| Saturday, January 2 |
New Half-Life SDK [6:15am]
The guys at WaveLength have gotten a hold of the
long awaited Half-Life source tools which should brighten the eyes of all you hax0rs out
there wanting to mess with Half-Life and write mods.
Valve's Ken Birdwell released an updated Models SDK. Here's what's included:
(From readme) These ZIP files are part of the developer release for the Half-Life Tools and Multiplayer models. They are fairly large, and it's doubtful that you'll need all of them. They also don't come with any documentation, so you're probably better off going to a Half-Life editing site and letting them set you up with exactly what you need.
hlmplayer.zip: the intermediate files and textures needed to rebuild the Half-Life multiplayer models, along with the raw 3DStudio Max 2.x model sources. You'll need the model exporter found in hltools.zip if you want to export your own.
hlmplayermax.zip: the 3DStudio Max 2.x source files to the multiplayer animations. By themselves, these are pretty useless and I can't think of any reason why you'd need them, but there also wasn't any good reason to not include them so here they are.
hlsprites.zip: a small example of a Half-Life sprite QC file.
hltools.zip: latest build of Half-Life tools used with Worldcraft, as well as a model exporter for 3DStudio Max 2.x and Character Studio 2.x.
hltoolsrc.zip: source code to the tools found in hltools.zip. Also includes a sample OpenGL based model viewing app. These files are only needed if you intend to edit existing tools or build new ones.
Also on the plate are a pair of new DM models you can snag as a seperate download for those of you who just wanna have a couple of new toys to play with but havent a clue how to code (like me!)
Lastly, something I want emailed about *COUGH* so here is word from Blue: The Decal and Models section of the Files section at Planet Half-Life has a small utility that saves other player's decals into bitmaps that you can then place in your /logos directory to use yourself (they're not normally saved). Oh, check out the Half-Life FAQ which has been updated as well.
Unreal Tournament [6:15am]
AVault has posted a cool new preview of Unreal Tournament with 4
screenshots which you might recognize but they are still pretty cool looking. It's a good
article with a bit of new information on just what those guys at Epic are up to.
Two companies are entering this looming arena, and if one must tremble, it is not Epic MegaGames. History will argue that id Software was the first developer to advance the idea of a multiplayer-only 3D action game, and there are scant doubts circulating that Quake III: Arena will be anything less than groundbreaking. There is another, though. At E3 last year, a mere month following the release of Unreal, the designers gathered together and discussed their mega-selling, but earnestly imperfect game. Although Epic had made significant improvements to artificial intelligence in 3D games and pushed graphics boundaries to boot, the team conviction was they could do better.
TRIBES Stuff [6:15am]
Spaceman Spiff of PlanetFortress sent along word of a admin tool for those of you running TRIBES
servers wanting to kick those retards who get their jollies from shooting teamates.
Also on the TRIBES kick, The Forge has posted the first batch of working skins for TRIBES.
Lastly, you guys gotta check out this TRIBES scripting page which gives some great tips on those of you wanting to dive into working on mods for TRIBES.
Unreal Update [6:15am]
Tim Sweeney has posted a big-ass update to the Unreal Technology page that will pretty much
answer any possible question you had about what he is working on for stuff like Unreal
Unicode, Data Compression, Curved Surfaces, and the 3D API's which will be supported.
I spent a few days learning the basics of curved surface rendering, which turned out to be very interesting. I was going to do my research with Direct3D (under Windows NT 5.0 Beta 3 RC0) but the 3D hardware support isn't quite there yet, so I took the opportunity to learn OpenGL using the software rasterizer and 3dfx's OpenGL minidriver. Both renderers were extremely stable and easy to use. To my amazement, I never experienced a "blue screen of death" or had to reboot--quite a difference from my past work with Glide and Direct3D! (Note: I haven't been very closely involved in the Unreal Direct3D and OpenGL support, which has been developed by our partners, so this is my first really in-depth experience).
The AVault guys have also slapped together an interview with Mark Rein which is worth checking out.
AVault: Why was the development of the sequel (to Unreal) turned over to Legend, as opposed to being done internally?
Rein: It came down to timing. Back at E3 we decided to do Unreal Tournament instead of a traditional level pack, which meant our own development resources would be tied up for awhile. Both GT and Epic wanted to get an Unreal sequel out in a reasonably short period of time -- under two years from the date of the original release -- and we wanted it to be considerably better than Unreal itself
<snip>
BattleZone2 [6:15am]
one of the most interesting and cool new games to
come out the past year of 98 was BattleZone published by aCtivision. Although it wasnt a
hot seller, everyone who actually purchased the game raved about it. Hopefull the 2nd time
around the market will be ready for BattleZone There's
a new column up at
the Pandemic Times covering not only the first info on Battlezone 2, but also what
gamers want from it.
Weekly Sections [6:15am]
A big coolbeans award goes to fastlane.net my new ISP that just rock. Got home and
couldnt resist the temptation to play some QW and recorded some 2on2 action with myself and DieharD-r3v. A couple of guys
blowup in midair with rockets which is pretty cool to watch. (Nobody was more surprised
than me, I've sucked lately!)
Secondly, here are a few Reasons To Live which we all need to make it through the years right? What makes America great? Well I'm here to tell ya!
Views [6:15am]
Tech [6:15am]
Dual issue, fully pipelined fpu - The feature which brings a smile to the faces of 3D gamers. Ideally, a fully pipelined dual issue fpu peaks at a performance level of two operations per cpu clock cycle, which translates to 1GFLOPS at 500MHz.
werd
For those of you who missed the Drakan shots (How
dare you!?) I've indexed them in the screenshots
section now which you guys seem to email me about quite a bit. I'm taking it upon
myself to clean up that section and make it actually decent looking as well as working on
another surprise for you kids next week.
| Friday, January 1 |
Year in Review [6:15am]
GameSpot has posted an actually pretty interesting
article talking about the top stories of the year. Of course the one story avid
"gaming news" page readers probably remember is this one:
Talk about street cred, it doesn't get much bigger than name John Romero. But one thing we noticed after going over the top stories for '98 (and that includes looking at which stories received giant numbers of page views and which ones generated reader mail), anything related to ION Storm, Daikatana, or John Romero created reader interest. And the news out of ION that got the most clicks was news about staff losses the brazenly publicity-hungry gaming company suffered this year.
Might wanna check out the PCGameWorld Top10 games of 1998. What, no Half-Life?
Pro Gaming [6:15am]
The Dallas Morning News has an interesting article talking
about the CPL and PGL gaming leagues. The topic of the differences between the two
leagues comes up of course. Here is my favorite quote from Angel Munoz concerning the
February/March CPL Quake2 tournament:
"Whoever wins our tournament is going to be considered, as far as our league is concerned, the best Quake 2 player in the world. Anyone who wants to challenge that can come to the event and prove us wrong," Mr. Munoz says.
Babylon5 Unreal-Tech [6:15am]
Here is the official word via the
guys at Gamers Alliance about the Babylon5 game to
be based on Unreal technology
Well we have a confirmation from Yosemite Entertainment's Public Relations department in regards to the development of an Unreal-based Babylon 5 adventure, as reported by us on Monday:
"Yes, we are doing a so-called Babylon 5 sequel, an adventure game, and it will use Unreal."
Duke4 and D3D [6:15am]
George Broussard of 3DR made a small post to the 3DPortal
msgboards about the ultimate goals for the D3D version of DukeNukem4ever. Here it is:
The ultimate goal is to try and move DNF over to D3D, so the video card hassle is minimized. This is an issue we will start to address after we patch to the 220-222 Unreal code base and evaluate the state of the current D3D drivers.
HexenWorld Final [6:15am]
Rick Johnson has made a .plan
update asking for any last minute input before he puts the finishing touches on the
final version of HexenWorld:
Over the next few weeks, given that my spare time holds up, I'll be putting out test versions for feedback. So if you are still interested in Hexenworld, check out the page and give me some feedback.
Views [6:15am]
Tech [6:15am]
Happy New Year
Yup, it's the new year. For some goofy reason now is
the time that everyone likes to reflect on the past 12 months and proclaim the next year
will be even better. I'm gonna play along! First lemme run down my favorites of stuff that
mattered and I think will matter:
My favorites of 1998
Game of the year: Half-Life, Valve Software
Absolutely brilliant. One of the very few games I have ever actually sat down and played completely through and enjoyed throughout. The sales numbers on Valve's baby over the holidays make it look like I'm not alone in this feeling.
3D Card of the year: Voodoo2, 3dfx Interactive
As much hype as the TNT has gotten, The Voodoo2 still outperforms any other 3D card out there where it matters, Quake2 engine based games. Hit some SLI action and you are cranking at framerates nobody else can think of touching.
Game Controller of the year: The Mouse, Microsoft & Logitech
It's finally upon us, full integration of the mouse into 3D gaming. After a few years of debate, nearly all PC Games are integrating the mouse into their gameplay interface. TombRaider3 being the only 3D game I can think of that is an exception. TR3 is based on an game engine they made in like, 1968 or something though right?
CPU of the year: Celeron 300A, Intel
The CPU that made 100+ fps possible for even the smallest budget. The beloved Celery. Was Intel intentional of letting it clock to 450mhz so easy? Who knows. We all loved it though.
Motherboard of the year: BH6, ABit
The soul mate of the Celeron 300A, The Abit BH6 with it's great pricing and Overclocking friendly Soft-Menu BIOS made the BH6 easily the hottest board of the year.
Hottie of the year: Jennifer Love Hewitt
If you dont understand who or why, you don't belong here. Please leave now.
New Websites of the year: SharkyExtreme & FiringSquad
It's a tossup for me. It would have been an easy choice for SharkyExtreme most of the year, but Thresh's FiringSquad which I honestly had doubts about looks like it will have some real staying power. I like em both!
Suck of the year: Online Cheating
With the popularization of cheats like ZBot, PAK2, CRC Spoofs, Wall hacks, and the famous Metabyte Voodoo2 GL drivers that let you see through walls, Cheating has affected us all if you are aware of it or not. Bring in online tournaments with prizes and money involved, and cheaters will follow. PGL, LIGA, Genocide, they have all had to deal with cheaters. It sucks. Nobody likes a cheater.
What's gonna rock the hizouse in 1999?
Game of the year: Quake3, id Software
Yup, I'm really going out on a limb here. Despite doubts among a few of the "hardcore" fans out there after Quake2, I'm confident that id Software will pull it through and listen to the players to make Quake3 a revolution. You think Quake created an industry? Quake3 just might do it all over again.
I'm pretty sure TeamFortress2 will make a strong showing as well, they better hope they beat Quake3 out the door though.
3D Card of the year: Voodoo3, 3dfx Interactive
Banshee2, whatever you want to call it. The Voodoo3 is my pick for 1999. Earlier in the year the TNT2 will have some brief time at the top, but we'll all finish out 1999 wanting a Voodoo3 in our PC. Quake3 will play a vital roll in this though, will 3dfx pay enough attention? The TNT2 is the heir apparent if not.
Motherboard, CPU, Controller of the year: Hell if I know.
New Year Resolutions
List of stuff I'll remind myself to do more often to better my way of life and the people around me.
Become an alcoholic
Start smoking
Eat more red meat and cholesterol packed foods.
Cuss more
Be rude to elderly people
Pick on little kids
Fart in the elevator more
Put boogers on more public doorknobs
and lastly...
Say stuff on my website that will piss off a lot of people!
werd
Doing a bunch of cleanup on the pages. I ran through
the error logs and am making a feeble attempt to fix them all. A few more things to post
as well as the weekly section which will be an afternoon post today.
| Thursday, December 31 |
System Shock2 Shots [5:15pm]
Through The Looking
Glass has gotten a hold of a few new screenshots of the sequel to that classic System
Shock. The game is based on an enhanced version of the same engine Thief: Dark Project was
built around.
Heretic2 Interview [5:15pm]
The Hereticii.com website has posted a new interview with the producer on the Heretic2
project, Steve Stringer.
Tech Etc [5:15pm]
Drakan [4:15am]
What, those screenshots get you all hot and bothered
yesterday afternoon? You wanna read about the game or something? It's your lucky spankin
day then cuz I got a pair of previews for you to check out this mornin. First check out
what Thresh has to say in his preview of
Drakan over at FiringSquad
While Surreal is stressing the importance of fantasy and role-playing, they do not want it to take away from the overall action. In fact, roughly 70% of the game involves intense action combat, whereas the other 30% consists of brain-teasers, environmental puzzles and traps. This heavy favoritism towards combat sets the stage for some serious blood pumpin' action, and Drakan will not disappoint
But that's not all! Once you checked that preview out head on over to SharkyExtreme and have a look see at what the monkeys over there have to say about Drakan.Drakan is being developed by Surreal Software.
AMEN [4:15am]
The boys at CaveNews
have posted a new interview with the cool Project Manager dude from CaveDog who is keeping
things organized on the AMEN: The Awakening project.
Mr.A: What is the main goal to achieve in Amen, is it to eliminate all the afflicted or just to kill the leader or some other important person on the side of the afflicted?
MacMartin, Greg: We have been purposely keeping that a secret. The goal of the game is to attempt to eliminate the great threat that the Afflicted pose to those who are not afflicted. To tell you HOW the player will accomplish that would give away the whole plot. (as in, any or all of your assumptions could be correct
RedStorm's Next Game [4:15am]
The RedStorm
Entertainment page has been updated with word on the next game the guys are up to. Not
exactly a sequel to their Rainbow6 game but in the same spirit. Thanks Mike
Next year we look at land warfare on a somewhat larger scale. Hard to do special-operations in a tank, but harder to kill a tank with a light machine- gun. And the baseline scenario will be fairly similar to the next Ryan book, which I will be starting shortly for a summer release--if everything works out.
Views [4:15am]
werd
Lorien at GA pointed
out www.shoutcast.com to me last night and if you
puds are into MP3's this is surely worth a look. Nifty idea. As for the demo of the week,
as you guys know from my incredibly irritating bitching on the page, the connect here in
Texas has been completely hosed. The good news is things have improved gradually over the
past couple of days, by this time next week. I'll also have a few new 1on1 demos to boot.
Everyone go get drunk but if you even think about driving I'm gonna kick your ass.
| Wednesday, December 30 |
Drakan Shots! [4:55pm]
Awww jeah, Psygnosis
has posted a boatload of new screenshots
of Drakan from Surreal Software on their website. I
snagged most of the good ones for you guys to check out. (Their server seems pretty slow
from where I am) Thanks Dave.
SouthPark Shots [7:45pm]
Saw on Blue's that
GameSpot has gotten a hold of a few more screenshots
of the SouthPark 3D Action game. These pics are from the PC port that is underway.
Duke4 Update [3:15pm]
George Broussard made a post to one of the messageboards over at 3DPortal giving a few details on what they are up to
over at the 3DR offices
Code: Been adding lot's and lot's of neato features so our mappers can do insane, and I mean insane amounts of interactivity. Also working on things like skeletal character system, level of detail, and preparing to do a major patch to Unreals version 220+ code base (Janurary).
Maps: the guys have been working steadily on majorly detailed level scripts, so that we know where you are and what you will be doing on a level per level basis. This is analogous to a blueprint for a house, or a script for a movie. They are about to start on "real" maps according to the scripts we've drawn up. Major design meetings and level reviews have been taking place as we continue to refine the game.
Art: Modellers have been building some characters and smaller decorative objects for the game. We are amassing a library of items that can pop into the game at any time and they know how to react to being shot or USEd. Texture guys are always jamming on textures for the levels, or skins for the characters.
<snip>
All in all, things are going great and we're about in our stride in full production on the game. We'll also probably be building a small motion capture studio in house and getting the equipment in here asap (as we've done the research and demo'ed a couple).
We've still got an immense amount of work to do, to bring the game up to playable "game" status, but all the separate parts are coming together and we're all really, really excited at what we see forming.
Thanks for the patience and support. DNF will rock you
Year In Review [11:35pm yesterday]
John Callaham has written up quite e lengthy and interesting look back at 1998 and
all the 3D FPS games that came out as well as a look ahead at the games of 1999 to come.
(Quake3, Unreal Tournament, etc) I'm sure someone will flame him for <insert game>
that was not included but oh well.
As busy as 1998 was, 1999 looks to be even busier, with a ton of new first-person and third person action games set for release. With that in mind, I have made a list of what games might be coming to a store near you in the next 365 days. Please keep in mind that this does not pretend to be a compete list, nor does it claim to have exact release dates for these games. As most gamers know, dates are subject to change.
CliffyB Interview [4:55am]
UnrealNation
has posted a new interview
with CliffyB of Epic talking about just what those Epic guys are up to and that whole
Unreal Tournament thingie.
Considering the success Raven had with Heretic II and the fact that Ritual are going 3:d person with F.A.K.K. 2 will Epic stick to the 1:st person perspective or are you exploring other possibilities?
I don't necessarily think H2 was successful because of the 3rd person perspective- it was because it was a fun game and they turned that bad boy out in a year. How many studios can claim that? Not many. Doing a mixture of first and third person could be cool but can easily double your workload if you're not careful. We'll see.
Heretic2 Enhancement Pack [4:55am]
Ken Hoekstra made another
.plan update of note giving a status update on the Heretic2 "enhancement
pack"
In addition to the new DM maps, team deathmatch support, and other various features, a number of bug issues will also be addressed. If you reported bugs to Raven directly or on one of our message boards, odds are it will be fixed. One such issue that several people have sent e-mail to me about is the joystick code.
Weekly Update [4:55am]
The links have been posted bright and early for you monkeys! Don't hurt
youself, and yeah that one link does have boobs on it. If you're under 18 like, dont click
there.
Half-Life Bug List [4:55am]
If you've run into something you think is a bug in
Half-Life and want to report it, make sure you check out the Half-Life bug list first and compare notes with
the list. -VE
Views [4:45am]
werd
Pondering an idea. Whatchu guys think of having
msgboard threads created for discussion on a few of the news articles every day? Pretty
much like the guys at slashdot.org do. I imagine
most stories would get very few comments, but every couple of days something comes up that
everyone seems to have an opinion on. Test
board (It would be made black)
| Tuesday, December 29 |
Carmack Speaks [4:15pm]
It's John Carmack, the guy programming that one game
that is gonna suck a couple more years out of your life soon. Here is his .plan update
talking about security stuff for Quake3:
I am considering taking a shortcut with my virtual machine implementation that would make the integration a bit easier, but I'm not sure that it doesn't compromise the integrity of the base system.
I am considering allowing the interpreted code to live in the global address space, instead of a private 0 based address space of its own. Store instructions from the VM would be confined to the interpreter's address space, but loads could access any structures.
On the positive side:
This would allow full speed (well, full interpreted speed) access to variables shared between the main code and the interpreted modules. This allows system calls to return pointers, instead of filling in allocated space in the interpreter's address space.
For most things, this is just a convenience that will cut some development time. Most of the shared accesses could be recast as "get" system calls, and it is certainly arguable that that would be a more robust programming
style.
The most prevelent change this would prevent is all the cvar_t uses. Things could stay in the same style as Q2, where cvar accesses are free and transparantly updated. If the interpreter lives only in its own address space, then cvar access would have to be like Q1, where looking up a variable is a potentially time consuming operation, and you wind up adding lots of little cvar caches that are updated every from or restart.
On the negative side:
A client game module with a bug could cause a bus error, which would not be possible with a pure local address space interpreter.
I can't think of any exploitable security problems that read only access to the entire address space opens, but if anyone thinks of something, let meknow.
I would have some insightful mind expanding comment here, but I certainly dont know enough about programming so uh, yeah I agree with John!
Myth2 Recall [5:55pm]
Doh, if you purchased Myth2 when it hit the shelves
you might wanna read this press release that was sent to Blue
CHICAGO--December 29, 1998--Before Myth II: Soulblighter hit the shelves, Bungie discovered a problem which warrants a recall of the title. Though the problem is likely to affect only a small number of Windows users, it nevertheless could be serious for them. Recalling a product is a difficult decision to make, but Bungie believes strongly it is the right thing to do.
In certain unusual cases, using the Uninstaller can cause problems. If a user chooses an installation directory other than the default directory, they should NOT use the Uninstaller but should manually drag the Myth II folder into the Recycle bin and delete it.
Anyone who has the game but has not yet installed it is asked to wait for a new version of the Installer which we will release shortly. If you have already installed the game, there is no harm in playing it, but players should be careful not to use the Uninstall executable. If you have already Uninstalled and not experienced obvious problems, there is nothing to worry about.
This is only the case with version 1.0 of the game. We are now replicating a new CD, which will be clearly labeled "version 1.1" and will have it on the shelves in a couple of weeks. Bungie deeply regrets the inconvenience to our customers.
Weekly [4:15pm]
Ayup, some guidance for
those of you looking to learn from my years of experience and wisdom.
MDK2 [4:15pm]
Remember that incredibly freaked out game MDK from
Shiny? Well BioWare is doing the sequel with their own technology and GAGames has posted
an interview with Greg Z of
the aforementioned development house.
Why did Bioware choose to develop its own engine versus using the Quake, Unreal, or Lithtech engine like other companies have done?
<snip>
...Second, I've personally always felt that games that use the same engine all have the same 'feel' and aren't substantially different than the original game off which they are based. (In most cases I think this is true however it seems that Half Life has proven me somewhat wrong. But, it seems that they've made substantial changes to the original Quake2 code so it's really only partially the original engine)
Cheap Celery! [4:15pm]
You guys hanging on to that p200 because you think a
p2 class system is just too expensive are running out of excuses. The prices of a BH6 +
Celeron is hitting the $200 mark now. Check out the
price drops from CNET. You can get a 333A for $115 and a 300A for $94. (saw this on
VE)
Despite these discounts, more cuts are likely, according to retailers, because they are selling the chips in retail for even less than Intel's wholesale prices. A survey of retailers conducted by CNET News.com found that the 333-MHz Celeron in the Slot package sells for between $95 and $105 with a 30-day warranty, less than even the wholesale price for the Socket version. With a three-year warranty, the chip goes for $123. The 300A-MHz in a Slot package goes for $85 and up. Most dealers have yet to pick up the Socket-style chips, but they expected these to be cheaper
More Tech Jive [9:07pm] - Huntsman
Yo [3:05pm]
Hey, back from some errands. (I saw my shadow, 4 more
weeks of winter!) 3 different things are broken here on the server I have to figure out
first but after that I'll slap you guys around with some links. Yeah, weekly section
too... :)
Command and Conquer! [9:07pm] - Huntsman
The Firing
Squad has a nifty preview of the upcoming Command and Conquer 2. Yep, it's 3D! Rumor
has it that Westwood didn't want to be made fun of for not having 3D in thier game...
Terminus [9:07pm] - Huntsman
Hey, this looks cool. Saw on VE something about a game called Terminus. The guys over at
Vicarious Visions have some new
shots of it. This is a multiplayer 3D space shoot 'em up which sounds a lot like Subspace.
Which is not a bad thing at all. Subspace rocked you, and you know it.
Don't Hack! [9:07pm] - Huntsman
I'm well aware that this isn't 3D or gaming related,
but I saw an article on Slashdot about a couple guy who
hacked into a bank are getting the death penalty. Major suckage there.
Lesson for the Day: Don't do whacko stuff anywhere but America.
Dungeon Keeper 2 [9:07pm] - Huntsman
Yep, we all got it. That perverse pleasure of
smacking the crap out of those chickens. CDMAG has a preview up
of Dungeon Keeper 2. It's revamped, redone and refried for our pleasure. Hopefully running
around in first person won't suck this time.
Tech Jive [9:07pm] - Huntsman
faux werd [9:07pm] - Huntsman
Yep, me again. Rumor has it sCary's gonna get
impeached. Or at least given a severe taunting. Anyway, wanna give a big screw you to
Footlocker. I got my shoes anyway. And, whats up with Kordell Stewart? Wasn't he good like
just last year? Oh yeah, poor Oakland, no playoffs :). Can't wait to see the AFC Wildcard
game with Jacksonville and New England. Battle of the backups! My picks are Denver vs.
Minnesota for the Bowl, and Denver taking it because Terrell Davis is going to tear
something up. That is, if they can get past the Jets.
| Monday, December 28 |
More TF2 [4:35pm]
Mod
Central has some more damage control from Robin Walker of TF Software answering
questions
Q: Why did it take so long for this to be announced? It would appear the move to a standalone product has been set for some time, and the fact it's only coming to light days before the end of the holiday buying season seems at the least quite suspect.
A: We had to work through some contractual issues before we could announce our intentions. We couldn't tell the community until it was a definite, because if it didn't happen we'd have to tell everyone we were wrong, it's still an add-on.
Is it just me or do you think saying "oops it's still an add-on" would piss people off a bit less than "oops you just spent 50 bucks on a game that you dont need" ya think? Perhaps there were more consequences however that Robin didnt mention.
Quake3 Stuff [1:15pm]
Brian Hook talks a bit about Quake3 and curved
surfaces in today's article.
You puds should check it out.
So yes, "curves are still rendered as polygons", but the part about "when you get close, the engine adds more polygons" isn't necessarily true. "So it looks curvy and runs slowly" isn't necessarily true either. That's like saying "so when id introduced polygons in Quake, things ran slowly". Sure, compared to DOOM, but that's rather a forest-for-trees attitude. In general framerates AND visual quality in games has increased with every generation. Curved surfaces are simply a new way of adding more visual quality while taking advantage of modern computer systems' greater computing resources
Max Payne [2:35am]
Why not open up the week with a look at Max Payne
aye? As I've said before with the release of Half-Life and Heretic2, only Max Payne and
Drakan are left on my bad-ass-game-o-meter. Check out the new preview at FiringSquad which features
a few new screenshots to take a gander at.
Aiming directly at the crime-thriller lovers in all of us, Max Payne will include much of the same real-world realism you'll find in hit action movies, such as Die-Hard. Along the same lines, Remedy infused a lot of John Woo-esque elements into the game, giving our hero some chic moves and a "cool as ice" presence.
FAKK2 [2:35am]
Wandering around the web I came across some info on
FAKK2 which is the next game the guys at Ritual are working on since releasing SIN. Here
is the blurb from staytooned.com
...sequel to the 1981 cult classic, "Heavy Metal F.A.K.K.²" I have for you some production art of the various characters in the story by Kevin B. Eastman. By the way, the official date of release is August 20th, 1999.
shot1 - The first image is of Julie Strain (Penthouse Pet) - the main character of the film and is referred to as F.A.K.K
shot2 - The second image is of Lord Tyler. He's the evil character in the story that kidnapps Julie's sister
shot3 - The third image is of Germain St. Germain, the science officer under Lord Tyler
shot4 - The fourth image is of one of the Shadow Warriors - a team of warriors under the power of Lord Tyler
Yup, you read that right. August of next year. Considering the recent release of SIN only a couple of months ago, this would put Ritual on approx. a 1 year development cycle for the project. (Assuming they want the release to come out the same time the movie does, which is the general idea for a movie license game) Check out John Romero's list of 3D action game development times. Note Heretic2 is not on that list, which I believe took about a year.
QW Draft League [2:35am]
What, you call yourself a diehard QuakeWorld player
and havent signed up for the QW Draft League?
You putz! Go sign your ass up now! Here's a snip:
In only a week and a half of existence 213 people have signed up already, and the East hpb division has been filled. There are 5 spots left for East lpb, 17 for West lpb, and 45 for West hpb. There are still 2 weeks of signups remaining, but the sooner the divisions fill the sooner we can start!
3D Gaming/Hardware Poll [2:35am]
A new poll on Game Asylum
that I'd be interesting in seeing the results for. Questions range from best developer,
best publisher, to best game and best 3D chip. You can vote for "cyber man" of
the year which I am on the list for some reason as well but I kinda doubt my traffic can
compete with Blue/VE eh?
TF2 Article [2:35am]
For those of you who are still all upset about the
announcement that TeamFortress2 will no longer be a Half-Life add-on this article is for you.
I believe Team Fortress Software is feeling a lot of pressure from the community due to their choice. Put yourself in their shoes and think about it, you really want to make an awesome game, which will make a mark in gaming history as one of the best multiplayer games.
Weekly Sections Return [2:35am]
Yup, I done got the nerve to start posting the weekly
sections again. We'll start the week off right with something the world has no shortage
of, Stuff That Sucks.
Tech Etc [10:15am]
werd
Yeah, finally resuming work on the weekly sections.
I'm a jaded old sarcastic cynical bastard but hey, it's my page damn it.
It has been brought to my attention that I don't link SharkyExtreme enough which is a bad thing. For those of you guys who are really into that hardware/gaming reviews and articles thing that page is "the bomb"
Oh, also put a new form at the bottom of the page which I figure is convenient for those of you searching for something in particular. Lastly, the .plan tracker should hopefully be fixed in a day or two. dwoemer has been out of town.
| Sunday, December 27 |
Hardware Therapy [1:15pm]
I mentioned I love these articles right? The new Hardware Therapy has been posted
at HardGames touching on just about every subject
you can think of including people thinking way too hard about Tom's Hardware having an
nVidia banner on one of his pages to bitch fests about SIN and Trespasser. Highly
recommended reading.
Heretic2 Walkthrough [1:15pm]
Still havent made it through Heretic2? Check out the new walkthrough
that has been posted over at Hexen2.com
Descent3 [6:45pm]
If you are into that whole flying game thing Descent3
is pretty cool. They actually took it to that "next level" with this one as
opposed to just adding 3d support and high-res like they did in D2. Well, the deal is Descent-3.com has posted some more Q&A's for
those of you who might have.. some questions? Also, here is word on the v1.1 patch:
Testing is still being conducted on the latest 1.1 patch. We've added many new features, including the Automap, and have addressed many of the problems that people have reported. We expect that if all goes well over the next couple of days that we will have something available for download by early next week.
For more info - check out Outrage Entertainment's web site.
werd
Mmmmm, slow holiday weekends.
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