Saturday, September 18, 1999

More on UT with Unified -- 2:24 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I've played the UT demo a little bit more. There are some other graphic problems with the Unified drivers. For example, on some of the weapon fire a flashing box appears around it. All in all, the graphic problems are surprisingly minor and the game runs at an acceptable framerate. I've going to toy with it some more and see what happens. So far, I must admit, I like it. Now I just have to learn the maps and the weapons better.

It Works! -- 1:12 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

OK, it's late, I'm stupid, I should be in bed. I just wanted to report that my UT Demo download finished about 1/2 hour ago. To my surprise, the Unified driver (version 1.20, the latest version) runs the Glide-only demo pretty nicely! At 640x480 with the default settings I was getting an average framerate of 28 at 640x480 with high settings. There were some weird texture errors, but I was very amazed that it ran as well as it did. Once I figure out if there's some demos in this thing to timedemo (and how to do it) I'll report back. Bedtime for now.

Friday, September 17, 1999

Glide-Only UT Demo Out! -- 4:59 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

At long last 3dfx got their act together and posted the Glide-only version of the Unreal Tournament demo. A complete list of mirrors can be found at 3dfx Gamers. It's a 50M download, so pack a lunch. I'm downloading it because a) I'm insane, and b) I want to see if I can get it to run with Creative's Unified drivers.

Update (7:02 P.M.): My download is still at 33%. At this rate, it'll be here around 11:30 P.M. Central. We'll see if I still have any neurons firing sufficiently to test it out.

Update #2 (10:30 P.M.): Well, I'm cruising along at 1.9K/sec . . . still have about two hours to go on the download. Here's to hoping that Epic is nice and also posts a ZIP file with just the new executable when the OpenGL/D3D version comes out so I don't need to do all this again.

More GreenMarine .Plan Goodness -- 10:48 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Brandon Reinhart updated his .plan again, expressing his frustration with the fact that 3dfx still hasn't released the UT demo. This is getting a bit silly. How long does it take to send the demo to some mirrors?

Tim Sweeney on UT Requirements -- 10:41 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Planet Unreal posted a message from Epic's Tim Sweeney regarding the system requirements for UT. Most interesting (to me anyway) was the graphics card information:

The best performance by far now is on Voodoo3's with Glide.

Next up are Voodoo2's, TNT2's, Savage4, and the Matrox G400. The Direct3D cards will improve in performance nicely once we update the demo for DirectX7, which has improved performance.

The next tier is the Voodoo1, TNT1, Rage 128, and software renderer. They're all about equal in overall performance.

This tells me one thing: the Unreal engine is, and always will be, a Glide engine. If the TNT, Rage 128, Voodoo1, and software renderers are all on the same level, it also tells me that the engine's OpenGL performance still sucks, otherwise the TNT would blow the Voodoo1 and Rage 128 away. The more I read, the more I think I'm going to stick with Quake 3. But, as I've said before, I will not pass judgment until I can try the full demo on my system next week.

The Master comments: I'll be happy to pass judgement right now. If UT isn't gonna run on a TNT half-decent (and if it's being compared to a Voodoo 1, it isn't) I ain't playing it. No way, no how. I'm aware of some texturing issues that cause the slowdowns in non-Voodoo cards, but there are ways to deal with that and the TNT is very capable of beating out a Voodoo2 in performance. Try again Epic, I'm not impressed.

UT Demo News -- 9:35 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Brandon Reinhart updated his .plan with news about the demo, including the fact that the fixed version of ngStats is now included in the archive. He also notes that the reason the demo isn't out yet is because 3dfx didn't have their act together for handling the potential demand for the demo.

CliffyB updated his .plan with helpful hints and tips on playing the UT demo, assuming it ever comes out.

Past Two Days' News

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