Sunday, April 15, 2001

New Ask Sweeney -- 5:35 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

VoodooExtreme posted a new Ask (Epic's Tim) Sweeney. As usual, the Q&A column covers a wide variety of topics in Sweeney's strait-to-the-point style. I like this answer in particular:

Mark - Another question for ya. Same thing, Winsock VS DirectPlay8 I don't know of any games using the new DirectPlay8 (Which was completely rewritten). Any news on that? Does DirectPlay actually use Winsock itself?

Tim - The answer here is much easier. DirectPlay is a bloated heap of junk kept alive by who-knows-what internal political forces at Microsoft. Everyone wishes they'd just kill the thing. Windows Sockets (the other Microsoft networking API, by the way!) is much better. All of the other DirectX8 components are excellent, though: Direct3D, DirectSound, and DirectInput.

This comment also startled me, especially with how many in the hardware press have pushed the Kyro II as A Good Thing:

ps - What's your take on the kyro2 and tile based rendering?

Tim - It's a competent TNT2 class chip, and the sorting and alpha-testing artefacts of past generations seem to have been sorted out successfully. But, like every generation of PowerVR hardware before it, it's a day late and a dollar short. It lacks support for basic DirectX7 (yes, 7!) features like cube maps. The kyro developers are cool guys, so it pains me to say that this is just not a viable piece of hardware in the market it's trying to compete in.

News for 04/15/2001

The Haus is powered by:

All original information on this website is copyright © TheHaus.Net, 1999-2005. The use of original images, text, and/or code from this website without expressed written consent is prohibited. The authors of this site cannot be held responsible for any damage, real or imagined, which comes from the use of information presented on this site. All trademarks used are the properties of their respective owners. This site is not to be used as a floatation device (but if you try, I want a video tape of it).