Thursday, January 6, 2000

3dfx on Mac -- 8:54 pm CST, Update by The Master

Well, according to this blurb on Inside Mac Games, 3dfx is building native support for Apple Mac into their chipsets and video cards. This is very good news for Mac gamers, since the Voodoo series is a much more powerful 3d solution than the current ATI Rage cards they're using now.

Q3A for Mac Shipping -- 5:27 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Activision issued a press release that Quake III Arena for the Macintosh has shipped. It should be available for purchase at a software purveyor near you very soon. Thanks Blue's News.

Graeme Devine Interview -- 1:06 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

ModScene.com has posted an interview with id's Graeme Devine. The interview talks about design issues in the game and the importance of the mod community. Thanks PlanetQuake.

Daikatana Delayed Again? -- 11:23 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Stop me if you've heard this one already. I saw the following news blurb at Evil Avatar:

DamageGaming is reporting from an un-named source that Daikatana has been delayed once again, this time the often-delayed first person shooter has been pushed back from January 21st until February 18th.

My own sources have also confirmed this rumor, so if you were hoping for Daikatana in January, it looks like you are out of luck.

The parts in italics are Evil Avatar's own comments. OK, that pushes the release date two months after the release party. *cough* But I suppose, once you miss Christmas, missing January isn't a big deal. The big question: will it be out by Christmas 2000?

The Master comments: (STOP STOP STOP!!)

New Mutators: Update -- 11:15 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I downloaded and installed the new Digital Extremes mutators for Unreal Tournament. If you have UT, you MUST download them! The Volitile Ammunition mutator is the best thing since shaved ice. When you shoot any ammunition packs in the game, they explode. Cool enough, but they don't just explode, they shoot off all the rounds contained in them! In other words, shoot some Ripper ammunition and suddenly you have tons of razor blades flying all over the place! Shoot Shock Rifle ammo and you get energy projectiles flying all around. Highly recommended.

New Ask Hook -- 10:15 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Billy et al at VoodooExtreme have posted the new version of Ask Hook. Today, he answers questions about texture sizes and which 3D API is the best to learn. Fun for the whole family.

Mutator Problems -- 10:01 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

There appears to be a problem with the new mutators for Unreal Tournament that were released by Digital Extremes yesterday (story). Here's the scoop, and a workaround from DE's site:

Hmmm... it seems that the .umod installer is not working as expected. I was playing online and the ammo pickups were invisible which means that the dedicated server is missing a line in it's UnrealTournament.ini file in the /UT/System directory. This problem will occur on dedicated servers for the Volatile Ammo and also the Team Beacon mutators.

To fix this, the following entry should go under the [Engine.GameEngine] heading:

ServerPackages=DE

This change should have been made by the .umod file, but instead it creates a new UnrealTournament.ini file in the /UT directory. Weird. Anyway, making this change should fix this problem for dedicated servers, which is the only place it will occur. In the meantime, Steve is working on making a new .umod file (by hand... ugh) that will install correctly. I guess it slipped by us here 'cause we had the line in our .ini already.

Jobs official CEO of Apple -- 8:52 am CST, Update by The Master

Well according to Yahoo!, Steve Jobs announced that he's dropping the 'interim' from his title of CEO at Apple. What does this mean? Jobs is 'the man' at Apple again. Hey, he brought it back from the brink. Good luck making Apple a serious player . . . (heck, Micro$oft needs some competition)

Wednesday, January 5, 2000

New Hun-Speak! -- 9:34 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Well folks, it's a new year. Time to vent my spleen! Today's target: online reviews. Far too many reviews that I've read on the web (especially of games) can be boiled down to either "it sucks" or "it rocks." Neither is particularly helpful or informative. Now the situation has taken a turn for the worse since you can't swing a cyber-stick without hitting a Quake III Arena or Unreal Tournament review (even on this very site!). Check out my thoughts on the subject in my new Hun-Speak column entitled Reviewing: a Lost Art?

The Master comments: This is the result of my posting of a really lame review link on The Haus. I apologize for exposing our readership to that review. Won't happen again :-)

Q3A FAQ Updated -- 5:50 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The unofficial Quake III Arena FAQ (it's faqalicious) has been updated once again with more Q3A-related goodies. Thanks Blue's News.

Jake Simpson Interview -- 4:38 pm CST, Update by The Master

Jake Simpson, a programmer at Raven is interviewed over on 3dGPU. I've chatted with Jake a few times over email, especially about the Q2 source code (VERY enlightening :-). He's a nice guy, and the interview is interesting reading.

Pondering the Imponderable -- 10:46 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

It's finally looking like winter here in Northern Wisconsin. We got about six inches of snow the night before last. We're supposed to get another 2-4 tonight. It's better to have a couple feet of snow than the ice we had on Sunday morning.

Obviously NT has locked up some files on us (stop me if you've heard this before) so our News Tracker and most likely the Finger Tracker aren't working right now. Why in the world would NT just decide to lock the file and require a reboot just to get it back? At any rate, our conversion to Linux is almost complete and should be online in a couple of weeks. Then it will be a non-issue.

Update! 12:20 P.M. Now the News Tracker seems to have updated after an eight hour "nap". Weird.

Tim Sweeney Interview -- 10:28 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

VoodooExtreme posted their interview with Tim Sweeney, the programmer behind the Unreal/Unreal Tournament engine. It's an interesting read; make sure to check it out.

Quad God -- 10:22 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The movie Quad God which was made entirely with the Quake III engine, has been officially released. You can download it from Tritin Films' official site or from Damage Gaming. It is in .ASF format, so you will need FakePlayer to view it.

PlanetQ3 has put up an interview with Joe Goss, the man behind the movie.

Update! 10:55 A.M. The main mirror and the Damage Gaming mirror are offline right now. They are trying to find higher bandwidth servers because of the great demand for the movie. More information to follow . . .

QuakeWorld Proxies -- 10:18 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The QuakeWorld Revitalization Project has posted the first release of their client-server proxy to eliminate cheating in QuakeWorld. Let's hope they succeed. Thanks Blue's News.

UT FAQ Updated -- 10:16 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The unofficial Unreal Tournament FAQ has been updated with even more information for your fragging pleasure. Thanks Blue's News.

New Official UT Mutators -- 10:11 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Three new "official" (in that they have been released by the creators of UT) mutators for Unreal Tournament have been released by Digital Extremes. You can download them here. Double-clicking on the DE.umod file will launch the UT installer. Here's the info on these new mutators from DE's site.

"Volatile Ammunition": This mutator makes any ammunition pickup in the game explode when shot. Punish theammo-hog with a devastating Flak-ammo chain reaction!

-"Volatile Weapons": When you kill yourenemies, their weapons explode! Think twice before using the Impact Hammer on those rocket-launching newbies!

-"Team Beacon": Places a yellow icon aboveteammates in team games (Ed.: like Q3A). A must-have for the CTF junkies!

Past Two Days' News

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