| Saturday, November 21 |
Half-Life [9:15am]
For those of you looking to sweeten up those Half-Life skills. Check out the
WON.net tips
page. The major questions being asked I'll just answer here:
Q: How do I get to the console?
A: Launch HL with the HL.EXE -CONSOLE command line.
Q: How do I turn off blast decals?
A: R_DECALS 0
Q: How do I bind keys directly to a weapon?
A: Here is the list of keys to bind:
bind <key> weapon_357
bind <key> weapon_9mmAR
bind <key> weapon_9mmhandgun
bind <key> weapon_crossbow
bind <key> weapon_crowbar
bind <key> weapon_egon
bind <key> weapon_gauss
bind <key> weapon_handgrenade
bind <key> weapon_hornetgun
bind <key> weapon_rpg
bind <key> weapon_satchel
bind <key> weapon_shotgun
bind <key> weapon_snark
bind <key> weapon_tripmine
I tried to do an auto switch alias similar to the NG/SNG switchers but Half-Life lets you momentarily switch to a weapon when you are out of ammo. I'll post the best config I can come up with in about a week.
SIN Patch [9:15am]
Word from Ritual
is the patch for SIN addressing the many bugs should be released any day now. It is in QA
right now with aCtivision over the weekend so we can hope to see it as early as this
evening or Sunday.
Expect the patch this weekend. Activision QA wants to give it one more day of testing to make sure we don't have any open issues.
In Ion's Defense [9:15am]
With nearly 20 (!) employee departures from Ion Storm
over the past couple of months, the Ion website
has posted statements from many of the remaining employees to "address public
concern" Mostly it's just fluff about how great it is to work there, but a few guys
had something real to say.
As far as the recent goings-on up here, every new company (especially in this industry) goes through its share of growing pains and employee turnovers. That's simply the nature of the beast. I just hope that people will base their opinion of Ion Storm on our products and not on malicious rumors that serve only to misconstrue the truth.
In Geoff's Defense [9:15am]
Looks like the guys at Monolith dont like Geoff of
GameSlice.com and decided to publically slam him in the end credits of their game. An apology was given by GT
Interactive as reported on Next-Gen which is amusing. You would think Monolith would
apologize instead of the publisher whom had little to do with it.
Weekly Demo [9:15am]
Yeah, a day and a half late but what the hell. Check
out the demos section.
Corrine's 3DR Job [9:15am]
In case there was any doubt of what Corrine Yu,
formerly of Ion Storm and now just joining up with 3DR was going to do, look no further
than this press release:
GARLAND, TX - 3D Realms is excited to announce that Corrinne Yu has joined the company to lead the development of future 3D engine technology. Prey and Duke Nukem 5 (tentative title) will be the first games to use this technology.
Ms. Yu previously worked at Zombie as Systems Lead Programmer, responsible for 3D graphics architecture and design on Spec Ops, and more recently worked a year at Ion Storm as Director of Technology rewriting and greatly enhancing the Quake 2 engine to meet the needs of Anachronox design goals, as well as being an aid to the graphics programmers of Daikatana.
"Corrinne is one of the industry's top 3D engine coders, with an exceptionally strong math and engineering background," asserted George Broussard, partner at 3D Realms and project leader for Duke Nukem Forever. "She's exactly the person we want to be leading our new technology development group, and we expect that it won't be long before she's properly recognized and rewarded for her skills and dedication as being one of the best in our industry."
Views [9:15am]
werd
Got a few love letters because I don't "pull
punches" when something happens. Hey what the hell if someone gets upset at me for
posting the truth, it's their problem not mine, right? :)
Might be hitting a local Half-Life tournament (well, couple hour drive) as listed on halflife.net/igames down in college station.
| Friday, November 20 |
More Ion Resignations [4:45pm]
Ok, all the Ion Storm departures is getting just
nutty. Had to rip this one last snip from Gaminginsider
though because it concerns the development of Quake3. It looks like id Software has scored
a new talented artist:
Ken "SkinGod" Scott, creator of ALL the amazing Daikatana character skins also tendered his resignation last night. He's off to become the newest Quake3 devotee at id. It is a small world in Dallas indeed.
The Green Titanic [4:05am]
Ok, I was gonna say make that 9 employees leaving Ion
Storm but the count seems to be much higher. First off we'll start with Corrine Yu, 3D
engine guru leaving Ion in favor of 3DRealms. Here is George's .plan
update:
[New member of the Realm]
Exciting news! 3D graphics programming guru Corrinne Yu (Former Director of Technology at Ion Storm) will be joining us soon to lead up developent on our new next generation graphics engine. Look for a press release on www.3drealms.com tomorrow some time. We are VERY excited about the future.
But that's not all, Gaminginsider.com has word that there have been *17* employee departures in the past 2 months. Check this out:
There was no destruction of the employee equity/royalty system at ION because it never existed. The closest thing resembling that is a three sheet pamphlet detailing how ION plans to keep their top talent (which isn't a contract) that basically says "management will decide how much of a bonus we'll give you after the game is done" and "we can take up to five years to pay it out". For a company that boasts about being so extraordinary, that's a pretty unremarkable financial arrangement and it sure doesn't look like it's very effective at keeping the talent.
That makes it about 17 employees that have been laid off or left in the last 2 months including ALL FOUR of the original Daikatana level designers. If their leaving doesn't have a significant impact on Daikatana's release, then Dominion's sales hit 100,000, Daikatana isn't a year late, and Doppleganger just went gold.
If John would spend time at the office WORKING and managing his team instead of concocting fake deaths, being glued at the hip with Killcreek, and letting the company go to shit thanks to Todd Porter, Daikatana would actually ship and he'd have to send less "Thanks for your hard work dude and good luck" messages.
Crazy eh? You can thank another ex-Ion employee for that headline.
COMDEX [9:55am]
Mark Rein of Epic has made an update to the Unreal.com website with his impressions of the show and all the
sightings of his beloved Unreal as well.
PingTool w/HL Support [9:55am]
Yup, a new PingTool
has been released offering Half-Life support. Up to a nifty version 2.4 now.
Need to live? [9:55am]
Aye, dont we all. Well here are some reasons for ya.
Oni [9:15am]
Matt Vaughan
sent word to me to check out the new Bungie game in
development and it's sounding pretty nifty. Yeah they made Marathon for the Mac which
was pretty good for it's time. Check this snippy that Billy over at VE grabbed:
In a Real 3D World...
Guide Konoko through intricate, multi-elevation 3D urban environments as she fights to bring the Kage crime syndicate to its knees. Modeled by architects, Oni's combined indoor/outdoor levels put a premium on realism. Rather not take the stairs? Vault over a railing, and break your fall on a pair of gunmen on the floor below. Need cover in a hurry? Dive-roll into a service tunnel while the bullets screech past.
Views [9:15am]
Tech Etc [9:15am]
werd
Demo will be up tonight, I'm still bumming about that
Half-Life thing. Hopefully a work around will be figured out for those wacked out mouse
movements in demo playback.
| Thursday, November 19 |
Romero on Ion Resignations [5:05pm]
The Ion
Storm daily informant has been posted with a quote from John Romero talking about the
departure several members of the Daikatana team:
Thankfully, the Daikatana team members that decided to leave and start their own company left at an opportune time. Most of the levels are in a final state, much of the coding has been completed for most of the game, and almost all the music has been done. Everyone that left made significant contributions to the project and I am thankful to have had them on my team. But it is time for them to move on and I wish them good luck on their journey. Thanks for everything, guys!"
Keep in mind, when was the last time you've seen a game company lose key members of their development team and actually admit if the game would be delayed or not? Here is the rest of what the informant says:
Romero said that the departures will not significantly affect Daikatana’s development cycle. Plans are already underway to fill the vacant positions, and the remaining 20-plus members of the Daikatana team are continuing work on the upcoming worldwide demo. "We are all excited about the demo," John said. "It really shows off the scope and size of Daikatana and what makes it different than all the other FPS titles on the market."
ION Storm Resignations [1:45pm]
Woah, this is big. Ion Storm has lost 8 employees.
All of whom are vital to the development of Daikatana and Anacrhonox. Here is the email
that was sent to Blue over at BluesNews: (Thanks Simon
for the initial word)
The signees of the following statement have decided to hand Ion Storm their resignation, effective immediately.
The first and most important reason for this public statement is to apologize to those that have been awaiting Daikatana for any further delays or obstacles this action may present for the game's development. Also, we regret leaving our friends and respected colleagues behind and wish them the best of fortunes. Walking out now has been an extremely difficult decision, and although we're leaving as a group, there are individual reasons for us doing so. We will not be disclosing these reasons to the public since they vary somewhat for each person, and also because we have no desire to start a war of words with Ion Storm. New companies springing forth from existing ones is nothing new in this business, neither is the pointing of fingers that sometimes follow. Suffice it to say, we all felt this move was inevitable and that there could be no other time than now.
We will remain as a group in the games industry and continue forward, but as a separate entity with our own set of goals. For those that are interested, the details about our company and its projects will be announced in the near future. We're all eager to show you what we can do on our own and to focus on we love best: making games.
Sincerely,
Matt Hooper - Level Designer, Daikatana
Sverre Kvernmo - Lead Level Designer, Daikatana
Will Loconto - Audio Director, all projects
Mike Maynard - Programmer, Daikatana
Mark Morgan - Artist, Daikatana
David Namaksy - Lead Level Designer, Anachronox
Steve Rescoe - Level Designer, Daikatana
Jonathan Wright - Lead Programmer, Daikatana
So it looks like they are breaking off to form their own company? I'd like to wish the guys the best of luck. For those of you not familiar with real names, these guys are also known as DaBug, Cleaner, Nelno the Amoeba, and um.. I dont remember any other nicknames. :P
Even More Voodoo3 [12:15pm]
Sharky Extreme
was given the chance to take a closer look at 3Dfx's Voodoo 3. They ran Quake II timedemo1
on a Pentium II-450MHz system and attained the following scores:
640x480: 97.6fps
1024x768: 67.9fps
1600x1200: 32.1fps
Running Massive1, the following scores were attained:
640x480: 72.8fps
1024x768: 56.8fpsTesting notes: Quake II v3.15 was used, and the Voodoo 3 3000 was clocked at 160MHz. On a sidenote, Scott Sellers, 3Dfx CEO, told us that they're seriously considering 32MB variants of the Voodoo 3.
Developers on Voodoo3 [9:15am]
Billy done real good and went right to all the developers
asking the question from the guys who make games if the lack of 24/32bit 3D is really a
large issue. Here is a snip from what John Carmack had to say:
3dfx downplays 24 bit color because they don't have it. NVidia downplayed per-pixel mipmapping when they didn't have it with NV3. PowerVR downplayed bilinear filtering when they didn't have it with PCX1. Etc.
If there isn't any blending or textures with alpha involved, the internal 24 bit rendering (just like current voodoo cards) dithered into a 16 bit framebuffer looks reasonably close to a full 24 bit path.
COMDEX98 [9:15am]
Sam over at 3DN is doing a darn good job
updating from COMDEX talking about what Matrox is up to, the TNT2, and some talk
about Elsa Graphics
along with the "best
of COMDEX"
The TNT2 is what you care about. nVidia wasn't releasing very much information on it, unfortunately... but what we do have it pretty cool. Remember the .25um TNT running at 125Mhz that was originally going to be released. It never will.
That's right, it will never be released. They're gonna call it the "TNT 2", baby. The TNT 2 will not be the same old TNT running a bit faster and cooler though, no sir. It will be a true next-generation chip with cool features. What features, you ask?
Heretic2 GOLD [2:50am]
While you are out there buying a copy of
Half-Life make sure and reserve yourself a copy of Heretic2 from Raven. Here is the word
from Rick
Johnson's .plan file:
11/18/98
Heretic II has gone gold! I've heard rumors that it will be available in some designated stores within 3 to 5 days. But that's just a rumor...
We'll be hosting forums at Raven for design, developer (for mod makers), and general bug / issues. I'll give out more info on this once everything is up.
Quake3 [2:50am]
Saw on VE that
Tech Network's has posted an interesting preview of Quake3:
From utilities like Adobe Photoshop © to 3D-Studio Max © the graphics and human-like characteristics have been greatly enhanced. ID Software has used human body parts to create and edit bots and players for Quake III Arena. Each single piece is taken by themself and molded into a bigger figure. This will leave the best possible details available today.
Views [9:15am]
werd
Ok, so I did some expirementing to hopefully
post a Half-Life DM demo for this week. Ran into some problems though, the demos stink!
The mouse hops around like crazy during playback and it looks like absolute hell. The
mouse is smooth actually until another player is within the PVS. Then apparently less
sampling from the mouse is taken into the .dem file for some reason. I would hate to see a
8 player HL demo from the looks of this.
| Wednesday, November 18 |
Carmack Interview [12:30pm]
CRT got a hold of John Carmack for a few
questions recently, go check
out the interview. Here is one of the answers:
PQ: Are the deathmatch levels in Q3 similar to the current generation we've seen for q1 and q2?
John Carmack: Well, they're all deathmatch levels. They're in a number of different styles. We've got a set of levels that are designed to have platforms where looking up and down is not a necessary skill, I think that's important for getting people into the game by keeping a manageable number of skills that you need to know there. But other than that we should cover the entire range. We've got a lot of tight one on one arenas. What we don't have much of yet and we need to build more on is the larger, really big Quake2 type levels because, the internet servers that can support like 8 to 16 people have the more stable population bases. Because, when you're smaller than that it crawls in and out of valid ranges of play. So I mean, it's certainly our goal to have, since we have nothing but deathmatch levels, we should be able to have levels for each viable style of play.
Half-Life Msgboard [12:30pm]
By popular demand, a Half-Life forum has been added to the messageboards here.
Half-Life [9:30am]
In case you didnt realize it Half-Life has
turned out to be even more incredible than people predicted. I've been playing the single
player game for hours and hours (It's in stores today or tomorrow in most areas) Here are
a couple of reviews of the game in case you don't believe me. (Blasphemy!) OGR published their pre-review of Half-Life,
and it looks like they were very impressed:
When our reviewer is done, we'll have the full review. It's of course possible that, after playing to the end, we'll find our enthusiasm dampened. Our first impressions, however, are quite positive. This is one impressive game, which comes close to living up to its hype. And that, gentle readers, will be one heck of an accomplishment if it turns out Valve and Sierra have actually pulled this off.
And Gamecenter gave it a perfect 5/5. If you want to know why, you'll need to read their review, but here's a little quote to give you an impression:
An excellent utilization of the Quake II engine, Half-Life also sports some interesting nonplayer character (NPC) AI. Scientists will tend to your wounds, help guide you along, open doors for you when you fail the retinal scan, and even push the story along at times. The Black Mesa security guards will also lend a hand. And, if the going gets a little rough, you can even convince them to travel with you and watch your back or, like the scientists, open doors that you cannot.
Linkage [9:30am]
The weekly wackass links have been updated.
Heretic2 [9:30am]
A .plan update
by Brian Pelletier gives us a status report on Heretic2 which is getting awful close
to completion in time for the holiday season:
We will miss our initial in stores date but we were so close we just wanted to make the game as solid as we possibly could. I can tell from testing the game for past 20 hours, it is pretty damn solid; no crashes, major errors or game stopping bugs. Sure there were a few little anomalies happening but nothing major (they should be fixed now). And that's a testement to our hard work cause there is a lot...and I mean a lot of stuff going on in this game, talk about sensory overload.
COMDEX98 [9:30am]
Our man Sam from 3DN.net is posting like crazy
with reports from his visits to COMDEX. Sounds like 3dfx is pretty much the hit of the
show. He's covering the portable
MP3 players, an interview
with Creative Labs, and a closer look at the Voodoo3.
Speaking of which if someone has a system identical to that test system they are using at
COMDEX and could send me some benchmarks of Q2 on a Voodoo2 I'd appreciate them to post
for comparison.
It's a screamer, baby! They currently have the Voodoo3 3000 running at 154Mhz (84% of its final clock speed) and it achieves 31.6fps in Quake2 at 1600x1200 resolution. That's with unoptimized drivers and beta silicon! Extrapolating from its speed at 150Mhz, the final can be expected to get 37.5fps in Quake2 at that unholy resolution. Fast enough for ya? I thought so.
More Voodoo3 [9:30am]
The guys over at Next-Generation published the
second part of their
interview with 3Dfx:
Tamasi explained that everyone at 3dfx wants 32-bit rendering, but they want it without a loss of performance. Rendering true 32-bit would cause the system to run at one-half speed. Eventually, we can expect 3dfx technologies to expand past 16-bit, but only when there is not a significant loss in performance. When we asked why not go ahead and allow people to take the loss in performance if they really, really wanted to, Tamasi explained that, given the loss in performance, 3dfx determined it was better to meet its schedule for Voodoo 3 and not risk breaking the core Voodoo pipeline. Voodoo 3 will use the same fundamental pipeline as Voodoo 1 and 2, and that architecture is not made for 32-bit rendering.
Hate Patches? [9:30am]
Been using hard bought and long awaited games
as coasters recently? 3DGN’s newest poll lets
you speak out to game designers and tell them just what you think about so-called
“unfinished” products hitting the shelves. In defense of PC game developers,
console developers only have to target ONE piece of hardware and not worry about
compatibility. A PC developer has so many targets and unknowns that it's just incredible.
SHOGO Patch [1:11am]
The "point release" (You can thank
Mr. Carmack for that term) for SHOGO has been released. You can snag a copy of the 7meg
patch for SHOGO from WarZone.com right here. For more information
on the patch and what's up check out PlanetShogo.com
StarSiege Tribes Beta Server [9:30am]
The StarSiege page has posted a beta test application form for those of you
interested in trying to run a server for StarSiege Tribes. You better have at least a T1
though. They say ISDN but um, yeah. -Blues
Views [9:15am]
Tech Etc [9:15am]
werd
Half-Life is in stores and stuff. You should go
get a copy. You will be amazed. Here is
something pretty um, sexual in nature from SIN. Also here is a link to the new Star Wars trailer showing
in theatres. You can also snag it from the official website as well in
other formats.
| Tuesday, November 17 |
Voodoo3 [9:11am]
Just because I'm so damn excited about this
thing, and I imagine you guys are sitting at home tugging away thinking about it (The V3,
not me...). Here is some more info on the Voodoo3. Brian Bruning was kind enough to answer
Billy Wilson's of Voodoo Extreme questions. Here's a clip:
There is no 32 bit rendering. There IS 22 bit rendering. Reason being, they (3DFX) asked developers of recent and future (within the next year) games if they would actually use 32 bit rendering or if they saw any major difference in quality. The response: 15% said they saw a difference in their games or they would use 32 bit rendering in their games.
After that, check out what Bill's Workshop has to say about the recent Voodoo3 announcement. Lastly, here are some benchmarks Maximum PC dug up and sent to Blue: PII-450 running Quake II demo1 on three day old alpha silicon:
| Resolution | FPS |
| 800x600 | 98.6 |
| 1024x768 | 72.7 |
| 1600x1200 | 31.6 |
3dfx [9:11am]
Speaking of those 3dfx monkeys, check out the interview with Greg Ballard
of 3dfx (CEO Guy) talking about the rumors of Creative Labs possibly buying out 3dfx. They
purchased 6.5% of the 3dfx stock recently, here's a snip:
"Creative is certainly big enough to acquire us and we obviously pay attention when someone buys 6-1/2 percent of our stock. They are our largest customer right now, and one of the things I said to some of these analysts who are buzzing is get a clue here. If our largest customer, who has more information about our road map and our technology and other people's road maps and technologies, thinks that we're worth investing 10 million dollars in. That's a pretty good sign that the company is on the right track and well valued. So we took that as a very strong endorsement of the company's direction in what we're doing and we were happy to see it.
TNT2 [9:11am]
For some reason nVidia has been pretty quiet
with the release of information on their next chipset for the TNT2. I'd guess that they
realize it doesnt exactly compare to the Voodoo3 press that is circulating. Apparently
this chip will probably hit the market a month or two ahead of the Voodoo3 though. Thanks
to RivaZone for spotting this blurb on TechZone
Nvidia was more forthcoming about the TNT Release 2, the next iteration of its flagship Riva TNT "enthusiast"-class graphics accelerator. Stocki said the Release 2 will likely be renamed. Scheduled to be launched in the spring of 1999, the chip will feature about twice the performance of the TNT, partly through the 0.25-micron process Nvidia's foundry, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, will be bringing online.
Half-Life Commands [9:11am]
DR-Central
has posted the command list and cvar list for Half-Life. You can get these lists from
within Half-Life by just typing "cmdlist" or "cvarlist" at the
console. Of course to access the console in the first place with Half-Life you need to
launch the game with the -console command line. (HL.EXE -CONSOLE) Also, many of these
commands dont seem to affect the game in single player mode. The most irritating being you
cant change video modes without using the windows interface.
SHOGO [9:11am]
Jason Hall has returned after a short break and
has word
that the multiplayer patch for SHOGO should be hitting the net tonight hopefully. It will
weigh in at about 7 megs and the ETA is 10pm CST.
Wisdom [9:11am]
My infinite wisdom all done up in HTML has been posted. It's a gift that I
try to share with the common people.
Tech Etc [9:15am]
werd
Damn, somewhat quiet morning.
| Monday, November 16 |
Even More Voodoo3 [10:39pm]
Ok, just in case you havent gotten enough on
the Voodoo3 you should check out what GameCenter has to say. Since we all know that
GameCenter just LOVES 3dfx and goes out of their way to make sure we all know it check
out their latest article:
As an extension of the Voodoo Banshee architecture, Voodoo 3 will share some of Banshee's shortcomings. Although Voodoo 3 will be able to take advantage of the high-speed data transfer offered by AGP 2X and sideband addressing, it will not support AGP texturing--the ability to access textures out of main system memory. Nor will the Voodoo 3 support true-color (24- or 32-bit) 3D rendering or true-color source textures, though it does include a 32-bit internal rendering pipeline. Instead, Voodoo 3 is forced to dither an image to 16-bit color, a process that can cause visual artifacts such as banding
btw, anyone know a program that can do a traceroute from a PC connected via a ISDN router? Showing actual hop locations etc. VRoute and the always faithful tracert for WinNT cant hang. :(
More Voodoo3 [1:35pm]
SharkyExtreme
has posted all this nifty info/specs on the Voodoo3 line of boards that 3dfx announced
today: Dual 32-Bit texture rendering architecture ,
True multitexturing: 2 textures per-pixel per-clock , Full hardware setup of triangle
parameters , Support for multi-triangle strips and fans , Single Pass, Single-cycle bump
mapping , Single Pass, Single-cycle trilinear mip-mapping , Alpha blending on , source and
destination pixels , Full-scene polygon-based edge anti-aliasing , Floating point Z-buffer
, True per-pixel, LOD MIP mapping with biasing and clamping , Texture compositing for
multi-texture special effects , 8-tap anisotropic filtering , Support for 14 texture map
formats , 8-bit palletized textures with bilinear filtering. The difference between the two
models of the card are listed on 3DN. Here is the more powerful of the two:
Voodoo 3 3000 (For Gamers)
- 7 million triangle per second
- 366 Megatexels per second
- 350MHz RAMDAC: 2048x1536 @ 75Hz
- 183MHz Core Graphics Clock
- 3Dfx Voodoo Compatibility
- 2X AGP w/ Sidebands
- DVD Acceleration
- Digital LCD Support
- Digital video out
- 4-16MB SGRAM
- .25 micron
- 8.2 million transistors
- Optimized for Pentium II I/O
Both of these products are 2D/3D products and 3Dfx is claiming that the 3000 will be able to outperform current Voodoo 2 SLI. The 2000 chipset will initially cost $35 per 1000 units and the 3000 will be $45 per 1000. Both cards will debut sometime in Q2 '99. Also, a 3Dfx spokesman said they currently get 32 FPS in Quake2 at 1600 x 1200 on a P2/400 with a Voodoo3 3000. They expect it to be 40 when the product is finished.
Voodoo3 - updated [11:25am]
Steve Fernandez dug up this press release on the 3dfx
Voodoo3 aka Avenger on the 3dfx Europe page. Notice that "twice the performance of
SLI" which does equate to roughly triple a single Voodoo2 in benchmarks. Holy @#@#!
World’s fastest 3D & 2D
With its dual, 32-bit rendering pipelines, Voodoo3 can generate more than seven million triangles per second, utilising its 100-billion operations per second 3D architecture. Voodoo3 delivers more thantwice the triangle performance of two Voodoo2 boards in the Scan Line Interleave (SLI) format
currently the industry’s fastest 3D graphics configuration. The Voodoo3 family utilises the 3Dfx-patented full-speed, single-cycle, single-pass multi-texturing, which enables critical features such as hardware accelerated bump-mapping and trilinear mip-mapping at 60 frames per second for today’s most demanding entertainment titles
More Voodoo3 news reaches us from biz.yahoo.com. In a press-release Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company said this about Voodoo3:
With 8.2 million transistors, Voodoo3 is manufactured in TSMC's Fab 4, cutting-edge .25 micron, five-metal layer process. The tight integration of 3D and 2D graphics, VGA, video/DVD and flat panel support enables the single chip Voodoo3 to surpass the performance and features of what previously required seven individual chips and three separate boards.
Carmack! [8:55am]
Unrealities.com has posted a write up of a conversation one of
the webmasters had with John Carmack while he was out there visiting the PGL finals and
giving his speech on Quake3. I also saw on Blue's that
Softcom CTF has a bit of a compilation of comments
from Mr. Carmack as well.
nVidia's Next Chip [8:55am]
Not quite as exciting, but another chipset from
nVidia, the Vanta. The Vanta is to the TNT pretty much like what the ZX was to the
RIVA128. Minor improvement. Check out the PR sent along from the boys at www.riva3d.com
NVIDIA™ Corporation announced today its Vanta initiative aimed at bringing 3D graphics to the enterprise market in 1999 and beyond. This initiative includes a new graphics processor, the NVIDIA Vanta™, based on the award-winning RIVA TNT
TeamFortress2 [8:55am]
Another preview of TeamFortress2 for you to look
at. The mod for Half-Life isnt coming out for a while but it's nice to look at and read
about something you cant have eh? Thanks VuduChild.
Just log on, join a team and choose your role or "class." Because there are nine different classes, each with its own goals, methods and weapons, players can choose the one that best fits his or her style and skills. Are you one to charge into the fray, guns blazing? Infantry is your class. Perhaps you'd prefer the solitary, shadow-dwelling existence of the Sniper. Or, if you're more into strategy than firepower, jump into the shoes of an Engineer or even the team Commander. Whatever role you choose, you'll be a valuable member of a well-oiled machine, working together to complete the mission's objectives and defeat the other team.
SHOGO & SIN Patches [8:55am]
Word from
Monolith is that they missed the deadline on the SHOGO multiplayer patch missed their
mark. Here's a snip:
Sadly, it looks like we are going to be about a day off of our initial prediction (that we made 25 days ago) of Nov. 15th.
I'll own up to that. I assure you though, hitting exact dates is very tough. Although we have successfully hit all our dates in the past, this is our first miss (and hopefully the last), and hopefully you will cut us some slack...you know we want this patch in your hands BAD.
I'll keep you posted on the situation as it develops.
As for the SIN patch, there was a bunk post on one of the SIN messageboards from someone claiming to be from aCtivision. Don't worry kids, the patch for SIN addressing many of the reported bugs & problems should be out shortly. I kind of gave up on playing SIN till the patch comes out personally.
Suckage [8:55am]
The weekly
suckage has been posted after a week off.
Half-Life Servers [8:55am]
Looking to run a Half-Life internet server?
Sierra sent out word on just what you have to do to get authenticated with the WON network
and have your own Half-Life server listed with the internal "mini gamespy" that
ships with Valve's baby:
In preparation for this massive release, Sierra Studios and Valve are offering special incentives-including advanced copies of the server software and prizes -- to those who sign up to become server hosts at launch.
Primary server enrollment begins with filling out the short informational questionnaire located at www.sierrastudios.com/hlprimaryserver. Applicants need to be running over a cable modem or better connection to be accepted into the program. Sierra Studios and Valve will be checking servers incrementally and sending rewards to those who continue to run dedicated Half-Life servers over time.
SIN Art & Contest [8:55am]
Dhabih Eng (The dude who made my swanky logo) is
hosting a SIN contest, but for
those of you who already have a copy you should still check out his nifty artwork.
Views [4:15pm]
Tech Etc [4:15pm]
Sites
werd
I'll be staying on top of things through the day for
you knobs just cuz I'm feeling frisky this week. Got the whole guilty feeling from slackin
it lately :)
Raiders win! Raiders win! I would prefer a forfeit to Denver next week.. it's just not fair.
| Sunday, November 15 |
Banshee2? [9:35am]
All kinds of crazy rumors flying around about the new
chipset to be unveiled by 3dfx at Comdex next week. It seems that the whole
"Avenger" thing sporting 3x the fill rate of the Voodoo2 had been a bit
exaggerated according to
SharkyExtreme. I can confirm this myself having heard from from a couple of different
sources. Of course here is a new rumor for you guys to chew on since it's just in good
fun:
Several industry folk told us that the product 3Dfx is set to unveil this Monday is in fact none other than the infamous "Banshee 2" and not a unit with three times the processing power of the Voodoo 2 as earlier reported. The "Banshee 2" is rumored to sit atop a .25 micron die size, have faster memory and a possible second TMU. Again, everything before the official announcement on Monday is strictly speculation.
Rocket Arena2 [9:35am]
The new version of Rocket Arena2 for Quake2 has been
released. Here are a few of the changes, just head on over to the homepage for download
you monkeys:
PGL Results [9:35am]
Well, in a repeat of last season Thresh loses 1 game,
then comes back strong to take the next 2 games and win the $8,500 cash. The Quake1
teamplay finals went to DeathRow, 2nd place went to Clan Gib, and 3rd place went to Clan
Kapitol. Check out the PlanetQuake Coverage
Carmack @ PGL [9:35am]
Speaking of the PGL, John Carmack made his way out to
California to answer questions about Quake3. John did this a couple of weeks ago at the
CPL event as well. AllGames has footage of his
speech.
werd
Ok, since I died last weekend when the Raiders lost
to Baltimore, perhaps I'll roll over in my grave if they lose to Seattle. How's this
though, if Jeff QB's they win, If that 2nd string knob gobbler QB's then I'm not so sure.
It's enough to make a kid cry. :(
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