Black Omega is looking for some new members for their upcoming TC. Send mail with a URL of your work to Wildcard.

Another TC in need of help is the Assasin TC (link active soon). They are looking for anyone and everyone, from modellers, to DLL programmers. For more information, enquire here.

I've done some thinking and there are some things I would like to change for the next release. 1) Move some of the lighter weapons outside of the security doors in the bases. By that I mean shotgun, machinegun, and maybe grenade launcher and RL. 2) I also wanna add some more spawn spots so it's harder for teams to 'cover all the spawn spots' and kill everyone upon respawn. Other questions people had: Teamsay cannot be fixed until 3.12. A little clarification for the func_button spawnflags - think of the spawnflag as saying which team can use the button.

Quake2 Skin Winner

Winner: Roger Bacon (download here)
Runner-Up: Chris Holden (download here)

Quake Skin Winner

Winner: SpliceR (download here) Runner-Up: N/A (due to circumstances listed above)

qWar, is my patch, think of it like a more comples Team Fortress. More realitic. Tanks, PLanes, Boats, COmmandos, Turrets, etc. Im looking for a skilled modeler, and possibly a skinner(not sure about that) to help out, full credit will be given. Also im looking for posible beta testers. Please check out www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/ Lab/9502 for the main page as well as a link for beta testing. Thanx!

1) New SABIN release of the base code is out.
2) We also have information on the upcoming Assassin Bot for those interested and previews on the Frostbot.
1) We have two NEW complete reviews on theCRBot v0.98 with a list of the new features (including the new MENU system and the "dynamic skill setting".)

I have had 2 people report problems with the Readme file for the latest ServUp! 1.3 release. Can you please make a note for people that have already downloaded the zip file that all files need to be placed in the ServUp directory. The readme read that only the gamex86.dll is to be placed in that dir and that is incorrect.

CB's Quake2 Resources is looking for some fresh meat to help out on staff.

January 28, 1998 (part 3)
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I reran some preliminary TIMEDEMO numbers with the new NVidia drivers, and they are REAL fast -- like, 33.6fps at 640x480, which is faster than the latest Voodoo numbers. Pretty amazing. I'm still not real happy with the overall image quality, but that's a subjective thing. Still, the driver guys there have been doing a pretty phenomenal job of increasing performance.
I'm going to rerun the Voodoo Rush numbers and the NVidia numbers after the point release is finalized. I got a newer board from 3Dfx that is more representative of a production board than the prototype that I'm currently using for testing.

January 28, 1998
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Someone passed along this URL, it's kinda funny:

http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/7510/bootmag.htm

I finally got around to reading the "Glitch" section of the February issue of Boot magazine, and I thought it was pretty funny. Now, if I was, say, an egotistical jerk (which I've been accused of on occasion, usually by some lowly puke who thinks we're "friends" because he has my e-mail address), I'd think that the satire was about me and my poor experience with Boot.

[Note to humor impaired: the above is sarcasm]

But that would be inappropriate for me to believe, since all I was doing was just whining a lot -- hell, all they really did was handle themselves unprofessionally, lie to me, renege on the parameters of our interview, then incompetently deal with the aftermath. Where would I be justified getting upset about that?

[Note to humor impaired: the above is sarcasm]

I hope all eleven of you that managed to find issues of this month's issue get a good laugh, I know I did. :-)

January 28, 1998 (part 2)
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Damn, looking at the same issue of Boot, and I looked at the interview with Bellfield and Yassaie. Now, granted, this is Boot doing the interview, so God knows what kind of screwed up interpretation is going on, but I thought I'd do some clarification and commentary.

On p.36, there are a couple technical terms that are just substituted with underlines, indicating a lack of technical knowledge on the part of Boot or the transcriber. I _think_ the proper term they were looking for was "occlusion culling", but I'm not sure. Pretty big oversight, letting that one through.

At one point Yassaie compares DirectX to Win32 -- "look how long it took Windows to become a graphics standard and you can see how young Direct3D is". Ouch. If all we can hope for is that DirectX will eventually become as "good" as Win32, well, we (developers) are screwed. And with the "talent" at Microsoft working on this stuff, it's hard to see how they could make it any better than Win32. But that's just my take.

Bellfield makes a couple of ill-advised comments. For starters, he implies that I'm hypocritical because I highly recommended the PowerVR PCX2 for GLQuake, but harshed it when it comes to Quake2. I've said this before, but the rendering requirements of GLQuake and Quake2 are DIFFERENT. People need to accept that they are different products, and that one accelerator can be good on one and crappy on the other. In the case of PowerVR, it falls apart with colored lighting and it falls apart with high triangle densities, and those are two major additions to Quake2 over GLQuake.

The other comment Bellfield made was: "I personally believe that lighting and texturing of the PowerVR PCX2 of Quake II is far superior, for example, than the 3Dfx version, whose use of color lighting looks way over the top."

Uh, if you really said that, and you really believe that, and there are no other missing qualifiers, I might recommend you look into a good drug counseling center -- get off that pipe! Are you using the same kind of eyes the rest of humanity was issued?! Also, 3Dfx didn't exactly implement colored lighting, WE did, so if anything WE were over the top, and 3Dfx just had the hardware to allow us to abuse colored lighting (if that's your attitude about it).

He goes on to say: "Also, remember that Hook is comparing a $99 PowerVR- enabled product to those from our competitors' that range from three-to-10 times that retail price, and that will not be available for three to six months."

I've pointed this out before, but the 3Dfx is TWICE as much as the PCX2, not THREE TO TEN TIMES. What $1000 accelerator was I comparing it against?

And I know the interview was done quite some time ago, but the V2100 (Diamond Stealth II S220) kicks the crap out of PowerVR for the same price, AND it has colored lighting, good performance, and 2D acceleration.

1-28-98

I saw an article on Next Gen that claimed a title from WizardWorks outsold Quake II in December. Unbelievable! So unbelievable, in fact, that it's totally untrue. Quake II December numbers were actually very impressive. According to PC Data, Quake II finished second overall to Riven for December in both raw units and dollar volume and Quake II wasn't on the shelves during either of the first *two* weekends in December. PC Data is the most widely used sales tracking source in the software industry. Retailers, distributors and developers all regard it as the software sales Bible.

More important than where Quake II ranked, however, was the strong raw sales data. Santa's sleigh must have been full of Quake II for all of the good boys and girls.

Btw, see if you can guess what 3D shooter from id was the No. 1 seller the first week in January...

3Dfx Interactive™, Inc. (Nasdaq:TDFX) today announced that on January 9, 1998, the Superior Court for Santa Clara County entered an injunction ordering Sega to return to 3Dfx Interactive, and prohibiting Sega from using or disclosing, 3Dfx Interactive trade secrets and confidential information which had been shared with Sega pursuant to the Development Agreement between 3Dfx Interactive and Sega which Sega terminated without cause in July 1997. The January 9th injunction formalizes an injunction that was originally filed by the Court on December 22, 1997. 3Dfx Interactive filed suit against Sega Enterprises, Ltd. and Sega of America, as well as NEC Corporation and VideoLogic Group, Plc. for claims arising out of Sega's termination of the agreement to use 3Dfx's chipset in Sega's next generation video game console.
3Dfx Interactive, a publicly traded company (Nasdaq: TDFX), develops high performance, cost-effective 3D media processors, software and related technology that are designed to enable a highly immersive, interactive and realistic 3D experience across interactive electronic entertainment platforms – personal computers, coin-operated arcade systems and location-based entertainment ("LBE"). Current 3Dfx Interactive products include the Voodoo family of accelerator chipsets, Voodoo 2 Graphics, Voodoo Graphics and Voodoo Rush. Visit the company on the web at http://www.3dfx.com.