Friday, April 21, 2000

Daikatana Demo -- 8:18 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

As they had promised, ION Storm has released a demo of Daikatana. The demo weighs in at a portly 102.5M so you modemers better pack a couple dozen lunches. Expect a full review of the demo here on The Haus early next week!

Daikatana Gold! -- 8:14 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Egads! Violence! Mayhem! Cats and dogs living together in the wild! Believe it or not, folks, Daikatana has gone gold after only 75 years in development (OK, about four years, but still). If you haven't repented yet, this might be a good time to start. The end is obviously near. I'm going to have to have a little sit-down. Thanks Blue.

UT for PS/2 -- 4:03 pm CST, Update by The Master

Blue has a post on Epic's plans for Unreal Tournament on the PlayStation 2. This sounds VERY cool, especially with the PS2 being able to support USB devices-making FPSes really do-able on console-class systems. Yum.

NVIDIA Announcement Soon -- 10:14 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

NVIDIA's website has a new Flash intro pointing to an announcement they will be making on April 26, obviously of whatever they are going to be calling the NV15.

The interesting thing is that the 3dfx V5-5500 previews I've been seeing (and as compiled at the Shack) show that V5-5500 is only 15% faster than a GeForce DDR on a P3-650 on Q3A's "High Quality" settings. With ATi and NVIDIA's new chips coming out RealSoon (tMS), 3dfx may set a record for shortest time as the speed leader. Not to mention the fact that both companies products will have hardware T&L while the Voodoo line still will not.

The Master comments: From what I've read, on the P3-650 the V5 is CPU-limited. This wouldn't surprise me. I doubt you'll be seeing max performance from the V5 until you get to really high end processors and 4x AGP. Otherwise the V5 is just too powerful for the rest of the PC to max it out. Which makes the V6 look really senseless, doesn't it?

FWIW the Geforce256 is CPU-limited right now too. I know Carmack is really impressed with what he can get out of a G256 DDR at 1ghz CPU speeds.

A.T. Hun comments: Which basically means we've reached "ludicrous speeds" (to quote SpaceBalls). What will you need to max out the V6? Dual gigahertz Althons? Give me a break. Of course, 4x FSAA will gladly eat up a lot of that fillrate. All this makes 3dfx' decision not to add T&L that much more curious. Then again, these new cards were supposed to come out six months ago.

Preview of the ATI Rage6 -- 8:42 am CST, Update by The Master

IXBT has a preview of the upcoming ATI Rage6 online. Sounds like it could be a winner. We'll see if ATI can deliver. Saw this on the Shugashack.

A.T. Hun comments: The BIG question in my mind is not so much whether or not that hardware will be cool, but whether or not they can actually write drivers for it. Cool hardware doesn't amount to much when the software kills it.

The Master comments: Good point-ATI has always had VERY poor driver support for their cards. I know Crawl hated his ATI card :-)

Counterstrike update coming -- 8:40 am CST, Update by The Master

The Counter-Strike homepage has been updated with news on the upcoming 6.5 release of CS. CS is a VERY popular mod for Half-Life. We also run a CS server on EZ-Net's game server.

Russian Duma ratifies CTBT -- 8:32 am CST, Update by The Master

Russian President-elect Vladimir Putin has managed to push the Duma to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. This is good news for reducing nuclear tension in the world. HOWEVER, Russia has also changed it's military policy today to reflect it's inability to defend itself with conventional arms since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The new policy indicates that Russia cannot contain a mass conventional attack without nuclear arms. Considering that the largest army in the world (China) is right next door, that may not be far from the truth.

History today -- 8:24 am CST, Update by The Master

• 1649: Maryland Toleration Act is passed. This act allowed freedom of worship for all Christians in Maryland.
• 1789: John Adams sworn as 1^st Vice-President of the United States.
• 1836: John Houston leads Texas into victory over Mexico in the Battle of San Jacinto, winning Texas it's independence.
• The Red Baron is shot down and killed.
• Apollo 16 astronauts begin exploration of the lunar surface.
• Timothy McVeigh arrested and charged in connection with the Oklahoma City bombing two days earlier.

Thursday, April 20, 2000

Q3A Mission Pack Info -- 5:40 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Quake3World posted some information on the upcoming Q3A mission pack. Redwood posted some more specific information translated from a French gaming website. What does it mean? Three new teamplay modes, three new weapons, and power-ups (read: relics). Pretty cool stuff. They've both got some screenies too.

UPDATE! id's Todd Hollenshead updated his .plan with this link on PlanetQuake with a little more information on the mission pack. Note to id: it'd be REALLY nice if you made this pack nice and cheap for us poor folks. Lord knows that Epic has kept their UT add-ons cheap :)

UT Inoxx Map Pack Shots -- 12:09 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Epic's Cedric "Inoxx" Fiorentino updated his own page with more screenshot from his soon-to-be-released map pack for Unreal Tournament. Thanks Blue.

The "Rocket Car" Legend -- 10:04 am CST, Update by The Master

OMG-I laughed so hard when I read Origins of the "Rocket Car" legend. For those who don't know-this story was posted a while ago on the online Darwin Awards site. It turns out there is some reality behind the story, which is chronicled in the above link. Be prepared, this page is a LONG read-but FUNNY :-)

WARNING! If you try this at home don't blame anyone else (especially anyone at The Haus) for your stupidity. But be sure it's on film so we can put this whole thing to rest once and for all.

History today -- 10:00 am CST, Update by The Master

• 1836: U.S. Territory of Wisconsin established
• 1889: Adolph Hitler is born
• 1920: Radium is discovered by the Curies of France
• 1940: The first electron microscope is demonstrated
• 1972: Apollo 16 lands on the moon
• 1978: Korean Air Lines 707 is fired upon by Soviet forces and crashes after entering Soviet Airspace. 2 passengers are killed.
• 1999: Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold attack their own High School, Columbine High School in Littleton CO, killing 12 classmates and 1 teacher before taking their own lives.

So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Goodbye -- 12:24 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

My beloved Detroit Red Wings just completed a four-game sweep of the Los Angeles Kings to become the first NHL team to advance to the second round. Goalie Chris Osgood pitched his second shutout of the series in the 3-0 victory. Next up . . . to be determined.

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