Monday, September 13, 1999

3dfx FXT1 -- 9:42 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

3dfx announced their own open-source texture-compression scheme today. Here's a snip from their website:

FXT1 advanced texture compression is provided free to anyone who wants to create and accelerate content utilizing many more texture images and higher resolution textures, all with the highest possible image quality. FXT1 texture compression provides equal to or better compression ratios than any available hardware compression scheme and is supported on all future 3dfx products.

This would have been really cool about two years ago. S3's S3TC (incorporated in the new DirectX 7 as DXTC) did that a long time ago. Now the Savage 2000 and GeForce 256 both support DXTC. This is just further proof that 3dfx cannot innovate, they can only follow--and they're not particularly good at that. Oh how the mighty have fallen.

Boring, But Hopefully Not For Long -- 6:05 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

It's been a slow past couple of news days. Fortunately things shouldn't stay that way. The Unreal Tourney demo is expected this week, and, if I remember correctly, a new Q3 Test was supposed to come out about now (of course, going to the skeletal system might have pushed that one back). Hope springs eternal.

Sunday, September 12, 1999

NHL 2000 Micro-Review -- 7:56 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I won't get into much detail here, I'm going to buy the full version and do a review on that. Basically the graphics and sound are amazing. EA's NHL series has always been the best in that regard. Now, however, the gameplay has really improved. The goalies are no longer virtual brick walls. You can score (although you won't necessarily score) from just about any place inside the blue line. Shots on an empty net don't automatically go in for the computer. Your defensemen can actually score from the blue line. It's much tougher to get in a fight (it seemed like I got in a fight every time I played the NHL '99 demo). So far, it seems like the best version of the renouned EA NHL series. Highly recommended.

Download the demo and see for yourself!

To get automatic line changes in the demo (otherwise you are stuck playing with only one line), start a game without choosing a side. Once the game actually starts (the national anthem is sung, etc.), hit ESC and go to the CONTROLLERS menu. Then move your controller to whichever team you want to play! Then you can either use F1-F4 to pick the line you want to use, or let the computer make the changes for you. (Thanks NHL 2000 Online for that tip.)

UT Demo Size -- 7:52 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I just saw on UTCenter.Com that, according to Tim Sweeny at Epic, the UT Demo will be about a 50 meg download. Make sure to super-cool them modems!

Slow day -- 5:59 pm CST, Update by The Master

Well, it's been a mega-slow news day. Only thing I saw was a blurb on SlashDot on a possible telnet port built into the Sega DreamCast. However, that appears to be a hoax-so no dice.

Well, at least the Packers won in the last 20 seconds of the game. (A.T. adds) as did this Lions! Booyah! Now if they can beat the Pack under the artificial sky of the Silverdome next week . . .

Past Two Days' News

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