go to www.shugashack.com for up to date news.
| Saturday, March 8, 1999 |
3dfx ICD Quake3 Drivers [5:55 pm]
Thanks to Derek Mann for the big news that 3dfx has finally released the
ICD for their Voodoo3, Voodoo2, Voodoo Rush, and Voodoo Graphics cards. Check it out,
and have a look at the "known issues"
The driver kits on this page include the 3dfx OpenGLŽ ICD driver and have been tested for compatibility with Quake3 only. We are hard at work on a general release for these kits, so visit this url regularly for new updates. In addition, we are working with idŽ to include future versions of all 3dfx driver kits in the next release of GLSetup.
- Voodoo3 Windows 9x Retail
- Voodoo2 Windows 9x Driver
- Voodoo Rush Windows 9x Driver
- Voodoo Graphics Windows 9x Driver
Speaking of files, for the curious here is a sample file template I've pretty much settled on for the new files section.
Drakan [1:15 pm]
FiringSquad has posted a new article talking with the guys from
Surreal Software about their exciting looking 3rd person riding dragons and exploring
caves 3rd person POV game.
Our engine and tools are completely custom. We've written the Riot Engine (the engine Drakan is running) over 4 years to be incredibly flexible and object-oriented. Object-oriented technology allows us to build effects and other AI in the game by creating generic, independent modules (entities) that can be connected together to create more complex behaviors.
FAKK2 Shot [12:15 pm]
I just noticed this preview over on GameSpot of Ritual's Quake3 engine based
FAKK2 project. Along with the ho-hum standard summary of what they are up to it also
includes a 640x480
screenshot of the game. Most of the article is just going over the same stuff you can
find in the latest issue of CGW though. From what I've seen of FAKK2 the shot is pretty
old. (Probably 2+ months)
More System Shock2 [12:15 pm]
If the Next-Generation preview of
SystemShock2 wasnt enough for you, the guys at AVault have gotten a hold of
some video footage of the game for ya to chew on as well.
Download the 3.3 minute, 17.2 MB movie here.
View the first set of screenshots here.
View the second set of screenshots here
Alienware PGC [12:15 pm]
Looks like the Alienware guys are gonna be showing off a TNT2
Ultra and a V3 2000 paired up in PGC mode at E3 next week accoriding to GameSpot.
So how much are gamers expected to pay for this lightning-fast package? While official pricing hasn't been made available yet, Alex Aguila, Alienware's national sales director, told GameSpot News that a US$300 price point, plus or minus a few dollars, is an accurate estimation. A final amount will be decided upon at a later date, however.
GameSpot News has also learned that Alienware will soon offer a downloadable driver, which will let its PGC Voodoo3 2000 boards be used in conjunction with any nVidia TNT2-powered AGP video card. Again, no price has been decided on for this download, but Alienware hinted at a possible US$20 figure.
Carmack on Q3Test [5:15 am]
John Carmack has another .plan
update with a realistic/honest run down of the chances of the Win32 version of Q3Test
coming out this Sunday, with it possibly slipping into the Monday area.
There is one must-fix issue and a couple smaller issues remaining before the release candidate build, then we have to do a lot of testing on it. I made a lot of significant changes in the last week, and I'm sure there are some things we still need to sort out before we inflict it on the general public.
We are aiming for sunday, but understand that that means sunday evening, not sunday morning. If saturday night / sunday morning testing on the release candidate turns up significant problems, we will put off the release until they are fixed. That could be later sunday night, or it might not make it until monday night.
The previous release delays for win32 were issues out of our control, but this release rests squarely on me. The content and other issues are ready, but we still need to make sure all the new code is solid.
He also updated the .plan with some more work log stuff covering some work on sunlight, and here is the big one:
* removed footsteps on non-metalic and non-water surfaces
Rejoice! Everyone get down on your knees and be thankful! No more STINKING footsteps wherever you go! They are still there for metal and water surfaces, but that's just cool. This one makes my day. Wee!
Sweeney on Unreal [6:15 am]
Got another Technology
Page update from Tim Sweeney talking about public reaction to the recently released
224 patch that was delivered in such a timely fashion. (heh) Here's a bit of it:
All the known server-crashing problems in 224 have been fixed and are in internal testing now. Stability has improved quite a bit. There is still significantly higher server CPU usage in 224 compared to 220 on heavily populated servers, and I'm still tracking this down. The Direct3D code has been cleaned up and optimized a bit, giving a few FPS improvement on the Riva TNT, with support for detail textures now enabled. 225 will include the new D3D driver, and the 225 public source release will include the source.
Future of 3D Graphics [6:15 am]
GameSpot has fired up a pretty darn good article
taking a look at our own little future of the 3D graphics market. The software, the
hardware, and everything in between. Have a look.
Better Rendering
It's likely that a number of the future accelerators will have four or even more rendering pipelines. To put this in perspective, the RIVA TNT and Voodoo3 have dual rendering pipelines. Since these parts will probably be even higher-density chips - a 0.22 micron or smaller semiconductor process is likely to be used - they'll also clock faster. A rough, back-of-the-envelope calculation reveals that four rendering pipes running at 225MHz will yield a fill rate of roughly 900 megapixels per second! Compare that with the 366 megapixels per second of the Voodoo3 model 3500.
Views [6:25 am]
Tech [6:25 am]
Gaming Etc [6:25 am]
werd
Damn, just when I'm starting to get comfortable in
Linux the Win32 Q3Test is about to come out. I'm pretty happy with RH6.0 though and I do
believe it will actually be staying on my hd even after the release.
I've finally figured out the layout/format for the new files section here. It's going to be a couple of days project getting the initial groundwork done, but I really think you guys will be happy with it once I'm finished. Hopefully I can dig up Huntsman to help out this weekend.
| Friday, March 7, 1999 |
Win32 Q3Test and Accelerators [9:55 pm]
Brian Hook has yet another .plan
update listing off all of the 3D accelerators that Q3Test will work with when it is
(hopefully) released this weekend. There is also a heck of a lot more in the update
talking about CPU support etc. Here are the boards that will be supported for sure:
3Dfx Voodoo Graphics , 3Dfx Voodoo2 , 3Dfx Voodoo2 SLI , 3Dfx Voodoo3* , 3Dfx Voodoo Rush (tested out of house, but supposedly stable) , 3Dfx Voodoo Banshee , 3DLabs Permedia 2 (ugly, some serious visual artifacts) , ATI Rage Pro (4MB and 8MB) , ATI Rage128 , Intel i740 , Matrox G200 & NVidia Riva128 , NVidia RivaTNT , NVidia RivaTNT2 , Rendition V2x00 (not very fast, but it works) , S3 Savage3
bold = high performance
italic = 32-bit rendering
underline = supports stencil volume shadows
Win32 Q3Test and 3dfx [8:55 pm] - Jack
There's that .plan update! id's Brian Hook updated
with the information that 3dfx will indeed work with the Win32 Q3 Test. Apparently, some
rumors got out that this would not be the case, and this update was meant to correct them.
Here's the update in its entirety:
There was an internal miscommunication here that resulted in the unintentional propagation of incorrect information (gee, how is THAT for convoluted?!). So I'm here to clarify.
In a nutshell, Q3TEST/Win32 WILL support 3Dfx! There was some internal confusion about the matter as we've been wrestling with driver stability and distribution issues (across all chipsets, not just 3Dfx). 3Dfx, especially Marty Franz and Rob Wheeler, have been highly responsive to our needs when it comes to driver robustness, performance, and availability.
So to reiterate: there will be support for 3Dfx, and I believe 3Dfx will be posting Q3TEST compliant drivers on their Web site over the weekend in anticipation of Q3TEST's release.
As an aside, during testing we've found that most of the OpenGL drivers have performed quite well and have shown a remarkable amount of stability. We are getting excellent performance on low end boards such as the Intel i740, NVidia Riva128, Voodoo Graphics, and the ATI Rage Pro. We're extremely encouraged by the solidity of the OpenGL drivers we've seen, and we're also proud that Q3TEST scales so well from low end hardware all the way up to the biggest and baddest new accelerators such as TNT2 and Voodoo3.
Oh, as a second aside, I installed Red Hat 6.0 on my old test machine, and I'm pretty impressed with it. Some talented engineer out there should take up 3Dfx on their job offer to work on Linux OpenGL drivers, since Linux + OpenGL = cost effective OpenGL development workstation.
Nothing [6:40 pm] - Jack
id's Brian Hook updated
his .plan with nothing today:
May 7, 1999
-----------
Sorry, I'm in a wacky mood today. We've got the E3 rush going on here at Ritual, and I worked until 1:30am! Woo hoo!
Win32 Q3Test Sunday? [6:36 pm] - Jack
Friend of the page and id's very own Graeme Devine
updated his .plan with the news that Q3Test for Win32 is planned to be released on
Sunday evening(!). Here's the update:
We're looking to release Q3Test for Win32 on May 19th.
Just kidding.
We're approaching what we consider a good build on Q3Test for Win32, and our current estimate, barring any problems, is that we will release it on Sunday evening. We will release Q3Test updates for Mac and Linux a few hours before Win32 to check for any bonehead issues.
There will be completely new data for this version of the test, old versions will not be compatible with the new version, and old and new servers do not mix.
If things change I'll let you all know. But this is the current plan.
The Quake3 Work Log [12:15 pm]
John Carmack over at id Software musta been workin
late/early.. homeboy just update the old
Quake3 work log with his latest hax0rings
* changed grabbed items to SVF_NOCLIENT instead of EF_NODRAW now that the pickup event is on the player
* clear event flags with event on reset
* move playerstate to netfield bit communication
* fixed configstring delta sequencing issue after initial gamestate
* extended the netgraph: short red lines are missing client to server packets (need to drop 3 in a row)
* extended cg_debugevents
* increased cl_maxpackets to 30
* fixed bug with console field not getting drawwidth set
* fastsky implies noportals
* changed fastsky color
* q3map now fixes tjunctions at fog boundaries
* build optimized tree with visible hulls of sides
* adjusted plane culling to avoid some cracks
* r_facePlaneCull
* fixed too-lax colinear collapse to avoid some cracks
I'll um.. translate this when I figure it all out myself.
Jack? help?
[update - Jack]
Some of these are just guesses, seems like minor bug fixes and tweaking.
* The server no longer sends over ammo pickup events (the client does it).
* Moved some of the net traffic to a different bitstream?
* Fixed a bug with configstrings and delta packets.
* Put in more debugging info.
* Upped the default cl_maxpackets from 20 to 30. I assume this is the number of net packets per frame?
* Console drawing bugs fixed?
* Fastsky won't allow/show through portals?
* Fixed cracking at various places (fog boundaries, plane culling, colinear vertex removing).
* Added a new cvar r_facePlaneCull, maybe it culls all the faces by the frustum planes, instead of just BSP nodes?
New LithTech2 Game [10:15 am]
Word from the guys over at AVault
is that another LithTech2 engine license has gone public, this time around it is the folks
at ASC Games who many of you know are already also working on an Unreal engine based game
(Werewolf: Apocalypse) as well.
More Q3 Ads [YESTERDAY]
Carried over from late last night: X-Human from GZNews was kind enough to send me all the scans of
the PCGamer Quake3 advertisments that are running in this months issue. Check out sho1 , shot2 , shot3 , and shot4. Speaking of
Quake3, the Cow hostage situation
has escelated, here is part of an email I received from Anna Kang of id Software:
Help me save the cow. I want the safe return of the cow! If any little bit of its fluff has been damaged, the terrorists WILL pay! The perpetrators should surrender the moo moo now and get off easy
Anna is offering up her sterling silver Q3 key chain as a bargaining chip to whoever can deliver the cow to her. It's not Q3Test.. but it's a start. :)
update: It looks like the cow has been rescued! Glad nobody got hurt. Of course eL|nukewinter had this ending in mind.
Linux X11Spy For Q3Test [8:25 am]
Finally! X11Spy
is now available for those of you who are running Linux & X wishing to ping all
those servers you see on the Underworld Quake3 server
list. Saw that on Blues
Views [6:25 am]
Tech [6:25 am]
Gaming Etc [6:25 am]
werd
Well, my power supply on my main machine died late
last night while working on completing the Wisdom.. It just went completely flaky. I
messed with it for a couple of hours and even got it to power up once briefly before dying
again. Just added to the frustration I guess. Was cute. I know a pretty good amount about
fixing computers when they have power to them.. but when their is no juice.. helpless.
Gonna run out with Jack and pick up a new case/powersupply in the morning. Pain in the ass... I guess it was a sign when my power flickered on and off from messing with my floppy drive a few days ago eh?
The only good news of the day? GTE finally fixed the DSL here at the house. Only took me 3 days and 15 phone calls to get them to do it! Too bad the DHCP server is still messed up.
Yeah, I'm pissy this morning. eat me.
| Thursday, March 6, 1999 |
TRIBES2 FAQ [10:15 pm]
The Datumplane guys have put together a TRIBES2 FAQ already in anticipation of
the big release from Dynamix early next year.
note: I'm not sure what happened to Shackware today.. (Huntsman?) I'm putting the finishing touches on Wisdom though right now.
Vampire: Masquerade [1:15 pm]
Following up on the screenshots I posted yesterday (shot1 , shot2 , shot3) the guys
at GA-Source have posted an interview
with Ray Gresko, programmer at Nihilistic working on the Vampire: Masquerade project.
btw, you guys might wanna have a look at this Quake3 hostage situation that has developed.
Unreal & Linux [11:15 am]
PlanetUnreal
has word on some instructions for getting Unreal to amazingly enough work under a windows
emulator through Linux since so many of you guys (myself included) have jumped on the
linux bandwagon recently.
KISS! [11:15 am]
AVault has posted a couple of pieces of
concept art from the Third Law Entertainment published by Gathering guys who licensed the LithTech engine from
Monolith to do their game based on the KISS: Psycho Circus universe. (Yeah, the rock
band...)
Waiting for Quake3... [8:15 am]
As we all sit around waiting for the Q3Test I spotted this post on the Q3Messageboard which draws an
interesting comparison for those of you upset about the Mac and Linux releases prior to
the Win32 release.
... It makes your blood boil seeing her hanging out with those dorks Linus and Mac. You know they don't deserve her attention. You keep saying to yourself "that's it, she can go f*ck herself. I'm through with that b*tch!", knowing good and well that you're just being overly jealous. Heck, Linus and Mac are nice enough guys. They rarely get this kind of attention. Let them have their little fling, for what it's worth.. It's meaningless.
<snip>
Max Payne [7:15 am]
GameSpot has
done up a nice looking preview of
Max Payne from Remedy/3DR which from what I've heard wont be showing at the G.O.D.
booth at E3 this year dissapointingly. The guys are obviously pretty far along according
to this GS article as well as the layout in this month's CGW magazine.
Weapons in Max Payne will be strictly real-world stuff. If you're looking for alien death rays and plasma bombs, you're in the wrong place. However, that doesn't mean that the guns available in Max Payne will be without cojones. Take, for example, a fully automatic shotgun that Remedy dubs "The Jackhammer." After seeing this thing in action, I was ready to trade in my BFG on the spot.
Also speaking of games not showing at E3, KingPin might not be showing either according to The Hive.
Mac Q3A OSX Server [7:15 am]
The Omni Group
has posted their official id Software endorsed port of the Quake3 server to Mac OSX
for those of you wishing to be nice enough to run a server for the rest of us out on the
net. Saw that on Blues
TRIBES & TRIBES2 [7:15 am]
The TRIBES Dev page has
been updated with a little bit of info on what the Dynamix
folks plan on showing off for their TRIBES sequel at E3 next week. I'll be there myself so
will make sure and let you guys know how it looked. Thanks Rick
Wow, time flies when you're hard at work. Apologies all around for the lapses of time between updates. The headlines for now are TRIBES 2 E3 DEMO and OPENGL MADNESS. As was announced in a press release recently, TRIBES 2 will be shown at this year's E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) in Los Angeles. A dev team detachment will be present, along with the SUAV, showing off some of the ultra-schwanky (to borrow a Diamondback word) but still top-secret features of T2.
Drakan Demo News [7:15 am]
Surreal Software,
who unlike the Max Payne developers are nice enough to actually show us their game at E3
fired off a bit of email to Billy over at VoodooExtreme
concerning the (hopefully) soon to be released demo of their game Drakan:
The demo will be the first part of one of our worlds/levels (keep in mind - these are HUGE). Gameplay should be around and hour and a half or so, depending on how much you explore vs. blow/chop stuff up. The level begins just after you find Arokh in the mountainous regions of Drakan, so there is a good combination of both ground and air (dragon) combat. There is one NPC/cut scene and two sub-quests. Arokh only has his fire weapon for this demo, which has both a primary fireball and alternate flame breath attack. There are also some juicy secrets with bonus swords and armor. Overall, Rynn can collect around 8 different hand-held weapons, several magic items, and a bow with 2 types of arrows
Views [7:45 am]
Tech [7:45 am]
Gaming Etc [7:45 am]
werd
Shackware is making a comeback!
After a couple of weeks on the down-low Huntsman
is gonna bust out with another issue for all you monkeys who have been itching to buy some
new toys and werent sure what you wanted. Clay is pretty sure he'll get it done this
afternoon so check back and stuff. I'll also have the Wisdom finally
making a return this week as well.
Oh yeah, the new Britney Spears video is supposed to debut on MTV today on the TRL show. Brad sends word that the show is usually on around 3-3.30 range. Grab your remote and your favorite lubricant and have at it!
Ok, so I took a jab at the ICQ resource pig and SailorScout actually did the numbers, so here you go:
According to Norton System Info, ICQ takes up about 8.31 MB with a contact list of about 100 users. Clearing the database history doesn't reduce the amount of RAM taken up; it only speeds up the load time. It also takes up 6 32-bit threads, with a combined idle CPU usage of 0.44%. When it's active, the CPU usage shoots up to about 23.55%. System tested was a Pentium II-300 running Win98 with 98Lite http://www.98lite.net
| Tuesday, March 4, 1999 |
NT4 SP5 [9:25 pm]
Saw on Redwood's
page that the official WindowsNT
Service Pack 5 has been released on the Microsoft website.
TF2 Has A New Name? [6:15 pm]
Check this out from the guys over at Halflife.net
TF2 is now officially named "Team Fortress 2: Brotherhood of Arms". Among the feature list, "Voice Communication" is listed! Communication plays a vital role in Team Fortress, and if Valve can pull this off successfully, we'll have the benefits of a LAN party right on the internet. Very exciting stuff :) Check out the scans: Opposing Force and Brotherhood of Arms.
New 3dfx MiniGL [4:45 pm]
3dfx has released a new MiniGL driver for their Voodoo3 card
line.
Wheel of Time [4:45 pm]
The weekly development update from the Legend
Entertainment guys working on Wheel of Time has
been posted. Check it out.
Carmack's Quake3 Work [7:45 am]
Keeping an eye on John Carmack's updated Quake3
work log, here is what he accomplished recently in his update that was posted early
this morning:
* seeded random numbers differently on tourney restarts
* cl_motd 0 to allow never sending request packets
* fixed map cache clearing bug
* cg_drawFPS 1 for running fps counter in corner
* remove all teleport destination pads
* moved checkmap out of cgame
* moved time positioning out of cgame
* made usercmd overrun freeze in place instead of snapping back
* slightly increased shotgun spread
* protected against using a cleared clientinfo
* use snapped origin from players for linking to prevent slight prediction errors during player collisions
So basically he has been working a bit more on the cheat prevention stuff, as well as added a framerate counter and some message of the day command stuff. A bit of tweaking on the network code as well addressing that "snapping" that I had actually mentioned (along with many others) a couple of days ago. The man is listening! Oh yeah, Quake3 console command of the day. "r_gamma 1.5 ; vid_restart"
Suck! [4:25 am]
Ok, finally resuming the weekly sections just for you
guys damn it. Here
is the suckage (a little late, teehee) and the new wack links
will be up in a few hours after the big morning update.
Wack! [7:45 am]
Links to the most incredibly wacked out stuff you can
possibly find on the internet, every time I think we're gonna run out a bunch of new
freaks show up on the net and do a web page about sexuality exploited street cones. (Among
other things) Check
out the latest list.
Quake3 & Linux/FreeBSD [7:45 am]
Here are some instructions on how to get Quake3 to run under FreeBSD for
those of you who might be having troubles. Saw that one on Blues. I also got word of an updated Linux Quake3 HowTo which
everyone should check out. The LinuxQuake3
messageboard if of course still overflowing with questions, and more importantly
answers for those of you who cant find what you need on those pages.
Speaking of Linux, I installed RedHat 6.0 last night (The "upgrade" option busted btw) so I had to do a fresh install. Aside from having to edit my XF86Config to fix my Intellimouse things went quite smooth. The Quake3 release on Linux was one of the best things that could have happened for the operating system. Just days after the big 6.0 RedHat release to boot.
Linux Quake3 Server Browsers [7:45 am]
QStat v2.3c has been released
which features the ability to query the id Master server to get Quake3 servers listings.
There are also a couple more server listings out there for you guys at QuakeCity and Gameaholic. The coolest new app
though I saw on Blues was a link to this deal by TREMOR who has put together a GameSpy'esque Linux
ping util.
I have whipped together a little server browser for q3test for Linux. It can be found at ftp://writtenword.net/pub/q3lister.tar. Currently, the browser shows the server IP address and the ping from your machine. The next planned release will also have the number of players listed. Please feel free to send feedback as this is my first contribution to either the Linux or Quake communities.
Views [7:45 am]
Tech [7:45 am]
Gaming [7:45 am]
werd
So I think work on the Quake3 messageboard is nearing
completion. Going to transfer over that "test layout" to all the other messageboards here and be done
with it. If you guys have any other features you think you would like added, drop Sander or myself
an email.
| Monday, March 3, 1999 |
Unreal Tournament [7:45 pm]
Epic's Unreal Tournament, which recently seems to
have been pushed back a couple of months according to Babbages (I never got any email from
Epic stating otherwise, so we'll just assume it's reasonably accurate) is previewed at Unreal Universe
including the storyline of the game and some brand spanking
new screenshots.
Now it is 2341. 50 years after the legalization of "concentual murder." The LMC has found the "Tournament" be significantly more popular than mining (now merely a token element of their yearly profits). The "Professional League" has been formed. A cabal of the most violent and skilled warriors. Each year, the LMC hosts the "Grand Tournament," the most brutal and popular of tri-cast events.
Wheel of Time [7:45 pm]
The guys at MeccaWorld have fired up a new preview of
Wheel of Time based on the Unreal engine being developed by Legend Entertainment, whom
are also developing the Unreal mission pack and Unreal2.
K7 vs P3? [4:55 pm]
A lot of you guys have emailed in about this article
on Slashdot which seems to make the recent K7 vs P3 benchmarks be
questionable at best. We'll just have to wait and see as always. Speaking of CPUs check
out the FiringSquad
Celery 466 article which can be pushed over 500mhz.
Love Dolls [4:55 pm]
The contest between Paul Steed and Murphy Michaels
which turned into quite the spectacle has finished up phase1, and now open for public
voting. Check out all the entries.
Star Wars Trailers [4:55 pm]
Because you're not a geek unless you dig Star Wars.
The new trailers
which will be showing on TV soon have shown up on the website in QT format.
Unreal 225 Imminent [11:55 am] - Jack
Tim Sweeney updated the Unreal Tech Page with the news that the 224 patch
is indeed not that last. Also in there is more explanation from Mark Rein's talk with Blue
about having a separate code tree. Here's a snip (thanks VE)
There will be another Unreal 1 patch. It will be 225. It will contain fixes for the significant bugs reported that are under our control (3D card drivers are dependent on the hardware makers). By popular demand, our focus on future Unreal 1 patches will be making bug fixes and small, incremental improvements. So, we've split off the Unreal 1 code base from the Unreal Tournament code base, and won't be major new features added to the Unreal 1 code base, just fixes.
Unreal 224 Voodoo3 Broken? [11:55 am] - Jack
[update 1:25pm]
It turns out that the people having the problems are few and far between. The lion's share of people have it working just fine, which is good. This includes people with both 2000's and 3000's. It's recommended, then, that if you have this problem, to do a full uninstall, remove the Unreal directory, reinstall, then patch. Installers are sometmies quite the pain to write, and catching every circumstance is a bitch. Before you fix your install, you may want to head over to the Unreal Tech Page and give Tim and the gang an email to try to fix your issue so that 225 works well for you.
[original update]
I got a couple disturbing emails this morning telling me that Voodoo3's won't work with the new Unreal patch. Just a heads up for now, as I have no verification. (I could have tried it at home... whoops)
Q3A Stuff [4:35 am]
All kinds of Quake3 stuff going down, Zoid has been
kind enough to answer quite a few questions on the Linux Quake3 Messageboard for
starters, which a number of people are happy with. Got a few links for you to check out as
well:
A cool console command RIX told me (which I should have remembered) is "cg_thirdperson 1" that will take you into 3rd person perspective when playing Quake3. Pretty nifty.
Linux Quake3 [4:35 am]
It looks like Matt Ownby has beaten me to the punch
on the Linux Quake3 guide. Check
out this notes on Quake3 Linux and all the major problems that people have run in to,
as well as more importantly the work-arounds.
Unreal Tournament Delay [4:35 am]
Mark Raley sends word that the Babbages website has changed their release date
listing for Unreal Tournament from mid-May to mid-July now. I also heard that the Quake3
release date was listed as October on the web page there as well, havent had a chance to
check that out for myself though.
K7 vs P3 [4:35 am]
Check it out, word from the homeboys at Ars-Techinca: "The Register somehow managed to get a hold of
some comparative benchmarks
of the upcoming K7 processor vs. the Pentium III, with both CPUs at 600MHz."
WinBench99 Version 1.1 (5 times measure) CPUMark99 (CPU Integer Performance
does not include MMX register)
- K7@600MHz 68.4 Mark
- Pentium III@600MHz 70.1 MarkFPUWinMark (CPU Floating Point Performance does not include
MMX,SSE,3DNow!,FSTORE Extension register)
- K7@600MHz 2,819 Mark
- Pentium III@600MHz 3,104 Mark
Speaking of CPU stuff, the Ars-Techinca guys have also posted this interesting article which notes possible new packaging on P2's (including a pic) which should help overclocking quite a bit.
Diamond TNT2 MHz [4:35 am]
Welp, remember those claims that the TNT2 would be
shipping at 183 clock speeds? Well it looks like that hasnt come true. A very similar
situation came up with the old Riva128 chipset as some of you may recall. Diamond is
shipping their "regular" TNT2 card at a 125mhz/150mhz clock speed for the gfx
and memory clocks. The "Ultra" board will only be running at a 150mhz/175mhz
range. Diamond will be including tools to overclock the card. Most of the reviews of
boards you guys have seen were based on a 175/200 board, such as the SharkyExtreme preview,
who are also the folks who sent
along this bit of news.
You can also check out this GA-Source interview talking with Joe Lau of Hercules who also has plans for a TNT2 based board.
Mr. Wolf! [4:35 am]
If you are in fact really old-school, then you should
remember Mr. Wolf and his Quake Den. Well SamHell has tracked down Mr. Wolf and asks one of the original
"Quake Scene" guys how he got his start, and what he's up to now.
New Loonygames [4:35 am]
Loonygames opens
up with a bang this week, check it out: "- Inside Raven Software: Featuring
comments from eleven Raven employees, and tons of never before heard information about
their current projects (Soldier of Fortune and Star Trek: Voyager) and even some projects
never revealed before now.
Views [4:25 am]
Tech [4:25 am]
Gaming [4:25 am]
Jack's Word - Jack
Ok, nothing big or controversal today. Does anyone know of a place I should call in the
Dallas area to get the color channels in my rear-projection TV re aligned? The move shook
em up a little. And please no 'Doesn't your TV let you do that in the menus?' or 'You can
easily do it yourself, go to www....' Thanks!
werd
Had a guy from the New York Times here at the house
asking all kinds of questions all evening and into the night yesterday. Was pretty
interesting talking to someone "outside" looking in at the industry and trying
to put together an article on it.
Bitch of the day, for some damn reason the DSL guys set my bandwidth to 256k... bah. Should get that cranked to 768k today though, I compensate for my inadequacies with bandwidth. Hey, at least I admit it!
I've been trying to hack together a script to help people make Shack their homepage on browser startup. I've hacked up this shack.reg a while ago (just click YES and you have a new browser homepage) and also put together this IE channel thing, but I just cant see any way for a single click solution. If someone has a cool script that is relatively simple, I would love to see it.
| Sunday, March 2, 1999 |
Jack's Word [9:00 pm] - Jack
I'll be damned, the Unreal patch came out.
Congratulations to Tim and the other Epic guys for getting it out. Even though I was a
sarcastic bastard to them yesterday, I'm still there for 'em. Lord knows I worked on that
Glide driver enough :-)
Got lots and lots of email over the Linux debacle yesterday. The results actually surprised me. Why? Well, for one, I expected the pro-Linux people to be as hateful and mean-spirited as pro-Mac people. I was pleasantly surprised by that.
Second was the number of people telling me how much they dislike Linux as a whole, and are tired of it all. This was around 60-70 percent of the people that wrote me. Apparently, there's no-one in the press (like I am?!) actually taking the time to bag on Linux, and a surprising amount of people would like to see that. Hmmm.
Third was the fact nearly every one of the pro-Linux respondants agreed with me on the points I brought up. However, they had all thought that the benefits of Linux outweighed those weaknesses. As I haven't had enough experience with Linux, I can't make that judgement myself. A lot of the people also mentioned that I should try Redhat 6, and that I wasn't using KDE, but some vfw95 or something like that.
So what's next, then? I'm going to bite the bullet and install Redhat 6 on my machine, and judge for myself. I just deleted my BeOS partition, now I've gotta wait for Pat to bring Redhat over. I may try other distro's if I have time (please no suggestions for now). I'll mention on here what happens, and whether it's worth it or not, in my humble opinion of course.
I really appreciate the politeness of the pro-Linux people, though, and it's a major reason I'm gonna try to take the plunge.
Unreal Patch! [2:25 am]
The end of the world is upon us! Epic has released the v224 patch of Unreal for public
download. The list of changes and improvements are just massive, here are a few of the
more interesting things included in the patch on the general side.
Also interesting is there is a new server browser included in this version if GameSpy just
isnt your thing.
Epic has also released the C++ Headers, and updated the Unreal Technology page with quite a bit of information. Thanks to Charlie Mattax and PlanetUnreal for all this.
Quake3 Linux Forum [2:25 am]
Considering the huge number of people playing around
with Linux right now just to get a look at Quake3, we've opened up a Quake3 Linux messageboard for
those of you with questions etc. I'm running around trying to recruit Linux gurus to help
people out on the board, so if you're having some troubles head on over there and fire
away, you could get lucky. :)
Q3Test Stuff [2:25 am]
Got a .plan update
from Graeme Devine of id Software who noticed all the other web pages out there
querying their master server to post server lists. Looks like they are gonna be changing
the protocol around a bit but he's asking you hax0rs out there to drop him some mail with
suggestions. Check it:
I see several people are going for the master server right now. That's fine, but we're changing the format of the server pretty radically over the next few days so the packet size will be nice and small and queries can be more detailed. If you're a hacker out there and you want to email me with suggestions, that's cool.
We will be publishing the specs to the master server and MOTD server really soon, we're anxious for people to look over that stuff.
Speaking of Quake3, Doomweaver's Abode has posted a few tips on weapons usage in Quake3 as well as some pretty good in DM screenshots.
TRIBES v1.41 [2:25 am]
Dr. Kimble sends word on the TRIBES patch v1.41 being
released that my lame ass forgot to mention a couple of days ago. I'm sure most of you
guys have seen it by now, but just in case... Grab
it from AGN3D.
Tech [2:25 am]
werd
So.. pretty close to being settled into the new place
now, was up till 3am last night moving the last bit of furniture with Pat and Jack.. We
have to go out and buy some alkeehol to stock the bar today, which should be fun.
I plan on spending an incredible amount of time playing Quake3, and amazingly enough working on a general strategy guide. It will only be a few pages long, but will include stuff like key configs, console tweaks, and whatever else I can dig up for you guys.
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