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Sunday, August 2

Q3 Curves? [9:16am]
Brian Hook answers a question in the Grandmaster B forum about the curved surfaces to be used in Quake3:Arena (Dig this screenshot of Q3 from a SIGRAPH speach)

Now, at first blush it would seem that curved surfaces are going to be more expensive than polygons, but when you analyze the problem it's not so clear cut. Sure, evaluating a curved surface takes some time, but if you end up tessellating it to LESS triangles than the same surface made out of flat polygons, you end up making back some time because of the reduced transformation load. On top of that, you now have a single representation for your curved surface that can be evaluated as finely (close up) or coarsely (far away) as you want, and at all stages in between.

KeyGrip for Q2 [6:56am]
Woo, everyone get excited. KeyGrip for Quake2 has been released. KeyGrip is a demo (.DM2) file editor and more for Quake2 that will let you create highlight films, movies, or anything else you can think of to play with the Quake2 engine.

-Supports all Quake 2 demos, from 3.05 to 3.17, including server recorded demos
-Multiple demo interface allows you to have an almost unlimited number of demos open at once.
-Highly advanced demo server works directly within Quake 2 to preview and edit the demos.
-One of the most powerful find/replace tools found in any application
-Easy to use and FAST camera studio, built directly into the demo server, allows you to recam demos and create spectacular movies in a matter of
minutes.
-Wide variety of camera transitions and effects make any movie look like it was done by a pro.
-Tested and retested by a large beta team to assure the highest possible quality
-Full windows help file describing every feature and dialog in detail
-Easy to understand tutorial gets new users up and running fast!
-Full sound editing, mixing, and previewing

Prey Interview [6:56am]
Check out the UGN Interview with one of the texture artists on the Prey project from 3DRealms, Scott McCabe.-Cyrellis

Scott: Quake(2) and Unreal I must say have some really excellent graphics. Their artists are really talented. Prey over Quake2 first off will be a noticeable difference because we can put more into the environment and that we're not bound to a 256 color palette. This opens the door for much bigger, cooler SFX and environment art (not to mention more objects for ultra realistic worlds). Unreal looked real sweet as I'm sure we all agree. They had some minor Portal tricks (nothing we hadn't shown from the previous E3) some great environmental effects like Fog, Procedural textures but Unreal has definitely made a mark as an engine to compete against (in a healthy way).

Unreal Work [6:56am]
Havent been hearing much out of the Unreal guys recently. (strange..) but Tim Sweeney made an update to the Unreal tech page discussing work on UnrealED as well as mentioning he is still looking at the net code.

Views [7:36am]

Tech [7:36am]

Tweakit for 3DFX cards
DirectControl for DirectX
Matrox Overclocker for Matrox cards

Sites
This is what Sunday is for, browsing the web.. ok, well that and blowjobs. (Doh, did I say that out loud?)

werd
Slow.... weekends.... I wanna thank the guys who emailed me about an ISDN router. Ryan Halter was the first to come back to me saying he would have it shipped out next-day air on Monday to my house, the dude doesnt even want it back. That = a bad mofo. Hopefully I'll find a way to cover this $300 phone bill in the next 6 days though or I won't have a phone line to use my new ISDN on though, ironic yes? Thanks Ryan!

 

Saturday, August 1

New Q2 CTF Server [9:36pm]
Yup, new version of CTF for Quake2. Here is Zoid's .plan update:

I've released the new Q2CTF 1.09BETA upgrade at q2ctf109beta.zip

This version features the new competition mode, server map rotation, remote admin functions, elections for map changing, and many other features. This is a SERVER ONLY upgrade. Players (clients) do not need to download this.

Server admins: By default the mod runs just like 1.02 without the new features, if you want to make the optional competition mode available to players, add "set competition 1" to your server.cfg start up file. Also, you may want to enable elections by putting "set electpercentage 66" since this allows users to vote for map changes and giving trusted players admin access (much like the competition mods for Quake).

As mentioned before, the user manual for the new version is available at
http://www.idsoftware.com/q2ctf The user manual covers all the new features of this release.

This is a beta release, so there may be some problems. I invite feedback on the release from both server admins and players.

Hope everyone enjoys this new release!

/// Zoid.
zoid@idsoftware.com

Daikatana Shots / Log [7:36pm]
The Daikatana Cabana has been updated with a new screenshot showing off one of the 2 sidekicks you will have in Daikatana as well as a chat log from the Daikatana team from the most recent chat held through their website.

CPU Stuff [7:36pm]
Anand's Hardware has posted a new article comparing some of the next-generation CPU's we may be using soon. Also, Tom's Hardware has posted an updated Intel CPU roadmap for you to check out.

More Views [7:36pm]

Half-Life MPEG [5:56am]
Blue has gotten a hold of a new Half-Life MPG which shows off footage of Valve's project. It is a high resolution video which shows off a good look at exactly how gameplay works in Half-Life. There are proximity mines as well as a few grunts getting capped in the video.

You Hear That Fog? [8:16am]
This newfangled volumetric fog stuff that so many people are talking about, well Gary McTaggart aka Gizmo (1/2 of the ex-Uber engine team) answered Billy over at VE detailing pretty much just what this stuff is.

Gary McTaggart: Volumetric fog is a very cool thing indeed. The first instance of it real time that I know of is in Tim Sweeney's cool ass work on Unreal. First a little background. . . 3D hardware so far typically has some sort of fog support. This hardware fog is typically based on how far the pixel being rendered is away from you. . . the farther away, the more of the fog color that is blended into the pixel.

Volumetric fog is a major improvement that instead of having some arbitrary fog function, the world contains fog volumes. The volumes could be made of solid function, shape, whatever. . . The most important thing is that given two points in the world, you can tell how much fog you are looking through. In Unreal I believe the fog volumes were represented as ellipsoids or spheres. . . another possible volume that is fairly quick and easy to use is the convex polyhedron (or brush in Quake terminology).

Screenshots [8:16am]
Couple of screenshots for you monkeys to check out of some upcoming 3D games. The one on the left is of the upcoming Myth2 which is being developed by Bungie. The shot on the right is a new shot of HeavyGear2 released by aCtivision:

Mac Unreal [5:56am]
Mac Central has gotten a hold of some screenshots of the Mac version of Unreal to post on their website.

Yesterday, MacCentral received the FC1 CD of Unreal, the amazing new shoot-em-up from WestLake Interactive and MacSoft. We've been trying out the game with the new Voodoo 2 Game Wizard from Micro Conversions, and the combination is stunning. While we can't reveal too much about the game right now, we will give you some information on the multiplayer aspect of the game, and some killer screen shots.

Motoracer2 Demo [5:56am]
The AVault PCRL page has posted a copy of Motoracer2 which you should be able to download now finally

This is a Pre-Alpha demo. Moto Racer 2 features an all new 3D track crea, weather effects, increased 3D accelerator support, and more.

DirectX v6 [5:56am]
If you havent snagged a copy of DirectX v6 from the juarez channels, you are a good boy. Here is the word from Microsoft:

DirectX 6.0 Released to Manufacturing! July 31, 1998
--
After months of hard work, the wait is nearly over! This morning, Team Direct signed off on the latest version of the DirectX software development kit -- DirectX 6.0. With dozens of new features (single-pass multitexturing, bump mapping, texture compression, stencil buffers, and much, much more), performance improvements (in Direct3D, DirectDraw and DirectSound), and enhancements to overall stability, we think you're going to love what you find.       It's going to take a few days for DirectX 6 to go through our distribution channel and become available. And before you ask -- no, we can't send just you a copy of the code. We're still waiting for it to make its way here. Keep checking this Web page: we promise we'll let you know as soon as it's arrived. In the meantime, you can order the DirectX 6.0 SDK on CD-ROM. We'll send you a disk as soon as they're in stock.

New V2x00 GL ICD [5:56am]
The Rendition page has been updated with some new OpenGL drivers for their V2x00 chipset 2D/3D cards.

Views [5:56am]

Brett, like most all level designers at Valve Software, come into contact with others of his kind, the level designer.

"If you take a stroll down the hallway its common to see or hear something that'll draw you into someone's office for a closer look," says Brett, "Sometimes a smell can have the same effect, but we won't go into that here."

SIN [5:56am]

werd
Hey, I'm actually going to be around during the day for updates all day just for the hell of it. Ok, so I just dont feel like going outside.. whatever..

 

Friday, July 31

Linux SIN [6:26pm]
OT made an update talking about the possibility of a Linux SIN port

Now that the demo's out, there's a strong possibility that we'll start work on the Linux Sin port soon. I've already emailed those who responded to me earlier about doing the Sin Linux port, but if there are any more of you out there, we're looking > for a volunteer to port Sin over to Linux.  And you must live in or near Dallas. --- > Email me onethumb@ritual.com if you're interested. 

Max Payne [4:23pm]
The Universal Gaming Network guys have posted an interview with Petri from Remedy discussing his work on Max Payne.

As to the performance, we're using different levels of detail to make the game run smoothly on normal machines as well. Distant characters are drawn with much less polygons, and that gives good performance with almost no visual drawbacks (sure it's much more work to develop the system and create the characters though, but hey, frame rate is everything, right :-)

Half-Life Shot [4:23pm]
The boys at Half-Life.org have gotten a hold of a new screenshot that is being featured in advertisements in magazines this month.

Wicked H3D [4:23pm]
Cyrellis has posted a review of the H3D Goggles paired up with the latest Wicked3D reference drivers.

SIN [4:23pm]

Motoracer2 Demo [7:43am]
AGN3D had posted the Motoracer 2 demo earlier today but the server can't quite handle the load.

I have pulled the Motoracer 2 demo from the public dirs. The constant hammering of people trying to get the demo is cutting off my web services. If you are a webmaster and want to mirror the file.. email Steve Parankewich for info on how to obtain the file from our server.

Messiah Feature [7:43am]
Check out 3DGaming.Net's exclusive Messiah Feature. They have an interview with David Perry, President of Shiny, an on-line chat log, a preview, and 14 exclusive screen shots messiah

Millenium G200 [7:43am]
Probably the first review of the Matrox Millenium G200 based card on the web

The Millennium G200 is slightly superior to the Millennium II in Windows 2D performance while adding superb 3D support. For many people the G200 should obviate the need for a separate 3D gamecard, if they were considering it. Obviously the Voodoo2 is faster, but the G200 comes closest of any to the Voodoo2.

Views [7:45am]

Zoid Update [7:17am]
Zoid updated his .plan file with a bunch of different things. What would probably interest most of you guys though is this:

Q2CTF Stuff
-----------

The Quake2 server at satan.idsoftware.com:27913 is running the new Q2CTF version 1.09BETA. This version features stuff such as server map rotation, elections for remote admin, map warping, and a full tournament mode. We're going to let it run on Satan for a day to beat on it and if things go well, I'll be releasing the new beta version publically probably tomorrow.

The new code is a server only upgrade. A full manual that covers all of Q2CTF including the new server options and the competition mode is available at http://www.idsoftware.com/q2ctf/ .

Other stuff
-----------

In other news, I'm working on the official QuakeWorld 2.3 version that clears up some bugs found in the 2.29 beta (which is why it was a beta). I'm liking the idea of doing public betas such as I did with 2.29--the feedback and testing was much more useful this time around than using closed beta testers. I took some heat from people complaining about the different versions (and how they were not compatible), but overall the response has been very positive.

I'm also working on Quake2 3.18. This version will address some bugs in 3.17 (*cough* water surface friction *cough*) and offer some new features. A new Quake2 release is needed for the upcoming Rogue mission pack, Ground Zero, so I'll try to tie it all into one release. Other stuff in 3.18 is server controlled air acceleration, server specific map rotation, and other minor features that makes life easier for server admins and players.

Linux Unreal [7:17am]
Mark Rein has made a post to the megaboard with some great news:

Linux support for Unreal Server is coming!

Mplayer, who is currently working on a Solaris (Solaris = Unix for Sun computers) port of the Unreal Server, told me yesterday that they'd happily release and support a Linux version of their Unix port of the Unreal Server to the public when it's finished! Woo-hoo!!!

This is AMAZING news!!

Many of you have been telling us that you think supporting Linux is the answer to having a LOT more servers out there. We know this but this was not something that could be started until Unreal was finished.

Mplayer has been working on their Unix port for a few months. They haven't given me any estimate of how long it's going to take to finish (so please don't ask!) but I've been watching some email exchanges between their programmer and Tim Sweeney and he's giving them all the advice and support that he can.

We'll let you know any news as soon as we know. I'm sure at some point in the near (or not so near) future we'll want people to join a game of Unreal on Unix or Linux server over at Mplayer to help with some playtesting!

Until then, I wanted to thank Chris Early and the entire gang over at Mplayer for their generous support and remind you that if you're into Unreal multiplayer then Mplayer is your friend!

werd
"Gee Steve, where were you yesterday? Hey, that's odd, how come your hard drive is freshly partitioned and formated? Gosh, that sure is strange." Windows can eat my ass. Just got a fresh format / install of Windows. (not by choice) but hey I'm back online freaking finally. Talk about poopy. Blah!

 

Thursday, July 30

SIN Demo Patch [5:47pm]
Mark Dochterman of Ritual Entertainment updated his .plan file with word on plans from Ritual to release a new patch for the SIN demo to address a few of the problems that have come up with having about a half million people playing your demo.

I am blown away by all the cool things happening online with Sin. The response has been beyond words, and the team spirit at Ritual is high. We are anxious to finish the rest of the game as I am sure you are anxious to play it. Here is some info:

- There will definitely be a patch to the demo to fix a number of issues, most of these have to do with multiplayer:
1. Remove cheat codes we overlooked (sorry)
2. Speed of net traffic (there were a few optimizations that didn't make it in before the demo)
3. Fix Zombie problems on servers
4. Fix dedicated server heartbeat problems.
5. Camgun problems in Bank
6. Menu options which are active but don't affect anything in game (these will be disabled)
7. Initial 3D Audio support
8. sounds not playing when fov > 90
9. A bunch of other stuff that escapes me.

- Don( OneThumb ) will be putting a known bugs section in front of the Sin Bug submission form, so we can cut down on dupe submissions.

- It is great to see benchmarks out there, BUT please keep in mind that Sin has really not gone through the optimization phase yet. This is something I had planned before the demo, but alas, time sux. The numbers you see around are sure to increase by the time the game ships. We will most likely still be a little slower than Q2, because our world and model poly counts are just plain higher, but I think the benchmarks will be a lot closer.

- look for a Ritual surprise next week :)

- One more thing, Sin is not a 3rd person game, but if you hit F6 or "toggleviewmode" it will put you in 3rd person, the update to the demo should have the 3D crosshair we had in at E3, which actually allows you to play the game from a 3rd person perspective. This can be fun.

Doom2000 [5:47pm]
A few people have gotten their panties in a wad over John Carmack mentioning Doom2000 at his speach at the recent CPL event and then noticing the domain was registered when they got home. Here is Disruptor's reply to the domain registration on Blues:

"Registering DOOM2000.COM was pretty much a just-in-case plan. Wanted to make sure that we snatched it up to avoid potential future pain-in-the-ass problems with getting domains back from people who've snatched them up ahead of us. (ie: quakearena.com)"

Game Demos [5:47pm]

More SIN [5:47pm]
Ritualistic is still finding stuff out about the SIN demo which is interesting. They have just run across the customizable HUD stuff which I really like. You can actually edit the .hud files to make your own display layout if you are a true haxor. The HUD's that come with SIN are # 1-4.

cl_hudfile "hud0#.hdh"
hud_restart

Oh, they figured out how to get the Elexis model um.. without apparel as well.

My SIN Impressions [5:25am]
Here ya go, my impressions of the SIN demo

Speaking of SIN, check out www.ritualistic.com for all the cheats etc etc. You guys can stop emailing me the easter eggs now, Ritualistic has it covered.

Unreal Guide [5:25am]
After blasing Unreal for pretty much stinking it up over the internet, GameCenter also wants to guide you through the game. Check out their new updated Unreal Guide.

Wack Links [5:25am]
The ever popular Wack-ass links have been updated. Dig on them and see what the web is really about.

SIN [5:25am]
Mooched from Redwood

Views [5:25am]

werd
If anyone happens to have an old ISDN router that they are no longer using and would like to donate it to the cause please let me know. It would only be needed for 2-3 months and I would pay for the shipping etc. Got an extra body in the house just recently. *cough* Keep in mind, I have zero money so can only pay you with perhaps advertising on my page or oral pleasure. Please no email about proxy software and running a linux box. :)

 

Wednesday, July 29

SIN Readme [10:25pm]
A new updated version of the SIN readme file has been released with a few addendums that were overlooked in the original. Check it out G.

Voodoo Game FAQ [5:55pm]
Moody's Voodoo2 Game FAQ has been updated again with more games added.

Sin demo 7/27
Wargames demo 7/26
European Air War demo 7/25
Hangsim demo 7/25
<snip>

SIN Work Log [5:55pm]
For the curious, Mark Dochterman, president of Ritual Entertainment updated his .plan file with a work log of the stuff he was doing during the development of SIN

More SIN [2:55pm]

Unreal Net Code [2:55pm]
Another update by Tim Sweeney concerning the work he is doing on the Unreal net code.

I'm continuing to beat the network code into submission. I have a decent set of incremental improvements lined up for the next patch, which improve Internet play somewhat more on slow connections. I've also been looking closely at the root problems behind the lag and overall slow performance many people are experiencing. I have lots of ideas on improving things more signfiicantly. Addressing these issues will require changing the protocol, some major testing/debugging before release, and a large downloaded patch. So, I'll try to coalesce these in with all of the gameplay/control fixes later on, for one single monster-sized update that's not network-compatible with previous versions.

Brandon has the new server querying interface and GameSpy support in great shape, and it will be ready very soon. After that has been released, he'll be fixing and adding functionality the TcpLink class, so it can serve as a better framework for new kinds of Internet mods. In the community, an IRC chat interface is in the works, as is a very interesting R&D project I'm not allowed to talk about.

Here is another project that is shaping up to be extremely cool: Naliwood Production Studios.

Half-Life Shot [2:55pm]
WaveLenghth Half-Life sent out this new screenshot of the Half-Life female character that looks pretty nifty.

Q2 Arena Eraser [2:55pm]
If you are looking to play a bit of Eraser Bot in Q2 Arena, CRT has some good news

I've put together a new Eraser bot DLL that has minimal support for Rocket Arena 2. Players can join an arena, throw a bot in, give weapons, start/stop the match.. etc.

This was primarily created as a demonstration of how easy it is for bot authors to add RA2 support, but it is sure a lot of fun to play with as well. The full source code is included for people interested in adding more functionality to the mod (it is unsupported, as we continue to work on the next version of RA2).

The RA2 Eraser bot (including source, requires full Eraser bot) is available at: ra2eraser.zip

I have gotten more e-mails than I can count from people requesting bot support for RA2 and hopefully other bot authors will now take the lead and add at least basic RA2 support to their bots.

Giggler Gone [3:15am]
Well, within an hour of Mike "giggler" Wardwell updating his .plan about his level work in SIN. (That SIN demo you all downloaded.. you know? Mike did both single player maps) Mr. Wardwell is no longer associated with Ritual Entertainment. Here is Jim Dose's .plan update:

> 6/28/98 -
---
> Mike Wardwell is no longer a member of Ritual Entertainment.

Since the announcement Mike has shown up on IRC as well and gave a few details on his departure. Mike plans on working with Gary McTaggart & Charlie Brown with the still nameless new company which has been in the works for a while now. Here is an interview I conducted with the two programmers a couple of weeks back. I'll bug Mike for a few questions soon. For those of you who wish to contact Mike, mike@cyberathlete.com still works.

Weekly Demo [3:15am]
Well, I've gotten an incredible amount of email concerning my surprising performance at the recent CPL tourney. I will have to admit that this DM4 1on1 demo against cyberathlete U4-Thorn was the most intense match I've ever played. For the record, we rolled a random DM6 map, but Thorn and I agreed to play DM4 instead. Demos linked from www.cyberathlete.com I'd recommend checking out http://csn.mpog.com and digging on some of the other demos there as well. I'll pick through a few of my favorites for next week as well. They dont get much more tense and exciting as the one linked today though. :)

Unreal & 3DNow! [3:15am]
Tim Sweeney made a brief statement concerning 3DNow! and Unreal:

Please understand that further 3DNow support won't help Unreal (beyond the upcoming volumetric lighting optimization already mentioned). All of the code that could be fruitfully optimized for 3DNow has been. If we spent an entire man-year optimizing the rest of the code for 3DNow!, which is way way way beyond our resources, it would likely achieve less than a 5% improvement. I've been getting a lot of emails from K6-3D owners, but it doesn't change the technical reality. Even theoretically, very little additional K6-3D performance could be squeezed out of Unreal.

SIN Stuff[3:15am]
w00, a whole category dedicated to Ritual's baby:

Hope ppl like the SiN demo - there is a lot of stuff in there that WE don't like and is pretty obvious, so don't think we don't know, care or won't fix it for the final game ;) BTW: All the stuff that you can see in SiN today has been in the design doc from day one, not added after seeing some other game at E3. Just felt like saying that :)

Anyway, the real reason for this update is that we'd like to hear what YOU think about SiN Deathmatch - we do care about your suggestions and will compile a list of what it is most ppl want.

Before firing up your mail client 3 rules, though:
- Don't expect an answer - we read everything, but we can't answer every mail and tell you what we think
- This is and will remain SiN deathmatch, so don't expect us to just change about everything. Mails like "Just make it like QW!" or "Make it like Q2!" won't really help, either ;)
- No bug reports to this adress, please, this adress is for DM feedback only. If you want to report a bug please use the Activison page at
http://www.activision.com/games/sin/bugs.asp.

What we do wanna hear about are issues like weapon strength, speed etc. And of course the generell feel, levels etc. Thanx in advance, we're looking forward to your mails :) And finally: the adress is deathmatch@ritual.com

The Views [3:15am]

werd
Doh.

Tuesday, July 28

Da Banshee [8:25pm]
Check out AGN3D's look at the 3dfx Banshee 2D/3D card. Here are the benchmarks he got on a p2/300 system.

640x480 800x600 1024x768
Quake 59.9 39 24.4
Quake 2 53.9 37.2 23.6
Forsaken 100.76
Turok 104.4

Weekly Stuff [9:45pm]
Yikes, thought I wasnt gonna get caught back up to date. I did a bit of extra stuff to make sure I'm ahead of schedule for a while. Did a bit of work on my SIN impressions as well. Yea, everyone in the world has already posted theirs, but I feel there is still a lot left there to touch upon. Check out Tuesday's section. (Monday was a lost cause, only thing I could think of that sucked was placing 6th at CPL.)

Before Framerate.. [7:15pm]
Mike "giggler" Wardwell, the level designer who originally worked on the 2 single player maps that were released in the SIN demo updated his .plan for the curious.

The Sin demo is out and so far no one has publicly ridiculed me for my crappy level design, so I think I just might get out of this unscathed. Some of my finer work in the bank and intro levels never made it into the demo due to "speed issues". Rather than beating my fists against the wall, I thought I'd post a couple of screen shots showing my work in the bank and intro before it was subject to company-wide opinion. :-) I know quite a few people have interest in what takes place here at the Ritual offices, so here is a taste of that from a level designer's point of view.

The first is of the Intro level, which actually went through 4 major revisions. This is what the Intro looked like at the end of its second revision. In revisions 1 and 2, I had the helicopter path circling the bank rather than just strafing back and forth in front of one side of it. R_speeds were 500-800 at this point, plus there was a lot of overdraw taking place. Much was sacrificed in terms of atmosphere and gameplay to save a few polys.

The bank never went through such drastic revisions as the Intro, but there were a few key areas that lost their edge when they were simplified for better framerate. This room, still recognizable in the demo due to the 4 large pillars, went from my signature bank room, to one that I refuse to look at. :-)

Mike Wardwell
giggler@ritual.com
mike@cyberathlete.com

Unreal's Future [7:15pm]
GameCenter has posted an interesting article talking about the future of Unreal multiplayer and the hopes of making it playable over the net for modem guys.

Well, it has to be said. Unreal just doesn't seem to be happening over the Net, does it? I think this is down to three reasons: a)The game did not come Internet-ready. We all know that when Unreal was released the game just did NOT play over the Internet. Even after the patch some people still have problems; b)Servers. Probably due to the first problem. We just don't seem to have any people setting up huge numbers of servers; c)The weapons and gameplay...most of the weapons are just too weak, which is not a problem in itself, but over the Internet (where lag is an issue) people just end up running around shooting at each other without much affect...So basically I cannot see Unreal surviving on the Internet...I know this sounds harsh, but often the truth can be that way.

SIN Message Boards [5:25pm]
If the message board over at HardCorps hosted by aCtivision isnt enough for you, there is another messageboard to chat about SIN on CGO now. Oh, that list of SIN reviews has been updated, just hit page down. Ah, and another thing, this from 3DGaming.net:

It's not whether or not you actually liked the demo or not... it's if the demo was good enough so that you will buy the final product, right? Now that SiNDay Bloody SiNDay has passed us by and Ritual Entertainment's baby is safely on your hard drive, there's but one question on our mind... Is the demo good enough to convince you to purchase SiN upon its release? Vote in our poll at http://www.3dgaming.net

Prey [5:25pm]
Paul Schuytema, project leader on Prey over at 3DRealms has done an interview with Universal-Gaming which is fairly interesting

This is the first Talon Brave game. Will you be making more in the series?

That's our hope. The universe is nicely fleshed out and can support a lot of exciting storytelling. Right now, we have the story arc planned out through 4 unique Talon Brave adventures, the first being Prey.

The graphics in Prey look incredible! How was the Portal Tech. Engine created and how long has it been in development?

More Views [5:26pm]

Hook on Quake3: Arena Shot [11:25am]
Brian Hook is quoted at Voodoo Extreme talking about the Quake3: Arena screenshot that was posted yesterday from his SIGRAPH speach.

Sure thing. I did a lecture at SIGGRAPH with some other folks (including Gary Tarolli of 3Dfx) about 3D acceleration for consumer PCs. I was talking about things from the "game developer" side of things. It's hard to get that much information from the talks -- John probably gave out more up to date and thorough information

The screen shots should really be taken with a grain of salt, they weren't intended to give a sneak peek at Q3, but instead were trying to illustrate the concepts of multipass rendering. As astute observers will note, that's one of Tim's BASE levels from Q2. It is also using 8-bit art and doesn't demonstrate our specular lighting, curved surfaces, or volumetric fog. The fog pass was a distance fog hack, which we deplore as being very uninteresting, but when the screenshots were made our volumetric fog code wasn't implemented yet in the current build, so I had to make do with our TESTFOG command.

At some point I'm sure that we'll release a "real" screenshot, but I don't know when that will be. Unfortunately a lot of our newer technology is difficult to appreciate from a single screen shot, e.g. curve LOD tessellation and specular lighting, but as it stands the SIGGRAPH stuff was NOT indicative of our new technology.

Brian

Speaking of Q3:Arena, 3Dedge has posted their own collection of information on the project.

Wheel of Time Update [11:25am]
The Wheel of Time web page has posted their weekly progress report on the development of the interesting looking Unreal technology based game

As people who read my .plan file know, the reason that last week didn't see an update was the heavy milestone that whacked me in the head. We delivered a bunch of stuff to GT which featured a new prototype. The prototype included two new citadel variants (one based on the Fortress of the Forsaken, and one based on the Fortress of the Light), all of the new artifacts, and a bunch of game play tuning.

Other deliverables included two new characters: the Forsaken and the Big Ass Trolloc. They are both absolutely incredible. For those who aren't crazy about our current trolloc, you're going to drool over this guy (I'm not going to discuss what's going to happen to the person who actually likes our current trolloc). Upcoming characters include the main character (an Aes Sedai of the brown Ajah), the Aes Sedai sister, the black Ajah boss, the Shadar Logoth minion, and the Shadar Logoth boss (these last two are the most twisted things I've thought up in years--the character artist, upon seeing the description for the latter character asked, "What's going through his head? Where did this guy come from?").

In addition, we delivered two more citadel variants, one of which used most of the new Forsaken primitives. These primitives are absolutely the most beautiful 3D environments I've even seen. The textures and geometry are wonderful. We're learning a lot as we go along, and the work shows it.

As Scott pointed out in his .plan, we're moving onto the primitives for Shadar Logoth. Based on some initial direction, Paul did some thinking and pulled together a bunch of reference for this city that--if we can pull it off--will make up the foundation of some incredible sights. Each environment we tackle surpasses the last. Forgive me for spewing superlatives, but I'm really impressed with this art team. 'Nuff said.

High level design continues on multiple fronts. I'm trying to achieve that balance of depth without frustration, lots of content without loss of focus. It's not easy, especially when no one has the whole thing in their head but me. The designers are doing an admirable job putting up with me and my outrageous demands though. Slowly, these designs are coming together, and the end results will be unprecedented.

Job @ id, SIN impression [11:25am]
The job that most any artist reading this page that doesnt already work at a game company would probably want, id Software has a new opening as mentioned in Kevin Cloud's .plan file. There is also some nice words for Ritual's SIN release this past Sunday.

Congratulations to Ritual on the release of the Sin demo. I hadn't had so much fun playing a 3D game in a long time. I can't wait to play the final game.

Adrian and I are looking for a 2d texture artist to help create wall textures, skins, and interface graphics. Any one interested should send their resume to me at kevinc@idsoftware.com. I am looking for someone skilled as a traditional artist, with strong 2d art talent and good modeling experience. Experience as a professional computer artist is required with a preference on someone who has worked on 3D games. I'm looking for a person willing to put in strong hours, is easy to work with, and doesn't require a lot of oversight.

The Best SIN Easter Egg [11:25am]
Some email that I got which um, we all can thank the lovable Wieder for mentions the discovery of my personal favorite easter egg in the SIN demo:

I noticed in the Sin demo, on the computer when you "type" the .ini file at the command promp it has a line that says:   WALLPAPER=C:\DOORWAYS\JLH-IS-HOT.BMP

Unreal Sound[11:25am]
Some email that I got which um, we all can thank th

SIN Views [11:25am]
Here is a list of all of the SIN impressions/reviews that I've found from across the web

Views [11:36am]

There are a several means for an AI to navigate successfully a level; in particular precalculated pathfinding and dynamic pathfinding. When implementing the movement code for the AI in Blood 2, I had an interesting decision to make on what kind of implementation to use.

werd
Got quite a bit more to post.. slowly catching up. I got the big old email bomb as my email finally started pooring in yesterday.. Yeesh. I apologize to anyone that I dont answer right away or completely miss. Also I'll see if I can do a 2 for 1 with the weekly section today since I missed it yesterday. (Hey, first time in over a month, not too bad)

Monday, July 27

Quake3: Arena Shot [7:18pm]
If you happen to have Adobe Acrobat or dont mind downloading it you can take a look at Brian Hook's course notes and lecture slides that he used when giving a speach at SIGRAPH a week ago. Here is the screenshot I yanked from the PDF cuz I'm nice: (Saw word of this on Blue's, I imagine I got email about it.. but.. I dont have email working right now) Keep in mind the resolution and image quality is pretty poor from this bit of haxoring I did. Check out http://www.quakecity.net/ if you wanna see the lightmap pass etc.

GameSpy For SIN [5:18pm]
According to Ritualistic, a new version of GameSpy has been released at www.gamespy.com with support for Ritual Entertainment's SIN already! Go check it out and download SIN!

SIN Demo Reviews [4:41pm]

After playing this demo, I have decided that real world levels are the future of action games. The bank level had escalators, revolving doors, ATM machines, and other cool stuff that I won't spoil for you, but it really made me feel like I was in a modern action movie. The enemies in this game have pain skin, so if you shoot them in the chest their shirt will be soaked in blood, and if you cap 'em in the head you see blood splatter on their face. If you run at a bad guy with guns blazing, he will be knocked back a few feet, and if you shoot him against a wall he will lean back on it then lay down. Before you shoot a bad guy, be sure to take a look at your gun. They not only look cool, but they also have some nice looking animation, especially the sniper rifle. You can pretty much destroy any object you see, and when you do, the pieces of that object are the same texture as they were when they were whole. The blood splats and bullet holes add so much fun to the game. After unloading on one of those baddies, I got to see my new masterpiece splattered all over the wall with a shower of bullets.

Thanks to Redwood for those other links.

SIN Cheat Codes [1:31pm]
Ok quit emailing me. Here is a list of basic cheat codes that I've seen on IRC so far. You must type these in the console of course.
/superfuzz = godmode
/wuss = all weapons
/nocollision = noclip
/wallflower = notarget

Also, if you have checked out the demo and wanna give your opinion on it, check out the poll on HardCorps SIN.

More Views [2:56pm]

3D Shooters Article [1:21pm]
Check out this CGW article which talks about the 3D shooter genre and of course how wonderful CGW is for being able to predict the direction that shooters will go.

At this time last year, we predicted how the crop of post-Quake games would move from run-and-gun gameplay to more story-driven action-adventure gaming. Of course, the bottom line is we all want to kill things - lots of things - in most 3D shooters, so the emphasis was, and still is, awesome action. But realistic puzzles and interactive environments enlivened by characters and enemies with interesting personalities have arrived to revitalize this genre.

The Carmack Report [1:21pm]
A huge compilation of the notes from his speech, complete with technical and personal  notes by Josh Forman, the GAGames CPL reporter. carmack.html

First, Carmack gave the group of about a hundred onlookers an update on what improvements have been made to the Quake engine. This is largely technical, and I'm not extremely proficient with Quake coding, so I'll do my best to comment. If I miscommunicate anything, by all means let me know at josher@interaccess.com

Weekly [1:21pm]
The suckage will be online this evening. I'm trying my darndest to catch up on a lot of email and deal with other issues that have come up over the weekend that I need to take a look at.

Quake3: Arena [11:01am]
This in depth analysis of many of the details that John Carmack revealed during his lengthy speach at the CPL tournament this past weekend is pretty complex. It's a good look though at some of the technology decisions that Carmack has made and gives some of the details behind just what the hell he was talking about.

More SIN [11:01am]
We need more servers, every server out there seems to be packed. Snag a copy of the demo. (Which is not infected with a virus according to Ritual) from their FTP as well as HTTP server. You guys will be impressed. It is very very very much worth the download, only wish you could DM on the bank level.

If you are looking for servers to play on or want to run one, check out www.ritualistic.com/servers/

Scourge Done Slick [11:01am]
Speaking of Ritual and their projects. The Quake Mission Pack #1, which was Ritual Entertainment's first highly successful project was the subject of this absolutely incredible demo made which runs through the pack for you showing the most astounding ways to finish the levels you could ever imagine.

Unreal & OpenGL [11:01am]
Mark Rein made yet another post to the Epic Megaboard talking about the status of an OpenGL port of Unreal yesterday

We're still not ready to release OpenGL for reasons that I'll try to explain as best I can. Up until late last week I was under the impression that we were going to have different Unreal OpenGL drivers for each card. I was wrong. I learned that we have one single OpenGL driver and we're working with the Independent Hardware Vendors (IHV's, a fancy term for card manufacturers) to (a) make it run well on the target cards and (b) bring their OpenGL drivers up to speed so Unreal can run well. Most of the IHV's updated OpenGL drivers that are being tweaked are either NOT finished yet, not up to what is needed yet or just not ready for release. This means that if we released Unreal's OpenGL drivers there would be no cards that it would run well with. I do NOT want to release something that runs like crap because no one has the right drivers to run it with.

Views [1:44am]

Hardware [11:42am]

Game Gauge Total = 555.19 (Note: Run With VSync Enabled)
Forsaken = 192 fps
Incoming = 82 fps
Turok = 87.5 fps
F22 = 49 fps
Quake 2 = 63 fps
Quake = 82.3 fps

Back on Track [10:31am]
Ok guys, things are resuming the normal schedule again which should mean 5-10 updates/day to the page. I apologize for the slow past few days but the CPL event in combination with the server problems in combination with myself making it to the end of the tournament at CPL kind of made things tough.

btw, if you are running a SIN server for the love of god use sindm6 if your players get past 4-5 people.

oh, and check out www.ritualistic.com/servers/ if you want to submit yours to the list. I imagine Ritual has contacted GameSpy by now so hopefully we can expect something soon.

werd
Sigh, servers.. scripting... errors.. irritating.. beyond belief..

Honestly, it's not mine!

Sunday, July 26

SIN Demo Released [10:11pm]
The SIN demo from Ritual Entertainment has just been released. For more details on SIN check out www.ritual.com SIN is based loosely on the Quake2 engine but with huge technology improvements including 16 bit color, full scripting language, and an actual storyline among other things. Here is a list of download sites: Oh, and check out GameCenters blurb

A SIN DM Server is already running at sin.lithium.com

Here is the readme.htm that is included in the demo.

/www.gamespot.com/sin_demo.exe
ftp3.download.com/pub/win95/games/Sin_Demo.exe
planetquake/iles/sin/demo/pq/Sin_Demo.exe
ftp.livewire.com.au//Sin_Demo.exe
ftp.questnet.net.au/Sin_Demo.exe
ftp://sin.lithium.com/Sin_Demo.exe
PlanetQuake MIrror List

No email sucks.

Keep an eye on the page, I'll have a list of download sites here ASAP.

Is This Thing On? [2:23pm]
RIX has won the CPL tournament over Gollum on DM6. Things on my end took longer than expected, I still havent gotten out to eat yet even.

I apologize for the page being down over the weekend, sucked huh? I still dont seem to be getting email and have other various problems that will be addressed this evening.

 

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