 new screenshots of Heretic2 which are looking cool.
Word on the Aftershock page is that Half-Life from Valve Software and TF Software will be showing their new TF2 mod at an upcoming LAN party being held in Toronto Canada. The event is on August 28th and runs till the 30th.
What will make Duke Forever more fun than the many other first person games such as Unreal,
| Thursday, August 13 |
Heh [11:58am]
Er, more difficulties than I thought associated with
getting to my page. Cool that I broke it huh? Here is some raw news I mooched from some
other pages out there just in case you guys are URL challenged. Gotta interview the AI
dude for Half-Life right now. Should have some nifty content for you guys later.
A new interview with Scott Miller has shown up at Outpost21
What will make Duke Forever more fun than the many other first person games such as Unreal, Quake 2 and Half-Life?
[1] Duke Nukem himself.
[2] Many unseen gameplay innovations.
[3] Superior environments that are interactive and realistic.
[4] Superior multiplayer.
In case you had hopes of Unreal matching the quality of QuakeWorld for online play, don't count on it. Here is a post from Mark Rein on the megaboard
Will the next patch give us Quakeworld quality performance?
Probably not.
The next patch will hopefully take most of those people having totally unplayable situations to something that is at least bearable. It will also give us a massive amount of useful diagnostic information in the form of the internet play logs we will collect from people having problems. That feedback will be quickly (yes, I know we haven't done anything quickly before :-) ) incorporated into a another small test patch and then we'll be getting into a large client and server-side patch that will hopefully being us close to or on par with Quakeworld quality internet play.
A new preview with screenshots for Turok2 is posted over at AVault.
The Matrox Users page has posted some more Quake2 benchmarks of their G200 card.
The Messiah Technology page has posted some new info on the project from Shiny.
The background engine is based on sets. One set is like one room. Rooms are connected by portals. Everything is streamed from the harddrive, so we change the textures constantly over the course of one level. Even between two rooms there are usually massive changes.
The Intel OWNers club has posted a new interview with Tim Sweeney of Epic who is hard at work on the new version of Unreal.
A: First of all, Unreal's visibility algorithm (which determines which part of the world needs to be rendered each frame) is very CPU intensive. This approach is somewhat slower than previous-generation engines, but enables us to have huge outdoor environments like Bluff Ever Smoking and The Sunspire, where the player can often see a quarter mile or more off into the distance.
A new article has shown up on GameSpot discussing Ultima Ascension which has been under fire a bit recently.
The latest edition of Heretic2 Designer Diary has been posted over at OGR.
Activision has posted some more information on their website about Heretic2 which we should be able to get our grubby hands on within a couple o months.
We have been working on some new water effects that are pretty unique. As you would expect, the water is all transparent. The transparency levels can be changed by the designer when he places the texture.
Tony Tamasi at 3dfx made a post to a techstocks messageboard talking about the new rev3 Voodoo2 card that they have been working on
3. I've been reading a lot of RUMORS about a V2 rev. 3 chipset, supposedly spec'd at 125 Mhz. While I see no reason to doubt this is possible, I have yet to get any confirmation. Could you clarify please?
A:We have developed a new board design (the rev-3 board) that makes better utilization of memory, and does run substantially faster if populated with faster memory. We are working with >OEM's to help them bring this new board to market, but the >chipset is unchanged.
| Tuesday, August 11 |
Klingon Honor Guard Movie [10:24pm]
Redwood via Cyrellis has word that a new movie with footage from the
Unreal tech licensed Klingon Honor Guard title has been released. Here is a link
to the movie on cdrom.com, and another link from
Redwood's page.
Duke4 Teamplay [4:24pm]
3D Realms' George Broussard took a moment this
afternoon to respond to the recent speculation about team play modes in Duke Nukem
Forever. Check out his response to 3D Portal's Duke4ever.com
Savage3D [4:24pm]
Fastgraphics.com has posted a new review of the Savage3D 2D/3D card. -VE
Talking about that performance, it's really good... The 3D part outperforms the G200 chipset from Matrox on most 3D benchmarks, though in 2D the G200 is superior. OpenGL performance is really good too. There wasn't a MCD OPENGL32.DLL file supplied with this card, but it ran Quake II quite OK with the standard OPENGL32.DLL file located in the WINDOWS/SYSTEM directory.
Prax War Shot [4:24pm]
Just got word from the guys at www.boatrocker.com (and Red, :) )that Randy Pitchford sent a new image and
they have posted it (of course!) The image is of Prax War which shows off curved surfaces
among other things.
Oh, btw Austin Powers2 is officially anounced now. Dig on www.austinpowers.com
ION Happenins [4:24pm]
The www.ionstorm.com
website is being updated with a series of interviews with different level designers
working there. The first guy up to bat is Cleaner Namaksy.
IDGamma [4:24pm]
A new version of the gamma correction utility for
RIVA128 cards for all you Quake / Quake2 / Hexen2 players has been released. Check out the homepage. -VE
No Wait, Savage3D Rules! [1:44pm]
From AGN: Not to be
outdone by 3dfx, The S3 guys have their own press release
telling us how cool the Savage3D is now
S3 Incorporated today announced it has entered volume production with Savage3D and was awarded top honors by Mercury Research for delivering the highest frames per second on real world game applications.
Testing based on Incoming from Rage Software and Turok from Acclaim Entertainment showed that Savage3D delivers nearly 33 percent higher frame rates on Turok and nearly 22 percent higher frame rates on Incoming than its nearest competitor 3DFX Voodoo 2 and Voodoo Banshee.
Shugashack.com [9:54am]
If you happen to run a website that links to my page, please
update your links to the shugashack.com URL. The vrgames.net forwarding address
just went down and has put a hefty dent in my traffic. Spank you very much.
Heretic2 Images [9:54am]
Blue has scored 3
new screenshots of Heretic2 which you guys should take a look at. Shot1, Shot2, and Shot3. Blue has also
posted the original TGA formats for you image quality buffs. TGA1, TGA2, TGA3 (They are 2megs
a piece)
Weekly Section [9:54am]
Tuesday's
section is now updated. Thanks for all the email about these sections recently, and no
I'm not taking bong hits when I write them. :)
Inside Xatrix [9:54am]
From Cyrellis:
The eXscape ladies have posted an in-depth look at
software developer Xatrix. You know these guys from
their Redneck Rampage series, and more recently, The Reckoning a Quake II add-on pack. Check it out here.
FAQ You [9:54am]
SHOGO Shots [9:54am]
In addition to those shots on GA, I saw on Cyrellis
that Monolith has posted shots
of all the main characters to be in the game.
No Unreal Engine Jedis [7:24am]
It seems that the rumors that Dark Forces 3 (Jedi
Knight 2) will be using Unreal Technology are false. The Jedi Knight Outpost did
some digging, and found out that LucasArts does not intend to use the Unreal engine.
Speaking of those Jedi dudes, jediknights.net has just opened up a new messageboard for you to play with.
We've learned that the PC Gamer UK report regarding a Dark Forces 3 is indeed false. All future Star Wars titles will be based upon the upcoming prequel movies. With regard to the rumor of LucasArts having purchased the Unreal engine for use in a future title, the sources stress that LucasArts has a strong policy of not using engines created outside the company. LEC does have another first person shooter in the works, using an original engine. However, details on that title are very sketchy at this time.
Quake3 Release Date [7:24am]
Heh, funny how this works. It seems Babbages knows when id Software is
going to finish Quake3. I'd recommend that all you other developers out there email them
to find out when your game will be complete as well. Thanks Jason
"Quake 3 (PC) 1/05/99"
Unreal [7:24am]
Mark Rein has another status update for us
for Unreal
OpenGL - The first test release (which we should really call an alpha) should be this week or next week. There are still a few things that need to be worked out but I've asked Dreamforge to prepare release notes describing all known issues and some performance and configuration recommendations. Right now it works pretty well on Rendition and Intel is apparently very close on new drivers that provide good performance on i740. This is good news.
Direct3D - No additional news right now. Now that DX6 is released things should start moving along on D3D.
Multiplayer - Tim is still working hard on this. I believe he's finished his portion of the next patch and is working with Green Marine on some server querying issues. I'm not going to venture an estimate except to say that the next multiplayer patch is pretty close.
We're going to improve the feedback loop on future multiplayer patches by creating a form users can fill out on our web site. It will be used for users to describe their system, their connection and the specific problem they're experiencing.
Tim has also put in the ability to log internet play sessions to a text file. That file, like the Unreal.log file, will provide us with all kinds of important technical data pertaining what's going on inside Unreal's multiplayer. If people experience problems with internet multiplayer they can email this to us and it will provide us with a detailed log of what was happening when the problems occurred. This should help us find solutions to internet multiplayer problems more quickly in the future.
More Unreal [7:24am]
Got this email from HardwareTechs:
Hello, This morning HardwareTechs was asked to remove the Mark Rein interview, because he claims this: "That interview was NOT an accurate transcript of what I said and therefore I've asked the site to take the interview down.
The interviewer didn't seem to understand my reply that Unreal's internet play problems have nothing to do with speed. In fact the root of the problem is that we're actually going too fast for many peoples' connections which floods their connection with the server which in-turn cause dropped packets and jerky performance. Tim's new network code is more conservative."
We at HardwareTechs have just posted a statement located right here: statement.html
Return To Low Res [7:24am]
Check out this article on Redwood's page which
says we should all stick to 640x480 for a bit by Kraemer. That is of course until games
come out with higher texel density.
SIN vs Half-Life [7:24am]
3DGN has recieved a good deal of criticism (hehe) about
the Sin vs Half-Life debate.
Why are they having a debate about two games that haven't been released? Is 3DGN the first
site to encourage the judging of unreleased games? They try clear up the answers to these
questions and many others in this article
Views [12:34pm]
Tech [12:34pm]
werd
*UnF!*
Aziz! LIGHT!
| Monday, August 10 |
Dark Forces 3 & Unreal Tech? [2:14pm]
Probably my personal favorite FPS single player
experience on the PC (JK2), check out this blurb from JediKnight.net Via VE
An interesting post has appeared on the MegaBoard quoting a passage from the September issue of UK PC Gamer - SALE OF THE CENTURY Epic reap Unreal rewards
Unreal's engine is now the most popular choice for developers choosing to create 3d games. Having arguably surpassed Quake IIs technology, many companies are buying into the Unreal code - literally. The games currently causing Epics tills to ker-ching include: <snip> ...but also rumoured to be using the engine are Dark Forces 3: Jedi Master(LucasArts)
SIN Pack [2:14pm]
Many of you probably remember the 2015 guys mentioning on their page that they were working on a
SIN mission pack a while back, well word has filtered out from Activision now
Gamers rejoice! Activision has signed a pact with developer 2015, Inc. to create the mission pack for Ritual Entertainment’s Sin. The official Sin-ful add-on will be designed and developed in conjunction with Ritual and will be published by Activision. The mission pack is expected to feature 13 new levels, a freshly created storyline and a slew of killer weapons and monsters.
Sin Project Manager, Joe Selinske said, We really wanted to expand on the characters and dynamic story elements in Sin and decided that there was no better way to do that than with a carefully crafted, all-action add-on pack.
Banshee Soon?[12:34pm]
Finally we might get to play with these vid cards
everyone is talking about. Here is a quote from an email BillyW
got
I called my local EB and they confirmed that the Diamond Fusion was showing a delivery date of 10/15/98 w/ a price of $149. He did not have the Creative Labs Banshee listed and had no info on it..
More Views [12:34pm]
3dfx Banshee [11:54am]
From VE Here is a press
release sent out by 3dfx telling us how cool the Banshee is.
3Dfx Interactive(R) Inc. (Nasdaq: TDFX - news) today announced that its newly introduced Voodoo Banshee(TM) chip for 2D and 3D graphics has earned the top score of 1290 in Ziff Davis' 3D Winbench 98(R) according to tests run by Mercury Research, a leading PC market research company, eclipsing a score from the next closest product by 100 points. The tests were run using an alpha version of the software drivers and a beta version of the chip. Results on final shipping drivers and the final version of the chip are expected to be higher.
Suckage [11:54am]
It has arrived. The weekly bitch fest. Oh, and just for giggles apparently my routing
to 75% of the net is down. Kinda hinders news. =/
SIN vs Half-Life [6:24am]
As it looks more and more like both games will be
released within a couple of weeks of each other, 3DGaming.net wants to hear your
thoughts before we've really seen Half-Life. I've got a trip to Valve this wednesday
scheduled, and hopefully I can squeeze into Ritual to take a few more looks at SIN as well
so I can do my own comparisons for you guys.
Links [10:18am]
I'll be damned, it only took me a month to update the links section but I did it! Still have to
flesh out a few of the sections a bit more but this is better than it was, ok? Keep in
mind I've omitted a lot of pages that I kind of feel you guys wouldnt really take a 2nd
look at. If you want your page added to the links, make sure it's a quality page. (yea, I
should talk.. heh) Finally getting to the suckage right now. 1more hr.
Gruntz [6:24am]
From 3DNews.net: A secret Monolith game under the name
of Gruntz has just been officially announced. Check out what Blood2's Jay Wilson has to
say about it "I've been avoiding the versions floating around here because it's just
too addictive, and hilarious, and I don't have the time to spare. :)" No word on a
release date yet, but you can see a few screenshots right
here. Thanks to Trevor Hateley from 3DGN for this info.
TNT Love [6:24am]
Blue has posted his RivaTNT benchmarks online
with comparisons to the Voodoo2 and planned Voodoo2 SLI benchmarks in Quake, Quake2,
Incoming, and Forsaken. He used a demo from my pov in Quake1! w00!
When I had a fresh Win98 install at my disposal after my hard disk crashed, I couldn't resist going back and re-running all the numbers. Rigorous testing in the Blue Labs (I've got the combat sequences in these benchmark demos memorized) showed the lone Voodoo2 to outperform the TNT in Quake and Quake II, while the TNT outperformed the V2 in Incoming and Forsaken.
Riva3D.com has posted a new review of the RIVATNT which is short and sweet
All primitive tests were performed with 24 bit Z-Buffer at 32 bit color depth at 800x600 resolution. While the TNT performed admirably as an OpenGL card, it wasn't quite as up to speed when compared with other high end OpenGL cards. But considering that the TNT wasn't designed as a high end OpenGL card, the performance was good enough for it to be considered as a valid alternative for the budget minded or hobbyist...
Voodoo & DirectX 6 [6:24am]
Voodoo
Extreme has a quote from Eric Johnson of 3dfx in
reference to new drivers from 3dfx that take advantage of DirectX6
We should have optimized DX6 drivers for Voodoo2 around the beginning of October. Most games currently available don't take advantage of the new features in DX6. We expect to see the first titles that really use DX 6 features to ship in time for Christmas, and we'll have you covered by then.
Erik Johnson
Software Product Manager
3Dfx Interactive
Quick3D [6:24am]
An OpenGL model viewer, Quick3D has been updated. You can
view .dxf, .vtk, and Quake1/2 models in the viewer.
Version 1.0 BETA is now available. This version adds format support for .dxf, .vtk, and Quake 1&2 models, and also has an improved user interface.
Views [6:24am]
Thief is unique in just about every aspect, from story to AI to the nuances of its gameplay. It's ambitious, to say the least. If anyone can succeed at this, however, Looking Glass can. Thief may not appeal to the frag-a-minute action crowd, but its atmosphere and flat-out depth should create a gaming experience the likes of which has not been seen in years.
Tech [6:24am]
I work at Cyrix and saw your "petition" for 3DNow support in Cyrix's next-generation chips using the Jalepeno core. The current products in testing which use the Cayenne core already have support for the 3DNow instruction set. Jalepeno will undoubtedly support it. If you remember, Cyrix had developed their own 3D instruction set enhancements, but since AMD came to market first and Microsoft would only support one non-Intel 3D instruction set, Cyrix is implementing the market-accepted standard.
Apparently, the G200 and Voodoo2 have neighboring memory addresses. This wouldnt be a problem except for that one of the cards is using more than it says and the addresses are overlapping, causing crashes and lockups and really slow 2D.
werd
Gotta get some suckage to you guys now too huh? I feel
so used..
oh, btw I've gotten a number of emails about this. The Clan R3V page is at werd.com/r3v (updated) and also r3v.gibbed.com
| Sunday, August 9 |
Bleh [4:43pm]
Weekends are slow, yes?
Urban Assault [12:13pm]
GameStats has snagged a beta copy of Urban Assault and
put it through the paces. Check out their
preview
The date is 2017. The future, and pretty much the near future. You mind fills with visions of robot servants and flying cars. Well, stop it. This isn't a George Orwell novel. The year is 2017, and you are in command of the creation and control of the most formidable military power ever seen on the planet. The only problem with this is that your enemy isn't from this planet. Does your situation seem bad enough?
Blood2 [10:13am]
Jay Wilson updated his .plan talking
about some user input he received from a previous update a couple of months back.
About a month or so ago I posted a message on the Blood forum asking everyone whether they would prefer to be able to play as all four of the Chosen in single player, or just Caleb. I must stress that removing the other three characters (Ophelia, Gabriella, Ishmael) from the game was NEVER an option, and never will be. Lots of people on the forum jumped to this conclusion, but that is not the case. Regardless of which way we decided to go we always planned to keep all four characters for multiplay,
<snip>
Trespasser Shots [10:13am]
Trespasser
Central has gotten a hold of a pair of new screenshots. I'll slap one up here but you
gotta hit their page for the other.
Voodoo2 Rev3 [10:13am]
Billy over
at VE is doing a bit of speculation about upcoming stuff we can hope to see from 3dfx
which sounds pretty on the ball to me:
Voodoo2 rev3 board will allow the use of 125MHz RAM (or rather up to 125MHz, who knows if any vendor will use this speed), which should give rev3 V2 boards somewhere in the range of a 20 - 35% increase in performance (assuming you're not CPU limited) over current V2 boards. Theoretically the clock speed on the cards could reach 110MHz - 125MHz from the default 90MHz (with proper cooling). I'll try to dig up more on this, just something to keep your mouth wet and you're booty dry. Of course, if I'm way wrong about all of this
CHAOS Leaves Ritual [10:13am]
Another Ritual departure, this time talented model
animator Mike Werckle who joined Ritual to work on SIN2. Mark Dochterman's made a .plan update which seems
resemble statements made by Ritual after the departure of "Uber Programmers"
Gary McTaggart and Charlie Brown.
Mike Werckle has headed back up north. He is pursuing a freelance job in Chicago which will last approximately 3 months. At the end of that time he may come back to rejoin the tribe. His leaving was amicable and we wish him the best of luck.
DirectX 6 [10:13am]
In case you are wary of downloading
DirectX 6 still, check out Gamers
Alliance's review of DirectX 6. My short review, It's great stuff.
Performance, we all want it, and we all know that only real way to it is through a supped up P2 400 with a pair of Voodoo 2’s. Alas, again, that’s not reality, and mortgaging off your house for a PC is just senseless.
New PingTool [10:13am]
For you ant-GameSpy freaks out there, this is for you.
A new version of PingTool has been released. A new
domain and everything!
Views [12:24pm]
Tech [12:24pm]
werd
Stinking butt monkey ass video card just fried for no
damn reason early this morning. BAH. Did I mention how much the 2D image quality bites ass
on a RIVA128? Man I hope the TNT doesnt look like this. UGH.
Btw, I fixed the click-through on the ads for my page. Sorry about that. I didnt eat last night! heh
| 3DNews.net | Last Weeks News | copyright Steve Gibson 1998 |