Thursday, February 24, 2000

OK Again -- 11:37 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

UGO must have gotten their DNS situation straightened around (finally). Blue's News and Webdog are now functioning properly. And not a moment too soon . . .

UT Bonus Pack Soon? -- 9:16 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Gamecenter posted this very good piece of news today:

Gamecenter will team up with Epic Games to premiere the Unreal Tournament Bonus Pack on Friday, February 25. The free bonus pack will be available as a download to all Unreal Tournament fans. It includes three new skins, 11 new multiplayer levels, and a new feature, Relics. These are special items that grant special powers. Relics will grant increased strength or speed, or even explode after you die in order to avenge your death. So check back here on Friday for your chance to download this exciting new development for Unreal Tournament.

Thanks, Evil Avatar, for the link!

John Carmack .plan update -- 6:03 pm CST, Update by The Master

John Carmack updated his .plan (and since I can't get to Webdog, I had to get this old-school). Here's the word:

Some people took it upon themselves to remotely wreck Slade's development system. That is no more defensible than breaking into Id and smashing something.

The idea isn't to punish anyone, it is to have them comply with the license and continue to contribute. QuakeLives has quite a few happy users, and it is in everyone's best interest to have development continue. It just has to be by the rules.

A.T. Hun comments: You can also view this update on Stomped finger tracker. I was able to get through on that one. Leave it to someone to punish Slade for doing something stupid by doing something stupid. Is this what we've come to as a society?

Q3A Meatpak -- 5:23 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Evil Avatar pointed me to this Quake III Arena map pack called Meatpak. It was made by one of the designers working on Electronic Art's Q3A-engine-based James Bond game. The levels have all new textures and some pretty interesting design (including a couple sweet traps). You can get the levels from FilePlanet. Check out the MOBS Review Crew review of the pack. These are some of the coolest levels I've seen. They very likely will end up in the rotation on the EZ-Net Q3A server.

New Skout Demo -- 3:35 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Blue is reporting that there is a new Skout demo available. You can snag it from 3D Action Gamers (19.7M). It's in English this time and everything! I'm going to snag it and see if has improved any since the German beta version I tried (story).

Thanks, Santana -- 3:25 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

A special off-topic thank-you to Carlos Santana for proving that cool music can still sell and still be rewarded. He tied a record last night with eight Grammies. Thankfully, his success kept Ricky Martin, Britney Spears, and Backstreet Boys away from the podium. Hopefully they will be long since forgotten by next year. My wife bought my Santana's Supernatural for my birthday (my second Santana CD). For my money, the best songs on the album are ones that will probably never be on the mainstream radio, such as (Da Le) Yaleo. Cool stuff, highly recommended.

Quake II Under Linux, Revisited -- 2:59 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

A couple of days ago (story) I said I was going to try to get Quake II to run under Linux. At the cost of way too much time and far too many brain cells, I finally got it going in OpenGL (or, more appropriately, Mesa). Once I stop weeping uncontrollably, I'll post the steps I went through to get it to work. In the meantime, check out Loki's NVIDIA driver support pages. This page was the key to my success. LinuxQuake's Quake II HOWTO was also helpful.

QTest Birthday -- 12:36 pm CST, Update by The Master

QTest is 4 years old today. Wow. I remember downloading that puppy from cdrom.com and thinking "this is REALLY cool". I wonder if I have that on a zip disk somewhere. Ah, nostalgia. . .

Borkage -- 9:42 am CST, Update by The Master

I've fixed the trackers by pointing them at webdog's IP addresses directly, since it seems webdog.org won't resolve on The Haus's DNS right now. Hopefully this problem will go away soon :-)

Wednesday, February 23, 2000

GPL or Not? -- 5:52 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

John Carmack updated his .plan in response to this download agreement which seems to violate the GPL that the Quake I source code was released under. I'm no lawyer, so I don't claim to understand (or necessarily want to understand) the debate.

Update! As I would have guessed, this news has made it to Slashdot. The site with the "download agreement" has been thoroughly Slashdotted, so don't expect them back up for a while.

Perhaps I should clarify my previous comments. It's not that I don't want to understand the GPL, it's just that I don't want to be dragged into a discussion of it. I'll leave the GPL and its rammifications to the experts. I'm too busy trying to convince Linux to recognize my printer (and run Quake 2, and . . .)

The Master comments: From what I can figure from the GPL license, this guy has no right or ability to enforce what he's doing. The GPL license is very explicit. I don't know what legal recourse he has, but I think John C has the right to say what he has said under the GPL license for Q1's source.

X-Box = World Dominance? -- 9:38 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I've been thinking about this for a while now. It is presumed that Bill Gates will formally unveiling their X-Box gaming console system at the Game Developers Conference. It will be a PC-like machine, rumored to have an Athlon processor, big hard drive, fast 3D graphics card, etc. All, naturally, running a variant of Windows.

This makes a lot of sense. You can get PC-style games, but only have to worry about one hardware setup instead of dozens. It sounds like gaming bliss, but the John Dvorak reader in me senses something more sinister.

Why wouldn't this box be able to run, say, Microsoft Office? Or Internet Explorer? Or any other Windows app? Can you see where this is heading? Not only are they going to be making the operating system, they will be making the box itself. This way, M$ can push its agenda anyway it wants. Sounds like a new Apple to me. "Sure, Office will run on any PC, but it works best with the Microsoft X-Box!" or "Never worry about incompatibilities, new drivers, or anything else with the new Microsoft X-Box!"

I think this idea has merit, and remember you heard it here first.

The Master comments: In a LOT of ways, this could make technical support a breeze for new PC users and corporate environments. HOWEVER, Microsoft would have to get out of their habit of expecting users to buy new PCs every 2 days to run their new porker-sized unoptimized software. I doubt they have the fortitude to change their ways THAT much.

SoF Demo Patch Caveat -- 9:27 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I tried to install the Soldier of Fortune demo patch that was released last night (story). It locked up my machine when it was patching the pak file. I tried it again this morning on a fresh install of the demo, and it locked up again. I'll have to see if anyone else is having this problem. Until then, caveat emptor.

Past Two Days' News

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