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Copyright Steven M. Gibson |
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Daikatana Shot
The new daily screenshot of Daikatana is posted on the OGR page. It's really tough to tell this is even the Quake engine, really hot stuff.
PGL Opens!
Got this email from the Pro Gamers League.
The PGL registration process, and PGL practice arenas, are up and running!
Let's get ready to Rummmmmbbbbblllllle !!! The new Professional Gamers' League is now accepting sign-ups; do you have what it takes to compete with Thresh, CnC_God, and the rest of the gaming elite? Go to the PGL web site at www.pgl.net and hit the SIGN UP NOW button to register for the Professional Gamers' League. Existing TEN subscribers can then simply type their screen name and password in the PGL registration form to register. All TEN members MUST register for the PGL to participate in the month-long qualification period, but they do not have to pay the $9.95 PGL Entry Fee that non-subscribers pay. (Non-subscribers: the $9.95 entry fee provides access to PGL-specific games and game arenas for three months: 10/23/97 through 1/23/98)<snip>
This is big exciting stuff and I can't wait to see what PGL does. I'm also especially interested to see how they handle online tournaments. It couldn't get worse than Red Annihilation. I'm sure a lot was learned though and things can only get better.
New Glide Drivers
Here is something that all you 3dfx owners should download, the new Glide Runtime Drivers for VooDoo Graphics. Check out www.3dfx.com for a bit more info on just why you need these things.
Half-Life Monster
OGR has posted the weekly monster information for Half-Life including new screenshots as well as movies for you to check out as well. This weeks monster is the Alien Grunt.
.plan Wagon
Several .plan updates again going around. It's just like the good ol' days:
Jedi Knight Stuff
Check this stuff out, Jedi Knight is forming quite a following. (As it deserved, I love the game)
Review / Preview Land
Dig on all of these things:
Quake2 Stuff
All the stuff that is Quake2:
3dfx OpenGL Beta
Thanks to NAWC / Prophet for this one:
3Dfx OpenGL Beta
The 3Dfx OpenGL Beta is now available from
http://www.3dfx.com/download/sdk/index.html Here's a bit of the posted
announcement.
This is an unsupported BETA release that is intended to give developers an early opportunity to gain experience with this API for 3Dfx Interactive hardware. NOTE: This beta release replaces 3DfxGL.
New Prey Logo
You may want to head over to www.preystation.com and check out the new logo that has been released.
Wanna Live?
As always the weekly section is updated, check out reasons to live with some great help by David Lapoint.
Happy Birthday
Ok supernaut, you are a freak, so happy birthday.
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Couple Things
Thanks Hanif for both of those.
More Jobs? (updated)
Here are a couple of job openings at other game companies:
Monolith Productions:
"Monolith Productions is looking to fill full-time on-site level design positions immediately. We have several positions open on high profile projects, including a lead position. We're seeking talented, motivated people with professional or amateur level design experience to join our teams here in Kirkland, WA and make some kick-ass games! If you are interested please submit your resume and examples of your work (Quake, Duke, Blood, or even Doom maps) to jobs@lith.com "
Ion Storm:
If you are a 2D texture artist looking for one of the most fun and exciting jobs in the world (Working at a game company) Check out Mad Samoans .plan update (Jeff Wand)
BYOC Signup for The FRAG
Polish just sent out word that if you are going to bring a computer to The FRAG, you *must* sign up, or you will not be allowed to bring your machine into the event.
Rocket Arena V1.13
A new version of Rocket Arena has been released over on the hompeage, email from CRT:
Version 1.13 of the Rocket Arena server code has been released on the Rocket Arena page http://www.planetquake.com/servers/arena . It addresses the water jump bug among other things. Also, a service has been set up to allow NQ server ops to set up a custom map rotation on their server. This service is accessable at: http://ripper.stanford.edu
Lost Email
Damn, you guys don't wanna know, just lost about a dozen or so emails due to um.. software problems, yea.. I didnt do anything stupid or nothin. So if you sent me somethig you think I should have responded to or posted, email it again I suppose.
Interviews
Not too many of them today:
Review / Preview Land
All the reviews that aren't Quake2. (Ok, one of them is Quake2, but it's from Cal so it's cool)
Quake2 Downloads
As you guys know, Christian over at id was trying to collect stats on just how many people downloaded the Quake2 demo. Well Next-Gen has reported 250,000 so far, yea.. 1/4 million people in the first week. Which is not including All the offices etc that downloaded one copy and gave it out to the other 15 guys who work there..
Requeim v2.0
A beta of version 2.0 has been released of Requeim over at the homepage. -Blue's
New Drivers
Just installed these new drivers for Win95 for my soundcard. (Awe64 Gold) They work and stuff. If you have a Creative Labs Soundblaster 16 / 32 / 64 or whatever, grab them from the homepage.
There are also some new drivers for the Velocity 128 (I'm hoping to get a hold of one of these cards to check them out)
Unreal Release Date
After everyone going spastic wondering if / when Unreal will be released, this quote comes from OGR who recently talked with GT, the publisher of Unreal (Thanks PSX)
"Latest word from GT Interactive is that Unreal will be shipping next month, with a shareware version due out before."
Speaking of Unreal, Snarf over at UnrealNation has posted some kind words to bring our community just a bit more closer together.
.plan Wagon
All kinds of crazy .plan updates in the past 24hours. Dig em:
Paul Steed of id Software wins the award for most entertaining / interesting updates:
****ATTENTION PARENTS AND WEBMASTERS IF YOU ARE IN ANY WAY OFFENDED BY PROFFANITY OR CRUDE LANGUAGE STOP READING THIS NOW AND GO BACK TO YOUR MILK AND COOKIES. I AM ON A RANT**** Okay. That said I just want to send a big "Fuck You!" out to several people who've pissed me off recently with their idiotic e-mails. I'll not name names, but they know who they are. To set the stage for this cheap-ass melodrama I'll first run off some statistics for you: Out of the 700+ e-mails I've received, SEVEN people have sent me their complete and utter displeasure with the progress thus far on Q2. Well, fuck them. If 99 out of 100 people buy our game then personally I'll have to carry the burden of those who voiced their displeasure and passed on Q2.
Tom Hall of Ion Storm has scored himself a new girlfriend and talks about the progress of Anachronox doing quite well in his latest .plan update:
Blazing on our Anachronox milestone. The levels are great and the models are looking awesome. The new Boots ROCKS. He will be in in like five minutes! Aaaaaah!
Brian Hook has some info about the new board from Quantum that people have been spooging over lately:
3Dfx has done a rough implementation of the SGIS_multitexture extension, and I've spent most of tonight/this morning getting it to limp along with Quake2. The performance difference is, well, pretty damn incredible (nearly double). Preliminary cheesy numbers (TIMEREFRESH at the beginning of DEMO1 in Q2TEST) are 56fps with multitexture, and 28fps without -- literally a doubling of overall performance. We can't draw too much from this, not until we do a full TIMEDEMO score, but right now the results are encouraging, to say the least.
We got one of those fancy Quantum3D SLI boards -- 4MB of framebuffer, and FOUR TMUs, EACH with 4MB. That's a 20MB 3Dfx board kids.
Unfortunately, that SLI board wasn't quite the "ultimate" Voodoo board, at least not nearly as much as the price ($795) and specs would make you believe. It seems the big performance killer is triangle setup -- the Voodoo lacks a full triangle setup core, so lots of polygons (which Quake2 has) hurt almost as bad as lots of pixels. The SLI board isn't lacking in fill rate, but its triangle throughput could stand some work.
The Quantum3D SLI board gave us about a 50% increase in performance over a regular Voodoo. This is pretty incredible, but I'm doubting that it's worth $795. After multitexture it might make a REAL performance difference though.
We have some new benchmark figures, and they're, er, interesting. When we have final data I'll post the numbers along with some analyses. For the time being I'll say this: the leader is the still the leader, the slower boards got faster, and some of the faster boards got slower. I have a feeling that the Quantum SLI board with multitexture support is going to own the 3D board landscape, at least for the foreseeable future (next few months). The test results will make the overall picture much clearer.
Wack
The links are posted along with the morning (er.. well, close to the morning) so go have fun.
I'm Wet
It was and um, still is raining real hard. I waited at my place this morning hoping it would stop. Things didnt work out, so I'm a little late and still drenched. Bah. Should have the rest of the morning stuff soon.
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CTF + Quake2?
Doh! just read this over on Blue's page that apparently there will not be included in the initial commercial release of Quake2 (Hopefully before christmas) Here is an excerpt from an interview with Zoid, creator of ThreeWave CTF:
CTF won't be in the initial commercial release. It will come out a little later as an upgrade/addon. Time constraints of development. The CTF will not be significantly different--the essential gameplay elements will remain intact. I don't want to change something that works. Lots of small issues, such as grapple redesign, the runes (or possible lack thereof), etc. actually still need to be worked out. I'm hoping it will be an evolution of CTF into a more refined game. Many people know my dislike for adding stuff for the sake of just having new gadgets to play with. ThreeWave CTF has always been basic, simple and complete.
Interviews:
Half-Life Pic
Homeboy Jaspur's Half-Life page has a full page scan of the assasin chick from Half-Life. VooDoo Extreme had one a little while ago, but this one is much higher quality if you want to get a good look.
Wisdom
Bah.. fell asleep and forgot to upload the glorious wisdom this morning. Sorry.. it has been posted for your enlightenment now though.
New Demo of Golgotha
This happened a couple of days ago I think but I never mentioned it. (Until now!) There is a new demo of Crack.com's Golgotha (3d accelerator recommended) that is worth checking out.
Unreal Rumors
Our beloved VooDoo Extreme has word from Epic dispelling the rumors of a release of Unreal this month:
No it is not true. Unreal will not ship this month. It will ship when it's finished but I can say with certainty that it will not be finished in October.
Hardware Corner (Updated)
.plan Wagon
Forgot to mention this one earlier this morning. Brian Hook, id programmer, updated his .plan file, here is part of it:
And in the end, yes, Wolf3D, Doom, Doom 2, Quake, Quake 2, Unreal, Jedi
Knight, and the host of other FPS games coming out are going to be doing
roughly the same thing in slightly different ways, just like the host of
military flight sims do today. The consumer gets to choose which one
implements their vision of the perfect FPS the best, and thus the market
decides what is good and what is not, and that is a Good Thing.
If people buy more copies of Unreal than Quake2, we will have to re-evaluate
our design decisions. If people buy more copies of Half-life than Quake2,
we will have to re-evaluate our design decisions. If people buy more copies
of Jedi Knight than Quake2, we will have to see about getting a Star Wars
license :-).
So when you're criticizing Quake2, or any other FPS game for that matter,
ask yourself -- "do I dislike this specific game, or am I just sick of this
genre?". The former contains the type of complaint that I think most game
companies doing FPS games are interested in. The latter, however, is
where you get to vote by buying "Dark Reign" or "You Don't Know Jack".
Quake2 Stuff (Updated)
Ok.. don't even ask why I was up all night. Hardware that fails sucks, especially when you have to fix it ASAP because nobody can afford to miss a day of work. Yet more reviews and all kinds of other stuff pouring out for the Quake2 test demo:
Dope Ass Unreal Rant
Ok.. DaKiller has posted what in his words is a "dope ass Unreal rant" that I suppose it would be a good idea to read if you are into reading stuff that is Dope Ass. (As I am..) Check out www.frag.com/news
Jedi Knight Stuff
Here are a few new things that may interest you in the Jedi Knight world:
Thanks Prophet for all of those.
Daikatana Shot
OGR is keeping to their word with the daily screenshots of Daikatana. Check out the Daikatana section and get a look at today's shot. Just bookmark the page and visit it every day if you are desperate for shots of Mr. Romero's new project.
Preview / Review Land
Other than Quake2, there are some games out there that are getting reviewed and previewed as well. Here they be:
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The Frag BYOC Registration!
It's open! and there are only 240 slots available. So if you want to bring your computer to The Frag and have a spot reserved to hook your computer up to the network, and play on that fat t3 pipe while you are there, you better head on over to www.thefrag.com and sign your ass up!
$50,000??? to play Quake?
Uh.. there is a lot of money and stuff flying around for all you DeathMatchers it seems. The Frag II has just been announced, and um.. I could use 50k, I dunno about you. Here is a link to the press release.
.plan Wagon
John Carmack, programmer at id, has made a .plan update that you may find of interest talking about Quake2:
Many of the comments about the Quake 2 test are already being addressed. We expected quite a few of them, but the test has served its purpose of bringing in some good feedback that we couldn't have predicted.
The final game will definately be better as a result of the test.
However, it certainly won't please everyone. I am confidant that the majority will think that Quake 2 is significantly better than anything we have ever done before, but even if we please 80% of our potential customers, that will still leave a couple hundred thousand people thinking that we let them down.
I suppose that I have it the easiest there -- I can always defend my technical decisions with specific discussions of my evaluations of the tradeofs that led me to the paths I chose. In fact, in a large number of cases when someone suggests something, I can actually say "Tried it. Didn't work as well."
Defending level design, artwork, or sounds is a lot harder. We can't even always agree here at id on many of these issues, so we know for sure that we can't please all the users simultaniously. All we can do is put talented people on the job and have confidence in their abilities.
Note: Q2TEST DOES NOT INCLUDE ANY HIGH QUALITY SOUNDS! That would have added another 15 megs to the demo size. Selecting high quality sounds just upsamples the existing 11khz / 8 bit sounds. There is a significant quality increase (at a slight speed and memory cost) with the full production sounds.
Quake 2's goal is to be the best first person shooter ever. We are trying to evolve a genre, not move to a different one. If you don't want a game that mostly consists of running around and killing things, you will be dissapointed. We are trying to be cohesive, but not deep. I have high hopes for the games that are atempting to aply our technology to other genres, but don't look for it in Quake 2.
BSP v0.86b
Yup, another version of BSP has been released, with support for OpenGL and Hexen2 among other things. It's the bomb. Grab you phat copy over at http://bsphq.telefragged.com -Stickerboy
Preview / Review Land
Um.. here:
GL Card Stuff
Zanshin has posted a nifty chart over at the GLQuake Dojo that should answer most of your questions concerning which 3d card supports GLQuake, and what resolutions etc.
Quake2 Stuff
Your daily dose of all the nifty stuff going around for Quake2:
Qoole Beans
Lemme quote our man Prophet exactly on this one because he
explains it best: GlQoole, for those that don't know , is a OpenGL enhanced Level editor
for ID Software's Quake. GLQoole 2.11 has been released to fix a few "issues"
with the previous
version. Here is a quote from the Qoole News Page:
"Download GLQoole v2.11. Fixed the bug that was causing the GLQoole Fatal Error, "No more DC's available." It occured when you switched to textured mode and a sky texture was visible in the 3D view. WinQoole was unaffected by this bug. "
Get GLQoole 2.11, at http://www.qoole.com/GLQoole211.zip
For more info (which is already in this email) check out
http://www.qoole.com/
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Interviews
Couple of interviews have popped up today that you guys should be interested in:
.plan Wagon (Updated)
Zoid, Paul Steed, and American McGee have updated their respective .plans asking for input on the Q2test. Here is Zoid's update:
Wow, seems I got a plan. I'm hoping to use it as a contact point about new Unix ports and my maintenance work for Quake, QuakeWorld and Quake2.
Here's what I'm working on right now:
- Linux GLQuake using MesaGL with GLIDE for 3dfx based hardware. I'm almost done with this one. It currently requires MesaGL 2.5beta1 or later (since Brian Paul and David Bucciarelli have been working on improving the MesaGL and GLIDE driver for better performance). Currently, Linux GLQuake is a console application (it doesn't use X11) and calls the fxMesa stuff directly in MesaGL. This was easy to get up and running. I'm planning to release a X11 version in the future that uses glX to set it up. That way, it will support any hardware that MesaGL decides to support. Since it's a console app, it uses SVGALib for Keyboard and Mouse handling, but not for video.
- Sun Solaris Quake (and QuakeWorld client). I've been working with the boys at Sun with this. It supports most Sun Ultra Workstations and features hardware pixel doubling so you get a decent framerate even with a huge window. Has full sound support for the Sun audio as well. This is a software client, not GL.
- Linux Quake2 Test. Now that the Win32 q2test is out, I'm working fast and furious on getting q2test out for Linux as well. It will support software and GL rendering modes (ala MesaGL). It will also be a console application initially and uses SVGALib for Mouse and Keyboard handling and video in the software render. The GL version has the same requirements as the Linux GLQuake I'm working on.
- QuakeWorld 2.1. This one has been forthcoming for a while. It's mostly just a maintenance release that addresses some bugs and issues that appeared in 2.0.
It's going to be a very busy next couple of weeks as I get all this stuff finished off and released. Hope everyone is looking forward to it.
If you have questions about the new ports, drop me a note at zoid@idsoftware.com. Note that with the volume of mail I receive, I can't guarantee a reply, but I do read everything sent to me.
/// Zoid.
Here is Paul's update:
MAN! Thanks for the intelligent, detailed, excited and flattering comments. Due to the number of mails I've been getting please don't trip if I can't send a reply. I need you all to do me a favor, though. At the current rate of comments (again I'm not bitching) its going to be hard for me to make the time to read them all so I'm going to list the most commonly referred to criticisms. This will help you guys find other things and ease your mind that I'm addressing this stuff:
1. Death Anims: I'm going to go back and make them longer and especially go over the baseline grunt.
2. Weapons: I'll try to adjust them so they don't block your view as much
3. Gibs: mentioned to John and Kevin the seemingly small pieces and possibly too fast velocity.
4. These are some of the other things you mentioned that we're going to discuss: explosions (sprites):(, flies (too many, appear too quickly), ejecting
shells and other weapons effects.
There's more common critiques, but these are the really common ones. So again thanks for the input and definitely thanks for all the flattery. We're
very pleased that you all like the game but are still focused on making this baby the hottest thing out there this year.
We're not just content to win the super bowl. We want to win it by about 90 points!
Daikatana Shots
Well, Billy over at VooDoo Extreme sends word that OGR has decided to do the daily screenshot thing like PC Gamer did for Quake2, but this time with Daikatana. Not sure how much more we can take of this. Here is today's screenshot.
Quake2 Stuff (More!)
Ok, well following up on the release of our Quake2 demo, everyone has started ripping the thing apart to no end finding all the secrets etc. The only command you need though is "/give all" :)
Guess here is the point where I should share my opinion on the Quake2 demo as well:
Quake2 for the Alpha
All you lucky bastards who happen to own a DEC Alpha system. (GRrrrrr) a version of Quake2 has been released just for you guys. Here is the accompanying .plan update by Brian Hook:
DEC Alpha binaries have been released. Xian is busy putting them into a ZIP file and will post them on our Web server and put a link to them in his .plan file, so watch for it!
The following is the README.TXT file that is included:
This ZIP file contains the Win32 DEC Alpha compiled versions of ref_soft.dll, ref_gl.dll, gameaxp.dll, and q2test.exe. In order to work you have to copy these files over the existing x86 binaries (with the exception of gameaxp.dll, which coexists peacefully with gamex86.dll). Because of this, make sure that you have backups of these files before overwriting them!
The DEC Alpha binaries have NOT been thoroughly tested! I've tested them on an Enorex DEC Alpha with a 500MHz 21164 installed, running WinNT 4.0 with SP3 installed. Both software rendering and OpenGL rendering work fine, but the OpenGL ref has only been tested on a 3DLabs Permedia2 board. I'm reasonably confident that it will work in some fashion with a PowerStorm board. I'm also reasonably confident that Q2TEST will NOT work with any other OpenGL accelerators available on DEC Alpha systems.
It is highly unlikely that Q2TEST for the DEC Alpha will work on a 21064 AXP system.
For you techies out there, these files were compiled using MSVC 5.0 with SP2 installed, full optimizations enabled, release build, and targeting the 21164 processor.
If you have problems, send mail to me at bwh@idsoftware.com describing the problem and the type of system that you have.Have fun!
Here is the file. You also need the win32 demo as well to run it.
Review / Preview Land
Ok, here ya go.. all the reviews that have popped up recently:
HeadHunters v3.0
The new version of HeadHunters will be released for all you HeadHunter fanatics on the 24th (Thanks Red). They are in need of some servers to run this coolbeans mod so check out the homepage. There are 12 new levels, new art / sound and "hours of non-stop ass-kickin fun" included in the pak.
QTracker with Jedi Support!
You may rejoice! the new version of QTracker has been released which support multiplayer Jedi Knight so you can query all those Jedi servers out there lookin for a little sumpin sumpin. Check out JediKnight.net for more info and grab a copy.
More Jedi Stuff
Check this stuff out, there are already editors popping up for Jedi Knight. Thanks Bryant Luk.
Goodbye to The Void
Another great page that never really got the recognition that it deserved, Pat Cupka's The Void Quake news page will no longer be updated. It seems the news page market is beginning to shrink once again. You can keep an eye on the always entertaining PlanetQuake though since Patrick will be spending more time updating that page. -Redwood
New Pages
Keepin an eye on the new pages joining our little 3d action lovers community:
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Quake2 Demo Released!
It's here and stuff. The Quake2 Demo. I heard it was kind of cool so you might want to check it out. Here is a list of download locations. (I'll update as they appear)
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Copyright Steven M. Gibson |
