Sunday, November 21, 1999

Xian .plan update -- 11:35 pm CST, Update by The Master

Christian "xian/disruptor" Antkow updated his .plan:

Nov.21.1999 @ 11:17pm

Gold!!!! ph34r!!!!!!!!

-Xian

Q3A GOLD! -- 11:18 pm CST, Update by The Master

Quake 3 Arena GOLD!

According to Kenneth Scott's (skin artist at id) .plan. Check it:

11-21-1999

We're Gold!

I love you sweetpeach. :)

Q3A Bounding Boxes -- 10:12 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

There was some concern expressed that the larger models in Quake 3 Arena (like Tank Jr.) would be larger targets than the other, shorter models. Quakeheads contacted id's Paul Jaquays who spake thusly:

They'll [larger models] be easier to see ... but the bounding boxes are the same size.

A bounding box is the invisible box around a model that the game uses for collision detection (with another player, a rocket, or whatever). Thus it will be just as easy to hit Daemia as it will be to hit Tank Jr. Of course, you aren't going to be able to hide as Tank Jr., either.

Björn3D on Voodoo4/5 -- 9:57 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Jim Macintosh at Björn3D has written the first in a series of articles on recently-announced VSA-100-powered Voodoo4/5 cards from 3dfx. In this part he gives an overview of the chip itself and the different cards. Even though Björn's site is geared toward NVIDIA products, he does attempt to give some unbiased thoughts and opinions on the future. It's a good read.

Q3DemoTest Networking -- 7:42 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The Master and I have been playing some Q3DemoTest against some bots with my system as a non-dedicated server. It works rather nicely, even with me only connected at 33.6K! (I did that so I could have 33.6K upload instead of 28.8K if I connected at 56K).

I am pleased to report that the lagging out problem I had on EZ-Net's server (see this news item for the info) with Q3Test 1.08 is now gone! Suffice it to say, I'm pretty geeked.

Special thanks go out to Jeff and Carl at EZ-Net for all their help with the Q3DemoTest server and keeping The Haus running smoothly behind the scenes. If you live in NE Wisconsin, you must use EZ-Net as your ISP, or at least send them large stacks of cash.

Q3A Opponents shots -- 10:24 am CST, Update by The Master

Blue has scored some rendered images of some of the new Q3A tier bots. The newest pair are of tier 2 (Bitterman, Hossman, Hunter, Daemia, Grunt) and tier 3 (Gorre, Angel, Klesk, Slash, Wrack). The pics are are jpeg'd for download, and tomorrow Blue plans to post the TGA format images.

Q3A Powerup Screenshots -- 10:21 am CST, Update by The Master

The Shugashack has some screenshots of the various powerups in the demo pak files. Check them out.

Q3ADT for Linux released -- 10:19 am CST, Update by The Master

Well, we missed this one last night (looks like a lot of folks in the news community did :-) but the Quake3Arena Demo Test Linux version has been released. There are two versions available. Downloads:

• TAR.GZ Format
• RPM Format

Saturday, November 20, 1999

No EAX in Q3A -- 9:13 pm CST, Update by The Master

Well, we all predicted this, but according to Billy Wilson of V3E, there is no EAX 3d sound support in Q3A. My assumption is Creative decided NOT to contact id to get the support in there. (A3D is almost always coded by Aureal, not the game vendor) Too bad, that doesn't do Creative any favors. Hope they get some SERIOUSLY SOLID A3D emulation into EAX quick.

A.T. comments: Actually, I remember Carmack talking about this quite some time ago. If I remember correctly, he didn't want to support it because it was platform-specific (Win32).

S3 T&L Update -- 1:12 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

MaximumPC has updated its comments about the Savage 2000's hardware T&L support. Here's the update:

While the Viper II will not support hardware transform and lighting when it ships this Friday, S3 representatives stressed today that it will support the feature in future driver releases. As it stands right now the chip has hardware T&L capabilities but they are not enabled by the current drivers.

Gee, driver issues with an S3 product? Go figure! Add to this the news on several websites that the Savage 2K's D3D drivers need serious improvement. I cannot imagine recommending that anyone get this card until the driver issues are sorted out. Methinks that S3 tried to bring this one to market too quickly before NVIDIA steamrolled them and before 3dfx could get its new cards out.

First the fillrate was lowered from 700 megatexels/second to 500, now the D3D drivers are bad and hardware T&L is disabled. Not good.

New "Ask Hook" -- 9:29 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

VoodooExtreme has put up the latest installment of their "Ask (Brian) Hook" column. In this edition, he discusses T&L and collision detection and palletized textures.

Messiah Demo -- 9:21 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Shiny has released a demo of their much-anticipated new game, Messiah. This is one of the first games to make use of the hardware T&L capabilities of the GeForce. You can get info on the demo from Shiny's site. You can download the 70M demo from Gigex here, if you are behind a firewall or here, if you aren't. The demo requires a PII 233, 64M RAM, and a 3D accelerator.

Just one caveat: I've been hearing that a lot of people have had a lot of problems getting the demo to run properly. Check Shiny's site (see link above) for any news or fixes.

Update! One of Shiny's programmers forgot to compile a script for the demo. Thus, when you start it for the first time, the program compiles the script, which could take up to five minutes. From then on, you should be golden.

Brandon Reinhart .Plan Update -- 9:04 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Epic's Brandon "Don't Call Me Brian" Reinhart updated his .plan. It seems like he's been getting a goodly amount of flames for GT Interactive's decision not to put the Unreal Tournament Linux client on the CD.

Who the hell is Brian Reinhart? (A.T. comments: yesterday, Slashdot reported on GT's decision and called him Brian instead of Brandon.)

Please stop sending me pro-Linux hate mail people. I don't have any say in GT's marketing decisions. I just write the port.

Understand this again: This was not my decision. I am not an operating system advocate. I am more or less indifferent to the OS debate. I just want to program.

Originally this update was much more aggressive. I'll simply say this: I feel that the Linux community is intensely detatched and unrealistic about how it approaches games developers.

Translation: you won't win friends and influence people by flaming the very people who are trying to help you! I don't know Brandon personally, but I have observed his comments and help provided to the Unreal community. He strikes me as a stand-up guy who was just as torqued about GT's decision as the people who are flaming him.

Hey folks, sit back, relax, take a deep breath. If that is the way Linux advocates will react to similar situations, you can bet that gaming companies won't be in the least bit inclined to make products for the OS.

The Master comments: Before people start torching ME, remember I don't care much about O/Ss either. The one thing that's stood out to me in all the O/S wars, is that Micro$oft has damn near no grassroots support, Apple has a very kind and generous support community, and Linux seems to be made up of hundreds of screaming fanatics backed by a core of wonderful people who are rarely heard from unless spoken directly to. So, when you speak to the Linux community, you get the radicals. What a shame.

Graeme Devine .Plan Update -- 9:00 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

id's Graeme Devine updated his .plan with this short, but sweet message:

We're at RC2. Life is good.

Translation? Quake III Arena is thisclose.

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