Wednesday, January 12, 2000

NVIDIA's NV11 and NV15 -- 10:23 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

iXBT got the mother of all scoops with this NVIDIA roadmap giving details on the forthcoming NV11 and NV15 chips. Note: board manufacturers will have these chips THIS MONTH. Cards with these chips will be seen at CeBIT in March with the first cards being commercially available about that same time. Here's the specs:

Chip	Single Texel (mil pixels/sec)	Multitexture (mil pixels/sec)
GeForce	480	240
NV11	320	320
NV15	640	640
V5 5000	664	332
V5 6000	1328	664

Yes, you read correctly. Free multitexturing. The NV15 will have almost the same multitexturing speed as the Voodoo5 6000. I bet it won't cost $600 either. Thanks Shugashack for the link.

Update! Ironically enough, Planet GeForce pointed me to this page in Thresh's MacWorld coverage which states that 3dfx does not have samples of the VSA-100 chip (the basis for the Voodoo4 and 5) yet.

That's what we were wondering once we learned that cards based on the VSA-100 chip weren't on display at MacWorld. We learned that 3dfx has just taped out first silicon on the chips, they haven't received any samples yet. Keep in mind this is for the PC unit, not the Mac product which is even further behind. We pressed the issue a bit further and learned that 3dfx still feels they can have cards based on the VSA-100 processor available in retail channels by April for the PC, but exactly which Voodoo lines that will be is still unknown.

Ouch, ouch, ouch.

Complex Doors in Q3Radiant -- 5:07 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Quake3Mods.Net (one of my favorite mapping sites) has posted a new tutorial on making complex doors in Q3Radiant, the Quake III Arena mapping tool. His English is a little broken (he broke it himself--actually, he's Swedish) but the information is all good and quite helpful. Thanks Wrynn.

UT Benchmarks -- 1:56 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

As promised, I ran many, many Unreal Tournament benchmarks on my system to test the effect that the various settings have on framerates. I have compiled the results and posted them here under our Tips and Tricks page. Enjoy!

Epic Chat Log -- 11:42 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Unreality.dk has posted a somewhat edited transcript of last night's chat with the Epic gang. The topics aren't particularly newsworthy, except these bits at the end regarding the upcoming free Bonus Pack:

The Bonus Pack should be out very soon.

3 new models in the bonus pack!

No HUMANS in Bonus Pack!

There will be a WarCow in the Bonus Pack.

New non-human player models! Coolness. Thanks Blue's News for the link.

Q3A Point Release Beta for Mac -- 11:35 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

id's Graeme Devine updated his .plan with this short, but sweet, blurb.

I just finished making the Macintosh point beta release. It'll be on the usual mirrors soon.

id's Christian Antkow updated his .plan with an eerily similar message:

The Mac version of the next point release beta is now available on our FTP site. Our mirror sites should have it available shortly.

Here's your list of mirrors: id Software, Blue's News, 3D Gamers, and the mirrors that are FilePlanet (which is back in working order).

UT Demo Playback Fixed! -- 11:10 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

One of the nicest things about the new 405B patch for Unreal Tournament is that demo playback is fixed now! This morning I ran a whole slew of timedemos to test the effects of the various settings. There's too much information to list it all here, so I will put it into a decent format and post it in our Tips and Tricks section. In the meantime, go and download Reverend's excellent Wicked benchmarking demo which is what I used for all my tests.

Sharky Reviews Cases -- 8:16 am CST, Update by The Master

Now, normally one would think, why review a PC case? Well, if you REALLY care about gaming, and overclock like crazy, this kind of stuff is very important. Check out sharkyextreme's review of the 3dcool Tornado 1000. I like Sharky's reviews-they're usually very clear on pros and cons, and he really knows his stuff.

Requiem for QuakeX -- 8:13 am CST, Update by The Master

Reqoning.com has announced a relase of Requiem for Quake2, and the news that Requiem is coming for Q3A. Now, most people don't know about Requiem, it's an awesome little mod for QW that adds bots, new killer weapons, and some neat gameplay. I'm looking forward to Requiem for Q3.

New QStat 2.3f -- 8:10 am CST, Update by The Master

There's a new QStat version 2.3f, which fixes some issues with Unreal and adds a couple of server status options. For those running Unreal/UT servers, this is probably a good download.

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 :)

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