Tuesday, September 26, 2000

Q3A 1.25 Revisited -- 9:24 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

One thing I have to say about the Quake III Arena 1.25 patch is that it got me playing CTF again. The bots do seem smarter and make much better use of the map. They aren't anywhere near as predictable as they used to be. I like the idea of the new scoring system (with more points for defense), but the scores get ridiculously high. If they can cure the bug that causes the bots to say the same thing 40 times rapidly in a row, we'll be in business.

Tribes 2 Bomber -- 7:14 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I saw on Shugashack that PlanetStarSiege has posted information on one of the vehicles to be included in Tribes 2, the Thundersword, a three-man bomber. Looks like pretty sweet stuff if it gets implemented well.

M$ Case to Appeals Court -- 2:05 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

CNN is reporting that the Supreme Court will not hear the Microsoft antitrust case, referring it instead to the U.S. Court of Appeals. Many view this as a victory for M$, since the appeals court has ruled in their favor before. Thanks Shugashack.

Tribes 2 Delayed -- 2:00 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Dynamix' Dave Georgeson sent this letter around to the "Tribes community" (I copied it from Blue) announcing that Tribes 2's release will be delayed.

In order to maintain the quality that Tribes fans expect and deserve, Sierra and Dynamix have made the decision to delay shipping Tribes 2 so that we can put the finishing touches on this ambitious project. (We will still hit the scheduled beta date. We just want a longer post-beta period to hone the game.) Because Tribes 2 is a "triple- A" title, we decided it would be best to extend the beta test and appropriately finesse the game so it meets the highest standards. This means we will be able to ensure the greater compatibility testing and play balancing that a game of this scale requires.

While we realize this is disappointing for many gamers, we hope you will agree this is the best decision, as our community deserves no less than our best effort.

So, stay tuned for the beta. We will be announcing a new ship date soon and guarantee it will be worth the wait!

Sincerely,
Dave Georgeson
Senior Producer/Director, Dynamix

Team Reaction Interview -- 1:22 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

BootMax has slapped up an interview with Team Reaction, the mod team behind Jailbreak for Quake 2 and Quake III Arena, among other projects. It's a relatively decent interview except a) BootMax' page layout causes Netscape 4.75 to crash and burn (violently), and b) the interviewer had to ask who Mr. Elusive was. How can you write about Q3 mods if you don't even know who made Q3?

Final NFL Week #4 Results -- 10:58 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

It was rough, but I ended up 8-6 and Eeyore was 6-8. I'm still a decent 36-22 for the season, but it's been rough after my outstanding 11-4 first week. At least I'm over .500 *cough*

The Master comments: Boy, you are MIGHTY brave goading Eeyore like that, course, I am married to her, so maybe I should be a bit more paranoid than you are . . . :-)

Monday, September 25, 2000

ToddH .plan update -- 9:58 pm CST, Update by The Master

Todd Hollenshead of id made a mondo .plan update with some responses on the beta 1.25 Q3A patch release. I'm going to summarize since this thing is hege.

• 1.25 is a beta release. So don't install it unless you like being a beta tester.
• A new release is planned shortly to correct issues being brought to id's attention now.
• Mods are broken until the next patch release since source needs to be rebuilt.
• The global ranking stuff will be better documented shortly.
• Diagnostics will be fixed in the next release.
• Physics issues that everyone has been flamebaiting on will be reworked in the new patch.
• CTF scoring will be returned to more of the retail CTF scoring model instead of the 1.25 model.
• Demos are broken.
• Don't use compiled DLLs. They are bad. Harmeless mods can also cause problems in the current 1.25 release.
• id has a short list of additional issues with sounds, callvoting, rankings, and more that are being fixed.

Havok Physics -- 7:59 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

TF2 Bunker posted an interview with Dr. Steven Collins. His company, Havok, has made a physics engine which sounds like it will have some impressive capabilities for games. Valve is reportedly using it on Team Fortress 2. That's one thing that I've always thought could be done better in games. Why won't that door blow out when I shoot it? Why won't that mirror break? Why can't this barely-standing garage be knocked over? Of course right now all this is theoretical. We'll see if any of the games that use the Havok engine live up to the hype. Thanks Shugashack.

The Master comments: Hey, A.T. Remind me when a game using this engine comes out that I need to go pick up that 8-way P3-1ghz overclocked to 1.5ghz with 2 gigs of DDRAM so I can play that game with the "cape floating in the water behind me".

Elite Force CD Keys -- 11:16 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Raven's John Scott updated his .plan to remind people with exceedingly small brains that they shouldn't give out their Star Trek: Elite Force CD keys to anyone.

Just a reminder, do NOT send your CD Key to anyone. No one at Raven or Activision will EVER ask for it. Any request for your CD Key is a ploy to steal it from you.

Treat the key as you would your car keys.

UPDATE! Raven's Rick Johnson updated his .plan with the text of an email going asking for CD keys under the guise of being from an Activision representative. I suppose someone who is really ignorant of how the authentication process would work could be fooled by it.

Video card thread on SlashDot -- 9:32 am CST, Update by The Master

Slashdot has an awesome thread on "The Good Old Days of 3dfx", which has two posts from John Carmack, one on Rendition and the other on consumer-level video cards in general. Yummy stuff in here-tho it does tend to run on forever, in the tradition of /.

Past Two Days' News

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