Friday, August 27, 1999

Patience, Grasshopper! -- 10:29 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Some people really got their undies in a bundle that the Unreal Tournament release date was not revealed, or that the demo was not released at last night's Avault chat with the Epic folks. I must admit that I'm always amused by people who have more free time than I do. Some of those guys sounded like heroin addicts who were just told that their supplier had "run out."

UT (or Q3A or whatever) will be out whenever it's ready. Personally I'd rather wait for a while than buy a product that takes three patches to get functional. (Like Sin?!? :-) That's also why, with a couple of notable exceptions (TIE Fighter and X-Wing Alliance), I usually wait for a week or two after the release to let the "early adopters" do the testing for me. It's no surprise that LucasArts was one of the first to use the "when it's done" release dates and their products usually require the fewest patches (usually for added features).

Psst, Wanna Make Some Mods? -- 10:19 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

PlanetQuake has set up two mailing lists for the discussion of Quake 3 mods. The first one, which can be subscribed to at http://lyris.gamespy.com/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=q3coding, is "a moderated list for discussion of the actual code, including "how to" questions, the client DLL, porting Quake 2 mods, bugs and fixes, etc." The second, at http://lyris.gamespy.com/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=q3coding-discuss, is an "unmoderated list . . . for general Quake 3 Coding discussion (e.g. mod ideas, compiling help, general C/coding questions)."

The Master comments: I am SO glad PQ has a web interface for their mailing lists. I sub'd from work. Gotta keep ahead on this stuff ya know!

loonyboi, Day Four (and Last) -- 9:48 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

loonyboi posts his log for day four of his trip with the Q3A bus across Texas (and heading across the U.S. southeast). He also busts out the digi-camera for some parting shots of the new levels and the fun around the bus.

Thursday, August 26, 1999

UT Avault Chat -- 8:17 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Well, I just missed the Avault Unreal Tournament chat tonight. Unreality.Org has the whole unedited log file here for anyone who wants to trudge through it. They have selected highlights from the chat on their front page. Most interesting to me was the following:

• UT will ship with all the Unreal monsters so people can make single player maps
• UT will also ship with all the Unreal textures so maps and mods should convert easily (it sounds like maps should work automagically)
• A demo will be out before UT hits the shelves, when it goes gold.
• While there are speed improvements, there are higher polygon counts and such so "overall it balances out." Let's hope that doesn't mean what I think it does. The Master Comments: Yup-it does A.T.

CliffyB also said that, "UT will be done Soon", which of course means absolutely nothing.

NHL 2000 Gold -- 2:15 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I just saw on NHL-Online that EA Sports' NHL 2000 has gone gold! As soon as the demo comes out, I'll put up a review.

Stupid computer tricks? -- 12:21 pm CST, Update by The Master

For the ubergeeks in the crowd, there's a site dedicated to Stupid Computer Tricks online. Just got done reading the Programming section. What a riot :-) Saw this on User Friendly.

New Hun-Speak -- 10:53 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

That news blurb about the article in the Ottawa Sun really got the creative juices flowing. Check out my latest Hun-Speak column. In it I try to answer the question "Do Violent Games Beget Violent People?"

Hollenshead responds -- 10:03 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Todd Hollenshead, id CEO, responds to the article in the Ottawa Sun about violent video games leading to violence in society. His well-worded response may be found in his .plan and includes addresses to complain to :) If you do send a response, think about it for a bit and make it a rational response. Don't just send email saying essentially "You suck".

Update: That article from the Ottawa Sun has been removed from the above link. Hmm, think they got some responses?

Update, part deux: Hollenshead passes along this link to a Salon article from May which shows that Grossman's (the "expert" quoted in the Sun article who is conveniently hawking his book on the subject) comments do not reflect actual facts, nor are they supported by any peer-reviewed studies.

The Carmack Speaketh -- 9:48 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

John Carmack updated his .plan with news of a new Q3Test in mid-September. Here's a snip:

The current plan is that we will have another test release around the middle of next month. This version will be running game/cgame/ui with the virtual machine, and will include single player play against bots. No new maps.

I will be releasing the source for all the VM modules with it, and setting the executable up so that it will allow modified modules to be used.

Finally we'll get to play against bots! The only reason Q2 is on my hard drive right now is to play against Ridah's Eraser bot. Carmack doesn't say if you will be able to spawn bots in multiplayer or not. Also, he'll be testing his new VM code which will allow community members to write mods! Suffice it to say, this is going to be cool . . .

His .plan also includes an updated worklog and an encouragement to users with 64M memory to consider getting some more. I would think that would be especially true of people (like myself) using Win98, which is a resource hog anyway.

SPAM? I HATE SPAM! -- 9:17 am CST, Update by The Master

WHAT THE HECK IS UP WITH SPAMMERS?!? I don't want your junk in my mailbox. I don't want to read your unsolicited crud. Keep your manure to yourselves.

I wish I could run the RBL mail checker on all my email (I do have this running at work. Spammers beware :-). Then I could finally ditch some of this idiot spam once and for all.

A.T. dresses up like a Viking and sings: Spam, spam, spam, spam, lovely spam, wonderful spam. Sorry, if you've never seen Python, you're not likely to get that. Trust me, I hate the stuff (both the packaged meat and the unsolicited email) as much as he does.

Past Two Days' News

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