Sunday, September 5, 1999

So Ya Wanna Make A 'Net Game? -- 11:33 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

There's a pretty cool paper on Gamasutra called The Internet Sucks, Or, What I Learned Coding X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter. It talks about the trials of trying to make a decent multiplayer game, playable over a connection as buggy and error-prone as the Internet. It's targeted toward programmers, but it's still a good read for us non-techie types. I saw this on VE (BTW, Billy, barley is malted to make beer, not the hops :) )

mp3 tag editors? -- 3:12 pm CST, Update by The Master

You know, I've been frustrated by this for awhile.

Nobody has written a freeware tag editor tool that is integrated into Win9x explorer (pardon my sin, A.T., but I actually LIKE explorer-when it doesn't GPF that is...). I am going to remedy that. I am going to write a FREE and hopefully small utility that will allow a user to view and change the tags in an MP3 file right from the properties function in Explorer. It will also show all the relevent details of the file including bitrate, sample size, etc. Any suggestions? Contact me!

DX7 soon? -- 2:59 pm CST, Update by The Master

Seen some preliminary reports of Microsoft's DirectX 7 coming out soon. Check out GameSpot UK's ECTS99 coverage (thanks Blue's). The reports I've seen indicate either Friday or next Monday as the release date.

Commentary: Yay. Another buggy version of DX that we'll all HAVE to install. Or else.

A.T. adds: This new version should be cool because of the T&L code, DXTC (DX7's S3TC support), and (I think) increased use of EAX. Of course, if it's buggy, no one will care. Like with all these releases, I'll wait until I have a game that demands it before I install it.

Search functions -- 2:33 pm CST, Update by The Master

I've added news searching to the site. Why? Because I hate having to search through all the news postings by hand to link related news articles together, thats why :-)

If you have any issues with it, please be sure to contact me.

Saturday, September 4, 1999

.gif wars heating up -- 2:54 pm CST, Update by The Master

#1, pardon the pun :-)

The whole Unisys .gif controversy (reported earlier here) is heating up, with a new site online dedicating to Burning Gifs Day. The whole .gif deal is the result of an incredibly stupid software patent, and is beginning to cause a stir in the internet community. I know I will abandon all gifs on all of my sites if Unisys ever threatens a cease and desist. It'll make for ugly sites, but I ain't paying those greedy *bleeps* any of my money so they can keep themselves profitable.

A.T. adds: I read somewhere (can't remember where) that they were going to be going after people who make graphics-creating software that is using the LZH (sp?) compression without a license. Webmasters should be safe. However, I would just as soon use PNG anyway because it can do the transparent backgrounds in full 24-bit color.

Software patents -- 2:45 pm CST, Update by The Master

<rant>SOFTWARE PATENTS ARE DEVILSPAWN!</rant>

Read this artice on the possible effects of software patents on Linux. FWIW, software patents are ridiculous, since damn near EVERY piece of software is based on algoritms, which should NEVER be patentable. But, hey, I'm not a profit minded lawyer, so what do I know?

Need to get that patent on rendering pixels so I can get a piece of the action. No, better yet! I need to copyright the word "pixels", or ever better, "micro"! :-)

Slow day -- 2:40 pm CST, Update by The Master

It's been a really slow news day. The only thing I've seen is this interview on Thresh's Firingsquad with Scott Sellers of 3dfx. I'm totally shocked by this article. 3dfx should be ashamed of itself. They seem to think that nobody can play in their 3d turf, and anyone who has a good idea outside of 3dfx is totally off the curve. Let me tell ya 3dfx, you're gonna lose the war unless you start INNOVATING, and your T-Buffer ain't it. T-Buffer=Accumulation buffer. Nothing new, highend 3d cards have had that for years.

Past Two Days' News

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