Tuesday, January 11, 2000

Q3A Point Release Beta 2 -- 10:11 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

id Software has released another beta patch for Quake III Arena. You can download it from id Software, CD-ROM, 3D Action Gamers, Blue's News, and Shugashack. The file is a little over a meg.

Robert Duffy, id's tool-time guy, updated his .plan with the low-down on all the fixes.

The 2nd Point Release Beta (version 1.15b) for Quake III Arena is out. It should start appearing on mirrors soon. This version contains several bug fixes and should go final within a day or so. The source should be available shortly after that ( within a few days ). Per usual, all dates and time frames are subject to change.

Changes:

• Control menu works properly
• Pure server connection notification
• 2D Armor icon appears properly
• .arena files are accumulated properly across pk3 files
• A few other smallish fixes

My take? If you downloaded the first beta point release (like I did), then download this patch. If you didn't, wait a couple of days until the final point release comes out.

Happy Anniversary! -- 6:12 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Best wishes to Mr. and Mrs. The Master who are celebrating their third anniversary today! Three years and she still hasn't killed you yet? Amazing! :)

The Master comments: Hehehe :-) I'm sure she's considered it more than once!

New Gamespy -- 5:01 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Version 2.19 of Gamespy has been released. This is a registered-user-only upgrade. It includes full support for Quake III Arena (finally), as well as better support for Unreal Tournament and Battlezone II.

UT 405B Patch Mirrors -- 11:57 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

If you haven't downloaded the Unreal Tournament 405B patch yet, check my news blurb from yesterday. I have added several new mirror sites. Unlike the Unreal Technology page, I give the links directly to the files or to the page on which the file is contained, instead of the generic website address.

Ask Hook -- 9:59 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

VoodooExtreme has posted a couple new additions to their Ask (Brian) Hook column. In this week's edition, Brian sings the praises of NVIDIA and ponders the future of inter-player communications in games.

It's Coming -- 9:47 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Yes, I know that the Finger Tracker is borked again. NT decided to lock the file again (sigh). However, on Friday we will have a dramatic change here at The Haus which will hopefully eliminate these sort of problems forever. The buttons at the bottom of this page should give you a hint :)

Monday, January 10, 2000

EAX for Q3A: Update! -- 11:23 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

After a little more experimenting with the Aureal patch, I discovered that sometimes sounds will not play in the game with A3D mode enabled. As a matter of fact, the weapon firing sounds rarely played. Combine that with the 19% framerate drop and I really don't think it is worth it. I just used the EAX controls to add about 15% of "Stone Room 1" reverb to give the sounds a bit more kick without the performance hit. It's not the same, obviously, but it helps.

UT 405B Patch Released -- 10:40 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The Unreal Technology Page brings word that the 405B patch is now available. Check the above link for the list of features. It is a 4.5M download. You can get it from Unreal Universe, Unreality, 3D Action Gamers, Blue's News, Evil Avatar, and the mirrors that are FilePlanet (assuming you can get past the Gamespy Network's patented CrashyServer technology). It is network-compatible with versions 400 and 402 so you don't have to worry if your favorite server is slow to upgrade.

Free UT Maps: Be Patient! -- 9:15 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Epic's Alan Willard updated his .plan with a promise that the free Unreal Tournament maps are coming so just chill.

Rather than make a long boring post about some lame thing I found on the web, I'll just say this:

The long wait for the release of those free maps we mentioned awhile back WILL BE worth it.

'Nuff said.

Say, Monolith, isn't it interesting that id and Epic are releasing MORE maps, but you guys never got around to adding more start-points in Shogo. Wacky, ain't it? Not that I'm bitter . . .

EAX for Q3A -- 9:23 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

A website called T-Break has posted instructions (supposedly from Creative Labs) on how to get Q3A to use EAX-based sound cards!. It seems that Aureal put out a patch that will allow non-Aureal cards to play A3D 2.0 titles using DirectSound (of which EAX is a superset). I may just have to try this. Caveat emptor, as always. Thanks Blue's News.

Update! I did a little more research and found out that this patch is indeed legitimate. I found a readme for the patch on Aureal's website as well as the patch itself. Cool beans!

I downloaded the Aureal patch, installed it, and ran some timedemos. I ran Reverend's "Pumped" demo and DEMO001 that comes with Quake III. Here are the results:

• Pumped w/o 3D sound: 30.3 fps; with 3D Sound: 24.6 fps (19% loss)
• DEMO001 w/o 3D sound: 46.6 fps; with 3D Sound: 38.2 fps (18% loss)

As you can see, enabling 3D sound causes a substantial framerate hit. Does it sound better? Quite a bit! Is it worth losing that many fps? For me, probably not. Download the Aureal patch and decide for yourself!

AOL, Time-Warner to Merge -- 8:19 am CST, Update by The Master

According to a biz article on Yahoo!, AOL and Time-Warner to merge announces AOL's stock buyout of Time-Warner (which is the world's largest media company) for around $190 billion. This is huge folks.

Past Two Days' News

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