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2:58 PM Registry settings for NVidia's Alpha2
OpenGL drivers
11:17 PM http://www.blizzard.com/beta/betaopp.htm 3:52 PM I'm a little confused as to why whatever horrible codec was used to compress the intro was used at all though. I'm pretty sure that with a standard codec like Indeo 5.0, much better video quality could have been acheived. Considering the baseline machine that Quake 2 as a game is targeting, I seriously doubt playback performance would have been an issue either. I'm dyign to see the intro as it was meant to be seen, so I actually dashed off an e-mail to Paul Steed at id about getting a hold of a higher quality version of the intro. Hope something comes out of that. On to the game. The use of textures and lighting in Quake 2 is much improved. That is to say, not everything is green and brown. Yes, beautiful blues and reds are in there. This does a lot to add life to the game. Architecturally, the levels are detailed and interesting, with tons of little nooks and crannies to hide in and corners to surprise people around. It's clear an effort has been made here to create an environment, not just a series of hallways to run through. Rooms look different, and when you get to the command center, you'll know it, because there will be a big computer screen in front of you and a satellite dish outside the window. Hmm, what else...the enemies have several nice death animations and are animated much better than they ever were in Quake. I still wish id would use some form of motion capture. Trust me, when you see motion capture, you know it. It just looks different...human. It's amazing to see the first time you look at a game like Tekken 3 and watch the expressive fluidity and motion of each fighter. No human can match that by hand no matter how hard you try. Enough with the single player stuff. Multiplayer is much better! First of all, you can actually choose your character, with a choice of 15 male skins and 10 female skins (female! Unheard of!). I love this little detail...it adds more of the individualization in the network game that makes you different from other people. I'd like to make myself a cool skin but that will probably take some time. Next...game balance. Yes folks, gameplay balance is back. No longer do you have to play "grab the rocket launcher" like Quake. Every weapon has its own role and you won't have to worry about somebody dominating because they are the only one who has the rocket launcher. In many respects the weapon balance seems to have taken a big hint from Doom/Doom II. This is a good thing as far as I'm concerned. The levels were unfortunately too big for even 8 people on the local network here. We may just need to browse through the levels to find some suitable ones. Well, enough about that. The point is, Quake 2 is more of a game than Quake ever was. The entire feel of the game lets you know that there was a concerted effort here to produce a game from start to finish and not some revolutionary game engine...although that might be a part of it :-). Id software takes a hint from their mistakes, and that's worth more than the Doom/Quake franchise to me anyday. 1:21 AM
8:35 PM 4:42 AM StarCraft info http://www.blizzard.com/star/chat.htm 2:30 AM Meanwhile, I was looking for drivers to go along with the cards. Turns out Winnov didn't have them on their site anymore...hmm, why? I posted to the newsgroup asking why. The official line seems to be that some company is using their drivers illegally to support their own products and so that's why they pulled them off. Fortunately, a kind soul pointed me to the beta site where I was able to grab a copy of the latest drivers. Now, however, it seems that they don't have any intention of letting people download drivers without any hassle at all! You'll have to be a registered customer and you'll have to call to get access to the drivers. If you aren't a registered customer, you'll have to pay $49.99 to get a service contract! Ouch...screw that! I got e-mail from a fellow person interested in the Videum AV and he managed to talk to Winnov's tech support and ascertain that there was, in fact, about what they said was a "50/50" chance it would work in an SMP system. I don't really know what that means, but it looked like I would have a shot. So, wonder of wonders, today I got the card, plugged it in, and wow! It works! Let me tell you, that was a big load off my back. The applications and configuration software which are included are very full featured. You have a choice of using Winnov's own hardware compression as well as several types of standard RGB/YUV formats. Time lapse and stop motion capture capabilites are in the software. You can capture at up to 704x576 (although 640x480 is probably what you are likely to use for convention's sake) and a slow scan option is provided. I imagine that slow scan does the same thing as the high quality still capture option on the Rainbow Runner, which takes several images and averages them together to eliminate random noise. The configuration software allows you to associate video settings like saturation and brightness with each video input, of which there are 3: the composite, S-video and MXC input. The MXC input is for the TV tuner and Winnov's special remotely controllable cameras. You can also associate specific audio inputs with each video input and even apply weird video effects (Metallic is probably the most fun...it lets you scare the other guy over Netmeeting). My friend tried using a VCR temporarily as a TV tuner. The frame rate was not great, but passable. I should note he only has a Pentium 133. And, of course, he was only using the composite input and not the MXC input, but as far as I know I don't think that should make any difference in the frame rate. Obviously it doesn't seem to be as good as, say, a lot of your standard overlay or integrated solutions in 95, but then again, this is NT, and the fact that support exists at all is a major leap. Finally, the Winnov Videum AV uses no IRQ's or DMA channels. Talk about easy to install! I can write more but I think I'll let it rest until tomorrow. The NT support is very simple and works, and for $69 it's definitely a steal, not to mention $49! I also need to talk about the ANC-500...
4:35 AM
10:34 PM A letter from the StarCraft team 4:39 PM 11:26 AM Microsoft and Silicon Graphics define OpenGL Joint Initiative Low cost Pentium II, low cost chipset 3:30 AM |
