Friday, October 13, 2000

Xian .plan update -- 11:10 pm CST, Update by The Master

Christian "Xian" Antkow of id updated his .plan with a serious bug in the new v1.25y version patch of q3a

There appears to be a problem with your baseq3/q3key file being reinitialized to a virgin state when you connect to an original 1.25p server with your 1.25y client (they are incompatible.) The result of this bug is that Quake 3 will print "Invalid CDKey" when you exit the game, reload it, and try to connect to servers on the net.

I was able to replicate this issue in-house and have mailed the programmers.

If you wish to save yourself some aggravation while testing this release, I would suggest the following after you've ensured that q3key contains your valid CD-Key;

• If you are an MS-DOS h4x0r, CD to your quake3aseq3 directory and execute "attrib +r q3key" at the command prompt. This will make the q3key file read-only (after you are certain that it contains your valid CD key.)
• If you are not comfortable using the command prompt, open up "My Computer" and head over to the directory where you have Quake 3 installed. Open the "baseq3" directory, right click on the "q3key" file. Select "Properties" and on the bottom of the panel, you should see a "Read-only" check box. Check that, and hit "Ok" to apply the changes.

Loki Interview -- 8:52 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Linux.com posted an interview with several members of Loki Software, who have ported and distributed countless Windows games to Linux. It's a good peek behind the scenes at what goes into porting a game. Thanks Blue's News.

For example, I was going to update my instructions for installing Unreal Tournament in Linux, but the new Loki 428 binary makes it quite literally a no-brainer. It's just as easy as installing it in Windows. Very slick and highly recommended. They're even making some of their OpenGL renderer improvements available for the Win32 version of the game. How cool is that?

New Q3A Beta Patch Soon Now -- 1:13 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

id CEO, Todd Hollenshead, updated his .plan with word that a new beta 1.25 patch for Quake III Arena will be released within the next couple of hours. Here's a snip:

The major change for this release is the physics code, which should make the game feel like 1.17. We're looking for feedback from players specifically on this issue. There are a number of other fixes, which are detailed in the readme.

If all goes well, a non-beta patch will be released next week. If you don't feel like testing or if you play a lot of mods, don't download it.

UPDATE! OK, that was quick. The patch is already out! You can download it (17.6M) from Blue's News, Shugashack, Stomped, or FilePlanet. Shugashack also posted the list of changes.

More 3dfx Pain -- 11:22 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

These two items come courtesy of sCary and the boyz. Just when things couldn't look a whole lot uglier, they've gotten uglier for 3dfx. First is HardOCP is reporting that their head PR guy, Brian Burke, has left the company and will be working for NVIDIA now. (I'm searching for confirmation from NVIDIA and/or 3dfx on this. UPDATE! Riva3D contacted 3dfx directly. They confirmed that this story is true.).

Also, 3dfx issued a warning that third quarter earnings will be "substantially" below expectations. I don't know how much further 3dfx stock can fall. It's already at 2 3/4. Can you say "hostile takeover"? I knew you could!

The Master comments: NVIDIA steps up to 3dfx stock-inhales deeply. Bu-bye 3dfx :-)

Mozilla M18, Revisited -- 10:52 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I guess it would figure that with all the glowing praise I have Mozilla M18 for Linux that I would have problems with the Win32 version. Everytime I start it up it GPFs almost immediately. I'm going to have to check the Mozilla website to see if there's some workaround. Oh well.

UPDATE! I tried downloading last night's nightly build (which was slightly different) and even changing my video card drivers back to 5.22 but Mozilla still crashes on start up. I hope to find a solution, but for now I'm giving up. Good thing it works very slick in Linux.

Bleh! -- 8:14 am CST, Update by The Master

Okay-I was offline all night last night, since Time-Warner has got my cablemodem completely borked into the deep black. It finally came up this morning, allowing me to pull down my 300 email messages, thank you SOOO much TW.

Course, now I'm behind on my history updates, which means a good two hours tonight updating if TW decides to leave my modem alone long enough to do it.

Thursday, October 12, 2000

Mozilla M18 Released! -- 9:41 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I just happened to check Mozilla.Org tonight only to find out that Mozilla M18 has been released! Check out the release notes for all the pertinent information. In case you've been living under a rock, Mozilla is the open-source browser project headed by Netscape.

UPDATE! I downloaded M18 for Linux and have been fiddling around with it. So far all I can say is WOW! It displays ESPN.com very nicely and it is the first Mozilla milestone to display Evil Avatar properly (those two sites are my Mozilla "acid tests" to see how they've progressed). The font display is first-rate and the rendering speed (in terms of initial page display and also scrolling) are much better than Netscape 4.75. Kudos to the Mozilla team! This one's a keeper!

UPDATE #2! I got the mail and news stuff to work without anything crashing (much to my surprise). Some of the preferences stuff is still a little wonky (some drop lists aren't displayed or displayed poorly, sometimes the OK button won't work). All told though, I'm still impressed.

Installing the NVIDIA XFree86 4.0 Drivers, Revisited -- 2:04 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

As I mentioned earlier today, I successfully installed XFree86 4.0.1 and the NVIDIA 0.9-5 drivers on Red Hat 6.2 today. I posted a detailed list of instructions entitled Installing the NVIDIA XFree86 4.0 Drivers, Revisited so that you can do the same. To top it all off, it was much easier than when I tried it before using Red Hat Rawhide RPMs! While you are at it, why not check out our other Alternate Operating Systems articles?

XFree86 4.0.1: Success! -- 10:22 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I did it! I got XFree86 4.0.1 installed on my Red Hat 6.2 box! The new way I found to install it is so simple that even a relatively advanced fish could do it. I'll post the full scoop once I recover from the euphoria of it all.

Pondering the Imponderable -- 1:03 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Well, after rearranging my office, I downloaded the XFree86 4.0.1 binaries from an XFree mirror site and will try installing those instead of fighting with the RPMs anymore. That, however, will wait for tomorrow when I'm more lucid.

A number of people have asked me why I'm such a big Red Wings fan. I think this article explains it better than I ever could.

The Haus: An Official AvantGo Channel! -- 12:46 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I just received word from AvantGo that they have accepted our application to be an official channel! I just have some minor paperwork to fill out and we're all set. Soon we'll have a shiny AvantGo button on the site so you can easily add us to your channel list. Stay tuned . . .

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