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Saturday, September 5

Permedia3 [12:55pm]
The guys over at Fontline whipped up a sneak peek at Permedia's upcoming Permedia 3 (nice name...). The preview pretty much covers everything we know about the chip

On the 3D side of things, the Permedia 3 can chalk up to 250 Million dual-textured texels per second and 125 million pixels per second in raw fill rate (compared to the 3DFX Voodoo2’s 90 Mpixels/s). It will be able to do single-pass bump mapping with surface texture, ie, it can render a bump map AND apply a separate surface texture in a single pass.

Rendition's Next Chip [12:55pm]
Rendition updated thier Fact of the Week page with some new info on the upcoming RRedline. RRedline is the successor to the Rendition's V2200. This week they talked about hardware DvD decoding, etc.

Voodoo Review [12:55pm]
A new issue of Voodoo Review is up at Voodoo Mag. Some of the topics covered are: METABYTE'S BANSHEE , NEW DIAMOND DRIVER , GLIDE INFO RED BARON 3D , URBAN ASSAULT REVIEW etc.

New Interplay Games [12:55pm]
Interplay released press releases for two new games recently, they are listed below with a snippet attached to each of them. 3D acceleration is possible for both games, I think. Star Trek: New Worlds Galleon

Level Reviews [12:55pm]
Check out Gonzomatic, a new level design review page.

Tech Etc [12:55pm]

Views [12:55pm]

werd
I slept in, ok?

 

Friday, September 4

EverQuest Movie [6:55pm]
EBWorld got an exclusive movie of EverQuest today, it weights at 21mb. To find out more about EverQuest, check out 989 Studio's official EverQuest site.

Dark Vengeance [6:55pm]
PC.IGN.COM has a preview of Dark Vengeance, GT's 3D action-adventure game from Reality Bytes

Dark Vengeance is pretty visually impressive as well. In addition to brilliantly detailed inside levels that boast dynamic lighting effects and silky smooth character movement (and we were playing on a system without an accelerator card), the game promises to give players access to beautiful outside levels as well.

Duke4 [4:25pm]
3D Portal's Duke4ever.com has just posted a recent interview with George Broussard of 3D Realms on the status of Duke Nukem Forever since the switch to the Unreal engine this June.  Among other things, George discusses the addition of Paul Richards (formerly of Ion Storm and id Software) to the DNF team, a new level designer whose name is yet to be announced, and of course the transition from the Quake 2 engine to Unreal's.  Check out the 5 page feature interview at gb19980903

ASCII Quake [4:25pm]
If you are one of the lucky ones to be running Linux on one of your machines, then you are morally obligated to check out Text Mode Quake. Yes, ASCII characters used to simulate 3D scenes from Quake. Here is a quote from the text, and a screenshot linked to Blues page:

What if it doesn't work for me?

Well, don't come crying to me. Do you think I care if a useless, buggy hack for an unsupported port of a game on a free operating system doesn't work for you? Hah! Think again. Err, but if you, heh, fix anything I'd sure love to hear about it.

ECTS Coverage [4:25pm]
Gamers Alliance will be bringing some nice coverage of ECTS for us. (Gaming trade show in Europe) Check out the first post.

Unreal Movie [2:55pm]
Here you go, have fun:

The Unreal Movie Team has released the worlds first Unreal movie. The action may be a little jumpy, and there may be a few glitches, but it shows that it can be done, and i think we can expect some cool stuff from these guys in the future. Check out their page here: http://www.jh-m.demon.co.uk/ They will be moving to www.unreality.dk/UMT within a week or so.

Q2 Mission Pack 2 Release [1:35pm]
Here is the PR sent along to me thanks to Lorien over at GA:

id Software, Rogue Entertainment and Activision announced that the second official mission pack for QUAKE II -- QUAKE II Mission Pack: Ground Zero has been code released. The add-on will be available in stores as soon as Saturday, September 12.

With Ground Zero gamers will blast grizzly new QUAKE II monsters in 14 never-before-seen environments and 10 thrilling deathmatch levels, with all new kick ass weapons, units and power-ups.

More Views [12:33pm]

SHOGO [12:21pm]
OGR slapped up three very cool Shogo-MAD screen shots. Billy has also posted a few over the past couple days at ve3d.net You gotta check out the first TC for SHOGO too. Highly recommended.

Baldur's Gate [12:21pm]
Lorien over at Gamer's Alliance slapped a juicy update on Baldur's Gate. A possible release date is included, check it:

One of our readers, Sean Rotter, sent us the following latest post by John Gallagher, the Conceptual Designer/Art Director of Baldur's Gate:
We're shipping a release candidate to Interplay on September 15th. If it is accepted, the game goes gold.

Weekly Section [1:21pm]
Slightly delayed, but oh well. Here ya go, something to help you squeeze through Friday and into the weekend. :)

More Tech Etc [12:33pm]

Heretic2 [10:41am]
The official Heretic II site got some new stuff for all you guys. Also check out the GameSpot movies that nobody is really sure if they are new or not. After you've checked that out, OGR has posted part 3 of the Heretic II designer's diary.

Third Person Only In Heretic II" is the topic for both of our newest features - the Heretic II QuickPoll, and the Heretic II Community Forum! After casting your vote for the way you feel, click on the "Community" menu link and tell us why you feel the way you do. The Forum's question will change from time to time, as new issues for discussion are brought about here on the News page, so be sure to check back often and get involved in our newly-emerging community :-)

Ultimata Ascension [10:41am]
Carly Steahlin-Taylor (Origin's Online PR Rep) has posted another long series of questions she posed to Richard Garriot on Usenet.

After every one of these, I feel better and better about the game. At this point, I'm even optimistic! I can't wait to hear Stones again...

Q: How is Ultima: Ascension coming along?

A: RG says, "Post E3, we made the scary decision to rewrite a few core routines within in the project, which is always a scary and dangerous move at this stage in the life cycle of the product. Specifically rewritten was the animation system and the renderer. Conventional wisdom would start shooting off warning flares to undertake such a task... but the good news is that we have high confidence that we're going to see an apprciable difference in frame rate and animation quality. If you had asked me this a few weeks ago - I'd be a lot more concerned, but we're now on the verge of re-intergrating the code and it looks like we'll succeed."

Quake1 vs Quake2 [10:05am]
Although Thresh has already stated in a previous article that he prefers Quake1 over Quake2, check out his "meager 2 cents" on the subject where he goes a bit more in depth.

Hrm, I just read it, and I agree with homeboy 100%.

Views [10:41am]

Tech Etc [10:41am]

werd
The world almost ended this morning when I ran out of Froot Loops. Everything is ok now, The paramedics were on hand and the situation was dealt with promptly. The key is to stay calm.

 

Thursday, September 3

Half-Life Interview [8:01pm]
GameSpot has posted a new interview with Gabe Newell of Valve Software talking about Half-Life.

GameSpot: With gamers hooked on Quake II, Unreal, and the SiN demo, why would they want to play Half-Life? What about Half-Life do you think will lure gamers away from those other games?
GN: We ask people to compare Half-Life with those games when they come in to play test, and pretty much 100 percent of the time they say Half-Life has a more immersive world, a vastly better AI, a story that matters, cooler gameplay, better art, and so on. About the only person who didn't give us a win across the board was this one guy who runs an Unreal fan site who said that he thought that Unreal's volumetric fog and detail textures were cooler than Half-Life's beam effects and skeletal animation. Unreal's volumetric fog is really cool.

Beta Test Myth2 [5:51pm]
Bungie is accepting beta test applications for Myth2! -VE

At long last the day has arrived! You've waited patiently, practiced your bug reporting and tracking til your head swam and your fingers ached, and now you're ready to prove that all your hard beta testing practice wasn't for nothing. We only have a few spots available in this first public Myth II: Soulblighter beta test, but if you've got what it takes we just might choose you. We know you're excited- stand in line, talk in whispers, and fill out this form. Good luck!

Server Stuff [5:51pm]
Yea, thought things were all better. Having some issues again with the server though, things are gonna be sluggish for a bit. =/

Proxy for QW v2.3 [3:19pm]
Err, sorry I missed this a couple of days ago. Head over to the Cheapo page and grab the latest proxy with support for version 2.3 of QuakeWorld.

Secret Ops [2:29pm]
AVault just slapped up the Episode 2 to Secret Ops. Be sure to head over to 3DGaming for the weekly strategy guide.

Secret Ops follows the thrilling Wing Commander Prophecy storyline with 56 new single player missions split into seven downloadable episodes.

Unreal Benchmarks [2:29pm]
Cool Computing posted some Unreal benchmarks using i740, PowerVR, Verite V2200 and Voodoo 2.

More More Tech Etc [2:29pm]

Wheel of Time [8:49am]
3DGN just released a huge, indepth feature of Legend Entertainment's upcoming title, Wheel of Time. The feature includes an exclusive interview with producer, Glen Dahlgren, the log of 3DG's chat with the team (2.5 hours long), and a up to the minute preview with tons of new info on the game

Da Banshee [8:49am]
Ok, I scored the latest Banshee drivers and Quake/Q2 actually work now. I'll try and dig up some tweaking action for the card before benchmarking it today, then I'll have to snag my V2 back out of giggler's machine for a bit to get some comparison action going.

Linkage [12:09pm]
The weekly wacked links have been posted. Make sure and email me any new ones you guys run across.

More Views [9:29am]

Unreal Patch Info [8:49am]
Check out www.planetunreal.com for every bit of info there is possible concerning the patch for Unreal that we should hopefully see within the next couple of weeks. The big change, multiplayer, and speed. :)

RailRoad Tycoon [8:49am]
GameSpot has posted the exclusive RailRoad Tycoon demo, the second title to be released under Gathering of Developers (The first title being Jazz Jackrabbit 2, thanks Mark)

Views [8:49am]

Tech Etc [8:49am]

werd
Uhoh, slightly late start this morning, sorry bout that. Boatload of news from yesterday that I missed since I was out for the afternoon. I'm glad so many of you enjoyed the Half-Life preview. Oh, and as for the release date so many of you have emailed me about, I'm still thinking that 3rd week of October is pretty accurate.

Wraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Wednesday, September 2

Anachronox Shots [4:54pm]
Check it out, the first ever screenshots of Anachronox from Ion Storm based on the Quake2 engine. Make sure and check out the Ion Storm page for 4 other shots as well. These are the images that were in the latest issue of PC Gamer.

Half-Life Preview [9:54am]
Ok, it took a couple of weeks due to some unforseen circumstances, but here you go. My impressions, feelings, and expectations of Half-Life from Valve Software. I didnt have as many critical things to say about the game as I do for most, which was well, wierd. Included in the preview are 6 new screenshots.

Messiah Interview with "Sax" [2:34pm]
An interview with the guy I'm most interested in hearing from, Mike Pearson, aka "Sax" over at Shiny. -VE

IGNPSX: That leads me to the next question. How linear is the game? Are there multiple paths, is there more than one ending?

Mike: It doesn't have more than one ending. Satan is Satan. The way the game is structured is like this. The areas are big, and you're not progressing in a room to room level, or a keycard by keycard level. A lot of it comes down to how you treat the environment. Do you choose to be the baby, and try and sneak in? Or do you try and possess a cop and be inconspicuous, or do you try and be one of the worker guys, and try and operate some of the machinery, so you can get through the doors.

Unreal Stuff [1:54pm]
Tim Sweeney (Yea, not Mark Rein for once) made a post to the megaboard:

Guys,
The upcoming patch's multiplayer improvements are mostly incremental tweaks. It significantly reduces server memory usage. It uses client bandwidth about 20% more efficiently. It should be noticeably better for people with low-bandwidth connections.

Also, PlanetUnreal has posted all kinds of details on what we can hope to see in the patch for Unreal which is so very close to release.

The new patch is *really* close, but it's taken a lot of time to get all of my work wrapped up, and all the external code merged in. Hopefully it will happen late this week. Here is the list of improvements and fixes:

Hardware support Kickass Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live support. Latest Unreal OpenGL support Latest 3dfx Voodoo2 dual TMU support More AMD K6-2 / 3DNow! optimizations Intellimouse support on Win95

Weekly Section [11:54am]
The demo of the week has been posted.

More Tech Etc [9:54am]

MaxPayne Character [8:54am]
MaxPayne.com posted a new character description, The Finito Brothers.

Messiah Release Date? [8:54am]
Gorb from Messiah World sent words about a possible but unconfirmed Messiah release date. Here is his message.

messiah.world has posted a release date for Shiny's upcoming title, Messiah. The release date was submitted by an anonymous source from Babbages game store. The release date of November 3, however, has not been confirmed with anyone from TeamEGO (the development team) or Shiny Entertainment

Anachronox @ ECTS [8:54am]
Jake Strider Hughes talked about what visitors at ECTS can expect to see in Tom Hall's Anachronox on the Ion Storm site. Here is what he said.

In Eidos' back stage area, Tom Hall, Cleaner and myself will be showing private viewings of Anachronox. What sets this apart from our E3 demo is mainly Battle Mode. As Programmer Patrick Deupree put it, "We have battles Keptin!" Battle Mode, which is essential to console type RPG's, has now finally made its debut in Anox. It has a pretty interface that Joshua Jay created. You can click on Monsters and execute various melee attacks, MysTech attacks, and heal yourself. It's early in development, but definitely functional. It also has cool camera scripts to enhance the action, with some nifty new GL effects and specular lights on Dynamic objects by our very own Corrinne Yu. There is also our 3d interface, which will also be making its first appearance. Squirrel has been working on that... A Lee Perry/Joshua Jay design. And maybe... just maybe... Joey Liaw can finish the actor blocker and we can actually make a scene in Anox.

JailBreak Gold [8:54am]
Jailbreak GOLD has been released, on the offical JB ftp at ftp://ftp.thepeel.com/pub/jailbreak/jbGOLD.zip   Features new maps, and many other goodies. Check out the offical JB site at http://www.planetquake.com/rxn/jail/ for details and more download sites.  

Speaking of cool mods, Action Quake for Q2 is awesome.

Views [8:54am]

More Tech Etc [8:54am]

werd
From Jono: "It was shown in a recent web master study that 4 out of 4 web masters who didn't update there daily sections, like *daily* had small genitals.   So what do you think ? < cough > If I were King < cough, cough >"

Oh, that sega ad isnt broken, I just pulled it from the front page cuz the load time was driving me nuts. Sorry I made you 28.8 guys suffer for so long. :) We're back down to 1 advertisement for a while I hope.

 

Tuesday, September 1

Gabe Newell [4:24pm]
Voodoo Extreme has just posted his interview with Gabe Newell of Valve Software.

VE) If there is a Half-Life2 are you going to stick with the engine that you've really come to love? Possibly develop your own engine, or maybe even shop around a bit for another engine?

GN) Picking an engine before we understand what makes the game interesting is premature. Once we know what makes any given game an interesting step forward, it's a lot easier to make a good technology decision.

Curved Surfaces [1:34pm]
OGR has posted a new article which many of you guys should find interesting.

While curved surfaces have a long history in computer graphics, they've probably only been brought to the gaming public's attentionin the past 6 months or so due to the closely followed Quake III Arena comments brought up by John Carmack and Brian Hook. Find out why curved surfaces are a "Good Thing"

Half-Life in October? [8:14am]
I've gotten 2 different emails from reliable sources both telling me that Sierra has purchased shelf space for Half-Life for the 3rd week of October. As for if this is true, and if it is when we can expect a Half-Life demo on the net, I dont know... yet. :)

To follow this up, EB of course has

More Tech Etc [11:54am]

Windows 95/98 Intel 2105-0356 1 Sept 98

Blood2 Info & Shot [8:14am]
The-Chosen.com has been updated with another development update as long as this new screenshot for you to dig on as well. Also check ou the new interview posted with Jay Wilson. (I met Jay Wilson while up in Seattle a couple of weeks ago, ok well, I said hi to him and he was playing StarCraft, but damn it still holds a special place in my heart)

QBS3 [10:54am]
The higly popular web page tracker QBS util is having a contest to name the new incarnation tentatively called QBS3 right now.

Early development of the sequel to QBS2 is already underway, but this ain't no QBS3. The changes are so major and the direction so different that they need a name which is new, snappy and interesting to appeal more to the masses than three meaningless letters.

Wheel of Time [8:14am]
The weekly Wheel of Time development update has been posted and includes a nifty new screenshot to boot.

Aside from the graphic tastee treat, I think the biggest news is the ramping up of the development team. One recent event shook free a few able-bodied programmers; the team dedicated to the adventure game The Blackstone Chronicles (due to ship very shortly) broke their shackles and ran for the light. Lucky for me, I caught them before they made it. Jim Montanus (tech lead for that project) is being dragged over to this side of Legend, tentatively scheduled to focus on single-player implementation. He's a smart, dedicated programmer and a died-in-the-woolhead Jordan fan. I'm looking forward to his enthusiasm and perseverance. Also, Ryan Ovrevik fell into a snare I placed right by the water cooler. He's now building the AI architecture and doing a great job (when he's not planning retribution). Ryan, also, is a smart and dedicated guy. I'm glad to have him on board

Weekly [10:54am]
I for some reason have zero urge to update todays weekly section right now. Probably after I get home later.

Views [9:44am]

Tech Etc [9:44am]

Is it possible for the Voodoo2 chip-set to be slower using two texture units rather than one? Suppose a game required more than 4 megabytes of texture memory for the first texturing (detail rendering). If the V2 was using both it's TMU's it would be forced into loading some textures across the pci-bus during gameplay. Is there a possibility that in some circumstances this would be slower than using a single TMU with all textures loaded locally? Does this situation exist with Epic's 'Unreal'?

werd
Cool, I swapped out a hd and forgot my mp3 directory. Of course it's deleted, formatted, and gone now. Gotta love that. Someone gimme a dollar for being such a moron.

# of days till Romero dies again: 360

 

Monday, August 31

Broussard Interview [9:04pm]
A new interview with George Broussard is now up on Game-Interviews.com at duke.htm.  The interview talks about Duke Nukem Forever.

Daikatana @ ECTS [7:44pm]
Here is some info on what Daikatana will be showing at the ECTS show in Europe this year according to Ion Storm.

Sidekicks Mikiko and Superfly will make their debuts; Brand new in-game cinematics; one at the beginning of each episode; Finalized songs and music; Ambient sounds, such as footsteps, water, etc. An .avi clip, set to music, from the actual opening cinematic.
The Weapons : , Sidewinder , Shockwave , Ion Blaster , Venomous , Sunflare , Trident , Wyndrax's wisp , Nharre's nightmare , Bolter , RipGun , Slugger , Novabeam

TF2 [5:41pm]
Spyder's Fortress has posted a new preview of TF2 which is the TeamFortress add on pack being made exclusively for Half-Life. There are 2 screenshots there as well. I recognize the first shot, but not the 2nd one.

According to TyR, half-life is almost completely done in code and with the models and is still within the "Summer release" time frame (summer ends in one and a half months) and TF2 is almost done in code but still needs work on the models and maps and he said it will be out 1-2 months later.

Ex-Ritual Happenings [3:58pm]
Many people are curious what Gary McTaggart & Charlie Brown, ex-Ritual "Uber Engine" Programmers along with Mike "giggler" Wardwell ex-Ritual level designer are up to. Well, I dug this up in a recent .plan update from Shaithis

Anyway, I'd love to talk more about my current projects, but I'm really not allowed to just yet. Let me just assure ya'll that what Gary, Charlie and Mike are doing is going to blow you away. :)

As soon as I can say more, I will. I'm still waiting to find out if Mike's gonna beat my ass just for posting that much. ;)

Yea, not much there, but apparently they are up to something that requires art, yes?

Banshee! [1:12pm]
Sharky Extreme has posted a new article with many benchmarks on the 3dfx Banshee

It's all in the drivers- and the differences were indeed marginally significant. Where as Diamond's Monster Fusion scored in the region of 28 frames per second in Quake 2 at 1024x768, the 3Dfx reference board turned out scores that were usually a frame or two higher.

How the heck did he get Q2 to run with the latest drivers? Hrm.

Fragmented Q2CTF Tourney [12:32pm]
Clanring has combined forces with ICR to bring you Fragmented, a Q2CTF tournament.  Registration has started and the tournament will include 64 hpb and 64 lpb clans.  The tournament begins after all available slots have been filled.

PC's of 1999 [12:32pm]
An interesting new article on ZDNet called Sneak Preview at your PC in 1999. I saw from Cyrellis

Here are a few of the Intel updates on tap:

450 MHz Katmai desktop processor with new Katmai instructions. Will improve 3D and floating point performance, but will demand changes from software and hardware designers.
The new Tanner workstation process, which is essentially today's high-end Xeon chip modified for the new Katmai instructions. Click for more.
4X Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP), which will also boost 3D performance.
Direct RDRAM, a new, faster memory.

Mac Unreal [9:42am]
Word on the Westlake Interactive page is that MacUnreal is good to go.

Unreal Macintosh should be showing up in stores later this week. Our last check in with MacSoft indicated that duplication has been going well and it should begin shipping out to pre-orders and stores today or tomorrow.

Quake2 & Overclocked Celery [11:32am]
Tech Reviews has posted a comparison between overclocked Celeron CPU's and the original P2's from Intel

Now for testing we used the widely recognized Quake II timedemos. Why? Throughout the gaming community the Quake II timedemos have become a well known deciding factor on how a video card and CPU perform. We used a Diamond Monster 3D II 12 MB Voodoo2 card for the timedemos.

Suckage! [11:32am]
Check it, the Monday suckage has been posted. Also, I can't find the actual email that attached the correct monday_old.htm file for my suckage archives, but thanks to everyone who helped!

Unreal Tech Games [9:42am]
Mark Rein made this statement about different companies who have licensed Unreal technology and how Epic handles updating them with code

The situation now that Unreal is released is that engine improvements are given to licensees AFTER they're released in patches for our end users. Licensees will receive the next update (with the stuff being address in the patch that, no promises, should come out in the next week) right after the next patch ships.

That next patch addresses a whole bunch of things:

1. OpenGL and D3D (when it's released) support meaning a whole bunch of cards will eventually be supported
2. A bunch of minor fixes
3. A bunch of server improvements
4. Easier server finding
5. Support for more downloadable stuff
6. Faster loading
7. Most importantly: Improved multiplayer

Myth2 Shot [9:42am]
Check out this cool new screenshot from Bungie of Myth2 that was released yesterday:

aCtive Channel Part2.5 [9:42am]
Ok ok ok, thanks for all the emails telling me wtf I was doing wrong. I forgot to set the interval correctly which kind of made the whole channel thing useless. (It added my page, but only updated when you manually did it, kinda defeated the purpose) So delete the page from your channel guide and re-add it (Hit that blue button in the left frame). I'll leave the graphic up there for the week, then after that move it to my links section or something. I was amazed at the actual large percentage of IE users use this thing.

World Deathmatch Tournament [9:42am]
Well, this doesnt look good. Ignatu announced on IRC yesterday that unless the WDT gets financial backing, he may no longer be able to spearhead the effort. Here are a couple of quotes from him:

<US-Ignatu> if you will pay my rent on Tuesday, I'll gladly continue for another month
<US-Ignatu> it has to do with time, and effort
<US-Ignatu> time and effort I should be spending working
<US-Ignatu> it's not a QW/NQ issue
<US-Ignatu> it's a ME issue
<US-Ignatu> my ability to be involved with this, in this way, is at an end
<US-Ignatu> If anyone wants to take over organizing a world tournament, email ignatu@idle.com

Views [8:24am]

Tech Etc [8:24am]

werd
Ok, I thought today was Labor Day, that's next week. Don't go outside or anything then, just sit in your office and ROT! :) I saw the sunlight for the first time in uh.. a long time yesterday. It was wacky. You guys ever seen that thing? It's the big yellow glowing thing.. really bright, only shows up thought when it's bright outside. I'm not sure what the deal is with that.

Oh, remember that stuff about me benchmarking this Banshee? Well the new drivers I installed... GLQuake / Quake2 dont work. DOH! Gotta wait for the next drivers I guess.

3DNews.net Last Weeks News copyright Steve Gibson 1998