Krawall.de (wazige Duitse site) heeft een interview gepost met Tim Sweeney van Epic, uiteraard met Unreal Tournament als onderwerp. Hier heb je een vraag:

Morn: Back in the days when Unreal 1 was still in development, there was talk about inter-connected servers that would form big "Unreal worlds" in which people could stage massive war-like battles with up to hundred (or more) players. Of course this is still a very difficult goal to accomplish,mostly due to the relatively low bandwidth that the Internet still has today and limited computer power, but massive multiplayer online games like Everquest are suggesting that people are still trying to "get there". Do you think those plans are going to come back up some day, maybe for Unreal (Tournament) 2?

Tim: A more persistent and interconnected world is definitely in our plans for the next project. I'm not sure how far we'll go with that -- we'll definitely have seamless seeing and moving across servers, but I'm not sure about persistent player accounts, inventory, etc. Games like Ultima Online and Everquest have proven that this kind of game is possible, but they both sacrificed graphical quality and realism very severely in order to make it work. The real challenge will be in combining persistent Internet support with a truly leading-edge 3D engine.

En dat ventje aan de rechterkant, dat is 'm dus .

Eerder vandaag plaatste ik al een newsposting over de ontdekkeing van Riva3D dat de Unreal 225 server patch een duidelijk performance verbetering liet zien in Direct3D. Rivastation heeft nu ook benchmarks gepost. Unreal doet nu een respectabele 45 fps op 1024*768 met een PIII-500. Check Rivastation.com voor de info.

Gamende Linux fanaten: het wordt tijd om van je luie command prompt te komen, want Sierra Studios heeft een poll op de frontpage staan met de vraag welk spel (Team Fortress 2, Pharaoh, Homeworld, Gabriel Knight 3 of Babylon 5) ze moeten porten naar Linux. Fiets naar http://www.sierrastudios.com/ en scroll halverwege de pagina om te voten.

Hardware Central heeft een artikel gepost waarin ze beschrijven hoe je zelf een Supercooler kunt bouwen. De resultaten die ze met een PIII behaalt hebben zijn errug heftig: boven de 1 GHz!

The increase in efficiency of the CMOS CPU is clearly visible as we were easily able to clock both Pentium III / 500 CPU’s to 620 MHz. And after having done some modifications to the Pentium III PCB, Motherboard, Bios Revisions, and the cooling setup we were able to clock it up to an unbelievable and completely stable 993 MHz. The next step was to try and break the 1 GHz barrier, which was possible but somewhat unstable. However the results prove the ability to run a CPU at a much higher clockspeed than it was originally designed for due to the increased efficiency of the CMOS CPU core at very low temperatures.

Nu je dit gelezen hebt zul je vast wel geïnteresseerd raken in het koelsysteem dat ze bij HWCentral gebruikt hebben. Check de info hier.

Alex van Sharky Extreme heeft het derde deel van z'n Computex Floor Report gepost. In dit deel vind je o.a. info over de AMD K7:

Having met with key sources close to AMD, we have heard (consistently) the following items of interest. Although the CPU is already sampling (albeit in small quantities), currently only three motherboard manufacturers, including ASUS, GigaByte and FIC have been chosen as tier-one partners to manufacture slot-A based motherboards for the K7. At this time all three of the chipsets (from VIA, SiS and ALI) aren't yet stable or mature enough. Therefor, according to OEMs, the only working chipsets currently are actually made by AMD's own engineers and in-house. In fact, the first round of motherboards for the K7 will most likely harbor an AMD chipset. It would be a pity for AMD if K7 support were to be wafer thin. A working K7 in excess of 550MHz will pack quite a punch…

Alex heeft een K7 in werking gezien en zegt positief te zijn over de performance van de K7. Verder in het artikel vind je spul over o.a. Rise, ATI en nVidia. Wat betreft die laatste: de NV10 (opvolger van de TNT2) wordt verwacht rond kerstmis / begin 2000. Check Sharky Extreme voor meer vers Computex nieuws.

GA-Source heeft 15 screenshots van Outcast gepost. Hier heb je wat info over het spel, voor het geval je er nog nooit van gehoord hebt:

In Outcast the player aka hero Cutter Slade has to fight, sneak and discuss his way through a parallel-world full of bloodthirsty enemies and neutral NPCs. Outcast promises to be the first game to deliver Real-Life-3D, possible by generating a highly interactive environment with it's own artificial intelligence system GAIA. Featuring Voxel- and Polygon-graphics and a huge world to discover, Outcast is heading for a June '99

En om een indruk te geven hoe het spel eruit zien, heb je hier 3 tumbnails:

Bij Review Zone hebben ze een dikke Slot1 motherboard roundupt gebouwd. Alle belangrijke merken (Abit, AOpen, Asus, Gigabyte enz.) komen langsfietsen.

Hmm, Review Zone gaat net plat nu ik een stukje tekst wil copy/pasten. Anyway, de mobo roundup vind je hier.

Storage Review heeft een review van de Quantum Atlas 10K gepost. Deze nieuwe schijf van Quantum draait op 10.000rpm en ondersteund de nieuwe Ultra160/m SCSI interface. Lekkere specs, dus rijst de vraag: is de Atlas 10K de nieuwe SCSI king of the hill?

The Atlas 10k turns in impressive figures indeed! WinBench 99 running under Windows 95 pegs the Atlas 11% faster than the Cheetah on the Business Disk WinMark. In High-End WinMark tests, the Atlas keeps ahead by a 9% margin. Results were similar in tests under Windows NT, with the Quantum leading the Seagate by 9% in the Business WinMark and 15% in the High-End tests. ThreadMark results concur, placing the Atlas 14% faster than the Cheetah in Windows 95 and 18% faster under NT.

Wow. Het ding blijkt ook nog eens minder herrie te schoppen als de Cheetah. Mocht je geld teveel hebt, dan is er weer een reden om dat uit te gaan geven...

Motorola loopt zwaar achter op schema bij de ontwikkeling van de G4 aka PowerPC 7400 aka 'Max'. Het was ooit de bedoeling dat het ding ergens midden '99 geïntroduceerd zou worden, maar dat gaat nu mooi niet lukken. Hier heb je het nieuws van The Register:

Reasons for Motorola's delay are unclear. One suggestion has it that the company is having a problem implementing copper interconnect technology, but this seems unlikely given IBM's success with the technique. And the two companies are now, of course, the best of friends.

More likely, Motorola is having a tougher time integrating the AltiVec vector processing module onto the same silicon as the main CPU core. The AltiVec unit isn't too complex in its own right (as these things go), but connecting it to the CPU core might well prove trickier than Motorola imagined. AltiVec is designed to operate in parallel with the processor and is rather more complex that the PIII's Streaming SIMD Extensions.

Whatever the cause, it still leaves Apple in a very sticky position. It had intended to use Max to give its next Power Mac release, the Power Mac G4, a major speed hike. The Power Mac G4 is set to contain an updated motherboard that implements Intel's 4x Advanced Graphics Port (AGP) spec. AGP provides graphics cards with a dedicated channel to the processor and direct access to the computer's main memory. The slower 2x AGP spec. is now a standard in Wintel boxes.

Ik kwam een review tegen van de Super Cooler E2C-2E & E2C-8E. Dit zijn twee harddrive coolers met twee fans, daarnaast zit er ook nog een system monitor in waarmee je bij de E2C-2E twee en bij de E2C-8E acht temperatuur sensoren op de moederplaat (of CPU enz.) kunt plakken. De system monitor is aan te sturen via 5 buttons die onder een LCD schermpje zitten. Het geheel past in een 5,25" drivebay:

Overall, the Super Cooler is a really nice device. Being able to find out the temperature of all your components in your computer and seeing that temp at a glance makes overclocking allot easier. It's a great thing to have when you're experimenting. Want to see which works better? A fan blowing in or a fan blowing out? The Super Cooler can tell you. With up to 8 thermisters, you can pretty much monitor anything in your computer.

Priced at $32.50 for the 2E and $39.99 for the 8E from AMK Services, they represent very good value. The piece of mind they give is surely worth that much. Giving a choice between the 2E and 8E, I would go for the 8E. It's only a few dollars more. You don't have to use all 8 thermister if you don't want to.

Kijk hier voor de hele review. Het lijkt mij een erug tof apparaatje. 'k ben benieuwd of hij ook in Nederland verkrijgbaar is (wordt). Iemand????

Riva3D heeft een interessant post over de Unreal 225 server patch. Het ding blijkt niet alleen handig te zijn als je een Unreal server draait. Lees dit:

No need to download the 2.25 Unreal Patch because it only makes server improvements? Is that what they told you? Well you'll be pleasantly amazed when we tell you that the Unreal 2.25 VASTLY improves D3D performance by as much as 20%, AND contains many more selectable features including multitexturing, triple buffering, trilinear filtering, and many others that will allow you to tweak for maximum performance on your particular card.

Using the 2.25 patch, 800x600 scores went from 35.88 (2.24 patch) to 42.40 (2.25 patch), and 12x10 screen res ran at an impressive 23.71 fps. You need this!

Hmm, da's koel. Eindelijk redelijke normale framerates op de TNT!

Billy van Voodoo Extreme heeft een interview gepost met Brian Hook. Uiteraard gaat het interview over het vertrek van Brian Hook van id Software naar Verant Interactive. Check de eerste vraag:

VE: Brian, there are a lot of rumors floating around, but can you describe, maybe a bit more in-depth, on why you left id?

HOOK: Actually, I think the right question is "Why am I going to Verant", since that's really the crux of the matter. id was a great experience for me, and I cannot emphasize that enough. But at id I had a specific role to play, and that was as a supporting programmer to John Carmack. There is nothing wrong with this, since that is what I was hired to do, but at some point a programmer really lusts to be in a position where they can exert more influence on the technical direction of a company. In effect, I wanted more responsibility, and at id asking for that kind of responsibility would have been like playing for the Chicago Bulls and bitching at Michael Jordan to pass the ball more. John Carmack is, quite simply, the most complete and competent game programmer of our generation. End of story. There wasn't much room for me to grow comfortably in that environment. At Verant I will be able to contribute immediately, and with a bigger impact than I ever had at id. I've read a lot of the messageboards and Usenet postings on my departure, and I do find it a little saddening that people just assume that one particularly job is "IT". I've received e-mail from people along the lines of "Dude, you're an idiot, you're at the best place on planet earth", and unfortunately some people just don't understand that no ONE place will ever be perfect for someone for eternity. id was, literally, a perfect place for me for quite some time, but for my professional and personal development I just needed to go somewhere where I could work on something different. And a first person RPG is close enough to what I've done that it isn't an entirely new and foreign concept, but it's far enough that it poses a bunch of interesting new challenges that I haven't encountered yet.

En de rest lezen we hier.

Het ziet er naar uit dat ATI Technologies een rechtzaak aan zijn broek hangt van Real 3D inc. voor het "lenen" van door ATI gepatenteerde technologie. Het stomme hieraan is dat Real 3D Inc. drie dagen geleden al naar de rechter was gestapt om precies hetzelfde te doen, alleen was toen ATI de L*L:

At issue are Real 3D's patents for a ``method for modulating color for effecting color cell texture'' and for an ``advanced video object generator.'' Real 3D had alleged that three of the patents' claims were infringed by Canadian-based ATI's RAGE products.

In papers filed in the U.S. District Court in Delaware, ATI said it had been negotiating since October about Real 3D's assertion that ATI needed to license Real 3D's technology or face patent infringement charges.

ATI described Real 3D's lawsuit as a ``sneak attack ... (and) improper gamesmanship intended to coerce ATI into an unreasonable settlement.''

Real 3D attorney Louis Mastriani told Reuters that ATI's lawsuit was a ``kneejerk reaction, which is obviously ill-fated.''

``We filed on Friday a patent infringement and trade secret misappropriation case (in Florida federal court.) That was the first-filed case. The Delaware complaint is obviously in retaliation and will certainly be dismissed because it's already implicated in the Florida action,'' Mastriani said.

Bij The Daily Informant (news page van Ion Storm) vind je een viertal nieuwe screenshots van Daikatana. Hier heb je de tumbnails. Klik erop om ze op te blowen:

Episode 1 (Future Japan)

Episode 2 (Ancient Greece)

Zoals elke dag weer een aantal previews, reviews of interviews van een aantal games.

Magic & Mayhem Review (AVault)

Jeff Gordon Racing Review (AGN 3D)

Neverending Story Interview (Gamers' Crypt)
Homeworld preview (Strategy Shrine)
Deus Ex Q&A (Unreal Universe)
Mad Trax review (CGO)
Re-Volt demo download (AVault)
Paul Jaquays / id software interview (QERadiant)

Het volk bij MGO Network heeft een review gepost van Alien vs Predator. Hier heppie een stukje:

The ability to play three different species with totally different levels and campaigns makes this a very unique game (Actually I have seen one other game that will offer this, Giants, which was previewed by Kris a few months ago.). The engine and physics for the control of the various species are totally dynamic and play as you would expect. The controls are very much like any other FPS, but bringing in three species meant there was some confusion with the keyboard layout, being able to customize the key-map of the three went some way towards resolving this problem. On the test system (pII-300 with TNT card and 64meg ram) the game ran flawlessly. It played fast and sharp.

Planet Unreal heeft een vette preview van Unreal Tournament bij elkaar geknutseld. De Weapons, levels, gametypes e.d. worden uitgebreid besproken. Hier heb je een stuk uit de final thoughts:

I was floored. The quantity and quality of the content just blew me away. If Epic plays their cards right (free advanced copies for server operators, etc) and continue to work on their net play performance, this will be an awesome online game.

I don't fully agree with the 'full single player game' hype. While the bots played very well, I would consider it exactly how custom botmatches are labelled in game, a practice match. Even so, I'll probably spend more time in UT botmatches then I did going through complete single player games, like Half-Life. If you're looking for a more traditional single player Unreal, don't forget about the mission pack and Unreal 2 being developed by Legend.

The maps and weapons are a lot more balanced then in Unreal. It was an absolute blast over the LAN. The new menuing system worked well and would be especially beneficial to a newbie, if you have a good framerate. I certainly didn't have any problems navigating Unreal's menuing system, but new features like the server browser are great to have. Beyond the greatly improved maps and models, a few things stuck out that made it more fun.

De preview is voorzien van een flinke berg toffe screenshots. Hier heb je er drie:

Naar mijn eigen bescheiden mening vind ik UT er toch beter uit zien dan Q3(Test)...

Op Zdnet Nederland ben ik wel heel erg schokend nieuws tegen gekomen, Tucows heeft vanaf vandaag een 8e mirror in Nederland. Deze hebben ze ondergebracht ja ja, bij Worldoff-...eeehh online.
Tucows Worldon(off)line

Op Zdnet nederland hebben ze een test van een paar "nieuwe" 3d versneller geplaatst.
Kijk hier voor de test.

Die Anand maakt (p)reviews aan de lopende band, nu weer eentje van de Asus V3800 TVR. Benchmarks ontbreken, maar hij heeft het wel over de overklokbaarheid van de kaart:

Here’s the million dollar question, how far did it overclock? The 125MHz core made it up to 150MHz reliably, however 155MHz and 160MHz did exhibit a few stability issues after running numerous Quake 2 crusher tests for a few hours straight. The SGRAM did not overclock nearly as well as the core did (for obvious reasons, 7ns SGRAM wasn’t meant to be run too far above 150MHz) as it only hit 160MHz without instantly crashing under Quake 2. With 150/160 being the stable maximum of the V3800, it’s obvious that the board wasn’t intended to compete with 175/200MHz boards floating around, but it does its job at holding down the competition at the 125/150 non-Ultra level.

[break]En nog wat wijze woorden:[/break]

The performance of the V3800 is on-par with that of the Diamond and Hercules boards at the same clock frequencies, so there is no point in re-publishing the wheel with more benchmarks. AnandTech will be rounding up all of the TNT2 cards that have come into the lab and will compare the performance of the individual cards in that roundup, but for now, performance shouldn’t be your top concern in looking for the TNT2 board that’s right for you. Features, overclockability, quality, and price are the four pillars that should support your TNT2 buying decision.

Lees hier de rest.

Anand heeft een microATX mamaplank van AOpen gereviewd. Dat zing heeft een ZX chipset, die met de opkomende i810 ook niet alles meer is. Ook niet echt geweldig is de onboard ATI Rage Pro videokaart, wel is het bord (als je niet overklokt) erg stabiel, wat we van AOpen gewend zijn. Verder is het wel erg goedkoop natuurlijk:

Overall, AOpen's MX3ZA does an excellent job of integrating decent video and pretty good sound onto a microATX motherboard. For those interested in such integrated solutions, it doesn't get much better than this. For just over $100, plus the cost of a CPU, RAM, and case, a complete system can be had. Although currently one of the best integrated motherboard solutions, the MX3ZA's longevity may be somewhat limited as i810 solutions pop up from everyone, including AOpen.

Sierra Studio's en Relic Entertainment hebben de release date van Homeworld(een rts game)officieel vrijgegeven, hij zal op 1 september dit jaar shippen....

Hier een stukie van het bericht:

Sierra Studios and Relic Entertainment announced today the official ship date of the highly anticipated real-time strategy game, Homeworld. Based on its strong, supportive showing at E3 and in an effort to coordinate a concurrent, worldwide launch, the game will be released to retail outlets around the world Sept. 1 of this year. Combining elements of space combat, strategic play and action, Homeworld is aiming to deliver elements of the most popular genres into a fresh 3D game experience. It is the debut release from Vancouver, B.C.-based Relic Entertainment.

Je kan hier de oficiele website van Homeworld vinden.

Ik dacht dat ze bij Firingsquad al lang een review van de Dynamite TNT2 Ultra gepost hadden. Hmm, dat bleek dus een pre-production model te zijn. In de nieuwe review hebben ze wat lopen mixen met de Core en Memory clock settings, en komen ze tot interessante conclusies:

We did run into an interesting phenomena, though. We ran the card with its default core speed of 175 and an overclocked memory speed of 230. We found that at 16-bit, this configuration does absolutely nothing in terms of performance. Even at 1280x1024 in 16-bit, the gain was very small. However, the same configuration gives quite a boost at 32-bit, but only for resolutions of 1024x768 and greater. 800x600 in 32-bit got a very small gain.

Then, we tried overclocking the core speed but leaving the memory speed alone. The configuration we ended up with was 190 core and 200 memory. The gains we saw here were small across the board, for low and high resolutions, and for 16 and 32 bit color depths. What did we learn from all this? Well, at higher resolutions and higher color depths, it is very important to have a fast RAM bus to move all the data back and forth. Having the RAM speed overclocked yielded an approximate 15% increase in performance alone when we dealt with 1280x1024 in 32-bit color. The core speed is important, too, but having a higher core speed requires that you couple with it a high memory speed.

Check de review hier.

Moch Tiberian Sun of TA:Kingdoms niet genoeg zijn voor de RTS fan, dan hebben we altijd nog Force Commander. Games Mania heeft een interview gepost met een paar ventjes van LucasArts. Hier krijg je alvast een vraag:

Jason: That was going to be my next question. What is the game play balance like? You've got some games that are very resource/management heavy, whereas some are action based. Would you say Force Commander falls into the action category?

Chris: It does have a lot of action. It also has a very nice planning phase. It's really different from a lot of the games out there in that you keep your units throughout the game. You play on both sides as a Rebel general--and an Imperial general. You start as an Imperial general, and you defect to the Rebel side and become one of their chief players. It gives you a chance to play all the vehicles on both sides. But what's unique is that you get to keep your units, they gain experience, and you can name them. If you go to a hanger bay, you can choose which come with you on the next mission

En een paar plaatjes:

Computer Games Online vond het nodig om net na PC Gamer ook een preview van Total Annihilation: Kingdoms te posten. Hier heb je een stuk info over de rassen in Kingdoms:

Kingdoms offers four different cultures to sample, two basically good and two more-or-less evil. In Adventure (campaign) mode, you'll play along a linear storyline, changing sides from mission to mission as the plot unfolds. (In one scenario, for example, you guide a small fleet of Verunan ships into Zhon territory, land their troops on the beach, and set up four guard towers to protect against the dangerous and much-feared Zhon natives. In the next mission, playing as the Zhon, you build up an army and descend onto the coastline, determined to smash the four towers of an invading force of Verunans. If you thought putting 'em up was hard….) In the single-scenario mode, you can choose to play any of the four cultures, and each seems impressively different from the others.