5/29/2004

Where have I been? bah, you don't care and if you did I'd be very sad for you.  The only thing of interest I've seen in the news lately is that Warren Spector might be leaving Ion Storm.  They say he isn't, rumors says he isn't.  Regardless, it won't help make Deus Ex 2 any better so screw it.  

Wow, want to know how bad the post E3 hangover is for the news sites is going right now? They still talk about Black and White 2. It's like reading about the results of the medical autopsy on a relative.  You don't want to read but it's just to weird to not read.

5/26/2004

A note of personal triumph. Doc_NH over on ND80s site was kind enough to help me address an issue with my own Enemy Territory server.  It seems that my server doesn't want to keep running the game after a certain amount of time.  Fortunately, Doc_NH knows Java and wrote a nice little Java program to address this issue. Now ET will always restart automatically on my  box (65.247.172.55:27999). Big thanks to Doc_NH.  Email me if you want the java program and his instructions.

Microsoft news.  First, further progress on changing the underlying method of delivering email with the goal being to reduce the amount of spam using some sort of handshake or authentication.  Most excellent.  Their system (SPF) and the DomainKeys proposed by Yahoo would be welcome solutions.

Second, Microsoft support for business level software to go for 10 years after it's released to the public. So that means Win 2003 would be supported till nearly 2013. I hope the hardware can last that long. 

A dedicated server for IL-2 Sturmovik.  If you think Wolfenstein or Half-Life people are protective fans of the franchises, you should see a flight sim chat board. Yikes. 

Dan's Data has a new letter.  That crazy Aussie always has good advice.

Crap that's a lot of news today.  Go back to gaming!

5/24/2004

Haven't had much news on Enemy Territory lately but that's understandable. But now the mod community is in full gear and here's an interview with Paul Wedgwood dealing with mods (specifically the Urban Terror mod), the progress of the Quake 3 engine and small tidbits about Doom 3. 

This article about responsible programming from game developers doesn't really interest me. What did interest me was the snippet Blue put on to describe the article:

Another parent asking others to oversea their child...

He has since corrected the spelling but I was thinking, "Wow, that off-shoring has gotten ridiculous."  Nice try Blue, but I saw the error .. 

5/23/2004

AntiElvis had this link on his site regarding gaming and the future of it.  One of the persons working on EQ 2 stated: 

"We don't expect anybody to be able to run it right out of the box with full settings maxed," Rizzo said. "We're planning for the future."

Super wonderful that news is (not).  I can understand wanting to push the envelope but honestly, I personally don't need (or at least I think I don't need) to have the most realistic water ripple effects in a game.  I'd just like it to run and run well on my system. True, right now I have pretty beefy rig but in a few years that won't be the case.  Instead of throwing in the kitchen sink, why not just get a game on the shelf *cough* Half-Life 2 *cough*

Every John Woo movie I've seen sucks.  Now he's making Spy Hunter which to me still seems like an over-hyped game in the first place. To get it's own movie is pretty far fetched.  

More Ghost Recon 2 goodness.  

5/20/2004

GMail, cause you know you want to have your email backed up and stored somewhere else and get ads thrown in your emails forever and ever. I like Google just like the next good citizen but these people are getting pretty dang hardcore.

With a game name like "Destroy all the Humans" you can't really go wrong!

71% of all Spam servers located in China? Cripes that's a lot. Gee I wonder why CAN-SPAM doesn't work? Oh yeah, that only applies to the U.S. Good job government.

Save Star Wars?  Sure, this is one idea.  But this one is much better.

5/18/2004

Anandtech has an article about the future AMD roadmap.

Some highlights:

- Athlon XP chips will be the value line and will have the original names of.. wait for it... "Value" and the number afterwards to designate the old numbers. 260 means the 2600,  you get the idea.

- Duron: no more.

- A change in the core for the upcoming FX (socket 939) chips based on voltage differences (1.5 versus new 1.3)

- Lesser news: Socket 754 (like mine): buh-bye.

5/17/2004

Scamming the scammer. Very nice.

Urge to panic. Rising! Cisco router source code found and some posted on the Internet.   And then there's that small stat that about 70% of all 'Net traffic goes over Cisco routers.  I guess we're about to find out the reliability of the whole "internetworking environment."

Laptops that might be upgradable on the GPU side. Not too bad really.

5/14/2004

So at E3, some geeks got really anxious for the next Solid Snake, broke into the demo machine and stole it.  This of course wants to make me turn on the LiveJournalBlogQueer switch and proceed to tell you about Quakecon 2002:

Back in 2002 at Quakecon I showed up with PC under arm, monitor in another arm, was setup quickly, hooked onto the LAN, and was quickly bored.  Therefore, I took off to look at the exhibitions which had been shut down.  Why had they been shutdown:  Some people had waited the night before under the tables (they had drapes or large tablecloths), so when the display people left they quickly popped out and stole some of the gear from the AMD display. I think they took some Athlon processors.  Pretty funny but also pretty pathetic.  Ok LiveJournalBlogQueer switch back off now.

More BoothBabes from E3. 

Future weapons of war.  Interesting stuff I suppose.

5/13/2004

So, X-Box will have co-op for sure on Doom3 but not the PC version mostly because X-Box apparently supports it from the ground up while of course PCs never have supported co-operative play and teamwork. Nah, never.  Regardless, I understand ids position on this. They wanted to make the best single player game for the PC. So they can sell the engine to another company for a boatload of cash to make a true mulitplayer experience (Raven and Quake 4, of course).  Really, that's ok by me.

Hey hey, lookie here. New Spybot Final 1.3

Holy crap. $200K and a grad student and you can fight the biggest disease of our day?

5/12/2004

While Halle Berry is a good argument for as much breeding between the various races in this great nation, I just can't believe they're making this CatWoman game and movie.

Oh.. yeah.. woopity doo.. more Half-Life 2 video stuff. Anyone else not care anymore? Well, I guess so.

5/11/2004

Yeah, you already know.

Can Microsoft bounties end viruses? Sure, just like "Just Say No" stops drug abuse. 

5/10/2004

Wow, just about everything one might hate about the marketing of games is in the news today. First up is Half-Life 2.  The Inquirer mentions that the whole bundling of Half-Life 2 with an ATi card is up in the air as to exactly what card is to get the game bundled.  They offered the bundle deal a while ago so whoever ordered the bundle then must already be getting an outmoded card? Or do they get theirs upgraded since the game is taking so long.  

Next up, the Phantom Console which is an apt name. 

The service, starting at $29.95 a month, will offer users certain basic content for free, and access to either buy premium games at prices comparable to regular retail or rent them, usually $5 for three days.

I'm not convinced.  I mean, you plug this thing into a TV, right? Well, there goes one of the big benefits of a PC game over a console: video resolution.  Also, there's the issue of piracy.  Don't think it won't happen. If people can hack an X-Box to turn around and run Linux then they can accomplish just about anything.  Would it be a widespread problem though? No. People have to buy the Phantom for there to be any desire to pirate it. And this thing will be about as popular as the N-Gage.

5/9/2004

SELL OUT!! No, seriously, I think it's great they caught the SASSER creator.  It's interesting for I hope to now see "Wanted" posters on faded yellow paper with bad drawings as was done in the Old West. The picture would be a blue screen or a "netstat" command line with about 20+ open connections to various email servers.  

5/5/2004

Hey hey, everyone, let's give a big "welcome to the party" to our brethren across the aisle who use their Macs and worship them like the second Messiah.  Welcome to patch land Mac users. Better still, watch the maker not really care!  You see, we're all the same underneath our case chassis. 

Well, looks like most sites shot their load over the pre-E3 nuttiness earlier this week. So get outside and enjoy your Cinco de Mayo.

5/4/2004

Mmmm.. more Total War goodness.  Geesh, you'd think I would get paid for all this promoting!

One of the first things Campaign mode players will notice is that the battles take place in a zoomed-in version of the terrain depicted on the actual Campaign map. If, for example, the map shows a hilly expanse in the Northern part of Italy and players move their troops for battle there, the action will zoom in to a battlefield that includes those elements, with the Alps appropriately depicted in the background. In addition, battles involving a siege of a city now include a more complete representation of the actual city, with any improvements or buildings present and destructible.

TWL Tourney with ND80 helping with the sponsoring and servers

5/3/2004

All sorts of Total War: Rome news today.  Here, here, and here.

5/2/2004

The coolest game mod I've ever seen. Someone's making Enemy Territory maps based on the Simpsons.  Very cool.