Monday, December 4, 2000

One Last Thing . . . -- 11:50 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

. . . before I go to bed. I've been playing quite a bit of one-flag CTF in the Quake III: Team Arena demo. For such a simple tweak in gameplay, it really adds an entirely different dynamic to tried-and-true CTF. Highly recommended.

NFL Week #14 Final -- 11:31 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Whelp, it was a dangerous weekend in the NFL and our records show it. I ended up 9-6 and Eeyore ended up 5-10, the first double-digit loss of the year. That brings my record year-to-date to 130-73 (.640) while Eeyore is 103-85 (.547).

Elite Force Source -- 7:54 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Raven's James Monroe updated his .plan with word that the source code for the Star Trek: Elite Force Holomatch has been released. Have at it, you crazy modders! Here's what he had to say:

Attention Holomatch Modders! your dreams are answered, I've released the source code for HoloMatch game play:

here's the zip:
http://www.3ddownloads.com/showfile.php3?file_id=112601

and here:
http://www.voyagereliteforce.com/files.asp?dir=/official&file=STEF-gamesource110.zip

if you've worked on quake3 mods, you'll recognize the setup. the batch files work fine in NT but have trouble running in 98. i think you have to edit the individual batch files to make it work in 98.

e.g. game.bat has a line at the top like:
set cc=blah
then later it has
%cc% ../g_main.c

you'll need to replace the %cc% with the blah.

Pondering the Imponderable -- 7:47 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

It's hard to believe, but people have managed to come up with even more annoying web advertising. What could be more annoying than your average UGO banner ad, you might ask? It's the new pop-up ad apparently targeted at people with very small brains. It's the Free Stuff by Email ad. You give them your email address and they send you spam! What more could you want, other than an icepick lobotomy?

GameFan's Dead -- 7:43 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The rumors of GameFan's demise are no longer greatly exaggerated, at least according to Gamers.com. Here's the news:

The entire GameFan staff was greeted with a Christmas bonus in the form of a pink slip on Friday. Since October, it's been a long, sad dance for the GameFan brand. Parent company Express.com danced around money owed after pulling the plug on its affiliate network.

As if we didn't see that one coming down Main Street . . .

MOO3 interview -- 7:43 pm CST, Update by The Master

There's a huge interview with Alan Emrich online over on Quarter to Three discussing the upcoming Master of Orion 3. Interesting read-I'm kind of disturbed at how large and convoluted MOO has gotten over the years. I've got to wonder if this game can possibly deliver everything it's claiming without blowing up from complexity issues. We shall see.

Team Arena Interview -- 1:59 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Quake3World posted an interview of sorts with id Software about Quake III: Team Arena. I say "of sorts" because all the questions were submitted by Q3W readers. There's a few interesting pearls to pluck out of there, particularly this one:

Question: If Team Arena is distributed on separate CDs for each OS, will you still be able to use the Windows CD to install Team Arena like you can with Quake 3 Arena?

Answer: The only SKU that I can say for certain as of this moment that will make it onto CD is the Windows version. Linux players will need to download binaries, and that may be required for Mac users. The data is interchangeable, just like Quake III Arena, so anyone buying the Windows CD version can run the game under Linux and Mac after downloading the appropriate binary.

I thought for sure that I had read that all three binaries would be on the CD. Hmmmmm.

MandrakeUpdate == Slick -- 10:44 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

One of the biggest PITAs (in my opinion) about maintaining a Linux system is keeping up-to-date with all the bug fixes and security updates. One of the blessings and banes of open-source development is that software is almost continually being updated. I tried using MandrakeUpdate on my Mandrake 7.2 installation today since I knew there were several security updates I needed to get. It automatically looked at what I had installed and gave a list of packages that needed to be updated. All I had to do was select the ones I wanted, wait for the them to download from a mirror site, and they were automatically installed. Very nice, very easy. Two big thumbs up.

Itanium: the REAL MAN's processor -- 9:54 am CST, Update by The Master

Sharkyextreme has a review of the soon-to-be-released Intel Itanium processor. This is a very tech-junky oriented article, prepare for major migraine. Oh, and I want at least 4 of these. With fries, and a shake :-) Thanks Blue.

Freelancer DOA? -- 9:27 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Avault got some more information on the goings-on at Digital Anvil. It was reported last week that Chris Roberts, one of the founders of Digital Anvil and the father of the Wing Commander series, had been fired by Microsoft. Now it is being reported that his brother Erin has also left the company and the game Freelancer will either never see the light of day or will be scaled back to the point of being unrecognizable. Bah. If this isn't Monday morning news, I don't know what is. Thanks Blue.

Sunday, December 3, 2000

NFL Week #14 So Far -- 10:35 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

With one game left to go, I am 9-5 and Eeyore, um, isn't. Let's just say she had a rough early afternoon. Thus, she is 5-9. When I looked at this week's schedule, I thought that it would go to the best guesser. I just was fortunate enough to guess right on the four games we picked differently.

More Q3:TA News -- 2:56 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

id's Christian Antkow made a post in this thread on the Quake 3 World messageboards about the original Quake III Arena CTF maps in Quake III: Team Arena:

Yep. The 4 original CTF maps that shipped with Q3A will be included in Team Arena. We've made some nice changes to the maps. Added support for all the new game-types, added the team powerups to most of the maps, and changed the architecture somewhat (CTF1, 2 and 3 got overhauled rather nicely)

If you guys liked the original Q3 CTF maps, I think you'll really like the changes =)

Cool stuff. id's Paul Jaquays adds that these four maps are above and beyond the 12 new maps in Q3:TA.

Q3:TA FPS Issues -- 11:54 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

id's Robert Duffy made a rather long post on the Shugashack about framerates and the new terrain implementation in their forthcoming Quake III: Team Arena. It looks like they've gotten a lot of the framerate issues addressed. It also looks like it would be A Good Thing to own a GeForce2 . . .

NFL Week #14 -- 9:59 am CST, Update by The Master

Eeyore's picks for this week are as follows: Falcons, Cardinals, Bills, Saints, Eagles, Raiders, Bucs, Redskins, Rams, 49ers, Jets, Jaguars, Bears, Chiefs.

A.T. Hun comments: Heh, I almost forgot! Here are mine: Seahawks, Bills, Panthers, Redskins, Bengals, Saints, Bucs, Raiders, Titans, 49ers, Jets, Jaguars, Bears, Chiefs. Once again, I underlined the differences. We both correctly picked the Vikes on Thursday.

Alice Demo Impressions -- 12:11 am CST, Update by The Master

Played through the Alice demo-all I can say is WOW. Download the demo (story), and try it for yourself. I'm very impressed. The camera is NOT a problem, like some other games I've seen (*cough* Zelda *cough*) and the levels are incredibly detailed (and strange like you could never believe Wonderland could be). I'm going to buy this puppy as soon as I can scrape up the cash. Excellent work, Rogue, American McGee, and EA.

A.T. Hun comments: I've only played a little bit of the demo, but I'm impressed by what I've seen. It runs like a dream on my system and the EAX audio sounds terrific.

Past Two Days' News

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