The Sanctum heeft een review gepost van de Tennmax dual Stealth V2 cooler, een zeer vette oplossing als je je Voodoo 2 SLI setup wilt koelen.

Hier wat stuff uit de review:

Heat.....The Enemy in Your System. It doesnt take Prisoners, and You should Protect all Your Investments from it. In the fight against Heat We at TheSanctum go overboard. The PixelCrusher Rig Contains about eleven fans inside it. One table top personal fan lingers on the outside pointing in, bringing a gush of air onto The Motherboard, and other interior items. The Mobo Temp stays around 89°F.

In Testing TheSanctum successfully Fried one Voodoo2 card. We kept one card protected with The TennMax Stealth V2 Cooler, and The Other Voodoo2 naked from The Factory. We Installed The Stock Diamond Monster II Drivers, after a few hours and, 3 System crashes playing QuakeII it was all over. After booting into SafeMode We found The Diamond Drivers had been Overclocked, this happened on several occasions. After removing The Non-Protected Voodoo2 Our Video Worked fine. We also tested 3dfx's Reference Voodoo2 Drivers but it doesnt include a way to overclock through the Display Panel. We felt safe with The TennMax Stealth V2 Coolers, but even safer with 3dfx's Reference Drivers, and if We wanted, could still overclock through The Registry.

Fresh3D heeft een artikel genaamd: Savage3D: What happened?, over wat er met die Savage3D gebeurt is.

Hier een stukkie:

Sure, the Savage 3d is still around, and S3 is still working on it (and it's successor, the Savage 2). But what is wrong with the Savage 3d's right now? Where are they? Hercules was the first company to release a Savage 3d card, the Hercules Terminator BEAST, which was a humongous flop. It had a tendency to overheat, and the performance was pretty weak. Why? It was not based on the 0.25 micron die process, and it only had 100 Mhz SDRAM, and the drivers just weren't ready. Reeling from their defeat, Hercules recently announced their TNT card, pretty much abandoning the Terminator BEAST.

A few other companies also announced S3 cards, such as AOpen, but by that time no one really cared. While the Savage 3d reference boards S3 was handing out to some sites were wowing people with great benchmarks, S3 had yet to deliver anything good to the people who would actually be using them. Meanwhile, nVidia was making waves with it's TNT chipset. Although the current TNT's were not everything nVidia said they would be, they are the fastest Direct X cards out there, and possibly the fastest 3D accelerators period. Great picture quality, 32-bit rendering and resolutions up to 1600x1200 made the TNT a hit. nVidia also got the right companies on-board to make TNT-based cards. Canopus, who's Pure 3d and Pure 3d-II cards were the top performers in the 3DFX arena, announced their take on the TNT, the Spectra 2500, once again choosing the non-reference path. A great seller, and a top performer, the Spectra 2500 paved the way for other TNT boards, including entries from Diamond (who have yet to come through with their Savage 3d card), Creative Labs and STB, all of which had Voodoo 2 cards that did very well. Taking a look at S3's site, the last Savage 3d article they have listed is from early September. Why haven't we heard anything new from them?

Computers.com heeft een review van de Toshiba PDR-M1 camera. Het ding heeft een 1,5Megapixel CCD en een resolutie van 1280x1024 pixels:

Despite its 1.5-million-pixel CCD (charge-coupled device), the PDR-M1's test photos are far less appealing than shots taken by our less-expensive Editor's Choice, the $399 Kodak DC200. In our tests, the Toshiba's outdoor pictures were sharply focused but somewhat washed out; indoor shots suffered from a severe yellowish-green haze.

Gamelinks heeft een review gepost van Revenant, een RPG/Adventure game van Eidos.

Hier wat info:

This game is eye-candy and then some. One of the most inpressive aspects of the game that I have seen thus far has been the lighting effects that look like they may rival that of the most advanced first-person shooters these days. Here is a bit on the lighting: As your character walks through dim caverns he is concealed in darkness. Walking into a pool of torchlight will illuminate your character with an orange-red glow. You can use this method to conceal yourself in the shadows while avoiding the lit areas. This is a major part of Revenant's stealth mode lighting the tiles pixel by pixel That's pretty damn cool!

- All the characters in the game are also made 3-D from the ground up and all animations have been done by hand.

- Your appearance will change dynamically and your look will almost never be the same as anyone elses. The reason for this is that developers have created a system in which the armor for each character is divided into five pieces that are interchangable between 30 armor sets which gives you virtually hundreds of different combinations to choose from.

- Excellent vertical depth and height features for the landscape

Game-Over heeft een review gepost van Tomb Raider 3. Hier wat stuff:

Graphically Tomb Raider is on par with its predecessors, meaning it hasn't improved noticeably in over two years of development. In fact, it is obvious that Eidos has "toned down" some aspects to make the game more accessible to younger audiences (and unwitting parents.) Most noticeable is the pixilated hot-pink blood. The level design is virtually identical to previous TR efforts, cluttered and full of cliché rock and spike traps. Again, same as before its D3D only, no GLide support here.

With games like Indy 3d very close to release, you would think Eidos could sense the upcoming competition, and put some effort in developing Tomb Raider 3 into something that would give these new comers a run for their money. One thing I would have especially liked to see is the addition of facial animations for Lara. The fixed smirk is so "1997", take a cue from Live '99 and give your character a little life. As you can see from the screen shots, Tomb Raider accomplishes nothing in the visual improvement area. The invention and innovation that TR once stood for is gone, and all that's left is a polygon girl with a bouncy.. err.. pony tail.

Bij Gamer's Central hebben ze een review van Myth II: Soulblighter, waarvan hier wat info:

The level of detail in Myth II is considerably raised. If you liked the fluid motions of units in Myth, you'll be astonished to learn that the numbers of frames of animations has been doubled. In Myth, most objects were pretty static. Now I wouldn't want to see a castle taking a walk but how would you like to see a drawbridge being lowered for you to enter? It's in. ;-) Other animated objects are (among others) doors, gates, windmills and waterfalls. On top of that, you will see all kinds of animals like birds and squirrels populating the lands that you are exploring. Oh and about those lands... They'll be four times more detailed. Combine all of the above with colored lighting and some advanced shadow effects and you'll get an idea of how much better the game will look. Pleased with what you've heard sofar? I haven't even started yet. :-)

The Sanctum heeft een review van deze 14,4Gig dikke DeskStart schijf van IBM.

Hier wat info over de performance:

TheSanctum replaced its 2 month old Maxtor DiamondMax 11 Gigger, and The Performance result was Incrediable. Software was installed faster and, Applications loaded quicker. The DeskStar Features GMR Technology which stands for "Giant Magnetoresistive". With this Drive Capacities can contain more Areal Densities, resulting in Bigger, and Faster Drives. Remember IBM Just released a 25 Gigabyte Drive using GMR.

Ik was nog wat verder aan het rondsnuffelen bij 3DNews en zag dat 3DGaming.net een review heeft van Delta Force.

Hier een stukkie uit de review:

The graphics just seem bad, but they really aren't. Since we seem to be unable to function in a gamers' society without 3dfx nowadays (most of us, anyway) most people would call the graphics terrible. But I'll talk more about the graphics later. The graphics actually help this game quite a bit. Delta Force is a lot of fun though, I mean, it should be renamed to 'cool-ass sniping game'. While it's fun to play with the bigger guns that you can't snipe with (high rate of fire) I prefer to aim, squeeze off a shot, and see someone's head explode.

The single player missions in this game are fairly drab but are made up for a real nice feel and have really great terrain. If you fire off a shot that isn't silenced, depending on the gun you fire it might alert a single enemy, a patrol, or even the whole camp (Got me killed once. Fine, more than once.) It's fun alerting the camp though. I usually climb the highest mountain I can find, entrench myself, and start firing away. Their first twenty or so shots go off in all directions as they try and get a bead on you, but then their shots start 'FWING'ing around your head, and you know you'd better move your sorry ass. I had a blast (literally) playing this game, especially when I'd use the LAW's (Light Antitank Weapon) on single patrol units. I've had a helluva lot of fun playing this game, and I personally will refund your money if you don't like it. Hmmm... maybe that's a bad thing to say :)

3DNews.net heeft een interview met Greg MacMartin, Lead Designer van Cavedog's Amen.

Hier een stukkie:

What was your inspiration in the design of Amen and what will make this stand out from the rest of the games in this genre?

Well, the entire foundation of the game is it's storyline, because every single bit of content is derived from the plot somehow. We are trying to create a cool and unique universe to immerse the player into...one that is as convincing as possible. Such novels as "The Stand" and "Lucifer's Hammer" and movies like Star Wars, the Indy movies, the Back to the Future films probably all contributed to the design of the game in some subconcious way. ;) If I had to pick ONE thing that will separate out Amen from the pack of shooters it would be the fact that EVERYTHING is derived from the game's plot. From the player's equipment, the Acts, the combat, the enemies, the characters, even the inventory system and the player himself...ALL of it fits into Amen's universe in a consistant way. Because so much pre-design work has gone into the Acts, they will feel more like Hollywood movie sets, as opposed to arbitrarily designed "levels". We have something cool in store for the player at EVERY location in the game. Games like Half-Life (and Duke Nukem 3D much earlier before) are proving that CONTENT and GAMEPLAY is where the truly great games lie...NOT nifty engine features. I know that many people have been making arguments like this one for a long time now...but I think that the games I mentioned are PROVING the theory to be true.

Ik zag via Crus dat Ace's Hardware een 3D Video card buyers guide in elkaar gedraaid heeft.

De intro:

Thirty and more frames per second, all beautiful sharp and colorful at resolutions of 800*600 and even 1024*768? Yes, the new wave of 3D video cards have really released the multimedia potential of the home PC. But before you rush to the local shop to spend you hard earned money, we would point out some important facts. After all, choosing a video card is not just about frames per second...

The main goal of this article is to make sure that you, the reader, know what's going on behind all those benchmarks you see on the web, so you can interpret them yourself.  We would also like to point out some forgotten or lesser known facts.  This first part is going to refresh your memory about AGP and give you some tips and tricks to help you optimize the AGP performance of your system. We will also try to solve some common AGP problems. The second part will give you a complete overview of the market today and a review of upcoming products, but first things first...

Nog wat spul van UpgradeCenter.net: ze hebben er een review van de Optiquest V775, een 17" monitor.

Hier wat info:

Wow... The picture on the V775 is amazing.  Text, even at higher resolutions (I'm writing this review at 1600x1200 to see how long I can tolerate the tiny letters ;-)) is clear and sharp.   The flicker of the refresh rate at 1600x1200 can be a little annoying before you get used to it, especially if you switch from a resolution of 800x600 that uses 120Hz.   But, that is to be expected with the higher resolutions of any monitor, so I can't hold that against the V775.  What sets it apart is that the text is actually readable at this resolution, compared to some cheaper monitors.  On a side note, most 17" monitors aren't capable of 1600x1200.

Upgradecenter heeft een review van Caldera Open Linux 1.3:

There are many great features about a Linux operating system.   Probably the most common one is that most distributions can be obtained free of charge.  The one drawback to that is the lack of documentation and support if you need it.  The other big thing is the source code, most versions of Linux if you know anything about the system and/or programming can be recompiled to really meet your custom needs.  The uses for Caldera Open Linux right now are virtually endless, there's programs being written and ported to it every day. 

Sharky Extreme heeft een preview van Earth 2150 met een paar screenshots.

Hier wat info over het spel:

Earth 2150 will pit you in the midst of an all-out war on Earth- in 2150AD (funny that?). Unfortunately the full-scale war between the "Eurasian Dynasty" and the "United Civilized States" has affected the Earth's orbit, pulling it closer to the sun and causing a glacial melt down etc... (for more info go and join Green Peace). So it's a war then, but it's not what you do, it's how you do it and for Earth 2150 you should hold your 3D accelerator cards at the ready. All sorts of real-time day and night effects will be present and of course so will weather effects (rain, blizzards, fog and thunderstorms). But it won't just be a 'pretty boy', as you'd expect from a tradtional RTS game, constructing bridges, managing units, vehicles and weapons systems will all be part and parcel within the game. In addition, a useful editor has also been promised along with a few multiplayer options, which should help the game in terms of longevity.

Sharky heeft tevens een paar shots van Devestator, die vind je hier.

Gamecenter heeft een review gepost van viper Racing. Hier wat info:

As its title implies, Viper Racing showcases Dodge's horsepower-heavy and barely street-legal beast under full race conditions. Although the Viper is the only car you'll be driving and driving against (there may be the occasional airplane, too, but we'll get to that later), don't be fooled into thinking the game gets boring--it doesn't.

Despite its flashy arcade appearance, Viper Racing is a borderline simulation, and an intriguing one at that. Granted, fuel isn't a consideration and the rather short lap counts don't force pit stops, but the Viper car model exhibits some of the same exceptional physics found in another Sierra racing game, Papyrus' own NASCAR Racing 2. And that's gotta count for something.

Ik zie op Simracingnews.com dat Codemasters een patch heeft gereleased voor Colin McRae Rally:

Codemasters has released a new patch for Colin McRae Rally. If you're experiencing technical difficulties with Colin McRae Rally, the downloadable patch below should help you overcome these problems.

After downloading this patch, to execute double click on the exe file. This will automatically update the files in your Colin McRae Rally installation.

Please download European Patch unless the game was purchased in Italy - then download Italian Patch.

Hier de Europese patch.

Fastgraphics heeft een big ass 2D/3D graphics card roundup in elkaar gedraaid.

En de winnaar is:...

Clearly the winner of the field, and the best choice among today's chipsets if you're on a high-end machine. The TNT chipset performs excellent in 2D and 3D, outperforming even the G200 in 2D. The 3D Image Quality is high, though G200 is a tad bit better in this area. When it comes to 3D performance there is currently no other chipset that touches TNT, except for the Banshee card from Diamond which performs about the same as most TNT cards. The differences among the TNT cards are little. All cards I've tested are were AGP versions, all equipped with 16 Mb of 8 ns SDRAM. Looking at the performance differences between the TNT cards, we see very small variations, mostly within 1% of each other. If you're in the market for a TNT based card you shouldn't let yourself be lead by performance. Price and bundle might be more important. If you're into overclocking, be sure that you get a TNT card which comes with active cooling, instead of one that just comes with a heatsink. Final thought: TNT cards don't scale down very well, so if you have a slower Pentium II or Super 7 system, you might want to go for Banshee instead.

Techweb heeft een artikel over het belang van Sun in de Netscape/AOL combinatie:

As a well-established enterprise player with a large installed hardware base, Sun will give Netscape much-needed muscle in corporate sales, support, and professional services. Although AOL will own Netscape, Sun will be Netscape's development and marketing partner for all of its enterprise applications, including servers and e-commerce applications.

"This [deal] certainly removes a lot of the cloud around Netscape and the issues surrounding it," said Sun president Ed Zander, referring to service and support concerns. Presumably to sweeten the deal for Sun, AOL guaranteed that it will purchase Sun systems and services -- worth $500 million at list price -- through 2002 for AOL's e-commerce partners and its own use. AOL will receive more than $350 million in licensing, marketing, and advertising fees from Sun.

Netscape customers generally hailed the Sun partnership-- with some caveats. "Netscape's developers are some of the best people in the business," said Ed Glassman, director of technology strategy at Pfizer, which uses Netscape's Enterprise Web Server and Proxy Server as well as Sun hardware. "But Netscape doesn't always have the best process for managing and enhancing its products and getting feedback from enterprise users. Sun does. If it can keep the development team intact, it's a real winning combination."

Apple heeft een nieuwe 'hogere' iMac in de planning. Tevens hebben ze nu door dat niemand 1300 dollar voor een groene doos wil betalen.

Hier wat stuff uit een artikel op Techweb:

Under increasing pressure from the sub-$1,000 PC market, Apple Computer in February will drop the price of its flagship iMac system to $999, several sources said today.

The iMac currently sells for $1,299.

In the same timeframe, Apple plans to introduce a second, higher-end iMac model for $1,299. The new system will use the same form factor as the original iMac, but it will feature more hard-disk space and a faster processor, the sources said. The existing iMac offers a 233MHz processor and 4 gigabytes of disk space.

"The higher-end machine will have the same look [as the current iMac], but it will have a larger hard drive and more processing power," said one source familiar with the company's plans.

The Register heeft weer wat info over de gang van zaken met de rechtszaak tegen Mikroschoft.

Het Amerikaanse miniterie van Justitie heeft een aantal document vrijgegeven met leuke info over de handelspraktijken van Bill en zijn kornuiten.

Hier wat stuff over hoe Mikroschoft OEMs chanteerde als zij afweken bij het invullen van de boot-up sequence:

The text of a Microsoft Agreement that prevents OEMs from modifying the boot-up procedure was given in an exhibit. It was hardly surprising that the DoJ was so hot under the collar about the anticompetitive measures that Microsoft had included in such agreements.

Microsoft would not allow any interference by the OEM from switching on the PC until the desktop screen was displayed. If Microsoft found any OEM not following the Agreement (as happened notably with Compaq), apart from remedies such as refusing to license Windows 95, Microsoft also reserved the right to charge "an additional royalty equal to 30 percent of the highest royalty for the product(s)."

This is confidential, so don't tell anyone: Microsoft charged AST $35 per system for the English version of Windows NT Workstation Upgrade Version 4.0, and an additional $6 for non-English versions. These gems are in an addendum to AST's agreement, dated 9 July 1996. [GX1035]

Het deel van de verkoopprijs van nieuwe pc's dat Intel en Mikroschoft voor zich opeisen neemt alleen maar toe, ondanks de bewering van Mikroschoft dat zij de kosten omlaag gebracht zouden hebben. The Register heeft er een artikel over met tevens een grafiekje.

Hier de tekst:

A document recently released by the court [GX439] shows that both Microsoft and Intel have been steadily getting a higher and higher proportion of the cost of a system. Microsoft's operating system cost has increased 2.6 times, and Intel's share of systems' cost increased 2.2 times, over the period 1990 to 1996.

Microsoft must be concerned at the exposure of such internal data, and wish that the data disclosed in DoJ exhibits had been kept confidential, especially as Microsoft's PR line is that it has reduced prices. With all the ire being directed at Microsoft at the moment, it is worth bearing in mind that Intel's share of systems' cost is considerably greater.

AOL heeft een officiële uitspraak gedaan over de toekomst van het Open Source project rond Mozilla 5. Hier wat info uit een artikel van The Register:

AOL CEO Steve Case has made his first official statement on the future of Mozilla, the open source browser project set up by Netscape earlier this year.

According to Eric S Raymond, president of the Open Source Initiative (OSI), a self-appointed body that seeks to promote open source software, who claims to have been in communication with Case, the AOL supremo promised his company will actively back the Mozilla project.

"We certainly intend to continue to support Mozilla and the open source community," Raymond reports Case as saying. "Indeed, I hope our involvement will further energise Mozilla.org and rally even more support among developers."

Case was also reported as saying: "We share your view that the agenda of Mozilla is and should be set by those who contribute to it. We will contribute too -- in part by maintaining the autonomy of mozilla.org."

Larry Ellison van Oracle gaat voor IMF spelen en leent Moskou $360 miljoen zodat ze bij ze daar een Unified Oracle netwerkje kunnen bouwen:

Never let it be said Larry Ellison doesn't think big. Oracle is to lend ailing city Moscow $360 million to allow them to build a unified computer network, Russian daily newspaper Izvestiya has reported.

The system will be based on Oracle software -- clearly, this is a 'here's the money to buy our software' deal, reminiscent of the hard sell approach taken by Oracle's sales reps in the early 80s... Hardware and installation will be provided by Russian computer companies.

Talk of Russian computer companies recalls to The Register's group mind paranoid stories printed in the UK IT press in the last decade claiming that the Soviet army used Sinclair ZX-81s (known to our transatlantic colleagues as the Timex 2000) to control ICBMs. This led to much speculation about whether the Communist Horde's ability to launch a nuclear attack on Western Civilisation might be severely hampered by RamPack wobble.

Zie The Register.

Tweak3D heeft een Soundcard & speaker tweaking guide in elkaar geknutseld met handig tips over hoe je je sound setup tot het uiterste kunt tunen:

Believe it or not, you c-a-n tweak sound cards, and speakers! Yes, it's just plain wacky, but it works. I know because everyone always comments on how incredible my system sounds =)

Jeremy van AGN 3D heeft een artikel in elkaar gezet met een vergelijking van de performance en beeldkwaliteit van de Banshee en de TNT in Half-Life.

Hier een stukkie:

The image quality of the TNT is quite a step up from that of the Banshee. The better quality the image, the better the animations look as well. So even though you will not be playing a game at 500% magnification like the images I have shown you, you will still appreciate the difference the better image quality makes in the animations.

The Banshee is not a bad card, the frame rate numbers obviously show that. Also considering that you can get a Banshee card for around $100, it makes it much cheaper then that of the TNT. The Banshee also supports Glide, something that the TNT does not do. (Do not blieve those Glide emulator rumors, I have not seen one that works right yet.) The Banshee does have tradeoffs though, most noticeably the image quality that I have shown you in this article.

De Unoffical Quake 3 FAQ is geupdate. Hier een stukkie info:

This game will use completely different way of play against computer. There will be no traditional "player with a lof of tasks to do vs. ton-of-monsters" single-player game. The main part of the game is Multiplayer DeathMatch, ID Software was always the best at it. However, people who don't have an internet connection or aren't willing to pay big phone bills for playing will still be able to enjoy a new way of playing against computer: BotMatch. Bots (acronym for robots) are computer controlled opponents that behave (or try to) like a regular human player. They pick-up weapons and health that are laying on the floor, shooting you and other bots. The most famous user created bots are the Reaper Bot for Classic Quake and Eraser Bot for Quake 2. Unreal (by Epic Megagames) and Klingon Honour Guard (by Microprose) have BotMatch in-the-box (i.e: the bots come with the game itself). Bots are usually weaker then good human players, but far better then computer controlled monsters in regular single-player games.

Na de patch ook een review, in elkaar gepleurd door Game-Over heeft er eentje.

Hier wat stuff:

There are a few neat things that I find Monolith should be given credit for. You can hold the trigger on the machine gun as you're raining death on someone, and 'support' him on the bullets, meaning he won't fall while you hold the trigger. For a little while, anyway. So you get to do what Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro have been doing for so long. It's actually pretty well-done, and I don't think I've seen something like this in an FPS yet, ever. For some dumb reason, however, once a critter is dead, you can still shoot its body - and have it explode on you, leaving a 'Life essence' behind, which is technically a fancy-sounding (and looking) stimpack. Sorry, I don't buy that. Dead bodies should stay where they are - as well as (on a side note) skid marks on tracks in racing games, and other permanent damage effects. Then again, I suppose, the resources of the host system would be strained a lot more were they required to remember such huge (and mostly useless) things.

De Blood 2 1.01 patch is uit. Je komt komt hier halen.

Wat het ding doet:...

This patch has been focused primarily on Single Play bugs and issues we felt important to resolve immediately.

We have made numerous changes to enhance the enjoyment of the single player game. But, we're not through yet. Please see the list that follows for specific changes. Then, look forward to mid-December when we plan to release our multiplay enhancements.

WARNING:

Previous SAVE GAMES from 1.0 are not compatible with this version.

New Engine Enhancements

· fix to USB keyboard issues

· some rezfile bugs fixed

New Single Player Game Updates/Bug Fixes

· Fixed view weapon jittering

· Removed Shift-I and Shift-O for toggling 3rd person. Added a cheat to do it instead: MPFOLLOWME.

· Fixed RandomSoundFX sounds continuing to play after the level ends.

· MPHEALTHY cheat now restores your weapons correctly when you use it after you die.

· Fixed muzzle flash sprites continuing to show in external camera mode (cutscenes)

· DamageObjectsInRadius takes the object dims into account for better accuracy (Large objects like the Ancient One were hard to hit with area of effect weapons since they impact too far from the center point).

· Fixed weapon hand model visibility problems on client

· Many gibs tweaks, added blood streams to kicked heads, bounce sounds, increased vertical velocity of blood spurts.

· Fixed rotating doors being pushed off of their hinges when they are blocked by the player being pushed into a wall.

· You can now climb ladders out of the water.

· Menu localization stuff

· Added additional code to hopefully prevent AI dropped weapons from sticking in walls. It may still happen occasionly, but not as much.

· MPCLIP fixed so that you don't suddenly move halfway across the world when the framerate chunks.

· Added a sound for when the "Press a key to continue. . ." message comes up.

· AI: fixed FindObjectsInRadius function so that it searches for players correctly. This fixes the Bone Leech, Hand, and Theif staying idle problem. (they weren't seeing the player)

· Made some changes to fix potential IMA issues.

· Fixed a bug with the player being able to overflow the Taunt field, causing a game crash.

Weapons and Boss Stuff

· Adjusted prox bomb timing for arming and exploding

· Removed the Alt-fire from the singularity generator

· Fixed death-ray beams hanging in the air

· Fixed it so you can't select bombs without ammo for them

· Added a game state so we can have the 'Press a key to continue...' message in the loading screens (only does this for screens that use the description text - automatically skips it for multiplayer loading and other custom levels)

· Fixed the bombs sticking in the air

· Didn't put in the remote bombs exploding upon death... cause it seems to have been voted out

· Fixed the black light on the death ray muzzle flash

· Tweaked some weapon values.

· Fixed some particle trail effects that were getting cut off when they weren't supposed to

· Made new special effects for the Naga (much nicer now in my opinion... )

· Tweaked the Naga AI a little so he'll do the ceiling drop more (at all)...

· Tweaked some damage values for the Naga.

· Added detail levels for Naga FX

· Removed the smoke trails on the Naga spike fragments.

Nog een review van een Test Drive spel: The Techs Network heeft er eentje hiero. Ze geven 'm de extreem hoge score van 40/100.

Hier de intro:

The old time muscle cars of the past, have almost been forgotten. Rarely do you see on the road an old GTO or a 1969 Mustang GT convertible. Accolade have brought some of these old muscle cars back in their latest game, Test Drive 5. You are putting today’s top super performance cars on the road against some old time classic muscle cars. The 1998 Dodge Viper vs. the 1970 Chevrolet Corvette, mono e mono. Test Drive 5 features, 28 cars and 18 tracks in face to face deathmatches of the finest cars ever made.

Anand heeft een review van de AMD's nieuwe K6-2 400 CXT in elkaar gedraaid. Dit ding heeft een licht verbeterde core (van daar de toevoeging 'CXT').

Hier wat info over hoe dat ding presteert:

How can you take advantage of the improvements found in the new CXT core?  Unfortunately it isn't as simple as popping in a new chip, you will have to make an update to your BIOS to recognize the processor as well as to enable the enhanced WHCR and the Write Merge Buffer.  As you'll be able to see from the tests AnandTech conducted, the K6-2 400 using the CXT core exhibited a 7% increase in overall performance in comparison to a K6-2 400 without the modifications enabled in the WHCR and with the Write Merge Buffer.  As far as gaming performance goes, the K6-2 400 doesn't really benefit all that much from the Write Merge Buffer, although you may see a few fps increase in performance in a few of your games, nothing too major. 

Voodoo Extreme heeft een review met Michael "Saxs" Persson van Shiny Entertainment.

Hier wat stuff over de Messiah engine vs die van Unreal en Quake II:

1.) In a semi-recent Ask GrandMaster B (Ask Brian Hook) the question was asked of how the Unreal and Quake2 engines differed (not necessarily superior to one another, just what is different) -- you can see that here: http://www.voodooextreme.com/ask/askarch/aug3-7.html#aug5.  Can you describe what makes the Messiah engine different, in this aspect?

- Now having read the mentioned article, the difference between the Messiah Engine and Quake/Unreal is quite big. We don't operate with one big level in memory. Every section is streamed while you play (and I don't mean like Half-Life where you have to wait every two minutes for it to load next section) so when you open a door it gets the new room including textures etc. Therefore we can have seemingly endless levels with new textures for all sections without the need to stop the gameplay for loading. We use portals extensively. That makes clipping, inclusion so much easier. The collision is based on spheres in time not cylinders. I don't use BSP since we have a lot of moving objects everywhere. I made dynamic routines for collision and real-time Boolean (exploding objects, walls that gets holes cut in them, shattering glass) so we can handle changing geometry. We support morphing backgrounds (mesh, texture and lighting). The list goes on but there is a lot questions still left so let's move on.

Avault heeft een review gepost van Test Drive: Off Road 2:

While Test Drive: Off-Road 2 offers support for 3D hardware video acceleration in place of its predecessor's SVGA graphics, the visuals here are still a step behind the very best. Monster Truck Madness 2, which itself does not have graphics at the very top of the racing heap, contains terrain and vehicles that are much more realistically portrayed than here. There is something about the rendering in Test Drive: Off-Road 2 that makes this game's trucks and backgrounds look like crude sketches rather than the real thing. One disappointment here is that while in Monster Truck Madness 2 if you landed in the water you would sink realistically as you would do in real life, in Test Drive: Off-Road 2 you just skim over the top of it with little effect. Similarly, the mud in this game slows you down but shows no visual impact. In addition, there is no dashboard view available here, which is a real minus in comparison with Monster Truck Madness 2's inclusion of photo-realistic in-car displays.

Ubisoft heeft een 3,4Mb grote patch voor Monaco Grand Prix in elkaar geknutseld:

Direct3D version corrects bugs with DirectX. 3Dfx version corrects graphics bugs with Voodoo2 and the uncompatibility problem with the Cyrix processor.

Je kunt het dingetje hier downen.

Matrox heeft nieuwe drivers gereleased voor hun op de G200 chipset gebaseerde videokaarten. Het spul kun je hier halen.

Nog wat info:

G200 only (including G200 PCI)

- DX6 support

- Fix for Half Life issues

- Not recommended for Socket7 AGP system