Thursday, September 30, 1999
sCary Takes on Q3Test -- 7:17 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun
Steve "sCary" Gibson visited id Software recently and gives his report on the current Q3Test changes. Lots more will probably change before the next test release. It's a good read, but pack a lunch. The Shack's webserver is flipping out again.Prepare for Godzilla -- 6:43 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun
OK, this is off topic but interesting nonetheless. I saw on Ars Technica that there was a nuclear accident in Japan, releasing up to 15,000 times the normal level of radiation into the vicinity of the plant. Here's a quote from the ABC News story:Officials said fission â€" which releases huge amounts of energy and is the principle behind the atomic bomb â€" was occurring.I love quotes like that which imply rather strongly that this could have been Hiroshima II. While there was no danger of explosion, the radiation threat is very real. Guess we'll get to see Godzilla vs. Mothra in person!
The Master comments: While this seems quite funny from our perspective, this accident is about as close to an unrestrained nuclear accident as you'd like to get. It's close to a LOT of people, and the ocean, and isn't a Chernobyl on an open steppe. And if fission is going on (and I believe it is) it could get very nasty before it's over. The Japanese are very good a ruining their environment tho, almost as efficient as the Russians :-/
NHL 2000 Patch -- 4:27 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun
GA Sports posted a blurb about the upcoming patch for EA Sports' NHL 2000. This will take care of some of the nagging little issues with NHL 2K. The patch should be out in mid-October, about the same time as a roster update will be posted. Thanks VE.Zoid Chat Log -- 4:24 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun
VE posted a link to a log from an IRC chat with Zoid. Zoid is the one who came up with the concept of Capture the Flag. He works now at implementing his brainchild into Quake 3 Arena. He mentioned that he is trying to get some form of CTF into the next test. Let's hope he is successful!UT on the TNT -- 12:12 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun
My experiences have been similar to Epic's, namely, that I average about 28 fps on my TNT at 640x480x16 (medium textures all around). The problem is, in a firefight (even a 1v1 firefight, my framerate plummets to the mid-teens, making it very difficult to aim. Add the latency of a modem Net connection and the whole thing spells trouble.Crawl, one of the EZ-Net techs, reported that he got excellent framerates at 1024x768x32 with his P3 and TNT2 Ultra. Obviously some more fill rate would do wonders for me. But when Epic said that TNT performance would be on par with Voodoo1 performance, they weren't kidding.
To add insult to injury, they are reporting serious framerate problems with TNTs on computers with 64M memory or less (hello, The Master!). Maybe resolving that situation will help the other. Who knows?
Please understand me correctly. There are a lot of things to like about Unreal Tournament. I like the weapons and the level design. If I can't play it online decently (no, it's not just because I suck, which I do, but that's beside the point) it's really pointless to play it. Q3 runs better and looks better (because I can run with all the graphics options cranked up) on my system. I guess I'll have to revisit this when I get a GeForce :)
Wednesday, September 29, 1999
id .plans -- 12:26 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun
Graeme Devine updated his .plan regarding the hubub about no grapple in Q3. Technically, that is not correct. The grapple code will be in Q3, but none of the CTF maps that ship with Q3 will make use of it. He also mentions that the author of the Q2 Gladiator bot is in Texas helping John Cash finish the bot AI.John Carmack updated his .plan talking about some issues with display lists in OpenGL. I read it and, frankly, it gave me a headache. Thus the wisdom of Carmack the Magnificent.
Redwood on Q3Test -- 10:04 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun
Redwood posted a most excellent article on Q3Test 1.082 which he got to play on a visit to id last Friday. He goes into a lot of detail on the changes and seemed to be particularly impressed with Capture-the-Flag. Here's a peek:Even though it was in one of the CTF maps I played, id will most likely NOT have a grappling hook of any kind in their CTF. When Graeme first asked me what I thought about this, I told him flat out "it sucks." That was my gut reaction and more of wanting the traditional in id CTF. Graeme told me the levels have been designed for not needing a grappling hook.I liked the grapple in QuakeWorld CTF, but the one in Q2 is next to worthless. The tractor beam (= grapple) in Shogo really gives LPBs a major advantage because it can react very quickly and HPWs have a hard time accurately predicting their movement. The problem with turning it off is that many levels were designed with tractor beam use in mind. Oh well.
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