More Athlon, half of it also dealing with the big I:

• AMD's Athlon Outperforms the Pentium III From Intel On Benchmarks Run by Mercury Research.
• GameSpot's Serious Competition At Last - New AMD Athlon chip reviewed.
• The Rumor Mongers at The Register say Intel is planning previously-unscheduled price cuts on August 22 on selected Pentium III processors to combat the new AMD release. Thanks Quake2000.
• WINMAG.COM Special Reports AMD's Line in the Sand. Thanks AMD Zone.

GameSpot's Third Person Shooters Enter the Second Age is a CGW look at "the next generation of action games, including Oni, Giants, Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine, and more."

Halo In Motion is a GameSpot sneak peek at Bungie's upcoming Halo. This is another preview based on a visit from Bungie that we missed posting while at QuakeCon. Here's a quote about cutscenes, or lack thereof:

But Halo isn't about cutscenes. It almost mocks the concept by doing everything in real time - by making every area you're playing in look and feel just like a cutscene.

Looks like sCary got the go-ahead to spill the beans on The Shugashack about something I was told might be happening: The post talks of id's Graeme Devine mentioning the possibility of the release of some way of viewing the demos recorded at this weekend's QuakeCon, either as a new Q3Test, or something else. Word is nothings for sure, but sCary's post calls it a "good possibility."

Taking root in Dallas on the Houston Chronicle says "A gathering of geeks from a handful of companies in North Texas is developing a host of blockbuster games in an atmosphere of healthy competition and with a sense of communal pride." Thanks Billy for the reminder that we never posted this (even though Dwight from the Chronicle gave us the URL at QuakeCon - d'oh!

The Battlezone 2 Center has conducted a brief Q&A with Matt Candler of Activision talking about the plans for a real multiplayer demo for Pandemic's upcoming Battlezone 2, talking about a September target for the release, discussing the size of the download as well.

Dynamix Programmer Nels Bruckner updated his .plan with word that TRIBES 1.8 finally accomplishes what TRIBES 1.6 originally set out to do, as well as giving word on some new game types:

Wow... it looks like we finally got it right with 1.8! Third time's a charm, eh? :) Seriously, it looks like 1.8 is (finally) what we were shooting for with 1.6, plus a few small bug fixes. As usual, it is highly recommended that server ops get the new version.

Later this week we will be releasing a couple new game types for Tribes. Both these game types were developed by Dynamix employees, on "spare time". They are the popular "Hunter" by Tinman and "Rabbit" by Eric Lanz. There may also be a third type, but it isn't quite done and we may hold it for later (it's a game called "Freeze" that Mitch Shaw has been working on). The reaction around the office to these new game types has been really fantastic (I've never heard as much loud cursing as when the Tribes team plays Hunter). I think they will be very popular with the Tribes community at large.

GamePen previews Revenant trying to gauge this upcoming action/RPG's potential as a worthy successor to Diablo.

BZ2.COM has just posted word on a playable demo of Battlezone 2 that's now available as part of the 3DGameGauge suite that turns out to be an older compatability test of the game. This isn't exactly approved of by Pandemic Studios, though they aren't going to the extent of trying squash distribution. They would like to stress the age of the material, however, and stress that this test is not really a good indicator of the game. Here's the post from Pandemic, courtesy of BZ2.COM:

"The material that is being circulated was an old compatibility demo which was released to selected sources several months ago. It was never publicly released. You are certainly welcome to take screenshots and distribute them if you want to, but please bear in mind that the graphics and technology seen in the demo are old and do not represent the current state of the game. (For instance, the pre-alpha framerates are far from optimized, and many graphical elements have been changed, altered, and updated. Many people don't realize that code governing performance isn't implemented until much later in the game development cycle.) While we won't try to prevent you from posting the demo on your site, we would rather that you didn't because it is old material. If you choose to put it up, please make it known that the material is months old.

A new version 1048 of the Q3Tweak Q3Test tweaking utility is out, adding a benchmark option, and fixing a few bugs. Thanks Voodoo Extreme.

Hercules Computer Technology Dynamite TNT Drivers page has Windows 95/98 Drivers and Utilities, Version 1.71.10208 that offer release 2.08 of the Windows 95/98 software for the Dynamite TNT, TNT2, and TNT2/Ultra. Thanks XP-FroDaddy.

Halflife HQ sends along news they got from Jenni at Valve on the status of the Half-Life patch that was expected yesterday, saying it was delayed, and is now expected "midweek."

Saw on Voodoo Extreme that Computer Games Online has posted some Vampire screenshots. Also the Vampire The Masquerade - Redemption Screenshots on Computers R Us look familiar, but they say they are mostly new.

• Ken at Gamecenter sends word of his Athlon vs. Pentium III Shoot-Out.
• There's a new Glossary of 3D Terms on ACID REIGN - Homepage of the Blitz Engine written by Richard Turnbull, the Blitz Engine programmer.
• A new version 1.04 of 3D Exploration a 3D viewer with Open GL hardware accelerator support. Thanks GameDev.net.
• Thresh's FiringSquad's Bitboys at Siggraph looks ahead at the Glaze 3D.

Dynamix' Dave Moore sent along an email to add some info and corrections about the Starsiege TRIBES tweaks posted in the story that follows. Here's the scoop:

Just wanted to drop a note about the news items re: TRIBES OpenGL tweaks. Some of these are out of date since PC Gamer's articles are written (I believe) several months before actual publication, and this article seemed to be based on a version of TRIBES that included only beta OpenGL support (1.3 or 1.4). I thought I'd correct a few items that have been changed in later patches, and add some info on what some of the other flags do.

$OpenGL::Enabled and $OpenGL::overrideLights: Both of these are obsolete flags now, OpenGL is always enabled in the latest patches, and dynamic lights are always enabled. There is no longer any need to create a special autoexec.cs.

$pref::OpenGL::NoAddFade == false: This flag should always be false unless you are attempting to run TRIBES in OpenGL mode on a RIVA 128. This prevents the additive effects like the plasma bolt from fading slowly out, as the RIVA 128 lacks the [SRC_ALPHA, GL_ONE], blending function. Because of some limitations in the TRIBES 3Space engine (and time constraints), we were unable to modify this to work with existing blending modes on the RIVA 128. (i.e., [GL_ONE, GL_ONE], with a constant color GL_MODULATE texture environment.)

$pref::OpenGL::NoPackedTextures == false: You should let the Options::Video setup for your card set this for you. (It probably will anyway...) This value should only be false on nVidia architecture cards. The packed format we choose is optimized for the RIVA 128/TNT/TNT2, and is not necessarily well supported on other cards. 3Dfx cards have trouble with this packed format evidently (the format takes a non-optimal path through their drivers).

$pref::waitForVSync: This flag has no effect on OpenGL, it exists only for Glide. We have no control over whether a SwapBuffers() waits for VSync or not in OpenGL, this is driver dependant. (You might check the advanced properties tab for your video card in the Windows Display Settings, this option is sometimes hiding in there...)

$pref::mipcap = 13: This has no effect on OpenGL in the latest patches, only on Glide. 9 is the last meaningful value for textures that shipped with TRIBES. Since we constrained ourselves to 256x256 textures for Glide support, textures can have at most 9 miplevels. This option is very useful for increasing Glide performance on 4/2/2 Voodoo2 and Voodoo1 cards though.

Overall, the tweaks from PC Gamer are quite good, and still relevant in the latest patches. OpenGL power-user types will find that the most effective speed modifications are in the pref::interiorLightUpdateMS and pref::dynamicLightDistance variables. (Particularly if dynLightDist is set to 0, and intLightUpdateMS is set to something ridiculous like 10000000.) $pref::OpenGL::Use32BitTex can give a rendering quality improvement on cards that support 32 bit rendering, though as noted in the PC Gamer article, this won't really help if your card is set to 16 bit mode.

...dave

Some assorted things of interest to Starsiege TRIBES fans, most of which I noticed on Datumplane::Starsiege:

• Tribes.de has a new version of TCon, a program that allows you to connect to a Tribes server via a URL.
• A new version 1.4 of the Orion Mod is out, the read me has all the skinny you need on this one.
• A few new HUDS: Crunchy's scripting site has new versions of TeamScore HUD which requires ObjectiveTrak, which was also just updated to version 2.0 beta 6, and the new version 1.4 of MissionInfo Pack. There is also a new version 2.3.2 of Objective HUD. There is a new CTF-HUD on Rayn's Scripting Archives, and while I'm at it I'll mention another good resource for TRIBES scripts and HUDS is Cowboy's Tribes Scripting.
• Planet Tribes has some screenshots up of a Star Wars mod for TRIBES in the works, and to cap this whole long post off, they also have word of a post on Planet Starsiege excerpting a recent issue of PC Gamer magazine, giving some easy TRIBES performance tweaks:

"...You will then need to browse to your tribes\config folder and create a file called autoexec.cs (if it doesn't already exist). Then open it up and enter these two lines into it:
$OpenGL::Enabled=true;
&OpenGL::OverrideLights=true;

Also, within the console.cs file, the following lines should have these values:

$pref::OpenGL::AlwaysRGBA="False";
$pref::OpenGL::NoAddFade="False";
$pref::OpenGL::NoMipmapping="False";
$pref::OpenGL::NoPAckedTextures="False";
$pref::OpenGL::NoPalettedTextures="False";
$pref::OpenGL::Use32BitTex="True"; (only works if your desktop is in 32 bit color mode)

Save the file and then start Tribes. Go to the options/display menu, and select OpenGL as your full screen renderer...

Now for the general tweaks... within your config.cs file, the following lines should be changed to read as follows:

$pref::interiorLightUpdateMS="20"; (smoothes things out...)
$pref::waitForVSync="False"; (if you have problems with flickering or atrifacts, set this to True)
$pref::TerrainVisibleDistance="10000"; (increases visual range in sniper-mode) (PSS Note: May be considered cheating)
$pref::mipcap="13"; (13 for TNT, lower for other cards - default is 9)
$pref::dynamicLightDistance="300"; (changes the length of the dynamic lighting)"
Depending on your card, your mileage may vary with these tweaks. Be sure to install the latest patch for TRIBES before making these changes."

Here's a Rogue Spear Weapons chart showing "what's hot and what's not," as RainbowSix.Net (where I saw this) describes it, as far as FirePower in Red Storm Entertainment's new Tom Clancy game.

Missed this one while we were gone: CNET Gamecenter's sneak peek at Halo

Saw on Adrenaline Vault News that Irrational Games' Ken Levine, project leader on System Shock 2, the first-person RPG sequel, is hosting a live chat this Wednesday, Aug. 11 at 9:00 PM EDT on the IRC server polaris.starchat.net in "the game’s official chat room." This chat comes on the eve of the game's release, as it's been announced the game will first be in stores Aug. 12. Word is: "Other developers are expected to attend as well to discuss the features and gameplay and answer questions from fans."

Damage Gaming has posted a teaser for a Q3Test movie Trintin Films is working up called Quad God. This not a hacked demo that's illegal under the Q3Test EULA, but rather a movie in a streaming Windows Media Player format, which I'm told is okay with id Software to distribute.

There are three exclusive Gothic Screenshots on GA-Source showing off some action in the dungeons ("Bring out the gimp!") of Gothic, an upcoming action/RPG from Piranha-Bytes.

Just for the record, I would like to formally announce that Blue's News fully supports the AMD Athlon as well, and you can freely use one to browse this site, should you be lucky enough to have one. Where was I? Oh yes, some slightly more significant announcements on that same subject:

• 3dfx Announces Support for AMD Athlon Processor.
• Matrox Announces Support for AMD Athlon Processor.
• Microsoft Announces Software Support for the AMD Athlon Processor Platform.
• American Megatrends Announces Support for the Seventh-Generation AMD ATHLON Processor.
• Nexar PC Manufacturing Announces Support for the Next-Generation AMD Athlon Processor.
• ALi Announces Plans for Chip Set with Support for the Next-Generation AMD Athlon Processor.
• Compaq Unveils Most Powerful Home Internet PC Featuring Just-Announced AMD Athlon Processor.
• NVIDIA's RIVA TNT2 Ultra Enables Powerful 3D Graphics for Seventh-Generation AMD-Athlon Processor.
• Systemax Introduces The New AMD Athlon Processor To Its Systemax PC Product Line.
• Phoenix Technologies Supports AMD Athlon Processor, AMD's Seventh-Generation Microprocessor.

Still more on the new AMD Athlon Processor. If there's a shortage of systems to start, it may be a result of all the review units out there:

• Computer Games Online reports AMD's Athlon pressures the competition.
• LostCircuits looks at the Athlon, calling it "The One that came after 'Deep Thought'."
• AMD - News Release #9988 declares "New 650MHz AMD Athlon™ processor sets the pace in clock speed and delivers the highest x86 performance for cutting-edge commercial and consumer software applications." Thanks Hot Hardware.

3DsoundSurge's Outcast interview talks with Infrogames' Gil Damoiseau (sound engine development), Franck Sauer (sound design), and Lennie Moore (music composition), about the sound and music in Outcast, the third-person action title currently available in Europe, with a US release expected sometime soon.

GA-Source talks to Dave Taylor on Red Hat's IPO asking a few economically-worded questions of ddt, formerly of id Software and Crack dot Com, noted as a Linux supporter long before he recently joined Linus Torvolds' TransMeta.

Power Gamerz interviewz Ryan "Ridah" Feltrin talking with the Xatrix programmer talking a bit about Kingpin, technology, and game design.

Freespace2.org has posted a quick interview with Jasen Whiteside, lead artist on FreeSpace2 concerning headway being made in fixing the feature that allows players to join a game already in progress.

Kokak's Doom Page has a new version 0.9 of DoomGL, a Win32 OpenGL port of the publicly available source code from id's classic shooter Doom. Thanks Billy "Imp" Wilson.

A couple of bots plucked from the AI loving pages of the Bot Epidemic: The Gladiator Bot page has a new version 0.96 of the Gladiator Quake II bot for Linux. The release includes the source code, if you want to try to add the Gladiator to another mod. Also, in anticipation of the reportedly imminent new version of Half-Life, TheFatal has released The Jumbot, a bot for Half-Life (thanks Bot Epidemic). The problem, according to the page, is that you probably will not be able to get it to work, and it definitely will not work exactly as it should, until the new Half-Life patch comes out (which was originally expected "hopefully" yesterday (story), so it may be out soon). Apparently it can possibly be made to work now though, so if you're feeling adventurous, you may want to take a shot. Either way, the mod apparently doesn't work at all under Windows NT.

The Kingpin Beta Testing page has a new version 1.17 Kingpin beta. Thanks Gangsta Billy at Voodoo Extreme. Here's the deal on the latest update to Ridah's ongoing beta patch to Xatrix' life o' crime game:

+ Invisible player models for unknown female skins
+ Chasecam observer mode
+ New "Push Download" tech for faster file transfers
+ Make download system backwards compatible with old servers AND old clients

+ Server's send "deposited" to GameSpy via "deaths" field
+ Disable CD check when enabling CD music in options

The World of Drakan, a German Drakan site, has a new piece of music from Surreal Software's upcoming Drakan: Order of the Flame, expected in stores August 20 (story). The music runs 3 minutes 43 seconds, and is in MP3 format.

If I don't keep up, I'll fall behind:

• Tom's Hardware's: The New Athlon Processor - AMD Is Finally Overtaking Intel (thanks Ryan).
• Ars Technica's: AMD's Athlon Paranoia realized.
• AMD Athlon 600 at Gamers Depot.

Drakan.Net has posted the seventh and final screenshot in their series showing off the seven dragons featured in Surreal's just-gold game, Drakan: Order of the Flame. The final shot is of the big-guy, Arokh, and as a bonus, the other six dragons are included for company.

AnandTech's QuakeCon '99 article is up, giving a look at the hardware used at the event, as well as the event itself, through the eyes of the crack AnandTech staff. The piece includes photos (including one of me, but not in the cowboy hat), and the brief analyses of the hardware includes discussion of the Athlon systems used (where we learn they were non-production motherboards), the ATI Rage Fury Pro, the G3s used in the press tourney (as well as an iBook on display), and the simply marvelous switched network supplied by Lucent and Lynksys that resulted in <10 ms pings across a network of hundreds of machines, and supported something like 112 players in a single Q3Test map.

There are four Soldier of Fortune screenshots on 3D-Unlimited showing off action from Raven's upcoming shooter of mercenary action.

PlanetQuake interviews Jake Simpson talking to the Raven programmer alternatively known as "the Gent" (or "the Gumby," if you saw him at the rodeo at QuakeCon). The Q&A discusses progress on Raven's upcoming Quake III-engine game base on Star Trek Voyager. They have also posted a write-up of the Jake's Workshop, also talking about Voyager.

This week's 10 Questions With SamHell interviews Cliff Bleszinski talking with the Epic designer about Unreal Tournament, level design, and of course, the infamous Cat-scan site.

Version 2.01 of the Direct3D Quake Viewer is now available. This is an updated release of that program that was originally released on the Microsoft DirectX site a while back. Here's a bit on what this program does: "This demo program allows viewing of Quake levels. It requires a Direct3D compatible 3D card. This program was originally written in 1997 to utilize DirectX 5. This latest version (v2.0) has many enhancements, although it has been superceded by the Quake2 version (not yet released), which has been rewritten from scratch."

The embargo on Athlon (K7) reviews has ended, so you can expect to see a bunch of those over the next couple of days:

• Sharky Extreme reviews the AMD Athlon 650 CPU, and...
• Sharky Extreme also reviews the AMD Athlon 600 CPU.
• CPU Review reviews the AMD Athlon 600.
• Ace's Hardware reviews the Athlon 650.
• AGN Hardware reviews the Athlon 600.
• FullOn3D Hardware's AMD Athlon video card shootout looks at video performance on the new CPUs, and...
• FullOn3D Hardware also interviews AMD talks to AMD's Drew Prairie about Athlon, K6-2, K6-III, Dresden, and more.
• AMD Zone's Athlon Review Prologue has "info on Athlon 650MHz at launch, pricing, clock locking, etc."
• CPU Review's Athlon/Pentium III Price Comparison is up.

Review Zone's Savage4 Graphic Card Roundup looks at the Creative 3D Blaster Savage4, Diamond Stealth III S540, Gainward Cardexpert SG4, and the Elsa Winner II.

The ClanBase 1on1 League is launching a new international Half-Life 1on1 duel league, to go along with their Quake II, Q3Test, Half-Life, and TFC leagues.

FPS3D.com's 3DCool.Com giveaway is a contest offering 11 different cooling products as prizes.

• Gamecenter's Online Gaming Services round-up offers comparisons between GameStorm, Heat.net, Kali, Mplayer.com, MSN Gaming Zone, TEN, and WON.
• As the name suggests, Configs By Request offers custom Half-Life config authoring...
• The Game Name Builder Official Homepage has a new version 1.11 of this program that can make fun names for a bunch of games, including the latest version of Q3Test...
• The Unreal Map Depot is now open for business, a repository of levels designed for Epic's Unreal...
• Speaking of Epic, Tales From The Hellmouth is a new site by Epic's Cliff Bleszinski "dedicated to exposing and sharing stories of peer and administrator abuse in the public school system." The about this site page describes the purpose for this, which is "in the hope that something will be done. If this website makes one tortured kid feel better, or makes one administrator or parent intervene in abuse, then it has served its purpose." Thanks Mongoose...

I'm back from the event actually known as QuakeCon, and quite the event it was. I was blown away by the level of organization throughout, id Software (Anna Kang, in particular), the sponsors, and the crack staff of QuakeCon volunteers (who are some of the nicest, hardest working folks you'll meet--no matter how big these events get, they still have the feel of pure "community" to me) did an unbelievable job of organizing the event, and keeping things rolling oh-so-smoothly. I had a great time throughout, as did everyone I spoke to. The Press Tourney was fun: as loony reported I lost my match (actually in the second round, I had a resounding first round victory when my opponent failed to show) 9-8 to ZyFly, so at least I didn't embarrass myself. I saved that for when I wore one of the cowboy hats that ATI gave out at the rodeo for the evening--there are a lot of folks who decided they needed a picture of that -- I'm sure the blackmail threats are on the way.

Another site has posted another attempt at hit-mongering with a "favorite news site poll" -- again, no links to it here, just my snide remark to try and encourage others to avoid these in the future.

Link of the Day: CNN - Man's attempt to get Pepsi jet fizzles. Where's the justice? Thanks devilbunny.
Image of the Day: Nothing Covers Texas Like Blue, another actual billboard from QuakeCon. Thanks crash, who is, as always, the man (after he managed to round up some Bawls, I should just make Gamecenter the link of the day to pay him back ).