The Haus

Tuesday, September 28, 1999

UT Revisited

After playing some more UT, I found that going to Advanced Options -> Audio and setting UseDigitalMusic to False gives me a pretty good framerate boost and it also enables UT to close down properly. Under Audio there is also an option Use3dHardware that you can set to true if you have a 3D sound card.

Also, if I start a game, then hit esc and go to Advanced Options, the game crashes, apparently because it cannot go into windowed mode anymore.

Update: Setting UseDigitalMusic to False does allow UT to shut down and return you to the desktop, but it remains crashed (the Task List says it's not responding). You need to kill the task manually to get it to go away.

My Thoughts On UT D3D

Well, I got the patch installed and played a little UT in D3D. I played in 640x480 with medium textures and 32 bit color. With those settings, some of the textures would flash bizzarely. Moving to high detail textures made it much worse. Moving the color to 16 bit took care of the flashing altogether. It is faster in D3D than it was with the Unified drivers and Glide, but not as much as I would have expected.

I didn't notice any major changes with the sound, even though it supposedly supports EAX now. I did get the "lockup" that was mentioned on the Unreal Technology page that happens to some people with Win98, Sound Blaster Live!s, and nVidia-based graphics cards. I had to manually end the task (twice) to get my computer back.

Last night The Master, Crawl, and I played Q3Test online. One thing I noticed immediately is how much smoother Q3Test is on my system than Unreal Tourney. I can get framerates of 44 on Q3Demo1 with "High Quality" settings (except at 640x480). I can't even average over 35 against one bot at 640x480x16 with medium texture detail in UT. In firefights (remember, it's against only one bot) my framerate drops into the teens. Unless the D3D situation improves, UT will disappear off my hard drive once the next Q3Test with bots comes out.

More Mirrors on Stomped

Redwood has posted some more mirrors for the full Unreal Tourney demo as well as the patch.

UT Demo on FilePlanet and UnrealFiles

FilePlanet and Unreal Files are busy updating all their mirrors with the UT Full Demo and the patch. You can get the full demo from FilePlanet or Unreal Files. You can get the patch from FilePlanet or Unreal Files. Thanks PlanetUnreal for the FilePlanet information.

UT Demo on CDROM.com

The Gigex links don't seem to be working for some reason. So much for "unlimited bandwidth." The full demo just made it to CDROM.com (I refreshed it until the full thing was there!). You can download it here. Hopefully the patch will be forthcoming.

UT Full Demo Is Out!

The Unreal Tournament full demo and patch for the Glide-only version is out! I'm working on getting a list of mirrors . . .

Update #1: The patch that is available on Avault does not contain the new map. They are making a new patch as we speak. I've seen links to what is supposed to be the full demo, but I'm not so sure I can trust them.

Update #2: Here are the links, directly from Unreal Tournament.com:

Full Demo (55M)
Download with Gigex, Download without Gigex

Patch for Glide-Only Demo (10M)
Download with Gigex, Download without Gigex

Please note! If you see a site that has a 7M patch, DON'T DOWNLOAD IT! It does not contain the new map. They also added this little incentive:
Win some UT goodies: If you download either version through Gigex, and provide your email address, you could be one of 50 lucky winners (chosen at random) to receive a long-sleeve, black UT T-shirt or be the one lucky winner to get a very exclusive Unreal Tournament leather jacket! Details appear with the download.

Carmack .plan Update

John Carmack updated his .plan with a new worklog and the news that the next Q3Test is still a little ways off. Of special interest to the biggest whiners in the community is the following:
* removed tripple bunny-hop protection, it was too arbitrary and didn't accomplish it's goal
Soon you'll be able to hop around like grasshoppers on speed again. Sigh. This was one area where I agreed with Carmack. It's really stupid to play when all you hear is "Huh huh huh huh huh" from everyone jumping around.

Monday, September 27, 1999

GreenMarine .plan

Epic's own Brandon "GreenMarine" Reinhart updated his .plan with news of the release of the Linux UT Server (not client) for the full demo, as well as a bit about the upcoming Win32 demo release.
Okay, the UT full demo linux server will start showing up on various sites for you to download now. I'm spreading it to some various sites for distribution and I'm sure it'll find its way around the net.

In the morning we'll release the UT full demo.

i820 Chipset at Ace's Hardware

I saw this interesting article on Intel's new i820 (Camino) chipset on Ace's Hardware. They put the board through its paces with RAMBUS memory and a TNT2 Ultra. The most interesting thing of all (to me) was the fact that the Q3Test timedemo actually got .1 of a fps slower using AGP 4x instead of AGP 2x. A 600 Mhz Athlon with a 100 Mhz front-side bus still beat a PIII-600 with a 133 Mhz FSB. Thanks Riva 3D.

No UT Demo Tonight

The Unreal Tournament page was just updated with this blurb from Mark Rein:
Our plans right now are to release the Linux Server-only version of the Unreal Tournament Demo tonight, do some exhaustive overnight testing (and potentially a bug fix if it's needed) and then give the demo to GT to release tomorrow morning if everything goes OK. There are still a few known issues (Tim Sweeney will post a list tonight on the Unreal Technology Site) that won't get addressed in time for the demo release but otherwise we think it will be pretty solid and D3D users should be pleased.
Go to bed. Watch Monday Night Football. Enjoy a lovely beverage. Any of the above.

Borland to port programming tools to Linux

WHOOOOO!!!! For all you programming weenies in the crowd, check this story out about Inprise to port Borland language tools to Linux. Now THAT is good news folks. I may need to get a Linux box running at home now :-)

RIPper RIP

My MAD (Shogo clan) member and Haus columnist, Joltox, has retired from the Old Married Guys [RIP] and has asked to be relieved of his columnist duties on this website. In Real Life (tMS) he and his wife are opening up a martial (not marital) arts school. I wish him nothing but the best. If I'm ever stuck in a dark alley, I want him on my side.

UT Full Demo Status

VE posted this blurb which someone saw on the Shugashack forums:
Keep your pants on. We're almost done with it, no visible bugs, looks spiffy on my TNT2.

*Should* be today! (Monday, fingers crossed)

Cliff

M$ out of cash?

Check this hilarious link out: MicroSoft runs out of cash! Oh, MY-I bet that MicoSerf is hurting :-)

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