Friday, January 14, 2000

Q3A Source Released -- 10:42 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

id's Robert Duffy updated his .plan with news of the release of the Quake III Arena game source code. Here's a snip:

The game source is out. It should start appearing on mirrors soon. It is in idstuffquake3source and named "Q3AGameSource.exe"

There is a "How to make a mod" text file included which shows the very basics of building the source for debugging ( Win32, Visual C++ ) and building the vms for distributing mods. It also shows steps to get your mod to run with the engine.

You can get it at id Software, 3D Action Gamers, Blue's News, Shugashack, and FilePlanet.

Still a Few Bugs in the System . . . -- 7:45 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I've noticed that our servers page is throwing an error and the commentary and tips sections are borking on the server-side includes. Unfortunately I can't upload to the server right now so we'll have to wait until tomorrow for that to be fixed. I can update the news, so it's not all bad :) Hang tight!

We're Live! -- 5:24 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

If you see this, you've officially reached our new server! There's still a couple of minor bugs to iron out, but we're live and kicking in Linux! Kudos to The Master for getting all the scripts converted and the server set up.

Graeme Devine .plan Update -- 11:47 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

id's Graeme Devine updated his .plan with a fix for people who are having problems resolving the id master server.

Okay. I see a lot of people with "awaiting CD Key authorization" questions.

In almost all cases, this is due to the IP address of the authorize server being wrong because the hosts file on the client has somehow been altered.

You can test to see if this is your problem by going to a DOS prompt and typing the following:

ping authorize.quake3arena.com

If you get the following, then your system has an invalid entry somewhere redirecting the authorize requests to the wrong IP address.

Reply from 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=32
Reply from 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=32
Reply from 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=32
Reply from 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=32

If you're running Windows 95/98, then in almost every case editing the file called "hosts" which resides in your c:windows (or wherever you've installed windows) directory and removing any lines that mentionauthorize.quake3arena.com can fix this.

Various cracks and CD key gen utilities (none of which actually work) appear to alter be the culprit, adjusting your hosts file without your knowledge or consent.

D-Day -- 10:07 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Well kids, at approximately 2:00 this afternoon, we will be attempting to switch The Haus over to our new Linux-based server. Hopefully all the bugs have already been ironed out, but you know how that goes. Hopefully for you, our faithful readers, this will mean cooler stuff from us in less time (at the very least we should be able to keep the Plan and News Trackers running all the time :) ). If you experience some "glitches" right about that time, hold tight. We'll be back soon . . .

The Master comments:

Aquarius, this is Houston.
Expect loss of signal in approximately ten seconds.

So long, earth.
Catch you on the flip side.

A.T. Hun comments: Ground control to Maaaajor Tom. Commencing countdowm, engines on.

VSA-100: First Silicon -- 10:01 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Reverend posted the following announcement from 3dfx regarding the VSA-100 chip, the power behind the forthcoming Voodoo4 and 5.

At Fall COMDEX, 3dfx stated that the VSA-100 based products would be available in our fiscal Q1. We have successfully taped out the processor and have received silicon back from our fab. We expect products to become available in the previously announced timeframe, with volume production in Spring 2000.

Thursday, January 13, 2000

NVIDIA 3.68 Drivers -- 9:13 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

NVIDIA has released new 3.68 Detonantor drivers for the TNT, TNT2, Vanta, and GeForce cards. You can download them here. I may try these out and see if my D3D performance slows to a crawl like it has with the other 3.x drivers.

NVIDIA NV15 Info -- 9:09 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

3DGPU.com posted this blurb regarding iXBT's NV11 and NV15 preview:

I just wanted to take a second and let everyone know that I have deleted our post linking to the recent "preview" of the upcoming NV11 and NV15 GPU's that was posted last night. After speaking with NVIDIA today, we were informed that the article contained not only unautorized information, but that some of it was just plain wrong. Due to this fact, the link has been removed. Stay tuned to 3DGPU for the "real deal" on NVIDIA's upcoming chipsets.

Q3A Point Release -- 8:53 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The Quake III Arena Point Release (non-beta) for Win32 is out! You can download it from id Software, Stomped, Shugashack, Blue's News, 3D Gamers, and CD-ROM. id's Robert Duffy updated his .plan with the list of major fixes since the beta 2 patch.

The Point Release ( Win32 version ) is out. It should start appearing on mirrors soon.

The three primary fixes in this version over the 2nd beta are:

• crash when bots chat on dedicated servers
• crash when bots chat under linux
• bots no longer "keep" trying to score after they respawn if they died carrying the flag

UDP vs. @Home -- 4:45 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

There has been a call for the Usenet Death Penalty against @Home for failing to deal with people using their servers/customers to spam the Usenet. An article on Slashdot first announced this yesterday. This post is the official announcement, and this article shows that a whopping 39% of @Home Usenet traffic is spam.

Bill Gates Steps Down -- 4:32 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

In a surprise move, Bill Gates has stepped down as CEO of Microsoft. He will remain chairman, but MS President Steve Ballmer will take over his CEO responsibilities. This is, no doubt, a proactive move, fearing what the Department of Justice might try next. Rumor has it that the DoJ will recommend that Microsoft be broken up. Of course, the source for that story is USA Today, a publication known more for colorful charts than journalistic integrity.

The Master comments: To be honest, not much is really changing. Bill is keeping the Chairman title, which means he's still the "God" of Microsoft. This just means that Ballmer is having more senior people reporting to him, and Gates has about another hour in his day to be proactive.

Beat Q3A on Nightmare -- 11:30 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Robert Hengel, who has beaten every level in Quake III Arena on Nightmare, has posted strategies for every map as well as demos of him beating every map in Nightmare. If you are getting slapped around, check out his inexplicably named Squeaky Toy website for the goods. Thanks Shugashack.

Darkmatch for UT -- 11:15 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Both Epic's CliffyB and Alan Willard updated their .plans singing the praises of the new Darkmatch mod for Unreal Tournament. In this mod, the only light comes from a flashlight that you can turn on or off. You need to decide if you want to see (and be seen) or lurk in the shadows. The mod will now work with all UT levels and mutators.

On the UT Expansion Pack -- 11:07 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Epic's Brandon "GreenMarine" Reinhart updated his .plan with more information on the forthcoming Unreal Tournament expansion pack he talks, in particular, about the new runes system.

We'll soon be releasing an "expansion pack" for Unreal Tournament. Some of the fan sites have mentioned it and maybe posted a few screenshots, but nobody has really had many details. The pack is a freely downloadable set of additional toys for UT.

Its not a patch and its not a required download, but will have some cool stuff. New models, new maps, and our runes system. Some of the runes are classics, some are new.
. . .
This pack will be a free download. We are still playtesting the Relics so their rules might change over the next few days.

Check out the full .plan for details on all the relics.

UT Benchmarks: Update! -- 10:53 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Late last night (WAY too late last night) I discovered an error in the UT Benchmarks I posted yesterday (story). The error came about because I didn't realize that you need to restart Unreal Tournament to turn hardware 3D sound on or off. Imagine my surprise when I'm trying to play my newly-tweaked version of UT with a sudden, inexplicable 20% framerate hit!

At any rate, I've updated the benchmarks with the new figures and added a "change" column on the one table so you can see the performance difference more easily. My final scores with the new settings didn't change at all (because I really didn't have hardware 3D sound enabled, even though I thought I did). Enjoy!

This also explains why I'm getting such a late start today :)

Past Two Days' News

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