Tuesday, November 9, 1999

John Carmack .plan update -- 10:56 pm CST, Update by The Master

Yet another .plan update from the mighty Carmack:

• fixed spinning barrel on respawn issue
• clear eflags before intermission
• shutdown menu on starting a cinematic
• mask name colors to 0-7 range
• fixed jpeg loading alpha channel
• try for not-nearest spawn twice instead of once
• made unzoomed exactly identity mouse modifier
• cl_debugmove [1/2]
• m_filter
• fixed time warnings
• allow timelimits to hit with only a single player
• filter local games with different protocol versions
• fixed bad arg 0 after sysinfo configstring
• removed unneeded svc_servercommand at start of command strings
• fixed redundantly loaded level bug
• fixed journal playback from demo build
• removed background image from viewlog window

Gibson Research-source of awesome software -- 10:12 pm CST, Update by The Master

I don't believe I've ever mentioned him before, but Steve Gibson Research is a must-have link for those looking for finely crafted, FAST, solutions to problems. He wrote the only tool I know of to check for "click death" in Iomega Zip drives. Check his site. Highly recommended.

Beer! -- 8:49 pm CST, Update by The Master

Saw this little ditty on Jerry Pournelle's website, and I KNEW A.T. would appreciate it:

The beer in your hand is in the processor's registers.
The beer in the cooler next to you is in the processor's cache.
The beer in the fridge is in RAM.
The warm beer in the garage is on the hard disk.
The warm beer at the beer distributor is on a server on the Internet.

BTW: Check out the rest of Jerry's site. He's got an interesting series of emails on the whole Micro$oft deal, and he raises some interesting points on why M$ has been GOOD for the computer industry. (I STILL wish they'd get off their butts and fix some of these darn security issues. How many classic buffer overflows do they need to have to get a clue in M$ programmerland?)

I'82: Gold at Last -- 6:06 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Blue has linked Gone Gold's report (how's that for convoluted?) that Activision's long-awaited follow-up to Interstate '76, appropriately titled Interstate '82, has gone gold! It should be on your favorite software retailer's shelves soon. I'll do some digging to find out if there is a demo forthcoming . . .

New Email Virus -- 5:06 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The Shugashack pointed me to this article on Network Associates' site about a new email virus called "Bubbleboy." If you use IE5 and Outlook or Outlook Express for your email you are vulnerable (unless you have IE5's security set to "High"). You don't have to run anything for the virus to activate, just opening it (even just previewing it in Outlook Express) will activate it.

It doesn't do anything damaging, but it doesn't take much to realize that this could become much worse than Melissa. All it would take is someone to take the code and make it do something destructive or that compromises security.

NOTE TO MICROSOFT: If you can find the time whilst dodging DoJ attacks, then FIX THE SECURITY HOLES IN WINDOWS! Some of them are big enough to drive a truck through! Any questions on why I use Netscape for browsing and Agent for email?

No Skeletons: Confirmed -- 4:46 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Our man Redwood fired off an email to id's John Carmack to confirm the rumor mentioned previously that a skeletal animation system would not be in Quake III Arena after all. Here is the Carmack's succinct reply:

The game fits in 64 megs without it, so we are probably going to ship that way.

The skeletal animation system was proposed to save memory, especially on computers with 64M RAM. I guess it either wasn't worth the effort or would require changing too much code thus pushing Q3A's release date back too far. Thankfully, my 128M renders it a non-issue :)

High Speed Wireless -- 2:35 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

According to this CNet article, Qualcomm has announced a new "high-speed wireless Internet wireless technology" which allows for transfer rates up to 2.4 megabits/second. The company hopes to use the technology to compete with cable modems and DSL. Heaven help you if you drive through a tunnel though :) Thanks Slashdot.

The Master comments: I believe EZ-Net already uses a form of this technology to connect their offices. It's an incredibly cool way to network :-)

loonygames Chat Transcript -- 2:06 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

sCary has posted an edited log of the chat with various industry luminaries (Romero, Steed, CliffyB, Zoid, etc.) to celebrate the new issue of loonygames. Lots of good information there. Of particular interest: confirmation that CTF will not be in the Q3Demo, it seems that the skeletal animation system was dropped in Q3A (Confirmation! I want confirmation!), and that Unreal Tournament is thisclose to being done (stop my if you've heard that one before).

loonygames Klesk Screenshot -- 2:01 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

loonygames has posted a screenshot of the new Klesk model to be included in Quake III Arena. Make sure to check out all the goodness in the new edition of loonygames. Good stuff.

UT Server Patch -- 1:56 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The Unreal Technology Page has posted a patch for Unreal Tournament Demo v348 servers which will hopefully improve server performance, especially regarding memory usage. Thanks Blue for the tip.

John Carmack .plan update -- 8:48 am CST, Update by The Master

John Carmack once again updates his .plan worklog today. Love these bug-fix updates :-)

• check for bad weapon number in non-3d ammo icon on death
• fixed plane catagorization
• error command does an ERR_DROP if given a parm
• don't load high LOD models if r_lodbias
• nobots/nohumans options for player spawn spots
• prevent voice rewards on frag that enters intermission
• dissallow native dll loading if sv_pure
• loaddefered cgame command, issued on addbot
• drop the weapon you are changing TO if you only had a MG or gauntlet
• fixed bounce pad event prediction for all angles
• allow empty tokens in map files
• fixed infos exceeded warning on bot parse
• warning on mismatched mipmap/picmip/wrapclamp image reuse
• fixed pain echo sound after predicted falling damage
• move sound to hunk
• move vm to hunk
• restart game vm in place for map_restarts
• avoid all lightmaps entirely when using vertex light
• pretouch all images after registration
• pretouch all known in-use memory before starting a game
• on error, shutdown client before server, to be more likely to get out of fullscreen before a recursive error
• new pre-allocated memmory manager to crutch up mac
• meminfo command replaces hunk_stats and z_stats
• adjusted scoreboard titles
• no guantlet reward on corpses
• fixed snd_restart when paused
• PRE_RELEASE_DEMO hack

A.T. adds: I still haven't seen a fix for the networking bug that Crawl and I reported. Grr.

Monday, November 8, 1999

Thresh and the ATi Rage Fury MAXX -- 10:36 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Ask and ye shall receive! Thresh and the boyz have put up a preview of the ATi R.F. MAXX which includes benchmarks against the GeForce with DDR memory. The MAXX fares rather well with a PIII-600, but not so well with a Celeron 300A (no big shocker there). The performance hit that the GeForce takes in 32 bit mode at higher resolutions (1024x768 and above) even with DDR memory is a major concern. Since even DDR memory (although it certainly helps) doesn't seem to be able to save it, I wonder if there is a driver issue that needs to be worked out.

Dan Bricklin M$ Commentary -- 9:41 pm CST, Update by The Master

Okay, this is a VERY interesting series of commentaries on the recent M$ antitrust trial findings of fact. Dan Bricklin (the programmer of VisiCalc-the first spreadsheet) put up several commentaries on his website. Very interesting reading, give it a look.

Stomped Q3A Model Shots -- 6:21 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Stomped has updated their swanky new design with some slick new shots of the various Quake III Arena models. Today they show Sarge and Slash (whom I affectionately refer to as "Skater Chick"). Over the course of time, they will be showing a total 29 shots. The amazing thing is that there are even more models that will be included in Q3A beyond these 29!

More Upstream Weirdness -- 5:24 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

EZ-Net's (The Haus' host) upstream provider is flaking out again this afternoon. The pings are swinging followed by periods of complete packet loss. EZ-Net is taking steps to ensure this never happens again.

If you live in extreme Northeast Wisconsin and don't use EZ-Net as your ISP, you're throwing your money away.

Hun-Speak: Slave Zero Demo -- 3:13 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Yes, kids, it's the moment you've been waiting for: an update to my Hun-Speak column! In this edition, I give a Brief Review of the Slave Zero Demo. Check it out!

Off Topic -- 11:31 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

How 'bout them Detroit Lions! 6-2 and in first place in the NFC. I'm going to enjoy it now, because I know as a lifelong Lions fan that the bottom can fall out any moment.

NeoShogo? -- 11:27 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Rohan Night is reporting that the Shogo mod "NeoShogo" may finally see the light of day by the end of the week. As I understand it (they don't have a webpage) NeoShogo adds new client-side weapon models and effects, without actually changing the damage or firing-rates of the original weapons. It sound pretty cool, although it was originally supposed to be out two months ago.

Microsoft Ruling Repercussions -- 10:59 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Ars Technica has posted links to special sections on CNNFN and on News.Com covering the fallout from the judge's recent preliminary ruling against Microsoft. M$ stock has dropped 5% already today in heavy trading. This is going to get interesting. I'd better check how much my mutual funds have invested in Microsoft.

I have to laugh that CNNFN's graphic for that section says "Justice vs. Microsoft" not "Justice Department vs. Microsoft." Hmmm, I wonder whose side they're on?

ATi Rage Fury MAXX at Sharky's -- 10:02 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Sharky Extreme has posted a "preview" of the ATi Rage Fury MAXX (ATi apparently figures the longer the name, the better). The MAXX is basically two Rage 128 Pro chips duct-taped together. Astonishingly, it managed to beat the GeForce in some benchmarks! Having said that, the MAXX has 64M RAM and the GeForce they use is the CL Annihilator with 32M. It would be interesting to see if a 64M GeForce would make much difference (much less one with DDR memory).

The conclusion? Here tis!

The ATi Rage Fury MAXX we tested is still in a Beta form. Its drivers will continue to mature on the way to its launch date in December. We're not sure exactly how much more performance will be squeezed from the MAXX's drivers as the card seems to be pretty solid in that department already.

Likewise, the drivers of the high-technology GeForce256 chip will also continue to mature, and could also bring gains in performance with them as NVIDIA's engineers optimize more of their new thoroughbred's raw potential.

Translation? They are both fast. They are better than the current crop of Voodoo3s and TNT2 Ultras. If ATi can release a fast, modern card, maybe there is hope for Rendition! Nah.

Q3 Amazon Model -- 9:59 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

sCary posted a screenshot of the Amazon model that will be in Quake III Arena. No doubt this is the model that Gloria Steinem will be using online.

New loonygames -- 9:42 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

In the "it's about time" department, there's a new issue of loonygames out! Included in this issue is an interview with American McGee formerly of id, currently working on EA's "Alice." Thanks Blue.

Past Two Days' News

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