go to www.shugashack.com for up to date news.
| Saturday, March 13 |
Spectra sees VideoPort [11:00 pm] - Marcus 'Majesty' Yam
While Canopus 3D cards have been discontinued in
North America, they have decided make good on their VideoPort 600. The VP600 is a special
5.25" drivebay video-in for the Specta 2500/3200 for those who of you who want to
make and edit your own vile home videos. Available directly through the factory store
beginning in April. Canopus also mentioned that they are planning on futhering driver
updates for their discontinued line. Thanks go out to Purified3D.
EA 64man Demos [10:30 pm] - Marcus 'Majesty' Yam
First group of demos have been released on the Cyber Athlete FTP. <grumble...stupid
.gz> UPDATE: Thanks to Six88 and Jeff for telling me to just rename .gz to .dm2 and
then it's all good! And check out more demos in
the root.
Hook answers the masses [6:00 pm] - Marcus 'Majesty' Yam
Brian goes through his routine and has once again updated the .plan
answering his bombs of email on 3D cards (not a religion).
1. "What clock speed/brand TNT2 were you using and why was it not as fast as everyone expects?"
This was a reference board TNT2 running at a fairly low clock speed, so it future production boards should be a bit faster. The performance at 640x480 is primarily limited by throughput (i.e. CPU and driver), not by fill rate, thus the similar scores for TNT and TNT2 at 640x480. If you look at the scores at 1600x1200, you'll note that TNT2 is over 50% than TNT in terms of fill rate.
2. "Was that a V2 or V2 SLI? If not an SLI, why not?"
It was a regular Diamond Monster3D V2, nothing special. We didn't run in V2 SLI configuration because we couldn't find where our other V2 boards were last night. I'll probably go buy another Monster3D II and do an SLI test for the next round of benchmarks.
3. "Why were you using different texture depths for TNT2 and Rage128?"
Because there's a bug in the ATI Rage128 ICD that makes it only download 16-bit textures. They will have this fixed shortly. The reason I quoted 32-bpp texture numbers for the TNT2 is that there was no discernable difference in performance between the two, so I quoted the test with the higher image quality.
4. "What were you doing about V2's max texture size limitation of 256x256?"
The tests were run with gl_picmip 1 so that all the cards would have a fair playing ground. All tests were also done at fullscreen and with vsync disabled if possible.
Yet more TNT2 [4:00 pm] - Marcus 'Majesty' Yam
Sharky tells me he has done some (CPU-crazy) Crusher
and Blowout timedemos with the
TNT2 going head to head with the 3500. 4Gamers/3Dgen has a small tech page rounding up the
features.
Brian Hook amazed and giddy [5:30 am] - Marcus 'Majesty' Yam
Yeah, the man said so himself! On top of that, he's
ALSO in a good (better at least) mood! What are the chances?! Oh right, he's got this pretty cool
.plan update that mentions Quake3Arena benchmarks with Voodoo2, Rage128, TNT, and
TNT2.
We ran some benchmarks tonight testing out some of our newer optimizations for Quake3, and decided to compare the top four accelerators that we consider relevant: Voodoo2 (for obvious reasons), ATI Rage128, and the NVidia RivaTNT and RivaTNT2.
We tested 640x480x16bpp very thoroughly, since this was the lowest common denominator among the accelerators, however we also made a few tests at 1600x1200x16bpp to test fill rate and 640x480x32bpp to test likely operating conditions. Tests were run on a best case machine, a P3/500.
640x480x16bpp (16-bit textures):
RivaTNT2 - 50.7
Rage128 - 48.1
RivaTNT - 48.0
Voodoo2 - 44.7 (Ed: HOLY SHIT THAT'S GOOD!)
640x480x32bpp:
Rage128 - 47.0 (16-bit textures)
RivaTNT2 - 43.7 (32-bit textures)
RivaTNT - untested
Voodoo2 - N/A
1600x1200x16bpp (16-bit textures):
RivaTNT2 - 18.1
Rage128 - 15.1
RivaTNT - 11.7
Voodoo2 - N/A
Well I'll be damned, 3Dfx does have an acceptable Open GL ICD in the works! Have thoughts and opinions to share? Quake3 Messageboard.
Diamond lineup (some more TNT2) [4:00 am] - Marcus 'Majesty' Yam
Eric of FG got his hands on the FULL
specsheets of the new Diamond Stealth III S520, Stealth III S540 and the Viper V770
and the V770 Gamers edition which will feature a higher clockspeed. Mmm, I want one.
Seriously, it's out [12:00 am] - Marcus 'Majesty' Yam
Carrying this over from yesterday, but I think it's
pretty big news considering we've been waiting for quite some time now. Here are a couple mirrors. And here are some DL
links:
Love it? Hate it? Post it on the Daikatana messageboard
Views [3:55 am] - Marcus 'Majesty' Yam
56kbps (modem, single ISDN): [stream] [download ZIP] (246KB)
80kbps (dual ISDN, slow cable, slow xDSL): [stream] [download ZIP] (576KB)
220kbps (ethernet, fast cable, T3): [stream] [download ZIP] (1.54MB)
Tech [2:55 am] - Marcus 'Majesty' Yam
y0!
Maj here (and there)! The two shocking pieces of news
from yesterday would have to be the TNT2 previews and Daikatana demo release. Of course
the mandatory Daikatana/MPlayer tie-in kinda nuked the whole multiplayer aspect
of this multiplayer demo. Has anyone tried jumping with the auto-shotgun thing
(kinda like a rocket jump, but you stay looking down)? You can gain about twice the height
of a regular jump, and thus even extend the length of the leap. Still, there is much of
Daikatana that we have not seen yet, so it's all up in the air. What we know is that
Daikatana exists now.
I'm a 3Dfx shareholder, and I must say that the TNT2 looks excellent (from the Tom and Sharky previews). Right now, I'm just wondering what kind of specs and numbers nVidia is going to include in the press release...TNT's press release was more like a preview of TNT2, knowhadimean? As impressive as TNT2 looks, it might be too early to forget about 3Dfx's bag of tricks ;)
I would like to wish William Ball (Bill's Workshop) best of luck with his future at Creative Labs :)
Steve, you checking up on me? Good luck, and remember: bust a cap!
| Friday, March 12 |
CPL EA Preview [3:30 pm]
Hey, Steve here. As everyone heads down to Dallas for
what many hope to be one of the final Quake2 tournaments, CSN has a preview of the event
raising questions and predictions for the top players of the tourney. I've spent about a
week practicing myself. Shooting for top 16 :)
TNT2
[10:00 am] - Clay
"Huntsman" Mitchell
I want one of these and i haven't even seen a preview
for it. Till now! Sharky
Extreme has a preview of nVidia's underhyped (a first for nvidia! btw, just one
question Sharky, what's a "Thrma;;u"? -Maj),
super complete 2D/3D chipset. Sharky's Benchmarks show that its performance is very
close to that of the Voodoo3 3500. It's gonna be a toss up kids. And everybody wins.
Toms Hardware also has a preview up of the TNT2. He and Sharky concur. TNT2 rocks the house!
Drakan Engine Licensing [10:00 am] - Clay "Huntsman" Mitchell
Wanna fulfill your life long dream of making your own
game? Next Generation has an article
up about licensing Surreal Software's Drakan engine.
Ritual Videos [10:00 am] - Clay "Huntsman" Mitchell
The G's over at Ritualistic
have a Capture The
Flag Video with Interviews, ingame footage and if you are lucky, maybe a bit of
Levelord pr0n.
Go Tank Racer! [10:00 am] - Clay "Huntsman" Mitchell
3DFiles is letting everybody know Grolier has
released a demo of Tank Racer.
Weighing in at a lowly 8MB, you get to blow up anything and everything. Sounds like fun,
no?
Tech Jivin' [10:00 am] - Clay "Huntsman" Mitchell
werd
Sup guys, sTeve is off somewhere doing something.
Drug dealing most likely. Since Mr. Yam (MajestY) sleeps till about 2 in the afternoon (if
at all) I got updating duty. At least I get to babble in "werd"! By the way, if
you didn't see the Star Wars
trailer, you're a big poo head. Its grade A 100% certified l33t.
| Thursday, March 11 |
Wheel of Time [7:45 pm]
The Legend Entertainment Wheel of Time website has a new design going on
which is looking pretty smoove. There are some new screenshots as well as video footage
that Blue spotted. Here are 3 of the shots, not sure
which ones are new cuz I'm dumb. Demandred over at World
of Dreams is slacking!
Here are the links to the Video courtesy of 3DN
56kbps (modem, single ISDN): [stream] [download ZIP] (264KB)
80kbps (dual ISDN, slow cable, slow xDSL): [stream] [download ZIP] (605KB)
220kbps (ethernet, fast cable, T3): [stream] [download ZIP] (1.54MB)
Vampire: The Masquerade [7:45 pm]
If you checked out the latest CGW you probably saw a
that pretty cool article giving a preview of things to come from Nihilistic and their Vampire:The Masqerade game. The aCtivision website has gone live with a section
dedicated to the title now:
We've just put the first part of the Vampire: The Masquerade web site online. V:TM is the latest Action RPG from Nihilistic Software, and was recently unveiled in the April issue of CGW. The site contains some info about the game, including some new screenshots. It can be found here.
Whew, Finished! [6:35 pm]
Thanks to everyone that has been beating on the messageboards, the new back-end is completed and
online. Everything is now faster and more extensible. Our main hax0r Sander did an
excellent job. Look for a purtier interface in the next week. The Quake3 and Daikatana boards are entirely
worth checking out. I've got to get back to practicing Quake2 now for the tournament
starting tomorrow. :)
Anachronox [4:45 pm]
The Ion Storm page
has another development update on the Anachronox project. Jake Strider Hughes, the
producer on the project is deep in the development cycle, check out what he has to say:
"What I'm working on right now... Trying, for the life of me, to refrain from jumping over the cubicle next to me and killing Ralph with my bare hands. Seeing the life slowly drain from his body. And maybe then, in his last moments of glorious Life, will he actually open his eyes to look at me. I will be the last thing he sees. This could very well be, one of the greatest moments in history... Ever made!"
TRIBES [4:45 pm]
WarZone has an interview with Tim Gift of Dynamix
asking a number of questions. Here is one of the more interesting ones about the choice to
support 3dfx's Glide API:
... In retrospect, we probably should have developed for OpenGL right from the start. Glide, and our own software engine, guided much of the design of our rendering architecture, some of these early decisions are causing us problems now with OpenGL. We should, of course, have supported either DirectX or OpenGL in the box, shipping only with Glide was not a good move, but we delayed the decision for quite a while. We had a DirectX driver running a one point, had problems with it, and eventually decided to go with OpenGL. Then we ran into OpenGL problems, and out of time, which eventually forced us to leave it out of the shipping product.
aCtivision [4:45 pm]
Saw this one on Blues:
There's an interview
with Pat "CodeKing" Lipo on Cult
Crowd Control, talking to the Raven programmer. They also have news there that Steve
Stringer is leaving Activision/Raven.
Voodoo3 Winners [1:45 pm]
If you entered that Voodoo3 contest that was linked
from my Voodoo3
article/preview the winners have been
announced over at 3dfx. I'm hoping to get to update it a bit with the now known
releases of TNT2 and Savage4 cards.
Rainbow6 [10:25 am]
The guys at Rainbow6 Retreat have posted their weapons guide on the popular game. There
is also a review of the new mission pack for R6 over at 3DGaming.net
Star Wars Trailer [10:25 am]
Absolutely nothing to do with this page, but the 2nd
Star Wars trailer is out. Go
look. Also, saw on Slashdot it will be showing
on Entertainment Tonight tonight. Check your local listings. Thanks Tenken. Here is QuickTime you
might need to play it.
Doom Marine? [2:55 am]
Vaughan Crole was kind enough to forward this email
exchange with John Carmack concerning that nifty DoomMarine screenshot which will
be showing up in Quake3.
Q: Mr Carmack, In the Quake 3 Arena picture you posted to Doomworld, the helmet on the doom model seems to look reflective. Is this the case? Will models include reflective bits on them ? FireMaster
A: Yes, it is reflective (of an environment map, not the actual surroundings, though). You can create per-pixel reflectivity effects with out shader defination files. You can't make it out in the screenshot, but the environment map image is actually an old DOOM screenshot.
- John Carmack
Also, the Quake3 messageboard is filled with chatter as always, Paul Steed from id Software has been nice enough to answer a few questions on the board for us. Here's a couple quotes:
The Doom Guy's weapon is the new rocket launcher. Oh and if you guys like Doom, you'll love Qdude
<snip>
Let's just say Kenneth Scott is the consumate Quake FANatic and the skin he did for the Quake Dude is amazing. Then again you guys need to give Kenneth a big round of applause for ALL his skins. He busts his ass every day and the guy's work is making me look as good as Adrian did in Q2.
As far as curved surfaces go, there aren't any on the models. You're just seeing a great combination of modeling, skinning and rendering from the people who do it somewhat competently ;]
Speaking of the boards, Sander has completed a code re-write for the boards but none of us seem to be able to come up with a good looking color/table layout. If you have some spare time and feel like taking a shot at a messageboard make-over, feel free to zip up the html and fire it my way. Just stick to the split frame thing cuz I like it. :)
SHOGO v2.2 Patch [2:55 am]
For those of you playing SHOGO the latest patch from Monolith has been released with the standard set of fixes
and enhancement. Check out the shogo-mad page
for downloads and details. The folks at Planetshogo
of course have more information as well. 3DNow! suppport, A3D, and all the cool extra
toys.
Views [2:55 am]
Tech [2:55 am]
Josh Maizel wrote in to provide some more interesting information about AMD's fab situation, including this lovely link to AMD's info. As it turns out, AMD announced yesterday that it has signed a two-year foundry agreement with IBM.
werd
Hrm, I keep staying up late. What's up with that?
| Wednesday, March 10 |
Doom Marine in Quake3 [YESTERDAY]
Carried over from yesterday cuz it's cool: DoomWorld has gotten a hold of a screenshot of the DoomMarine model
which has found it's way into Quake3 courtesy of Paul Steed. Check it out. Thanks to
SailorScout from PlanetFortress for the word.
Feel free to post your comments on the Quake3 Messageboard (uhm...link
fixed for the second time now -Maj)
Daikatana & EA [4:25 pm]
I've just gotten word that the Daikatana tournament is no
longer cancelled and will be held after all. Here is a quote from CPL. There is also a .plan
update from John Romero.
"The Daikatana Tournament has been reinstated. An official announcement from ION Storm is forthcoming."
The Cyberathlete folks also sent out a summary of the events to be held at the upcoming CPL Quake2 tournament here in Dallas starting Friday.
Starsiege TRIBES Tourney, Valve's TFC Tourney, Mortyr Tourney, Redline & Slave Zero showing on 8 player LAN, Requiem on a 8 player LAN, and all the new hardware being shown off by Creative, Dell, and 3dfx.
KingPin AVI [3:15 pm]
Well, no demo just yet but you can check out this new AVI with footage from KingPin over
at Gangland.org. Here is a description:
We set up a little test the other night with 16 enemies running around on the street all trying to kill each other. It turned out to be a pretty cool little simulation, so I snagged it on tape and made an AVI out of it. Thought everybody might like to see how the characters look in motion. The accompanying screenshot was taken during the same simulation to show off the visual quality; the black "letterbox" bars at the top and bottom were added by me
Some alternate downloads:
56kbps (modem, single ISDN): [stream] [download ZIP] (44KB)
80kbps (dual ISDN, slow cable, slow xDSL): [stream] [download ZIP] (104KB)
220kbps (ethernet, fast cable, T3): [stream] [download ZIP] (214KB)
Mr. Smart Guy [3:05 pm]
Not sure how you should lead your life? Feeling lost or
confused? I'll sit down with you and
explain it all, serving as your guiding light to success and wisdom. You can trust
me...
Unreal & Star Wars? [2:05 pm]
Check it out, AGN3D spotted
this information that Infinite Machine will
be licensing the Unreal technology to do a 3rd person 3D game. Infinite Machines is
comprised of several ex-Lucas Arts Employees. Check out Jeremy's summary:
Infinite Machine announced that it is licensing Epic Games' Unreal(TM) gaming engine for its upcoming third-person 3D action shooter. The game will be published by GT Interactive Software Corp. and released in 2000. For those of you not familiar with Infinite Machine, they are the company founded by the developer of Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight. This announcement makes for the 18th game to be based on the Unreal engine.
More Daikatana [9:45 am]
Well I'm sure everyone noticed... Still no Daikatana demo.
However a couple of Ion Storm employees were kind enough to share with us on the messageboard just what is
going on over there to give us a bit of insight. Here is part of one of the few Kelly
Hoerner posts to the board:
... I'll explain a little something about how this piece of development works. We give a version to Mplayer, they update the installer, port the code to Solaris (their UNIX based server code), distribute the new version to their master servers, update the patching system for the beta testers, and then get feedback from the testers. If there is any problem we fix it and then the whole process is started over again. (About two days) Meanwhile, we sneak in all the new features we can. That's the way it works.
<snip>
Kelly also mentions the choice of releasing the demo on MPlayer. On top of that there is a post by Xcalibur of Ion Storm answering a couple of questions about map cycling and carrying weapons between time periods in the full version of Daikatana. Check out the Daikatana messageboard, there are a number of posts with some good info. Speaking of Ion Storm Dan Hammans (aka RIX) has recently landed a job over at Ion. Here is word straight from Dan:
I'm working in the Ion Storm QA department, currently working on the Daikatana MPlayer demo.
Hardware Buyer Guide [10:35 am]
Looking for a second opinion on what the best PC rigs are? ArsTechnica has a nice buyer guide giving their recommendations
for what parts for a PC are the best going from motherboards to CD-ROM drives. It's about
to start piecing together that new machine for Quake3 isnt it? Check out the Shack Hardware guide as well.
Epic Interviews [9:45 am]
Got a pair of interviews with Epic employees who are working on Unreal Tournament
for ya. I've heard a few things through the grapevine about this game and it's sounding
pretty good. Can't say I was a fan of the weapons much, blah blah here are the interviews
for ya:
Views [10:25 am]
Tech [10:25 am]
Gaming [10:25 am]
werd
All my email to AOL.com email accounts seems to be bouncing.
Sorry to everyone who has emailed me in the past couple of days from that domain. I'll try
and track down whats up today.
| Tuesday, March 9 |
Daikatana & CPL [7:15 pm]
The Daikatana Tournament at Extreme Anihilation, has unfortunately been
cancelled. Damn I was signed up too. Here is the official word from Mike Breslin of ION Storm. No word on if this has any relation to the
upcoming MPlayer demo being hammered on over at Ion Storm which was supposed to be out
last month.
"Unfortunately Ion Storm will not be able to participate in this weekend's CPL tournament. We are currently making the last minute tweaks and changes to the M-Player Daikatana Deathmatch demo. In doing so, Ion Storm does not have the bandwidth to participate in this weekend's tournament. Ion Storm will definitely be working with the CPL in the near future and looks forward to the start of a great relationship."
TNT Stuff [5:25 pm]
4Gamers.net has a new preview of the TNT2. Check out the 3DHardware.net preview as well.
Also, here you go, new drivers for those of you lucky enough to own one of those Canopus made TNT cards. Thanks to Purified3D
S25W9x20201.exe - 5.46Mb - full blown package.
S25202drvs.exe - 920Kb - only the new stuff.
Wheel of Time [3:55 pm]
The weekly development
update over at the Legend Entertainment Wheel of
Time page has been posted. It's always interesting to see stuff like this from game
developers, which more of them would do it. :) Thanks Demandred BORK BORK BORK
The level designers have put a lot of spit and polish on a lot of levels. Scott has opened up "The Approach to the FoF", James has added a bunch to "The Approach to SL", Warren has put a lot of stuff into "The Portal Stone World", and Tim has spread his time throughout "The Vault", "The Streets of SL", and "The Inner Sanctum." Although it's clear that there's some work left on each, they've all come a long way, and they're looking mighty fine.
TF Classic @ EA [11:55 am]
Check this out, finally everyone will get a good look at
Team Fortress Classic. Here is a bit of the PR announcing the mod will be
showing at the upcoming CPL event in a
few days in Dallas.
Kirkland, WA - March 9, 1999 - Valve L.L.C and Sierra Studios today announced that Team Fortress Classic preview tournaments will be held at the Extreme Annihilation gaming event in Dallas, Texas, March 12-14.
TRIBES [1:45 pm]
What's in the future for TRIBES? The TRIBES-Status page
has been updated with info on the soon to be released tools set for the game as well as
what is on the horizon for future stuff to be released. As always Planetstarsiege is on top of things.
Two major things on the horizon right now for TRIBES are the next version of the OpenGL drivers, and the big release of the mission building tools. The OpenGL stuff pretty much speaks for itself, so I'll tell you a little about the tools package. This is going to consist of an update to the TRIBES executable itself, as well as several "standalone" tool programs. The built-in mission editor will be snazzified, including a new "Terrain Wizard" that makes constructing new landscapes simple. The other tools included will allow you to process your own 24-bit source art for use in the game, so you can create your own tribe's logos to appear on bases and other buildings as well as a veritible passel of other uses. And naturally, the team is casting their collective eyes towards the horizon and the rich pastures available for "TRIBES: The Next Game".
Heretic2 EP [1:45 pm]
Thorson over at RavenGames
sent out this little update which was originally in Steve
Stringer's .plan update saying that work still continues on bug testing the Heretic2
free expansion pack from Raven.
Just to let everyone know, we're still pounding on the EP. The code still has a few bugs, and we're doing our best to test the game thoroughly before releasing it. I understand that many of you have been waiting for the EP for quite some time, but the simple fact is that it's not ready yet. I certainly empathize with everyone's dismay at how long this has taken; trust me, no one wants this out more than we do. But it has to be right.We've all been burned in the past by buggy software released prematurely. I don't want that to happen here. Not on my watch.
Questions? Comments? Flames? =)
E-mail me at sstringer@activision.com. Thorson thorson@ravengames.com
Messageboards [12:55 am]
The puds have been working overtime to stabilize the Quake3 and Daikatana messageboards. Things have been running smoothly for a couple of days
now so I figured now was an ok time to send you guys over to bang on them a bit. Both
boards are frequented by the developers of the respective games, so feel free to share
your 2 cents and be heard.
update: Well, stable.. just a bit slow now. :)
Clock Locking Beats [10:05 am]
ArsTechnica has posted a follow-up to their hit single Clock and Locking the
P2&P3 which should answer a few questions for those of you wishing to know stuff.
The fact that the PIII core is not locked to a specific speed, but to a range of speeds, shows that my concerns about the feasibility of building an on-die, temperature-independent bus lock were justified. For those of you who read the earlier article, you'll recall that I stated that any bus-locking scheme implemented on-die would run into heat-related accuracy problems. This appears to be the case on the PIII, though they've got the accuracy problem under control enough to make an on-die bus lock feasible. I have some insight on how Intel might have accomplished this task.
Ass-Wack Links [11:35 am]
I've upddated the ever popular weekly feature of wackass links. As always thanks to
everyone who emails those things in, It's you guys that keep this thing going. :)
id Linux Products [10:05 am]
Seems a few people are making a fuss about what was already
covered in my Quake3
& Linux article. Other id Software products being ported and sold on the linux
platform. Here is what Zoid said on page3:
We are currently working on getting out a product containing Quake and both mission packs (Hipnotic/Ritual and Rogue) and another box with Quake2 and both mission packs (Xatrix and Rogue) out for Linux. I am very curious to see how this product performs in the market.
Daikatana Tonight? [1:35 am]
It looks like the Daikatana demo is getting pushed back a
bit more than anticipated mostly due to the arrangement that was made with MPlayer for the
exclusive demo release. Here is what John Romero had to say on the latest happenings.
Thanks RB-Anubis
John Romero: Well, we aren't able to get the demo out today because MPlayer needs to keep testing it up through tomorrow.... yes, tomorrow (Tuesday) night. They are testing it right this moment and so are we. Everything is looking great -- just some last minute stuff. See, their Daikatana servers are Solaris machines so they have to take our code and merge it with their Solaris codebase they developed. It takes a bit of work to get everything up to date and synchronized..
DirectX 7 takes shape [2:05 am] - Marcus 'Majesty' Yam
DirectX has come a long way from total suck to pretty good.
Loyd Case (of G-Spot;) has some details about MS's update to
the API.
DirectX 7.0 is taking shape very nicely. Bachus noted that Microsoft was still on track for delivering the first beta in the March/April time frame, with the final product shipping by mid to late summer. "It's pretty much the same schedule as any other year," he noted.
Most of the development work for DirectX 7.0 is taking place on beta versions of Windows 2000. In fact, Windows 2000 is the target platform for game developers. "The goal is for developers to use Windows 2000 for the development platform but still target the titles for Windows 95/98."
Soldier of Fortune Shots [1:35 am]
The folks at Soldier-of-Fortune.com are getting a hold of a
screenshot a day all week of the Raven Software Quake2 engine based title. Check out the first shot
right here.
Vampire Info [1:35 am]
Robert Huebner of Nihilistic made a post to their
own messageboards giving out some specs on the 3D game they are working on. Have a
look at the latest CGW for a good article with info as well. Here is a bit of what Rob had
to say. Saw that on AGN3D
Of course the polygon count has gone way up too.. In Jedi I think Kyle had around 350 polygons at his highest setting, in this game we've got characters that are well over 1000 polygons. We're using skeleton animations, of course, so you can expect lots of different animations and unlimited interpolation of frames, so the animations are all very fluid and smooth. We also switched from 3DStudio to Alias/Maya for modeling, which seems to be a more powerful tool, overall. And of course those annoying animation glitches with the joints going the wrong way sometimes as in Jedi are history, since the animations are stored in a different format now that prevents that sort of error.
Tech [10:05 am]
- Multiple texture support (yep - like a TNT/Voodoo2)
- 32bit colour fillrate performance is nearly identical to 16bit color, as fast if not slightly faster than Rage128
- FULL HARDWARE TRUE bump mapping support (you just wait - THIS will be the baby)
- Stencil buffer
- It's capable of playing Quake2 in 32bits color slightly faster than a Voodoo2 in 16bits colour, fast enough for 1024*768*32 at very good frame rates. From what I've read of the TNT2 the G400 should probably be faster yet look much better.
werd
Was up past my bed time last night, doh!
| Monday, March 8 |
TNT2 [5:55
pm]
3DHardware.net has put together a great new article
giving out all the specs of the nVidia TNT2 3D accelerator chipset which we should be
hearing a bit more about. The article entitled " nVidia TNT2 - Demystified" does
just that.
We were invited over by Creative Labs' offices in Stockholm for a preview of their TNT2 based graphics board - the 3DBlaster TNT2. The room was fairly small with two monitors located at one end of the conference table. The TNT2 we were shown was an Alpha Engineering board...
3DMark 99 MAX [5:55 pm]
GameCenter has the "exclusive download" of 3DMark99 now available.
If you are looking to benchmark that PC this it the file for you. It's about 18megs though
so go make some bagels while you wait. Here
is the link. You can also get it from the 3DMark download page.
The new 3DMark 99 adds the AMD 3DNow! and Intel Pentium III Streaming SIMD Extensions to its CPU optimizations, so that gamers can compare how well the new processors are performing. In a released statement, Aki Jarvilehto, managing director of Futuremark, stated, "For the first time ever we can offer users real proof of the power of SIMD instructions and tools that offer Internet interaction."
Raven's New Game [5:55 pm]
The guys behind those cool Heretic and Hexen games are doing
a Star Trek game if you can believe it. Here is the announcement from Brian Raffel. The
first public showing of the game will be at E3 in LA this May.
I am pleased to announce that Raven Software will be developing a Star Trek: Voyager game for Activision. The title will encompass the attributes of both intense first-person shooter action and team oriented combat, as you play the role of a security officer fighting alongside your fellow security team members. Drawing from the rich Star Trek universe, we will be focusing our efforts into creating the most amazing first-person shooter yet, with new and intriguing gameplay elements. We are developing new AI and Scripting systems so that the NPC's and enemies will intelligently react to their surroundings and situation. At this time we are in the early stages of development and more information will be forthcoming.
Duke4 [5:00 pm]
Georgy B. over at 3DRealms has
a .plan update with a status update on just what the 3DRealms guys are up to on the
Duke4ever project we are all antsy to see.
Well we finally almost have the motion capture room setup. The ceiling has been yanked (so we can jump up and no hit our heads) and the stage will be installed tomorrow. Then we just setup the equipment (We opted for the MotionStar Wireless system from Ascension), calibrate it and start capturing motions for the game. The 3 animators (Chris, Allen and David) are in Canada now getting training on the mo-cap cleanup software we're using (Kaydara FilmBox).
Chris Hargrove already has the full skeletal system in the game and it all works great. A character can be doing his animations and you can use the bones in the skeleton to override various animations like: Have enemies heads track Duke's position, shoot them in the shoulder and they can recoil, independent things like ponytails or tails, while doing another animations.
We've spent a good deal of time re-working Unreal's character system, and it's time for it to all start paying off. Once you have skeletal control and motion capture data, putting animations in the game becomes trivial (the cleanup is very minor with the right software), and capturing complex motions like strippers becomes easy ;)
Add to this, a fully dynamic real-time LOD system for every mesh in the game, and you have a character system that we are very, very happy with
Goerge also mentions a poll over at GameSpot UK between TF2 and Duke4. I cant say I see any similarity between the two titles but what the hell.
Suck? [5:00 pm]
Suck! Well 2 of my hours were compromised dealing with the
fuggin phone company today, so of course I lead off the suckage of the week with some pissing and moaning about that.
New LithTech Game [3:45 pm]
Six Shooter Studios
has announced High Noon, a new old-western theme 3D game being built around the licensed
LithTech engine technology from Monolith. Here is the quote thanks to VE for the news:
High Noon is a first-person action/adventure game set in the Wild West that combines the action of a game like Half-Life with Zelda-style adventure elements. The single-player game will feature a dynamic storyline that lets players choose the morality of their character and play accordingly. Its online component will be massively multiplayer, wherein scripted events draw individual characters into groups that fight the good, or the bad fight
Speaking of Monolith, PlanetBlood has a bit of info from Jason Hall stating the Blood2 source is on it's way out and the Nightmare Add-On is close as well, considered to be "quite p1mp"
More GLTRIBES [2:45 pm]
The Datumplane guys have been working overtime on the OpenGL FAQ for TRIBES which
should address any other problems you guys havent been able to solve.
New A3D Drivers [2:45 pm]
The Aureal folks have
released some new drivers (hit the
index, there are a few different ones) as well as an updated SDK for their 3D
audio API. If you own one of those Vortex2 sound cards and wanna bust out with some
Half-Life in A3D mode these are for you. Saw that on Blues
Daikatana Demo [11:45 am]
Eric Smith, lead artist on the Daikatana project at Ion Storm had this short update. 8 days after the
latest deadline, but hey hopefully it was worth the wait. I'll have more info as soon as
it's available. Also a couple of quotes from John Romero who made a brief appearance on
IRC. thanks RB-Anubis
Eric Smith: Shhh...the DK M-Player Demo is out the door
John Romero: The demo will most likely be available tonight....TONS of final testing is happening right now! :) Remember, the demo is a DEATHMATCH ONLY demo that is ONLY playable on MPlayer...
Tim Sweeney [9:41 am]
Arcadia got
a hold of the lead programmer for Epic now working on Unreal Tournament for an interview. Here is Tim's
quick summary of just what those kids are up to:
<snip>
Playing Unreal Tournament against bots is a wholly new experience. Playing Domination and CTF with a couple bots on my team, against an opposing team of 3 bots, is much more engaging than deathmatch. It's a completely new feel; I can remember my rage when an enemy killed my teammate (a bot) a couple seconds before she reached our base with the enemy flag...she goes down screaming, and my only thought was, "You bastard, you killed her! You killed my teammate. You will PAY!"
Scott Miller [9:21 am]
SamHell sends word that he's got a new interview with sCott Miller of Apogee/3DRealms
Q: Can we anticipate a demo of Duke Nukem 4 before the game hits the shelves? If so, what will it offer (multiplayer support, number of levels, etc.)?
A: Our plan is to release a demo about one to two weeks before the game itself. And the demo will not be more than a level or two. We don't want to give away too much of the game for free, but from what we do give away you'll be able to tell how cool the game is.
SCSI or IDE? [9:21 am]
ArsTechnica is
going just goofy with comparisons. Considering the new UltraDMA 66 protocol is SCSI still
the champ? Check out DamageLabs
and throw in your 2 cents.
I think that you are underestimating the benefits of scsi. CPU utilization is not just as low with ATA, actually it is a lot higher. As you may or may not know, SCSI has a dedicated RISC processor that handles drive ops. This leads to a capability of 256 simultaneous ops, plus drastically reduced processor time. This makes it totally ideal for multitasking environments like win98, the choice of many a gamer.
What to Buy? [YESTERDAY] - Clay
"Huntsman" Mitchell
Yep, you guessed it, the hardware
pages have been updated. Got a few things here and there to check out. Just a
reminder, when you buy over the internet, there is always the small chance you could run
into trouble with a "company" trying to rip you off. Use common sense when
purchasing anything over the internet. If you call a new place and they sound like there
is something fishy going on, just be wary. Everyone at the shack hates to see bad things
happen to people, so just keep your eyes open when making online purchases.
Views [12:05 am]
Tech [12:05 am]
Where 3D Mark 99 was a reliable waterhole in a desert of fata morgana testing, 3D Mark 99 MAX has been made the oasis that no caravan can afford not to visit. Its subtle excertion of powerful force by demonstrating what floating point SIMD can accomplish may be - hands down - the single most valuable contribution to PC gaming this year
Gaming [12:05 am]
werd
<insert generic apology for server downtime> Bah. What
a pain in the ass.
| Sunday, March 7 |
Quake3 & Linux [11:25 am]
A bit of reaction has come out from the recent Quake3 & Linux article
that went up here on Friday. In case there was any confusion though if you purchase
one of the 3 versions of the game, the other 2 OS executables will be available for
download. Sorry about not including that in the original article.
KingPin Demo? [11:25 am]
Planetkingpin as
well as Gangland.org have some follow up on that spoof
KingPin demo announcement yesterday with word from actual Xatrix employees on the plans
for the real demo release. It looks like the demo will be single player only so we have to
wait for the full game to crack heads among friends. Here is part of the note from PK:
There are still some details that need to be taken care of, but all in all the first episode (which makes up the demo) is looking great. Remember, we have added a ton of new features to the QII engine and the FPS genre in general, so its a bit more laborious to make sure that everything is working properly. The other good news is that the first episode represents about 85% of all of the mechanical elements that are in the game, so future scenaric coding is all based on the existing code-base.
We want to make sure that everything is "right" for the demo, so we're taking the amount of time that is necessary to get it done; no more and no less. We will, of course, keep you guys posted as to the progress.
SlaveZero [11:25 am]
Word from SharkyExtreme
is that SlaveZero will be shipping in late June or early July from Accolade.
During our recent meeting with Accolade, we were also given a brief showing of Slave Zero, their 3rd person giant robot shooter. We were told that the game should be ready to ship by the end of June/July
Views [11:25 am]
Tech [11:25 am]
werd
It's a weekend.. Go relax. I've got some more cool stuff
planned for you guys during the week. Damn server is down yet again as I write this.
Great...
Huntsman should be updating the hardware pages today, keep your eye on that.
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