Wednesday, August 4, 2004

New Mozilla and Kin -- 8:56 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Mozilla 1.7.2, Firefox 0.9.3, and Thunderbird 0.7.3 were all released at Mozilla.org to fix some potential vulnerabilities. If you use any of the above products, it would be best to get downloading. I've upgraded Firefox and Thunderbird on my box.

Neverwinter Nights 2 Announced -- 1:52 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Atari, Bioware, and Obsidian announced that Neverwinter Nights 2 is in the works. There's even some forums for you to peruse. I assume that Bioware chose Obsidian to do the game since their CEO (Feargus Uruquhart) has a name most like a D&D character. Mind you, there is a bit of prophecy involved since the game is slated for a 2006 release. Thanks Blue's News.

In case you are wondering: yes, I already hit their forums and began begging for a Linux client :)

AnandTech Benches DOOM3 -- 11:10 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

AnandTech broke open their closet packed with video cards and put them all through their paces in DOOM3. The results are somewhat surprising, especially how well older video cards can work. Obviously, you will sacrifice some eye candy, but just the fact that they work at all is pretty amazing. I'm pretty thankful to see that my GeForce FX 5700 Ultra can hold its own quite nicely.

Today, they ran similar tests with CPUs. Unfortunately, they didn't go as low-end as they did with video cards. The long and short of it is that generally, the faster your CPU, the better the game will run. Of course, it doesn't pay to spend $700 on a new CPU if you still have an old video card.

So what did I learn from all of this? Upgrading my video card or CPU individually probably wouldn't help me that much. I'd really have to do both. The good news is that DOOM3 seems to love Athlon 64s, which will be my next upgrade, although that upgrade is still a very long ways off.

The Carmack on DOOM3 and Q3A Source -- 9:39 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

John Carmack made a couple of posts on Slashdot, talking about his thoughts on DOOM3 and the potential open source release of the Quake III Arena engine. Here's a snip from the former:

I am extremely proud of Doom 3. I think it is the best game we have ever made, and it exceeded all of my expectations. That is a rather trite phrase, but it is literally true -- I had a good set of expectations for how the game would turn out based on the technologies that it was built on, and it wound up being just plain better than that.

Thanks Blue's News.

Tuesday, August 3, 2004

Pondering the Imponderable -- 9:54 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Doh! I hate it when I forget the difference between Ctrl/Alt/- in X (lower the screen resolution) and Ctrl/Alt/Backspace (bring X down entirely). Thankfully I didn't have anything important open.

J.t.Qbe comments: That's why I use the '-' and '+' keys on the numeric keypad for adjusting screen resolution.

RealPlayer 10 for Linux Released -- 12:40 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Real has released RealPlayer 10 for Linux based on Helix code. It includes codecs for RealAudio/Video, OggVorbis/Theora, and more. It's based on the GPL Helix code. I've been pretty impressed with the beta version. I hope this just puts the final polish on. Thanks Slashdot.

Yet Further UT2K4 Rebate Info -- 11:16 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Well, I just checked the Atari rebate website again and they claim that my rebate check for Unreal Tournament 2004 was finally mailed yesterday. We'll see how long it takes to get here.

Meet Your DOOM(3) -- 8:30 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

So, did anybody go out to a participating Best Buy and pick up DOOM3 at midnight? I know I didn't! After all, the closest one that was open at midnight was in Chicago. Anyway, I'm waiting to see if there are any deals. Wal-Mart has it advertised at $49, but it's not supposed to be available until tomorrow, according to their website. I'm also waiting for some official word on the Linux binaries. For now, we wait.

Oh, by the way, IGN is whining that they don't have a review out yet because id didn't send out any advance press copies. Awww. My heart bleeds for them.

The Master comments: Well, I'm waiting for someone to say whether this puppy will run on a P3-1ghz, since that is theoretically very close to a P4-1.5ghz in a cycle-for-cycle shootout. Otherwise I'm going to have to wait for next year, when I can afford to upgrade my base system. Those 64-bit Athlons look quite tasty :-)

A.T. Hun comments: Shhh! Don't steal my thunder! I've got an idea for an article on what I'm looking for in my next upgrade.

J.t.Qbe comments: A month from now I'll be interested to hear how well this holds up. I devoted my life to FPS games for several years (first time I saw DOOM was in A.T.'s dorm room) but finally got plain ol' bored with them. The DOOM 3 hype has been lost on me. I'm sure that it's getting rave reviews right now...but will it last?

No Old News

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