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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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Voodoo2 Drivers w/ Glide3.0
Check out the Creative Labs Voodoo2 page and
sign up to be a beta tester for the new drivers if you are an owner of one of their
Voodoo2 boards. They will probably be released publically within a couple of weeks but if
you cant wait that long go sign up now. The new drivers add anti-aliasing support when
using Direct3D as well as fixing some problems with Dungeon Keeper. -VoodooExtreme
Broussard on Shooters
I'll just quote the 3DR website on this one:
"If you missed George Broussard's chat last night on Shooters, you can now check it
out as it's been put on the archives page for the show. Make sure to check it out at http://pseudo.com/shows/shooters/archives.asp
. George talks about the decision to use the Unreal engine for Duke Nukem Forever"
Releases -more
Quake Arena part2
Well, I probably got well over 100 different
emails on the Quake
Arena editorial posted 2 days ago. (Got responses from guys at id, Activision, Online
services, you name it) and I've sorted through them all. Kind of a bummer that most of the
high up guys who emailed me asked not to be quoted though. Here is the follow up article with several
opinions voiced.
sCott Miller on Duke4
Scott Miller made a .plan update
plugging the recent PlanetQuake
article covering Duke4 and a bit more. Here ya go:
There should be no concern that DNF, now being built upon the Unreal technology, will lack the action and gameplay seen at E3 when the game was based on the Quake technology. In fact, the Unreal tech is better suited for these effects and we should be able to do them on a grander scale. People who saw this demo know we pushed the Quake 2 engine well beyond its intended specs, and we'll do the same with the Unreal tech.
Dementia with Redwood
The Daily Dementia show has been
posted again. This time they talk with Redwood
about the recent Duke4 move to the Unreal engine as well as the Quake3 / Quake Arena
announcement as well. It's about 22minutes and you need a Real player from www.real.com
Messiah Stuff
The Team
Ego page has been updated again with a new shot for you to check out
of a Police officer type character. -VE
Also, I dont think this has been linked before but over on dperry.com there is a transcript of the speech he gave at CGDC along with some images of Messiah which are very cool. Thanks Alvaro.
Dreamcast Footage
I'll just quote the story on Next-Gen here:
": Sega of Japan today released new screen-shots and first ever Quicktimes of the
Dreamcast demos shown in Japan last month." There are 4 shots posted in the article
as well as a pair of movies for download.
Murphy on Ion Storm
An artist who formerly worked at Ion Storm
before landing his job at Ritual, Murphy has made a couple of .plan
updates concerning his move to Ritual and explaining some statements he made about Ion
Storm in a previous .plan update.
Intel Countersuit
The fun doesnt stop. Thanks FartBark (heh) for
the link to this news.com
article which talks about Intel filing a countersuit against Intergraph (Had to
happen) and also claiming that an agreement made between the two previously makes Intel
immune to Intergraph's patent claims.
Daikatana Shot
Zep using his mind powers took control of the
brain of a Daikatana team member and caused him to DCC Zep a new screenshot of Daikatana during the
Cabana chat that took place last night over at www.ionstorm.com
UnrealED Manual
The Skarz News
page is still hard at work updating their UnrealED manual for the masses to use. -Unreal Nation
RoboRumble
I didnt link this when the original demo came
out but now that the "final" demo has been released I'd suggest checking out
RoboRumble. It's a 3D action RTS style game which you really need a Direct3D accelerator
to play with. If I may quote Voodoo Extreme:
TopWare Interactive released the final demo version of RoboRumble, a real-time 3D strategy game from Metropolis Software.
The latest version adds Voodoo 2 support, featuring tri-linear filtering and bump mapping on Voodoo2 chipsets. RoboRumble is the first available game with such features, according to TopWare.
The Views
Sites
werd
Uhoh, almost on a regular sleep schedule
again. Somewhat slow news day today. I fell asleep yesterday and didnt get to finish that
Q3 follow up aritle, so it will be a bit later today than originally anticipated.
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QW Proxy: Qizmo
Qizmo is a QuakeWorld proxy, it
works with network packets moving between a QW client and a QW server. Qizmo is based on
FAQ-Proxy 1.02 and is backward compatible. New major features: menu system, server
browser/pinger, voice channels, data compression, FPS boosting, and lots of small stuff.
Supported QW versions are: 2.0x, 2.1, 2.21.
Note: This is a 15minute limited shareware util. I suggest downloading the QWFWD util from the QuakeWorld section if you are only looking for a rudamentary IP forwarding util though.
Just Quake, No Movie
As we all know just how engrossing and
interwoven the plot is into gameplay with Quake, one couldnt resist to make a movie with
it right? Well check out the Dark Horizons
page which says a Quake movie may be on the horizon: -Whole WheaT breaD
Quake: The Movie: 'Human' has heard that 'GT interactive' is rumoured to be selling the film rights to this megahit computer game to Warner Brothers. The word is that a script has in fact already be written, and the film itself may be entirely in CG (ala "Final Fantasy").
Just when you started pulling your pud in anticipation of the Quake movie, Blue got some email from Todd H. of id shooting it down. bummer.
We have had some preliminary discussions about making a TV show or movie based on Quake or Quake II, but nothing more than that. The source you quote is probably misinformed about GT's involvement since they don't have any movie rights whatsoever. So if GT is negotiating something, they would be doing so without our authorization and with no (legal) ability to sign a deal.
More Hardware
George Broussard on Duke4
If I may quote the email from the PQ boys:
"PlanetQuake has just posted an interview with George Broussard of
3D Realms. The interview was recorded during E3, before the decision to switch to the
Unreal engine was taken. Although the engine has changed, the game remains the same, and
this interview reveals some of the awe inspiring action we can expect to see in Duke 4Ever
when it's released early next year...
Eraser Bot
Ok ok, enough emails about it. Yea, another
new version of the Eraser Bot for Quake2 has been released over at http://impact.frag.com and no I have no idea what is new
in this version. My guess is the version # changed at least though.
Unreal Slips to #2
After only 1 week in the #1 spot on the PCDATA sales list, it looks like Unreal has already
slipped to #2? Wow.. I would expect it to be camping up there in the #1 spot for much
longer than that. -3DNews
Unreal Shareware
Still havent gotten to check out Unreal? Here
is a status report Mark Rein posted to the megaboard
yesterday for the curious as noted by UnrealNation:
The shareware will come out sometime after the update to improve multiplayer performance over the internet is released and we've had a chance to get seom feedback from it.
Quake Arena Opinion
Very interesting, I've seen a few different
polls being taken on websites such as www.3dnews.net www.ogr.com and www.avault.com
and all 3 of them came up with the same results of approximately only 45% of the readers
say they would consider buying Quake Arena now knowing the direction that they are taking.
(Keep in mind the questions were posted in a slightly uninformed or biased manner in most
cases)
Xian on the game formerly known as
Quake3
Well, I'm going to refer to it as Quake3 for a
while just so people know wtf I'm talking about. Check out what Disruptor of id Software had to say after reading
around on the web:
It's kind of frustrating checking out websites and seeing people calling Quake Arena a "multiplayer only" game. There seems to be a bit of confusion in the community where people think that QA will be an internet-only game.
This is not the case. Please read John Carmack's announcement in his .plan again. id has not abandonded single player in QA. It just won't be the single player experience you have come to expect thus far. Yes, id are doing something different, but please don't jump to conclusions.
Playstation Q2
BLoG [UT] sent this link from PSMOnline which talks about
Quake2 for the Sony Playstation. Apparently aCtvision has confirmed that this project will
happen. I also found this
link on the Next-Gen page covering the story as well.
Daikatana Chat
Stormtroopers.com's Daikatana Cabana is
hosting an IRC chat with ION Storm's Daikatana team today at 8pm Central.
When: Today (June 18) at 8pm Central
Where: #daikatana on ION Storm's IRC server
How: Via ION Storm's web site (Live Online section) or use an IRC client to connect to www.ionstorm.com
Extra Sections
Oh my, they have returned. The Wack Ass Links page is back! Can you
believe it? It's been a long time I know. :) Speaking of other sections, The absolute HUGE
amount of email I received on the Quake3
editorial I posted yesterday was nuts. I'll have a bit of a followup article finished
with comments from many readers posted on Friday.
QW Tester Demo
Back when we were helping Zoid test the QuakeWorld v2.21 client for overflow problems while in the
game, we decided to pile up as many people as possible outside of DM3 and let Zoid blast
us with a Quad rocket. Well, if you are into that sorta thing, here is the demo.
The Views
Hardware
Site Seeing
Havent posted this section in a while now eh?
werd
Gah, freakin putz friends caused me to only
get 2.5hrs of sleep last night. I have no idea if I'll be able to pull through the day or
not. Good news is that the scary.vrgames.net IP is now auto forwarding to this new URL.
Remember to update your bookmark to my new url at www.shugashack.com
though as that forwarding trick will only be active for about a month. Big thanks to Chris
Roberts for the favor.
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Ask GMB
Check out todays edition of Brian Hook's
Q&A. It's like, talking about 3D stuff or something.
Heretic2 AVI's
Blue
has scored himself a pair of Heretic2 AVI's which show off the incredible game which all
of you should be eagerly anticipating. Here you go Final1.avi and Final2.avi
My Quake Arena Editorial
As I noted earlier this morning, I have
written up a large
editorial discussing my views and concerns with the Quake Arena project. It's quite a
large mind fart of an article but I hope it causes many of you to think. I'm sure I'll get
a number of emails on this thing, fun fun :)
After reading that article, I suggest you head over to Op3dfx and fill out their Quake3 poll.
Steed on Quake Arena
Paul Steed made a large .plan update
thanking Fragmaster for his PlanetQuake
editorial on the subject and finalizing it with this statement:
Quake Arena will be good. The motivation behind its creation is evolutionary, not derivative; innovative freshness, not fearful apprehension. You will like it and slap your head in appreciation of its elegance and purity. Trust me. I know the guys working on it :p
Levelord Busted!
Uhoh, not sure what this means for Sin but
check out the story on Ritual Outpost. I'll
quote a bit of it:
This morning, Channel 17 News showed up at the offices to interview us. It's confirmed, levelord has been busted for smuggling a controlled substance. We assured the news team that this was just routine, that levelord did this on a weekly basis, and there had never been any cause for alarm before. Astonished, the reporter blurted "But THIS much? For himself??" We just shrugged, having worked with the lord for months know. They finally left, but not before graciously providing us with some on-site pictures of the arrest, taken by an enterprising civiliian.
This one clearly shows levelord, in handcuffs, as a police officer shows off a small portion of the pot levelord was transporting. Here's a cropped zoom of the same shot
Read levelord's .plan for the story. :) Oh, and I almost forgot to credit Shanaynay 'All Flustered' Jenkins for the heads up.
Jobs
A couple of job openings are out there in
gaming land. Firstly Raven Software is looking for
a level designer. Here is a quote from Eric
B of Raven:
We are still on the lookout for level designers. If you want to apply, drop me a line. All I want to see is ONE level using any Quake technology (or Unreal;) that showcases your talent.
Remember, we are based in WI... that might scare off some of you.
Secondly, Ritual Entertainment is looking for another artist to work on their projects.
note: Paul Steed is cool.
Weekly Sections
Yea, its crazy. I've even updated the weekly demos section. I had hoped to get a hold of
some of the demos from ICON that took place this past weekend but those will have to wait
for next Wednesday I guess. Got a *great* 2on2 demo this week posted along with the QIL
west coast semi finals matches.
More Views
id's Quake Arena
Uhoh! Now, this is great news for most of the
people who read these pages. id Software has decided to ditch Quake3 in favor of a
multiplayer experience called Quake Arena. Check out John Carmack's .plan update
and spooge:
My last two .plan updates have described efforts that were not in our original plan for quake 3, which was "quake 2 game and network technology with a new graphics engine".
We changed our minds.
The new product is going to be called "Quake Arena", and will consist exclusively of deathmatch style gaming (including CTF and other derivatives). The single player game will just be a progression through a ranking ladder against bot AIs. We think that can still be made an enjoyable game, but it is definately a gamble.
In the past, we have always been designing two games at once, the single player game and the multi player game, and they often had conflicting goals. For instance, the client-server communications channel discouraged massive quantities of moving entities that would have been interesting in single player, while the maps and weapons designed for single player were not ideal for multiplayer. The largest conflict was just raw development time. Time spent on monsters is time not spent on player movement. Time spent on unit goals is time not spent on game rules.
There are many wonderful gaming experiences in single player FPS, but we are choosing to leave them behind to give us a purity of focus that will let us make significant advances in the multiplayer experience.
The emphasis will be on making every aspect as robust and high quality as possible, rather than trying to add every conceivable option anyone could want. We will not be trying to take the place of every mod ever produced, but we hope to satisfy a large part of the network gaming audience with the out of box experience.
There is a definite effect on graphics technology decisions. Much of the positive feedback in a single player FPS is the presentation of rich visual scenes, which are often at the expense of framerate. A multiplayer level still needs to make a good first impression, but after you have seen it a hundred times, the speed of the game is more important. This means that there are many aggressive graphics technologies that I will not pursue because they are not apropriate to the type of game we are creating.
The graphics engine will still be OpenGL only, with significant new features not seen anywhere before, but it will also have fallback modes to render at roughly Quake-2 quality and speed.
Carmack Q&A
Blue
sent some email to John Carmack asking a pair of questions concerning cheating. Here is
one of the answers, you'll have to check out his page for the other one. :)
Blue: Your recent .plan talks of changes to the client/server structure in Quake Arena. In your current vision, is this going to have an impact on the possibilities of cheating with hacked clients, either making such abuse easier or perhaps harder?
John Carmack: I have been stressing a bit about this. Writing a stoogebot type client side dll becomes almost trivial if you can change the client side presentation logic. Each game will probably only be allowed to work with a specific client side module. While there would be some neat things you could do with simple client side modifications, the cheating risk is too great. The enforcement of that requirement will be carried out by the network logic. Because it will involve binary digests, I have some concerns about cross-platform compatibility issues. Servers will probably have to have a small list of digest values that represent valid clients -- one for win32x86, one for win32alpha, one for linux, etc.
Honestly I'm much more concerned about gameplay. Of course, I'll get to that later today.
On Quake Arena
SGI Quake2
The SGI
Quake page has posted the new version for all you guys who happen to own an SGI box.
It's only the v3.14 port though so you cant really play it on the net since 3.14 servers
arent exactly easy to find.
Team Fortress 2
Check out the big preview including screenshots of the
conversion for Half-Life that the guys over at TeamFortress Software are working on. Yea,
they decided not to do the conversion for Quake2 because Valve offered to pay them money.
Unreal Tech Info
The Epic Unreal page has been updated with
quite a bit of information. Check out the Tech
Information Page, the Audio
Information page, as well as the Texture
Information page.
The Views
"Why not use the Prey engine?," Brussard said, "It is of utmost importance to us to have Prey be the first game released using the Prey technology. By going with Unreal's tech to create Duke Nukem Forever, we'll be able to stay on schedule to get Duke done and released before Prey."
werd
I've seen a number of places link to my old
URL which no longer works. The vrgames webserver did make a brief appearance this
afternoon for about 90mins though which was cute. Please if you are linking my page link
to www.shugashack.com eh?
Guess I gotta hang around in the evenings. Twice in a row the "big news" happens after 5pm.. doh.
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Raven's Turn
After reading what John Carmack of id Software
posted in his .plan,
Raven programmer Josh Heitzman updated his
own .plan talking about the large number of entities in Hexen2.
3dfx on GameCenter
In a little followup to the recent GameCenter
article attacking 3dfx. (Can you imagine? GameCenter attacking 3dfx?) Operation 3dfx's
3dnews.net website posted a lengthy response from Tony
Tamasi of 3dfx.
Q2Comp
I generally dont plug Q2 mods much but this is
a special exception. Competetion mods should be run on all servers honestly. The Q2Comp
mod over at http://www.telefragged.com/q2comp/
has been updated to v0.20 now with support for competetive style Quake2 play. If you are
running a Q2 server without any mods right now, please snag this and put it on your server
instead. Make life easier for all the competetive players out there. :)
Scott Miller on Duke4
More rumor control today. Check out what Scott
Miller of 3DR had
to say concerning some misconeption that the move of Duke4 to the Unreal engine was a
financial decision:
Yesterday, a prominent fan site of the 3D gaming community wrote the following commentary about our decision to switch Duke Nukem Forever to the Unreal engine:
"Basically this means it came down to money not what is better for us as gamers."
Wrong!
The decision to move to the Unreal engine was based solely on the fact that we can make a better Duke Nukem game. We are losing a TON of money to id making this switch (wish I could say how much because it's quite significant and impressive, but I cannot violate our agreement's confidentiality clause).
id Not Investing in Activision
To refute any rumors, Todd Hollenshead, CEO of
id made a short .plan
update talking about a recent post on www.planetquake.com
No, id has not purchased a block of ATVI stock. Unconfirmed conjecture and plain factual errors are the reasons I cancelled my subscription to MMWIRE about a year ago. *IF* they would have emailed or called me, I would have told them that we have warrants to buy ATVI stock that we may or may not exercise in the future. This isn't anything out of the ordinary.
Duke4 Q&A With George
Well, we knew this would happen. In response
to the mail bomb that George Broussard has received since announcing yesterday that Duke4
would be switching over to the Unreal technology from the Quake2 code, he made a big ol' .plan update
for ya:
1) Internet play. Yes, it stinks in Unreal now. Yes, Epic is working on it hard to fix it. I believe they will. Why wouldn't they? They have the #1 game in the country that is poised to take over net play. It is in their interest and their dozen or more licensees to make net play rock. Give it a little time. Even Quake 1/2 has net issues upon release. Even if the unthinkable happens and they don't, we will. There is plenty of time for that before DNF is released.
2) High system specs. Yes, Unreal likes power. That's the price of advancement folks. Sorry, but those P150/166's aren't going to cut it anymore. Unreal runs reasonably well on a P200/64 megs and a voodoo 1 cased card. I know. I've run it here on that system. It runs silky on P266/64 megs and voodoo 1. The only time it really bogs is on some maps where not enough care was taken with texture usage and poly counts. Chalk that one up to running out of time. Clearly we will optimize Duke maps for speed. We are frame rate junkies like all of you. But the bottom line is that you will need a P200/64 negs and a voodoo 1 card (at least) to run DNF. This should not be an issue in 1999. I mean don't expect Quake 3 or any other leading edge 3D game to run on your P166's either. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
3) Delay. Folks, DNF was likely a 1999 game in the first place. At least early in the year. This decision is not going to cost us 6 months or more, and if it does it means we are adding cool stuff like strippers and pool tables. The actual conversion to the Unreal engine is nearly trivial. We have Unreal code. We have analyzed it and what we need to do. We are not the least little bit concerned. What concerns us is that we can make maps MUCH larger than we were and that means more time to make them, but that's a good thing. For you.
On Duke4:
The Views
Overrated?
Since the all knowing GameCenter *cough*
posted their views on what was overrated and underrated out there in gaming land, I posted
a vote yesterday asking people to submit what they thought should be on the list. A list
from people with a clue would be out of place on GameCenter, so I'm just posting it here instead. :) Oh, and
Tuesday's weekly section is updated
as well.
GameCenter Corrections
Oh gee, it looks like GameCenter is actually
owning up to doing no research before posting incorrect information on their site. Check
out http://www.gamecenter.com/Corrections/
and laugh at them. 3 "corrections" in one article.. hrm... oops? -Rick Smith
Duke4 to use Unreal Tech
George Broussard initially broke this news in
his .plan update concerning the "major announcement" that he hinted at about a
week ago. The Duke4ever project has ditched the Quake2 engine in favor of the Unreal
technology. Here's a snip of his .plan:
(Thanks Redwood btw)
Major Duke Nukem Forever announcement time ;) We are switching to the Unreal engine to finish the game. You will be able to find a press release online at www.3drealms.com in the next 24 hours. We are very excited about this decision, and we think our fans will be as well.
Later on the press release from 3DR appeared on their website talking a bit more about the decision. Here's a snip of that:
People who have seen the Duke Nukem Forever E3 video, or back room demo voiced concerns that some of the items they saw would be lost. "Not at all" says Broussard. "If anything, the E3 demos showed what we could do with licensed technology and how we can extend it. We intend to apply the same ideas and efforts into the Unreal engine and push it until it breaks. Fans can expect all the stuff they saw at E3 to make the crossover to the Unreal engine."
George also showed up on IRC this afternoon mentioning that the level designers have been using 3DSMAX to design architecture for the maps and then importing it into the Unreal engine. The results were just so damn smooth that they had to use Unreal's tech instead.
Romero on Carmack
After reading John Carmack's latest big .plan update John
Romero over at Ion Storm updated
his .plan talking about what they are up to over there:
Carmack is totally right about moving as much as possible over to the client so as to reduce as much packet traffic as possible. We're doing this right now in Daikatana by moving lots of animations over to the client so packet traffic is low.
For example, our Shockwave weapon (a steel ball that blasts out, hits a wall, then explodes with tremendous force in an ever-expanding sphere of death and destruction) has all the animation on the client side, even the expanding, rotating rings of death and all the hit-checking is done on the server with no packets being sent out saying which frames need to be drawn. With this BFG-style weapon, that's a good thing because there are about 8 massive objects being drawn all at once!
<picture coming soon>
Carmack on Quake3
John Carmack made one hell of a .plan update
talking about his work on Quake3 and ditching his "dumb terminal" approach to
internet play. I'm gonna slap most of it up here because it's interesting:
I am giving up on one of my cherished networking concepts -- the client as a dumb terminal.
With sub 200 msec network connections of reasonable bandwidth, pure interpolating is a reasonable solution that is very robust and elegant.
With modem based internet connections having 300+ msec pings and patchy delivery quality, pure interpolation just doesn't give a good enough game play experience.
<snip>
QuakeWorld was my experimentation with adding a lot of specialized logic to improve network play. An advantage I had was that the gameplay was all done, so I didn't mind adding quite hardcoded things to improve nailguns and shotguns, among other things. The largest change was adding client side movement prediction, which basically threw out the notion of the general purpose client.
Quake 2 was intended to be more general and flexible than Q1/QW, with almost everything completely configurable by the server. At the time of q2test, it was (with a fixed 10 hz clock).
<snip>
Almost all cycling animations can be smoother. If the client knows that the character is going through his death animation for instance, it can advance the frames itself, rather than having the server tell it when every single frame changes.
Motion of projectiles can be predicted accurately on the client side.
All aspects of your own characters movement and presentation should be completely smooth until acted upon (shot) by an outside entity.
s
All the clever coding in the world can't teleport bits from other computers, so lag doesn't go away, but most of the other hitchy effects of network play can be resolved. Lag reduction is really a seperate topic. QuakeWorld had instant response packets, because it was designed for a dedicated server only, which helped quite a bit.
During the projects development, the client side code will be in a C DLL, but I intend to Do The Right Thing and make it java based before shipping. I absolutely refuse to download binary code to a client.
Unreal Skins
The Unreal skin pack is nearing release. The
client side has been tested and everything is comming along nicely. I still need a server
to check out the connectibility of the pack but so far so good. Check out the site for details.
Site Move
Damn it, I dont know what happened to the
vrgames server today. The page is now at www.shugashack.com
for like, ever. The hosting service that my page is on provided by the guys at www.gibbed.com is only temporary but very much
appreciated. The .plan tracker will be working
again ASAP as RonSolo from Stomped is the man. :)
Max Payne Video
The 3rd hot title that is coming your way from
3DR. Max Payne which will be published by The Gathering.
There is a video now up on the 3DR site
along with videos of Prey and Duke4..
Since the movie is just so damn cool. Here is a local copy. of the RealVideo version which looks awesome.
Correction
Oops, made a a booboo when mentioning the Seed project. Here is the correction I received from
Chris Rhineheart:
Just wanted to quick e-mail you and correct you on a bit of news. Human Head Studios is NOT working on that Seed game. We're currently working on Daikatana 2. Human Soft, Inc apparently is the company working on Seed.
werd
Yea, for some reason its just the HTTP port at
scary.vrgames.net that died on my server and nobody has access to it right now to fix it.
Apparently the mailserver is still working thank god.
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GameCenter
w00, its complete. GameCenter has made total
asses of themselves. Everyone loved that clueless post talking about how John Romero
apparently worked on Quake2, and to complete the circle they have thrown in a nice 3dfx
bash in their new article.
Banshee "Behind the Times" is their new article talking about how they claim the new 3dfx 2D/3D chipset is well, behind the times. Uh.. no.
AMD & Q2
The AMD website has posted a section for their upcoming
release of an optimized version of Quake2 that takes advantage of the new features in
their K6-2 CPU. No real word on just how much better/faster this will be, but we'll have
to wait and see. Hopefully I'll be getting a hold of a K6-2 box sometime next month and
can let you guys know first hand. -YtsejaM
More Views
Cyrix MII-333
Thanks to Redwood for sending this link
that is an announcement from Cyrix with their next generation CPU. the M2 or something.
Who wants to take bets on if the FPU is worth a damn this time?
Wheel of Time Shots
The weekly update to the Wheel of Time website has been posted with the
bonus of a number of new screenshots for you to check out. These are actually the E3
screenshots which a number of people have already seen probably, but not all of them.
Seed Shots
Always got to keep an eye on what the
developers are up to. HumanHead Software (a new company started by some ex-Raven employees
among others) has released 5 shots of their Seed
project. I'll take the cue from VE and quote a
recent PC Gamer preview that
was posted talking about Seed:
Instead of a traditional polygonal-based engine, Seed uses pixel-based ray tracing. The levels and architecture don't look radically different than they do in Quake-style engines. Objects have height, width, and depth, and you have full six degrees of freedom in moving about the world. The difference is that with pixel-based ray tracing the developers have a finer level of control over how light affects object and casts shadows. With traditional polygonal engines, shadows are calculated using only the edges of objects. Pixel-based ray tracing allows for a more accurate representation of shadows.
RBR FAQ
The BoatRocker.com
FAQ is up to v3.0, with some really tasty tidbits about the game engine, and features in
PraxWar, and more. Come check it out at http://www.boatrocker.com/game/faq
All Star CTF2
From the pages of Captured.com
The long wait for Allstar2 is almost over! The first version of Allstar2 the Quake 2 edition of the popular All-Star CTF, will be released on June 22, 1998. We will hold an IRC release party to celebrate the release that evening. I'll post the time and channel as the even gets closer. Until then, check the Allstar2 site frequently for sneak previews of the upcoming release. Today's spotlight is on professional level designers from Ritual Entertainment that worked on Allstar2, and there are several new screenshots of their levels."
Weekly Sections
I am assuming that I'll be landing a deal this
week for the page with a new host, and since I promised you guys that the weekly sections
would be revived when I score a deal, I'm going on faith here and starting the updates
now. Here is Monday
Overrated / Underrated
Ok monkeys, I wanna post a big ol' list of
stuff you think is overrated and underrated tomorrow morning. email me your submissions and we'll post em here for
the world to see. You dont need to give me reasons.
The Views
Unreal Crap
Can you smell it? (oh calm down, I like
Unreal)
Hardware
Raven
Kenn Hoekstra of Raven Software poses a couple
of interestsing questions for you guys:
June 13th, 1998 - Time for some readers' polls... I want to know what you, the consumers think about the following issues...
1) Why don't Raven Software's games get more hype on the net? Is it because we don't have a ton of websites dedicated to our games? Because we aren't controversial enough? Or because we don't have a "rock star" to identify with at our company? Let me know...
2) What do you expect from a game entitled "Soldier of Fortune" based on the Quake II engine? Do you want gritty realism? Blood and guts? Controversy (IE killing world leaders)? Real world environments? Or Quake II levels re-textured and modified to pass for real world environments? How about weapons? Items? Equipment?
Cover all the bases and drop me a line... khoekstra@mail.ravensoft.com Thanks in advance.
Jennifer Love Hewitt's Boobs
I've been meaning to post another review
recently so I figured I'll just cover a topic I'm very familiar with. JLH's breasts. At
first glance they appear slightly perky but not overly large, but upon closer inspection I
discovered that Jennifer's breasts are indeed gigantic. I find myself dodging and weaving
when watching her in a movie and she turns around to protect myself from losing an eye.
The firmness that her breasts offer also entices me. I would gamble to say you could pirch
a 2liter bottle of Coke between them.
Sometimes when discussing world politics with my friends and the economy, Jennifer's endowments come up and it seems to be the general consensus that Jennifer is a full blown hottie.
werd
Yea, this should be the last day of waiting
around for different ad services so I can finally freaking move this site and get the new
(better looking) design going along with the spiffy new domain name etc.
Funniest offer I've gotten recently, <censored> offered to let me keep a wopping 20% of my ad revenues! HA HA HEH Yup, just think. I can be pulling in about $10 bucks a day and I get to keep $2 of it!
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More Unreal
Mark Rein made another massive
post to the megaboard wanting to let everyone know whats up and attempting to answer
just about any question someone would have about the status of what Tim and the boys are
up to. Here's a sampler: -VE
OpenGL and D3D are just as much on the top of the list as improvements to Unreal’s Internet network play. We're working with expert 3rd parties so that we can be addressing BOTH of these major concerns simultaneously and not just one or the other. Your patience is sincerely appreciated.
We do have OpenGL up and running on a few cards. I've personally played it on the Rendition V2200-based Hercules Thriller 3D. The performance isn't quite there yet but that's to be expected on this very early attempt. The Riva128 is running (I haven't seen it yet) but with some problems that Riva is looking into on their side. Apparently Nvidia tried Unreal on the TNT and the results were extremely good but our focus for now is clearly on cards that are already out there so this is just good news for the future. I'm not sure of the status of the Intel i740 but I can tell you that I personally visited Real3D's Lockheed Martin Florida headquarters a few months ago and they pledged their complete support to us so I expect things will work out there too.
Oh, and of course the answer to the big question of when the hell will we get to play with this stuff:
It's hard to say because we're very much dependent on hardware manufacturers giving us updated drivers that are up to the task. I'd say they'll start to trickle out in test form in the next 2-4 weeks.
Romero vs GameCenter
In response to the recent GameCenter
article calling John Romero and Quake2 both over rated. John made a .plan update to
set the record straight. All GameCenter needed to do was throw in a 3dfx bash and
everything would be great.
Damn, I'm overrated. I'm an overrated geek, not a God. An overrated rock star AND geek AND not God. Thanks for clearing that up, GameCenter!
I don't remember telling everyone what the single-player gameplay was going to be like in Quake 2. Too bad GameCenterLoaf didn't like Quake 2; I thought it was a pretty badass game. And, hey, there's like hundreds of thousands of people playing it, too. If too many people are playing your game, it's overrated. Like me.
And Daikatana's been under development for an entire 14 months now. That's a looooooooooong time to people with a 6-month memory. What's the going development cycle for a 3D shooter these days? Let's break it down:
Game Time in Months Quake 18 Quake 2 18 Duke 3D 30 Dark Forces 30 Jedi Knight 30 Shadow Warrior 36 Blood 36 Unreal 36 <Achoo!> Am I dead yet?
Rick Johnson is dead on correct. :)
Wait, thousands of people use a 3dfx card, they must be overrated. GameCenter? Hello? you missed the big story!
Also check out John Scott of Raven's reaction. Then head over to VE and check out Brian Hook's editorial on it as well.
500 Meg SIMMS
Check out this article over at
news.com that is pretty interesting. Samsung has announced that they have just wrapped
up the development of 0.13micron semiconductor technology that would enable them to creat
4 gigabit memory chips. 60 times the capacity of the 64 megabit chips that most pc's are
using today. Oh, a P2 uses 0.25micron technology for the curious.
DreamCast
Not really PC 3D Gaming related, but as the
console market and the PC market get ever closer, I figure I should mention this. The
DreamCast console (Which is rumored to run on Windows CE) will have a 500million dollar
marketing budget alone according to this Next-Gen article.
The Views
werd
Sitting around waiting on some final offers
from 3 different places on hosting my page. I bought a huge cardboard box for myself and
spotted a good parking lot just a few blocks away in case things dont work out. (It's a
joke mom, dont worry. its actually one of those rubbermaid boxes, none of that cardboard
stuff for me.)
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