go to www.shugashack.com for up to date news.

 

Satuday, April 3

SiN 1.04 [5:15 pm] - Huntsman
I saw in Scott Alden's .plan that Sin 1.04 is out over at Ritualistic. Whats new? I'm sure bug fixes, stuff that needs to be improved and Sin CTF are all included. Get it now. (Unless you don't own SiN, but then, whats wrong with you?)

Q3 Teasing [5:15 pm] - Huntsman
John Cash was annoyingly cryptic in his last .plan update:

Q3A TEST ======== To quote Jerry Pournelle... "Real Soon Now".

Where is it? Why don't I have it? I think the general "Quake Community" consensus is that q3test.exe should appear on id's ftp before we are forced to get some pitchforks and some sticks and some fire and lynch id's office Frankenstein style. Psst. John. Hook me up.

you aren't sCary! [5:15 pm] - Huntsman
Yeah yeah, I know. But I have no blinkin idea where he is. He may be nursing this hangover. sTeve, come back! we miss you! And you still haven't updated Reasons to Live. And the "S" button on my keyboard is broken. Fix it! This news update is brought to you soley by QuakeFinger.

Friday, April 2

AMD Lawsuit [5:15 pm]
Oh heck, looks like everything isnt as peachy as AMD makes it out to be according to a lawsuit that was just filed. Check it out over at GA-Source.

The complaint alleges that in January 1999, AMD disclosed for the first time that its newest K6 chip was experiencing production and design problems, which had resulted in significant yield and production problems during late 1998. In response to this announcement, defendant Sanders assured investors that AMD's problems were "behind us now" and that AMD was on track to post strong performance in the first quarter of 1999. On March 8, 1999, AMD shocked the market by announcing that the production problems which defendants assured investors had been resolved had in fact adversely affected K6 production throughout January and February of 1999, and that AMD would suffer a "significant loss" for the first quarter of 1999. This revelation caused the price of AMD shares to plummet to approximately $17 per share, almost 50% below its Class Period high.

Check Please [5:15 pm]
Inspired by Big Lebowski, myself and a couple of friends from Ritualistic were in town and sucked down a bit of alcohol before going to see The Matrix. Here's the tab because um.. We're gonna try and beat that next time. :) Also I'm working on some RTL right now, a bit late but it's Jack's fault.

John Carmack [4:15 pm]
The folks at DoomWorld got a hold of John Carmack of id Software for an interview looking back at the creation of Doom some 5 years ago.

Doomworld: When was the original concept for Doom created?

Carmack: We worked from the technology towards the game. The style of play from Wolfenstein was clearly a good thing (in retrospect, it was the birth of an entirely new genre), and I had a pretty solid idea what the next step in the technology was going to be: arbitrary 2D maps with variable floor and ceiling heights and table based lighting. Thematically, DOOM was viewed as "Aliens" meets "Evil Dead 2".

TFClassic Not Today [2:15 pm]
Oh well, that didnt last long. It looks like TF Classic for Half-Life has been delayed yet again due to the international versions not being done with QA testing. Here is the email I received:

The Bad News:
- TFC isn't going to release today.  We have to do simultaneous releases in all languages, and we haven't finished QA on the international versions. Once that finishes up, we're going to do final acceptance testing on all the different language versions for 24 hours, and then release.  I'll let you know as soon as that 24 hour clock starts.

The Good News:
- There will be a new map in the release, called Push.  We were going to keep this a secret until the release went out the door, but in a desperate attempt to reduce hate mail, I'm going to try to buy you off with this information.
- The Team Fortress Classic review in today's issue of 'USA Today' gives Team Fortress Classic 4 out of 4 stars, calling it "incredible" and "spectacular", and saying it "rocks"!

TFClassic Today [10:35 am]
According to the latest information from Valve Software, Team Fortress Classic for Half-Life should be released some time this afternoon. I'll of course have a list of download urls and all the extra information posted as soon as it's available. You can check out the latest preview at 3DGamers or the Betabites preview.

Messiah [10:35 am]
Havent had much on Messiah lately. WarZone has posted a new feature interviewing Scott Herrington of Shiny Entertainment asking about the oft-delayed Messiah with hopes that we actually see the game come out soon. :)

Well, while everyone else for the past year or two has been concentrating on pushing more and more polygons around, we took a slightly different route and came up with a system of using the polygons more effectively. The scalability of the engine takes advantage of the increases in hardware and processor performance, so we're constantly pushing each system to its maximum as well. The way we see it, the "Saxsengine" (named after its coder/creator Michael 'Saxs' Persson) beats just about every engine out there in terms of flexibility, level of detail, speed, and overall greatness!

Views [10:35 am]

Tech [10:35 am]

Gaming [10:35 am]

werd
I have no idea what the problem with the server was all morning. The big switch to the new server should be happening today, so maybe some nimrod broke something in preperation. Oh well.

Looks like the guy who made that Melissa virus has been caught.

 

Thursday, April 1

Official QuakeCon99 Messageboards [6:25 pm]
The folks at id Software and QuakeCon.org asked me to host the official QuakeCon99 messageboards, sounds good to me. I imagine the more useful of the two boards will be the car pooling board. Members of the QuakeCon staff will be on hand to answer questions on the boards on occasion as well. Here ya go:

Two message boards are available providing forums for QuakeCon 99 discussion:
- QuakeCon 99 General Discussion
- QuakeCon 99 Carpool: Need a Ride / Want a Ride?

Daikatana [4:45 pm]
The Ion Storm website has posted an interview with Justin Randall, programmer on the Daikatana project. It has some pretty detailed answers concerning weapons and mods like CTF etc.

In cases where the client already has the information necessary to correctly render entities in the game, it's redundant for the server to re-iterate what the client already knows. E.g. When a player shoots the Ion Blaster, the client already knows which direction the blast has to travel, it knows what model to render, it knows what effects to apply, it knows everything it needs to know to make the blast travel through space.

Jack @ Ritual [3:55 pm]
Mark Dochterman of Ritual Entertainment has updated his .plan file with news that Jack Mathews formely of 3dfx and still part of GameSpy has joined Ritual as a programmer. Yes, that means Jack is moving to Dallas and will probably invade my little Shack here again with his antics.

Blood v2.1 [1:55 pm]
The v2.1 patch for Monolith's Blood2 game has been released. Here is a link to the download mirrors, and check out PlanetBlood for a list of changes made. It's pretty lengthy.

CGW Awards [12:05 pm]
GameSpot has posted a new article awarding all of their favorites for games of the year in different genres as well as covering what they feel was the hottest (heh) hardware of the year. Oh yeah, and the shocker? Half-Life won game of the year...

Rainbow6 Sequel [12:05 pm]
tAng sends word that the sequel to Rainbow6 has been announced on the RedStorm page. Here are a few of the new features. (update: Hey what the hell, at least I only fell for one April 1st jokes.. not bad I guess.)

Quake3 & Todd [9:55 am]
The bis guy over at id Software took part in an interview with the U-Games folks to answer a few questions about what the goals and expectations are for Quake3.

Todd Hollenshead: We're never satisfied, so we're always improving in every way we can. We invented deathmatch, so we know more about it than anyone. It is our goal to make this the greatest deathmatch game ever, and that means changing things from what has been done before.

TRIBES Stuff [9:55 am]
The TribesPlayers page has been updated with some information on future release plans. Speaking of TRIBES check out this tactics page which is pretty cool I saw linked on Blues

...Before 1.4, however, we're going to give you lucky folks a passel of mission tools. This will be a ZIP file release as opposed to the usual patch -- this won't replace your Tribes.exe or modify your scripts.vol file, it just contains stuff you don't have. Some of the things that will be included in this release are: the volume tools (VT, VTlist, and extract) used to manipulate .VOL files; the interior building tools (ZED and family); Matilda (creates DMLs, which are needed to make interiors); and PicaNew (remaps 24-bit art into 8-bit format, creating a new palette or using an existing palette).

Also, there is an interview with Rick Overman talking a bit about Starsiege and a little about Starsiege2.

Sweeney on 3D [9:55 am]
VoodooExtreme asked Tim Sweeney of Epic Games a few questions on what he thought was the hot 3D card of the moment is as well as plans on Unreal Tournament which should be quite near completion at this point.

Sweeney -1: Voodoo3: Clearly the fastest card I've seen, image quality not the best but fine for our purposes. It will really lag in games that use 24-bit textures instead of palletized textures.

Rage 128: Very good, almost as fast as Voodoo2 and TNT, better rendering quality, and I'm very glad to see this card exist, because it means that the baseline 3D accelerator that everyone will have in the future is pretty good.

TNT2: Haven't seen one yet, should arrive any day now.

Views [9:55 am]

Tech [9:55 am]

Gaming [9:55 am]

werd
Matrix was a great movie, kept me up late though. :( Also, I forgot to mention the plan yesterday was with Shackware going up, I pushed Wisdom to Thursday to hold the spot of the weekly demos until they return with the release of Q3Test. Expect it after lunch today as I'm pretty swamped right now.

 

Wednesday, March 31

Best 7 Upgrades [6:35 pm]
Here you go, something to play with after you've checked out ShackWare. From the mouth of Ken Feinstein: "Gamecenter picks our top 7 hardware upgrades, including benchmarks and witty analysis!"

Also, as a special treat (heh) Shack will be going 100% advertisement free late tonight for the next week (after I get home from seeing The Matrix) . Fun huh?

Shackware! [3:00 pm] - Clay "Huntsman" Mitchell
You may have noticed that the hardware section hasn't been updated in a bit, due to the fact its been revamped and made better! Dig the new Shackware, the little pictures and the portrait of sCary (you can't miss it). If something is screwed up (and I'm sure it is) let me know. The Shackware should be making its appearances on Wednesday from here on out.

Deus Ex Progress [1:45 pm]
The Witchboy's Cauldron, maintained by Harvey Smith of Ion Storm has been updated with a few musings on finding an Unreal CD as well as talk of the progress on Deus Ex (Ion's Unreal engine based project) as the E3 show closes in upon us. Thanks StormTroopers.

Deus Ex is looking like a game. we're a few days away from reaching Alpha. you can play missions 01 & 02, walk around, talk to numerous NPC's. we're trying to create believable NPC's, not just game thugs. it's way fun to listen to them talk and otherwise interact with them. pissing off the hulking, cybernetically freakish Gunther Hermann is actually terrifying.

currently, you can also do things like collect inventory items and use the skills your character has (chosen and advanced by the player from a selection of skills). picking locks and jury-rigging mechanical devices is cool already, though obviously we will be tuning the entire skillset as we go. also, the various in-game nanotech powers (also carefully selected and upgraded by the player) are fun to play with. (no one can have all of them, so the character building choices in some way determine how you play through the missions.)

Hook on Curves [12:15 pm]
As most people know the largest visual difference between Quake2 and Quake3 is the curved surfaces. Brian Hook of id Software explains things a bit about just what "curved surfaces" really are in Quake3.

Curved surfaces are invariably tessellated into triangles at some point. Quake3 has curved surfaces as a fundamental high level primitive, i.e. the editor supports the notion of a curved surface natively. With other technologies such as Quake, Q2, HL, etc. then the curved surfaces are going to be the result of a level designer painstakingly laying down brushes to emulate a curve. All Q3 does is allow the level designer to drop a curved surface directly.

At run-time, you get about the same effect either way. Some curved surface rendering technologies do, in fact, control the amount smoothness depending on distance, etc. This is known as "level of detail" control. This type of control is not possible with hard coded curves a la HL and Q2.

GLHeretic [12:15 pm]
If GLDoom wasnt enough for you, check out the new version of GLHeretic which has been released at Kokak's Heretic page. Saw that on Blues via Raven-Games

Drakan Near [9:25 am]
The Surreal Software Drakan title is nearing completion, here is word from the page you should keep an eye on most. Drakan.net also, here is a screenshot that came out recently.

Two bits of good news for all us Drakan fans!  #1 is that Beta has been delivered over this past weekend!  That is great news for all of us, because that means it is almost done!  I would probably expect to see it before summer!

#2 is the fact that Surreal also delivered a demo version of the game!  That's right, there is a DEMO for everyone to play!!!  One thing though; it is an exclusive demo for a certain magazine... Unfortunately, we have to wait for that magazine to be on the shelves (presumably May).

TNT2 Available May 1st [9:25 am]
According to an interview with Derek Perez, the PR Manager for NVidia the TNT2 should be available and "on store shelves" by May 1st. That is about 4 1/2 weeks from now. Also, concerning future 3D chipsets from NVidia:

... We will announce a new architecture that will revolutionize the 3D graphics industry for the fall of 1999. Unfortunatly, if I gave you any more information about the part I would have to kill ya!!!!!  :)

Also, you can check out these new TNT2 benchmarks posted over at Riva3D which pairs up against the Voodoo3 line. It looks like the difference between a V3 and TNT2 is about the same as it was between a V2 and original TNT when it comes to Quake2 benchmarks.

Wheel of Time [9:25 am]
The weekly development update for Wheel of Time based on the Unreal technology has been posted by Legend Entertainment. Thanks as always to Demandred (BORK BORK BORK) Here's a clip:

The first finished single-player levels will be rolling off of the assembly line this week. Since the entire team is focused on bringing these levels to completion, that's where everyone's effort has gone. Scripting and AI tasks have been focused on the requirements of the levels (Saving the White Tower and Approaching the FoL are real stess-tests for these things). Artifact behaviors are being tuning based on level-specific puzzles. Textures are filling specific requests from the designers. It's going to be amazing to see it all come together--as we will in a couple of days--and more maps are on their way.

MDK2 @ E3 [9:25 am]
Saw on VE that Computer Games Online has posted a new article giving some details on what we can expect at E3 this year from the MDK2 title. Looks like they have developed a new 3D engine specifically for the game:

MDK2 is being built using the Omen engine, a multi-platform game engine developed internally by the team at BioWare. While both the engine and the game are being developed for the PC and Sega Dreamcast, The Omen engine utilizes a realistic lighting engine which affords diffused and specular highlights and an animation-driven development system which allows segments of the game world to be dynamically modified in real-time. Additional features include realistic object physics and complex scripted AI which provide inhabitants with intelligent interaction and mannerisms. The Omen engine will be shown publicly for the first time at E3 via MDK2.

Views [9:25 am]

Tech [9:25 am]

werd
The "Shackware" page should go online today. Huntsman has given the page a much needed new look

Unlike yesterday I'll be around all day in case something interesting happens. Amazing what a pain in the ass some apartment complexes are about releasing rental history, that and the fax machines at Kinko's suck ass.

 

Tuesday, March 30

Ritual [6:35 pm]
3DGN invaded the offices of Ritual Entertainment seeking rare nude footage of Alexis Sinclaire and Levelord. Find out what they discovered, and how to eat crawfish in 3DGN’s Trip to Ritual Entertainment.

One of the things I did while being gone all day was stopping by Ritual myself for a bit. I'll just say FAKK2 is going to take quite a few people by surprise at E3 this year.

Requiem Demo2 [6:35 pm]
A new demo of Requiem: Avenging Angel has been released. Check out the 3DFiles.com mirror list as well as the 3DAction Gamers page and grab it. Here is the list of stuff that you can find in the new demo. Havent checked it out myself so I cant tell you if it's cool or stinks. :)

4 "JAM's" (or sub-levels) that make up the one level
Setting in the Power Plant of New Damascus
Tons of soldiers, Demon Rats, Demon Dogs, and Flying Kynthra
Tons of Angelic Powers including Resurrect, Possess, To Salt, Bloodboil, and Warp Time

Mission Objectives:
Meet with Rebel Soldier, Elijah
Find Cathcart, a Power Plant Exec Sympathetic to the Rebellion
Blow up the Back Up Reactor to set up a diversion

TRIBES2 [12:55 pm]
Datumplane has posted an interview with Dave Meddish of Dynamix asking some details about the sequel to TRIBES which is beginning development now.

Yoshi: Will the maps have more buildings like a city or something?
Dave: I don't know if we're going to have more "urban" maps. We toyed around with it for TRIBES but were having poly count issues, which is why the city maps didn't make the original cut.
Yoshi: Hardware only should help.
Dave: I would think so. We'll know more once we start really cranking out new missions.

ProjectV1 [8:15 am]
The PlanetUnreal guys have done up an interview with Wesley Davis from Digital Platoon, who are of course working on the Unreal engine based ProjectV1. Just have a look at this screenshot and you'll be impressed. More information should be online tomorrow as well.

PROJECT V1 is 3D squad-based tactical real-time action and simulation game of the most elite and versatile small unit of special warfare: the US Navy's Sea Air Land commandos (SEALs). Set in Vietnam, Project V1 will feature real SEAL missions in realistic 3D environments such as shrines, naval bases, jungles and villages.

Feel the passion of leading a platoon on thrilling and breathtaking missions of rescue, reconnaissance, recovering prisoners of war, capturing high ranking officers, staying alert for booby traps, gathering intelligence, staging ambushes, calling air/water support, securing areas and river patrolling.

Ass-Wack Links [9:25 am]
The weekly collection of links has been posted. The theme this week is people with too much time (and money) on their hands. Of course that is generally the theme every week, but this one in particular. :)

Messiah Update [8:15 am]
The MessiahPress folks have posted a good amount of new info on the development of Messiah from Shiny Entertainment as we approach E3. Maybe we'll actually see the game in 1999. Here is word from Scott Harrington:

Tons more character animation is going into the game then we had originally thought of.  It just seems to keep piling up.  This is the last time we make a game so flexible!  Every character has to work in just about every scene/environment in the game - and that means a truckload of animation for each.
<snip>
AGP code is being worked on so that we don't have to reduce textures at all.  People with AGP machines are going to have a truly stunning looking version of the game when the code is complete.

Views [8:15 am]

Tech [8:15 am]

Gaming [8:15 am]

werd
Well, after pushing this poor server to the limits day after day, arrangements have finally been made to move my beloved web page to a spanking new server. It'll be a Dual p2 system with a half gig of ram and a pair of 9gig scsi drives. The system is already operational, we're just waiting on a couple of things and everything will be online this week.

Also, thanks for all the email on my Q3Test article. Amazing how many of you guys just never saw those screenshots before :) Also, here is a shot from the Q3Test level from Tim Willits.

 

Monday, March 29

TRIBES v1.3.12 [8:35 pm]
TRIBES version 1.3.12 has been released.  This patch is unsupported by Sierra but does add a list of new features! Pick it up on the PlanetStarsiege mirrors and check the main page for a list of fixes.  Some of these are a new mission editor wizard,  banning problems fixed and OpenGL fixes. tribesbeta13to1312.exe

Deus Ex [5:35 pm]
Saw on VE that Bob White of Ion Storm has posted some information on the development of Deus Ex, the Unreal engine based title from Ion that I believe is targetted for Christmas this year? Here is part of the post to the StormTroopers messageboard concerning work towards E3:

"Well...We have an internal deadline to reach by April 1 of a playable first section of the game (a couple of missions). Also we have set a high goal for ourselves of also having all geometry for everty mission complete. This team is strong and driven to get their tasks completed. I am proud to say that this team will reach the goal and on time.

These first two sections of the game, based in the burrows of NYC, will also comprise the demo, since they could be stand alone and provide an excellent set-up or the rest of the missions. You will get to see these at E3 if you are one of the lucky ones to get a glimpse of the game.

Permedia3 [3:35 pm]
Hardware Central takes a look at the Permedia3 card from 3DLabs. Look for some strong OpenGL support for this card, as the Permedia2 OpenGL ICD was incredibly solid.

Unreal Tournament [1:35 pm]
Looks like the GameTime folks have gotten a hold of Epic games and will be doing a show with them this afternoon. Here is the quote from Jeremy over at AGN3D.

Today on GameTime live at 6:00pm est, Scot and Jim (agn and Aufeaux in chat) will speak to Cliff Bleszinski from Epic MegaGames about the upcoming new Unreal game, Unreal Tournament! Join us in chat by connecting your handy dandy irc client to chat1.pseudo.com #allgames, or by using the ichat plugin. Real Player required to watch the show

Voodoo3 & TNT2 [1:35 pm]
Spotted over at VoodooExtreme this link to an interview with 3dfx employees asking of course about the Voodoo3 card. Also, Jeremy has a very interesting post concerning the TNT2 and nVidia's history of overhyping a chip and delivering something that isnt quite as fast. (But still kick-ass none the less)

World Deathmatch Tournament [12:20 pm]
Frank Cabanski sent this press release to me announcing that the once-failed World Deathmatch Tournament is making a come back in the first quarter of 2000.

GENEVA, Switzerland, March 29, 1999 -- Presenting you the WDT - the World Deathmatch Tournament. This event will involve the soon-to-be-released 3D action game ‘Quake3:Arena’ from id Software. The game has established an enormous audience through its former versions (i.e. Quake and Quake2) and the world scene grows every day. The tournament will consist of national teams admitted by their respective national associations.  30+ countries are expected to attend the event

I participated in the original WDT Team USA formation, along side Thresh, RIX, and Hobbes. The thought of a WDT actually happening is incredibly exciting to me. If Quake3 does get the press and attention many of us hope and believe it will get, chances are this event could be huge.

Q3Test Preview [YESTERDAY]
Carried over from yesterday evening for all you folks away from the computer on weekends. As promised I finished up the article from my most recent visit to id Software play testing Quake3, and specifically the level(s) intended to be included in the Q3Test. I've listed off the weapons and powerups that will be included in the test, as well as brief descriptions of the level(s).

Firstly the test was originally planned to be a single map. However due to the many dynamics of internet gaming, id Software is considering a second very "open" map which will help test the new network code which will push a consistent 5-6 players in the PVS at any given time. No final decision has been made at this time though.

The first map, authored by Tim Willits is a good map for about 8-10 players showing off the majority of architectural and rendering capabilities of the Quake3 engine. Myself and RIX also played the map a bit in a team game, and I'm excited to say the map has the potential to be a very fun 3on3 or 4on4 map.

Hopefully it will give you guys a good idea of just what id Software is working on for Q3Test. Also, a couple of more previews from Redwood as well as Kraemer who both were also there. I recommend checking them both out. If you're wondering what the hell is going on, check out this .plan update from Graeme Devine of id Software.

Half-Life Teamplay [9:05 am]
The guys at Half-Life Resource Center have posted quite a bit of information on some new entities that should get you up and going for team games in Half-Life.

Suck! [11:45 am]
The weekly pissing and moaning session is online.

Views [9:15 am]

Tech [9:15 am]

V2 Benchmarks: c300a @ 464mhz, 128 megs of ram, Flash 3d II Voodoo 2 clocked @ 100mhz, Using default settings in kingpin, sound was enabled.
TNT2 Benchmarks: p3-500 @ 500mhz, 128megs of ram, Diamond TNT2 v770.

640 x 480 800 x 600
V2 Minigl 1.47 47.5 fps 39.3 fps
V2 OpenGL Beta 62.1 fps 52.5 fps
TNT2 47.5 fps

Gaming [9:15 am]

werd
Argh, starving. Just got some Reese's Cups, almost forgot how damn good these things are.

The Matrix comes out this week, Once the new design for the page is done (hah) I'm pondering a quick movie reviews section on the page done by myself and some friends.

 

Sunday, March 28

Q3Test In A Few Weeks [11:45 am]
Graeme Devine over at id Software has made a .plan update which will most likely disspoint everyone (myself included). Q3Test which was being targetted for the end of this month is going to slip into April. Check out the .plan and here ya go:

3/28/99
I know a lot of you are looking at the end of the month as a fixed date for q3test, but we're probably looking to be within a few weeks of that date rather than exactly on it. We're working on it; I just want to keep expectations in line with reality.

This is a test of Quake 3:Arena, not the demo. With this test we're looking to see how well the brand new networking and graphics code works, and while we've run this through a QA process here and at Activision, this is not code that is of release quality in speed or gameplay. Please do not look upon this as the "demo" of Q3A.
<snip>

Also, Grame was nice enough to give the go ahead on writing up a bit of a summary on what I saw in the most recent version of Q3Test. Check back later this evening and I should have something up for you guys. It will only be a page or two though, but should help give you guys an idea of where the guys are and what will be included in Q3Test.

TFC LAN + Internet? [11:15 am]
Well it pretty much had to happen, the "LAN only" release of TFC from Valve this weekend is already being hax0red up and played over the internet. The guys at PlanetHalflife are on top of things and have posted a number of tips on exactly how to get it to work. Here is a bit on the tips from readers:

It appears that you can play the LAN Team Fortress Classic version over the 'net. Doom writes in and reports: First off we launched the dedicated server with "hl -game tfc -console" then pulled down the console and typed "connect ipaddress:27015."

He's another way as sent in by xp3rt:
I got it to work, but I do this: e:\sierra\half-life\hl.exe -console -toconsole +connect (ip adress)
I've been playin quite a while. And for a dedicated server, I've used this:
e:\sierra\half-life\hlds.exe -game tfc +map 2fort -port 27016
I know for a fact that works, cuz I've been playing w/ several other people

Speaking of Half-Life stuff, I saw on Blues that a new version of the Half-Life front-end is out with the mod directory support stuff in preperation for the official net release of Team Fortress Classic. Also there is a review of TFC posted over at 3DGaming.net for those of you who are wondering if it's worth the download.

Ion Storm Spotlight [11:15 am]
The GameSpot UK folks have done up a pretty good article taking a look at a couple of the projects in development over at Ion Storm. Have a read of the Anachronox and Deus Ex previews, as well as what the GameSpot folks thought of the recent Daikatana DM demo release. Here is the quote I saw at VE:

All of this is common knowledge. But, what ION Storm had to show me didn't shed a great deal more light on Daikatana's eventual prospects. There were more complete levels than we'd seen before and some impressive and atmospheric architecture. You could get a sense of the considerable scope of the game, too, with over 64 monsters and 32 weapons. And there was a glimpse of how details are dictating gameplay decisions ­ for example, the reason your companions come and go has as much to do with the manageability of three characters in a narrow corridor as anything else.

However there was no evidence of a finished AI, weapon-balancing was still up in the air, and most of the non-player characters were incomplete animation-wise, or mere place-holders

New QTracker [11:15 am]
A new version of the QTracker utility has been released, a shareware server browser in the same family as GameSpy. Check out the list of new features and fixes to this version.

Views [11:15 am]

Tech [11:15 am]

werd
Amazingly I was up at 8am, and began a new OS install here on my machine figuring it would take me about an hour to get up and running. Of course here I am 3 hours later just now working and still dont have any damn sound. SBLive! cards and NT just dont mix sometimes. Bah.

I'll have a bit more posted once I'm finished fixing up this damn machine.

3DNews.net News Archives copyright Steve Gibson 1998