Thursday, November 9, 2000

DirectX 8 Done -- 4:52 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Microsoft issued this press release, stating that DirectX 8 is done and will be available for download at http://www.microsoft.com/directx/ by noon Pacific time on Saturday. Thanks Shugashack.

As I've done with the past DirectX .0 releases, I'm going to let others be the sacrificial victims and see how many games get broken with DX8 before I try it myself.

Icewind Dale Review -- 2:42 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The Xtreme Network posted a review of Icewind Dale. Here's what Jeh's email had to say about it:

Icewind Dale is an isometric-view role playing game (RPG) set in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons universe of Forgotten Realms, the same universe that such games as Baldur's Gate, Planescape: Torment, and Baldur's Gate 2 are set in.

I've been toying with the idea of getting an AD&D-based game. Maybe I'll have to leave my computer on for a few days and download the Baldur's Gate II demo.

Pondering the Imponderable -- 2:39 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I'd like to apologize to both of our regular readers for my political diatribes today. I promise that I'll now go back to posting whatever the heck it is that we normally post here.

The Master comments: I would have commented as well, but since I'm not all that fond of any of this years choices for President, I figured it wasn't worth the page space :-)

Questions of the Day -- 9:51 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Where is the (non-beta) Q3A 1.25 patch?

Why are so many people surprised at voting "irregularities" in Florida?

Why, after a great (by recent standards) voter turnout, are so many groups willing to risk alienating voters simply because their candidate may not win?

UPDATE! I guess I spoke too soon. There are now reports, according to this morning's paper, of possible voting "irregularities" in my state of Wisconsin. There are accusations that some people offered homeless people in Milwaukee cigarettes to vote for Gore. Sigh.

I also saw the ballot that is causing so much debate in Florida on CNN.com. I know I've used similar ballots. The only way you could mess that up is if either you didn't take your time or you are a moron. If this ballot was so bad, why didn't the Democratic or Republican supervisors (who had to approve it) complain in the first place? I'm sorry, this is abject stupidity.

UPDATE #2 I wish this were a joke, but it isn't. The people of Missouri elected a dead man to be their Senator. The man who lost, Senator John Ashcroft, said:

Missouri is a compassionate state. And I think that in a very special way, they have demonstrated the compassion which they have.

I think it also demonstrates profoud idiocy. HELLO FOLKS! You aren't voting for prom king here. This isn't a "lifetime achievement" award. It's a scary thing when reality is weirder than anything I could dream up.

Counter-Strike 1.0 Released -- 9:27 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

It's official. The Counter-Strike 1.0 mod for Half-Life has been released. It is available as a patch from beta 7.1 (23.4M) or full installation (82.3M) for Win32, and as a server port for Linux (72.3M). All files and various mirrors are available on the Counter-Strike downloads page.

Wednesday, November 8, 2000

New UT D3D -- 11:32 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

An Unreal Tournament patch without Direct3D problems? Heaven forbid! If you are a TNT/TNT2 user who is having HUD or other D3D-related problems, head over to the Unreal Technology page and pick up the new (old) d3ddrv.dll. Thanks loonyboi.

CounterStrike 1.0 Tonight -- 10:25 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Everyone and their dog is reporting that the 1.0 version of the immensely popular CounterStrike mod for Half-Life will be released tonight. In celebration of the joyful event, Gamers.com posted a big ol' preview of the 1.0 release. We'll pass along mirror sites as soon as they are announced.

Baldur's Gate II Demo -- 8:34 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Bioware has released a demo of Baldur's Gate II which covers a full chapter in the game. You can even import your character into the full version if you decide to buy it. The catch? It's a 618M download. No, that is not a typo. It comes in seven ~90M chunks at FilePlanet. You need to download all seven parts to play. Here are the links to parts one, two, three, four, five, six, and seven. Thanks Blue.

XFree86 4.0.1, NVIDIA, and Mandrake 7.2 -- 2:51 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

As I mentioned earlier (story), I had a hard time getting the NVIDIA XFree86 4.0.1 drivers installed with Mandrake 7.2. The reason was that the Mandrake installer actually installed the XFree86 3.3.6 server and SVGA driver when X was configured. With a little scouring on the 'Net, I came up with a solution. You can read all about it in my latest how-to entitled, XFree86 4.0.1, NVIDIA, and Mandrake 7.2. While you are at it, why not check out all of our Alternate Operating System articles. You might just learn something!

Special thanks go out to Linux Frog for his help with this.

Stupid Linux Distro Tricks -- 10:51 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Yesterday I installed Mandrake 7.2 using the CDs that J.t. sent me. I was pretty keyed to have KDE2 and XFree86 4.0.1 built in so I didn't have to mess with it. Or so I thought. Apparently the Mandrake installer does something extremely stupid. It installs XFree86 4.0.1, but when it configures it at the end of the install, instead of installing the 4.0.1 server, it installs the 3.3.6 server and SVGA display. Thankfully a search of Deja provided a solution, which I will be posting today hopefully. You would think that SOMEONE would have caught this in the beta testing.

J.t.Qbe comments: Hmmph. I wish I could get Mandrake installed on MY system. It keeps freezing up during the install; my guess is it's a hardware conflict. Oh well, guess I'll just keep trying.

Congratulations W -- 1:41 am CST, Update by J.t.Qbe

Make a difference.

A.T. Hun comments: If only it were that simple. They've still got to recount in Florida. Can somebody tell me why it's going to take until early this evening for the recount to be completed?

J.t.Qbe comments: To give more time to generate more ballots for a certain candidate? Well, at the time I posted, this was accurate news. With 96% of Florida counted, W was ahead by 50K votes and the networks called it in his favor. Just goes to show you how accurate the so-called "experts" can be.

Oh well. My wife was getting sick of my political slogans anyway. Her favorite: "Minnesota. We elected a wrestler. Who knows what we'll do next?" My favorite: "Bill Luther. He's like Martin Luther, except Martin Luther went to heaven."

UT 436 Patch Released -- 12:11 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

According to the Unreal Technology Page, the 436 patch for Unreal Tournament has been released. You can see a list of the changes here. A list of mirrors for the Windows, Mac, and Linux versions (yep, all three at the same time) can be found here.

Past Two Days' News

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