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Shiny & Messiah
A couple of things on the Messiah front. The Team Ego page has been updated with some more images for you to drool over the incredible engine and character stuff they have. Then when you are done check out the newly revamped Shiny webiste with some spiffy flash stuff going on there.

Unreal FAQ
A new version of the unofficial Unreal FAQ hosted by Unreal Kingdom is online. -Blue

Unreal & OpenGL
Mark Rein made a post to the megaboard concerning the status of using OpenGL acceleration with Unreal. Here's a bit of it:

Now the good news. Tonight I got to play Unreal using OpenGL! I was playing on my P200MMX with a Hercules Thriller 3D which uses the Rendition v2200 chipset. The performance wasn't up to Voodoo1 levels yet but I'm pretty confident we'll get close. Unfortunately the minimum resolution on this card appears to be 640x480 which seems kind of dumb to me. One of the best features of the Voodoo card is its ability to run at 512x384 which looks almost as good as 640x480 but with a lot less overhead - especially on those 3-pass renders we do quite often.

GameSpy v2.01
A minor bug in the HTML server list parsing from the GameSpy that was being distributed on the www.intel.com page has been fixed. Just check out the www.gamespy.com website and read Mark Surfas' .plan update describing whats up and why you need to upgrade.

Q2 DM Bible
The always informative Gamers Extreme deathmatch bibles authored by Thresh and company have been updated. This time Thresh takes a stab at all the different uses for the Q2 weapons and the tecniques that have evolved that you may or may not be aware of.

The Views

• 3D Realms at E3
  The 3D Realms website has been updated more with some great footage of the big E3 show including of course that cool new Duke4ever video that I hope all of you downloaded and checked out. There is also the new Prey video in RealVideo format.
  
  
• GameCenter's Ratings
  Yea, GameCenter has decided to go on the crusade of bashing all kinds of things while at the same time saying how grand Microsoft is and Direct3D is. Check out the article which also calls Quake2 overrated.
  
  
• Unreal on PVRSG
  If you are wondering what Unreal looks like on the new PowerVR 3D chipset head on over to August West's page where he has posted a buttload of shots and even put them in zip files for download if your heart so desires. -Blues
  
  
• Future of Unreal
  A new article posted on GameCenter called The Future of Unreal talks with Tim Sweeney and Mark Rein both a bit about where they see Unreal going now that it is released and what they plan on doing for supporting the product. (Fix internet play? heh)
  
  
• Dark Reign 2
  Well, I admit the first Dark Reign did absolutely nothing for me but possibly the sequel will be better. Apparently they have taken the game into the 3rd dimension (as everyone seems to be doing) and GameCenter has the peek.
  
  
• C&C 2
  A game that I did enjoy was the original C&C. (Red Alert blew though, of course I just dont like games based in the past very much) The sequel has been in development by Westwood for quite a while now and a preview has been posted over at www.ozonegames.com
  
  
• More Lara Croft
  Can't get enough of this chick. (She was a HOTTIE at E3) Here is another poster for the upcoming Tomb Raider movie on the Dark Horizons page to be released in theatres of course that should get a rise out of some of ya.
  
  

Hardware

• K6-2 Review
  Anand's Hardware page has posted a review of a K6-2 CPU that could possibly float your boat if you are in the market for buying a new CPU and feel like being a non-conformist.
  
  

werd
Oh lord, just saw the latest Jennifer Love Hewitt flick with some of the homeboys. Her breastages should be bronzed. (After of course appearing in several more movies and making a few trips to my place for some paddy-cake) I salute JLF. heh. btw, I forgot to mention this but the Truman show was brilliant. Can you imagine, after all this time something that was actually original for once. Too bad Truman didnt get jiggy with that "new love interest" though. She had it goin on. (I didnt give away the plot, dont cry)

Sin Shot
The HardCorps Sin News page over at aCtivision has been updated with a new screenshot of John Blade chillin in front of his new ride. -Ritualistic

Ion Storm
A few things happening over at the www.ionstorm.com website of interest: Former Dominion tester Rich Vos joins the ION web team as Assistant Webmaster and Dominion programmer Patrick Deupree takes his talents to the Anachronox team.

Dear Mynx
Mike "giggler" Wardwell of Ritual Entertainment. You know him, you love him, and he's the embarassment spotlight of the week over at the newly posted Dear Mynx column. Also covered is Quake divorce, butt hair, and net love. All of which Mike can relate to.

EGN
This is pretty cool. Take ICQ, then take GameSpy, and add them together. You get EGN. Ok, well GameSpy has a lot more to offer than EGN does as far as being a server browser. I dig this app although the UI still needs some work, it's a nice alternative to the overcrowded ICQ (Who's future is um, uncertain with that AOL buyout. What happens to ICQ when its out of "beta" anyways?)

Duke4 Video
OMG! Ok, now this is the real deal. The Duke4ever video that was playing on the E3 floor that was blowing away so many people. Myself included. If you want to see some just plain incredible stuff done in the Quake2 engine, check out this big ol' video released from 3DR. Hey, I even went through the trouble of downloading it through my ISDN and posting it on the server. Takes a long freaking time with a 30meg video. (Yes, I want a cookie)

IE5 Developer Release
If you feel like going through the trouble of signing up for the developer list stuff on the Microsoft page you can get your hands on an early copy of IE5.0 for download. It features nothing spectacular that I've discovered yet aside from a cute new media player and some annoying sound effects added to your File Explorer.

Sin Mission Pack
The guys over at 2015 have mentioned on their website finally that they were the development group chosen by Ritual Entertainment to work on the first official add-on pack for Sin. It will of course include new weapons/monsters/levels etc as all mission packs do. As for the continuation of the heavily involved plot of Sin, dunno.

GameSpy v2.0
Congrats to the GameSpy team (myself included, w00) for being featured on the front page of www.intel.com as an offering to the Intel Owners club. Even bigger news is the fact that if you join the free club you can download the new version of GameSpy v2.0. Well, if you registed GameSpy you prolly already have v2.0 but if you are a cheap bastard then grab it from the Intel page.

While you are digging on that check out Mark Surfas' .plan update talking about it.

MPlayer + Unreal
One of the few online gaming services I actually have some respect for, MPlayer has announced support for Unreal on their service. This is available for free to all users who sign up. (Which is also free)

Of course, Unreal still pretty much bites ass over the net, but hopefully Tim Sweeney can fix that.

Speaking of Lag
And of course, on that subject Tim Sweeney (lead programmer for Epic) made a post to the Bugs page to let us know whats up:

I'm doing a lot of testing on some network play fixes that greatly reduce the client-side lag problems that many 28.8K and 56K modem users are reporting. Hopefully this will be ready for public beta in a few days. Please don't email me about this, it just takes away time from working on the fixes.

The Views

• X-Com meets Unreal
  Gamers Alliance has gotten a hold of the first ever public screenshots of X-Com 5, which has licensed the Unreal engine from Epic Megagames. No, they arent doing the Anachronox thing with the Unreal engine, they are taking the game to the first person.
  
  
• Blood2
  The-Chosen page has been updated with a bit more information on the Blood2 project that I was um, underwhelmed with when I saw it at E3. Played it for a while. Check out the new "weekly vision"
  
  
• Carmageddon 2
  The boys over at Next-Gen have posted a bit of info on Carmageddon2 for those so enthused with running people over in a virtual world.
  
  
• VooDoo Review
  A new Voodoo Review has been posted following the world of Voodoo cards and everything about them. They are generally entertaining and informative to read if you own a Voodoo or Voodoo2 board I suggest checking it out.
  
  
• FLY! Shots
  TRI has released a batch of shots of their new 3D game that is in development. 14 shots to be exact. TRI are the same guys who brought you CART racing a few months back.
  
  
• Brian Hook
  GrandMaster B over at Voodoo Extreme is carving up a rug or something answering questions. Check it out and fire a few questions his way if you are feeling worthy.
  
  

Hardware

• AVault on Motherboards
  AVault has jumped into the foray of hardware reviews with this posting talking about motherboards and suggestions for people who are looking to buy a new one.
  
  
• Matrox G200 Review
  The guys at Windows Sources have gotten a hold of one of the coveted Matrox G200 2D/3D chiset vid cards and have posted their review on the card. This is one of the first reviews I've seen posted by someone who isnt directly related to Matrox so check it out. -VE
  
  
• Hercules
  OGR has posted a bit of information concerning what the Hercules kids are up to:

Hercules made some video card announcements recently, including their own Voodoo 2 board. The Stingray/2 will feature 12MB of on-board memory, the Voodoo 2 chipset and carry a price of $299. The Stingray/2 will also feature the Hercumeter, allowing users to adjust the clock speed. Hercules also announced the Terminator BEAST, a 2D/3D card (plus DVD accelerator) featuring the S3 Savage3D chip. The 8MB BEAST will be available in July for $199. Finally, Hercules' Thriller Conspiracy is a 2D/3D board featuring the Rendition Verite V2200 chipset, 8MB of on-board RAM and will carry a price of $149

werd
Got the new server up and going over at www.shugashack.com although I'm not posting to it yet. I've decided to hopefully hold off on moving to the new domain until I finalize which company I'll be working with. If everything goes as planned it should be by Monday. (Doubt it though, prolly more like Tuesday/Wednesday)

I'm assuming the web designers who wrote me saying they would rework my page a bit are hard at work on a new look. If so, thanks! If not, your work sucks anyways. :)

Quake2 V3.16 Status
Yet more information on the Quake2 patch that you cant download. (yet) Here is part of a .plan update from Disruptor over at id talking about whats up:

We were doing some playtesting of the Q2 3.16 patch over the net this evening and things are looking very promising for a release "soon". Just wanted to make this update becase quite a few of you have been inquiring about it's status. Here are the things that have changed since v3.15 - Fixed infinite grenade bug - Fixed autodownloading to actually download sounds and console pics - Fixed autodownload to not create empty directories for files not on the server. - Added customized client downloading. cvars are the same as the server side: <snip>

Unreal Patch Status
For the curious Mark Rein made a post to the megaboard givin the low down:

The silence means that Tim is either working his butt off or sleeping. That's all he does these days. We know net play needs some work and Tim Sweeney is working on a fix. He's posted information about that several times on this forum and we maintain an entire web site devoted to Unreal technical issues including known bugs, what we think is causing them and how we think we can fix them. You can find it at http://unreal.epicgames.com . I suggest you go there and read the page before you boil over in frustration. Tim has indicated a test net play update should be sometime this week but because it involves changes at BOTH the client AND server side it's a big project and needs to be done right. Your continued patience is appreciated and will eventually be rewarded with some fantastic net play.

Tim has a lot of work ahead of him to make netplay fantastic, but from what he said at E3 he is more than willing to do that work because he understands how important this work is to the success of Unreal.

Unreal Pack followup
Darci Nagorski of GT Interactive sent an official response to John Callaham concerning the Unreal add-on pack that was announced by Creative Carnage and then pulled the very next day. Here it be:

"The information Creative Carnage posted was premature and we are still working on details of the contract and we will have an official announcement on the Unreal add-on in a couple weeks. I will keep you posted."

On that same note, Lordbio sent word that Game Time Today did an interview with CliffyB of Epic and asked him about the add-on pack. Cliffy stated that the pack was not officially endorsed and that Epic themselves would be doing an add-on pack.

Unreal Editing Manual
Skarz News page has compiled an unofficial Unreal editing manual of sorts that is quite useful in the quest to understand UnrealED and how to make levels for Unreal. It's actually a .hlp file so that hitting F1 will actually do something in UnrealED besides telling you that you have no help file. :)

Sin Specs
The Vup3D page has gotten a hold of large list of all the changes that Ritual is implementing into the Quake2 engine to include in their Sin title. Here are a few of them because it's an interesting list: -Op3dfx

16 Bit color in hardware and in software Advanced character AI Character Regional damage Plug in Scripting language and character def file language Advanced world control scripting language Interactive music system Enhanced sound effect system (Echoing, sound shifting) Script based animation system Colored lighting in both hardware and software Permanent wall damage Object tessellation system Advanced surface control system (Ricochet, slick, opaque, reflective, etc) Increased multiplayer support

The Views

• Tomb Raider Movie
  There is a teaser poster posted over on Aint It Cool News page that shows off the oh so recognizeable profile of Lara Croft.
  
  
• Quake2 MP
  PCFan has posted a review of the recently released Quake2 Mission Pack. (Which I admit I have still not played.. heh)
  
  While you are at it, check out the GameHut review of the same product.
  
  Oh wait, also check out Todd H's .plan update talking about the latest sales figures on the mission pack over in the UK.
  
  
• Prey Preview
  A short little preview of Prey from 3DR is posted over at GameSpot for those who cant get enough. Hopefully Ill get a bit more of a look at Prey while I visit 3DR either this evening or next week. There is 1 more screenshot up there as well.
  
  
• Heavy Gear 2 Shots
  The very impressive looking Heavy Gear2 which I suggest you take a look at is coming soon to a software store near you. aCtvision who is all excited about this title has posted a few more shots on the website to wet your whistle.
  
  
• Redline Racer Review
  A racing game that I myself enjoyed quite a bit (Until I beat it at least) Redline Racer is reviewed over at Gamers Alliance. -VE
  
  
• Fallout 2 Chat
  Everything you could possibly want to know about Interplay's upcoming Fallout 2 can be found in the games-zone chat log from last night. The url is http://www.gamers-zone.com/chats/fo2/fo2chat.shtml
  
  

Hardware

• Riva TNT Demo Stuff
  For those of you who checked out the RivaTNT shots posted yesterday over at RivaZone, here is a bit more info on those shots as quoted from Cyrellis: "Right now, all TNT demos we have were written in DX5, 16-bit, low res. (8x6 or 10x7). We have been in the process of the last couple of weeks to re-write them into DX6, 32-bit and 16x12 res. It is a little hard to determine when these will be good to go but I wouldn't be surprised if they aren't ready by mid-July." -VE
  
  While you are checking out those. Here are 2 shots of the RivaTNT running Quake2. Shot1 / Shot2.
  
  
• Matrox G200
  HardwareCentral has posted an interview with Matrox man Jason Della Rocco. He's in charge of developer relations over there at Matrox and does a good job making the G200 sound like the card to die for. -Blues
  
  
• Voodoo2 Review
  OGR has posted a big review and comparison of all the Voodoo2 cards out there except for 1, the Diamond Monster3D 2? Why was that card not included? At any rate its a cool bunch of benchmarks and pretty much says go buy the Orchid card because it's the fastest.
  
  
• 3dfx Webiste
  The www.3dfx.com website has a brand spanking new look, and of course it looks gnarly. Most likely you will get laid if you have this website open while surfing the web on your laptop at singles bars.
  
  

Releases

• FrogBot Editor
  The frogbot editor v1.5 has been released, check Metropolis www.telefragged.com/metro direct download link is.. fbedit15.zip
  
  

werd
Er, lost access to the server again for about 4hrs before I just gave up and went to sleep. Blech, As you read this update I'll be cleaning up the new temp space for the page. Lets just slap it over there for a few days until I figure out the pages new home.

Oh, and of interest. All deals I have discussed for the new page would include me *regularly* updating the weekly sections so that you could actually count on them being updated. (Hey, this web page is gonna pay my rent now, you bet your ass I'm gonna update them)

Duke4Ever Video
Ahh.. now this is something I suggest everyone check out. The extremely impressive Duke4Ever video by 3DRealms that was showing at E3 is now available over on cdrom.com (My ISDN is choking on it now) Thanks to Surfdog[OSKI] for the link.

update: BLEH! It's the same video that was shot from AVault, sorry.. I'm a moron. It's still cool but no sound.

Quake2 v3.16 (not yet)
Check out the update on Redwood's page concerning the status of Quake2 3.16 and why it has not yet been released:

For those wondering about Quake 2 v3.16, here's a little info. Since it was initially thought to be finished, other bugs have cropped up in 3.15 that need to be fixed in 3.16 so those are being taken care of ASAP. Zoid is working as fast as possible, please be patient and don't email him about it.

Messiah Engine License
Interplay has announced that the much hyped and talked about Messiah engine is up for license by developers who wish to make a game based on the technology. The big thing about this technology besides deserving a badmotherfucker wallet is that it "scales" to the CPU/3D abilities of the machine that it is being played on. RT-DAT or some crap. -GA

Speaking of Messiah, the Team Ego Messiah page has posted some information and screenshots of the character editor for Messiah that makes all that neet stuff happen. The level editor is also pic'd on the page as well. -VE

Cyberathletes
Ok, your daily new sponsor for the QuakeCon-CPL tournament to be held in July has been announced on the www.cyberathlete.com website. Check out http://cpl.cyberathlete.com/ if you want to sign up for and attend QuakeCon this year. Oh, this time the sponsor is Logitech.

Invest in Crack
Dave Taylor of Crack.com has updated his .plan that they are looking for some financing to help finish up the Golgotha project.

Wednesday's Demo
My connect has gone to total crap recently. (Should be fixed in a day or two, assuming Wieder figures out how to use a fax machine) so I havent been playing much online at all. But, I managed to squeeze in a couple of games last night and have become the master of packetloss. Check out this demo and be sure to do a r_netgraph 1 and check out the mean PL.

The Views

• Prax Wars Shots
  A couple of new shots of Prax Wars have popped up over at www.boatrocker.com They are both quite cool looking although I'll have to say the sunglasses on the guy in the 1st pic look pretty hanus.
  
  
• EverQuest Movie
  Thanks to D9-Geiger for the word that a new movie has been posted on www.everquest.com that shows off what we can hope to play in this online RPG.
  
  
• 3dfx Dudes
  The Operation3dfx guys have posted their first sets of Q&A with 3dfx's Brian Bruning and Tony (forgot his last name)
  
  
• Brian Hook
  The GrandMaster B column over at Voodoo Extreme is still being updated quite a bit. Check out what Mr. Hook is answering over there today.
  
  

Hardware

• RIVA128 Tweaks
  Dan's page has posted a number of different ways to improve performance on the RIVA128 based cards as well as try and improve the somewhat shabby image quality while you are at it. -Blues
  
  
• Super7 Motherboards
  Anand's Hardware page has posted a ton of reviews of several Super7 motherboards -VE
  
  
• Matrox G200 Bundle
  The Matrox Users page has been updated with what they plan on bundling with the new 3D card. -VE

Matrox have announced the software bundle that will be included with the Millennium G200 card: Picture Publisher, Simply 3D, Netscape Communicator, PointCast Client, Imagination Software. It seems release dates will be announced at the end of June

Releases

• JailBreak for Q2
  A new version of JailBreak for Q2 is availalble on the homepage. This is a big 2.2 release so I figured I would mention it on the page. Just use the sw_newjb console command on the server if you wanna test out the new features. -Hive
  
  

werd
For the guys who asked me if I was interested in them redesigning my site, of course I am! You don't have to ask my permission first. :)

I have not decided on a deal yet. My good friends at gibbed.com registered the domain I will be moving to though when I do find the best situation to continue my page.

I'll be online today so should actually get another update in around 1pm.

Unreal Pack?
The first official mission pack that everyone was mentioning yesterday being done by Creative Carnage seems to have dissapeared? John Callaham sent me word that the information on the pack has been pulled from the website without any explanation. Perhaps the pack wasnt so official?

Downtime
Yea, neet.. VRGN keeps flopping on and offline apparently. Sorry about that. Should have the temporary move done sometime tomorrow or the next day.

The Views -updated
A few more interviews for you to read

• Max Payne Preview
  One of the big hits at E3 (Just about anythong associated with 3DR was a hit at E3 this year) Max Payne is previewed over at the PC Games website.
  
  
• Carmageddon 2
  The sequel to one of the more controversial games to be released has been announced along with some screenshots for you to check out as well. Gamers Alliance has the shots, check them out.
  
  
• Prey Video
  The 3DRealms website has word that cdrom.com has posted the video that they were showing at E3 this year in in MPG format. A bit better quality than the one we all saw posted on AVault a little while back. Hopefully they will post the Duke4 video soon :)
  
  
• John Romero Interview
  Mr. Romero himself, the Ion Storm head honcho is interviewed by Fargo over at StormTroopers.com talking about Daikatana.
  
  
• MechWarrior 3
  A 3D game a lot of people are looking forward to. MechWarrior 3 development has finally begun. Yea, that means you wont be seeing this title until 1999 but it's good to know they have at least started working on the project. -VE
  
  
• Ask 3dfx Dudes
  If the Ask GrandMaster B section (Brian Hook of id Software) wasnt enough for you guys, then you should head over to Operation3dfx and check out the sections they have posted for Brian Bruning and Tony Tamasi of 3dfx.
  
  
• Myscha Interview
  Level designer on the Unreal project, Myscha did an interview at the Processed News site. Process of course asks Myscha about stuff he knows best, level design.
  
  
• E3 Awards
  The UGO E3 best of show award nominations have been posted on the E3 website for everyone to check out. The winners will be announced on June 22nd. -Blues
  

Hardware

• Stingray 2
  Operation3dfx has word on the announcement from Hercules that they will be shipping a Stingray 2 card based on the Voodoo2 chipset of course. There will be a couple of different versions. One that includes TV out capabilities.
  
  

Mac QW v2.21
Got word from the Westlake Interactive guys that they have released the latest version of QuakeWorld for the Mac users out there. Hey, Zoid didnt even know it was released by these guys, and he made the damn thing.
Snag the Client
Snag the Server

RivaTNT
The RivaZone page has posted some new shots they scored from the nVidia guys showing off some "exclusive" shots as they were of the RivaTNT in action. There is of course a bit more info on the chipset as well as the RivaZone page. -VE

Voodoo2 FAQ
Moody's Voodoo2 Game FAQ has been updated yet again over at the VE page. The intent of the FAQ is of course to tell you any and every game capable of running on the Voodoo2 and what patches etc you would need to download to run the games along with their locations.

ICQ Followup
The ICQ page has been updated with this little quote that I saw on the JK page:

Because AOL has asked us to continue to run the service exactly as before, we don't intend to make any changes in our policies. We will continue to offer the software and the service exactly under the same terms and conditions as before (time limited free beta). And of course, you will still be able to use ICQ No matter who your ISP is, or where you live.

werd
Dunno why the server dissapeared last night (along with my email access). The vrgames webserver should be hot until the end of the month. Just in case though I've already taken measures to have my site temporarily stored at another location until I can find a permanent deal.

Also, if you happen to be a web designer with some free time on your hands. I'm looking at redesigning the site for the move. I don't pay but can send several thousand people to your website in thanks. :)

ICQ to charge?
Of course the rumors have been flying around quite a bit concerning what AOL plans to do after buying out ICQ. Check out this GamesMania article on the subject. Snippit: -Ant

here will be one of two scenarios developing over the next few months. One scenario sees ICQ users have to pay $20 for three months use or $50 for the entire year for their ICQ privileges with a maximum number of users they can authorize. Right now you can authorize as many people as you want to. The second scenario sees the ICQ feature being added to AOL users for an additional charge.

Unreal Pack
The first official add-on pack (A TC of sorts) for Unreal has been announced. Creative Carnage is working on the project which is titled Unreal: A World Gone Dead. It will of course include new weapons, monsters, items, etc. -Marcus

Cyberathlete Announcements
The constant flow of announcements from the CPL has not slowed down. Yet another announcement from another sponsor offering yet more money to people who enter the tournament to be held at the QuakeCon - CPL tournament to be held next month. This time the guys from Canopus as well as Gamers Alliance are involved. Just show up and you'll prolly win $500 bucks at the rate this is going.

WinGlide
Chris' WinGlide page has been updated yet again with information on his popular app that lets you run Glide apps in a window. (Rendered on your 3dfx card then blt'd back to your 2D card) He has an update talking about how to increase performance. -VE

Intel
The Intel homeboys in the news

• CPU Price Cuts
  For those of you interested in snagging a new computer. Intel is announcing more price cuts on their processor line. -VE
  
  
• Sued
  What everyone loves to see. A large corporation who dominates the industry is being sued. FTC has filed a lawsuit against Intel, here's a quote:

The FTC determined that Intel's dominant market share constituted a monopoly, subjecting the company's conduct to heightened scrutiny under U.S. antitrust laws.

Intergraph, who has already filed suit against Intel, has put out a press release of their own on the matter. -Blues

Final Call
VRGN my current employer as well as webhosting service was the victim of of a financial buyout. Actually SportsNet, the financer of VRGN was the company involved. The new investors decided to cut funding to most US ventures, and well, VRGN was one of them. This in fact happened a bit over 2 months ago. I have been running this page without any income for my work over this period. The savings are beginning to dry up.

VRGN is still alive at this point and looking at new financing but I can no longer stick around. The ideal situation for me would to form a partnership with a larger site and share revenues generated from my advertising. (OGR, AVault, GameCenter, Games.net, etc) What I would enjoy doing is along with maintaining my site being a contributing journalist at the main site as well. I dig on doing articles :) Hell, I'd like to do magazine articles as well as long as you wanna host my site.

I do not need a temporary hosting. I appreciate the offers but no thanks. If you have any serious offers, leads, or inquiries, please feel free to toss them my way. drop me a line at smiles@vrgames.net

I am still plowing through email. If you have sent me an offer and I have not yet responded please dont take that as a no. I should be finished answering everyone by the end of this evening.

The Views -updated
A few more interviews for you to read

• Tom Hall Interview
  Mr. Hall of Ion Storm is interviewed on the 3D Alpha page talking about his much hyped recently Anachronox project. -Blues
  
  
• Eraser not dead
  Contrary to some quote that was put out on the net earlier, Ridah updated the Impact Development team website with a clarification on exactly what the state of the Eraser Bot is and his work on it.
  
  
• Dementia Show
  The guys over at the Dementia show are goin nutty. They scored some time with Members of Valve, g.o.d., Ensemble (AoE), as well as David Koon of Motocross Madness. Just snag yourself a RealPlayer from www.real.com and have at it.
  
  
• Stratosphere Preview
  AVault is kickin up the cool previews as always. Check out what they have to say about Stratosphere from the RipCord homeboys. There was a demo released a while back according to VE which you can download already.
  
  
• Prax War Shot
  Kinda forgot to link this one the other day. a Prax War shot has been smuggled in from overseas to make an appearance on the www.boatrocker.com website. RBR's baby is lookin sweet.
  
  
• JailBreak
  Curious what the JailBreak hype is all about? Check out the review just posted over at the Quake2 Press page. -PQ
  
  

Carmack on Input
John Carmack made a pretty interesting .plan update concering work he has been doing on Quake3. First thing that he went most in depth on was the mouse sampling rate stuff. Dig it:

Mouse sampling on win95 only happens every 25ms. It doesn't matter if you check the cursor or use DirectInput, the values will only change 40 times a second. <snip> I now have three modes of mouse control: in_mouse 1: Mouse control with standard win-32 cursor calls, just like Quake 2. in_mouse 2: Mouse control using DirectInput to sample the mouse reletive counters each frame. This behaves like winquake with -dinput. There isn't a lot of difference between this and 1, but you get a little more precision, and you never run into window clamping issues. in_mouse 3: Processes DirectInput mouse movement events, and filters the amount of movement over the next 25 milliseconds. This effectively adds about 12 ms of latency to the mouse control, but the movement is smooth and consistant at any variable frame rate. This will be the default for Quake 3, but some people may want the 12ms faster (but rougher) response time of mode 2. t takes a pretty intense player to even notice the difference in most cases, but if you have a setup that can run a very consistant 30 fps you will probably apreciate the smoothness. At 60 fps, anyone can tell the difference, but rendering speeds will tend to cause a fair amount of jitter at those rates no matter what the mouse is doing.

What he also mentions, and the one thing that *seriously* irritates me about Quake2, is the 10hz crap that he used in Quake2. He knows it was a bad choice now and owns up to it though, check it:

I have also concluded that the networking architecture for Quake 2 was just not the right thing. The interpolating 10 hz server made a lot of animation easier, which fit with the single player focus, but it just wasn't a good thing for internet play.

He then continues on a bit more about Quake3 mentioning that the direction of the project has changed a bit more since the initial announcement. What this means in relation to the release timeframe is unknown but uh.. I guess we'll find out soon enough.

Q2 CTF Movie & KeyGrip2
Dig on the email I got from the man crt about this new Quake2 movie.

Clan Phase 2 put together a really kick-ass CTF movie using the KeyGrip 2 beta. I couldn't help but get into the act, so I mixed some music into it. You can download the demo with soundtrack from: ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/quake/planetquake/keygrip/p2ctfm.exe or without music from: ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/quake/planetquake/keygrip/p2ctf.zip but I highly recommend getting the version with music. The movie was created from two separate demos which were cut/pasted together in KeyGrip 2. The movie was recammed in the KeyGrip 2 camera studio, and effects were added to round it out. Finally, I used KeyGrip 2's easy sound editing facilities to add the background music. KeyGrip 2 is currently in private beta. We are just waiting for Quake 2 3.16 to be released so that we can test with it. Once that testing has been completed, KeyGrip 2 will be publicly released.

Qbsp3, Qvis3, etc
Here's an email I got from Steven Boswell that you map maker types will find of interest:

I've taken the time to learn the source code to qbsp3 and qvis3, and have unearthed a lot of interesting information on what they do to your maps and what implications that has for map authors. It answers a lot of questions that haven't been answered yet. You can find it at http://24.0.172.162/whatis/Quake2/bspvis.html

ModWatch
From the same guys who brought you QBS, ModWatch is on the loose. "A simple scripting utility makes it easy for authors to have their mod added
to the list and it should hopefully put an end to all those problems that people have regarding installing all the latest mods in the correct places. It should also give more exposure to the mod makers out there who don't manage to get themselves mentioned on some of the big news pages so that it no one sees what they've just spent the last two months working on.

Hardware

• 3dfx & DX6
  3dfx has put out another press release. This time concerning their work with "the man" over at Microsoft and DirectX6. Here's a snippit of it: -VE

"We applaud 3Dfx for participating in the industry review of the DirectX 6.0 3D pipeline and driver model, and helping us make sure it enables Voodoo2 to achieve full performance," said Kevin Bachus, product manager for DirectX at Microsoft Corporation. "We believe DirectX 6.0 transparently unlocks the power of Voodoo2 for Windows developers and consumers around the world and look forward to even greater performance when both DirectX 6.0 and the final 3Dfx driver are released."

• Matrox G200
  The Matrox Users page has posted a few more benchmarks for you to scope out on their website concerning the new G200 chipset that you can get your grubby little hands on pretty soon now we hope.

Releases

• New Eraser Front End
  Version 3.3 of EFE is now available from Industry News http://www.frag.com/industry/efe.html . New features include:
  * Redesigned interface for the map selection
  * Launch button to the main form instead of on a tab
  * Launch menu item which is accessible by using CTRL+L
  * Predefined preset files with the extension of '.efe'
  
  
• LMCTF Sound Pack
  Flag Noise, the Loki Minion's Capture the Flag, Radio Addon Sound page was found a new home at Captured.Com: http://www.captured.com/flagnoise/ with a new Terminator2 Sound pack.
  
  

werd
Things are looking good for the page continuing. I've got a staggering number of people to talk to all day today. (No sleep for me) Got a few more funny offers as well. Amazing the kinds of deals some people will try and pull over on ya.

Btw, I'm not making any final decisions or signing any contracts till the end of this week.

Shack needs a home
VRGN my current employer as well as webhosting service was the victim of of a financial buyout. Actually SportsNet, the financer of VRGN was the company involved. The new investors decided to cut funding to most US ventures, and well, VRGN was one of them. This in fact happened a bit over 2 months ago. I have been running this page without any income for my work over this period. The savings are beginning to dry up.

VRGN is still alive at this point and looking at new financing but I can no longer stick around. The ideal situation for me would to form a partnership with a larger site and share revenues generated from my advertising. (OGR, AVault, GameCenter, Games.net, etc) What I would enjoy doing is along with maintaining my site being a contributing journalist at the main site as well. I dig on doing articles :) Hell, I'd like to do magazine articles as well as long as you wanna host my site.

I do not need a temporary hosting. I appreciate the offers but no thanks. If you have any serious offers, leads, or inquiries, please feel free to toss them my way. drop me a line at smiles@vrgames.net

Half-Chat
If you didnt feel like running through that chat log that was posted the other day from the Valve guys, here is an edited pretty log for those of you dying to get info on Valve's baby. -Red's

DemoPlay
A util that I actually downloaded off the net and actually use for once. DemoPlay has been updated to version 1.2 now with a few bug fixes. Not sure if he fixed that setting your FOV to 120 whenever you play a QW demo or not thing, kinda irritating. It has support for the -game dir stuff in NetQuake demos now as well.

The Views
A few more interviews for you to read

• Dave Riller -Valve Software
  Level designer for Valve Software, but more importantly <g> the rl box monkey for my QuakeWorld clan, Dave Riller is interviewed on the contaminated.net website.
  
  
• Robs -Rogue Entertainment
  Fresh level designer over at Rogue Robs is interviewed at the new Processed News site.
  
  
• Lance Smith -AMD
  Hardware Central has posted an interview with Lance Smith, a member of AMD. Lance of course talks about the new chip from AMD and what benefits it has. -VE
  
  
• Brian Hook -id
  The GrandMaster B colum over at VooDoo Extreme is getting updated quite a bit with Q&A with Brian Hook of id Software. This time Brian covers some hardware questions talking about the 3tmu Voodoo2 design.
  
  
• Voodoo Review & VE
  Dave Whittle has posted his Voodoo Review over at Voodoo Extreme. He of course covers everything that the 3dfx guys are up to including the Glide 3.0 API.
  
  
• Diablo2 Movie
  Hey! it's Diablo! but with higher walls! If you are not hurting for bandwidth and would like to check out an 18meg movie of the sequel for Diablo in the works over at Blizzard you are in luck. Check out this movie which was sported by the guys at www.diabloii.com -VE
  
  

Sweeney gettin jiggy wit it
Tim Sweeney, lead programmer for Unreal is goin all out answering any questions that people can come up with for Unreal on the megaboard. The guy is hard at work adding and fixing stuff in UnrealED as well as working with the GameSpy guys in tuning internet play as well. Here are a few topics he covered: -VE

• Shareware Unreal
  Tim explains what is holding up the shareware release of Unreal. As stated before its of course the work on the international versions.
  
  
• Lens Flares
  For the curious wondering why you see those lense flares through your weapon model, Tim explains that sorting the images is a good 5-10% cpu hit in this post.
  
  
• Multi-CPU use in Unreal
  Tim Sweeney explains that Unreal does not and can not take advantage of a multiple CPU system. Unless of course you just run 2 copies of Unreal on the box. :)
  
  

Sites

• Gringo's Hut is pretty cool. A nice demo archive and team strategies.
• I've become a bit of a fan of http://www.fgnonline.com/ recently. It's pretty dry but informative once in a while.

werd
Yeeha, well most likely I'll continue doing the site. I'll run that looking for a home headline until Monday evening then I'll get it out of your face. Also on Monday I'll have my little Half-Life preview posted as well. I'm hoping to make my way out to 3DR sometime next week and get a real look at Duke4 and Prey as well.

Thanks for all the kind emails, I really do appreciate it. Please stop offering to host my site for free on your cablemodem guys though. It's a nice gesture but er.. no thanks :)