Friday, April 20, 2001

Jake Simpson .plan Update -- 7:10 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Raven's Jake Simpson updated his .plan with a correction to his interview on Voodoo Extreme earlier today:

A couple of things. In the VE interview I stated that SOF2 was based off the 1.17 build of Quake III. Of course I was completely wrong. It's based off the first release of Team Arena. I'm just a dummy getting confused between Elite Force Multiplayer, which was 1.17, and the SOF2 start up times. Oh well. What's an interview without something wrong on it?

That did sound strange to me since he mentioned specifically that it was Team Arena.

Arrrghhh -- 11:50 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I've been extremely frustrated trying to get Red Hat 7.1 to run properly. Here's a list of problems I've had:

• It didn't install Linuxconf automatically. Why?
• It refuses to run any root programs in X after I enter the root password. They just barf.
• It didn't install PCMCIA services even though it detected my PCMCIA wireless card at installation.
• I can't get it to access the Internet at all. I have no idea why. I've quadruple-checked all my settings (mind you, I got this working in Red Hat 6.2 and Mandrake 7.1).

I'm going to keep working at it, but right now I'm very frustrated, especially considering how much time I put into downloading this. There are some cool new features, but right now they are being drowned out in the noise of everything else that's going wrong.

UPDATE! OK, there was a bit of PEBKAC involved. With the help of Crawl we fished through all my settings until I found the problem. Networking is now working. For some reason, running root programs fixed itself. Too weird.

UPDATE #2! I got the NVIDIA driver installed, although I had to use the source RPM instead of the one that was for RH 7.1. Not sure if there is a kernel difference between 7.1 beta and 7.1 final that causes the problem. Now I can't get Quake III to run full-screen. I'll figure that one out later.

SoF 2 Interview -- 9:48 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

VoodooExtreme interviewed Raven's Jake Simpson about Soldier of Fortune 2. Topics include the updates they made to the Quake III engine, weapons that will be included, and much more. Here's a snip about the new GHOUL2 animation system:

And then, inevitably, there's GHOUL2. This is what I've been doing for the past few months. Ghoul2 has all the same abilities of Ghoul 1 (well, mostly anyway) and many more. It's a true skeletal animation system, where we can override any bone in the body so we can do programmer-controlled joints (get the guys to look at specific places, make feet match the floor and so on). We can also run animations on specific parts of the body, share animation skeletons across multiple models, bolt objects on, generate on the fly bolts. This allows us to attach damage geometry to the model exactly where you hit it. Of course per-poly collision detection is still there, as is the multiple bolt-on guys, so you won't see repeats of the same guy all over the place. Our texture budget has grown hugely, as the screen shots in PC gamer show. We are definitely going for the photo-realistic look as much as we can.

Thursday, April 19, 2001

James Monroe .plan Update -- 4:51 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Raven's James Monroe updated his .plan with a list of the fixes he is trying to get into the HoloMatch patch for Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force.

Pondering the Imponderable -- 3:21 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Well, if I wasn't before, I am definitely now a certifiable geek. I just got done downloading Red Hat Linux 7.1 and burning it to CDs. I feel like I've just gone through some rite of passage. I will also have to check if any birds were fried from flying between my wireless Internet antenna and EZ-Net's.

Audiogalaxy Satellite Installs Spyware -- 2:34 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I upgraded my version of Audiogalaxy's Satellite to download some MP3s of songs I have on tape that are no longer playable. With that new version came webHancer, a spyware program. Nowhere on Audiogalaxy's download page, nor on the page a Download.com from which I got it, is webHancer mentioned. It is in the fine print on the installation wizard though, including this rather ominous comment:

In consideration of the foregoing license from WEBHANCER to you, you grant to WEBHANCER the perpetual, unrestricted right to record and use your web surfing performance metrics, in whole or in part, in any form or format.

That comment comes after the part where they mention that any future "upgrades" of the software fall under those terms. I only discovered it because I found it in my task list. Fortunately, it was relatively easy to uninstall. Audiogalaxy must be desperate for cash.

IPTABLES Exploit -- 10:54 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

A vulnerability has been found in Linux kernel 2.4's IPTABLE firewall. Bugtraq has all the details and a patch to fix it. Basically you don't need to be concerned unless the firewall is protecting an FTP server. This shows open source's main strength, IMO: bugs are quickly identified and quickly patched. Thanks Slashdot.

Mandrake 8 Released -- 9:48 am CST, Update by J.t.Qbe

If you're a Mandrake fan, today's a big day: Mandrake 8.0 is here! Looks like it has lots of cool new stuff.

A.T. Hun comments: Mandrake goes for the version number bloat :) I'm just getting done downloading Red Hat 7.1, the first distribution I've ever personally downloaded and burned. I'm switching back from Mandrake because I felt a lot of their Drake-whatever configuration utilities never seemed to work quite right (especially not MenuDrake) and I could never get printing to work satisfactorily. Having said that, Mandrake is very easy to use and provides the extra hand-holding that newbie users would like.

Past Two Days' News

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