Friday, September 3, 1999

UT Update -- 8:56 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

CliffyB reports on the UT messageboards that UT is "Almost there." Stop me if you've heard that before. Thanks sCary.

Microsoft Responds -- 8:46 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

In response to the allegation that all versions of Windows have an NSA "back door", Microsoft has responded, calling the allegation "inaccurate and unfounded".

Big Brother Is Watching You! -- 10:56 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Someone has found out that every current version of Windows (95/98/NT/2K) has a "back door" built-in for the NSA, the federal governments "spying" branch. Nothing like a built-in invasion of your privacy. I can't wait until crackers get their hands on this! I saw this on Slashdot.

NHL 2000 Screenshots -- 10:25 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

NHL-Online has scored 36 new screenshots from EA's in-stores-soon NHL 2000. The shots are pretty cool, even though the person taking them was playing with the Colorado Nordilanche (blech!). This may be my next game purchase . . .

One thing I noticed from these screenshots that they've added since NHL '99 is expressions on the players faces (smiling after scoring a goal, grimacing when giving up a goal). You can see that most clearly in this screenshot. Actually, it's a little eerie.

Another thing I noticed that they didn't fix was goalie masks. Some goalies like Buffalo's Dominik Hasek and Detroit's Chris Osgood wear the older kind of goalie mask, basically a regular player's helmet with a cage on the front. As you can see from this screenshot, Hasek has the newer, fancier kind of mask. It's a small point, I'll grant you. It would seem that if they could put time into getting expression on players' faces, they could get the right mask on Ozzie and the Dominator.

Thursday, September 2, 1999

Carmack on the GeForce -- 11:07 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

John Carmack updated his .plan with a blurb on his impressions of NVIDIA's recently released GeForce 256. Here's a snip:

It is fast. Very, very fast. It has the highest fill rate of any card we have ever tested, has improved image quality over TNT2, and it gives timedemo scores 40% faster than the next closest score with extremely raw beta drivers.

The throughput will definately improve even more as their drivers mature.

For max framerates in OpenGL games, this card is going to be very hard to beat.

Carmack Interviewed on ZDNet -- 11:04 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I saw this, um, everywhere. ZDNet has some RealVideo interviews with id's John Carmack, recorded during QuakeCon. In one of the interviews he talks about the possibility of id's next product being single-player only. It would make sense because most games that try to do both suffer in single-player, multiplayer, or both.

Nose art? -- 9:45 pm CST, Update by The Master

Brandon "GreenMarine" Reinhart of Epic Megagames posted a .plan update today, with the following UT blurb:

One of the artists painted a happy face on the end of the flak shell. I was playing against bots the other day and I took a flak shell right in the face. Two frames before it hit me, I see this smiley face staring me down. Boom! Giblets bouncing everywhere. These artists think they're funny.

Heck, I think that's a riot! I think I may need to buy this game :-)

Thresh's GeForce Article -- 10:10 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I saw on interested article on NVIDIA's new GeForce 256 chip on Thresh's Firing Squad. Among other interesting tidbit, he mentions that Q3A benchmarks at 1600x1200x16 bit color were 33.1 for the GeForce and 17.5 for the TNT2 Ultra. He didn't say what CPU the benchmarks were taken on. However, id is making a higher-polygon-count version of Q3A and the benchmark differences there should be even more dramatic.

Past Two Days' News

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