Monday, April 16, 2001

EuroGamer on Pro Gaming -- 4:36 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

EuroGamer has an editorial on the state of professional gaming, fearing that it is going nowhere fast. The article raises some interesting points which gives me the opportunity to share an opinion I've held for some time: Professional Gaming is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Not that the players aren't talented in their particular game, they are. But who cares? Who, I ask you? Who is calling up ESPN2 and screaming to have this stuff televised? Who really wants to spectate a professional Counter-Strike tournament? If I can't see any point and I love these games, how in the world will we convince non-gamers to watch and companies to shell out cash for it? Thanks Stomped.

Red Hat 7.1 Released -- 4:10 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Red Hat has announced the 7.1 release of their popular Linux distribution. Included is the Linux 2.4 kernel, XFree86 4.0.3, and KDE 2.1. Naturally, the mirrors will be beaten in a most violent manner so you might want to wait on that download.

Haus of Shogo Overhaul -- 12:39 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I'm busy giving my Haus of Shogo a major overhaul. It's been redesigned and I'm cleaning things up behind the scenes. I've got almost everything converted, except for the walkthrough. Check it out at its new address, shogo.thehaus.net, and let me know what you think!

UPDATE! 3:10 P.M. I finally got all the pages done. Take a look around and tell me what you think. I don't feel like looking at my HTML editor for a while :)

Multicast Technology Demo -- 9:23 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Valve's new multicast technology was shown off at the Speakeasy CPL Counter-Strike tournament. Multicasting allows a virtually limitless number of people to view an ongoing game with an overhead view of the map and a spectator cam. Very cool stuff. Check out the three-minute streaming video (Windows Media Player required). One warning: be prepared for some vertigo from the cameraman's lack of skill with a camcorder.

Sunday, April 15, 2001

Security Issues with RPMs -- 7:43 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

SecurityPortal has an article on potential security issues with Linux RPMs. I'm not sure how big of a concern this really is. Even if you compiled the source, you still need to install it as root. Someone could put nasty code in there to destroy your world. I know I don't have the time, inclination, or programming acumen to dig through every file looking for malicious code. Still, the article raises some valid points that would be good to keep in mind. Thanks Slashdot.

New Ask Sweeney -- 5:35 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

VoodooExtreme posted a new Ask (Epic's Tim) Sweeney. As usual, the Q&A column covers a wide variety of topics in Sweeney's strait-to-the-point style. I like this answer in particular:

Mark - Another question for ya. Same thing, Winsock VS DirectPlay8 I don't know of any games using the new DirectPlay8 (Which was completely rewritten). Any news on that? Does DirectPlay actually use Winsock itself?

Tim - The answer here is much easier. DirectPlay is a bloated heap of junk kept alive by who-knows-what internal political forces at Microsoft. Everyone wishes they'd just kill the thing. Windows Sockets (the other Microsoft networking API, by the way!) is much better. All of the other DirectX8 components are excellent, though: Direct3D, DirectSound, and DirectInput.

This comment also startled me, especially with how many in the hardware press have pushed the Kyro II as A Good Thing:

ps - What's your take on the kyro2 and tile based rendering?

Tim - It's a competent TNT2 class chip, and the sorting and alpha-testing artefacts of past generations seem to have been sorted out successfully. But, like every generation of PowerVR hardware before it, it's a day late and a dollar short. It lacks support for basic DirectX7 (yes, 7!) features like cube maps. The kyro developers are cool guys, so it pains me to say that this is just not a viable piece of hardware in the market it's trying to compete in.

Happy Easter! -- 12:13 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Happy Easter to one and all from The Haus! We had my son's baptism today so a zillion of my relatives are over here. The Master is also visiting relatives, but he should be poking his head in later on tonight. Enjoy the day!

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