Friday, October 6, 2000

Red Hat 7.0 Bug Fixes -- 8:42 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

My mailbox has been deluged this evening with messages from the redhat-announce-list with a bunch of updated packages for Red Hat 7.0. Some of them are starting to show up on Red Hat's Security Advisories page and Bug Fixes page for their 7.0 distribution. Otherwise, check the 7.0 updates directory on Red Hat's FTP site.

Some have griped about RH7 being very buggy. Part of it comes from adding bleeding-edge features (like XFree86 4.0, USB support, the directory structure for the 2.4 kernel). This much you must say, Red Hat fixes the bugs a lot quicker than a certain Washington-based company does.

SoF Gold Patch Released -- 7:56 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

As promised (story) Raven has released the patch for Soldier of Fortune which updates the original retail version with all the extra content of the Gold version. It weighs in at 26.5M and is available from FilePlanet, 3D Downloads, and Blue's News.

Further Kernel 2.4 Delays -- 6:30 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

According to Infoworld, Linus Torvalds announced that the much-anticipated 2.4 kernel for Linux will be delayed until at least the beginning of December. Thanks Slashdot.

Elite Force Holomatch Levels -- 3:27 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Raven has released two capture-the-flag levels and a team holomatch level for their latest game, Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force. The level pack, which weighs in at a meager 4.8M, is available from FilePlanet. Thanks Blue.

Creative GeForce2 MX with DDR -- 12:38 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

RIVA 3D posted the press release from Creative Labs announcing their new Annihilator 2 MX graphics card. Based on NVIDIA's GeForce2 MX chip, the card will come in AGP and PCI configurations and include DDR RAM for an ESP of US$129. Slap on a cheap 486 heatsink/fan combo and the DDR RAM should make this card an overclocker's dream at a price even folks like The Master and I can afford.

The Master comments: Whoo! Whoo! WHOOOO!O!O!O!O!O!O!O! Yeah baby! I already convinced Eeyore that I need one of these at the $149 pricepoint-then CL comes through with this and makes my day

Pondering the Imponderable -- 11:58 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Well, my rechargeable alkaline experiment seems to be a flop. I was trying Rayovac Renewals in my Visor, but they really don't work too well. They don't start out with as high a charge as regular alkalines and you have to swap them out earlier (I set my Visor to the "Rechargeable Alkaline" setting) so they last longer. To top it all off, high-drain conditions--such as playing games or using the backlight--really beat the daylights out of them. I guess I'll just have to buy a box of generic alkalines and be done with it.

On a similar note, I've been trying the new NVIDIA 6.31 Detonator 3 drivers on my TNT. As I expected, I really haven't seen any improvement, but they aren't any worse either. If you have a TNT and are using 5.22 or higher, it's probably not worth the hassle.

I still haven't heard back from AvantGo regarding our application to make The Haus an official channel. Stomped also applied right about the same time and I don't think they've heard back yet either. In the meantime, you can follow the instructions in this news post to get The Haus on your PDA.

UT 432 released -- 8:21 am CST, Update by The Master

Epic has released patch 432 for Unreal Tournament. You get get a complete list of changes on Unreality, and the patch can be found:

• Blues: Download Page (5.5mb)
• 3dgamers: Download Page
• PlanetUnreal: Download page
• Gameaholic: Download Page
• Shugashack: Download Page

Release notes for 432:

• Version 432 is completely network compatible with all previous public releases of UT (versions 400, 402, 405b, 413, 420, 425, and 428).
• faster server browser initial pinging of servers. Added a new default property to [UBrowserServerPing], MaxSimBroadbandPing, which defines the max number of servers to simultaneously ping if your netspeed > 6000.
• team scoreboard holds more players (no more names dropping off the bottom for 32 player games)
• fixed grenade smoke in OpenGL - fixed some D3D compatibility issues
• faster server ping response for servers with mutators
• admins lose cheats and die when they log out as admins
• fixed bug causing player team choice to be overriden (also cause maxteamsize not to work when 2)
• fixed thrown weapons sinking into ground in net play
• fixed listen server crashing with too many serverpackages
• fixed server still sending data on disconnect
• fixed server not allowing custom skins because of skin cheat fix
• servers are now prioritized by version on the master server
• improved map decompression time
• slight improvement to server CPU utilization
• prevent message spamming in net play
• centered admin messages - if logged in as an admin, start your message with a # to have it centered
• voice autotaunts not printed in net games
• fix for CTF AI
• limit translocator firing rate (max 2/sec) to prevent translocator spamming bind cheats
• suicides are counted as deaths
• admin spectators can use # to center print messages
• disallow setting of actor properties using the "set" command on clients. Prevents a whole class of cheats
• faster menu loading with mods. modmakers to make a small change to the way they add items to the Mod menu

A.T. Hun comments: I downloaded and installed the patch. It actually does seem to fix the "server still sending data on disconnect" bug that was theoretically fixed in 405b (*cough*). As promised, it does remove the CD check, which is a very thankful thing in my book.

Thursday, October 5, 2000

The Future of x86 Performance -- 11:14 pm CST, Update by The Master

There's an excellent article over on Ace's Hardware entitled "The Future of x86 Performance". This highly technical article discusses why the P3 and Athlon are so close in speed when the specs seem to indicate the Athlon wooping up, and a review of possibilities in the future. Check it out.

SoF Gold Patch Tomorrow -- 10:11 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

A representative from Activision reported on the Raven support BBS that the patch to bring the regular version of Soldier of Fortune to the "Gold" version will be released tomorrow. Thanks Blue.

UT 432 Patch Changes -- 6:10 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Unreality got their hands on a list of all the bug fixes and changes forthcoming in the 432 patch for Unreal Tournament. The most valuable fix, in my book, is removing the CD check. I'm not interested in making copies for anyone, I just find CD checks too annoying for words. Thanks Blue.

Be Afraid -- 11:09 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Be very afraid. I know I am.

Team Reaction Interview -- 10:51 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Hellhound has posted an interview with Team Reaction, the mod team behind Jailbreak for Quake III Arena. Jailbreak is one of my favorite mods. As soon as I get a few spare seconds, I'm going to write a review of the 1.0 release. Thanks Stomped.

Note to web authors everywhere: in English an apostrophe s denotes possession not plural. Some spelling and grammar mistakes are going to happen, but a quick proofreading usually does the trick. You'd think that 90% of the webmasters out there ride the short bus.

Detonator 3 6.31 Released -- 10:20 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

NVIDIA has released new Detonator 3 drivers (v6.31) for their family of cards from TNT through GeForce2 GTS. These drivers are supposed to improve performance on TNT and TNT2 cards. The other improvements include: Full support for all TwinView functionality (the dual-monitor support in the GeForce2 MX), new NVIDIA Desktop Manager, Digital Vibrance Control Slider, improved Anti-aliasing interfaces, and cursor trails.

Please note! For some reason the NVIDIA FTP server only has the 6.18 drivers. To get the 6.31s (dated September 20, oddly enough), use the HTTP link.

Past Two Days' News

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