Saturday, November 14

PGL Finals [7:35am]
Well, as I mentioned on Thursday Immortal beat out Thresh in the early match up. They are set for a rematch in the finals today. The Quake1 Teamplay finals are today as well. Check out the PlanetQuake coverage which is superb.

TF2 [7:35am]
Speaking of Half-Life, Fortress Brimstone has word on the target release date that the guys working on Team Fortress 2 for Half-Life are looking at:

<LintODeth> Red: we won't be released before christmas. a MP-aimed title like TF requires extensive network testing, and we're not going to release it until we're certain its balanced

SIN [7:35am]
Got a couple of SIN reviews for you to check out. First off www.avault.com has a review that tears into Ritual a bit about releasing a game that was considered "beta" by the AVault reviewer. Then head over to www.3dgaming.net and check out the review there. The 3DG guys seem to love the game giving it a solid A.

HL Servers [7:35am]
Contaminated.net hosted a chat with members of Valve Software talking about the recently completed Half-Life. A couple of quotes that Blue ripped are worth a mention:

Question: Having a LAN party for the release of Half Life, about 16 people or so, and I believe some of these people won't have half life by the time of the party. But 3/4 of the people should. My question is can a CD be used for multiple mutliplayer installs for the remaining people, just for LAN play? Don't know what your guys policy or security is on this, and I want to plan ahead for this contingency.

Gabe: If your Half-Life server doesn't authenticate (in other words it doesn't have an IP connection to WON's authentication servers), you can play up to 5 clients sharing a single CD key. If the server can authenticate itself via WON, then it insists that all of the clients have a unique CD key. This basically differentiates LAN games from Internet games.

Prey? [7:35am]
What? You thought the project was dead because they lost their lead programmer and project manager a couple of weeks back? Bah! The latest Prey Journal has been posted over at GameCenter. Guess it was written a while ago because Paul Schuytema was one of the authors.

Once an idea gets the thumbs-up, then it's time for the actual modeling. We use 3D Studio MAX for Prey modeling, and it works well for our needs. All models still need to be converted into "Prey actors" before they can show up in the game, and for that, all work is exported into VRML (that also means that gamers can use whatever tool they want to create their own 3D content for Prey--they just need to be able to get it into VRML).

Views [4:15pm]

Tech Etc [4:15pm]

werd
Ok monkeys, to make up for such a crappy week of updates I'll put myself on the line next week for update hell. Won't that be a change.. :)

Thursday, November 12

Thresh Loses? [9:35pm]
This just in from the PGL finals coverage by PlanetQuake:

In a serious upset, the young challenger Immortal beat Thresh 10 to 1!

Immortal got the first kill but the match stalmated for a long time. The arena was the Frag pipe, which led to a very defensive game and very few runs. Short, cautious confrontations marked the battle until the closing five minutes. A couple of unfortunate suicides by Immortal kept the scores low, and the game was tied 1-1 at the halfway mark. Weapon choice seemed to be the deciding factor -- Immortal had the railgun when he needed it, he had the rockets ready, and he was ready to go in whatever situation came up. A spectacular mid-air railgun kill amazed the crowd--Immortal took off 7 to 2 with less than five minutes left, and Thresh couldn't close the gap. The final score was 10 to 1, and the PGL has a new legend!!

This was only the 2nd round so they may have to meet again assuming they both win the rest of their matches they will meet up in the finals. Thresh will have to beat Immortal 2 games in a row however to win it. Immortal only has to do it once. Here is the demo! I had a chance to hang out and play with Immortal for a bit and the kid sure has matured a lot. Hey Immy you sure were a putz two years ago! Nice job man. To play the demo just use the MAP <demoname>.dm2 command at the console.

Immortal participated in the CPL FRAG2 Tournament a couple of weeks ago and took 3rd place behind RIX and Makaveli. PGL's silly claims of being the "only pro computer gaming league" sound a bit spiteful to you? Perhaps the PGL press office should grow up a little bit.

KingPin [4:55pm]
Havent heard much about KingPin in a while. The current project over there at Xatrix based on the Quake2 engine. Check out the preview over at PC.IGN More interestingly though is that Billy Wilson over at VE got word of the lead level designer of Xatrix resigning:

After nearly three years with Xatrix Entertainment, I've decided to resign as Lead Level Designer. The reasons behind my departure are personal, and should in no way reflect negatively upon Xatrix or any of its team members. My work there was very rewarding, and I leave some great friends behind, but it's time for me to move on. I wish everyone at Xatrix the best of luck, and I'm confident that KINGPIN will be a huge success. If anyone needs to contact me, I can be reached at aldawg@gte.net.

PGL Finals [4:15pm]
The PGL Finals are set to begin this weekend. Check out the PlanetQuake coverage too.

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 12 /PRNewswire/ -- With the richest computer gaming competition in history set to begin here today, the top 32 players in North America are enjoying all-expenses paid trips to San Francisco, courtesy of the AMD(R) Professional Gamers' League(TM) (PGL(TM)). $70,000 in cash and nearly $50,000 in prizes will be divided among the finalists in the Diamond Multimedia Championships of the AMD PGL, being held at Club-i today through Saturday, November 14. The PGL is also celebrating its one-year anniversary, and will be giving out PGL trading cards and other merchandise to fans who attend the event. Interested fans can also follow the action via live Webcast, being provided by Pseudo Networks' All Games Network.

Gary Tarolli [10:45am]
Sharkyextreme has put up an excellent interview with Gary Tarolli of 3Dfx. In it, they discuss everything from the founding of 3Dfx to 16-bit vs 32-bit rendering to the 3Dfx's future. Read the whole thing right here.

Rocket Arena2 [4:25am]
Just got this from the Rocket Arena guys:

The highly anticipated upgrade to Rocket Arena 2 is almost complete and will be available for download starting Saturday. Believe it or not, this is only the SECOND official Rocket Arena 2 release! The first release instantly achieved an unheard of level of popularity and has maintained that level ever since. Over 50,000 frags a day are recorded by Rocket Arena 2 players on the 150 servers around the world. We've taken the recommendations from our players to heart and have created an upgrade that is sure to please. Check out the info below for all the details!

We will be holding a release party on 3dNet IRC this Saturday starting at 7PM Pacific (10PM Eastern) in the channel #arena

-8 NEW Maps with 48 new Arenas! That brings the grand total to 16 Maps with 94 Arenas!
-Off-center countdown
-Player remaining count on status bar in pickup
-One team is spawned on even spawn points, one on odd. This keeps you from being surrounded by 3 guys on the other team at the start
-Health and Armor Protect on the voting menu
-Only changed items are shown on the voting menu
-Server ops can specify things that can't be voted on
-Anti-Vote Spamming code
-New Standard logging options
-Server Admins can lock arenas (for matches,etc)
-OPTIONAL Offhand Grappling Hook (can be enabled in server config only, off by default)
-Fixed endless ticking from hand grenade
-Fixed telefrag protection on lifts
-Observers telefragging players bug corrected
-All New Skins, including support for Crackhor and Cyborg
-Countdown doesn't make voting/other menus disappear

SHOGO [4:25am]
Jason Hall has made a .plan update with word that the Monolith SHOGO multiplayer patch is only 4 days away.

4 more days until the Shogo Multiplayer Point Release!!
I saw them testing it today with the NEW deathmatch levels...my god...the FUN!
Man, they have added a TON of new options to the server!
The client-side Weapon stuff is awesome...
You gotta get this patch!
Guess what?...
SHOGO MULTIPLAYER ENABLED DEMO SOON!
I'll keep you posted...Whoo hoo

Requiem Demo [4:25am]
The Hell on Earth Requiem news website has some new info on the development of the Requiem demo:

The Demo is a Boss Level - a fight between Malachi and Lilith in a one-room arena. You'll be able to see Malachi, Lilith (one of the leaders of the Fallen), Demon Rats, and Zaebos. You'll be able to use Pentecost, Brimstone, and Lightning. And you can use the Assault "Azazel" Rifle and the Grenade "Beelzebomb" Launcher. The demo is done, but there're a couple of Installation Bugs that have been a pain for Ron Little for the past couple of days. We're hoping to get out tonight

Blood2 [4:25am]
Have some questions about the bugs with Blood2? Check out www.blood2.com and all your questions will be answered. The Monolith guys do a good job of addressing most of the concerns players had. Talk of the deathcam, chase view, and location based impact.

Messageboard [4:25am]
People have been hammering away on the Quake3 messageboard. I'm hoping if I do enough sweet talking I can get Sander to hook me up with a voting mechanism that we can poll gameplayers on issues with Quake3.

Views [4:15pm]

Tech Etc [4:15pm]

werd
After that interview that was posted with me from ActionExtreme (mplayer) the other day, I've been attacked with email. I wrote up this FAQ to make things easy.

btw, had a chance to finally check out Metal Gear Solid on the PlayStation tonight. Holy hell it is absolutely awesome. I've only seen a couple of levels but I was absolutely blown away. I mean, HOLY SHIT. If you own a PlayStation you MUST buy this game.

Hrm.. Zelda64 soon too. Havent seen an action/rpg style game that I've enjoyed since the original Zelda.

 

Wednesday, November 11

Unreal [6:45pm]
T. Elliot "Myscha the sled dog" Cannon from Epic made a lengthy .plan update that will hopefully clarify things a bit more on just what Epic is up to and Tim Sweeney in particular

Tim Sweeney, as you all know has been spending months working hard as hell to improve Unreal's networking architecture in an attempt to increase internet perfromance for all users of varying bandwidth. This to date, has included many "BETA" style patches where gamers can test for themselves and send their feedback to Tim, who can then address more specific issues coming from the horses mouthes (the gamers)

His last multiplayer BETA patch has shown tremendous improvement and I feel it's smoothe as silk. He is finalizing this now for an upcoming OFFICIAL patch-to be caled Version 220-whereas the out of the box version was 200.

We will be testing this in deathmatch and Cooperative in the next week in an effort to finally fix and improve and stamp with a MegaSeal of coolness.

This upcoming "merge" is also to include many enhancements and improvements that were originally slated to be included in next year's Unreal Tournament Product, but the team felt that portions of this content should be released along with and integrated with the upcoming 220 version as a reward for;

1. Gamers being patient while Tim improved the networking architecture and code for the long haul

2. Response to many criticisms regarding weapon "power" and "feel"

etc. etc. I will not and cannot reveal EXACTLY what additional Goodies are to be included with Version 220-but I know that the consensus here in Raleigh has been give out as much "cool whip ass enhancements for free" as possible. Mostly geared towards giving folks a brand new bloody way to get online and start maiming each other.
<snip>

ICQ99a [6:45pm]
If you werent quick enough to snag that beta of ICQ that was leaked on accident a few days ago then maybe you can grab it this time from ZDNet. It's a pretty cool alpha that for some reason comes with some really irritating noises that you have to turn off.

GameSpy [6:45pm]
New version of gamespy as well as a spanky new website over at www.gamespy.com for registered and non-registered users to download and enjoy. Some pretty good new features especially useful for sorting through that huge number of Quake2 servers.

Views [4:15pm]

Tech Etc [4:15pm]

werd
Looks like I don't have to pay the phone company. Turds. I just might surprise you guys next week with some fast news coverage. Been avoiding the page like the plague recently but hey I got a bunch of "real life" errands done. :)

 

Tuesday, November 10

Romero Chat [11:05pm]
Gamers Alliance hosted a chat with John Romero tonight and Pestilence was quick on the draw to put together a comprehensive summary of all the questions and answers here.

Quake3 Minimum Specs [4:05pm]
Billy over at Voodoo Extreme has posted an email from Brian Hook detailing the target machines for Quake3 that they are using over at id Software as well as a bit of a rundown on the 3D accelerators of choice

It's hard to say what realistic minimum system requirements will be. Right now we'd like the game to be playable on a Pentium/200MMX w/ 32MB of RAM and a Voodoo. This is a pretty common place machine, and hopefully things will be scalable enough that you can run at 512x384 with minimum detail (both geometric and texture) with a Voodoo 1 and get decent performance (although, obviously, not earth shattering).

Our test systems range all over the place -- K6/350, P2/300, P2/333, P2/400, and I believe some Pentium/200 boxes here and there. We test regularly on Rendition V2200, Voodoo 2 (our primary target), Riva TNT, and Intel i740. We also have test machines with Riva128, Banshee, and Savage3D boards in them for performance/QA verification.

So with our scalability we'd like to think that we can run fairly well from a Pentium/200MMX all the way up to the biggest and baddest systems available upon release.

Right now a RivaTNT is King of the Hill for Q3A performance.

Half-Life Multiplayer [4:05pm]
The Sierra guys are just goofy running around with copies of Half-Life showing it off to whoever they can. This time around the PC.IGN guys had a chance to play Half-Life in multiplayer mode and have posted their impressions of the multiplayer carnage.

Speaking of weapons, they range from the mundane crowbar and pistol to the ass-whumpin' Particle Accelerator which will rip your opponents to shreds in seconds. The wickedly assorted arsenal also includes a crossbow with a zooming sniper scope, a laser guided rocket launcher, and an assault shotgun that turn's the enemy into ground beef at close range. Like Unreal, the weapons will have a secondary fire mode. For example, you can fire the pistol carefully and slowly or you can hold down the alternative fire button to pop off a rapid succession of rounds at the sacrifice of accuracy. With the laser guided rocket launcher you can opt to enable the laser targeting thereby giving away your position, or turn it off to conceal your location.

Wheel of Time [4:05pm]
The weekly WOT update has been posted by Legend Entertainment. A couple of new screenshots have been posted as well as some chat about what exactly they are working on.

SIN Patch [4:05pm]
Couple of goofups in the shipping version of SIN that Ritual has quickly addressed. Here is the update from Tom:

[. Sin Patch .]
We will be releasing a patch in the next few days that will address some of the bugs that have filtered their way down. Here are the major bugs that we addressed:

- Long load times, Fixed. - Broken mutant woes. Fixed. - Major soundcard issues. Fixed. - Levels loading twice, causing major gameplay issues. Fixed.
Sorry for any inconvenience this has caused, if we had known about any of these bugs we would have fixed them right away. We also took the time to iron out the other bugs that cropped up and are in the process of testing everything now.
Also, all future retail copies of Sin will have these bugs fixed.

Blood2 Demo Patch [4:05pm]
Monolith has addressed many of the problems and complaints people had with the original Blood2 demo and have released a patch for the game over at www.blood2.com so have fun. The patch is a bit under 3 megs and fixes most of the "issues" that were mentioned in the previous week on the .plan wagon.

LithTech2 [4:05pm]
Speaking of the Monolith boys, PlanetShogo has a new chat log posted discussing the next generation technology (LithTech2) that Monolith is working on right now for their next set of 3D games.

- Model enhancements
- Chromakeying/color specification per model.
- Exchangeable limbs.
- Full collision (at least for raycasting).
- Something like multiple bounding boxes for models (for large models to have accurate collisions).
- Preferred lighting / phong shading / specular highlights / potential radiosity models
- Realtime weighted deformation a possibility, but only if we need to animate parts of the model in code (like facial expressions).
- Curved surfaces.
- Bump mapping.
- Phong shading.
- Volumetric effects. This consists of moving fog areas, steam, fire, haze, etc. It also consists of lights that show colloidal dispersions and shoot beams through fog.
- Large landscapes
- Interconnected servers
- 24 and 32 bit texturing and high speed multitexturing support

Views [4:15pm]

Tech Etc [4:15pm]

werd
Tips on how to *not* get linked from this page:
- ALL CAPS
- "web exclusive!"
- "Hot News! Right off the presses!"
- "Do your job and link this"
- Spam me with 5 different emails linking the same page with a different subject.

Tips on *how to get linked* from this page:
- Short and sweet emails with the actual subject in the header
- Sex. (Sorry, you have to be female, I'm picky that way)

Cool news of the day, I got a phone bill for about $400 yesterday. Apparently my ISP dialin is considered long distance.

 

Monday, November 9

Half-Life GOLD [6:05pm]
After all kinds of rumors, Half-Life has gone gold for real. Here is the email sent out by Gabe Newell

Half-Life has gone gold, and is in manufacturing.
I'd like to say how extraordinarily grateful all of us here at Valve are for the support and enthusiasm you have shown Half-Life over the last two years.  We are very proud of the product, and hope it lives up to your expectations.
Sierra will be sending out a media alert tomorrow giving more details on the street date.

Heavy Gear2 Demo [3:55pm]
Better late than never eh? The Heavy Gear2 demo has been released as one of those exclusive thingies over at GameCenter. It's halfway between 20 and 30megs and you get to be a robot blowing stuff up. Pretty neet.

The three-mission Heavy Gear II demo features one single-player mission that will not be included in the final game. Also, players can pilot their Gears for the first time in true zero-G space combat, as well as a dense swamp environment in the demo's two multiplayer missions. The game features an entirely new 3D hardware-only engine that delivers fast combat action, true physics, photo-realistic graphics, and complex battlefields that include numerous vehicles and structures, flying debris, and fire and smoke.

Avenger Specs [1:15pm]
From 3DN: Oh boy, the rumors are starting to fly about this bad boy. We'll have to wait about another week or so until Comdex for anything official, but we'll be there for all the coverage. Anyway, here are the rumored specs:

- 0.25 micron process
- 125MHz chipset
- 10 million triangles/sec
- 500Mtexels/s fill rate
- 32Mb 125-150MHz SDRAM/SGRAM
- 16bpp and 32bpp rendering
- Improved Banshee 2D core
- Volume shipment 1Q 99
- $250-$300 retail

For those of you who havent heard yet, "Avenger" is the code name for the latest 3dfx chipset that everyone is hoping will be revealed at Comdex next week.

CSN [1:15pm]
The 3rd birth of Cyber Sports Network and hopefully the final one that we can have these guys around from now on. CSN is dedicated to coverage of all multiplayer Quake/Quake2 events such as CPL/PGL and online tournaments like Genocide4 etc.

Unreal Stuff [1:15pm]
Myscha from Epic updated his .plan file confirming any doubts of that "Unreal Tournament" project.

Work? Well since GT slipped the Cat out of the bag-yes I've been working some on "Unreal Tournament" among other things. I'm really excited, however about this upcoming merged version of Unreal that's going to be released for free on the net which includes many improvements to weapons and the final Multiplayer pass.

SIN [1:15pm]
Check out www.ritualistic.com for the new SIN multiplayer server list for those of you itching to play some multiplayer online.

3dfx's Next Chipset [2:15am]
Right on the heels of the Voodoo2 release there were rumors abounding about the 3dfx next chipset. Although the codename seems to have changed to "Avenger" now, check out this Forbes Digital Tool article discussing the possible Creative buyout of 3dfx (doubtful) and the mention of Avenger:

In related developments, 3Dfx is expected to launch its next generation 3-D graphics chip at COMDEX, the computer industry's biggest trade show in Las Vegas, Nev. The Forbes Digital Tool has learned that the chip which is code-named "Avenger" is three times as powerful as the Voodoo2 graphics chip. The product will be available sometime in 1999.

After you check that out, VoodooNation has put together a bit of speculation for Voodoo3.

Heretic2 [2:15am]
A bit of an update from Brian Pelletier on the progress of Heretic2.

We are frantically trying to finish Heretic II. There are just a couple outstanding bugs that are holding us up. We also spent the last 2 weeks Play-testing and balancing the game and doing any last minute tweaks to make the game more fun. Some were minor changes but really added to the gameplay and funfactor. This team is great and they have been coming up with excellent ideas that I think will really make this game memorable.

QERadiant [2:15am]
Saw on Redwood's that a new version of QERadiant has been released. If you are into level design for Quake/Quake2 and have a video card with a GL driver then this is the level editor for you. Based originally off the source code released from id Software and much refined.

Blood2 [2:15am]
The Blood2.com website has posted a bit of info from a chat with Brian Goble of Monolith concerning the multiplayer for Blood2 that should be hitting the streets soon.

Will the multi-player (internet) code in Blood II (out of box) be up to par with the soon to be released Shogo point release code?

Brian Goble: No. The new multiplayer code won't be integrated until a patch is released. Blood2 out-of-box will be the same as Shogo's out-of-box (fine on a LAN, not too good over the internet). :)

Tech Etc [2:15am]

werd
Yeah, the Raiders lost. I'm dead now and not surprisingly I went to hell. I didnt dig on the place much though so I came back here instead. I'm still dead though, but I'm feeling much better. For a dead guy. Last week certainly stunk it up for news and weekly updates ya? Hey at least I admit it. :)

 

Sunday, November 8

DirectX v6.1 [2:15pm]
No real word on the improvements with this new version of DirectX from Microsoft but It is highly recommended that you install DX6, and if you're feeling frisky you might want to try this DX6.1 Release Candidate. I've found these drivers get along better with the latest TNT v550 drivers btw. Here is a direct link to the core download. -Blues

3dfx Banshee OpenGL [2:15pm]
It's finally here kids, the updated OpenGL minidriver for 3dfx Banshee cards to use with Quake/Quake2 engine based games. Here is word from the boys at 3Finger's page:

If you are having problems with Quake2 being too dark or other issues that provide unsatisfactory results while running Quake2 with your Banshee, then replace the 3dfxgl.dll in the Quake2 folder with this 3dfxgl.dll file. You can also rename this 3dfxgl.dll to opengl32.dll and use it with GL Quake/QW, this has been reported to solve Banshee user problems running GL Quake/QW.

After you snag those drivers check out Bill's Workshop with a nifty Banshee guide. -VE

New Unreal Editor [5:15pm]
Word from PlanetUnreal is that Ben Morris, the original author of WorldCraft is now working on a 3rd party level editor for Unreal. -VE

Bleach just let us know that he saw over on Rust that Ben Morris - author of the famous Worldcraft level editor for Quake, Quake II and Half-Life - is working on a new project which may well support the Unreal engine. Although the new editor will probably not carry the WorldCraft trademark (now owned by Valve), it is to be published by ACD Systems, the people who also published the original versions of WC. All this was revealed in this email a guy named Ian Walsh recieved from ACD System's Tech Support:

Well Ian, your hopes may be answered. Currently Ben Morris (WC Author) is working on another editor for us, that, hopefully, will have Unreal support and possibly a slew of the other popular 3d games that are going to hit the shelves.

Views [12:25pm]

werd
If the Raiders lose to the Ravens I may have to end my life early.

3DNews.net Last Weeks News copyright Steve Gibson 1998