Saturday, April 15, 2000

Interview with Gary Gygax -- 9:17 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

When I first saw the name "Gary Gygax" for this interview I thought, "Man, what a blast from the past." I wasted many an hour in high school playing AD&D with my cronies. Check out the interview with the father of Dungeons and Dragons on The Gamer's Press. Thanks Evil Avatar.

Q3Fortress Beta 1B Out! -- 6:59 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The Q3Fortress Team has released a beta 1B patch for their Team Fortress-esque mod for Quake III Arena. You can find out what's new here and download the patch here. Note: they are only releasing a patch so you will need the full original install too. Thanks Shugashack.

Gamesplayer coming soon -- 6:14 pm CST, Update by The Master

Richard (of Webdog fame) has announced on his Gamesplayer site that he's looking for "a few good men and women" to write for Gamesplayer. His plan is a no-news, all content site dedicated to reviews and commentary on the computer/console gaming scene from the beginning. Sounds like a great idea.

Carmack talk at Razor-CPL -- 6:02 pm CST, Update by The Master

John Carmack ran a workshop at the Razor-CPL competition which is summarized on Eurogamer. Check it out-interesting reading.

New Winamp 2.62 -- 12:05 pm CST, Update by The Master

The weird folks at Winamp have released version 2.62 of Winamp. It's mainly minor bugfixes, so you don't need to download this version, but if you've been having any problems with Winamp, check it out.

A.T. Hun comments: What?!? And everyone at Nullsoft didn't update their .plans 55 times with inane comments? Go fig!

The Master comments: Heh-I was wondering if my post would bring this outburst. I could have beat you to it A.T. :-)

Rocket Arena 1.1 Patch -- 10:23 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

GreenMarine released a patch (that didn't take long, did it) for the new Rocket Arena mod for Unreal Tournament that was released last night. You can get all the details at the RA:UT homepage. Here is a direct link to all the files on FilePlanet. Mac and Linux users (and Win32 users who can't get the .umods to install properly) should download the "no umod" versions:

• Rocket Arena 1.1 Patch
• Rocket Arena 1.1 Full
• Rocket Arena 1.1 Patch (no umod)
• Rocket Arena 1.1 Full (no umod)

A number of people are apparently reporting "problems" that could be solved if they read the readme file. Do it. It helps. A lot.

Titanic -- 12:12 am CST, Update by The Master

On April 15, 1912, at 2:20am, the RMS Titanic finally sucumbs to the sea, taking the majority of the 2,200 passengers onboard to their death. 705 survivors of the disaster are recovered in 20 lifeboats.

The Titanc disaster is one of the best known, since it was touted as an "unsinkable" ship. When she foundered on the 15th, she shook the maritime community, British, and American goverments into seeing the importance of safety at sea. The US Coast Guard and International Ice Watches are founded as a result of the disaster, along with the requirement that enough life-saving equipment be stowed on vessels for all aboard.

Rest in Peace.

Friday, April 14, 2000

Robin Walker interview -- 11:56 pm CST, Update by The Master

Robin Walker, designer on Valve's Team Fortress 2, is interviewed over on IGN. Great article on what's going on for TF2, which looks to be one HECK of a game when it comes out.

My only fear with TF2 is that it'll be too complicated to pick up easy. TF was difficult enough that I never bothered. I'd like to give TF2 a shot.

SoF Demo Patch Update -- 11:40 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The Evil Avatar Soldier of Fortune review got me thinking about finishing playing the SoF demo. I reinstalled it and, on a lark, used MS System Information to disable just about everything at boot up. After rebooting, I tried installing the patch. It worked! then I used MS SI to renable everything. Glad it worked this time because that was driving me mad.

UT Rocket Arena released -- 7:55 pm CST, Update by The Master

Brandon Reinhart updated his .plan with news of the release of the UT Rocket Arena mod. Here's the .plan:

Rocket Arena for Unreal Tournament has been released at my Rocket Arena site: http://www.planetunreal.com/arena/

So go get it! There is information about the mod on the site, so I won't repeat it here. I've had fun working on the mod, but now I've got to turn back onto Epic stuff. Mike 'Mongo' Lambert is going to take over the project (he's kick ass.)

I've got the Linux patch put together and need to release that tonight too, but I'll go get some food first. Dan Vogel has integrated all the OpenUT stuff so I'll talk about that later.

UPDATE! According to Blue's, the UT RA site has an update from Brandon on a soon-to-be released bug patch. It appears that the site is down right now (11:57 pm CST) so I can't confirm or deny this.

SoF Review -- 12:22 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The crazy folks at Evil Avatar have slapped up a review of Raven's Soldier of Fortune. I really like the demo for this game (although the patch caused my system to lock up). I probably would buy it if a) I had money, and b) I hadn't just bought Half-Life. SoF looks like THE single-player FPS to have right now.

J.t.Qbe comments: And c) if you didn't have an 80-hour a week job. . .

A.T. Hun comments: Only 80 hours a week? Luxury.

J.t.Qbe comments: I thought you were a slacker and only worked that much. I used to put in 184 hours per week.

Team Fortress Everywhere -- 9:46 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Lowtax has posted another shocking and disturbing press release to shock and disturb you. This one announces a new federal law requiring every product to have Team Fortress support. Make sure to check out this shocking and disturbing development. I'm sure it will both shock and disturb you (if this news item hasn't done that already).

Return to Wolfenstein at E3? -- 9:33 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

In a news blurb that occasionally resembles English, IGN PC reported that Gray Matter will be showing off Return to Castle Wolfenstein at this year's E3. id will also be showing off their Q3A expansion pack. Thanks Voodoo Extreme.

Technology Marches On -- 9:18 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Our own J passed along this link to a CNN article talking about IBM's new hard drives for portable computers. The big one is a 32G 5400 RPM Ultra-DMA66 drive that weighs in at about five and a half ounces. Ain't technology grand?

Would you like to play a game? -- 8:19 am CST, Update by The Master

Microsoft admits to having planted a backdoor password in the Microsoft Frontpage Extensions. Implications? Hey, if you know the password, you can 0wn dang near any IIS server anywhere. Check out the ZDNet article.

A.T. Hun comments: This is exactly the sort of thing that could not happen with open-source software. The source is out there in the open so no, ahem, idiots can hide stuff like this. It's just another case of Microsoft's arrogance and complete disregard for their customers who pay through the nose so Bill and the boys can have multi-million-dollar stock options.

Plus, anyone who uses FrontPage is, well, a wuss. REAL men code with text editors. Or hex editors when we're feeling cocky. :)

J.t.Qbe comments: A.T. hit it right on the nose. Try hiding stuff like that when everyone can read your source code! Doesn't happen. Besides, FrontPage is a hog and produces highly bloated HTML. Real men code their web pages in octal!

History review-Titanic -- 12:08 am CST, Update by The Master

Today is a big day in history. Big one for me is tonight is the start of one of the epic maritime disasters in history. At 11:45pm on April 14, 1912, the passenger vessel RMS Titanic strikes an iceburg and begins sinking. She carries approximately 2,200 souls onboard, with only enough lifeboats for a fourth of her rated passenger capacity.

Other historical notes:

• 1759: Composer George Handel dies.
• 1865: Abraham Lincoln is shot by John Wilkes Booth while watching the stage comedy "Our American Cousin" at Ford's Theater, Washington D.C.

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