Thursday, September 9, 1999

Annihilator Preview -- 9:32 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The lads and lasses at 3D Hardware.net have posted a preview of Creative Lab's GeForce 256-based card, the Annihilator. They do a pretty good job and weighing the pros and cons of the card. It should be out at the end of this month or the beginning of next for just under US$300.

Happy Birthday Star Trek -- 7:57 pm CST, Update by The Master

Today in 1966 at 8:30 pm The USS Enterprise NCC-1701 began it's five year mission.

Battledroid Q2 Model -- 12:54 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Check out this cool Battledroid model for Quake 2! Now you can be one of the beige terrorists from The Phantom Menace! The poly count is quite high at 1,100, but it's a very cool model nonetheless. Thanks JediKnight.Net.

Hasbro buys Wizards of the Coast -- 12:22 pm CST, Update by The Master

Oh, yuck. Hasbro made an announcement regarding their purchase of WOTC. This sucks. FASA is being bought out, and now WOTC (parent company of TSR) is being bought out. Soon nobody is going to be able to get a decent RPG with all these megacompanies buying up the REALLY cool RPG games and turning them into yuckfactor general public trash.

Okay, maybe that's a bit strong. But I'm not holding my breath. When these small, creative companies are bought out by megacorps, usually the products they make suffer from the PC syndrome and general lack of creativity embodied by megacorps. Man, I'm bummed.

GreenMarine on UT -- 10:30 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Brandon "GreenMarine" Reinhart updated his .plan with news of how QuakeWorld players have been choosing UT over Q2 and Q3. I can see why QW players would prefer anything to Q2, but the issue with Q3 confuses me (IMO, Q3 plays a lot like a jazzed-up QW). Maybe once they try to run UT on their home systems instead of on top-of-the-line machines at a conference their tune will change. Or maybe I'll run the UT demo and be blown away too. We shall see!

Y2K Test -- 10:24 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Today is supposed to be the last big Y2K-related test before "the real thing" at midnight, January 1. Programmers used to use strings of 9s as a way to indicate the end of a file. Today, being 9/9/99, could cause some of those applications to puke. So far, so good methinks.

Wednesday, September 8, 1999

Shogo: The Next Level -- 10:10 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

There's a new Shogo site out there called Shogo: The Next Level. It is dedicated to mods, maps, and skins for Shogo. Check it out!

Recovering . . . -- 9:54 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Well, I had to reinstall Win98 again today. Don't ask. I'm slowly getting everything reinstalled. ICQ is flaking out, not sure if it's a network problem or what the deal is. I played the NHL 2K demo once. It seems really cool, but I'll need to play a bunch more before I can comment further (aw, shucks).

Nuclear meltdown? -- 8:31 pm CST, Update by The Master

Read this article on Yahoo! on the Y2K certification process for US Nuclear reactors. Um. I REALLY hope that we haven't computerized the reactors that much. I mean, what would happen if the damn power failed and a manual system didn't exist? I mean-please. Nobody in their right mind automates a damn BOMB so the computer has sole discretionary control. I think people get a bit too worked up about this stuff.

Those plants are gonna be READY for Y2K no matter what-most of the people who work in them live in the lethal blast radius :-)

Quake3 is TOO pretty?!? -- 8:22 pm CST, Update by The Master

Okay, this just blows my mind. Read this article on Quake3, and the "split" in the Quake community over it's look compared to QW/Q2. Now, don't get me wrong here, but if id made Q3, well, Q2, what would the point really be?

The reality is Q3 is designed to be a fast shoot-that-other-guy game. Things are bright and colorful-why? Because the human eye easily and rapidly deals with those kinds of objects. If everything blended together you'd have the same idiocy like QW where a dude with a brown skin can't been seen unless you're on top of him. And WHY would you want a Q2 deathmatch game? Personally I thought Q2 SUCKED multiplayer. Too slow. Q3 is just right :-) If you want QW or Q2-PLAY them. Don't buy Q3. I don't care. And neither will id in the long run.

Ya know-I never really took up Q2 deathmatch. Mainly because of zbot, but also because I like a fast game. I still play QuakeWorld Requiem (see the requiem page here) but I LOVE Q3. Q3 is finally a fast enough game to make me switch.

NHL 2000 Demo Released! -- 10:29 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Last night at about 8:30 Central, EA Sports released the demo for NHL 2000. It's a pretty big one, weighing in at 42.1M. The good news is that it has full music and full commentary (unlike the Madden 2K demo). You can download it from here or here (both EA FTP servers). I'll try to whip up a review tonight if I get a chance.

Past Two Days' News

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