CLICK HERE FOR UP TO DATE NEWS
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PGL All Star Demos
So, surprisingly to some that PGL All Star
demos have shown up on the PGL
homepage. Yes, these are actual demos of a team with Thresh, B2, Unholy, and Dmann
getting beaten convincingly on LAN. The team that beat them? Gollum, Thorn, Kornelia,
Reptile. The scores were 91 to 59, and 117 to 52. Check them out as they are pretty damn
entertaining. There are also some exhibition games against Clan [9] of Sweden. Thanks
Walla.
- Thorn's POV Game1, Game2
- Gollum POV Game1, Game2
- Kornelia POV Game1, Game2
- DMann POV Game1, Game2
Make sure and use host_framerate 1 to speed it up during the wait, then hit host_framerate
0 again at the console when the game starts. Thorn recommends his POV in game2. :)
Making of Unreal
Part 2 of the Making of Unreal editorial / coverage
whatever you wanna call it has been posted on GameSpot
with help from Geoff of GameSlice.
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4D Rulers Chat
Just got this from Lorien over at Gamers Alliance:
We are extremly proud to announce that Joel Huenink, Lead Developer and President of 4D Rulers, and Acy Stapp of Slam Software, will be going on-line Monday, June 29 at 4pm Pacific (7pm Eastern/6pm Central) to talk about the upcoming 3D action shooter Gore and the 3D engine, AMP, which is being used to create Gore.
The chat session will be hosted by us on the IRC Efnet, channel #GaGames.com. An archive of this chat session will be available June 30 here on GaGames.
New mIRC
Hardly related but barely I guess. Thanks to
SailorScout for the word that a new version of mIRC is out over at www.mirc.co.uk for all you guys who hang on IRC setting
up clan matches. There are like 170 different fixes etc in this version.
More Hardware
RitNews Interview
Murphy Michaels, a new artist over at Ritual
Entertainment after a brief stop over at Ion Storm talks about his time spent in the
"Green Titanic" over at the www.ritnews.com
page as well as a bit of talk on FAKK2, the next big project coming our way from Ritual.
Finaly Fantasy VII Demo
GameCenter has gotten their own little exclusive demo version of
Final Fantasy VII for download on their page. Go pay your respects to the all mighty
CNET etc and then download it.
Q2 Poll Results
Well now, lets see how this little expirement
pays off. I posted
a little poll (Still active for the hell of it) 2 and a half days ago asking for votes
on what type of physics players wanted to have when playing Quake2 online. The results
were a convincing 2:1 ratio of players wishing to keep the air control. With just under
2,000 people casting their votes I feel its an adequate representation of the popular
opinion. Hopefully id Software will take these results into consideration when making
future decisions about gameplay. Think it worked?
Brown & McTaggart
(Carried over from yesterday since it was a
late post) As noted in Gary McTaggart's .plan earlier yesterday, here is an interview conducted with the
two programmers that should help answer a few questions. Also, there will be a follow
up article posted here comprised of questions that people email me to give to the 2 programmers. Please do not
flood them with questions on your own as they are busy working on a new company.
We wanted to stay quiet for some time until we had plans with respect to our new game company, design, publishing, etc. (ie. news that worthy of printing, ahem.) We at least wanted to have a company name before speaking publicly, but there have been so many rumors out there with respect to us leaving Ritual, we felt the need to clarify the issue. Both sides have been very quiet so far which tends to breed gossip. There is no ill will between Ritual and ourselves. . . our breakup was amicable. We want to take the time now to straighten some of this out so that both parties can get back to work and make cool games!
Hey, after you read that, check out Gary's .plan which features a sporty shot of Jack Mathews from 3dfx.
The Views
Hardware
werd
Gah, www.3dnews.net
is supposed to go live in a few hours so I need to get some sleep so I can be up at a
reasonable hour. More updates in the afternoon to the page.
Hey, pull my finger. oh, I'm gonna start using smiles@3dnews.net as my primary email account. No more of this hopping from account to account crap hopefully. It's a nice way to cut down on lame spam mail though. :)
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Interview with Brown &
McTaggart
As noted in Gary McTaggart's .plan earlier
today, here is an interview
conducted with the two programmers that should help answer a few questions. Also,
there will be a follow up article posted here comprised of questions that people email me to give to the 2 programmers. Please do not
flood them with questions on your own as they are busy working on a new company.
We wanted to stay quiet for some time until we had plans with respect to our new game company, design, publishing, etc. (ie. news that worthy of printing, ahem.) We at least wanted to have a company name before speaking publicly, but there have been so many rumors out there with respect to us leaving Ritual, we felt the need to clarify the issue. Both sides have been very quiet so far which tends to breed gossip. There is no ill will between Ritual and ourselves. . . our breakup was amicable. We want to take the time now to straighten some of this out so that both parties can get back to work and make cool games!
Hey, after you read that, check out Gary's .plan which features a sporty shot of Jack Mathews from 3dfx.
Brian Hook Interview
VooDoo Extreme and Brian Hook "Cut da rug" together.
They talk about Quake Arena, DirectX 6, and all kinds of interesting things that I
recommend reading.
Rumor Control
Since everyone in the world seems to have
their own version of what really happened with Charlie
Brown & Gary McTaggart's departure from Ritual, Gary has made a .plan update
which is of some interest:
There certainly has been a lot of gossip/speculation going on on the net about Charlie and I leaving Ritual. Most of this "news" has attempted to either make RItual look really bad or us really bad by speculating the most negative/untruthful things possible. We realize that it is important to get the true story out there instead of remaining quiet. Look for that soon. . . we should have an interview up on www.shugashack.com soon where we talk about what we are doing.
More More Views
PlayStation Quake2
Man, who knows if this project is gonna happen
or not. The latest word according
to this article is that the Quake2 project for PlayStation is back on again for at
least the next few days. -GA / Blue
More Hardware
Quake2 Physics Poll Day2
After trading some email with Carmack and
Disruptor, I finally got permission to post this poll. The guys over at id are contemplating
reversing the physics change that that was made in 3.15 due to online feedback back to the
original style. Here is a poll where you can vote. (Thanks gibbed
and Ronsolo) I felt that a decision like this
would set a presedence for the QuakeArena project. Lemme quote part of the email I sent to
Carmack for ya:
The popular online opinion should help you guys make this gameplay decision which is supposed to be catered to the online gameplayers.
Also, I realize that a recent PlanetQuake poll covered this
question, but it was in a different context. Your votes may have an actual input into the
gameplay of Quake2. Also, as I've stated in my QuakeArena editorial, I believe things like this should be done for
id's next project.
note: I've extended the voting on the poll for another 24hrs because it was broken
yesterday :(
Making of Unreal
An interesting colaboration between GameSpot
and GameSlice, check out part1
of the Making of Unreal trilogy. It's a pretty damn interesting read about Unreal and what
it took to get this baby developed. -Blues
StarCraft Demo
Not really related but a lot of you knobs play
StarCraft or want to check it out so snag the demo that was just released. Head over to
the PCRL
is probably the best place to get it from.
Hardware
The Views
werd
Working on an update, gimme a bit. Oh, check this out while you are
waiting. Oh, if you wanna see/hear my appearance on Shooters last night, here is the link.
Ugh, up a bit late, the first step to reviving the 3dnews website has been complete. www.operation3d.com is up now as Sam hammers away at getting everything going. Some really interesting perks have come up for my page relocation, I'm all excited and stuff.
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Wieder with some issues
A .plan update by level
designer Charlie Wiederhold at Ritual which gives us some insight into where Charlie's
mind is:
I think tonight is cute, just graduated from high school, chick night in the West End.
AM I HONESTLY SUPPOSED TO WORK UNDER THESE CONDITIONS!?!?!?!
More Views
Email
Did a bit of testing last night and yea,
smiles@texas.net is bouncing a lot of email apparently. 3dnews.net should be going live
within a day or two though so I'll just start using an email account over there or with
mydesktop.com instead. I'm sorry to whoever has emailed me with something really neeto and
didnt get a response from me. I've emailed Texas.net with my complaint, of course there is
no telling if they actually got it though huh? smiles@vrgames.net
is still working for the next couple of days though.
Matrox Bios
A new bios for Matrox cards has
been posted over at www.matroxusers.com for those
of you who just gotta have the latest stuff. Just remember, if it aint broke, dont fix it.
-Cyrellis
MS Chrome
Always entertaining to see what decisions
Microsoft is making for us. Check out the Chrome article posted on ZDNet
which i mooched from VE. Hey, even a bit of a
snip:
Microsoft Corp. is polishing up Chrome, its next-generation multimedia rendering engine, which will ship in public beta form with a set of tools next month.
Dear Mynx
Check out the latest Dear Mynx, because um.. apparently
someone is silly enough to have a crush on me. *blush*
New WinGlide
Chris' WinGlide page has
been updated again with a new version of his cool WinGlide util. Here's da quote from da
page: -VE
Gamma WinGlide v0.94 and Overlay WinGlide v0.94 have been released. Multi-threaded WinGlide is now a part of Gamma WinGlide (Multi-threading can be enabled in Gamma WinGlide's ini file).
These releases fix a bug that caused the wrong part of the frame buffer in the 3Dfx card to be copied to the 2D video card when using 3Dfx OpenGL Beta 2.1 with WinGlide at certain resolutions. This bug is not present in B2 WinGlide v0.94.
Q2 Skin Pack
The 3dfxMania
guys have posted a sizeable zip file which contains pretty much all of those skin
files that you have to be irritated with downloading on Q2 servers. Just get it all out of
the way at once with this
file instead.
Weekly Section
Yup, weekly section updated again. Check out the new links.
Happy Hardware Day
Not a whole lot going on really today so we'll
just cover all kinds of hardware eh?
The Views
werd
Oh, we are getting oh so close to having www.3dnews.net up live. Also my page should be on a new
server fairly soon with a new look to boot. I agreed to go on Shooters tonight for the
hell of it. Not really sure what I'll talk about, but what the hell.
Everyone be sure and check out The Texas Martini Foundation. Highly recommended reading with some pretty good insight into what is really going on with the gaming industry.
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McTaggart & Brown Surface
A bit over a month ago the 2 programmers who
were working on the much heralded Uber-Engine left Ritual Entertainment
for unreleased reasons and without any statements made from either party. Rumors have
abounded of course as to what Gary McTaggart and Charlie Brown were up to. Well, here is the first
clue. Gary McTaggart has updated his
.plan for the first time asking for some help in naming their new company:
[Wed June 24]
We have a short list for company names. . . anyone have any whack company names that we should know about, yo?
Oh yeah, here's our new contact info:
Gary McTaggart: garymct@garymct.com
Charlie Brown: slothboy@onramp.net
Ending a sentence with the two letter "yo" is a sign of great intellect, as stated by Jason of RBR. They must be on the right track.
Half-Life Footage
The Bloodshack
has posted some footage of Half-Life that was taped while attending this years E3
conference.
Banshee
A couple of more articles on the Banshee
coming our way from 3dfx. Check out what the guys at CPU
Madness has to say as well as what Cyrellis
had to say as well.
Gore Stuff
Saw this linked on VE that the GamesDomain
guys have also posted an interview with
Joel from 4DRulers. They of course talk about the Gore project that Joel is working
on.
The Good Stuff
The 3DR
guys really know whats important. Check out this link they
provided which gives a bit of a look at the history of Lara Croft as well as several um..
nice pictures of her. There are some other pictures of the current Lara Croft model doing
other work as well. The ripped off a few shots from 3DR as well as Ritual, but oh well.
GamesDomain on Duke4/Quake3/Unreal
Well, I'm not going to pick this editorial
apart (too much, heh) here on my page but I did email the author of this GamesDomain
rant linked from Cyrellis. (I just added
Cyrellis to my short list of frequent visits btw, awesome page)
Mostly, the guy talks about delays because of Quake2 tech etc. I'm not sure how switching to the Unreal tech is going to speed up the development cycle, based on the 1 game I've seen so far using that technology and how long it took to develop. Of course, in the long run I believe Duke4 will be a better game with the Unreal technology, but the guy is way off base on the reasoning behind it. Perhaps he should read what George Broussard has been saying over and over in every interview?
Talking to g.o.d.
The Gathering
website has a new section up called The
Oracle which posts questions and answers with the developers who are being published
by The Gathering. Some interesting stuff, there is a bit on programming for DirectX up
there right now. -Blues
Baseball in Messiah
Saw on VE
that VRSports has announced that VR Baseball
2000: Series 1 will be the game that is utilizing the Messiah engine. Here is a quote:
VR Sports announced today that VR Baseball 2000: Series 1 for Windows 95-based computers will utilize the state-of-the-art Messiah technology.
Messiah has approached the polygon limitation line and moved well beyond it. In the past, approximately 300 polygons per model was the industry norm. With this increased technology VR Baseball 2000 will have player models in excess of 3,000 polygons. "This feat was once thought to be unobtainable," said Happy Keller, head of VR Sports. "It's a very exciting technology that will be utilized in a very exciting title."
Rocket Arena 2 Strategy Guide
Just got this email from Smoke with lots of
love:
I just posted my new Rocket Arena 2 strategy section at http://smoke.quake2press.com/arenaintro.htm for everyone to see. I put some work into this one and would love for other people to see it and add their own strategies as well. If you could pass the news it would be greatly appreciated.
Rampage!
Just a day after the Banshee going public, Next-Gen has scored a bit of
info on 3dfx's next 3D chipset which sounds like it will take yet another huge step
and take over the industry once again. We have to wait for all the other 3D companies to
come out with their chipsets first though before 3dfx breaks their hearts again though.
Thanks Tony on Yahoo
Q2 SouthPark TC Models
Scoot's Q2 page has released all the models
that were part of the SouthPark TC for Quake2
which sadly never saw the light of day. You can kill Kenny in the comfort of your own
home.
Unreal Lag Fix
Not sure how good this thing is, but there is
an online wizard that helps fix lag in Unreal. The url for it is: http://www.angelfire.com/ca2/UnreaLag/
Weekly Section
The demos from last weeks ICON tournament are so damn impressive I wanted
to put them in the demos section this
week. Check out the DM4 finals between Thorn and Gollum for Quake1, then check out the
Q2DM1 finals demo between RI-X and AceJas.
Sin on July 26th
A few things to check out with yesterdays
announcement of the Sin demo being released on July 26th.
[06/23/98]
As I am sure you have heard by now the Sin demo will be out July 26th. I know members of the press community have for some reason bashed us because we have nailed down a date. I ask you this, would you rather have a product that was worked on the morning of the release, and whose QA consisted of 12 monkeys
Yes, GameSlice is bashing Ritual for announcing a release date... I remember last week when I got really pissed at my favorite TV show because they announced they would be on next Thursday at 8pm too. The nerve...
The Views
werd
Was up a bit late trying to finish up another
editorial, of course I just passed out instead though. Hopefully I'll be busy with
3dnews.net though today which may put off finishing up the editorial until tomorrow
though.
Announcing a release date for Sin is a good thing.
Lastly, quote of the day from Werckle at Ritual: "Also: No, 2D art isn't really for girls-- It's for pussies!!! CHAOS"
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3DNews.net
The grand re-opening of the www.3dnews.net / Op3dfx website is getting there. A shell
of a page should hopefully be online and running by the end of the week, with a full blown
page up sometime next week.
Sin Demo Date Announced!
Here you go kids, an actual release date for a
3D action game?! Can it be?!
SUNDAY WORSHIP WILL TAKE ON A WHOLE NEW MEANING WITH RITUAL ENTERTAINMENT'S SINDAY BLOODY SINDAY -- THE LAUNCH OF THE HIGHLY ANTICIPATED SIN DEMO ON JULY 26
Santa Monica, CA -- June 23, 1998 -- Ritual Entertainment delivers salvation to sinners everywhere on Sinday Bloody Sinday -- Sunday, July 26, 1998 -- with the launch of the eagerly anticipated Sin demo. Rolling the seven deadly sins into one wicked download, Ritual and Activision will unleash the demo among an assemblage of promotions, contests and tournaments. Sinners take heed: the Second Coming will reveal more details.
Check out www.ritualistic.com for more details. This demo release also coincides with QuakeCon-CPL 98' as well. Might as well check out the HardCorps News page while you are at it and vote for your favorite Sin character. There is also an interview with Mike Werckle at Ritualistic as well.
Permidia2 Drivers
The 3D Labs page has posted some new drivers for the Permidia2 based cards that
they make. -Blues
Riva TNT Benchmarks
The Cyrellis3D
page has gotten a hold of some benchmarks sent to him by
nVidia themselves. (Take these with a grain of salt) but show the TNT to outperform a
12MB Voodoo2 board in the Turok framerate tests. I do recall a rep from nVidia claiming
that the Riva128 was faster than a Voodoo2 in Direct3D acceleration as well though, so who
the hell knows. This card should be the #1 competetion for the 3dfx Banshee. -VoodooExtreme
Romero Interview
On the heels of the Scott Miller
interview, the LA Reviews page has posted an interview with Ion
Storm study boy John Romero. -Blues
Half-Life Demo
Guess what, in case you were expecting a demo
from Valve's Half-Life anytime soon forget about it. Here is a quote from a Sierra
representative concerning questions about a Half-Life demo release sent along by Half-Life.net
In fact, we don't have a secure date yet as to when it will be available. Rest assured, it will not be for at least 2 more months.
More Banshee
Trying to follow up on all the Banshee hoopla
from yesterdays specs release. Here are a few more articles snagged from all over that
talk about 3dfx's new Banshee card: 3dfx Official Banshee FAQ & Feature List & Benchmarks,
GameGuage Bench Results
, BootNet Banshee
Pictures , AVault Coverage ,
GameCenter Coverage ,
GameSpot Coverage
, Next-Gen Coverage ,
and News.com Coverage.
Voodoo2 Game FAQ
Recommended reading for any Voodoo2 owner.
Moody's Voodoo2 Game FAQ has been updated and posted on VE for
your viewing pleasure. If you are looking to play any game which takes advantage of your
Vooodoo2 check this out. The locations of any type of patch you need for games to use your
Voodoo2 are also listed. You can also grab the .doc file
Unreal TimeDemo
An updated version of that timedemo util that
was posted yesterday on www.planetunreal.com is
up now. New and improved!
Unreal OpenGL Port
Just a little blurb by Mark Rein concerning
the reasoning behind not having the OpenGL accelerated version of Unreal out yet from the megaboard:
"Up and running" is not the same thing as being ready for release. Unreal was "up and running" 2 years ago. In addition to other things still needed on the OpenGL front, we have to make a change to Unreal's polygon rendering order to facilitate good OpenGL performance. That change won't happen until after the internet multiplayer and a few other things are done.
New MacQuakeWorld
Here ya go, the new veresion of QuakeWorld
from the guys at WestLake
Interactive so you can finally play with all your version 2.21 QuakeWorld playing
friends. They call it v2.21b1 though instead just because.
Jedi Knight patch
LucasArts
has released a patch for Jedi
Knight (linked from PCRL) that addresses any problems that have come up with people
playing the incredibly fun Jedi Knight game. If you havent checked out Jedi Knight yet
head on over and grab the demo. It was one of the greatest single player experiences I've
ever run across.
Weekly Section
Tuesday's section has been updated and posted.
The Views
Tech
SciTech MGL is a developers tool which will enable you to create interactive graphics applications in the shortest amount of time. This professional graphics library has been used in the development of leading titles like WinQuake, Hexen II and many other applications
werd
Check out that AllStar CTF pack kids. A pair
of the maps came from the talented level designers at Ritual.
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AllStar CTF 2
I'll just quote Void from PQ on this one: "In case you aren't in 3DNet
#Allstar2, All Star CTF for Quake 2 has been released! Download as2_090.zip
(8.8 MB), or get more information at the Allstar2
homepage. In addition to the Allstar2 download, you'll also need Threewave CTF for
Quake 2 (6.9 MB), along with ThunderWalker II: Rolling Thunder for Win32 or Linux (both
1.9 MB, from ThunderWalker.net), if you don't
already have 'em. And if you're looking for some competition on the Allstar2 maps, check
out Battle Command, the first league to use the
Allstar2 maps. Happy Flagging!"
CompUSA buys CompCity
While we are listing buyouts, I figure I'd
mention this one too. CompUSA has announced
they are buying out Computer City. I mention this because I'm curious what this may do
to Computer City's big DIV-X push.
Micron Buys Rendition
Wow, Micron is going nuts recently. They
bought up a bunch of ram factories last week and this week they are buying Rendition. They
must have some new management going on over there or a bis plan at least. :) Check out the
Yahoo press release. and a
quote:
Micron Technology, Inc., (NYSE:MU - news) and Rendition, Inc., today announced that they have signed an Agreement and Plan of Reorganization whereby Micron will acquire Rendition pursuant to a stock-for-stock merger. The merger is expected to increase Micron's presence in the field of graphics accelerators and provide other strategic benefits to both companies.
More Views
PlanetQuake Poll
The results are in on last weeks poll and the new questions are up for this week.
Even More Banshee
Check around most of the other tech websites
and you'll find stuff on the Banshee as well. I thought this article on News.com
to be especially interesting though.
Redwood just sent me this link to an OGR article giving a pair of opinions on the matter.
Oh wait, also check out Anand's Hardware page for his look at the Banshee too. -Blues
UGO Best of E3
Better late than never eh? Well the UGO page
has just posted their picks for
the top games of E3.
Miller on Shareware
Scott Miller over at 3DRealms and one of the
original dudes to be associated with Shareware has updated his .plan
with reactions to the recent GameSlice article. Interesting read.
Unreal Timedemo
The boys over at www.planetunreal.com have gotten a hold of a util
that will do timedemo scores for Unreal. Its only 3K (linked here) and will satisfy
your curiousity. :) Thanks to YtsejaM who has a last name in reference to a root
vegitable.
More on Email
My email count has dropped considerably since
moving to the new address. If you have emailed me at smiles@texas.net
and it bounced, please let me know through my old smiles@vrgames.net
account.
Banshee Specs
As I mentioned yesterday, the specs for the
3dfx Voodoo Banshee 2D/3D
combo chipset have been released. First off, here are the specs for the chipset from VE: (VE's FAQ on the Banshee here)
-128 bit 2D engine
-230 or 250 Mhz RAMDAC option
-Interfaces to SGRAM & SDRAM
-AGP 1x only, no AGP texturing
-16-big floating-point Z-Buffer
-Chip runs at 100Mhz delivering 100mpps (initially)
-No single pass multitexturing
-3.3V 0.35 micron 352-pin PBGA
-Initially 0.35 micron, will be 0.25 micron -- at which time chip will run at 125MHz
-$38 at large quantities
Next, a TechWeb article talking about the 2D capabilities of the card:
With the Banshee, 3Dfx claims that it has custom-designed a true 128-bit 2D engine, outperforming even traditional 2D leader Matrox Graphics Inc.
The chip features a 16-bit floating-point Z-buffer, as well as interfaces to SGRAM and SDRAM. Full scene-edge anti-aliasing, environmental fog, bump mapping, and environment mapping are included.
Then, a comparison of the 3D abilities of the Banshee and the Voodoo2 also from VE:
Banshee Voodoo2 Voodoo2 SLI Fill Rate: 100Mp/Sec Fill Rate: 90Mp/Sec 180Mp/sec Texel Fill: 100Mt/Sec Texel Fill: 180Mt/Sec Texel Fill: 360Mt/Sec
Lastly, check out 3D Overtime which has a couple of articles on the Banshee to read. AGP:Myth&Truth, as well as Bandwidth Basics.
You should also take a look at this large Voodoo Banshee article from 3D Central. The card looks like its the only video card an average gamer could ever need for a while. With the fastest 2D performance of any video card on the market. (Yea, even better than a Millenium2) and 3D performance in the same area as a Voodoo2. I wouldnt expect to see many RIVA128 sales once the Banshee is released.
Quake/Quake2 Demos
The ICON
tournament held about a week ago sported some of the best Quake and Quake2 players in
the world. Check out the website and snag
copies of demos from the pov's of Gollum and Thorn in Quake1, as well as RI-X in Quake2.
Weekly Sections
Yea, updated Monday's
section. Add waking up late to that list.
FAQ You
The Views
Releases
werd
Holy shit guys, calm down. Yes, I've
tentatively agreed to run the news at Op3dfx/3Dnews.net with the guys there. This will not
affect what I do on this page though. The content of those pages is a bit different than
my page.
Hey, check out this trophy for an upcoming Australian LAN event.
Also, it looks like Lithium formerly of 3DPortal has resigned after getting hired by another unnamed company who has "shown him the money." A big congrats to Aaron, you're in man!
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3DNews.net / Op3dfx
The guys at AGN and the founders of
3DNews.net/Op3dfx have reached a settlement
finally, and hey my name is up there in lights! The op3dfx.com domain will have pointers
to both respective companies websites for a few weeks. After that point op3dfx.com will be
returned to the founders of the page. All content of the afformentioned pages will be back
online within a few days at www.3dnews.net
For those who are concerned, the future of shugashack.com is looking very bright.
My Email
Ok, I've gotten away from the VRGN webserver,
now I need to dump their Mailserver as well. Please send any future emails to me at smiles@texas.net
Perfect Dark
If you are lucky enough to have played
GoldenEye for the N64 (My favorite FPS of all platforms) then you better check out Perfect Darkt.
This is the next game based on the same engine being made by the same people but this time
around they have more experience, and more cool stuff to put in there.
Status of Unreal
Check out this big update that Tim Sweeney
made to the Unreal bug page talking
about all the stuff homeboy has been slappin down on the PC in efforts to make all you
puds happy. Here's a bit of it: -VE
Multiplayer fixes: I've identified the major causes of the heavily lagged 28.8K performance people have been reporting. I've added a client framerate limitor, and significantly reduced the client->server bandwidth. I've hooked up a slow ISP connection at 14.4K with 400 ping to test the worst-case performance. A patch is getting closer, but it needs more testing before release. There should be a public beta in a few days (I don't know exactly when), and if that works well, it'll turn into the "official patch".
OpenGL: It's up and running internally on a few 3d cards <snip>3dfx: Voodoo2 multitexturing is up and running experimentally...should be ready for public consumption at the same time as the OpenGL support.
Other things I've been working on: The majority of my time is going into misc unexciting necessities: Working on the translation infrastructure for the Spanish, French, German, and Italian. Preparing the shareware version (no news on release date yet). Preparing a new installer. Bringing new licensees up to speed. Investigating bug reports.My general strategy here is to address the most significant issues first (internet play, opengl support, significant bugs) and then move on to the less critical "tweaking" type improvements that users have been requesting.
Banshee Info
Everyone keep your eyes peeled for information
on 3dfx's next chip on its way to the market. at
12:01AM this Monday 3dfx will be releasing details on the Banshee chipset that will stop
all the wild speculation. What we can count on is some solid numbers from 3dfx which are
not inflated unlike other manufacturers tend to do.
Kali95
Saw on Blue's that there is a new version of Kali95 that has just been released. The new version has
support for Z.A.R. as well as Dark Omen. There are also some enhancements for Descent /
Descent2 players that should float some boats. Snag it from the KALI FTP Site.
Hardware
werd
Slow... slow.. slow..
Oh, check out all these files released by the FBI recently that I found linked on Redwood's page. As with all big movies, X-Files is of course going to cause a bit of an uproar in the retarded community who never thought to realize that the US Government may be hiding stuff from us until they saw a movie.
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Overclockers Delight
A couple of bits of news for you guys who are
into that performance thang. Gary Peterson's Voodoo2 overclocking util hosted over
at VE has been updated with some bug fixes.
Then if you are looking at buying a new CPU, check out these results from overclocking a Celery stick... (Intel
Celeron CPU)
Releases
Riva TNT
All of the next generation 3D accelerators are
making their way closer and closer to release. VoodooExtreme
spotted this preview
of the STB Velocity 4400 based on nVidia's RivaTNT chipset.
Few 3D accelerator chips on the horizon have stirred more interest than the RIVA TNT. The TNT is a 7-plus million transistor chip sporting two rendering engines on a single chip. These 3D engines render in 32-bit color (with 24-bit z-buffer) throughout the rendering pipeline. The theoretical fill rate can be up to 250 megapixels per second. The chip was also designed for Microsoft's upcoming DirectX 6 release and has hardware support for features like bump-mapping.
As for performance, I'm not ready to stake my reputation on performance numbers yet, but what I saw looked pretty solid. Let's just say that at its current state, it beats any 2D/3D combo card hands down and comes reasonably close to Voodoo2's performance (single card mode, of course). And we're talking purely alpha hardware and drivers.
Unreal Skin Pack
The Unreal skin pack has been released on time
as planned. There is also have yet another in depth tutorial on Skinning your bots
to get those hard to come by screenshots once you've created your skin. Last but not least
the mail bag section is up.
skin pack 1: http://www.planetunreal.com/houseofstyle/files/skinpack1.zip
.plan'ning an Attack
Heh, you guys gotta see this stuff. Check out Scott McCabe of 3DR's
.plan update, then check out what Paul Steed had to say back
to him. There's gonna be a throw down.
Op3dfx/3DNews
A page that had just recently made it into my
short list of frequent visit sites seems to be going under a bit of management change. The
Operation3dfx / 3DNews.net multisite has posted a big explanation that you better bookmark
www.3dnews.net and drop the links to the old
op3dfx.com domain. Thanks to YtsejaM as well as www.purified3d.com
The Views
Hardware
werd
Got a couple of emails saying that 960x720 now
works with a single Vooodoo2 card if you grab the new beta drivers from Creative Labs. You need to yank the Q2 mini-gl
driver from your directory and put the CL one in there instead.
Oh, everyone check this page out. MetaSpy Exposed!
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