Saturday, September 11, 1999

More on the UT Demo -- 7:15 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Blue posted some more information on the forthcoming UT Demo from the aforementioned thread on the GT Forums:

The demo/test will have 4 or 5 maps. The plan right now (it is still subject to change) is 3 deathmatch maps, 1 Domination map and one Capture The Flag map. Of course there will be bots and a single player ladder (albeit shortened to the 4/5 levels that come with the demo).

I had to put this next quote in too. It was from someone in the Unreal community. I thought it was a riot, and it shows a decent vocabulary (a novelty on the web it seems).

Do I need to remind anyone here how long an Epic "week" is? Maybe they should change the name from Epic to "Epoch". ;)

HTML Rant -- 9:59 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Hey "webmasters", check your sites using Netscape too! I can't tell you how many sites display incorrectly or not at all in Netscape simply because the webmasters never bothered to check. 99 times out of 100, when I check their code the source of the problem is not one of the vaunted "different interpretations" of HTML between IE and Netscape, but plain, old, crappy code. Table tags opened but never closed. Entire tables with nothing in them. I even saw one site with three BODY tags! Here's an idea, check out HTML Jalfrezi and find out how HTML should be written.

UT Demo Next Week? -- 9:48 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Thus spake Mark Rein (Epic's PR dude) on the GT Forums this morning:

Next week (and again the week after) we'll be releasing a demo/test version that will help us find and shake out some of the last few bugs in the game. Once we see what users report then we'll have a much clearer picture of when the game will be ready.

This is in response to someone complaining about UT not being out yet. He sounded like an addict begging for a hit. Hey, folks, it's just a game. How 'bout getting a life? Thanks Blue's.

Friday, September 10, 1999

ICQ Identity Theft -- 12:49 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Redwood points to this News.Com article that a Trojan Horse under the guise of a JPEG file is being transmitted via email. This Trojan Horse steals ICQ numbers and passwords, allowing others to use them. Apparently the number of ICQ users has grown so large that people are resorting to stealing others numbers rather than put up with a mega-long ICQ ID number.

Personally, I don't see what the big deal is. It is beyond sad if a low ICQ number becomes a status symbol. If your number is in the lower (six digit or less) range, you may want to watch out for this. It would be advisable to change your ICQ password and remove your email address from your details.

I'm not sure how a Trojan Horse can be added to a JPEG file, but if this report is real (which it seems to be) there must be a way.

The Master comments: It's the same old story. DON'T TRUST EMAIL ATTACHMENTS! It's SO easy to fool email apps into opening exe's that are named with differing extensions. In email, you can mark a file as executable and give it any extension, even .txt, and Windows will open it as an .exe. I NEVER trust my email apps. Save to disk, then use a graphics editor to open the files. Same with any other kind of attachment.

UT Preview -- 10:12 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Gamespot UK has a preview of Unreal Tournament online. The author speaks of it in very glowing terms, but the penultimate (look it up!) paragraph is a little disturbing:

We're not reviewing UT this issue because the current beta still has some serious issues with graphics. Unreal was essentially developed for 3dfx Voodoo cards and despite the array of superb D3D accelerators, Epic have only recently started working on support for those. When UT ships it should support 3Dfx Glide, D3D and OpenGL drivers all in one. It will even have a video selection phase that will attempt to find the best driver for your hardware. Next issue we'll be reviewing the finished code so non-Voodoo owners would be wise to watch for that.

This has been my greatest fear about UT. Unreal is an absolute dog in D3D and OpenGL, even on a fast system. I know the review was done on beta code and a lot of things can change, but if there still are "serious issues" this late in the development cycle, it certainly doesn't bode well. I'm trying to remain as open-minded as I can be on this. I'll reserve judgment for when the demo comes out. Thanks Blue for the heads-up.

Past Two Days' News

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