Thursday, April 27, 2000

Video Games and Violence Revisited -- 3:23 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

A few days ago (story) I reported on a study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology which seemed to indicate a link between video game violence and violence in real life. After reading the study, I did not think that the study supported the conclusions. Today, over at Tech Report, this article written by someone with a bachelor's degree in psychology takes a closer look at the study and finds it just as wanting as I did, only he does a better job at explaining why. It's not the lightest reading in the world, but it is definitely worth the effort. Thanks Shugashack.

UT Single Player Map Pack -- 1:36 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

A couple of people have asked about the single-player map pack for Unreal Tournament that I alluded to in my Daikatana review. The maps are a conversion of the original release for Unreal. Since all the monsters, textures, etc. from Unreal are present in UT, all that needed to be changed was the weapons. It's called Peril on Mars and I highly recommend it. Weighing in at 8.7M, it's exponentially smaller than the Daikatana demo, and exponentially more fun.

Romero on Daikatana -- 9:26 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Billy W. at Voodoo Extreme copied this post from the Planet Daikatana forums from The Romero himself about Daikatana not being at E3 this year and the game in general:

Daikatana is not going to be on display at E3 and it should be in stores around that time. I will be at E3 promoting the game by doing interviews.

I've read lots of negative flames and all the negative reviews and such, but let me just say this: Daikatana is the best game I've ever created so far. Period.

And regarding hype and information about my next project, thanks to what's happened with Daikatana, I will be staying silent.

Thanks to everyone who is supporting Daikatana and spreading the good word about the game. I love the game just as much as you do. :)

Well, since this is the only game he personally has ever created, logic would demand that this would also be his best. FWIW, Billy W. referred to the game as Daikatana - Frogs in Space. ROTFL

The Master comments: You must be physically holding yourself back from the keyboard A.T-the false kindness is overwhelming :-)

NVIDIA 5.16 Drivers -- 9:11 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Reactor Critical has the NVIDIA 5.16 Detonator drivers available for download. These are the drivers that all the current GeForce 2 GTS reviewers were using and will most likely ship with those boards. It is the Win9x version. I'm actually somewhat surprised that they haven't surfaced on the NVIDIA site. Thanks sCary.

UPDATE! Harvey over at Evil Avatar has tested these new drivers and compared the results to the 5.13 and 5.14 versions. Basically the differences are minor. Unless you are having some compatibility problems, you might as well stick with whatever 5.1x version you are using.

AMD Duron Announced -- 9:08 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

AMD has announced that their Celeron-killer CPU codenamed "Spitfire" will be sold under the name "Duron". I just have two questions: which firm do they pay to come up with names like this and will they please go bankrupt? Fortunately the processor sounds way cooler than its name would imply. Thanks Shugashack.

A Positive Daikatana Review -- 9:01 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I know, I promised no more links to reviews of Daikatana lest the long-deceased horse be beaten further. But this one is unusual in that it is actually a positive review! Check it out at 3DGN. Here's a snip:

Storyline aside, the cutscenes, which are rendered via the Quake II engine in-game, are absolutely breathtaking. The Catacomb level has a stunning opening cutscene that I found myself wowed by.

Well, either this person is the patron saint of the Church of the Easily Wowed or he never played Shogo, which did in-game cutscenes substantially better over a year and a half ago. The other interesting thing is that the whole review seems to be written as if the author were the official apologist for Daikatana, yet in the end he only gives it a 3 out of 5 rating. Curiouser and curiouser.

These are the kinds of reviews that I normally wouldn't link to because of those very problems. However, I thought at least a somewhat positive review should be heard. Thanks Blue for the link. I think.

Wednesday, April 26, 2000

GeForce 2 GTS on Friday? -- 1:19 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The rumors are swirling that Fry's and Electronics Boutique will have Elsa's GLADIAC GeForce 2 GTS card this Friday already! This was apparently stated by a NVIDIA representative at WinHEC.

The Master comments: Oh, boy. Oh boy oh boy oh boy. I wish I was Crawl. I'd have one of these by Monday then 8-)

Improve Daikatana -- 11:18 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Someone sent this screenshot in to Something Awful, which shows a way to dramatically improve Daikatana by unchecking one box in the options. Now I may have to update my review!

GeForce 2 GTS Announcements -- 11:05 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Creative Labs and Elsa have already announced new cards based on NVIDIA's GeForce 2 GTS, the Annihilator 2 and the GLADIAC, respectively. Both will be out in May and both will have an estimated street price of $349. Thanks VoodooExtreme.

GeForce 2 GTS Preview -- 9:57 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The NDAs have expired, here comes the news! NVIDIA has officially unvieled its GeForce 2 GTS GPU. Sharky Extreme has a very nice preview posted. Here's a comparison:

	GeForce	GeForce 2	Voodoo5 V5500
Fillrate (MPix/sec)	480	800	667
Texel Rate (MTex/sec)	480	1600	667
T&L Speed (MTri/sec)	15	25	N/A

The increased texel rate is because the GeForce 2 GTS can apply two textures to a pixel in one pass whereas the Geforce can only do one. If I drool anymore I'm going to short out my keyboard. Oh, and boards based on this chip will be out in about two weeks :) Gentlemen, shine your credit cards!

History today -- 8:27 am CST, Update by The Master

Big one today

• 1607: John Smith and a band of colonists found the first English settlement in the Western Hemisphere.
• 1968: The United States explodes a 1 megaton nuclear device in the underground Nevada test site.
• 1986: The #4 Chernobyl nuclear reactor melts down and explodes, sending massive amounts of radiation into the atmosphere and killing at least 31 people. The accident is still killing people today, with hugely inflated rates of cancer in people who lived in the fallout path.

WinZip 8.0 released -- 8:17 am CST, Update by The Master

WinZip has released the official (not beta) version 8.0 of WinZip. Go get it now, and if you HAVEN'T paid for yours yet, do so. Why? $20 for forever upgrades is worth it :-)

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