Saturday, December 5 - Get GameSpy!

(This is your guest updater, Jack Mathews today)

Happy Birthday! [2:32am]
By the way, happy birthday to my sister, Jessica, who's like 20 today or something. Wanna wish her well? Click here.

A3D Support in Half Life [9:51pm]
Jon Renner sent in this link here with newsgroup postings regarding A3D support in Half Life. Here's the gist of it, according to him:

1. Halife [sic] supports A3D 2.0.
2. A3D 2.0 is backwards compatible, so cards with a Vortex 1 chip can still
use it.
3. instructions on installing the 2.0 drivers, even for 1.0 cards.

GOLF!!!!!! [6:58pm]
Steve asked me personally to post this bit of stunning news, being the master of the links he is and all. There's an MS Golf review here at Electric Games. Hold back your rapture.

Defection of the day [11:24pm]
Looks like yet another company lost yet another set of people to start yet another company. Today, it's Uprising 2 from Cyclone Studios getting delayed I guess. John Eberhardt had this to tell Blue:

I've resigned my position at 3DO/Cyclone Studios to go off and form a new company, Black Mace Entertainment.

Black Mace is going to produce indoor and outdoor strategy/shooters, and will feature the best talents behind Uprising, Requiem, and a few other titles that I can't talk about just yet.

Our first title that we're working on is Raiders of the Forbidden Zone. Think a strategy Shogo with space pirates - the seedy side of Star Wars. We're currently in discussion with several publishers, the winner of which I'll share with you as soon as the ink is on the page.

Our website will be active next week, with more news to follow.

Make the modemers pay [11:24pm]
From Blue's... Half Life decals seem to be all the rage, every kid seems to have one. Now you can pick out your own at BabelFish's Half-Life Decals. Show those people on 28.8's what having a slow connection is all about. :)

Expendable(!) [11:24pm]
From VoodooExtreme: GaGames has posted up some screenshots of Expendible by Rage Software. This is one kick ass game, by the way. One of the first games to give a really good arcade feel, while having a great looking and quick 3D experience on a PC. Check it out!

That wild and crazy Zoid [11:24pm]
Part 2 of the Zoid interview has been posted up on Daily Dementia for your listening enjoyment.

Inside Scoop: Word on the street is that Zoid has quit smoking! Zoid could not be reached for comment at press time. Comments? Email him. Tell him Jack sent ya :)

SLI contest winners announced [11:24pm]
Riva3D has annouced the winners of their SLI contest. Follow that link there, because for some reason their page is redirecting to some ComputerHeaven thing. Also, seems odd that a site named Riva3D would be giving away an SLI pair, but, well, c'est la vie.

Dungeon Keeper 2 screenshots [11:24pm]
3dnews.net has scored an assload of Dungeon Keeper 2 screenshots for your viewing pleasure. Seems additive effects are all the rage lately, this is no exception. Pretty nice looking.

Word [6:58pm]
Since Steve's a lazy bastard, and I had to wake him up at 3:30pm, he hasn't had a chance to update. Poor baby, huh?

Update: We saw American History X tonight. Damned cool movie, really deep and stuff. The one annoying thing was Steve rooting for the Nazi's.

Friday, December 4

Deus Ex [7:35pm]
The Ion Storm guys sent out word of a new interview on StormTroopers.com with Albert Yarusso from the Deus Ex team. Check it out for some insight on the Unreal based game.

Zoid's .plan [7:35pm]
Been a while since we've heard from Zoid. Here is part of his .plan update mentioning a couple of interviews he's done with some details on Quake3 and other projects as well as some talk about the recent code release:

As John Cash mentioned in his plan, 3.20 is the final patch for Quake2.  The 3.20 beta testing went very well so we have stamped it as official.  We won't be doing another update on the Quake2 code base unless something major shows up (like a serious DoS attack or bug).

The Quake2 upgrade path has a bit bumpy (3.15's air control), but overall the path was to solve two essential needs (a) address bugs/security issues such as DoS (denial of service) attacks, and (b) provide new features.

werd2
So I was gone most of the day. It was worth it to see Jack Mathews walking around TomThumb with a case of ramen though.

Unreal 220 [5:35am]
For those of you waiting on the latest patch for Unreal to improve netplay just a bit more check out this update by Tim Sweeney to the Unreal Tech Page:

We're hard at work putting the finishing touches on Unreal 220.  It's looking good, but the extent of the changes and improvements has required quite a lot of testing and refinement.  It won't be ready for public consumption this week or over the weekend, but hopefully early next week.

GameSpy & Half-Life [5:35am]
Figured you guys would find this interesting. a .plan update from Tim Cook of GameSpy yesterday who apparently doesnt agree with Valve's decision of CD checks for multiplayer:

There were some questions about my last post concerning GameSpy support and
Halflife when I said "Gamespy support will not require WON access."

1) Gamespy does not require WON. You can get your server lists from anywhere Gamespy supports. The default master server though is WON's.
2) Halflife will require WON access until Valve decides to remove the checks. I understand why Valve did this. There are some real jerks on the internet.
3) If you have an Invalid identity problem in Halflife, it is probably because the checks to the WON server are failing. Try again in a few minutes. This is the reason why the WON checks are not such a good idea. As more people get the game and play, these problems will only increase

Q3 FAQ [5:35am]
Saw on Blue's that the Unofficial Quake III Arena FAQ has been updated.

3dfx on OpenGL ICD [5:35am]
As many monkeys know, a full ICD has yet to see the light of day. Check out this email that VE received from the PR Manager of 3dfx Brian Bruning:

The full ICD for Banshee and the updated OpenGL for Voodoo 2 is still in active development and testing.  We're supplying developers with a version now which should go public in early Q1.  It's been quite a challenge getting the performance and stability to our standards and accommodating the desires of various developers (centered very closely around Q3A.)

While you are there, VE also has a blurb from Brian Hook on those of you still confused about just how much of a different 16/32bit color makes.

For a simple game such as Forsaken, which does single pass rendering with lots of saturated colors, then the difference between 16-bit and 24-bit simply isn't that big a deal.  But on some games that do many, many passes of rendering, the quantization error that results from multipass rendering can become significant and reveals itself in noticeable banding on the screen. This is not a subtle effect.

Views [7:15am]

When it comes to Monolith, it's all about action, fast action. Starting up Blood 2, I first thought I was in Turbo mode. After playing the slow-down game with Quake II, Unreal, and Half Life, it was a big shock for me to be scoot around at a Doom pace, jump as high as Duke Nukem, and have almost the same in-air control (misleadingly labeled air acceleration) as ROTT.

Tech Etc [7:15am]

Its impact on games should be nothing less than astounding. If you consider that you need a 400+ MHz processor today to get maximum frame rate out of boards using chips like the Voodoo2, Riva TNT, or RAGE 128, you'll see what we mean. Intel suggests that KNI will benefit 3D geometry processing and animation; imaging (read Photoshop);

werd
So I tracked my system problems down to some bum ram last night. It was brand new pc100 cas2 stuff so it didnt even occur to me that it would be bad. Talk about a pisser. 256 megs and they both flake out at 100mhz.

The Austin Powers 2 trailer is the bizomb.

 

Thursday, December 3

Action Half-Life! [9:45pm]
Thanks to Ant for spotting this news blurb on OGR:

Sierra is officially announcing that the A-Team will be developing Action Half-Life. Just as the A-Team developed Action Quake 2, a mod that turns id's game into a virtual John Woo movie, and they hope to do same for Valve's recent 3D shooter release. No details yet on availability, however

KISS & Bloodshot [4:25pm]
There is a new interview on AVault with Harry Miller of g.o.d. discussing the new ex-Ion startup company Bloodshot Entertainment. The official list of employees mooched from Blue: Programmers: Adam Hayek, Mike Maynard, and Jonathan Wright. Designers: Matt Hooper, Sverre Kvernmo, David Namaksy, and Steve Rescoe. Artists: Andy Chang, Ronn Harbin, and Mark Morgan. Audio: Will Loconto.

Miller declined to comment on if the Gathering's offer played a part in the group leaving ION en masse while working on a number of projects, but did mention the title is a one-time publishing deal that departs from their traditional relationship with founding members.

Demo [4:25pm]
A demo from the infamous EG QW clan this week. Check out EG|gemini in a 4on4 pickup.

SIN Multiplayer [4:25pm]
FiringSquad has posted the multiplayer review of SIN by Thresh & Kenn.

Over the past few months, the same question has been lingering in all of our minds: How will the latest bad boy of the first-person shooter genre, Sin, stack up in the multiplayer arena against the granddaddies of online gaming, Quake and Quake II? Well pallies, you're about to find out. Kenn and I have spent a large portion of our testing time this past week playin' Sin multiplayer, or SinFest, to get a good grasp of what it has to offer. Through hours of rampaging random servers and beatin' up on a poor terrified lil' Kenny, I've come up with four words that best describes what I feel about SinFest: Not quite on target.

Drakan [7:15am]
You puds better be looking forward to this game. Check out the new preview on PC.IGN of Drakan from Surreal Software. The ads I saw in the latest PC Gamer have this game slated for a February 1999 release. (Thanks to VE for the link)

IGN: In Drakan, the character can go indoors, run along the ground or fly high up in the air. Is this all handled within the same engine? If so, how is it being done?

Patmore: Yes, the entire game is rendered using the same engine. Our tools allow us to essentially edit "layers" of geometry. By manipulating this geometry we can create incredibly organic indoor and outdoor environments. Some of the latter levels of the game are incredibly fantastic. Massive spiraling mountains, lava waterfalls, floating islands are just a few of the environments that the tools allow us to create. The ability to edit layers allows us to create geometry that is impossible in traditional landscape engines.

Deus Ex [7:15am]
Check out the new article on Dues Ex from Ion Storm based on the Unreal engine that VUP has put together. It's a chat with the man Bob White.

Once again, the idea is to immerse the player into as real an environment as possible so that things they would expect to happen in the real world, will happen here. If you throw a chair through a window in our game it will probably break the glass and if it falls to the street below, the chair might break and maybe it won't (Better chance of breaking the higher up you are). If you shoot into a crowd, the people will scatter and run, just like they would in the real world. There are many more examples, but that is enough for now.

Heretic2 Tips [7:15am]
aCtivision has posted the official tips page for Heretic2 with some info that you may wanna check out if you are playing through Heretic2. (Argh, I missed out on playing it today as well. I'll get to it this weekend I think)

System Shock 2 [7:15am]
Via VE's new affiiliate Through The Looking Glass here is word from the LookingGlass homepage on the continuing development of System Shock2:

Now that Thief is out there (and a total blast, I might add) we're picking up some key members of that team to make Shock 2 the last word in 1st person RPGs. We've got a new developer's diary online, along with a bunch of killer screenshots. One of the shots features our full screen mode and we've also thrown in an AVI of a cool piece of bioweaponry called the Viral Proliferator. Look soon for expanded section on the weapons and monsters of Shock 2

Views [7:15am]

Tech Etc [7:15am]

werd
Doritos give me gas.

 

Wednesday, December 2

Quake2 V3.20 Released [4:15pm]
Yup, it's out. The big Quake2 Final code release. (We hope.. hehe) Here is the .plan update from Disruptor. Thanks Mike Dowell for initial word. Local copy of Win32 x86 Binaries

Win32 x86 Binaries  5,327,872 bytes
Win32 x86 Binaries. Deathmatch maps included 13,842,432 bytes
Win32 x86 Binaries. Deathmatch maps and CTF included 19,267,584 bytes
gamex86.dll source code 455,680 bytes
Rogue Mission Pack gamex86.dll source code 700,416 bytes
Xatrix Mission Pack gamex86.dll source code 519,168 bytes

Unix releases are located in their usual spot in ftp://ftp.idsoftware.com/idstuff/quake2/unix and the shar versions of the source releases are located in ftp://ftp.idsoftware.com/idstuff/quake2/source This is, for all intents and purposes, the last official release of Quake II.

g.o.d. Game [4:15pm]
Gathering of Developers has announced the project that the ex-Ion employees will be working on confirming the "rumor" that the employees were departing to work under a publishing deal with g.o.d. Here ya go: (Link mooched from Blue)

Dallas, TX, December 2, 1998 -- Put on your kabuki makeup, black leather and metallic studs, and stick out your tongue in your best Gene Simmons impression, KISS is going digital! Developer-driven computer and video game publisher Gathering of Developers today announced a publishing deal with new developer group, Bloodshot Entertainment, to create a game based on the best-selling KISS Pyscho Circus comics and action figures series by Todd McFarlane.

Bloodshot Entertainment, comprised of designers, artists and programmers formerly of ION Storm, is developing a 3D action game that integrates McFarlane's rendition of the KISS "universe" with the likeness of the legendary KISS members and their music. The game will be published in the U.S. by Gathering of Developers, and Take 2 Interactive will co-publish the title in Europe. The Gathering has secured the KISS Psycho Circus license for all game platforms.

 "Our shows are a sensory ambush--filled with hard-core rock and roll, cutting-edge technology, and in-your-face action," proclaims Gene Simmons, KISS vocalist and bassist. "We are working with Bloodshot to convey that same raw electric excitement in this game." Simmons continued, "We aren't all gamers ourselves, but we got the word that The Gathering was the place to call if we wanted a guarantee of quality and artist recognition. Besides, it's good to have g.o.d. on our side for once!"

Headphones or Speakers? [4:15pm]
In case you were concerned which of the two are better for gameplay, Thresh's FiringSquad has a new article discussing it. I'll have to vote for speakers for "immersive feel" when cranked up, but headphones when it comes down to playing to win. Check out the review of SIN while you are there.

One teeny little novelty is called stereo-separation. Yes, you heard me you audiophile freak monkey. Just about ANY pair of decent headphones will blow away an expensive pair of speakers when it comes to determining the given position of a sound. Having the drivers closer to your ears magnifies the appearance of sounds coming from one direction or another.

Linkage [4:15pm]
Got some new links for you guys to mess around with.

Sierra Dates [1:15am]
Thanks to Gamers Alliance for the word on these release dates given out by Sierra. Yup, looks like TF2 for Half-Life is indeed a few months away. The # of HL servers out there seems to be increasing a good amount.

Worldcraft Pro- Winter 99
Homeworld- Winter 99
Gabriel Knight III -Spring 99
Team Fortress 2 - Spring 99

Heretic2 Support [1:35am]
Couple of new websites for those of you playing around with Heretic2 that is out on shelves now. Heretic 2 retail support: http://www2.ravensoft.com/heretic2  and Heretic 2 developer support wwwboard.html

Views [1:15am]

Tech Etc [1:15am]

Voodoo Banshee OEM Drivers page
Win95 for AGP board
includes: Glide 2.53, Glide 3.0, Direct3D, DirectX and Voodoo Banshee Control Panel applet
Win98 for AGP board
includes: Glide 2.53, Glide 3.0, Direct3D, DirectX and Voodoo Banshee Control Panel applet
WinNT for AGP board
includes: Glide2.53, Glide3, and Voodoo Banshee Control Panel applet
Win9x for PCI board
includes: Glide 2.53, Glide 3.0, Direct3D, DirectX and Voodoo Banshee Control Panel applet

Voodoo3 is designed for 16 MB of unified memory. We will use faster speed memory than we currently utilize and we have significantly increased the internal bandwidth.  If we see a strong need, it's possible that we might increase the maximum memory size supported in a future version

werd
Havent had a chance to play Heretic2 for more than a few minutes. The opening movie sequence was neeto though. :)

Tuesday, December 1

Zoid on Dementia [5:35pm]
TC's Dementia show played host to Zoid, programming monkey for id Software currently working on too many things to list. He talks about Quake3 of course and a few other things. Check it out.

Weather The Storm [5:05pm]
From 3DN, That's the title of the newest interview with John Romero, of ION Storm, at GameSpot. this is the place!

New IDDA [5:05pm]
My personal favorite demo analyzer of the bunch. IDDA has found a new home at PlanetQuake and has posted a new version that fixes the crashes with a number of QW demos to boot.

FragMaster! [3:35pm]
Oh geeze, for all of you out there who thought that SpaceOrb was hot stuff, you aint seen nothin yet! Check out the new FragMaster released by the Thrustmaster guys. Here is a picture cuz I just *know* this thing will revolutionize 3D FPS gaming. Thanks "Rickard from Sweden" Bolt it down and strap yourself in! Check out the sideview as well.

note: S A R C A S M

New TNT Drivers [2:45pm]
Thanks to RivaExtreme for the word that new reference drivers for the TNT have been released addressing issues with Unreal as well as the new Descent3 demo that was just released. The file is dated almost 2 weeks ago but the readme.txt is dated today, so what the hell.

Build 0.48 for Win95/98 AGP W9x048ag.zip 11/17/98 902 KB
Build 0.48 for WinNT 4.0 Nt4048.zip 11/17/98 508 KB
Build 0.48 for Win95/98 PCI W9x048p.zip 11/17/98 892 KB

Half-Life's Future [1:05am]
As we've all discovered GameCenter has a sweet spot for Valve and Sierra. Check out the new article they have posted shooting some questions to Gabe Newell. Here's a snip:

As for Valve's future, its next release will be Team Fortress II, a multiplayer-oriented team combat game using the Half-Life engine. Will Valve stick to the first-person action genre? "We're still trying to figure out our identity; we're still not entirely sure who we are," Newell says. "What we hope will define Valve is that we ship stuff we're proud of that does something interesting, whether that's an RPG or a strategy game or whatever."

Also, for those of you still having problems with the WON authentication stuff:

"The authentication system we've put in place is a really important part of the health of the multiplayer community," he says. "There are a group of people who work to destroy games for other people and we want to keep them as far away from the community as possible. They try all sorts of nasty things to screw up servers and cheat. There are a bunch of things they did when Quake II came out that gave people an unfair advantage in multiplayer. We don't want them hurting other customers' experience because in the long run that's the thing we're really jealous of. Nobody should be [toying around] with the Half-Life community."

Half-Life Config Generator [1:05am]
Check it out, email from Dan "Tweak Monkey" Kennedy:

After a big day of boring old JavaScript, I've managed to whip up a Half-Life autoexec creator. It includes commands to tweak the video, sound, and multiplayer, and has screenshots and descriptions for all. halflife

Wheel of Time [1:05am]
Yup, the weekly update to the Legend Entertainment Wheel of Time page.

Level design continues at a frantic pace. Warren is deep in the portal stone world; James is putting together the Whitecloak single player levels; and Scott (in between his sessions of Varghina) is playing around with the weather effects inside Shadar Logoth. This variant isn't even on his schedule! If the effects didn't look and sound so cool, I'd give him such a noogie!

Unreal Patch Soon [1:05am]
Neeto, Billy was harassing Tim Sweeney from Epic about work being done on Unreal and this is what big bad Tim had to say about the next patch:

We're still testing it and fixing minor problems. The UnrealScript code changes and improvements are very extensive, so we're trying to be careful about getting everything right before we release it.  Probably late this week, but no gurantees.

SIN Walkthrough [1:05am]
The Ritualistic guys are posting walkthroughs of the levels of SIN for those of you who are having trouble. From what I've heard the patched version of SIN seems to be running quite a bit more stable.

Tech Etc [1:15am]

werd
Got a copy of Heretic2 yesterday from EBX. The demo was awful cool, the artists at Raven are absolute studs.

What, you think I forgot the suck? Na just wasnt feeling very bitchy yesterday. Funny considering all I did was bitch and moan when my HD went belly up and I lost all my damn data this weekend.

 

Monday, November 30

ION [5:05pm]
Check out this new GameSpot article / interview with Todd Porter of Ion Storm. Here is my favorite quote:

..With the advent of the internet, you have anyone that can pay $20 per month posting a website and many times spouting rumors or all out lies because they can. Does it affect us? I think anyone who has negative things said about them doesn't like it, but we consider the source. If it's CNN or NBC or CBS, reporting this stuff then you might believe it, but on WWW, journalistic integrity takes a back seat to Trash Publication.

Not sure who this is directed at. Just in case though so guys dont get confused, everything you have read here about Ion Storm has proven to be correct. If Todd has any particular "rumor" he would like to dispell I'm sure we all would love to hear it. I'm guessing this is aimed elsewhere.

SIN [11:55am]
A .plan update from Mark Dochterman concerning more work being done on SIN as well as the tools release in the future:

- 3DNOW - I worked very hard on getting 3DNOW support in for the 1.01 patch, unfortunately there were a lot of issues with their 3dfxgl driver (it didn't recognize my PURE3D). Right now I am in a holding pattern waiting on AMD to see what they do to improve their optimized drivers. Another issue that came up is that the 3DNOW optimization is basically targetted solely at VOODOO customers. Anybody out there own a K6 and not use a VOODOO based video card? It seemed to me like there would be quite a few people in this situation and I want to make sure the optimized 3DNOW driver is compatible with all the popular cards.

- Tools - I am getting the new tools ready for release. This time I will also include the MAX and MAX2 plugins (compiled) sorry about that, didn't realize I just sent out source. Incidentally, the MAXSDK comes on every MAX disk.

- Source - We are also putting together a release of the source code for the gaming dll, this will take a little longer because it will be our first release ( the tools as you know had already been released for the demo ).

- Patch - I hope everyone is Sinning out there ;). I apologize for the change in Save games, but since most of the level scripts had changed, the old save games were truly no longer compatible.

Black Crypt [11:55am]
Check this out, now that Heretic2 is on the shelves Rick Johnson is planning on reviving his "Black Crypt" project. He even wants to release a net demo:

My current plan, barring any legal problems, is to put together a build that will contain just the first dungeon level (which is 2 player levels) and put that out sometime next weekend. I mainly want to do this to see if there are any current bugs or compatibility problems with the code. The game should run well on any Win95, Win98, and WinNT system (486 66mhz and above). If everything goes well, then I'll put out the full release shortly there after.

Remember that we are going to be putting this out as donationware. If you enjoy the full product, feel free to send us some money or anything worthwhile. :)

G200 OpenGL ICD [11:55am]
Oh, gee can you believe it? The Matrox guys have announced yet another delay of their OpenGL ICD.

Matrox ICD Update
Matrox regrets to announce that it has pushed back the release of  its OpenGL ICD to Wednesday, December 9, 1998. On this date, Matrox will release a pre-beta version with support for Windows 95/98 only. Windows NT 4.0 support is expected during Q1'99.

Another 3dfx Card? [11:55am]
Saw on VE that Leviathan received from Brian Bruning (3Dfx) that confirms that there is thing going on that's bigger and better then Voodoo 3. Leviathan complained about the Voodoo3 (the usual, no 32 bit color, z-buffer issues, etc, etc.. the usual) and this is what Brian replied:

As an educated hardcore 3D gamer, I believe you are justified in your assessment. However, for the millions of people who have suffered with their Virge, Rage, Trident, or Riva cards, Voodoo 3 IS the next big advancement. For you advanced 3D gamers, we have something extra special for you in the works :)

Views [9:15am]

Tech Etc [9:15am]

werd
w00, computer is back up and running now. A fresh HD always seems to speed things up. Sorry about the "spotty" updates through the holidays. It was the holidays anyway damn it.

3DNews.net Last Weeks News copyright Steve Gibson 1998