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February 12th
Happy birthday mom, where ever you may
be -Frank
3Dfx Interactive issued
a Press Release
detailing their 'final' plans for their Voodoo3 based products:
The 'low-end' Voodoo3 2000 has had its clock speed increased
from 125MHz up to 143MHz and should be (according to 3Dfx) dishing
out an expected 6 million triangles and 286 Megatexels per second.
This clock speed 'bump' might well please some of the more concerned
entry-level gamers and is slightly (36Megatexels/second) faster
than the originally specified 250Megatexels/second. The 2000 will
be available in both PCI and AGP flavors with an onboard 300MHz
RAMDAC. The bad news is that The Voodoo3 3000, priced at a suggested
retail price of $179.99 in the US will still feature the promised
350MHz RAMDAC and TV/S-Video Out capabilities but will ship in
an AGP flavor ONLY. There won't be a PCI version.
In another surprise, 3Dfx announces that another Voodoo3 based
product will go on sale. This will be called the 3500 and will
actually be the same specs as the 3000. The 16MB of SDRAM memory will
be clocked at 183MHz delivering "366Mtexels/second"
fill rate. The 183MHz Voodoo3 3500 AGP based board (again there
won't be a PCI version) is expected to deliver up to 8 million
triangles and 366 Megatexels per second at resolutions of up to
2,048 by 1,536 pixels. With its 350MHz RAMDAC, patented LCDfx
technology, the 3500 has been designed to support the latest digital
flat panel displays.
I just wish they had some details on the Mac version of those
cards. We will try to find out and let you know ASAP.
Oni multiplayer online precision [bad news..] Doug Zartman commented during a WWB chat about Oni online gaming capability:
"It will not include map or resource editors due to
the fact that levels are extremely complex in design, and are
being created using AutoCAD.
-The game will require hardware acceleration; both 3dfx
and RAVE will be supported.
-There will definitely be LAN support, but they are still trying
to figure out if Internet play will be feasible."
The lack of internet play is pretty distressing. LAN play is
fun, but no online gaming is big disadvantage. And very few people
have the luxury of playing on LAN, let alone regularly. I hope
they can solve this issue. Online gaming has proved to be the
most important factor in 3D shooter type game success (think of
Quake)
Matthew Parsons has a cool ducking tip for Unreal:
"Oh, I found a cool little trick. (Practice in the jailcell
or in front of other shiny surface) Squat down, release and dodge
to the side (double tap strafe) and then duck again. You jump sideways while staying
ducked down! (You can't normally jump/dodge while ducking). Imagine
dodging behind an entryway, your opponent gets his weapon of
choice ready, looking for that one pixel of yours. He hears you
loading up eightballs, and gets ready to place favorite projectile head level. You come flying/gliding accross in the blink of an eye and dissappear on the other side,
while your unleashed fury spreads accross the corridor, as his
futile weapon sails overhead where you just were. (Yea, in real
life I'd kill myself w/ the premeture firing bug and stand in
the middle in a daze ;) "- M. Parsons
Remember also you can also do this frontward and backward.
You can also move in silent very fast by pressing "c"
for 1 sec and releasing it quickly. Repress "c" just
before you start hearing your footsteps. Very useful in the long
tunnels of DMMansion.
Big fish eat the little fish: Nintendo going after
Emulator developers: Beth Llewelyn, PR manager of Nintendo US, has issued a formal
statement regarding the action the company will take over the
UltraHLE emulator issue. It appears that legal action against
Reality Man and Epsilon will be forthcoming. "Nintendo is
very disturbed that Reality Man and Epsilon have widely distributed
a product designed solely to play infringing copies of copyrighted
works developed by Nintendo and its third-party licensees,"
she stated. "We are taking several measures to further protect
and enforce our intellectual property rights which, of course,
includes the bringing of legal action. Emulators and Roms are
clearly infringing and damage not only 'larger industry players'
such as Nintendo but hundreds of smaller companies who invest
millions of dollars and thousands of hours to develop and program
software only to have it stolen on the Internet." Emulators
of the world take note...
George Broussard, President of 3D Realm / Apogee (makers
of Duke Nukem) comments on Nintendo's intention to sue the 2 programmers:
"Nintendo sucks. Multi-Billionaire game company to sue two
garage programmers for making a kick ass N64 emulator. Nintendo
should be hiring these guys instead of suing them. I'm wondering
what case Nintendo has here, if Sony couldn't sue Connectix (who
make the Virtual Game Station - PSX emulator), that will be used
on the G-3 Mac's. Unless these guys illegally obtained code of
specs from Nintendo to write the emulator, what did they do wrong?
It's a sad, sad day when you get sued for just making a handgun,
and not actually commiting a crime with it."
According to many readers, the emulator perfectly works with
a 3DFx card. Gameplay is apparently also as fast as a Nin 64.
George also gave an
interview to 3DGaming about the release of Duke Nukem Forever
which will use the Unreal engine.
George commented that Unreal's network play in v 220 was only 90% as good as
Quake 2, but much better than the original shipping version. He also commented
on Duke Nukem Forever minimum system requirements being appx. a PII 233-266 and
Voodoo2 as a preferred base.
Sweet Oblivian is
has an interview with Duke Nukem Forever Programmer Chris Hargrove.
This interview seems to be more geared towards Chris himself, instead of Duke.
However, there's some good reading here, too. Make sure
to check it out!
Daily Movies have some exclusive info on the coming release
of Duke Nuke'm: The
movie. Duke Nukem the movie is being created
by Threshold, the media team put together by producer Lawrence
Kasanoff (Mortal Kombat, Terminator 2). While production
won't start for another six months, Kasanoff gives a few scoops
on the film. "Who wants some ?":-)
Unreal Level Pak Named: A GT Interactive spokesperson has revealed the name of the
Unreal Level Pak I mentioned recently. Titled "The Return To Na
Pali", the pak will include pretty much every level of Unreal ever
constructed. No firm release has been set on the product as yet,
but sources indicate that a March release is likely, just before
the shipping of Unreal Tournament.
Smile For The Camera: Would you like to see your very own mug shot in Interplay's
forthcoming Descent 3? All you have to do is send in your picture
and complete the submission form here.
Thanks to Thresh's Firing Squad.
Improving brightness with Rave rendering: Hiram has
a tip:
"Hello Mike and Frank, I haven't seen anyone mention this anywhere
before, but you can use the version of ColorSync built into Mac
OS 8.5 or later to adjust the brightness of RAVE games. I have
created a web page which will help people setup a ColorSync profile
for RAVE games. I think many people might find this useful.
Here's the link: http://members.aol.com/wilsonware/colorsyncprofile.html
. Have a great day. Hiram"
Unreal 1.02b4 problem in Noks Elbow:
"When I am playing on my B&W and go into the castle after
noks elbow, whenever i try top look in the first doorway the
game quits, this happens nowhere else. -Cairan . Anyone seen this too ?"
RichE wrote he will soon release DmTerrorist:
"Not the most detailed level I've done, but I wanted to do
something playable, which means something simple..if you know
what I mean - I get about 30fps in botmatch, which is a BIG improvement
over the DMBronxdelux level. Its set in a cityscape again, but
this time you can take lifts, go into buildings & leap accross
rooftops, hide under bridges or just run around shooting wildly
with the 8-ball. Enjoy ;) Let me know if there are any bugs that
need fixing before make a public release of it. As I said, it's
not very detailed, but I hope you like it.
It's meant for Serpentine, but will play just fine with 2.20..
I don't know if the guys @ serpentine have released the public
version of their beta 7 yet, but if they have then it should
run just fine. Rich."
MacGaming has a revised
version of their Mac
Gamer's guide to 3D available. check it out.
February 11th
Epic Megames posted some info on Unreal Tournament development:
" We are making changes and improvements at such a fast
pace that it has been hard/impossible to stabilize the code for
the 3-5 days required to fully test a new patch. I apologize
for the earlier false start we had with 221."
What we've been programming: I've been juggling work on the installer, OpenGL, and some core UnrealScript improvements. The installer is coming
together, and is complete in terms of installing the retail game
and patches, but more work remains to be done on uninstallation
issues, and improved support for installing/distributing mods.
Some of the latest UnrealScript improvements include a command-line
script compiler, which can be used from any programmer's editor
(or Visual C++) with standard output of error messages; UnrealScript
execution optimizations; and support for dynamic strings.
UnrealScript's string support has been pretty solid all along,
as a result of using BASIC style functions (Left, Right, Mid,
InStr, Chr, Asc...) instead of C's error-prone string handling
functions (strcpy, strcat, strcmp, sprintf). The one annoying
limitation, which has been the source of some bugs in the past,
is that strings were fixed length. 221 supports dynamically
sized strings with no practical size limitation (just available
memory). This makes it easier to write text-processing
routines, which the new in-game server browser is really stressing.
Steve Polge has been improving the AI and the flexibility of
the game code. Because Unreal Tournament's gameplay can
be far more complex than Unreal 1's (from a bot's perspective)
as a result of team play and Capture The Flag, Steve has been
teaching the bots a lot of new techniques for coordinating together
and better understanding the environments. It's sooo cool
watching Cliff and Myscha playing CTF with a few bots on their
teams.
Jack Porter is hammering away on the new user interface code
and the in-game server browser. In the past, first-person
action games haven't been known for having good user interfaces.
We're hoping to change that, and go for the quality level of
an EA Sports interface. Sticking to our general-purpose
roots, Jack isn't just creating user-interface code for Unreal
Tournament, he's creating a flexible, object-oriented UI framework
which will be very suitable for licensees and mod makers.
Brandon Reinhart is working hard, implementing a lot of the Unreal
Tournament game code, the single-player progression, stats tracking,
and much more. The stats tracking is going to be a very
cool feature for Internet play; perhaps I can convince Brandon
to write a note about it here.
Erik de Neve, who created Unreal's algorithmic fire and water
effects and optimized much of the rendering code, is working
on a next-generation project that will make its debut in Unreal
2.-Tim Sweeney"
Dave is going home!! just heard that Dave will get
to go home (for the days ONLY) on Saturday Afternoon and all day
Sunday! And, there's talk of him being released in a week and
a half or so.
Reader's feedback on the new
ATI 128 drivers with Unreal:
Hi Frank, Still love the page, don't ever change!!!! Here
are my Unreal fps scores (with the new ATI drivers) . . . .
System:B&W G3 350 DVD - standard configuration ,128 megs
of RAM ,90 Megs allocated to Unreal, Unreal 1.0.2b4
Pre-update:
HQ - 23.75 fps
(didn't bother doing LQ)
Post-update:
HQ - 28.14 fps
Not too shabby!
Mark also noted an improvement with Myth II but said
that 3dfx rendering still looks better :
Also, the Myth II problems have been sorted out . . . Soulless
no longer have an ugly black box around them No black boxes around
the 'move to' circles Arrows and explosions look an awful lot prettier Fog no longer
can be qualified as 'pea-soup' (i.e. can't see a darned thing
- screen was just white before) However, I have to say that I
played Myth II on a PowerMac 6500 with the Macmagic Voodoo I,
and while the frame rate was incomparable, the Voodoo I
looked way better.
I haven't been able to try my Voodoo I on the new G3, because
the casing gets in the way of the monitor adapter. I thought
about dismantling the case, but I couldn't bring myself to do
it! Thanks for your hard work, Mark Hyett"
[For other reader comments see my new Rage128 Driver Feedback page posted today
at the main site. This page will be used to list all comments on games and applications
with the new drivers.-Mike]
Games.net has a preview of Aliens vs. Predator, the
new game from Fox Interactive. Take a look at some screenshots
here.
Aliens vs. Predator will be coming to the Mac this summer courtesy
of Logicware. Thanks to
Vertigo for the link.
February 10th
Thank You guys! -Dave
Dave does not need any introduction again but in case you are
new to the page, he was involved in a terrible car accident lately
in which he almost left his life.. Soon after the accident, Jamie
Dresser , his brother-in-law and Unreal multiplayer partner, informed
me of the situation. In a sign of support for Dave, Mike and I
set up a guestbook where people could send their get well message
to a fellow mac gamer. The reponse was outstanding ! Jamie said
he collected more than 40 pages of messages( see Dave above holding
the messages ). An Unreal Level also included a special message
board for Dave, thanks to RichE! . Dave recovered at such a fast
pace that doctors were really impressed. He is still in bad shape
but the future looks bright for our friend. To all of you who
showed your support to Dave, Thank you!
The Congregation of Plovers have released a 15 level addon pack. It's all Dm/Dk/8ball and a hell of a lot
of fun. Go check it out. I haven't check it personally - so some
maps might not be compatible yet since they are 2.20 compatible-only.
Gran Turismo 2 screeenshots! The next racer behind
the white-knuckle Gran Turismo is on the way. Check them out here!
Players will be able to choose from more than 400 cars
(more US and European automakers will have cars in this edition),
and 20 courses will be available for players' driving pleasure
(there were only eleven tracks in the original). Sony's hyping
the game's "peerless" 3D graphics and it will be Dual
Shock compatible (no surprise). Note that Gran turismo was voted
the best simulator at the Milia Gaming annual conference this
week. It is imo, the best Playstation car games ever made. In
fact, it worths to buy a Playstation console simply for this game.No
kidding!! More to come on this soon.
Pirates of Silicon Valley: Think May 1999 . Make sure
to visit TNT web site for more info on this new coming movie about
the 2 most famous computer Tycoon, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.
For all the details. http://www.tnt-tv.com/movies/tntoriginals/pirates/index.html
More feedback on Klingon Honor Guard memory problem:
"Hi Frank,
Well, I investigated KHG's memory problem a little more, and
found that if I turned Virtual Memory on, I did NOT have and
crashes. It did crash once for me even after I lowered the memory
allocation from 140 to 110, so there's something not quite right
here. The program wasn't running out of memory, there was almost
80mb of memory free(110 allocated to Klingon) and there was NO
slowdown with the game at all with VM on. Of course, other than
when it hits the CD to get the next audio track.
Great game, really hard at parts, especially at the end. Nothing
worse than having the hardest character armed with seeker rockets
to start the level off! Took me a dozen tries to win! Now, I
have to go through the game at "Klingon" instead of
"Human". Guess I'd better be prepared to get spanked
some more!
So, perhaps there's more memory being used than Unreal? Stands
to reason, it's got more textures, right? Wonder what the "optimum"
memory allocation would be for KHG?
Seen anybody doing online KHG matches? I haven't even looked
yet.
Gonna go see Dave tonight, I'll say "hi" for ya-
Thanks,Jamie"
Michael Lohmann wrote that cool new maps have been added to
deCyber:
Resident Evil (You'll need both (file1 and file 2 zip files to play it) [from RichE]
Victorian
:, Undesired, Fortress Of Mato, Campers Paradise, Perceptual
Illusions, Church, Dorian and a few others.
I couldn't check if they are 2.20 compatible only, but give
it a shot. The wait for a Mac compatible version of Unreal that
can use PC 2.20 maps is too much for some people. I had 3 readers
who wrote me recently asking if I knew when a compatible Mac version
would be available. Westlake Interactive decided to wait until
Epic releases 2.21 since this version will break compatibility
with some mods again. While this was a good decision, no one could
have expect the wait to be that long.
In order to please Mac users and allow them to play the newest
maps and most of allowing them to play online on 2.20 compatible
servers, Westlake recently indicated they were considering making
a Mac 2.20 version :
"Given the situation with Epic, an upgrade to 2.20 is
being strongly considered by Westlake. We, too, were led to believe that 2.21
was an "any minute" thing--and, alas, this seems not to be
the case. Although no final decision has been made, we are now looking at different options.- Suellen Adams, Business Coordinator, Westlake Interactive,
Inc."
Nothing has been decided yet though. Let`s hope the decision
will be postitive.
Some readers asked me how they could speedup the process of
loading levels. Beside a faster machine, doing a full installation
of Unreal on your fastest drive is imo the best solution. See
my Hard
disk comparison with Unreal [increasing the disk cache size
in the memory control panel might help as well, if you have
the ram to spare-Mike]
Wheel of Time web site
update: Legend Entertainment updated their web site with some insight
on this coming game based on the Unreal Engine . Check it out.
Michael Eilers wrote he is seeing some differences with Unreal
after updating to 1.0b4 :
"I downloaded some older solo maps to play with Unreal 102b4
(version 219) and I get type 1 errors in the first few seconds--I've
never seen this happen before... Any suggestions? I've got all
the RAM and power one could want... I suppose I could go back
to my non-beta install, but then I'd have to give up network
play.
Also, am I not mistaken or is the character lighting getting
stranger with each update? For instance, the lighting on the
characters in the map DMDeck16 is really strange. When an opponent
is standing directly under a bright light in a fully-lit hallway,
their face and body are almost totally black. Also, firing weapons
no longer lights up the person's body. Note that this happens
with both RAVE and 3Dfx voodoo 1 on my two systems. During the
solo game, the lighting also seems a bit darker but it makes
more "sense" (the lighting on the character's body
matches the lighting of the scenery/area.) Anyone else see this?
Is there a fix?- michael"
He also commented on Unreal 1.0b4 with his ATI 128 card
:
"I've been playing Unreal for a few days on my new G3 Pro with
the RAGE 128 card, and it looks astounding and plays so smoothly
that this is a whole new game to me... and I was playing with
a fairly fasy machine and VooDoo I before this. Anyway, I've
noticed two flaws and I'd like to know if anyone else is seeing
this....
First, when I get hit by anything that causes a colored flash
(especially a red flash, i.e. getting shot with no shieldbelt)
the screen darkens for a moment, and occasionally will take several
seconds to brighten up again. This is most noticeable during
botmatches (and not just because I tend to get hit a lot! :-).
It is as if the red flash has turned into a black flash, so to
speak.
Second, I get some very annoying pauses and hesitations just
after loading a new level or at certain points in the solo game.
When the game is going, it is totally smooth and utterly playable,
and CPU speed (400 MHz) and RAM (128 MB RAM, 99 given to Unreal,
no VM) isn't a factor. Has anyone else seen this? -michael"
Mac Quake II Update: Nate Trost of Logicware, lead programmer
on the Quake II Mac port currently underway, has updated his .plan
file :
"I meant to get around to updating this over the weekend,
but pestilence and disease got a hold of me. I hate colds where
I don't have much in the way of symptoms but have all the energy
and life sucked right out of my body..."
"Anyway, Quake 2 continues to come along, I now have the
renderers and game libraries split out to shared libraries, so
the Mac version now has the same modular functionality as the
PC version." "For those familiar with the PC architecture
for game library plugins working with the Mac version will be
very similar. One difference that will be a minor issue while
porting is there will be an additional export function to handle
for importing some Mac specific routines that replace some ANSI
standard library calls. For file i/o and a couple other things,
this was necessary for the Mac version." "I'm wrapping
up implementing things like Apple Event support and the like
right now. Things will work very similar to the way they did
in Quake 1 Mac
as far as using Apple Events to simulate command-line options,
etc. I still haven't decided whether or not to ever throw up
a menu bar, but you will be able to background Q2 and switch
out to the desktop to work with game trackers, etc."
"Send some screenshots off to Activision recently, hopefully
they'll get through the approval process and into circulation
shortly. The game is looking very pretty running on the Rage
128 in millions of colors..."
February 9th
Mac3D posted info
on a workaround that will allow you to use a voodooII card with
Apple Studio Display monitor. Here are some tips :
"1. Boot up your machine with extensions off (important!)
with your monitor connected directly to the internal video card
(not through the Voodoo 2 card). Hopefully you'll get video to
screen at boot time. If not, zap the PRAM on your way up.
2. Throw away your Display Prefs from your active System Folder's
Preferences Folder. Empty the trash just to be safe. [file may be locked-Mike]
3. Shut down your machine and connect through the Voodoo 2 card
to your display.
4. Boot your machine and hold down Command-Option-P-R to zap
PRAM on the way up. You might let it zap PRAM a few times before
releasing the keys. With no display prefs and no display settings
in PRAM, it should force the monitor to sync to the display's
default (and likely compatible) resolution."-Mac3D
Mac GameWeek interviews this week:
Monday, February 8th
6:00 pm pacific/9:00 pm eastern
David Rees, Altor Systems
7:00 pm pacific/10:00 pm eastern
Ian Lynch Smith, President of Freeverse Software
Tuesday, February 9th
6:00 pm pacific/9:00 pm eastern
Doug Zartman, Bungie Software
7:00 pm pacific/10:00 pm eastern
Logicware, Bill Heineman
Wednesday, February 10th
7:00 pm pacific/10:00 pm eastern
Glenn Andreas creator of Cythera
Thursday, February 11th
7:00 pm pacific/10:00 pm eastern
WWB GameZone Meets....Nate Birkholtz, MacSoft
To participate in the chat just point your JAVA enabled browser
to
http://worldwithoutborders.com and click on the ChatNow button.
Netscape 3.0 or higher recomended by the site.
In a followup to part one on setting up the network, Ruffin
Bailey prepared : Quake
Lan Tutorial Part 2: QuakeWorld. Check it out.
Daikatana Coming to the Mac: Last week, John Romero, formerly
of id Software and now president at Ion Storm, said that their
flagship title, Daikatana, would be ported to the Mac: Daikatana
is a huge 1st-person shooter based on the Quake II engine and
a lengthy, detailed plot that spans four unique game worlds. More
info can be found at the
Daikatana web site.
There is a Logicware interview at Inside
Mac Games. It is mentions that Sierra and Logicware are now
negotiating the port of Half-Life to the Mac.
Vertigo also has an interview with Logicware's Bill Heineman
Next Generation as an interview
with Steve Jobs and the Mac as a gaming platform.
3Dhardware has a 6 page article
on Voodoo 3 entitled "what flavor do you want your Voodoo3?"
(sounds familiar?!:) )
Interestingly , they were told by 3DFX: "The
Voodoo3 is the slowest of the chips you will see from 3Dfx this
year." (!!!)
"The Voodoo 3 will, as announced, come in two
versions, the Voodoo3 2000 (V3 2k) and the Voodoo3 3000 (V3 3k).
There will also be PCI versions of both, the fillrate will be
the same as the AGP versions but triangle rate will be lower
due to the slower bus. It will support PCI 66 and will function
on a Macintosh.
Shipping in late March, 3Dfx will have an extremely aggressive
price, the Voodoo3 2000 will go for $129 while the Voodoo3 3000
will sell for $169. You won't see the large price differences
found on the Voodoo2 when choosing from different manufacturers,
as 3Dfx now handles all distribution, the set price levels will
be held around the globe"
Amazingly, the article reports that Quake I timedemo gave an
outstanding score of 181.1 fps at 640x480 and a respectable 38.6
at 1600x1200 !!
Today, gamers from all nations have gathered at Milia
Games in Cannes, [the site was empty when writing these lines]
France to discover the next wave of hit titles. Visit Gamespot
later today for more news. Note that Villagetronic will show their
Banshee working in 3DFX mode there. If you attend the show,drop me a
line!
Cythera version beta 6 movie:
This is a movie taken while playing Ambrosia's upcoming role playing
game "Cythera." It is about 8.6mb (a tad large, but
of good size and quality)
the movie shows off some of the very cool features of Cythera
(using an unreleased version Snapz Pro to record the QuickTime
movie of course...)Cythera will be released soon; keep your wits
about you, and your sword drawn...
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