Monday, October 4, 1999

Buggy Software -- 11:55 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Here's an article on buggy software that every software company should read and every software user should be appalled by. If you've ever had IE bring your entire system to its knees, read this. I saw this on Slashdot.

Creative GeForce256 card review -- 9:46 pm CST, Update by The Master

There is a Creative 3DBlaster GeForce Annihilator review on Hardware One. It's a really interesting read. The 104°F temperature in Q3A/benchmark mode is VERY scary, however. I hate it when my machine hits 90°F, I don't even want to think about this kind of heat.

Carmack .plan Update -- 8:49 pm CST, Update by The Master

John Carmack updated his .plan with another Q3A worklog. Check the highlights:

• allow cg_thirdPerson and cg_thirdPersonRange in games
• single pass plasma explosion effect to save overdraw
• rescaled and sized gib and mark blood to save a lot of overdraw
• fixed cg.time < snapshot time on vid_restart
• back to requiring a before commands on the console to distinguish them from chat messages. Tab completion automatically adds the slash.
• new tab command completion with complete to longest common, multiple match listing, complete first token, etc
• separate version check for game/cgame in addition to system

Lots of speed improvements and cheat protections here. And THANK GOD for the "" requirement on the dang command line! That has annoyed me WAY too much in Q3A.

Top 10 bugs that piss me off -- 8:24 pm CST, Update by The Master

Saw this on GameSpy's network: The Top Ten Bugs that Piss us off. Now, THIS thing is just hilarious. When you get a moment, give it a read :-)

A.T. adds: My #1 bug would be Win9x . . .

Annihilator Announced -- 10:50 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Creative Labs has announced their GeForce-based Annihilator graphics cards. The Annihilator with 32M memory (SDRAM?) will be available this month for a suggested retail of US$249. The Annihilator Pro will be out in time for Christmas and will have 32M of DDR memory. You'll have to pony up an extra C note for this one though, it will retail at US$349. Thanks 3DGPU.com.

Dang it, A.T., you BEAT me to this one!!!! Grrrrrr :-)

Intel Names Merced -- 10:48 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I saw on VE that Intel has officially named the chip codenamed Merced. It is now the Itanium. Seriously. The amazing thing is that there are people who make zillions of dollars coming up with names like Itanium, Athlon, and GeForce. P.T. Barnum was right . . .

Sunday, October 3, 1999

UT D3D Speed Up -- 10:36 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I saw on the Unreal Tournament.com that D3D users can get a major speed boost by turning off the HUD. I was skeptical, but I tried it. WOW! My average framerate jumped from 28 to 35-37 at 640x480x16 on my TNT! They said they are working closely with NVIDIA and others to find a way to get that to work better in D3D. The long and the short? UT went from being virtually unplayable online to being playable. That's a Good Thing (tMS) in anyone's book.

Update: I just played the same level twice (DM-Tempest: up to 30 kills with five bots), once with no HUD, once with just the little health and armor indicators at the bottom. No HUD: 33 fps, Little bitty HUD: 30.5 fps. Obviously the conditions weren't exactly the same, but I tried to stay in the thick of the action as much as possible. It does show that even a little HUD has a big framerate impact. Fortunately you can set the game for no HUD, then just hit - when you need to peek at it and = to make it go away again.

DooM source re-release -- 8:48 pm CST, Update by The Master

John Carmack has re-released the DooM source as GNU General Public License. This mainly means that the source can be used for profitable projects, but CANNOT be held privately. This is cool since nobody can work on DooM-based code and keep it private. The source code download is available here. Thanks DoomWorld.

Death of another Emulation news site -- 6:36 pm CST, Update by The Master

Well, sad to say, another emulation-related website has gone the way of the dinosaurs. Digital Arcade was closed down yesterday due to the cost of bandwidth far exceeding his ability to pay for it. Too bad, this was the only consistent news site I've been able to find on emulation in a LONG time (like, since EMU World shut down). Oh, well. RIP.

Past Two Days' News

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