Wednesday, September 22, 1999

UT Demo Stuff -- 5:10 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I've been playing CTF with five bots (3v3) in UT and I must say that it's an aweful lot of fun. I'm slowly cranking up the bots' intelligence as I get more accustomed to the weapons. Beware my 133t skillz :)

I haven't bothered to play online yet because I felt that running the demo with the Unified drivers would add too much system weirdness to give the netcode a fair shake. Once the full demo is out, I'm going to test it online and see how it goes. I will give UT this, I've played the demo a lot more than I ever played the Unreal demo that came with my SB Live!

DirectX 7 released -- 4:26 pm CST, Update by The Master

Well, DirectX 7 has been released on the MicroSoft DirectX Home. Download now, since Unreal Tournament shouldn't be far behind :-)

A.T. adds: It's a better than six meg download, so pack a lunch (since M$'s mirror sights tend to be soooo fast). Hopefully this will not cause any of my other DirectX games to barf (NHL 2000, Shogo, XWing Alliance, SW: Racer).

Okay, who's the wiseguy with the backhoe?!? -- 10:53 am CST, Update by The Master

I was offline most of the night last night since my ISP's T3 seemed to take a serious muck-sucking dive last night. I'm playing with a couple of things programming-wise on this site. I intend to port this whole site to a new codebase as soon as I can find some free time to get the coding finished. (free time? What's that?!?)

In other news, I FINALLY found a free explorer extension for .mp3 id3 tag editing. As soon as I can get the binaries uploaded I'll add a link to the whole package.

Fill Rate vs. T&L -- 10:02 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Today Voodoo Extreme asks several game developers this musical question:

Right now (or within the next month or two, I'm talking very near future), what do you see as being more important: A card with an EXTREMELY high fill rate and full screen anti-aliasing but with no T&L, or a card with good fill rate (not outstanding, but better than current cards) with T&L? Yep, this is almost a Voodoo4 (based on rumor/speculation) vs. GeForce 256 question, but I'm trying to avoid being that direct :) So, in an attempt to avoid a V4 vs. GeForce 256 (and/or Savage2k) war, I'm just being vague, and asking a "T&L vs. high fill rate" question.

The responses are very telling. About every developer said that T&L (transform and lighting) is more important. Mike Dussalt of Monolith made the observation that on-board T&L helps overcome the PC's biggest bottleneck, the bus.

The disadvantage of a GeForce (or Savage 2000) card is that it will not scale up as well with a faster processor as the Voodoo 4 will (assuming it ever comes out). This is a great advantage for those of us on a budget, in that slapping a T&L card in our current machines will extend their life significantly.

The Master comments: And WHO really cares about the card scaling? That whole argument is a sign that your software T&L pipe has issues, especially 3dfx, since they're the one card that gets the most benefits from higher processor speeds. Bah, I still say T&L is a LOT more important than fillrate, espcially now with pretty solid fillrates but polygon render limits because of the AGP/PCI bus.

Tuesday, September 21, 1999

UT Damage Tone -- 9:34 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I just read the following blurb on the Shack:

The latest topic GreenMarine brought up was asking if UT should have 'hit feedback tone' telling a player when damage is inflicted. It looks like GM is gonna put it in the next version thanks to you guys.

That's one thing I noticed immediately when playing UT. It was hard to tell when I hit someone, especially with the minigun. The tone (a la Quake 3) would be a welcome addition.

NHL 2000, Mine! -- 9:24 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Well, kids, I picked up a copy of NHL 2000 yesterday. I played in quite a bit yesterday. Once I get a better feel for it, I'll post a review. Until then, gotta practice my hip-checks!

UT Full Demo Progress -- 9:19 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

There is an update on UnrealTournament.com detailing their plans for the full UT demo release. The demo will not be released until M$ releases the DirectX 7 stuff, hopefully tomorrow. The full demo would then come Thursday at the earliest. The worst part in this update is that Epic hasn't done anything with the engine's OpenGL renderer since Unreal 2.25, so expect it to continue to suck.

The good news (at least for me) is that they will also be releasing a patch for the Glide-only demo to bring it up to the full demo. So if you want to try the current demo with the Unified drivers, give it a shot. At least you know you won't have to do another 50M download when the full version comes out.

Past Two Days' News

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