Don't cry if you do not have a Mac, becuase there's always THIS!

[Majesty's note: Sander, WTF you doin' on my turf? You lucky this is just Mac bidness.

BTW, If any of you get this thing running on your Mac (especially those of you with the new blue and white G3s w/ Rage128), feel free to drop me a line all about your orgasmic experience.]

More Colorado [5:00 pm] - Marcus 'Majesty' Yam
This weekend is going sloooow on the news (woohoo!), so I thought I would post some more stuff on the shootings, and all the finger pointed at video/pc games. The first view that we are all sick of is that games are bad ("mmmkay?"). The second, more realistic and rational one (thanks Brian) is that blaming games is just an easy way out of solving a larger problem. I actually have a pretty big opinion about this, but it'd be better saved for an editorial/rant of some sort.

Speaking of violent games of death(match), 3DGN and FiringSquad had their little showdown. Any guesses on the outcome?

Carmack raps on WhyMac [5:00 am] - Marcus 'Majesty' Yam
So it's true, Mac first. This is really understandable, given how many of us would jump on the Win32 version, find a bug, and flood id Software with the same bug reports that they have gotten from another million people. As always, I get a huge kick outta John's .plan updates:

We are finally closing in on the first release of Q3test.

As you have probably heard by now, the first release in going to be the mac version, probably followed by the linux version, and only then the windows version.

Some of you are busy getting all bent out of shape about this.

We want to get a lot of people playing with the test to find bugs and offer well thought out suggestions, but there are classes of bugs and suggestions that emerge in each order of magnitude of exposed testers.

If a given bug is going to show up when a thousand people have looked at it, but we had released it to a hundred thousand people, then we are going to have a lot of duplication to wade through.

The mac testers will find some obvious problems.
We will fix them.
The later releases will be better.

Even if we had the windows distribution ready to go right now, I would still seriously consider releasing one of the mac or linux versions first because it will make our tracking a lot easier.

The holdup on the windows side are the issues with updated driver distribution. The game itself doesn't have any holdups.

We could do a windows release for just, say, voodoo2 owners and get some of the benefit of a controlled release, but it wouldn't really work out, because everyone would figure out that it can be made to (almost) work on lots of other cards by tweaking some values. That type of feedback would not be useful, because we KNOW that there are problems with most of the current drivers. We have been working with all of the vendors for the past year to get them all straightened out.

Glsetup is going to be slick -- just run it and it will Do The Right Thing for your video configuration.

We hope it will be done soon, but there are factors out of our direct control involved.

Don't be spiteful. This is just the beginning of the testing and release process.


One conspiracy theory suggests that Apple is somehow getting us to do this.

What we have "gotten" from Apple is a few development machines. No cash payoff. No bundling deal. No marketing contract.

I am looking at this long term. I want to see OS X become a top notch platform for graphics development. I think highly of the NEXTSTEP heritage and I might move my development from NT if it turns out well. There is a lot of groundwork that needs to be laid with apple for this to happen, and my working on the mac right now is part of that. Plus a lot of complaining to various apple engineers and executives. :-)

To be clear:

At this time, there is no mac that is as fast for gaming (or just about anything, actually) as a pentium III with a top of the line 3D card. Period. I have been misquoted by some mac evangelists as saying otherwise.

The new (blue and white) G3 systems are very good systems in many ways, and make a perfectly good gaming platform. However, a high end wintel machine just has more horsepower on both the CPU and the 3D card.

A 400 mhz G3 performs about the same as a 400 mhz PII if they aren't fill rate limited, where the faster cards on the PC will give about a 25% advantage. A 500 mhz PIII with an appropriate card in 30% faster than the best mac you can buy.

The multi colored iMacs, old G3 desktops, and powerbooks can play Quake3, but the RagePro 3D acceleration defines the absolute bottom end of our supported platforms. A serious gamer will not be satisfied with it.

Voodoo cards are not currently supported by the OpenGL driver, which is very unfortunate because many serious mac gamers own voodoo cards. I hope Apple and 3dfx will be able to correct this soon, but I certainly understand Apple's prioritization -- obviously, good support for the OEM video options is of primary importance.

The voodoo performance will still lag the windows platform by some amount, but some strides have been made in that area recently, so I expect good performance,

Gaming is not a reason to buy a mac, but Apple is taking steps so that it may not be a reason to avoid a mac if you have other reasons for wanting one.

MacOS still sucks.

Understandably, there is the need for a controled test. Thanks yohann.

Q3ATest board [4:40 am] - Marcus 'Majesty' Yam
Christian of id Software has made an update regarding the opening of a Test board (in addition to our msgboards):

I've written a message board for use in discussing the impending Q3Test releases. It's primary function will be a central place for you to post bugs so that we can quickly peruse the boards and see what some of the main problems are. It's still in development, there are a few problems that I still need to iron out, but it's mostly functional.

I'm interested in seeing how it performs under a high load. I originally  used MS Access MDB format, but became frustrated with file locking issues with a minimal load of activity, so I spent most of the afternoon today installing MS SQL Server 7 and adjusting the code to work with it. Coming from a database background (Oracle at my previous job), I was quite impressed with SQL Server 7. Really easy to set up, and the performance seems very good.

Anyway, if you want to beat on it, it's temporarily located at;

http://underworld.idsoftware.com/cgi-win/webcon.exe/

If any of you would like to use that as a discussion forum, and generate some data for the database, I'd appreciate it. If you find any serious bugs or get any error messages, please post in the "Q3Test: Bugs" forum.

The board will be moderated by id staff to retain it's focus. For general Quake 3 discussion, I highly recommend the Quake 3 messageboard at sCary's Shack

Can't get to it? Neither can I! Pass the time in our "highly recommended" Quake 3 msgboard.

Update 6:00am: Works now, musta been a blip.

A little more Devine-The Mac?! [4:20 am] - Marcus 'Majesty' Yam
Graeme has once again updated the plan (thanks EViLz), but this letting us know that the Mac Q3Test will be ready before the Linux or Win32 versions. The whole thing:

The test is not coming out tonight, but we do have a Macintosh candidate ready to go. If all goes well tonight, it will be out over the weekend. The Linux/Win32 builds are not yet ready.

The test version of Quake 3 Arena is just that, a test, and as such we here at id software need to have some controls over it as we start to test it out publicly. Without these controls we cannot actively track and improve the product in a manageable manner.

We wanted, and are eager to be completely "out there" on all platforms, but the OpenGL drivers the product needs for all the platforms are not yet finalized. By launching on the Mac first it gives the various 3D board manufacturers some time to get their Win32 OpenGL 3D drivers certified with Microsoft. We're using, and depend on, the latest and greatest drivers and want to be able to distribute those drivers for the Win32 platform.

The Macintosh market is smaller than the Win32 market, and has less configuration options than the Linux market. There is only a single OpenGL driver, and the hardware is essentially always the same. This is an ideal "controlled" environment for the initial testing. Basically, if there is a huge issue with the initial release we're exposing a smaller audience to it. This turns out to be a good thing.

The plan is to release the Macintosh version first, followed by the Linux version, followed by the Win32 version. We will release on the other platforms as soon as possible. We will rev the other platforms as we make new releases.

I hope you understand and agree with this decision/process. It is a good step towards a timely release of the full demo and retail product.

Views [10:55 am] - Marcus 'Majesty' Yam

• Colorado
  Jerry pointed me to this article on ZDNN. It's more the same old same old about how games like DooM all make us trained psychos. Hey, if they believe that shit, they should just wise up and keep their traps shut...we could kill 'em all.
  
  
• Kingpin Preview
  After playing the demo many times, this is a game that I MUST HAVE. Preview of it on IPG.
  
  

Tech [4:55 am] - Marcus 'Majesty' Yam

• P3 Xeon Roundup
  Review Zone has the goods on all 3 variations of the P3 Xeon 500. Good stuff for those who want to know how much cache size matters (after all does size matter?). Of course, if you are even thinking about buying one of these for your own personal applications, I suggest you donate to the Majesty Foundation.
  
  
• UMA on mem bandwidth
  Bill looks at the effects of UMA (unified memory architecture) video on memory bandwidth.
  
  

Misc. Gaming [10:55 am] - Marcus 'Majesty' Yam

• Girl Power? Chix in games!
  I dunno what inspired the creation of this site, but it basically highlights a bunch of female roles in the games of today. Many pics are included -- oh wait, that's what inspired it!
  
  
• New QTracker Beta
  New stuff - HTML Server list generation, enhanced TFC support.
  

y0 [4:00 am] - Marcus 'Majesty' Yam
Eh? How you guys doin? Originally planned to post some stuff, then go to sleep...but there was nuffin, so I slept. And it was good. Yes, I'm aware of the date bar problem, but that's Clay "Huntsman/Hunts Men" Mitchell's area.

BTW, I'm gonna bust a cap on any Mac user that taunts me with their slight lead on the Test.

I wonder if they could just release the Win32 Q3Test and cripple all of our email programs so that we can't flood their mail server...I could live with that.

Got Q3Test? [8:20 pm] - Marcus 'Majesty' Yam
We must be close. We have to be. It's a matter of need...The saw from the loon in blue that Graeme Devine is leading us just a little bit closer to the hole to trap the white rabbit:

No news is good news they say! We're still working hard to get the test out. If you could refer questions to me (zaphod@idsoftware.com) regarding the test I'd appreciate it, everyone else here is plenty swamped. Obviously if it's just "when?" then that is pretty hard to answer, because "when" will be as soon as it's done!

But watch this space and remember to follow the white rabbit.

And yes, I'm back after an emergency that I had leave for a period of about 3 weeks. I'm slowly recovering going through email and catching up on news etc...You'll be seeing a lot more of the Maj in the coming times! If there's anything that needs my immediate attention (as I may have missed something), please do not hesitate to email me :)

More Word [3:40 pm] - Jack
Hey guys. Just made a quicky little update for today before Huntsman and Maj (where are you?!) [I'm here and stuff...-Maj] take over for the weekend. I'll be down in Austin, while Steve'll be up in Wisconsin visiting the local Crips up there, as there's been rising Blood activity on the streets. Since Rick Johnson at Raven is a Crip too, Steve'll stop by there and come back with a huge preview and lots of ads on it.

Hope you all like my new VE and Blue's copy and paste icons. I didn't use them nearly as much as I thought, but c'est la vie.

I also got an email from Steve's mom about the car thing, and I would post it, but I'd have to censor it. Here's my favorite part, and probably Steve's:

Geez... I’d even give a couple hundred bucks for the pleasure of carting his ass around for a few days again, long as he would keep it washed.

I think I may update the Friday section in a couple hours if I don't leave to Austin by then.

Oh, and why aren't you watching Kilborn's show yet? It's really good stuff. It's on at 12:30/11:30 central on your local CBS affiliate.

Doom Legacy Alpha Testers? [3:40 pm] - Jack
Doom Legacy (a pretty cool Doom mod with freelook and such) is looking for alpha testers for their OpenGL version. As it seems Bruce Lewis' GLDoom project is on indefinite hold, this could be the only other OGL conversion project that can actually be completed.

UT Weapons Update [3:40 pm] - Jack
The Official Unreal Tournament page shows two new weapons off - The Sniper Rifle and the Rocket Launcher. Should I put a smartass comment here about originality, or just leave it be? It is nice of them to show us what's going on, though.

Star Wars Game Stuff [3:40 pm] - Jack
Ok, I know Steve can't give two shits about this, but, well, he's gone! Saint of Skinners found out these upcoming released from Best Buy:

PC - 5/29/99 - Episode 1: The Gungan Frontier - $29.99
PC - 5/29/99 - The Phantom Menace - $44.99
PC - 5/29/99 - Episode 1: Racer - $44.99
PC - 6/25/99 - Episode 1: Insider’s Guide - $29.99
PC - 10/30/99 - Force Commander - $49.99

Now, The Phantom Menace is, of course, the shooter/adventure title. "Racer" is the project that they were calling "Pod Racer" except for that the fact that a racer called 'Pod" is already out. Force Commander it an RTS, however, I'm not sure what The Gungun Frontier is. Anyone know?

MAKE.MONEY.FAST [3:40 pm] - Jack
This is neat. There's a UK PCGC contest being sponsored by Microsoft and AMD with 50,000 pounds worth of prizes. That's like, 5 billion dollars or something. Quake 2 and Unreal for the qualifiers, and Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament for the finals. Check it out.

Colorado Stuff [3:40 pm] - Jack
While most people are shunning press coverage of the Colorado stuff, it does affect people who play games. One of my friends on Team GameSpy who happens to be a computer freak and wear a black trenchcoat is now being treated like a total dick at school. I'm sure there's a lot of others being treated unfairly, and I'm sure some of you read this page. As such, I deem it newsworthy :)

So, with that said, here's a link to one of Eric Harris' doom mods right here.

Here's a parody of the Fox News Article that I linked yesterday.

Here's a really well written article from Salon doing what they do best - calling everyone else stupid.

Q&A on MDK2 [10:00 am] - Huntsman
GA Source has a Question and Answer bit up about Bioware's MDK2. It focuses on the lack of multiplayer in the game. This kinda bums me out. I played the original MDK and I though "You know, this would be reaaaally fun in multiplayer." But nobody listens to me :(

Q. With so many developers now focusing on multi-player support, iD with Quake III and GT with Unreal Tournament, why did you chose to exclude this from MDK2?

A. I really look at it as an opportunity. I don't have any less fun playing great single player games now that there are more multiplayer options available. Multiplayer games represent a totally different experience than single player games.

Asus V3800 TNT2 Review [10:00 am] - Huntsman
Asus made a pretty good TNT product, and Fast Graphics has a review up of Asus' TNT2 card. What do they think?

I'm not really excited about this card. The specs look very promising, but in real life it's all a bit disappointing. The 3D speed is very good, but not the best out there. Image quality is better than Voodoo 3, but Matrox G400 is certainly another bit better.

Guillemont 16MB TNT2 Review [10:00 am] - Huntsman
Still got that Voodoo 1 or that Riva 128? HEHEHEHHEHE LOSER! Oh, no, I'm just kidding, but if you don't have a huge wad of cash to blow but want the speed, check out Sharky Extreme's review of the low cost TNT2 card which will have a estimate retail price of $129.99 which  means it will be in the low 100's or 110's on the street.

K6-3 & V3000 Scores [10:00 am] - Huntsman
Got a K6-3? Thinking about one? Wondering how it reacts to those shiney new V3's? Check our Riva3D's score card of how it act in Quake2. Interesting, that spiffy "22 bit dithering" doesn't seem to cause a major performance hit. Anyway, go! Read!

Linux Distrib. Info [10:00 am] - Huntsman
You thinking about making the dive into that Linux fad? Wanna be k3wl? Me too. So I read this pretty intelligent report over at Planet IT (surprisingly, not part of the PQ network). It gives the low down on the major Linux distributions including Debian, SuSE Caldera and Red Hat.

Views [10:00 am] - Huntsman

• Starsiege Review
  Electric Games has a review of Dyanmix's upcoming Big Freaking Mech game, Starsiege.
  
  
• Seed Interview
  3D-Unlimited has an interview to Gabor of Human Software about the upcoming SEED. It's got it's on engine. The game looks to be a first person shooter about a pissed off Demon. Looks to have an actual story line!

Tech [3:30pm] - Huntsman and Jack

• Terratec Xlerate Pro
  Want a new sound card? Check out German company Terratec's Xlerate Pro. Extreme Hardware has a review up of the Vortex 2 based soundcard, giving it 8 out of 10. Stars or X's or smiley faces or something.
  
  
• Seed Interview
  3D-Unlimited has an interview to Gabor of Human Software about the upcoming SEED. It's got it's on engine. The game looks to be a first person shooter about a pissed off Demon. Looks to have an actual story line!
• Celeron @ 618mhz
  What happens when Tom's Hardware decides it want to REALLY overclock a Celeron? They give it to the boys at Kryotech for a quick deep freeze, and then run it back to the computer so they can grab some benchmarks before the ice melts, because they have that joker running at 618mhz. Eek.
• ABIT ZM6 Motherboard
  ABIT motherboards have been getting lots of talk lately. Here's one more review for you over at 3dhardware.net. They apparently dig it, even if it does have ISA slots on it.

werd [10:00 am] - Huntsman
Hello, my name is Huntsman and I'll be your host this weekend. sTeve's off in cheeseland (read: Wisconsin) checking out something cool. Hopefully he'll put a page up about what he sees. Anyway, I'll be your host in the morning for the next few days, and we'll have guest stars Marcus "Majesty/I'm a Potato" Yam and Jack "Morbid/I'm Steve's New Roomate and I have a HUGE FREAKING TV" Mathews who should be hitting you guys up with some news in the afternoon. Anyway, I hear your pleas about making the page not so bloated under Netscape and I'll be working on it ASAP. I promise.

Anachronox [7:45 pm]
Check out the GameSpot preview of Anachronox. Thanks Larry.

Levelord [7:15 pm]
The Hive has posted yet another interview. This time with Richard "Levelord" Gray of Ritual Entertainment working on the FAKK2 project right now. Speaking or Levelord, a new level of his has appeared over at Ritualistic.

Sorry about the server downtime, Lost a couple of IP addresses for a bit.

K6-3 [7:15 pm]
You want a AMD? Got a couple more reviews / previews of the latest AMD CPU for ya. Here is what Gamers Depot has to say about the 450mhz baby, as well as the WickedPC folks talking about the 550mhz deal. Saw those links on VE

Duke4 = Y2K? [4:55 pm]
WipeOut over at Duke Nukem Forver World sent this link to a post to a Yahoo messageboard by Scott Miller of 3DRealms which may surprise a number of people (Myself included). WipeOut is sure it was Scott.

To make clear:
Duke Nukem: Zero Hour for the N64 is set to be released by September this year.
Duke Nukem Forever will be a next year release.

LithTech2 Q&A [4:55 pm]
CGReview has posted a quick Q&A with Mike Dussalt of Monolith asking questions about the upcoming LithTech2 technology he is working on.

Deep Space Nine [4:55 pm]
The folks at CGO have cooked up a preview of the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine game which is worth taking a look at if you're a Trekkie.

Getting Primed Up For Tomorrow [1:49 pm] - Jack
Just making a test update in preparation for the copy-and-paste spree that I'll be laying on you guys tomorrow while Steve's out of town. Oh, if you guys could do me a lil favor, email Steve and convince him of the virtues of being a car owner. Then I won't have to cart his ass around all the time :)

Oh, and Mark brought up something interesting at lunch (for once <rimshot>). The fact that the kids in Colorado (one of which looks a lot like Randy Pitchford, btw) did stuff QUITE similar to the movie Heathers. Including killing Jocks, wearing black trenchcoats, and trying to blow up the school and stuff. Of course, news will keep on mentioning the stupid DooM connections.

GearBox Software [1:35 pm]
The GearBox Software page is now online (Thanks Jobe for the mail) which lists off the full team member list, as well as a description of their official Half-Life expansion pack.

In Half-Life: Opposing Force, players return to the Black Mesa Research Facility to engage in an entirely new episode of single player action and will be offered an enormous variety of new multiplayer content. Gamers play a soldier this time around, instead of Gordon Freeman. Having the option of playing on the opposing force, the player will experiment with a host of new military, experimental and alien weapons. Also a key feature will be to battle a fierce new alien race as well as interaction with more human characters

Being the super detective that I am, I also spotted Mike Wardwell on the employee list. The first non ex-RBR employee to be snatched up by GearBox to work on the project. Also, more importantly my roomate until about a week ago. :)

New Design [12:55 pm]
Yup, here it is. Ok well it seems most everything is fixed, aside from the .plan tracker which should hopefully be resolved soon. Gonna play with the sidebars quite a bit more, but I wanted to get this thing cuz I'm an impatient bastard. The new layout will filter back through the rest of the page next week.

Vampire: Masquerade Shots [11:55 am]
GA-Source has posted 3 new screenshots of the Nihilistic Vampire: Masquerade title. The engine technology is not a license, but in fact created internally by the programmers there. Looks pretty smoove.

AvP Trailer [11:05 am]
The Official Aliens versus Predator site has scored the official copy of the AvP trailer that is playing in theaters. It is a 20 meg download and is in QuickTime 3 format

More Colorado [10:55 am]
More email with links on the Colorado shootings. One of the most interesting is this image sent in by Anubis with the profile of the Wills guy which displays "Doom is the best game ever" As well as this drawing on CNN.com Jester sent in. There is also a MiningCo article on the subject Blue linked. As well as the obligatory "police link crime to computers" story.Note, I only link this stuff because I feel you guys would find it somewhat interesting. I certainly dont feel DooM or id Software are responsible at all for influencing these fruit cakes.

Nihilistic & LOD [10:55 am]
Rob Huebner has a pretty lengthy and interesting .plan update he made yesterday talking about the LOD technology and plans to integrate it into their Vampire: Masquerade title.

SIN v1.04 [10:55 am]
Yup, a new version of the SIN server patch. Here is word from Ritualistic: Thanks to General WarT for sending along the Wages of SiN 1.04 server patch (807kb) which adds "some spiffy new things from Sin 1.04 such as reduced weapon latency and client-side death messages, as well as adding a bit of it's own with Message of the Day support for multiplayer servers and the necessary handfull of misc. code tweaks.". He also sends the Wages of SiN 1.04 source code.

Speaking of SIN, here is a Wages of SIN review.

id Games Poll [10:55 am]
The Ars-Technica monkeys are having a little poll for those of you who want to share your opinion on your favorite id title. Speaking of polls that will be one of the new additions to the little shack here some time next month.

More Quake Toys [10:55 am]
The Resaurus page has been updated again with more info on those Quake3 toys. Even setting up a seperate page this time around.

Views [10:55 am]

• Anachronox
  Pete's Hardware has posted the 2nd part of their Ion Storm Anachronox preview now. Saw the link on VE
  
  
• Kenno Hoekstra - Raven
  CGReview takes Kenn Hoekstra aside for some Q&A action asking about Soldier of Fortune a bit, as well as the Raven Star Trek title in progress at the offices right now.
  
  
• Max Payne
  Must say I'm dying to see this game in action again. Max Payne from Remedy is previewed over at PCParadox which includes a good bunch of footage of the game collected from previous releases.
  
  
• CliffyB - Epic
  The recently opened Hive has their 2nd interview online now. This time CliffyB of Epic working on the Unreal Tournament answers a few quetions about UT and more.
  
• Michael R. - Raven
  SailorScout has a fairly long interview with one of the level designers from Raven Software
  
  
• Gathering of Developers
  Here is a GameSpot pictorial of the Gathering of Developers publishing group headed up by ex-ION CEO Mike Wilson.
  
  

Tech [10:55 am]

• PVR250 Not Delayed
  Well, it's not delayed anymore than it already was that is. The most recent fuss about the card not being on schedule has proven to just be a miscommunication. Check out the story on EETimes which is in fact false. The Neon250 will be out in June.
  
  

Gaming [10:55 am]

• Sony vs PSX Emulators
  Next-Gen has a report that Sony has won the latest round of court battles against Connectix, the guys behind the PSX emulator for the Macintosh.
  
  
• ClanLeague / World / Ladder
  The ClanLeague.com website is now open for business for those of you interesting in TRIBES tournies. There is also a ClanWorld tournament for Half-Life and TRIBES players, as well as ClanLadders.com which is handling tournaments for just about every game. Saw those on Blues
  
  

werd
Playing with the final touches for making the new page go live this morning. Huntsman loves to keep busy! His computer busted the other day which delayed things a bit. Maybe if I prod Clay enough he can get the Shackware update going today too.

Thanks for all the kind words on the counter rolling over. I got 3 different emails from guys saying they saw the 10,000,000 mark which leads me to believe the counter isnt very accurate.. Oh well.

Descent3 Demo [7:15 pm]
The folks at PC.IGN have gotten a hold of a new downloadable demo of Descent3 for checking out. There is multiplayer capability in the demo and it is a single level. It weighs in at a almost reasonable 36megs. Grabbing it myself right now, hope it's cool eh? Saw that on VE

DooM & Colorado [4:35 pm]
I've gotten a surprising amount of email from readers who noticed that the recent Colorado school shooting incedent by a couple of high school juniors may end up with the "violent computer games influence" tag on it. Have a look at the CNN article, and more specifically this picture of stuff being confiscated from the home of one of the suspects. Yup, those are DooM books. The CNN article also brings up that whole downloading how to build a bomb instructions on the internet. Apparently the internet is evil, but a library which contains the same information isnt a problem.

The hype about computer games being the culprit hasnt started yet, but knowing the press and CNN, one can anticipate it will be just around the corner.

update: Here is a Washington Post article JohnM sent along which brings up the computers a bit more. It's coming!

Half-Life Mission Pack [2:15 pm]
GA-Source has posted an interview with Randy Pitchford of Gearbox Software giving a bit of information on Gearbox and the expansion pack they are working on:

In Half-Life: Opposing Force, players return to the Black Mesa Research Facility to engage in an entirely new episode of single player action, what are some of the new experiences Op For will offer players?

Black Mesa is a much larger environment than Gordon Freeman ever witnessed. There are lots of new environments and clever revisits to familiar ones. Ultimately, our soldier will obtain more than a half dozen new weapons to defeat the new alien threat with.

Half-Life Mods [2:15 pm]
The folks at ModCentral have some pretty exciting news for you recreational hax0rs out there. Valve wants to make you famous. All you have to do is cook up a cool mod for Half-Life and if it's chosen they will be diplaying it at the E3 show next month in their booth along with a few other perks. Here is word from Harry Teasley:

Add-ons chosen for the show will be shown on the show floor on PCs specifically designated for these demos and will be included on a special CD distributed to the gaming press. This is an incredible opportunity for add-on teams to make themselves known to the industry professionals. If you wish to be considered for inclusion in the Sierra Studios E3 Half-Life presentation, send your mod or ftp information to het3@valvesoftware.com no later than May 10, 1999. 

Quake3 Toys [11:15 am]
Steve Lawson sent in this link announcing Quake3 toys.

There are four figures planned for the new series, including a new Male Marine named Sarge, Slash, a female cyborg, the alien champion known as Klesk (pictured, from the game) and Sleeg a heavily armored alien

3D Card Roundup [10:15 am]
Review-Zone has done up an incredibly long 3D card shoot-out of sorts taking a look at every card under the sun and a few that havent even seen the light of day yet. Here is the quick link list: 3dfx Voodoo 3 , nVIDIA TNT2/TNT2 Ultra , Matrox G400/G400 MAX , ATI Rage 128 Pro , S3 Savage4 GT/Pro , NEC/Videologic PowerVR2 , 3D Labs Permedia 3 (Updated)

Some Maps [10:15 am]
Magicman over at Nihilistic updated the old .plan file with word on his release of a Q2DM3 conversion for Quake1. While we're at it g1zm0 from the Quake3 messageboard posted this conversion of the Quake3 map we've seen in the video footage for Quake2. Be sure to set the +deathmatch 1 tag though so you can spawn into the map.

Unreal Patch Not Out? [10:15 am]
As most of you noticed Mark Rein made a statement last week that the patch for Unreal would be coming out later that week. Well it's Wednesday now of the following week and still no patch. Here is what Marky Mark had to say:

When I made that statement it certainly looked like a slam dunk it would be out around the weekend. The whole team was planning two days off from Unreal Tournament to work exclusively on testing the patch thoroughly. But as the weekend rolled around it still had some problems that needed to be resolved and retested. So, I apologize for that. You'd think I would have learned my lesson by now in terms of letting people know our expectations. I think I'll just slink back into my cave in shame with my tail between my legs and shut up now.

Order Win2K [10:15 am]
Saw on Ars-Technica that Microsoft is offering you guys the oh so exciting chance to beta test the latest Beta3 of Windows 2000. Yeah, I'm as scared as you are. Ars-Technica will also probably have an article taking a look at the OS once they have it in their hands.

Views [10:15 am]

• Nocturne Screenshots
  Doug Myers from Gathering of Developers sent along 3 new screenshots of the TRI Nocturne project to AGN3D. Check out shot1, shot2, shot3
  
  
• Brian Hook on Tech Licensing
  An interesting GrandMasterB today. Check out the question he answers: It all comes down to: can you see using 3rd party engines becoming the norm, and even specialist software houses writing only engines. Also, perhaps the development of more open game systems (APIs?) becoming common, as a major limiting factor for smaller developers is the license cost?
  
  
• Gabe Newell - Valve
  The newly opened AlienWare Hive has an interview with Gabe Newell of Valve Software. Gabe talks about the choice of GearBox Software as the developer of choice for their official Half-Life mission pack slated to be released late this year.
  
  

Tech [10:15 am]

• Voodoo3 Cranking
  Saw on Blues that the V3 overclocking and 3500 info page at SharkyExtreme has been updated. The V3's overclock like a champ and the performance shows, check it out.
  
  
• New Rage128 Drivers
  ATI has released some new drivers for their Rage128 cards according to VE. The drivers are called ATI TV Wonder beta 2 though which is kind of wacky.
  
  
• AMD Stuff
  Lost Circuits has a fairly interesting look at the K6-2 from AMD paired up against their next-gen CPU. Mooch #2 from VE today:Thanks to James T. for letting us know that AMD has updated their Processor Compat. Test Results page
  
  
• More TNT2
  Cant get enough of those hardware previews? Have a look at what Hardware Central has to say about the Asus TNT2 board which is nearing release. There are an assload of benchmarks which should make you happy.
  

Gaming [10:15 am]

• Connection Guide
  A lot of fluff in this one, but for those of you who are on the newbie side of things the FiringSquad connection guide is a pretty good overview of the different types of net connects available for your gaming needs.
  
  
• Diablo2 Shot
  The monkeys at Diabloii.net have posted the weekly screenshot of Diablo. I suffered a brief addiction to the original until I lost my character about 20 levels into the game. This one looks even cooler. :)
  
  

werd
I ran out of Cherry Pepsi yesterday. Basically I spent half the morning shaking on the floor and foaming at the mouth. The paramedic showed up and shot me up with some sugar though long enough to do this update and take a trip to the store to buy some more.

I could quit if I wanted to. I just dont wanna.

Descent3 [4:55 pm]
The Interplay folks have updated the Descent3 page with a bit more information on their upcoming sequel. Descent2 looked pretty damn sweet when it came out, hoping for the same "wow" when D3 hits. There are a couple of movies with footage of the EMD and Plasma cannons.Thanks Khleed

LithTech2 [2:15 pm]
Mike Dussalt of Monolith has a .plan update giving a bit more detail on the LithTech2 technology that he is working on. You can expect to see the engine in action at E3 this year powering a couple of games including the KISS title from 3rd Law. (Former Ion guys)

Skeletal animation is working great so far.  Each model can now have multiple textures assigned to it as well.  M.A. is pimping out models with shared animation sets.

Support for 32-bit textures and screen surfaces has been in for a while.  I'm very happy with the way it's structured.. all the color conversion code was strewn out before but now it is cenralized, clean, and simple.  It's definitely better to be using 32-bit textures and a 16-bit screen than 16-bit textures and a 32-bit screen.

Wack! [2:15 pm]
The latest edition of ass-wacky-goofy links has been posted. Check them out and tell me what a putz I am for not including your link!

More Quake3 Screenshots [1:55 pm]
Imperator somehow got a hold of these new Quake3 screenshots and sent them my way. I'm not particulary sure of the source of the screenshots but I recognize the levels that the shots are from so they are indeed legit. A couple of the other shots in the zip were the same images that were shown in the recent CGWUK article, so I imagine this must be from the press pack. Well here you go. There are of course more shots in the good-ol' Quake3 preview.

yanked by request of aCtivision! doh!

Inside CaveDog [12:55 pm]
Games.net takes a look inside the CaveDog development house and what they are working on which includes Amen: The Awakening as well as of course their upcoming TA: Kingdoms project.

Rainbow6 Sequel [12:55 pm]
Blue spotted this press release talking about the sequel to the incredibly popular Rainbow6 (Still selling top10 right now) The Aztech New Media folks, who are in charge of the project have also worked on add-ons for StarCraft, Urban Assault, and SHOGO.

Seepe said Aztech has been granted a worldwide exclusive license. The title of Red Storm's Rainbow Six sequel game has not yet been finalized. Aztech's Rainbow Six sequel expansion pack is expected to be released in the early Fourth Quarter of 1999

Wheel of Time [12:55 pm]
The weekly development update from the Legend Entertainment guys talking about progress on the Wheel of Time project has been posted. This week talk is focused on the AI system, preperation for E3, and the cut scene work.

Views [12:55 pm]

• System Shock2
  Through The Looking Glass has some pretty lengthy discussion on the features to be included in the sequel to that "cult hit" System Shock which broke such new ground a few years ago.
  
  
• Witchboy - ION
  GameGirlz pins Witchboy in a corner to answer a few questions about his work on the Ion Storm Deus Ex title.
  
  
• Descent: Freespace2 Shot
  From the Loonyman: Here you go kids, a new screenshot from Volition's recently announced upcoming space shooter, Descent: Freespace 2.
  
  
• Graeme Devine
  Take this one with a grain of salt, but there is a Graeme Devine interview over on this page. Looks like Quake3 is space-orb only!
  
  
• Heavy Gear2
  Next-Gen takes a look at Heavy Gear2 from aCtivision. They are actually claiming that MechWarrior3 is not a competitor for their market share amazingly enough.
  
  

Tech [12:55 pm]

• SIMD Shootout (K6-3 / P-3)
  Ars-Technica has put together a great article taking a look at the K6-3 and pairing it up against the Intel P-3 for some old fashioned toe to toe action. Check out who won.
  
  
• RAM Guide
  Saw this on VoodooExtreme: The Review Zone has posted a new RAM Guide. Basically an FYI for people not in the know on RAM
  
  
• More Voodoo3
  GameCenter always has interesting views when it comes to 3dfx products. Have a look at what they have to say about the Voodoo3.
  
  
• TNT2 vs TNT1
  Riva128 has posted a pretty interesting article taking a look at the TNT2 and what improvements it actually offers over the first incarnation of the TNT from nVidia. He uses the LeadTek 32meg jobby for the article.
  
  

Gaming [12:55 pm]

• MS Explorer Mouse Preview
  Well, a few people are a bit excited about this new optical mouse from Microsoft. The technology itself isnt as new as MS makes it out to be, but it still looks neeto enough for a preview to pop up on tech-review
  
  
• FPS Spectator Interview
  Recluse has done up another interview, this time Julios is under the gun, one of the more "suicidal" players out there. Make sure and keep an eye on FPS Specatator whenever the big tourneys go down, great stuff.
  
  
• Blood2 Tools
  Monolith has busted out the tool set for Blood2 for those of you interested in trying to hax0r up on Monolith's game.
  
  

werd
Still got a fair amount more stuff to post, so just check back more today for the wack links to appear as well as a few more Quake3 screenshots cuz I know you guys love them so much.

Mortyr [5:45 pm]
GA-Source has a quick new Q&A with Mike Pearson asking about the little bit of fuss being made over the packaging for Mortyr. Saw that on Blues

Think of the subject matter and how difficult it was to convey the story with this subject matter. As it is, you've got a German officer's helmet with a bullet hole going through it and a pool of blood. To me this thing screams shooter, and guess what you get to shoot? Nazis. Not demons or aliens, but Nazis, mankind's worst enemy, a real quantifiable evil.

New MS Mouse [5:45 pm]
Microsoft has announced a new mouse which is kinda funky, as an Intellimouse user myself I'm always interested in the latest mouse products looking for that "next big mouse" but um, you never know until you try em. The most impressive part of the mouse is that there will be no moving parts, it's totally optical which should give you precision freaks a kick.

Requiem2 Footage [3:15 pm]
The folks at Requiem HQ have scored some video footage to the sequel of Requiem which is in development right now. It's lookin pretty smoove. Saw that on VE who made me look like a goober for thinking it was real. :)

Voodoo3 & NEC [3:15 pm]
Looks like the 3dfx stock should be climbing, NEC has just announced packaging Voodoo3 cards with a line of their machines. Saw that originally on AGN3D

NEC Direct, a subsidiary of Packard Bell NEC, one of the world's biggest PC manufacturers, announced today that it is bundling 3dfx Interactive's new Voodoo3 technology with the company's new NEC Direction PCs. NEC Direct will incorporate a high-performance Voodoo3 3000 AGP card as a standard feature in select Direction PC configurations, and as an optional feature for all Direction PCs

SamHell @ Shack [12:15 pm]
Many of you are probably familiar with SamHell and his "10 Questions" interview feature that has been appearing every week. Well Jason (SamHell) impressed me so much that I asked him something that I've never done before. To come be a part of Shugashack. SamHell's 10 Questions will continue to appear every week with interviews from around the gaming industry. To kick off the new digs SamHell has interviewed none other than the webmaster of Loonygames, Jason Bergman.

QuakeCon99 = Full [12:15 pm]
The 1,000 registration slots have already filled up for QuakeCon99. However the number of people who sign up for these things and actually attend is a staggering 50-60% or so. Basically a waiting list is now open but although the official 1,000 is already full, I would recommend signing up anyways since chances are you will still get in.

Suck! [12:15 pm]
After a one week hiatus, the suck has returned with um.. more suck.

Expendable Demo [9:55 am]
A new playable demo of Expendable from Rage Software (You may remember their last eye-candy-fest, Incoming) has been released. The 3DFiles guys have already posted some download urls and mirror lists so just head on over to their page and grab it. The file is over 70 megs though. Saw that on Blues

Unreal [9:55 am]
More updates to the Unreal Technology page have appeared as written up by Tim Sweeney. This time around it's fairly technical but also pretty informative stuff. The release didnt happen last week but it sounds pretty cool so may still be worth the wait.

The guys have been beating on internal test versions for the past few days, and we've been polishing the code.  It's both a blessing and a curse that the Unreal code is evolving by leaps and bounds, gaining major new features all the time.  This approach makes testing each new patch a major effort.  Though, 224 will be especially worth the effort because of the in-game server browser and level-of-detail optimizations. 224 will probably happen late this week.

Life After NT SP4 [9:55 am]
Ars-Technica has put together another superb article talking about if it's really worth applying that SP4 patch to your NT box. There is an incredible amount of good information there for gamers and admins alike. Highly recommended reading.

Views [9:55 am]

• Loonygames
  The latest issue of loonygames has gone live. This week opens up with a chat with Mark Liadlaw of Valve Software.
  
  
• Phantom Menace
  U-Games has a new preview of the Star Wars universe based game from Lucas (Whooda thunk?)
  
  
• BattleZone 2
  Check out SharkyExtreme's first look at BattleZone2. The first one was pretty damn cool so one can only hope and expect some more.
  
  
• Digital Anvil
  Games On-line has posted an english version now of their interview with Tony Zurovec of Digital Anvil formerly employed by those folks at Origin. Saw that on VE
  
  
• Giants Shots
  Ga-Source has scored 8 new screenshots of Giants from PlanetMoon which continues to look cooler and cooler.
  
  

Tech [9:55 am]

• Detonator Drivers Article
  SystemLogic has gotten up an article on the new TNT detonator drivers. This talks a bit about the new drivers and some problems fixed.  It also comares the new drivers and benchmarks the difference with and without using an STB velocity 4400 and 3D Mark 99.  With the new drivers my score went up 300 3D Marks.
  
  
• Voodoo3
  WickedPC has put together what will probably be the last Voodoo3 review you'll ever need to read. Really well done. TheTechs has a review as well.
  
  
• TNT2 Guide
  From the ExtremeHardware dudes: We've set up a TNT2 Guide over at EH. Nothing earth-shattering, just an article collecting all the hardware specs, box shots and other info on the upcoming TNT2 crop in one easy-to-digest morsel. There is also a review of the TNT2 card over at Tweak3d.
  
  
• KingPin V2/V3 Guide
  VoodooExtreme has posted a pretty good tweak guide for those of you looking to get the best visual quality out of your V2 or V3 card when playing the KingPin demo. Also check out these comparison shots.
  
  
• VoodooReview
  Another new issue of the VoodooReview is on stands now. This week of course the hot topic would be Voodoo3 cards and cranking them.
  
  

Gaming [9:55 am]

• New Gladiator Bot
  My personal favorite Quake2 bot, the Gladiator has been updated to v0.92 now.
  
  

werd
More moving stuff yesterday into the new place. Busted my arm up carrying a matress on the wall, that sucked. Jack (morbid) has this absolutely incredible TV (64" 16:9ratio) as well as a DSS which is just calling my name which was setup last night. His DVD player is flaking out though so my little RCA player will be working relief duty for a bit. Not having neighbors behind the wall is gonna be good fun.

The fridge still leaks water... doh

Also, I've never been so behind in email in my life. I apologize if I dont answer you guys, but it's just impossible.

Check out this TheMushroom article which involves my run in with a couple of punk kids.

Raven Interview [11:00 am]
The WiredNews page has posted an interview with Raven Software talking about their Heretic2 project as well as the currently in development Soldier of Fortune game.

id Interview [11:00 am]
The Arena sends word of an interview with Graeme Devine of id Software. Graeme mentions that they have yet to make a final decision on the character classes as well as another confirmation that Q3Test will include 2 maps. You can also check out my little preview of Q3Test right here.

Stuff [11:00 am]

• Ultimate Quake Poll Results
  Methos has posted the results to his ultimate Quake Poll. Even though I've been lacking in the updates quite a bit the past couple of weeks you guys were still nice enough to vote for me, thanks. I'll be finished moving for the most part later this week, and Jack will be riding my ass to update more so I'm sure you guys will see som more action around here :)
  
  
• New WebDog?
  What, you thought this was cancelled? Looks like WebDog has come out of retirement for a number of new updates due to popular demand.
  
  
• New WinGlide
  Another new version of WinGlide has been released by Chris Dial. The new code is based off the Glide v3.0 stuff which should make a few of you guys happy. Wanna play Quake2 in a window on your Voodoo2? This is for you.
  
  
• New PowerStrip
  Want to overclock your video card? Play with all those nifty screen resolutions? The Entech Software PowerStrip util is pretty handy for those of you who just have to have that extra bit of control.
  
  

werd?
So... I spent yesterday running around the new house. I bought my first ever major appliance yesterday, a fridge. It has that cool ice dispenser thing on the front and even has a child lock so Jack cant make a mess. It must have took the 5 of us who were carrying that thing in like an hour to figure out how to hook the damn water up. Fridge repair dudes, along with having nice ass-cracks are indeed skilled individuals.

Here is a bunch of stuff by Huntsman while I was out this morning:

GLHeretic [11:00 am] - Huntsman
Version 0.09 of GLHeretic has been released on Kokak's page. With the canceling of GLDoom, this seems what all you 0ldsK3wl people need to grab.

New Rocket Arena [11:00 am] - Huntsman
Don't play enough Quake 2 already? You an old QW standby who wants to know what this new fangled "rail gun" is? Check out the new Rocket Arena. It's got 9 new maps for another 57 arenas for a grand total of 172 arenas. That's a lot. Go get it!

glDoom Dead [11:00 am] - Huntsman
Doh. the glDoom page has word that the glDoom is "defunct" or in other words, dead. He uses the old "my hard drive crashed and I didn't back it up" excuse, and I'll take his word for it.

New Design [LATE] - Huntsman
Wanted to thank everybody for thier comments and criticisms on the new design. Just wanted to address a couple issues:

• No, it doesn't look like Blue's page. What are you people smoking?
• We'll get rid of the mouse :)
• The design is changing because, as one person aptly put it, it is a "piss/puke scheme". We'd like to look almost professional :)
• We'll get rid of the forced underlines. This was actually an accident :)
• There are a few compatibility issues, I know. If you are find something goofy, please don't mail me the 1240x768 screenshot :) Stick it somewhere so I can check it out without too much downloading. Thanks.
• There are a few speed issues, we'll see if we can fix that.
• Frames are SO 1998 (actually like 1996)
• We'll see what we can do about getting the shack graphic on there somewhere.
• Yes, Steve insists on not learning HTML so he still uses Frontpage :)
• I still don't understand why you think it looks like Blue's News. A vaguely similiar color doesn't equate to "wannabebluesnews.com" :)

If you have any comments/suggestions other than whats listed above, let us know. It's not finished, but I hope to get it soon.

Views [9:45 am]

• Expendable Review
  Tweak3D has a preivew of the Incoming (heh) game, Expendable. Remember Ikari Warriors from way back in the day of Nintendo? Expendable is a lot like that except with much better graphics.
  
  
• More on the Frivilous Law Suit
  This amuses me to no end. 2 Senators are claiming that those bad games are directly responsible for the shooting of several people in a school yard. The senators named the 10 most violent games, but Quake and Quake2 were not listed. Ah, that explains my recent lack of wild killing sprees. Saw it on GeekNews.

Tech [9:45 am]

• Apple opening QuickTime Code
  Yay. Another example of a company "doing the right thing", Apple is releasing the QuickTime code. This means you can watch future Star Wars trailers on your linux box without having to find the .mov conversion! Saw this on Slashdot. Now if they can get enough mirrors on the first day of release...
  
  
• Microsoft Release WHCL TNT Detonator Drivers
  Somebody missed it, but I saw on Blue's that Tweak3D noticed that 1.15 WHCL Certified Drivers have been released for the TNT and Win98. Grab em..

• Overclocking
  Seems that Overclocking has replaced getting stoned as most computer users favorite past time. Ars Technica sent word of the Tech Zone overclocking a celeron 466 to 525mhz. The jump isn't as big as the say, 50% jump we saw with the 300a, but, hey, its still more bang for the buck, no?
  

werd! [11:00 am] - Huntsman
sTeve has been moving, thats where he is. Once he gets settled in I probably won't be updating as much :( Maybe give me more time to work on some other stuff you guys will like. Or maybe he really likes this not having to get up in the morning and I'll do mornings forever (yeah right, he like's doing "werd" too much. I've discovered that "werd" is the only reason to actually do the news).

Finally saw Matrix. Woo.