CLICK HERE FOR UP TO DATE NEWS
|
Half-Life AVI part2
Well, after several hours of download last
night I finally got the Half-Life AVI
(44+ megs) recorded by VX Half-Life mirrored
locally. It should move a bit faster hosted on this here T3 thingy. VX Half-Life also has posted of course his
impressions of Half-Life after getting a first hand look at the project while visiting
Valve Software.
New QuakeWorld?
Well, at the same time of Rick Johnson talking
about the final version of HexenWorld, he also makes this statement:
There will be one additional release of HW in the near future, as Zoid is making some changes to QW that needs to be incorporated into HW as well.
Hmmmmmm. note: Don't even think about emailing Zoid. If he's working on some changes to QW I'd prefer he spend his time working on that instead of answering your email. ;)
Carmack on Quake3
John Carmack over at id Software has been .plan happy recently,
talking about his new F50 as well as this tidbit on his progress with the Quake3 engine:
The distance between a cool demo and production code is vast. Two months ago, I had some functional demos of several pieces of the Quake 3 rendering tech, but today it still isn't usable as a full replacement for ref_gl yet.
Writing a modern game engine is a lot of work.
The new architecture is turning out very elegent. Not having to support software rendering or color index images is helping a lot, but it is also nice to reflect on just how much I have learned in the couple years since the original Quake renderer was written.
My C coding style has changed for Quake 3, which is going to give me a nice way of telling at a glance which code I have or haven't touched since Quake 2. In fact, there have been enough evolutions in my style that you can usually tell what year I wrote a piece of code by just looking at a single function:
Alex St. John
Mr. St. John over at Bootnet wishes to cram
his foot down his throat as far as possible. Check out his most recent statement
Still not listening out there are you? YOU DIDN'T GET ANY OPENGL IN QUAKE. GL are just two letters id stuck on the box, they didn't do a DAMN thing for you. You have been playing the Glide version of Quake and you can thank id and 3Dfx for bringing that quality to you. The letters "GL" did not blow away the letters "D3D." The basis for the opinion you are expressing is a hallucination based on a false understanding of the technology you're talking about. GL doesn't make anything look better, it doesn't make 3D run faster, it doesn't take better advantage of a 3D card, it doesn't do anything like that.
Now check out what John Carmack has to say:
This is a false statement with just enough of a kernel of truth to confuse people.
GLQuake and Quake II are programmed to the OpenGL API. They have no knowledge of Glide, and only require the presence of a DLL that exports the OpenGL function calls.
The 3dfxgl.dll driver that allows GLQuake to run on 3Dfx hardware is an implementation of OpenGL on top of the Glide API. I find it a pretty big stretch to call GLQuake a "Glide version" because of that. It would be analogous to calling any Windows program an "ATI version" because you happen to be running it on an ATI video card with an ATI supplied display driver.
GLQuake runs just fine on nVidia, Rendition, ATI, Intel and other chipsets that don't support glide at all.
HexenWorld Final
Well, the final version of HexenWorld is
coming. Check out Rick Johnson's .plan
Will be uploading the "final" version to Steve Stringer, he'll create a new install and put that out early next week. I'll be on vacation next week as well.
There will be one additional release of HW in the near future, as Zoid is making some changes to QW that needs to be incorporated into HW as well.
Thanks to Zoid, Jack Mathews, Steve Stringer, Phoebus, the people behind all of the tools (GameSpy and PingTool especially), and the alpha testers. For the maps, Kenn, Mr. Renner, Jeremy, and Jon. And of course, programming, Nathan, Ron, and Steve.
Heretic2 FAQ
Just like the headline says, a new version of
the Heretic2 FAQ for those who wished
to be fully informed.
Preview / Review Land
Hardware
werd
I have some advice for all you guys today. Go
see The Object of my Affections. It's got a HOT girl in it (Jennifer Anniston) which is
enough to see a movie right there. But dig this, it has a gay guy who Jennifer is trying
to get him to switch sides (ala Chasing Amy) and this seems to *attract girls*.
I havent seen so many good looking girls packed into one theatre in a very long time. (Aside from the weekly strip shows that Gary McTaggart puts on at the Sony Theatre on Thursday nights)
So um, oh.. the movie is decent, 2hours of looking at Jennifer Anniston. worth a few bucks. Make sure and look sharp kids.
|
Half-Life AVI
You remember that RealVideo with Half-Life
footage from a couple of days ago? Well the VX
Half-Life page has now posted an AVI version weighing in at a nice big 46megs for you
guys with excessive bandwidth to abuse. I'm trying to mirror it locally right now but
it'll take about an hour. So head on over to VX
Half-Life for now and snag it. You also need the Indeo 5 AVI codec if you
dont already have it installed.
DooM Movie
Todd H., CEO of id Software updated the ol' .plan file
with some info on the DooM Movie:
I've seen a great deal of recent speculation about the DOOM movie. We're very optimistic about the prospects.
To clear up something I've seen on the 'Net, Ivan Reitman hasn't been involved with the movie for over a year and a half. The inside scoop says that he chose to do the Howard Stern movie at the time, but I have no idea if that's really the truth. Universal declined to re-option the rights in November 1996 and the rights came back to us. We're now working with Tri-Star, who appears set going to production. They also claim to be interested in making a movie that all the DOOM fans will appreciate (lots of blood, violence and scary monsters from Hell, etc.).
Hollywood has the abolute worst reputation about saying one thing and then doing another (all deserved, I might add), so I wouldn't buy advance tickets yet.
Btw, anyone got a good suggestion for title we should use for the movie? The guys at Tri-Star don't seem to be into obscure literary references, but what do they know? ;)
Heretic2
PC Gamer has gotten a big ol' preview posted of Raven's Heretic2
project that we'll all be seeing at E3 this year. There are screenshots, discussion of te
spells and weapons, and all kinds of other cool things that will be included in the game.
Here's a snip I snagged from VE:
Many of the spells from the original Heretic are back including the Morph Ovum (so everyone can turn each other into chickens again!), plus several new spells like the Sphere of Annihilation, the Ring of Repulsion, and Fire Wall. There are eight offensive weapons in total and four defensive weapons, most of which are spell-based, but there is also melee, a magical bow and a magic staff. Players will use these weapons against dozens of creatures and humanoid races that act intelligently and work together, we're told.
The twenty-five single-player missions take place in true 3D environments across very different kinds of locales such as cities, swamps, canyons, and caves. Since the Quake II engine is employed, there's also 16-bit color with colored lighting, but by using a third-person perspective, there are extra fluid character animations like diving rolls, hand springs, climbs, and other maneuvers that just aren't possible in first-person perspective games.
For multiplayer gaming, Heretic II will support anything Quake II supports, i.e. Internet play, serial hook up, and local IPX network. Both deathmatch and cooperative multiplayer modes are planned, as well. Deathmatch will have several user configurable options (a la Quake II) like a level timer, kill counters, and the like and will support up to 16 players. Raven is hoping to get this mode up and running soon, so that they can iron out any potential issues of third-person perspective deathmatch. The cooperative game is limited to four players, due to the number of animations each player model has.
Cyberathlete Schedule
The Cyberathletes events page has been updated with a few
more dates of upcoming CPL events. There are a couple of the professional events listed as
well as THEFRAG2 which is scheduled of course for Halloween of this year.
aCtivision Titles
OGR has posted some shots and info on several
of the new games upcoming from aCtivision. Asteriods3D - Heavy Gear II - Interstate '82 - Third World - Heretic 2 shot 1 - Heretic 2 shot 2
Freespace Demo
Volition-inc.com
has posted a bit of info concerning the latest release of the Descent Freespace demo.
A list of things they have changed due to player response among with several other things
of interest. -VE
Polls / Contests
Tony on Yahoo
Yea, Tony is dropping enough mail to warrant
his own section on the page..
abit , bcm , chaintech , elitegroup (ecs) , epox , fic , freetech , gigabyte , intel , iwill , m-tech , micronics1 , micronics2 , microstar (msi) , qdi , spacewalker , supermicro 1 , supermicro 2 , supermicro 3 , supermicro 4 , tekram , tyan
Hardware
Q: Your 3D accelerator FAQ says that Voodoo2 supports up to three texelfx2 processors per pixelfx2. Are you sure? Why hasn't anyone taken advantage of this (not even Quantum3d)?
A: We're positive. No one has done it yet for two reasons. First is cost. Obviously adding a third texelfx2 is going to run up the price a bit. Second is supply. It's been difficult enough for OEMs to get their boards on the shelves using only two chips per board. Think of how difficult it would be with three. You can bet your bottom dollar that if it notably improves performance (and it does, in as much that at least you could do another rendering pass in the same cycle) that Quantum 3D will do it regardless of cost. Bear in mind that Quantum is trying to get its "lower end" (well, lower end when compared to its arcade boards) units out before it blows the roof off of what is possible.
The Views
Unreal
Epic's cashcow:
werd
Yea, werd. Busy doing laundry etc for the trip
to LA this weekend. I'll be updating while I'm out there though, so don't worry. Hopefully
I can get a few demos recorded during the trip as well.
|
QuakeWorld Invite League
The QuakeWorld
Invitational League is about to get started. After tallying all the votes the top 12
QuakeWorld LPB clans have been selected for participation. The entire schedule for the
first season has been posted as well.
West Coast
- r3v r3volution
- 311 Clan311
- LGC Legacy
- X eXcalibur
- FiTH
- I ImpactEast Coast
- nB Negative Burn
- SD Super Darkies
- DR Dark Requiem
- KM KnightMare
- RS Race Souvraine
- 7DS 7 Deadly Sins
There has been discussion of having the final event being held at the upcoming I-Con convention. QIL is looking for corporate sponsors for the event to help cover the costs as well as prizes to give away to some of the best Quake players in the US.
Math lessons with John Carmack
Heh, I'm telling you guys, drop out of
college, this is the kind of math you'll be doing:
> 4/16
> ----
> F40 + $465,000 = F50
Rendition's next chip
Yea, we all know what 3dfx, PowerVR, Matrox,
and those nVidia guys are up to, but how about Rendition? Check out http://www.bjorn3d.com as there is some new info posted
there on just what is up with the homeboys. -VE
"By coupling Fujitsu Microelectronics' DSP-based Pinolite geometry processor with Rendition's v2200 accelerator, Rendition hopes to squeeze more power from the v2200 architecture before the next-generation v3000 hardware hits. The project is called the 3D Conspiracy, a whole new board design that should be shipping by the time you read this. Moving geometry set up and lighting functions to a specialized processor such as the Pinolite will result in significant performance improvements. Practically all the calculations that occur in the 3D-processing pipelines -- geometry set up, lighting, triangle set up, and rasterization -- will occur in the accelerator instead of the host CPU."
3dfx
An article of interest, 3dfx has posted record
earnings according to this
press release on yahoo.com -VE
Sites etc. -updated
.plan Wagon
Just because they all know we love this oh so
much, check out a couple of recent .plan updates:
Speed Demo Archives
Speed Demos Archive http://planetquake.com/sda has opened, the result of
a merger between Nightmare Speed Demos http://planetquake.com/nsd
and Muad'Dib's Skill 0 Speed Demos http://www.kvande.com/quake/quake.htm
. Besides featuring speed demos from both easy and nightmare Quake maps, They now have
speed runs for Quake II! A speed-runner's goal is to complete each map as fast as
possible, using all the shortcuts imaginable, and using tricks ranging from the simple
rocket jumps and grenade jumps to the more exotic fiend-pounce jumps, vore-ball jumps and
ogre-grenade jumps. Check out our demos and show off your own skills at Speed Demos
Archive!"
3D Accelerator FAQ
Next-Gen has gotten into the FAQ bis it seems.
Check out their 3D
accelerator FAQ -VE
"New parts of the FAQ include areas about Intel’s I740, Matrox’s G200, Nvidia’s TNT and ZX and of course the latest on 3Dfx’s Voodoo 2 and PowerVR’s PVRSG.
Naturally, with new cards currently on the market, Next Generation Online’s opinions of what cards to buy for certain uses has also undergone somechanges. So check out the latest version of the FAQ."
Doom - The Movie
The Dark Horizons page has an update talking
about the status of the Doom movie. This is a quote from The Sydney Morning Herald
actually written by the co-screenwriter Ron Mita: -Blue's
"Doom was set up at Universal, where Ivan Reitman was producing. They took several passes at the script, but it never amounted to much. Universal let it go and Tri-Star jumped on it. Part of the problem was the tone. Universal wanted to make it like 'Ghostbusters'. That, obviously, is a bad idea. Tri-Star wants to be true to the game and our primary goal is to create a story that won't alienate the die-hard fans. The studio really likes the 'hell on Earth' concept. The story will have something to do with an alternate evolution from the bowels of the Earth that makes its way topside. Like the game, our heroes will be locked in combat with the creatures and forced to annihilate them. If you've played the game then you know there isn't much story there. We've overcome that hurdle and hope to begin writing any day now."
Mac Unreal
The guys at WestLake interactive have updated their page with a
status report on their Unreal port to the Mac OS:
"We're keeping the Mac version up to date with the PC (which is progressing very nicely), and adding more Mac specific features steadily.
We now have cross platform network games working (Mac<->PC) with TCP/IP, and are working on the options setup interface (all nice and Mac standard with a beautiful grayscale appearance).
Check out the latest Unreal ads from Epic in the PC game magazines like Computer Gaming World, you'll see a MacSoft logo and "coming soon for Mac" above it!"
Quake all night
I snagged this from the PlanetQuake news page:
In celebration of their 1-year anniversary since they were first mentioned in ThunderWalker CTF page, Clan CNN is gonna bust out Classic Quake and ThunderWalker CTF, and play every TWCTF map from beginning to end -- E1M1 to XEN09! With the scheduled 20 minute timelimit, it should take over 10 hours just to finish the id maps.
The fun starts this Friday at 8:00 pm EST, when the Clan CNN folks, and anyone that wants to join in on the fun, will gather in the Clan CNN chat server (Java applet available at their homepage, or point IRC clients to 207.24.85.123:6667)... they'll start with a 32 man brawl on E1M1, and from there will decide whether to open more servers, add a fraglimit, etc. Drop by Clan CNN's web page, now at ClanCNN.net, for more information on this weekends Gibfest.
Hardware etc
You know you like it hard...
Quake2
"I've just posted the latest version of Wally... 1.0. That's right, it's no longer beta! It's still freeware, of course, just that what we have now is considered a full feature set. Here are a few items that were added since the last release (0.90):
- Flood fill
- Constraining tool (vertical/horizontal)
- Pattern paint
- Copy to clipboard, copy to clipboard tiled
- Mirror, flip, and rotate (left/right, 90-180-270 degrees)
- Three blend filters (light, medium, heavy)
- Spray paint tool
- Color palette toolbar
- Color Replacer tool
- Spray Color Replacer
- 24-bit PCX import
- Export of BMP and PCX format
- Online Help
Preview / Review Land
What everyone else is saying about the games
or want to play
werd
Well, I got my tickets for flying over to the LA area this weekend and will be checking out the PlanetQuake beatdown. Someone have a p2 I can borrow while I'm there? heh.
|
More Heretic2
Yea, the aCtivision guys have just posted
their new Heretic2 page for you
to check out the low down on the new project from Raven.
Unreal
Myscha from Epic made a post
to the Megaboard talking about lighting in Unreal, here is a bit of it:
"Other light sources within the room(s) blend smoothely and realisticly. Varying levels of light and darkness are the result. The Level designers use point source lights placed at the sources. Just because a light source's side face is not completely in dark shadow does not mean it is wrong-It means that another light source is affecting the polygon."
Varying levels of Shadow maps can be adjusted on a per polygon basis by the level designer-So in a situation where a single light sources is desired to cast strong shadows this is easily done so. But the examples you chose to use as evidence for your assumptions/conclusions are not single source lighted areas or volumes. "
Speaking of which, check out the Unreal interview I found linked on VE.
Amiga Quake
Word from PlanetQuake and Blue's
is that Amiga Quake will begin shipping "soon" which is "As soon as
production of material is ready"
Messiah at CGDC
Dave Perry of Shiny Entertainment made this
post to a newsgroup recently addressing many of the concerns floating around out there
about their Messiah project. A quick background on Messiah, it's a 3D game being developed
by Shiny which has an engine that has several cool features (Ones you can expect in Uber
and Trinity) but for some reason Shiny is under the impression they are the only company
out there working on technology like this. -VE
"FROM: DAVID PERRY, President, Shiny Entertainment.
I have been reading through the hundreds of Messiah postings with great interest... There is a lot of misinformation, misunderstandings, misquotes, basically too many "mis" things.
That said, I want to thank the people that dive in on my behalf to say "maybe we should wait and see".
To clear it all up, to show the work my team has achieved, to personally answer any questions, and to help other teams avoid the expensive mistakes we have made, here is our plan:
At the Computer Game Developers Conference next month in Long Beach, California, we will describe the Messiah technology in GREAT detail. We will be showing everyone the steps and tools required to make very fast real-time tessellation, deformation, volumetric lighting, interpolation, morphing in your games etc...
Of course we know similar technology existed before Messiah in the form of rendering engines or research papers, but as we showed it at E3 last year, we proved that it was time to make it all work in a single game. (Running smoothly on a 166Mhz machine in software.)
During development we tripped over all the hurdles that everyone else seems to encounter, that is why a whole year later we are still improving the engine day by day. The result is a freedom for design that will make Messiah a very different expressive game. So going into this, I know that we can save some people from a lot of hair pulling.
The speech is called "Messiah, what you may or may not believe" :)
With the help of the Messiah lead programmer "Saxs", expect the conversation to get very technical. (May 6th from 2PM -> 3PM)
This I will then follow by sitting on a panel from 5PM -> 6PM with Sid Meier and Ron Gilbert. I am sure I will be covering patents and all that good stuff then.
Hope to see you at the conference.
David Perry."
Half-Life News
Some cool news on Valve's Half-Life
"There will be a public beta-test for Half-Life -- it has not been determined how wide a test and how we will get participants. Date is also TBD although probably May sometime. Vague enough for you? : ) Touch base in mid-May -- we'll see where we stand. All the best, Eric Twelker "
Quake2 Mission Pack AVI
Check out this Quake2 Mission Pack AVI (about 10megs)
which I found linked from Redwood's page last
night.
Monolith News
A number of things happening on the Monolith
front. Of course the big news is that they have gotten the rights back for the engine
formerly known as DirectEngine, which is now called LithTech. Check out this bit of email
I got from them as well:
"We've also just launched our new LithTech.com web site at http://www.lithtech.com , and have posted a downloadable demo video of the engine technology in action. The video includes NEVER-BEFORE-RELEASED scenes from Riot, Blood 2, and other previously guarded LithTech Engine titles!
The Riot site will soon have a new look and exclusive video - so be sure to check it out soon at http://riot.lith.com And if you haven't already - be sure to check out our Get Medieval web site and the Get Medieval downloadable movie. Visit http://www.getmedieval.com .
Preview / Review Land
What everyone else is saying about the games
you play or want to play:
The Patches
Hardware etc
Drivers, updates, yadda yadda
Sites etc
werd
A happy belated (1 day late) birthday to
Patrick "Sabian" Hook and Gary McTaggart over at Ritual Entertainment, as well
as Jack "morbid" Mathews over at 3dfx. Your naked pictures are on the way so I
hope you enjoy them. Dont admire them for too long at a time though, as it is common
knowledge that you will go blind from too much of that stuff.
Welp, like I said I worked on 1on1 demos a bit week and have a couple of them posted in the demos section for you guys to check out. A DM4 demo as well as a DM6 demo. I got kinda careless towards the end of the DM6 demo and payed the price, the DM4 demo is quite entertaining too :)
Oh, and yea.. I know, late update today.. 10.30 am, the shame!
|
Heretic2 Interview
Gamesmania has posted an interview
with Brian Pelletier of Raven Software, a member of the Heretic2 team. Brian goes in
depth on just exactly where they are taking the Heretic2 project discussing storyline, as
well as some of the niftly cool features you can expect to see in Heretic2. Of course
there are also a couple of new shots for you to check out as well.
P2 Price Cuts
Saw over on VE that Intel has announced
some more price cuts for the P2 CPU's that you may be interested in:
"After tomorrow's price cuts, the most expensive Intel desktop chip will cost under $500. Upcoming server chips are expected to start at around $2,000. Intel's priciest notebook chip currently sells for $696.
The 333-MHz Pentium will be reduced from $583 to $483 in quantities of 1,000, according to sources, a steep decline from its January debut price of $722. Meanwhile, the 300-MHz version will fall to $368 from $530, while the low-end 233-MHz version will drop to $194 from $268.
All of the older Pentium MMX chips will be priced at or below $100, according to sources.
Mad3D Engine
More 3D engines for you to check out, here is
a quote from TriCentriC: -VE
"A demo version of Mad3d engine is going to be released tomorrow! What, you don't know what Mad3d is all about ? This is an engine that has coloured lighting (a la Quake2), 3dfx support (like in most games), coloured glass (umm...never seen that before). This demo will have no weapons/monsters, the game itself will be released later http://trinity.cc/
Q2 Patches etc.
Doh, I somehow forgot this entire section in
the morning update, heh
Blood / Blood2 Screenshots
Blood2pit
over at VE has posted some new shots of the original Blood with the nifty new 3dfx patch
that was released not too long ago.. -VE
Blood2.com has posted yet some more new screenshots of their 3D action game based on the DirectEngine technology -Blue's
Johnromero.com
Heard about this actually a little while ago,
but here is a quote from the Ion Storm news page,
thanks Billy.
"As of tonight, John Romero is opening his website with a nice Flash intro! He will be releasing all sorts of cool facts, pictures, design documentation, and the like for most of his 3D shooter games. As of now, he is still compiling these little tasty morsels of information, and plans to have them up there fairly soon. For now you should drop by and check out some of the VERY cool flash graphics that Dave Cash has put together for the site!"
Pure3D 2 Announced
Well, we've heard about the new card from Canopus a couple of times now, but I guess it's
official finally according to VooDoo Extreme.
Here is a snippet. Also check out the article posted on
AVault.
"All settings can be saved, giving users one-button access for each game. For example, click on the Quake II button and the screen is automatically set to your preferred settings for the ultimate gaming experience.
Pure3D II offers unsurpassed TV-out capabilities for "arcade" style, or big-screen gaming with a sharp, stable, flicker-free TV image. Pure3D II also provides extensive game compatibility with support for Glide, Direct3D and 0penGL. To maximize game time, a cooling fan is mounted on the board to keep Pure3D II at a reliable temperature.
Pure3D II will be available the week of May 18, 1998 for a suggested retail price of $329. Pure3D II offers plug-and-play installation and includes all the cables needed for game play on the PC and/or TV.
KOTH Maps Reminder
Time is closing in on the end of the map contest for King of the Hill
. The deadline of May 15th is fast approaching so let us know what you are up to. Yes, if
you are planning to create a map, or looking for some input on one you are making, they
will be happy to provide some hints, tips, advice or whatever you want to call it.
Half-Life Status
Gabe Newell of Valve sent out this email
response that was originally posted on The Breeding
Grounds:
"There's still a lot of work to be done - play balancing weapons, getting all of the level specific code finalized, tweaking monsters, and so on. It takes a long time, because we want Half-Life to be as good as people are expecting.
It's very frustrating to us, as well to the fans, not the least because we don't get paid until people buy the product. Most of the money to pay for development has come out of my pocket, and it's pretty tempting to hurry Half-Life out the door just so I can recoup some of that. However, I think that there are a bunch of games that have come out where the developer or the publisher decided to shove it out the door and hope nobody noticed all the flaws, and we are committed to not doing that.
We are working with our marketing partners on a demo date, and will let people know the date as soon as we know the date.
Lastly, I don't want to lie to you and say we won't slip again. The one thing I'll guarantee is that the game will be as good as we can make it when it ships. I can guarantee one or the other, but not both. Hopefully that's the right decision for the product, for us as a company and for you as a paying customer."
Wheel of Time Status
Legend Entertainment has updated the Wheel Of Time website with the latest development
update on their Unreal engine based title: -PSYCHO
" ... We've finally integrated all of the microcosm work with the new version of the Unreal engine--so WoT now plays reliably over the network..."
Win98 to be released on June 25th
Thanks to Tony Chang for this link, as well as this
link which announces that Microsoft has made it official. Win98 to be released on the
25th of June:
REDMOND, Wash. (AP) _ Windows 98, the latest upgrade to Microsoft Corp.'s operating system for personal computers, will be released June 25, the company announced today.
Rob Bennett, group product manager for Windows 98, estimated the upgrade will sell for $109; the version for computers that do not have the Windows 95 operating system will be cost an additional $100.
Qoole Beans
Yea dood, a new
version of Qoole. Here is the info on the new version straight from the author:
Main changes since v2.31 include:
Quake II external texture support (.wal files and .paks)
Quake II entity sets CTF2, BotS, Jailbreak, and KotH
Multiple bug fixes, including some that caused leaks
This version does not officially support Hexen II. I will release a version before the end of this month that does. Beyond that, v2.xx will be getting no new features. All effort is being directed toward version 3, which is in progress.
Interviews
Preview / Review Land
Hardware
Sites etc.
werd
Um, do your taxes or something, know what I'm
sayin?
|
3DRealms at E3
I sent Scott Miller over at 3D Realms some email to find out if we would get to
play Prey and Duke4 at this year's E3, here is a part of the email he said I could
publish:
"Prey and Duke will be shown via video on the floor, but the real meat will be via back room showings. Max Payne's plans are still up in the air given god's situation."
Kind of a bummer that we wont get to play Duke4 and Prey, but even a rolling demo of Duke4 should be a treat. Not much has been seen about Duke4 since that big PC Gamer article a few months ago.
Intergraph Wins!
Amazing, a company actually won a lawsuit
against Intel. Check out this press
release link sent to me by "SweatLoaf"
Fragapalooza Video
The Fragapalooza pages have posted a sizeable realvideo which looks back at the
recent LAN event that was held. There is also an AVI available on the pages for
those blessed with high bandwidth.
This video is aimed mostly at the Quake community because that was the major focus of last years event. This year though we are opening it up to any and all networkable games, hell even network Solitaire (although I still can't figure that one out). Thanx and havea good one.
Abyss of Pandemonium Demo
PsychoNews (a peachy VRGN affiliate like
myself) sent out word that the Quake1 level pack Abyss
of Pandemonium has been released. There are 16 new levels, 6 new monsters, 4 new
weapons, a new powerup, and all kinds of other cool things for you to play with. -Red's
QuakeWorld Invitational League
The votes have been cast and the first ever QuakeWorld Invitational League is getting underway.
The top 12 QuakeWorld LPB Clans are being contacted as you read this to confirm their
participation and then the league will begin. btw, I'm excited to say the clan I'm a part
of, R3V has been selected. :)
GLDoom
Bruce Lewis is still hard at work on his GLDoom project, he just posted some new screenshots
for you to check out showing off transparency as well as how surprisingly good the sprite
monsters look.
Eraser Routes:
SkullPlate's
Quake2 page is offering the routing tables for 168 different Quake2 map for you to
plugin to your Eraser Bot instead of having to go through the maps yourself. this includes
of course all the Q2 maps, CTF maps, DM maps, and several of the more popular user maps.
Get a 3D card
The guys at Raven who are working on the
Heretic2 project are debating among themselves the benefits of supporting software
renderer or not, check out this snippit of one of their .plan updates:
The internal gripping about software support continues amongst the programmers on Heretic II. Anyone one who happens to be reading this, buy an accelerator card or better get an AGP system. A good 3D accelerator can be gotten for less than the cost of 2 games.
It’s a simple fact that software will never look as good as hardware and run at a decent frame rate, no matter how much time is spent hand optimizing in assembly
Preview / Review Land
Hardware etc.
Q2 Releases
Sites etc.
werd
Ah, good ol' Monday. The updates will be
flowing in all day today as I've finally got myself worked into a regular schedule sleep
schedule again (pretty much) Yea, the weekly section is updated today as well. Missed last
week, that sucked. :)
Oh, a couple of people emailed me telling me pretty much Quake1 is dead and I'm living in the past for playing it. Without starting a big debate on the matter (Last thing I want) I'll just say what makes Q2 DM so much more superior to Q1 DM that I should quit? In a deathmatch setting, the only difference to actual DM gameplay between Q1 and Q2 are the weapons and player physics. Just for the record though, I do enjoy Q2 and play Q2CTF fairly often.
Wait, now that I think of it how come people are still playing Football? that game is old! Why not Arena football? It's so much newer....
Happy birthday Lithium btw. He's 21 and probably piss drunk as you read this.
|
ATI GL Drivers Marks:
ATI has recently released new "Turbo
Drivers" and OpenGl Drivers. That have boosted their performance in quake and quake2
from their past beta driver. The image quality is a little improved but not much. The
results and everything else are on this page at http://www.sns-access.com/~bellm
Kick my ass, get a V2
Well now, it seems the guys at VRGN are pretty confident in my ability to play Quake1.
While at the gamer group yesterday it was revealed to me that they plan on having a
"beat sCary" contest at the next event. What it means is that they are gonna
setup a couple of computers, and have a Voodoo2 card to give away to someone who can show
up at the Infomart in Dallas next month and beat my ass in 1on1.
I'm no Gollum, so there are quite a few people out there who I'm sure who can beat me. The catch is you gotta make it to the next VRGN Gamer group / LAN party. I'll have more info posted on this as I find out. Guess what though, I get to pick the map. :)
Speaking of Quake, I'm really sorry I pulled that demo from Wednesday, but here is a demo that I showed a couple of friends and they got quite a kick out of. I'll be brushing up on 1on1 this coming week so the next demos will be 1on1's for sure.
New WinGlide
Chris' WinGlide page has
been updated with a new version of his really cool .dll which blits scenes rendered on
your 3dfx back to your 2d card so you can show 3d scenes (and Quake2) in a window using
the 3dfx features.
DM2 Strats
A campers delight, DM2 and all the darkness
you can hide in has been revealed on Gamers.com in their new strategy guide
for DM2.
Half-Life News
- April 9, 1998: Brett Johnson (Valve Software) Brett Johnson is a level designer at Valve Software and in this interview, he and Gabe Newell talk to VX's Dave about Worldcraft and editing levels for Half-Life.
- April 9, 1998: Steve Theodore (Valve Software) VX's Dave talks to Steve Theodore, a modeller and animator at Valve Software, and Gabe Newell about, well, modelling and animating with Half-Life's incredible skeletal animation system.
- March 14, 1998: Valve Software An interview with a lot of the Valve Software staff.
CTF Chaining?
Got thiss email from Del Dhanoa of an interesting
project: (If that url actually works ill be amazed)
We have received a number of requests about starting a CTF Chain Map. Now that the other Chain Maps are underway (and looking good, head to the screenshots section at the site) we figured we will start the CTF Chain.
Screen Shots
Quake2
The Heretic2 stuff, of course:
Heretic2
The Heretic2 stuff, of course:
Unreal Not Done
Got a new flash for you guys, Unreal still
isnt done! Check out one of the all too common message
board posts from an Epic employee (Mark Rein) once again telling to calm the hell down
because it isnt coming out for a while still:
Unreal is not finished yet and will not be finished before the end of April. We will most definitely announce it when Unreal is finished. A large group of GT's playtesters are furiously testing it any reporting bugs and strange things they find. The programmers and level designers are working very hard to correct them in order to get the game to a realeasable stage as quickly as possible.
The tasks still be worked on are: performance and memory optimization (to make it better on lower-end machines), difficulty tuning (right now it is slightly too hard and defaults to the highest (Unreal) difficulty level, Internet performance and tuning, weapon tuning, improving some sound effects, bug fixing, configuration menus, the intro and a few user interface issues.
GT is doing everything in their power to significantly reduce the amount of time between the date we give them the gold master and the date the game arrives in stores. This might put some pressure on the shareware release which now might not happen until just before Unreal is arriving in stores or perhaps even a day or more later.
The final film for the box is finished and going into production. The differences between the final box and the "coming soon" boxes you've seen in stores are: The word Unreal will be stamped with gold foil, the creatures will be embossed (raised), many of the screen shots (and ALL of the CD shots have been changed), there are three new partner logos, and there have been some changes to the text.
The most important change is that it now says "Includes Unsupported Beta Version of the Unreal Level Editor". So there you have the news that GT is shipping the full version of the editor as we originally thought. We at Epic have decided that it rightfully deserves to be called a Beta and that's what we'll refer to it as from now on. We're currently in the trademark process for the final name for UnrealEd. The manual is going through it's final draft next week and then will also be printed.
3dfx FAQ
Yup, a FAQ for the 3dfx card is up on this page
which I saw linked from Blue's.
Sites / Stuff
werd
Sorry I forgot I had to actually run around
downtown Dallas yesterday and didnt get to update the page before I left. Hope you guys
had fun playing Rocket Arena2 while I was gone though. :)
Hey, Happy Easter!
| Older News | Copyright Steven M. Gibson - |
