Thursday, March 23, 2000

Bought Half-Life . . . Finally -- 8:55 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I took Best Buy (no affiliation, yadda, yadda) up on their offer to get the Half-Life Game of the Year Edition for $9.99 after rebate. I've only played a little bit, but I just now remember how much the H-L Uplink demo freaked me out. Good stuff. If you don't have it yet, get it.

Avault on Daikatana -- 8:31 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Avault is reporting that Daikatana isn't as finished as the had earlier reported. Here's the news blurb:

Eidos Interactive has informed the Adrenaline Vault that John Romero's long-awaited 3D action game is not finished, though the development team at ION Storm is submitting builds for testing. We reported last Saturday based on comments from a source close to the project that the game was finished, but not gold. Brian Davies of Eidos told us that the team is close to being done . . . Davies called to amended [sic] his statement to say the latest information he has received indicates the game "could be out this month."

Thanks Blue's News for the heads-up.

Video Cards and SoF -- 6:56 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Raven's John Scott updated his .plan with little more than a link to this page with some statistics on how the various video cards perform in Soldier of Fortune. I was very pleased to see that my TNT is still a very viable option. Actually, I already knew that from playing the demo. Check it to see how YOUR video card rates!

Gaming and Violence -- 1:51 pm CST, Update by The Master

Todd Hollenshead updated his .plan with a big Thank You to the gaming community for their support of his interview last night with 20/20 contributor John Stossil. I regret to say I missed this 20/20, but from what I'm hearing this was one of the first attempts by the game development community to speak to the charges being levied against them. Here's Todd's update:

Thanks for the enormous positive feedback on my interview with John Stossil. I'm fortunate to have had the opportunity to present what I believe is the sane, rational, and correct point-of-view. The support of the game community is greatly appreciated.

One point in the 20/20 commentary really stuck for me: do YOU want the government to decide what you can and can't play or watch? I don't. Hell, they can't make up their mind how much they want to charge us for new desks for Senators every year. They can go govern down their paychecks thank you. Leave me and my games alone.

Countdown to the End -- 9:33 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

OK, it's Thursday. Still no Daikatana gold announcement. Perhaps the team was guilty of a little premature jocularity (apologies to Keith Olbermann) with their planned vacations. The silence right now is deafening.

Update! And now Noel Stephens updated his .plan with some bugs they're fixing. So that's why we're still waiting:

Hahaha, I just was reported a very funny bug. It appears that if you stand right next to the exact location of a specific monster and start using a 'specific' type of weapon which does an insane amount of damage, the monster will die within the first 10 milliseconds of its existance. A problem? Well... in the case of the person who might have this weapon at this point of the game and who already knows what and where things are going to happen...this could be a problem because these monsters in particular need to 'initialize' themselves before they are killed so other things can be triggered. So, I am fixing this minor bug today along with one other very minor bugs.

The good news? Well, those are the two bugs I have left to do. I also know that Shawn has kicked through a good % of his bugs last night. Anyway, I figured, for those of you waiting for Daikatana feverishly, I would let you know the severity level of most of the bugs we are dealing with (obviously the one described above is kind of severe if the moon and sun are aligned just so... but they are not like you start the game and it takes a **** to your desktop level bugs).

Network Issues -- 9:29 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Last night, something was majorly askew with EZ-Net's Sprint T1. To my knowledge, the problem has not been completely rectified. As a result, all traffic is being routed through their Times-Warner T1. I believe this is why the new games server is currently down (although I have not been able to confirm this yet). Sit tight, as soon as Sprint figures out what the deal is, everything will be back to (ab)normal.

Update 10:30 A.M. The Sprint feed is back up. Still no word on the games server, but I'm guessing that that's pretty low on the priority list right now :)

Update 6:25 P.M. It seems that the new games box barfed all by itself. It was not brought down by EZ-Net, it brought itself down. Small consolation. A few things have been changed and it's back running--hopefully for good.

Wednesday, March 22, 2000

More on the 411 Patch (Give or Take) -- 8:27 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The folks at Unreal Universe spied some information from Epic's Jack "Mek" Porter on why forthcoming Unreal Tournament patches change version numbers more often than I've had hot dinners.

>>What happened to 406, 407, 408, 409, and 410? <<

We made all these versions, but they had problems or bugs. We sent them to the ngStats guys to test the ngStats changes, tested them internally, etc. Last night the server admins were testing 411, and we found a problem - so today we gave them 412. If a big problem is found in 412, we'll release 413.

We keep incrementing the version number so there's absolutely no confusion about what version a build is. People don't seem to like it when we add letters - last time we got to 405b, but people thought that meant Beta. We should have just called it 406.

Expect the 478 Patch any day now :) Mek also commented on the rumors about no further patches coming from Epic.

We've been fixing bugs for UT and will continue to. We're not adding features to UT or changing UT's gameplay in any way. UT is the game you bought from the store. UT has been "Done" since it went gold in, terms of being feature complete. Features we've been adding in the patches have been things to encourage people to make cool mods for UT, or things which encourage server admins to run more UT servers.

So while we're continuing to support UT by fixing bugs and keep the community going by encouraging modmakers and server admins, we're also moving towards our next big thing.

Thanks Voodoo Extreme.

UT Version 411 -- 9:46 am CST, Update by The Master

Looks like Epic blew right past version 406, and are going to 411. Here's a list of features and fixes (grabbed from UnrealTournament.Org):

New Features

• D3D uses vertex buffers for all drawing operations - gives overall performance boost.
• Can now use number and arrow keys to navigate voice menu
• Random bots picks from all 32 (not first 16) - including the specially configured ones
• Can summon specific bots: 'AddBotNamed Alarik' adds the bot with the name Alarik (if he's in the list of configured bots)
• Now shows waiting players on team scoreboards before start of game (players who aren't ready are greyed out)
• Improved bot AI about triggering pressure zone when player is in it
• Changed xDSL and cable modem clientspeed to 10000 (and added separate category in netspeed selection)
• No longer need to type 'iamtheone' for cheats in single player
• Demos can now play looping - demoplay demofile?loop
• Turbo/hardcore mode is now shown in UBrowser for team games

Bugs Fixed

• Fixed occasional green skins on players.
• Eliminated most common cause of crashing on startup for GeForces in D3D mode.
• fixed slow client occasional assertion in UnChan.cpp (last part of the problem that first showed up in 402)
• fixed clients continuing to get data from servers after disconnecting
• fixed problem causing !Bunch->IsError() assertion which was causing some server crashes
• fixed last man standing late entry cheat
• fixed head gib not replicated on headshot in network play
• fixed die at start of feign death and can't respawn in network game
• The detail textures now work correctly in D3D and are reasonably fast (still disabled by default)
• Eliminated squares showing around decals and other modulated textures in 16-bit mode D3D.
• fixed death message when killed in pressure chamber
• fixed keyboard key sticking problem (thanks Chris Norden from Ion Storm/Deus Ex)
• fixed actors getting beginplay events twice if spawned while level is being brought up
• Custom crosshairs > 9 now show up.
• Fixed speech menu bug with mouse staying active.
• Fixed speech menu text positions.
• Fixed bug in bot Assault AI for dealing with team cannons

A.T. Hun comments: OK, so I was right in the first place, they did blow past 406 altogether. I just started noticing the "squares" problem when I upgraded to the 5.08 Detonators. Good to see that's being addressed. I hope the plan is still to make this a simultaneous Win32, Mac, and Linux release. I may have to email GreenMarine about that . . .

SB Live! drivers for Win2K -- 8:43 am CST, Update by The Master

Creative has finally released Windows 2000 drivers for the Sound Blaster Live! cards. This download is the full Live!Wire package, so anyone running W2K with a Live! card is now ready to rumble :)

Past Two Days' News

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