Wednesday, April 24, 2002

Diablo II 1.10 Patch This Summer? -- 3:04 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The good folks at the Diablo II Network spoke with Blizzard's Bill Roper about plans for Diablo II. It seems that there is a 1.10 patch in the works which should be released around mid-summer. Among other things, it will add more crafted items and runeword items. It's a German site, but they were kind enough to include a translation for those of us without the Sprachgefühl.

Pondering the Imponderable -- 2:18 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I've been enjoying the Jedi Master gametype in Jedi Knight II quite a bit recently. I haven't tried it online--this has all been against bots. In Jedi Master, there is one lightsaber. Whoever has it becomes the Jedi Master gets all force powers at level three. He gets frags for everyone he kills. All the others try to bump off the Master and take the lightsaber for themselves. You would think that the Jedi Master would be too powerful. But remember, everyone else is gunning for him and he can only use the lightsaber and his force powers to attack. Plus, everyone can see the Jedi Master wherever he goes as if they had force seeing just for him. Cool stuff.

In other news, I gave the CrossOver plugin the first torture-test yesterday as I used it to listen to the Red Wings game via Windows Media Player. I am pleased to report that it worked flawlessly. There didn't seem to be any weird memory leaks or other problems. It just worked. You can't beat that. Actually, I'm using it right now to listen to the Dan Patrick Show on ESPN Radio.

Half-Life and Counter-Strike Clients Released -- 1:39 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The eternity of lag you are enjoying at just about every gaming website comes courtesy of the fact that the 1.1.0.9 patch for Half-Life and the 1.0.0.4 patch for Counter-Strike have been released. Check out FilePlanet for the downloads, or use the auto-updater. If you don't have a burning need to get these right now, I'd suggest waiting until tomorrow for the mirrors to cool off.

And yes, it seems that Blue's News is crumbling under the strain. Our Webdog news and finger trackers will be offline until things calm down.

The Master comments: Ahhhh... that explains the molasses-like performance of the internet since about 1 pm.

Counter-Strike 1.4 Linux Server Released -- 10:19 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The official Counter-Strike website brings word of the release of the 1.4 Linux dedicated server. The 1.4 Win32 client will be released later today. Expect Internet traffic to slow to a crawl as CS players snag the new release and try to find new ways to cheat with it. Thanks Blue.

Tuesday, April 23, 2002

Serious Sam SE 1.07 Patch -- 8:31 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Croteam has released the 1.07 patch for Serious Sam: Second Edition. The file is not yet on Croteam's site. The above is a link to Seriously!, a Serious Sam fan site on ye olde Gamespy network. That page has a complete list of fixes, which includes a new skeletal animation system. One minor caveat, the patch breaks network compatibility so servers and clients will need to upgrade. Also please note that this patch is for the U.S. version only. International patches will be coming soon. Thanks VE.

New Half-Life Dedicated Servers -- 8:25 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Blue got word that Valve has released new dedicated servers for Half-Life in anticipation of the new client release tomorrow. The new versions are 4.1.0.9 for Windows and 3.1.0.9 for Linux. They are available as a ~9M patch or as a ~112M full install.

New NVIDIA Windows Drivers -- 7:46 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

NVIDIA has released "new" 28.32 Detonator XP drivers for the various flavors of Windows (9x, ME, NT, 2K, XP). I put new in quotes because they seem to be the same as the previously released 28.32s, just with WHQL certification. Thanks Shacknews.

UPDATE! I found out that these drivers cause Jedi Knight II to lock up on my system while playing the demo (both with and without timedemo 1). I'm back to the old 21.83s, the only drivers that have worked correctly with every game I've tried on my GeForce 3 Ti200.

JKII in WineX -- 3:21 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I downloaded Transgaming's WineX from CVS, compiled, and installed it. The compilation and installation went rather smoothly (the tools/wineinstall script automated the whole process). I fired up Jedi Knight II which I already had installed on my Windows 98 partition. The game runs much better than I expected. There are some minor "hitches" every so often. For some reason, my framerate is capped at 50fps so it's hard to make a direct comparison. The level loads take slightly longer. I probably wouldn't need to reboot to play anymore, but for online playing the extra fps would probably be better. Hopefully I can figure out how to get rid of that 50 fps cap.

UPDATE! I was in the middle of a multiplayer game with four bots. I hit "esc" to bring up the menu and pause the game. When I came back, my box was almost locked up. The music was looping and the hard drive thrashing. I tried to do a ctrl-alt-F2 to log in and kill the process, but the drive was thrashing so much the login timed out. When I tried to return to X, my box locked up. Also, a timedemo in Win98 gives 63.4 fps, but in WineX it is 47.7. The WineX number is no doubt crippled by the aforementioned fps lock. So while it works, it is a bit flakier. I think more memory probably wouldn't hurt either.

Morrowind Gold -- 3:12 pm CST, Update by J.t.Qbe

It's official: Morrowind has gone gold and will be out soon! The official news is here, but the official site is rather bogged down now. You can also read the news at Voodoo Extreme. Projected release is early May--next week? I hope so! I think I'll be taking some vacation time real soon. . .

PHP 4.2.0 Released -- 12:48 pm CST, Update by The Master

The PHP Group has announced the release of PHP 4.2.0 on their website. The full changelog is here. This is a major security release, making massive changes to how PHP handles form variables and other submission-based data.

RPG Goodness -- 10:07 am CST, Update by J.t.Qbe

RPGdot has published its own review of Might & Magic IX, giving it a score of 85% where most other sites give it a score in the mid 60s. The difference: RPGdot focuses strictly on RPGs rather than all types of games, and it's run by M&M fans. Overall it's a pretty fair review. I really, really need to give this game a try.

Morrowind previews have been popping up all over the place lately, and so far it's looking like Morrowind is going to be all it's cracked up to be. I've been waiting for this one since Daggerfall, but without a lot of expectation, but now I'm really starting to look forward to getting it! Good previews at RPGdot, Gone Gold, and RPG Vault, with some interesting developer Q&A too (sorry about the ads at RPG Vault).

Another good current RPG is Gothic. I fired it up for a while the other night and enjoyed simply wandering around the gameworld looking at the scenery.

Freelancer Preview -- 9:57 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Gamers.com posted a brief preview of Freelancer, the upcoming space combat game from Digital Anvil. While the article is rather short, the author attempts to show how Freelancer may become the Diablo II of space sims. Whether that's a good or bad thing is rather subjective. I'm more interested in the massive, living universe they are trying to create. Thanks Evil Avatar.

The Master comments: This is the kind of game I've been waiting most of my gaming life for. I hope it delivers on the promises. Otherwise, I might have to sit down and write it myself :-/ (not that I haven't been meaning to do that for years . . .)

Blackley Interview -- 9:38 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

GameSpot posted an interview with Seamus Blackley about his recent decision to resign from work on the X-Box for Microsoft (story). It appears that it wasn't concerns over the X-Box's sales as it was the desire to make games that led to his resignation. Thanks Blue.

Past Two Days' News

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