Saturday, December 12

Lazy [Sunday]
Steve's lazy. Buy GameSpy.

Friday, December 11

More Ritual Departures [9:35pm]
The 3rd level designer to depart Ritual Entertainment in as many months, Matthias Worch has announced that he is leaving Ritual and the FAKK2 project in favor of Legend Entertainment to work on Wheel of Time and Unreal2. Good luck Matt,

More Ritual Departures [9:35pm]
The 3rd level designer to depart Ritual Entertainment in as many months, Matthias Worch has announced that he is leaving Ritual and the FAKK2 project in favor of Legend Entertainment to work on Wheel of Time and Unreal2. Good luck Matt,

Today is my last day at Ritual. I've had a very good time here over the last few months and can't thank everybody here enough for that. They got some really cool stuff coming up, but like so many other ppl in this industry have done and do I've decided to move on...

The new company I'll be working for is Legend Entertainment, if you haven't heard of them check out their awesome looking WoT game at http://www.wheeloftime.com.

I'd like to thank everybody who's supported me and Ritual over the past couple of months, especially the people running fan sites. I'm sure we'll stay in contact, anyway :) My Ritual email adress should still work for a while, and I can be reached at langsuyar@ocrana.de as always.

/me vanishes again - you'll probably hear something from me again (if you like it or not ;)) when we got a game to show you :)

Speaking of which, you can check out the new Wheel of Time preview including 4 new screenshots over at GAmers Alliance.

Getting Too Slow? [8:55am]
Check out this new article on FiringSquad.com which is a bit of bantering between Thresh & Kenn on the subject of games getting slower and slower player speed wise. (Doom, Quake, Quake2, etc)

Doom was fast, blazing in fact. Quake was slower, but still zippy. Then we got Quake II, Unreal, which gave us larger levels and environments, but molasses in our boots. Half Life wasn't any kind of improvement in this regard, and with the popularity of "strategic teamplay" in games like Rainbow Six, it looks like folks are forgetting how fun racking up 200 frags in 10 minutes can be.

Gonna have to say I agree with Thresh on this one. I'm gonna say POOP really loud if Quake3 gets any slower. I'm hoping a combo between q1/q2 speed for movement as the base speed, with about a 10% difference between the classes.

Q2DM? What? [12:15pm]
I've finally found the urge to start really playing some Q2 DM the past week or two, since a few of you guys seem to take interest in seeing if I'm worth a damn playing Q2, I just recorded a FFA demo. (399k) I had a download going in the background which isnt pretty on ISDN so excuse the icky looking lag. (Makes rail shots hell)

Myth2 Gold [8:55am]
Not a 3D aCtion game but I figure you guys should probably be interested in checking out Myth2. Bungie has announced going gold and also mention a demo coming this month:

A downloadable, playable demo of the game will be released to the net this month, shortly before the game appears in stores. Keep an eye on Bungie’s website, http://www.bungie.com for more news

Half-Life Guide [8:55am]
For those of you having problems with the single player portion of Half-Life (What, you havent finished it yet?) check out the GameSpot tip guide. They offer some multiplayer tips as well, but uh.. yeah. It's GameSpot.

Views [7:45am]

Tech Etc [7:45am]

werd
Had a blast last night playing some QIL2 matches against FITH. We had to make comebacks in 2 out of the 3 matches. Totally intense. Got some demos from DieharD-r3v actually in the demos section.

Talk about a boring Friday. I'll try and dig something exciting up for you guys to look at, and hopefully it wont even be password protected!

Thursday, December 10

GLDoom Downloads [9:15pm]
Here is a list of downloads for GLDoom sent along thanks to Pointy:

http://www.3dfiles.com/files/gldoom_install.exe
ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/3dfiles/patches/gldoom_install.exe
ftp://ftp.epix.net/pub/3dfiles/patches/gldoom_install.exe
http://ftp.telepac.pt/pub/3dfiles/patches/gldoom_install.exe
ftp://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/3dfiles/patches/gldoom_install.exe
ftp://ftp.saix.net/pub/3dfiles/patches/gldoom_install.exe
ftp://ftp.iol.it/3dfiles/patches/gldoom_install.exe

Also concerning GLDoom and 3dfx card's here is a tip:

After some toiling around with different OpenGL dll's, I found that if you grab the 3Dfx OpenGL Beta 2.1, extract it into where GLDoom.exe is located, and then rename the 3dfxopengl.dll to Opengl32.dll you get much better performance and a LOT less texture thrashing.

SIN Mission Pack Shots [10:25am]
According to Ritualistic, the 2015 page has posted a pair of new screenshots of the official SIN mission pack in development by the team there.

GLDoom Today [5:35am]
Yup, GLDoom has finally arrived. Here is the email. Also, an interview with Bruce Lewis at Meccaworld, the author of GLDoom.

glDoom is finally upon us! To celebrate Doom Nation and Frag.com are holding an IRC hangout/party over on GamesNET ( irc.gamesnet.net ) #gldoom. Come hang out with the fans as Doom players of the past and current unite for the anticipated release of this port! Download links information will be posted at exactly 12:00 CST and we will be holding random quizes and questions with prizes before and after the release, prizes range from PingTool egistrations to some swanky t-shirts and caps. What better way to celebrate the 5th anniversary of Doom?

Snark_Pit! [5:35am]
Thought some of you guys playing Half-Life would find this interesting, here's an email I got concerning the Snark_pit level in HL:

...I noticed some familiar things in The Snark Pit to a particular (Quake1) DM map made by a certain Valve employee (Dario Cassali) anyways, his map DCDM3 is EXACTLY the same as the Snark Pit its  completely laid out the same! it isnt 100% the same but is damn close! check it out for your self (the texturing is way diffrent) but the layout is the same the Lightning gun is where the egon is, the trap to the lava/slime is the same etc etc the air tube leads to quad instead of lotsa ammo (buts its a blue room heh!) ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/dcdm3.zip

Voodoo3 [5:35am]
Some more information has come up for the Voodoo3 card that 3dfx is working on over at Voodoo Review. Here is a snip from the Q&A Session that Steve Schick was a part of:

. You are claiming "twice the power of Voodoo2 SLI". Does this mean that if a game will play at 1024x768 at 30fps on Voodoo2, then it would be around 60fps on Voodoo3? Isn't the CPU the main limiting factor on Voodoo2?

A. Voodoo3 isn't twice the power of Voodoo2 SLI in all cases. It has the fill rate of a Voodoo2 SLI, and twice the triangle rate of Voodoo2 SLI, twice the bus bandwidth of Voodoo2 SLI, integrated 2D and unified frame buffer. All these things taken in combination mean substantial improvements in features, performance, and price.

All graphics cards are limited by the CPU in some case or another. Typically, as resolutions rise, the limitations begin to shift more towards being fill rate limited and less towards being CPU limited. This can be viewed as "hitting a wall" CPU-wise, but needs to be understood.

Speaking of Steve, VE got an email from the same guy about 3dfx's OpenGL ICD:

3Dfx has released a beta version of its OpenGL ICD to its registered developers.  A public beta should be available by late January 1999.  Look for an announcement on VoodooExtreme indicating that a public beta is available for download from the 3Dfx site. The company has not yet set a date for the final production version

Matrox OpenGL ICD = Poop [5:35am]
I kind of forgot to mention yesterday that the new GL driver that Matrox released after much delay is slow as hell. Just stick to the D3D wrapper if you want at least halfway decent Quake2 framerate. You will take a good 25% framerate hit if you grab those things.

Top10 Selling Games [5:35am]
PCData sent out the top10 selling games for the past week to people goofy enough to subscribe. Thanks Richard for sending along some of the results. Of course Deer Hunter II and those Barbie games etc are all over the place, but as for 3D Action Half-Life was the #8 selling game the past week. Right below.... Hot Wheels Stunt Track Driver.

Tech Etc [7:45am]

Unlike the TNT and G200, the Rage 128 can render at 32-bit (aka True Color) color depths without the 20 - 50% performance decrease all other chipsets come with.  In fact, the Rage 128 can render at 32bpp (versus 16bpp) in many cases, without any performance penalty at all.    In the tests AnandTech ran, the largest performance gap between 16bpp and 32bpp rendering was no greater than 3 fps.

Anyway, the newer chips coming out soon have more effective speed control methods built into them, so overclocking will soon become a dead subject. Why do we go to such great lengths to prevent hobbyists from experimenting with their personal property? Ah, if that were all it was...

I Have A Psychic Gift [3:35am]
So I'm watching this infomercial, (again) and apparently these psychic people have a gift because they make vague references that apply to 99% of the population. Check out these skills:
Your lift involves computers and the internet
You enjoy games
You want more in life
You were a kid once
You've thought about winning the lottery.
You've looked at another person or picture and imagined doing things with her/him.
Something happened a long time ago that you wish didnt.
Sometimes you read a web page and you resent the guy because he updates at random times.

I am confident this alone is proof positive that I have psychic abilities. Just think, I just served thousands of people with insightful information into their lives.

The first 4 minutes you read this page are free, but each additional minute is $35. You are required to send check or money order to Steve Gibson. Limit one viewer per web browser, void where prohibited.

Server seem reasonably fast yet? btw, I fixed the messed up link in the wack-ass links section. (Wrong url, first one is different now)

 

Wednesday, December 9

Gladiator Bot [9:35pm]
As I'm sure you guys know I dont post Quake2 mod news much since I leave that to PlanetQuake and Blue, but this new Quake2 bot from the author of the Omicron bot is very much worth a look. Check out the Gladiator Bot and get some practice in. There are multiple "personalities" for the bot for you to practice with, and more promised in later versions. Keep in mind you have to do some compiling (which is automated) so the first time you play it takes a while.

Matrox OpenGL ICD [8:15pm]
As promised the Matrox OpenGL ICD for G200 cards has been released. VE also recommends having the following installed:

- Windows 98 or Windows 95
- Driver 4.50.008 (beta 3) or higher
- DirectX 6.0 or higher
- Please read the README.TXT file that ships with the ICD Beta1 for last minute detailed information.
- Please note that, as this is a beta release, no technical support will be available for this driver

Drakan [8:15pm]
Stuart Denman of Surreal Software, the guys working on Drakan up there in Seattle has answered a few questions here for those of you (myself included) who cant wait to get your hands on this game:

Stu: We're definitely supporting all the high-end cards with bountifulgraphic elegance like high-polygon counts and over 10 MB of high-resolution true-color textures per level.  Of course, the engine can scale down these figures for lower-end machines so you'll still be able to play great with a Voodoo 1 or Riva128.  The engine also support lots of jucy multi-texturing effects like colored shadow/light-maps and detail textures.  Voodoo3 and TNT do this in a single-pass.

Is This Thing On? [8:15pm]
Well, I got tired of waiting around for the server and just went to sleep. Dunno when this thing finally got fixed. Once again if you sent me any important email in the past day or two and havent gotten a response you might want to send it again.

KingPin [4:45am]
Gamers Alliance has put together a great new article taking a look at KingPin from Xatrix based on the Quake2 engine. This has to be the furthest departure from Quake2 of the bunch. Get a load of screenshots like this one:

Alien vs Predator Mirrors [4:45am]
Straight from Redwood: For those having trouble getting the Alien vs. Predator demo, try one of the 3D Files mirrors or you can now get it from Stomped (48MB). The Australian 3Dfile mirror only had part of the file earlier so you may want to make sure it's the full one before you go downloading it.

Messiah [4:45am]
Shocked.net has posted a new interesting article / interview with guys on the Messiah team from Shiny that also features a couple of new screenshots for you to take a look at some of the most incredible 3D character work you'll see in a computer game for a while.

Q: Except for speed upgrades, what advantages will users get from using 3D Video Cards?

A: Well, like I said earlier, you'll always have a constant framerate no matter what. The 3D cards will help up that rate a bit, and will also do things like smooth out edges, add some extra cool lighting effects that we've got going on, and increase the polygonal detail. Can Messiah be played without one? Sure, and it's still a great looking and fun to play game. But, the better hardware you've got, the better - visually - gaming experience you'll get.

Unreal Arena/Tournament Whatever [4:45am]
Next-Gen posted a little blurb yesterday talking about the Unreal project that the Epic guys are working on along side Sweeney's hax0ring with the net code:

The game was accidentally announced along with GT Interactive's financials on November 2nd, and according to the release is slated for release early next year. It seems as if an announcement on the title is in the offing. Rein, VP of Epic MegaGames stated: "Not quite yet but soon. We're just waiting for the lawyers to finish up the contract with GT."

We should hopefully be seeing a highly revamped and net play oriented version of Unreal early next year. Quake3 should be out early next year as well though so uh.. that is some stiff comp.

PingTool [4:45am]
Blue has word of a new version of PingTool: Beta 3 of version 2.4 of the PingTool server browser is now available, offering what's described as a much improved "New Workspace" feature. Thanks Phantom_309.

Search Engine [4:45am]
As many of you guys know the other website I work on 3DNews.net features an incredibly cool search engine that I've been hoping to have carry over to this page. Well we are part way there. Through some advanced java scripting and awe inspiring CGI work, I have come up with this simple yet robust search engine. Click on my main logo to make sure you have the searchable frame selected, then hold down the CTRL key, and at the same time hit the F key. You're all set!
Ok, old joke. Actually a search engine should be finding it's way onto my page before the end of the year. It will only search about 3-4 months back but that will be enough I hope.

Wack ASS Links [4:45am]
Got some highly recommended links for you to check out posted today. You guys did good in digging up a bunch recently!

Tech Etc [7:45am]

While competitors remain focused on older 0.25 micron designs, S3 Incorporated (Nasdaq: SIII) and UMC Group today announced that they have successfully produced the graphics industry's first 0.18 micron design. Recognized as one of the most advanced processes in the world, UMC Group's 0.18 micron technology will enable S3 to deliver significantly higher-performing graphics accelerators that exceed even Intel's Pentium II processor in terms of gate complexity
<snip>
Specific details about S3's first 0.18 micron design will be available when the part is officially launched in the first half of 1999

Got a voice mail response from 3Dfx's KATHY DAVIDSON and she has verified to me that Canopus now has EVERYTHING they need from 3Dfx for the Canopus drivers as of Wednesday of last week. So now that 3Dfx has come through she told me to contact Canopus to get the final release date, but 3Dfx is now "out of the loop"

werd
I'm gonna have to say those infomercials that play at 3am telling me how "YOU COULD GET RICH ON THE INTERNET" are the coolest thing in the world. It's great stuff, just say internet and people give you money.

How come whenever I tell a girl what I do for a living she doesnt seem impressed? But when I tell anyone over about 35 or so, they get all giggly and think I am a millionaire? I just wish I was into older chicks.

 

Tuesday, December 8

w00? [11:35pm]
Golly gee, email / server etc seem to finally be working again. Sorry about the bounced mail etc looks like our server was getting hammered from traffic on one of the other affiliate pages. Still choking through some mail downloads but it's halfway recovered. :)

Half-Life TextureWad SDK [11:35pm]
Here is a small zip file of the all the tools (plus source) one needs to build Half-Life WAD3 format WAD files.  There are some sample textures, and a tutorial for painting, naming, and using textures.

System Shock2 Shot [7:45am]
The first official screenshot that I know of to be released of System Shock2 has surfaced at Through The Looking Glass. Here is an index of screenshots over at screenshots.net as well, even with a nifty .zip file to download.

Alien vs Predator Demo [7:45am]
After what has to be one of the longest delays ever, Alien vs Predator has finally hit the net in demo form. Here is a link to the file on AGN.

The ALIENS VERSUS PREDATOR Demo is a work in-progress. Thus it is not fully optimised and configured for lower spec machines. These issues will be corrected for the full retail version, giving the end user control over engine and special effect variables ensuring smooth gameplay over a wide variety of CPUs, accelerator cards and RAM.

Views [7:45am]

Tech Etc [7:45am]

We can expect a boatload of new drivers and updates from Matrox Graphics this week.

On Wednesday, Matrox will be releasing their full OpenGL ICD for Win9x only. It will offer relatively bad performance in games compared to their Direct3D OpenGL wrapper, but will support all of your favorite OpenGL apps. This update isn't for gamers.

It looks like they might also be releasing some new NT 4.0 drivers as well. These will support the Marvel as a 2D board (finally) but won't include the video software or the OpenGL ICD yet.

werd
Ok, I'm not your official Win98 tech support but here is a quick summary of how I got multimonitor working so you guy will quit bombing me with email.
- Set up box with 1 vid card, 1 monitor normal setup.
- Install 2nd vid card, have drivers readily available and extracted.
- Go to display / properties and click the "expand my desktop to this monitor"
- say to self "I really shouldnt email that guy who runs a gaming page with Microsoft technical support questions"

A bit more specific about the system I ran this on:
P2-450 / 128mb / Abit BH6 / Diamond v550 TNT AGP / Diamond FireGL PCI / Viewsonic P815 / AST Vision 7L.
OpenGL mode got totally screwed. I use a Voodoo2 for gaming so it didnt upset me, might piss you off though. :)
Also, to get ICQ onto the 2nd monitor, hold down control while dragging the window.

 

Monday, December 7

QuakeCon 99 [8:35pm]
Here ya go, official word from id Software on sponsoring the next QuakeCon event to be held next year:

id Software will be sponsoring one of the greatest pastimes of the gaming community, a fragfest known as QuakeCon '99. QuakeCon '99 will feature the first official tournament for Quake III Arena in addition to the free-for-all which will include id classics. The event will also host a variety of gaming workshops with topics ranging from level design and programming to creation of mods. Making its debut, QuakeCon '99 will feature a special seminar for the female gaming community.

Where: Dallas, TX at The Mesquite Convention Center and Exhibition Hall located within the Hampton Inn & Suites. The hotel has reserved 115 rooms at a rate of $69-$79/night available on a first come, first serve basis.

Date: QuakeCon '99 will open its doors on August 6-8, 1999. On-site equipment registration will begin on August 5th.

Attendance is free and limited to 1000 enthusiasts - first come, first serve. Registration is scheduled to begin on Friday, April 9th. For more information, check out the QuakeCon '99 site located at www.quakecon.org/

First official tournament for Quake3 in August? I'm guessing if the CPL / PGL pick up Quake3 before hand that means id Software will not give them the "official" nod then?

Hired Guns [6:35pm]
From 3DN: Planned for release this spring, Hired Guns is a unique use of the Unreal engine. You control a team of four, and your screen is split to show each character's perspective. By controlling a team at a time, elements such as ambushes are added to gameplay. While you may think that this would take a serious frame rate hit, the designers admit that while smoother full-screen, they insist that it is very much playable in windows. Also, the available weapons sound PHAT, including force field projectors, hovermines, grappling hook tractor beams, and bio grenades. There's much more info and some great looking screenshots in the full review.

More ION Departures [6:35pm]
What? You thought it was over? Yet another announcement from an Ion employee leaving the ranks. This time it's Jeff Wand aka "Mad Samoan" here is the letter he sent out to Blue:

I'm no longer at ION Storm and am now at Red Storm Entertainment in North Carolina working on the Rainbow Six sequel (Rainbow 7?) I want to wish the best for ION and recently ex-ION (Kenneth, Corrine, the Bloodshot crew, Mike M., Ben H., Hushvahtov. I can be reached at jeff.wand@redstorm.com

OpenGL & V1000/2x Chips [4:45am]
Here's a bit from X Generation - if you like, give it a shot, but remember to back up your old drivers...

I've found that if you take the Verite GL driver from SiN and try to use it for Quake II, Quake, etc, it *will* run with a few exceptions. Not so sure this works on a V2x00 since I only tested this on a V1000, but I'm pretty sure it will.
<snip>

While I'm at it, saw on Blue's that The 3DNow! NOW Page has posted an unofficial 3DNow! patch for Half-Life on Rendition V2x00-based systems.

Heretic2 Editing [4:45am]
Jeremy Statz (Raven dude) updated his .plan with a little workaround for those having trouble editing Heretic II maps. Here's what he had to say:

Anyone working on a Heretic 2 map who wants to use scripts may have noticed the lack of a script_runner entity in the list. Unfortunately, the included Heretic 2 project file is told to look for *.c files, while the comment for the script_runner is in a .cpp file (the only one in the directory).
<snip>

QTracker [4:45am]
A new version of QTracker has hit the street. They are up to 2.2 now and have added support for a few more 3DAction games to play over the net in addition to the standard Quake/Quake2.

Unreal Interview [4:45am]
Saw this Unreal interview with Mark Reign linked from VE that pretty much kills any rumors that Unreal framerate will be improving with later versions:

...Will the new 220 (or any further patches) look at solving the low frame rates on slower PC's or is it simply a matter of there being a "minimum" requirement for PC's to run Unreal smoothly?

Mark : Nope. Unreal requires a certain minimum spec and that won't change. 

Views [7:45pm]

Tech Etc [7:45pm]

werd
Damn, not a whole lot going down recently. B O R I N G

I hooked up a 2nd monitor to my PC today. Win98 multimonitor support is just too damn cool. Just put in a 2nd video card and hook a monitor to it and Win98 is good to go. It's a 21" and a 17" btw. If I could figure out how to get ICQ to work on my "secondary" monitor I might actually start using it again.

 

Sunday, December 6

Unreal DM Future [7:45pm]
T. Elliot Cannon (aka Myscha the sled dog) updated his .plan about Unreal multiplayer issues:

One of the big items discussed there was this upcoming 220 Version of Unreal which fixes Multiplayer woes and responds directly to gamer feedback regarding items like

1. Weapon damages/splash radii
2. Weapon Sounds and Punch
3. Player Movement rate
4. Player Jump Height
5. Menus-HUD-Messaging etc.

This latest batch of DM maps I've been working on go back to 1 on 1 and 2 on 2 and 3 on 3 style of play. The maps are ultra fast paced allowing sound cue players good sense of control and accessibility to adjacent areas quickly and effortlessly. I've been focussing on layouts that allow for players to hear a sound cue and get there without much more than a 2-3 second delay-so that the source of the sound cue hasn't moved on to another area.

My hope is that these batch of maps that are being designed specifically for the new changes to Unreal deathmatch shall be released as seperate free downloads along with Tim and Steve's final patch. This IMO will help give gamers a second look at UDM with maps that are specifically designed for the weapons utilized in them.

Also on Unreal, WestlakeInteractive released a new version (1.0.2b2) of their public Mac Unreal beta patch. It fixes a lot of stuff and you can find out more (including download locations) at news0059.html

Views [7:45pm]

werd
I'll just smack you guys up with a hefty helping of news late tonight/early tomorrow. Weekends are made for goofing off ya dig?

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Last Weeks News

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