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Half-Life on Gamespot

Yea, just what the headline says, GameSpot has an article on Valve's Half-Life with some new, quite impressive screenshots.

Half-Life on Next-Gen

Well, I coulda grouped these two tidbits together under one headline, but uh, It looks like I have more stuff to post this way ya know? Here is a Next-Gen Article on Half-Life as well.

Qoole Beans

New windows and DOS versions of Qoole, the cool object oriented Quake Editor have been released on their web page, www.qoole.com

Weekly Forecast

GameSpot once again has posted their predictions for upcoming major game releases. Here are the ones you should be interested in:

- September 1997 Hexen 2 Jedi Knight Unreal (Shareware) - October 1997 Unreal (Full) - November 1997 Daikatana Half-Life - December 1997 Quake 2

SiN is not listed due to scheduled release date falling after January of 1998. -Prophet.

Storm

Ion Storm news letter has hit the stands.

Magnificent 7

GameCenter has just started their webcast with members of Ritual, Ion Storm, and 3DRealms among others. *AND* they have some new screenshots of the games including a 3 of SiN. Including shots with characters.

More! more!

Ok, just cant get enough screenshots of Quake2.. check out these new ones from the id Software page. -Weird Joe.

Also, Disruptor updated his .plan with info on each screenshot.

Things are moving right along and everyone's really busting their asses. With respect to the batch of screenshots that I released today, I just wanted to answer some questions I saw people had on 3DNet #quake. frame1: The monster you see is monster_infantry (aka: Paul Steed). The weapon is the rocket launcher. This is one of Tim Willit's base levels which appear near the start of the game. frame3: The monster is monster_soldier (There are three different variations of this monster, with varying degrees of toughness and each of them has a different attack. The weapon that the player is holding is the grenade launcher. This is one of American's levels, The Factory, where the aliens chop up captured humans and turn them into cyborgs =) frame5: a monster_soldier with his back turned to you. This is one of Tim Willit's base levels which appear near the start of the game. Notice the gorgeous sky with the mountain range in the background. Hope this answers your questions. Back to work for me...

Quake2 Screenshot

Another screenshot has hit the net, this time via Quake Workshop. I'll post a thumbnail here, but head over to the Workshop for the full size image. -Prophet.

It's getting closer...

Disruptor slapped this cute little animated gif up in his .plan file a little while ago:

Bah

Wasted all morning waiting for a tow truck that never showed up, sorry about the late update.

Deathmatch Essentials

A patch that was being shown off during QuakeCon, the DM Essentials patch is out on the net for you boys and girls to check out. it includes new animations for the player models (In Deathmatch of course) to show off what weapons the players are holding as well as crouching being added. You need 16 megs of ram to run this patch but as Blue says, I imagine just about everyone who plays Quake has that by now.

Note, this is just the demo shown at QuakeCon. The final is being sent to QA (probably today)

Half-Life Screenshot

Jaspur, webmaster of the Telefragged Half-Life page scored a screenshot from the Valve boys. Guess I'm gonna have to post another one of my own to keep up now eh?

World Domination?

Jason Robbins (Aborted Fetus) emailed me this interesting little article he wrote on exactly why he feels Ritual will be successful..

Thresh's Frontline

Gamers.com has posted a new section done by Thresh himself (that dude who can kick your ass in DM) called the FrontLine. -Prophet.

Quava

Quava is, as the author calls it "Java hacks for Quake" here is a quote from the page:

"I've hacked out some code in Java which makes it talk to Quake servers. You can now write Java apps which query Quake servers for who is playing and what the scores are. You can also write a Quake packet proxy server for gameplay. The reason for this is that if you want to write an applet, your Quake java applets cannot talk to any server except the machine it came from, which might not necessarily be your Quake server. Hence, I've included a class, QuakeProxy, which when instantiated and started, starts receiving and sending packets." http://inky.proxicom.com:8000/quava/

-Prophet.

Fray

More updates on the Fray page. Fray is of course a NYC based huge ass lan party being sponsored by Cyberweb Cafe, Pseudo, Blue's.

Duke64 Shots

There are some screenshots of the N64 port of Duke Nukem 3D over at the Taponline pages. -Prophet.

SiN FAQ

The Elitegames SiN page has posted the official SiN FAQ. Hexagon did it with the help of our bis guy Harry Miller here at Ritual. Check it out.

200 Player Quake

GameSpot has posted their little article on the future of Quake2 and the implications of Quake2 having up to 200 clients on the same server. -Prophet.

DirectX 5 and WinQuake

Zanshin updated his Dojo over at PlanetQuake with information on DirectX 5 and possible conflicts with WinQuake, so if you haven't installed DirectX 5 yet, make sure and check out the Dojo first for info.

Unreal Movie

Yea.. everyone was saying that movie released the other day over at www.unreal.com pretty much sucked, and Mark Reign agreed. The reason? They uploaded the wrong one! Check out www.unreal.org for the story and expect a re-release of a much improve version in the coming days.

Interview with Jaquays

Paul Jaquays answered a few questions in an interview over at the Quake Workshop. Paul is a writer, level designer, and artist over at id Software.

Mynx Watch

Everyone's favorite online couple, Mental4 and Mynx are about to have a kid. Go to their page and take a stab at guessing the time of birth for their new baby. For those who don't know, Mynx and Mental actually met in a game of Quake, and are now actually married. -werd to ^Tsuba

QuakeWorld.net

Bi||iard updated www.quakeworld.net with some info on the latest version of GLQW including the changes made so you can tell who has a Quad, Pentagram etc. They are using different colored lights now to signify who has what, take a look at this shot of some punk with the pentagram:

Vanilla Fudge

Oh my god, just wasted 4 bucks on something horrid, stopped by the mall to get pizza for lunch, and said "Hey, I'm gonna buy me some fudge" So I stopped at the Fudge makers place "Fudgeorama" or whatever the hell it's called and hooked myself up with a couple slabs of fudge. The homegirl at the counter told me I get 1/2 slice free for buying 2 slices and recommended the Vanilla, so I said "sure thing, gimme some o' dat"
She packs the fudge up (heh) and I come back to the office to enjoy some pizza and a nice desert. Now I just finished up my 2 slices of glorious pizza and bit into the "complimentary" piece of vanilla fudge.
**** HORK *** PUKE *** GROAN ***
Holy shit I think I'm gonna get a tumor. How can they pack fudge like that (heh) and sell it? Or even give it away for that matter? I'm gonna go pawn this fudge off on that Hadwin guy, he eats anything. Actually I've heard he can eat a peach for hours...

Quake2 Preview

For all you guys who just can't get enough previews of Quake2, Gamers.com has posted their own preview of id Software's upcoming game. Gamers.com is also host to Thresh's DM diary.

New Version of BSP

BSP.com has yet another version of the ever improving BSP Quake map editor. A lot of people looked at BSP 6-8 months ago and never looked back, well you puds, take another look. BSP is the most feature rich Quake editor out there now days.

WinQoole

A new version of WinQoole is out as well that fixes the "texture crashing" bug among other things. -Prophet.

QA Hiring

I forgot to mention this yesterday, but if you are a talented texture artist and wish to work for the company who produced Shrak and have an impressive other title in progress right now, contact Embrionic Pete.

Star Wars TC

Hm.. dunno why this one didn't get Foxed (tm) Gamesnet has a preliminary (beta?) version of the StarWars TC available for download, "In this version, you can try out the blaster rifle, and shoot some stormtroopers. Have fun!"

Arch Mage beta

Another Quake TC that has been successful.. man.. and way back I thought none of these things were gonna actually get finished. Here is the mail I got:

The v.01 Beta version of the Arch Mage TC has been released on http://www.planetquake.com/archmage . The Beta features 8 new monsters (4 combatant, 4 non), 43 spells, an example of conversation and in-level movies, many new items, and a giant level with completely new textures to house it all. This should provide an adequate taste of what we at Team Arch Mage have planned for the future...

Fray Games

Lotsa people attending the Fray for some wacked out reason may want to play some games other than Quake! I don't really get it.. I mean.. uh.. why? Play Quake damn it.. it's good for you. Or well, is Virtual Valerie networkable?

Wheel of Time Preview

A game based upon the yet to be finished Unreal engine code, Wheel of Time is a nifty RPG style looking game with some seriously nice artwork, check out the GamesDomain preview. -Prophet.

Quess Update

There is an update on the Quess page (Chess for Quake)(!) Here is a cut down version of what has been fixed in the new build:

- Checkmate code totally bugfree - Camera view markers - Status bar: Time remaining in the turn is now shown where the armor display normally is - ASCII board display - Pawn Promotion - instead of instantly becoming a Queen you now select which piece to promote a pawn to - Move notation & saving

Quite a few other things as well but I didn't feel like listing that bigass text file. -Prophet.

Quake Modeling Association

If you are a cool dude who likes to crank out those models for Quake, check out the new Modeling Association page and join up.

Intellimouse

If you own one of those MS Mouses with the cool little scroller stuck between the buttons and want to use it for Quake, Buzzkill's Quake page has a free util for you to use that will turn it into a weapon switching toggle. -Blue's.

Gatling Gun

Fairly cool Quake mod with new weapon / sounds. v1.5 is out on Means of Destruction. -Blue's.

QName Maker

Another version of QName maker, that thing that puts all the purty colors in your Quake nickname is out.

SB Drivers / Quake Custom SB.

Well, this covers about 75% of you guys who own a SoundBlaster card. Creative Labs has released a new set of drivers for everyone. Also, If you own an awe32 or awe64 and like to play with the sound bank (Hey, they've got ram on those cards for a reason) Check out crazygeoff's custom Quake soundbank.

Tips from Mr. McGee

Brian 'Plucky' Ploeckelman sent me some mail about American McGee answering questions for him about Quake2, the new bsp format, and the release of QE4 among other things, here is a quote:

Q: are the textures gonna be contained within the new bsp files? if not, how are new textures gonna be used in levels? A:Textures will NOT be contained in the BSP file in Quake2. You would have to ask John the second question.

200 Players in Quake2!?

Yea well.. uh.. it could happen.. check out what John Carmack, lead programmer over at id has to say in his .plan:

July 30 quake2 +set maxclients 200 :) The stage is set for ultra-large servers. Imagine everyone at QuakeCon in one gigantic level! A single T1 could run 80 internet players if it wasn't doing anything else, a switched ethernet should be able to run as many as we are ever likely to have together in one place. There will be a number of issues that will need to be resolved when this becomes a reality, but the fundamentals are there. There will probably be issues with UDP packet dropping at the ethernet card level that will need to be worked around with a seperate qued thread. Quake 2 isn't as cpu intensive as QuakeWorld, but I'm not sure even a Pentium-II 300 could run 200 users. An alpha 21264 could certainly deal with it, though. The new .bsp format has greatly increased size limits, but you could still make a map that hits them. The first one to be hit will probably be 64k brush sides. Ten thousand brushes can make a really big level if you don't make it incredibly detailed. Loading a monster map like that will probably take over a minute, and require 32+ megs of ram. I should probably make an option for death messages to only be multicast to people that are in the potentially hearable set, otherwise death messages would dominate the bandwidth. Everyone should start thinking about interesting rules for huge games. A QuakeArmies dll has immense potential. Enemy lines, conquering teritory, multiple clan bases, etc. Cooperating servers will be possible with modified dlls, but I probably won't include any specific code for it in the default game.dll.

Gibs, Jibs.. etc..

Didn't we already go through this little debate a few months ago? American McGee has some comments on the correct pronunciation:

**Ugrent update to the Gib-Jib Debate** The TRUE inventor of the word "Gib" turns out to be Adrian Carmack, who explains as follows: "Gib is short for gibblet. Gibblets are guts of a chicken. I first heard a friend of mine use the term. Once I started working at id, I would call the guts I drew "gibs"." Thanks Adrian. Now we can all sleep a little easier.

KC in Rolling Stone

Check out the Ion Storm page, there is a blurb there about the never ending saga of KC and Romero and how it got her a mention in this months Rolling Stone.

Valve Half-Life Shot.

Just can't get enough of these shots huh? I dug up yet another screenshot of Valve's Half-Life project for your viewing pleasure, gotta have those exclusives ya know? :)

Midnight CTF

A new version of this quite entertaining enhancement to Zoid's CTF patch has hit the net, check out the homepage. -Dr.DooM

Web site of the day..

You know em, you love em.. another cool web site.

Quake Mission Pack #1

Yow.. check out this huge honor CGW has bestowed upon Ritual for the Quake Mission Pack over at the news section, Thanks Elliot Chin for permission to post.

Strag's Place of Quakeness

Brian Vanatta, you remember him? The guy who did those *great* Danzig levels for Doom2 has release his new map for Quake intended for QuakeWorld play. Check out his homepage and grab the map, it rocks!

Unreal Movie

A new .mov has been released of Epic's upcoming 3d action game Unreal. Check it out over at the homepage.

Defusion News

Josh Martel (aka cRUm) sent me this mail concerning the QW port of Defusion as well as the finalize v1.0 version:

Unfortunatley, the defusion QW port won't be ready by next week. We are working on getting version 1.0 ready to go, and in the process are changing several things and adding some others. We are adding more/better sounds and levels, as well as a new weapon. It has two firing modes: burst (Particle Beam) and pulsed (Pulse Cannon). I will be changing the way server settings are changed for more dedicated server support as well as adding some remote admin ability. The code will be much better in verison 1.0, with faster exection and less net trafic, hopefully making for a smoother online experience. Once version 1.0 is done and out, I will start on the QuakeWorld port. It shouldn't take too long, but I will also be helping another group out with some code and sounds for their upcoming TC, so that may delay things a bit.

Requiem News

Another popular Quake patch, Requiem has had some updates to the homepage, here is the email I got:

Requiem has updated his web site with a new SUPPORT page and GOSSIP page which will offer Quakers the chance to get help online or find out the latest news or ramblings of a mad man (Req: "hehehe.. thats me") There's also a new Requiem Now button for sites that wish to have a link to the site.

Zerstörer

One of the most eagerly anticipated add-on packs for Quake has an update over on their homepage. Just so you know how good these guys are, one of the members of the team was just hired by id Software. -Faustus

Qoole Quickbar

There's a new and improved version of Quickbar for Qoole by Matt Lee at http://web.mit.edu/mattlee/qoole/quickbar.zip -Prophet.

DeathStar Consortium

People out there interested in getting their own domains should talk to Dragos, here's the latest:

The DeathStar Consortium, the project to bring DNS to the IP only quake servers on the Internet. Is pleased to announce that not only are we still providing DNS to those which are slaves to IP, or just want a cool name, but we are now operating a Quake Server Admins Page. The quake server admins page located at http://help.deathstar.net will be help page dedicated to assisting the server admins or future admins getting started running quake servers. We will be covering all operating systems, and types of quake, such as normal quake and quake world. Also, we are putting together a level pak, so map maker's feel free to contribue. For more information on our DNS project goto http://www.deathstar.net Map contributes send info, on where to download your maps to maps@deathstar.net.

Daikatana.com

Ion Storm's Daikatana page has opened, although there is just about nothing there as far as content just yet, it looks kinda cool. have a look at www.daikatana.com for yourself. -Hudd.

HDR Tutorial

MJM has opened up a tutorial section over at the HDR pages for Quake editing issues, inparticular models, textures, and levels.

Why is my Rush Card Boggin in GL?

Zanshin's of the Quake Dojo over at PlanetQuake sent some mail to Blue about how the most recent beta version of the Stingray 128/3D drivers are actually a bit slower for GLQuake than the previous version:

"...I had an excellent conversation with a source at 3Dfx, who assures me that all is not lost. The reason for the release of the beta drivers is Mechwarrior 2 Mercanaries. It was not their intention to alienate all the GLQuakers out there. Second, the triangle setup problem IS fixed, but there is a new issue with fill-rate being caused by GLIDE internals on the Rush chipset. This is something they will probably be able to fix. ..."

HPCL Signups

If you signed up previously for the HPCL Tournament, well guess what you gotta do it again.. some problems with the earlier signup resulted in all the data being thrown out and ya gotta start over again. -Blue's

Take No Prisoners Demo!

w00, just played this game for a while and it's a winner in my book, pretty damn well done. Head over to GameCenter for the exclusive or just grab the 10meg demo (need directX) here. Hey, it's got DeathMatch support, it has to be fun :)
-Prophet.

And You Thought MPlayer Had no Clue..

Check out onethumb's response to TEN and their amazing display of poor management. I think they saw how poorly MPlayer did the Ferrari tourney and decided it wasn't bad enough.

Quake2 Release date

Slipgate over at www.quake2.com sent along this email he traded with Kevin Cloud (I assume he got permission to post)

>I read your request for clarification on the release date of Quake 2. Actually, Quake 2 >could ship for Christmas and ship on November 18. The term Christmas release covers a >broad period of time ranging from about October till a week prior to Christmas. ----------- Sorry I cannot be more specific. However, given the complexity and size of Quake 2, the final implementation, clean up, and testing of the game is going to take longer than with prior id releases. Therefore, speculation as to the exact date of the game's release is simply guess work. With that said, we are committed to get Quake 2 finished for Christmas and feel that it is a reasonable deadline given our current development status. Kevin Cloud"

-Prophet.

Fray Moves (New prices!)

The Fray has moved its location to the Nanuet Inn in Nanuet, New York, and because of this has had a major drop in room prices read about it at http://www.cyberwebcafe.com/frames.html -Prophet. (btw I quoted Prophet directly on this one because I know it pisses him off.. heh)

Census results

The latest PlanetQuake census results are in, including the much debated correct pronunciation of "gibbed" There is a new set of questions including one in particular I'll have to go over there and answer.

Glide for Linux

The Glide 2.4 Rasterization Library for Linux (Voodoo Graphics) is now available from 3Dfx -Blues.

!@#LKJ!!!!

AAAAAAHH#@!$L Man I hate it when I forget to upload my page update.. Sorry sorry.. I actually had this thing done at 10.30am.. bah.

Quake Special Forces TC

It's out! go download it and enjoy a military twist on Quake. -SaNtan.

QuakeWorld News

Jack Mathews has some more info on the next version of QuakeWorld to be released soon. (In response to Redw00d's post)

The reason for the sky slowdown is because places with sky are large areas, and texture thrashing is going on. The 8-bit texture code in the next versions of GLQuake and GLQW should help this out a lot, but will not totally eliminate it. I have added floodprots into the server. Now, in case anyone was wondering, it's very configurable. You can specify the # of messages/# of seconds before someone is locked out, and you can then specify the # of seconds they are silenced. Also, the first message they get is configurable, which is why "herd" was spelled wrong in Red's screenshot :)

Defusion Server

Due to unforseen problems, the Defusion server that was announced could not go up. There is, however, a new one, and it is up for sure :) It's at 24.3.98.17

New Stingray Drivers

The new drivers for the VooDoo Rush Stingray are up at the Hercules website for download. Thanks Drew Mann and Charles Yang.

Tips from Thresh

B2 as well as Prophet have mentioned this site to me so I imagine I should eh, www.gamers.com has a weekly updated DM guide by Thresh himself to help you guys learn all the secrets of a Quake DM master..

.plan Wagon

Brian Hook is talking about Quake2 features again.. have a read:

Spent today getting stippled translucency to work. I haven't tested its performance vs. the table based "real" translucency, but in theory it should have at least 2x the performance because only half the number of pixels will be rendered. Hell, with 25/33% transparency, only 1/4th the pixels need to be rendered. And stippling has the added perk of not requiring a read from the backbuffer. The down side to stippled alpha is that it's, well, pretty butt ugly. If you're running a high res desktop with a smallish window then it looks just> fine, but if you're running low-res, it looks like the complete and utter Hell of White Noise. Stippled alpha will likely be off by default, but it will be controllable via the video options menu and also by a cvar ("r_stipplealpha").

Warzone

A bunch of new pages are popping up over at www.warzone.com

Steve's quake2 page http://www.warzone.com/steve/quake2/q2home.html White Tiger Tavern UO site http://ultima.warzone.com Steve's DNF page http://www.warzone.com/steve/dnf/dnfhome.html Team Fortress Battleground http://www.warzone.com/battlegrounds Hexen2 Dungeon http://www.warzone.com/hexen2 Emeror's Realm http://www.warzone.com/rebellion Quake news/opinion/commentary page http://www.warzone.com/inferno/

The BORG

A single level add-on being worked on by Guardian (webbie of bubbah's monster page), The Dire Protofiend (kenneth scott of the skinforge) and Ravage: THE BORG. Check out the news on it here.

3D Action Webcast

GameCenter has announced the WebCast they have had in the works for a while that will include members from Ritual, Ion Storm, 3DRealms and a "special guest" as well. -Prophet.

Don't Like Crossdressing?

Well, I can see how crossdressers might bother some of you guys, (Especially in CTF) so Grey_Ghost has come up with a little patch to get rid of them in Custom-CTF. Check out the CTF Skins Page. -Blue.

Quake2.com

The mailing list being run by Slipgate over at www.quake2.com has been axed, here is what he had to say:

The Quake 2 mailing list finally got restarted. However, the amount of bandwith needed to handle the mailing list in even the slightest open forum manner would melt Quake2.com. Given that open forum discussion already happens on the messageboard of Quake2.com, and that a weekly news recap won't help since people can read the old news, we've decided (albeit unhappily) to permanently and totally axe the mailing list. This is no longer a notice of it being broken and soon to return, don't expect to see it anymore. It's gone. We are sorry to those people who liked it. Quake2.com will continue to have tons of great stuff, including some upcoming really great stuff.

Quake2 Music

American McGee, level designer and sound man for Quake2 updates his .plan with info on Quake2's music, Ozzy!

There seems to be some talk in the Quake community regarding the Quake 2 music and who might be working on it. I'd like to let you guys in on what's going on in the music area, and set some things straight. Sure thing: The majority of the music in Quake 2 is being done by Sascha Dikiciyan and his partner. These are the two guys who did the "Methods of Destruction" CD for Quake. You can find their homepage at: http://www.cyber-age.com/qcdmain.html They will be contributing as many tracks as possible, hopefully allowing us to have at least one track of music per level or level group. Possible things: Sony records is interested in doing a compilation CD to which you would play Quake 2. Most of the songs on this CD would be previously released material from bands on Sony labels that we here at id enjoy listening to. There is also a chance that there would be one track on this CD done especially for Quake 2. This CD would be a separate product that you would purchase to listen to while playing Quake 2, driving your car, etc. Basically this product would have no connection to id aside from the Quake 2 logo and an id "stamp of approval". The guy most likely to record the special Quake 2 track is Ozzy Ozbourne. He has shown interest in this project and might also do the player sounds (death, pain, etc...) From what I understand Ozzy is very interested in this and chances are that all will go well... but this is the music industry, and things could just go nowhere. We'll have to wait and see. Trent Reznor has also sent word to me that he may be interested in doing some music for Quake 2. Again, this may or may not happen, but I am going to try my hardest to make it happen again. For now you can be assured that even without the contributions of Trent and Ozzy the Quake 2 sound track is going to kick ass. The music that Sascha and his partner have been contributing is nothing less than amazing. But if things go as planned we could end up with a game soundtrack unlike any other done before. Cross your fingers.

Super Mario TC

Check this out.. another TC comes out of the woodworks with impressive screenshots, this time over at Telefragged by Jazon and Strabo. Here is one of the pics.

My favorite quote on the page : "Please don't sue us!" -Prophet.

Defusion

I talked to Polish and Crum is already hard at work on the QuakeWorld port of Defusion. (I would say sometime next week we can fire up a Defusion master)

QMe News

Quake Model Editor, one of the best editors out there (Used by quite a few TC guys) has some updates as well as a challenge that was answered. Check the homepage. -Prophet.

New Visage

Another version of the Macintosh .pak utility is out, Visage. -Prophet.

QRally

If you still haven't checked out Quake Rally you are missing something big. The pages have been updated with a HTML'ized version of the entities and also a new WAD file that is compatible with BSP.

A webring has even begun for QRally.

Quake Mountain / Nailed

A good lookin page that just opened, Quake Mountain, Another site that has been consistently updated for a while is Nailed. (Good lookin page too)

Flood Protection in QW

Something people have been wanting for ages in QuakeWorld looks like it is finally going to happen, flood protection. What it does is if a person spams they are muted for 15 seconds or so and given a notice of the err in their ways. Check the screenshot over at Redw00d's.

3D Accelarators

Straight from the MM Wire, here's the latest on 3D cards:

Game developers and publishers increasingly are supporting 3D accelerators for the benefit of the technically-savvy hardcore gamer market, but they concede they are running into obstacles among mass- market consumers. 3D accelerator cards are intended to give PC games the kind of graphics quality found on consoles, but right now rival manufacturers are making a number of competing cards any of which may not be compatible with a particular title. There exists a "core set of gamers who know what cards are what," but "when it comes to the [general] consumers, a lot of education still needs to be done," an official at Psygnosis says, adding, "It's still a very young area of the industry." While accelerator cards from the likes of 3Dfx Interactive [TDFX], Rendition, Diamond [DIMD], Matrox and 3D Labs [TDDDF] are being used by a variety of publishers, the specific bells and whistles of each card cannot be used by every game, says Steve Wartofsky, project manager of external development at Interactive Magic. "When you're in that competitive environment, there will be some consumer confusion," says Activision [ATVI] Senior VP of Marketing Eric Johnson. "We wish there was one standard, of course." It's expensive and time-consuming to support too many cards in any one game, the Psygnosis official says, noting that her company targets mid- to high-range cards for its games. Psygnosis' G-Police will support a dozen different cards when it's released in October, the official says. "Publishers are having to expand what they support." Johnson compares the 3D accelerator environment to that of sound cards several years ago, and, he believes, like sound cards, one or two market leaders in 3D acceleration will emerge. "I don't think it's going to happen for this holiday season," however, he adds.

Half-Life Shots

Got a couple more screenshots of Half-Life for you guys to check out:

Half-Life is a 3d game being developed by Valve Software based on the Quake engine.

Faster GLQuake

Jack Mathews is doing a lot of work to improve GLQW and apparently is making some good progress.

QuakeWorld is where a lot of my time has been poured into lately. I am now uploading textures to the card in 8-bit format, so the card renders them *better* and takes less texture RAM. Combat will be usable on GLQW, and yes, the 8-bit uploads will make it to GLQuake too. The HUD, though, will not, because GLQuake is "classic" Quake, and that's that. Also, the physics are fixed and Zoid got in individual maxspeeds for players, so the TF scout will have an advantage again. There's some other stuff I'm thinking about doing that could surprise people. Stay tuned.

Check out the rest of his .plan

Quake2 Preview

Well, this is actually just one guy's impressions of all the games he saw during his QuakeCon visit, over at the MPlayer pages. -Prophet.

Fragapalooza

If you're in Canada and can't make it to the Fray, Fragapalooza is your answer, looks like they are stackin up a couple sponsors and sign ups are going well.

Deathmatch 4

Disruptor and tokay have been havin a good ol' time modifying the inferno id server, here are the latest changes:

Deathmatch 4.0 Addendum: American and I were talking some more this morning, and we added the following to DM4.0 rules; - You start with 250 health - You start with 200 red armour - Every time you pick up an enemies pack, you get 10 additional health - For obvious reasons, weapons and ammo do not spawn Enjoy =)

Just connect to inferno.idsoftware.com and have fun. (You need QW of course)

Valve Shots

I've gotten a hold of a few more Half-Life pics.. maybe I should post them tonight? :)