March15th - 21st, 1999 News Archive

March 21

Official 1.0 MP850/Glide Drivers Released: Villagetronic sent a note that the 1.0 release is available at the MP850 Drivers page. Frank mentioned Friday he was taking a few days off - until Monday I thnk. -Mike

March 18

I've added a page of MP850 Glide Performance and comments - including a tip on setting the tweaker to English. It includes several readers (and Frank's) performance tests and comments on image quality. (Frank is to provide more performance test results in tomorrow's news). Intial reports are 3dfx Quake doesn't work and audio dropouts are a common thread (possibly the driver or 565 pixel conversion in thousands colors is cycle/bus hogging)-Mike.

VT MP850 Glide Drivers! [From today's main page news - The wait seems to be over as Tobias Bertschinger just sent a URL to the Glide Drivers for the MP850. [As of Sunday the file had been removed - see above for official VT Mp850 drivers page link-Mike] Since it's not a VT URL, hopefully these are for real. Frank has a card to test and can comment on them. Looks like I need to get one now :-) -Mike]

[Update - the main page news has test results in Unreal, and a note on audio popping/Myth II-Mike]

Mesa Open GL drivers

Until Apple comes out with its officially-supported version of OpenGL, there is another solution: the freeware library Mesa. I hope that the Logicware folx will test Quake 2 with Mesa, since Apple may be slow in coming out with its officially supported OpenGL extensions.

URL: http://www.mesa3d.org/

The home page of the MacOS version is:

URL: http://valerie.inf.elte.hu/~boga/Mesa.html

It implements not only OpenGL ("Open Graphics Library"), but also the libraries GLU ("Graphics Library Utilities") and GLUT ("Graphics Library Utility Toolkit").

MacMesa OpenGL is implemented on top of QuickDraw 3D RAVE, which means that MacMesa can be used with any 3D card for which RAVE drivers exist. It also supports 3Dfx.

GLUT is a sort of wrapper library for OpenGL that handles windowing, messaging, and so forth. It's not particularly fancy, but it is OK for the simpler sorts of projects. It's cross-platform enough so that a GLUT program free of OS-dependent code can be recompiled for the MacOS with *no* rewriting. -- Loren Petrich

I hear that Apple this week released their beta OpenGL SDK. Every attendant of the Computer Games Developer Conference received a copy on CD in their registration packs. Also, Apple was showing Quake 3 Arena running on MacOS using this SDK at the conference. It looked great.

Thresh at FiringSquad has a recap of the first day of GDC (Gaming developers conference) taking place now : here are some quotes

"The first thing we saw was Quake III, literally everywhere. "

"ATI pushed Rage128, Matrox introduced their next-generation bump-map crazy G400, and 3DLabs was readying Permedia 3 for launch. S3 was present with Savage4, and even Apple was present."

"I eavesdropped on their speech [Apple] and heard the obligatory bogus Bytemark "faster than any Pentium II" spec, the slightly-less unrealistic "Rage128 more than twice as fast as the fastest P2 with 3DFX" chart, and so on. I mean, G3 is a great processor and a great machine, but let's not get carried away with utterly asinine BS, please. I think the G3 is great for a lot of things (including 3D gaming), let the product stand on its own. " [I couldnt agree more here. Imo, Apple should stop using those Bytemarks scores. -Frank].

There is a lot more in the report, like Threash impressions on Quake III [Thresh btw, is considered THE best Quake player in North America], impressions on Team Fortress Classic and more.[ Thanks to Lucian Fong for the link]

New Quake 1 map from ID software: Tim Willits (Level Designer id Software) (Satan)'s .plan file has been updated.

Here is a summary of the update made:

" I had an old Quake 1 map lying around so I thought I would release it. This map was originally built for the Quake 1 arcade game, a conversion of "The Edge" for Quake2. I added some teleporters to it in hopes of speeding up
gameplay and help prevent camping. For those of you who like to play Quake 1 I hope you enjoy this. Thanks, Tim"

iMagic Online Releases Dawn of Aces for Mac :

press release:
"iMagic Online is proud to announce its newest online MEGAplayer flight sim Dawn of Aces, now available for the Macintosh!. You can download Dawn of Aces at no charge.
The current release of Dawn of Aces for the Macintosh is a "preliminary" release. Much of the offline play has been disabled, and some minor graphic elements are incorrect or missing. However, the game is definitely playable. It is being released both for testing purposes and to determine whether or not development should continue. If you wish to see development continue, the best thing you can do is play online!
The system requirements for Dawn of Aces Macintosh are:

* Power Macintosh running at 150mHz or higher
* 32 MB RAM
* 20 MB available disk space
* Color display capable of running Thousands of colors at 640x480 or better
* Open Transport
* MacOS 8.1 or later (Or earlier systems and Appearance Manager 1.0.3)

Dawn Of Aces is based on the WarBirds engine but has a completely different flavor. The flight arenas carry a more historic feel. The terrain is based on France with a front and aerodromes on both sides. Unlike WarBirds, which has four non-distinct countries (purple, red, green and gold countries), Dawn Of Aces has two teams. A pilot flies for the Allies or the Central Powers and has only the appropriate aircraft available to his side.
The online play is free for a limited time so grab Dawn of Aces and start playing! Just enter any name and password and start flying!

ftp://ftp.imagiconline.com/pub/doafiles/mac/doapre13.sea.hqx [game]

ftp://ftp.imagiconline.com/pub/doafiles/mac/SE5Aart.sea.hqx [art work]

ftp://ftp.imagiconline.com/pub/doafiles/mac/doa1024.sea.hqx [art work]

Doom II, Batman total conversion released for the Mac :

Batman: Doom II features:

* A total replacement of DOOM 2 characters plus a few more (20 new characters).
* 24 new levels with hundreds of new textures.
* Incredible new physics not seen in any other wads.
* 9 new weapons.
* ...and much, much more!

Download Batman: Doom II for the Mac (6.1 MB)

Aliens versus Predator Trailer  : There's an Alien Vs Predator movie trailer posted on 3DFiles.com.

Unreal Tournament Movie & More GameSpot UK has an Unreal Tournament Demos and Downloads page up. It Includes a UT Video Clip, a Playtest report and more, The video is an 80-some MB monster in MPG format that talks to Epic Games' Jay Wilbur and shows off gameplay. There is also an HTML version of the interview with Jay Wilbur of Epic. [Interesting comments on the new weapons]

Chris Hargrove has an all-new entry in his loonygames series "Code on the Cob".  This new issue focuses on game logic, and actor code.  If you're interested in checking out the mind of a 3D game programmer, make sure to check out this series.

Gamecenter has a poll asking "Which game would make the best movie?
 

• Doom
• Grim Fandango
• Half-Life
• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
• Metal Gear Solid
• Thief: The Dark Project

How about Unreal ? ;-)

March 17

John Carmack president of ID software, has updated his plan file. He gives his impression on the new Silicon Graphic box and talks about the LCD panel screen. Interestingly, he had this to say about the new G3 design "The system tower is better than standard pc fare, but I still think Apple's new G3 has the best designed computer case. " take a look at the rest of his plan file here.

TeamFortress2 Announcements for PC , use of a new meshing technology.: Valve LLC, the makers of the blockbuster PC game Half-Life, announced today that they will be using Intelās Multiresolution Mesh Technology for their upcoming title Team Fortress 2. This technology will allow Valve to create a "scaleable" game with highly detailed, realistic looking models that automatically adjust performance to the gamerās PC.

Wheel of Time Preview PowerVR Revolution's Wheel of Time Preview is up offering a look ahead at Legend's upcoming Unreal-engine RPG, as well as an interview with Legend's Glen Dahlgren.

Logicware (Quake II, Redneck Rampage, Aliens vs Predator etc..) now maintains a hotline server so you can download their latest demos and patches. : hotline.logicware.com

New Mac Unreal server is available: It is called Blade and the address is 129.101.142.35. Thanks to Steve (Masai) for the tip.

Deer Avenger feedback:

"I got the demo, and here's my verdict:
It's basically a gag game, a game that makes fun of the deer-hunter genre of game -- and deer hunters. In map-view mode, you look for beer cans; I'm not sure that many hunters will enjoy being stereotyped as litterbugs. And you attract your prey with calls like "Here's your Viagra!" and "Come and see The Nuge [Ted Nugent]" and "Someone left their pickup truck door open" and "I'm naked and I have a pizza".

Its gameplay and graphics are not particularly fancy, and if it reflects the original with any faithfulness, then it should not be surprising that hardcore gamers have reacted with disdain to "Deer Hunter" and similar games.

In the demo, you only get the M-16 rifle, and it takes me about two or three shots to bag my prey -- and I'm not always successful. -- Loren Petrich"

Deer Avenger demo can be downloaded here [Large Direct Download link].

The Idiots of IWS Interactive, Randy Soare and Gary Randazzo talks about the new mac games in 1999. "New Mac Games: The '99 Drool List". You will find news on an extra extraterrestrials adventure called Experience, new title in development called Drakan from Surreal. This high flying action/adventure drops you in a beautiful Myst-like fantasy world, but in real-time. They also mention a title under development called Outcast from Infogrames. This game uses a new technology that only a few game engines have started to exploit. The technology is called Voxles [I hope this is better than the 'Voxel' technology used on PC games for some time. VoxelSpace2 was better but still nothing groundbreaking-Mike]and it allows incredible amounts of detail in on the fly rendered worlds. I hear though that this game should push the hardware to its limit.

IMG has a preview of Carmageddon II soon to be released (April I heard)

New USB Wingman Mouse from Logitech aimed for Mac Gaming. "The 3-button WingMan Gaming Mouse was designed to meet the needs of competitive gamers and features an extremely fast report rate. The higher the report rate, the more often and accurately the mouse sends its position and button status to the host computer." I don't know exactly how this could benefit Unreal gameplay for example but I wouldn't throw away your 4-buttons Kensington Mouse just yet ..

MacVertigo gives away a copy of Mac Starcraft.

Inside Mac Games will be hosting a Mac Games chat today on the IMG web site. The chat will begin at 10 PM Eastern/7 PM Pacific. They will be discussing about discussing the Starcraft release, demo, amongst other things

EBWorld reports that Blizzard Released Starcraft For The Macintosh (MAC): "Blizzard Entertainment announced that it released Starcraft, one of the most critically acclaimed games of 1998, for the Macintosh. The company expects the product to start hitting retail shelves within a few days. Get the whole story.

Kevin Lee sent a note saying that the Scouting Report web site has been revamped:

"Hey, Just want to let you know that The Scouting Report, the newest site dedicated to the scout class of Team Fortress, has received a face-lift. Believe me, a lot of hard work went into it after my hard drive getting toasted (must remember to backup). Also, a shout out to all my fellow MacFortress Clan buddies, keep up the good work. (We're moving up to the silver division after holding the TC position for some time).

The Scouting Report (made with Mac, of course) http://scouting.quakeintosh.com/

Luke Malish comments on Starcraft demo "connection lost" message reported yesterday :

" One of your readers commented that he had been playing a battle.net game and received a message that said that his connection to battle.net was lost. I have received this message while playing too. AFAIK, Starcraft only communicates with battle.net every once in a while after a game is started to check for player drops and stuff like that, so you can still keep playing a game if your battle.net connection is lost. I don't know if a game that looses connection with battle.net while it is still being played will count on your battle.net record or not though."- Luke Malish"

Scott Miller, President Apogee Software 3D Realms (Duke Nukem ) comments on the new Wing Commander movie:

"I was just asked via email by one of the key producers behind the Duke Nukem movie what I thought of Wing Commander. Here's the answer I sent to that person:

"I saw it, and it rates as a good Saturday morning kid show script -- except that it even bored my two kids! The special effects were good enough, but the story and dialogue was embarrassing. There are so many easily fixable problems with this movie it's just a real shame. This movie makes the endless stupidity in Stormship Troopers look good!"

I could elaborate further about the dumbness of this movie, but it's best to forget the nightmare and focus on the coming space movie that really matters... - Scott Miller"

March 16th

Westlake Interactive on Deer Avenger Demo:

The Deer Avenger Mac demo is now available, check your favorite Mac news sites for links and mirrors. We sent off the final CD to Hypnotix late last week so the full version should be available from Simon & Schuster Interactive soon.

Deer Avenger is a hilarious parody of the hunting games that have been hot sellers lately, written by Brian McCann, a staff writer on the Late Night with Conan O'Brien Show. You get to turn the tables on the hunters, and play as a deer that is armed and dangerous.

The Deer Avenger Demo (8.2 MB) is currently available at the MGL Hotline server. Check their web site for the info on how to get access to their server.

Update on Quake II for Mac: Nate Trost, leader of the MacQuake II project at Logicware, updated his plan file with additional info on the development of the game:

"Things are progressing nicely, I've mostly been taking care of all the little details and issues that need to be dealt with during a conversion. Most of the exciting stuff is out of the way. Q2 is pretty solid at the moment, I spent about an hour or two a day now playing on the Internet (DM, CTF, Lithium, etc). My rocket launcher skills slowly improve..."
"I think I've finally got savegames working the way I want. Unlike the PC version, savegames on the Mac won't break if the code is revved, so if we have to ever do a patch, you can keep your savegames. It turned into slightly more of a pain then it first looked. Porting PC games are usually painful in the load/save department due to the evil known as function pointers. One of these days I'll write a proper rant about function pointers and sloppy coding. (grin)"
"I've gotten a lot of questions about graphic drivers. I really don't have any control over which cards get supported by OpenGL. Quake 2 uses OpenGL, so there _must_ be GL drivers for a card for Quake 2 to use it. Right now the only chipsets I know for sure that will be supported are the ATI Rage Pro, Rage 128 and the Microconversions Voodoo2. Anybody else doing drivers please get in touch with me." [This means Villagetronic]
"The march towards beta continues. Hopefully we'll start going into Activision QA by the end of the month. Thanks to all those who expressed interest in beta testing, but we are not looking for external beta testers for Q2."
"Did I mention I've been playing in lots of Internet games? :-)"

MGL on Release date and Mac version of Q3Test: They contacted ID Software and they were told that a Mac version should be available but no release date was given. "Probably, yeah." was the response given by John Carmack..

ATI 128 cards delayed : Bottomline, one of the site sponsors mentioned that the availability of those products has been pushed back to April 12th.

iMac Voodoo II owners feedback about Quakeworld 3DFX problems: [Update: Eric Rybski sent a guide to Configuring Quakeworld for iMac/Voodoo2 owners -Mike]

"Hi Frank, Well I did my test on Quakeworld on my iMac with 3dfx and it seems to run fine. No problem. I believe that after I got Regular Quake running okay, Quakeworld just fell into place. The only problem I am having is when I try to run Quakeworld finder. When I run Quakeworld finder I get this error message "Cant find Quake data. Make sure id1 folder is in the same folder as Quakeworld. If you are using Quakefinder make sure the correct app is selectd in QF's preferances dialog" Now I am using the demo version of Quakefinder (as I havent registered it yet, naughty me I know) but the preferences are set correctly and the id1 folder is in the right spot. The only thing I can think of is that I did delete the gl folder at the advice of someone else to try and get quake running with 3dfx and it has rebuilt itself. If anyone has a clue as to whats going on I would surly like to know. I am also using the 2.3beta1 version of Quake world and I'm not sure if its the latest. [Yes it is the latest-Frank] Thanks Nathan Bishop"

Emir Quandus has a comment as well on the issue:

"Dear Frank, Not owning an iMac I took the liberty to throw in my two bits' worth at the Quake issue. As far as I know you shouldn't trash the actual glquake folder but the contents of this folder. These are the 'meshed' files that 3dfx and RAVE versions of Quake create when first starting up. If there is no 'glquake' folder present, the application will just scatter these files in the id1 folder. Deleting these files now and then is useful when you experience texture errors or hangups as described by Nathan. It's also useful if you use third party add-ons with your Quake application. These extra levels need to mesh their own files to display them correctly in accelerated versions of Quake. Again this is only done once, so after starting up your extra level (by dragging the appropriate folder to the Quake application) you should allow Quake to remesh it's own files. This procedure helps to prevent the 'potatoebag 'effect when displaying models or skins written by others than id. Beside from this you should also trash your Quake preferences file from the System prefs file before switching from software to 3dfx Quake. As obvious as it may seem, I had the impression from Nathan's note that this may have been overlooked by him. I don't know whether this will fix the Quake issue in general on iMacs with the GameWizard, but I'd expect that it should in many cases. In my particular case, a 9600/350 with the 12mb GameWizard it did help to get Quake 3dfx and all add-ons to run in glide-mode.Best regards, Emir Quandus"

I got also 3 other replies from rev A or rev B iMac owners who said they were running Quakworld without any problems.

StarCraft demo feedback:

"Hi Frank, I played the demo and it's a must for download! It was great to finally play this old ;-) game on my 7300/200. It runs very well in both single and multi. One interesting thing happened on battle.net--I was playing against one other player and we both recieved "Your Connection To BattleNet Has Been Lost" but we were both able to continue and even message each other! I wonder if all the Mac play stuff has been fully ironed out or if it's network/ISP/modem related? [good question, I would think it is a bug left in the game-Frank]

So, my initial reaction is WHEN'S IT ON THE DARN SHELVES... But I've waited this long just to read the words "gold master" from Blizzard, so what's a few more days huh?

Oh, one thing about all the noise concerning this massive delay. My take is: Yes, Blizzard f**ked up in their timing whether it's their fault or their porting people, but it's still a damn fine game and I'll buy it, play it, enjoy it and not think about the fact that PCers have had that ability for a year now. We [Macs] need to support any and all Mac game development and quit bitching at, but keep the pressure on, developers and publishers. IMHO.- Geoff Cottorone"

Charlie Wilson wrote about a fix to the freezing problem after qutting Unreal on an iMac Voodoo2 machine:

"Frank, I had a similar problem with 120 megs of ram allocated to unreal. The problem went away when I updated to the newest version. No more freezes, etc. after the advanced options screen. Best Regards,- Charlie Wilson"

Duncan Girvan also wrote back saying that Westlake Interactive advised him to try it with the base extensions. This fixed the problem he said.

Hank Devos comments on RAVE vs 3DFX rendering:

"I just wanted to voice my opinion on Unreal in RAVE acceleration. I hear a lot of people complaining about the frame Rates in Unreal when in RAVE rendering.....Well Unreal was not designed from the beginning to take advantage of RAVE but rather was just tacked on when the port happened.This is probably why the Voodoo 2 still runs better,it has been supported since the intial design of the engine.I think if someone was to do the oposite,Build an engine completely arround RAVE technology and then tack on the Glide rendering option later I bet that the Rage 128 would absolutely kill the Voodo2 in that area.- Hank Devos" [well, don't look too far..check Myth II ;-)-Frank ]

How to solve the tearing effects and stuttering [Pauses] in Unreal running in a B&W G3/ATI Rage128:

"I too get stuttering in Unreal with a RAGE 128, but I found that if I flush the cache often (hit tab, then type "flush"), the stuttering decreases. [you can also bind a key to this for faster flushing-Frank] That should fix one of the problems. The tearing effect is due to the new "DisableVSync" option of 1.02b4. Here's what is says in the Readme.

š DisableVSync- normally on for all Rage cards, this speeds up the game by immediately drawing a frame as soon as it is ready, and not waiting for the monitor to synchronize with drawing. Turning this on may cause some flickering or tearings of shapes on the screen.

š PageFlip- uses special video hardware to display frames. This removes all flickering and tearing but is not quite as fast as when off or with DisableVSync on. Turning both PageFlip and DisableVSync on will cause one or the other to cancel out.- Jake Beck"

The Darkside of Voodoo 3?: the guys at 3D Core have posted an article covering the Voodoo 3. They also have an editorial that talks about the darkside of Voodoo III. Read and make up your own opinion on the upcoming Voodoo 3 chipset from 3Dfx

3Dfx also announced that they will launch the biggest ad campaign in graphics chip history which will include an unprecedented number of TV commercial spots. One of the spots is online at their website on a page titled 3Dfx Interactive 3dfx 1999 Ad Campaign. Thanks Voodoo Extreme for the info. The ads will air on select networks such as MTV, Comedy Central ESPN, Fox Sports, TNT, and USA Network and some prime time spots during the NCAA basketball tournament on CBS.

Btw, if you are into car games and own a Playstation, checkout Colin McRae :The Rallye. I have been playing it A LOT in the last week and it rocks. IMO, it is the best car game since GT Gran Turismo. The physics are very well respected, so well that you actually feel like you are in the car. Check it out !

March 15th
[ There was no weekend update]

Starcraft Gold Master & Demo! Blizzard released Mac Starcraft demo. It is around 30 megs in size. For more info about the release go to Blizzard's Homepage. The demo can be found there [28MB Download!]. I welcome your feedback on it. [Today's main site news has a reader comment on it - Mike]

Planet Unreal has a growing list of Unreal 2.19 (Mac 1.02b4) compatible maps.

Unreal Map Blood simple pack problem fixed:

It came to my attention that there were some serious problems with the Blood Simple Map Pack--crashing problems and other nastiness. I've investigated the problem and to my chagrin realized that certain changes made to the pack between its "prerelease" and "release" phase, changes that were designed in fact to make it more convenient to install, broke all the maps. Long story short, unzipping, repackaging, and rezipping the maps caused bad weirdness. I've returned to the drawing board and have redone the pack as I did in the prerelease. I've simply zipped togther all the zipped maps togther into one working archive.

By the time you read this a working copy of the map pack will be up. It supercedes all previous versions. I am truly sorry for this regretable mistake. I apologize for your lost time downloading (and crashing) and hope you give Blood Simple a second try.

Grab it at: http://u.unrealintosh.com/downloads/BloodSimpleMapPack.zip

Randy Geurt, Unrealintosh

iMac VoodooII/Unreal problem: An iMac owner with only 64MB RAM writes:

Hi, I have a Rev. A iMac with the MicroConversions Voodoo2 card with 90000K allocated to Unreal and 64Megs of physical RAM. (It doesn't matter what the Virtual Memory is because it will do it anyway.) Whenever I come back to the Finder (ie: Advanced Options or quit) my computer freezes as soon as i touch the mouse. It doesn't do this with any of my other games, just Unreal. I need help bad! -Duncan Girvans

If you know a fix to this problem, let us know. I suspect it might be caused by lack of real RAM.

iMac VoodooII/3Dfx Quake fix:

"Hi Frank,
I was the one that left that message on the mac action games newsgroup that you put on the Accelerate your macs unreal page about the iMac Quake 3Dfx problem I was having. I actually got the 3dfx version to work. Here is what happend. Someone wrote me back on the newsgroup and told me I needed to delete the glquake folder inside the id1 folder. Which I did and it still wouldnt work. So just messing around I launched the Rave version of Quake and Changed the resolution to 800x600. I quit and then tried the 3Dfx version again. This time it launched fine and I was playing 3d enhanced quake. I really dont know if it was deleting the file or changing the resolution in the Rave version. (are they connected somehow?) Anyway It works great now and I really like it. I have not however tried QuakeWorld 3dfx yet but that will be my next project I'll let you know how it goes. I happen to have a rev A iMac by the way.- Sincerely Nathan Bishop

If I remember, quakeworld will not run maybe on the imac-Voodoo2 as a reader mentionned recently here. It may be due to the fixed monitor refresh rate on the iMac and the Quakeworld application itself. If you were able to get Quakeworld to run in 3DFX mode on your iMac-VoodooII, let us know.

[I've heard trashing the glquake folder (forcing a rebuild of it) is a common fix for several Quake problems or oddities. It's also recommended I hear when switching between RAVE and 3Dfx modes/cards in some cases (which sounds like problem above).-Mike]

Quake III benchmarks posted by Id Software with the newest 3D cards: [ they will have soon the results with the Voodoo III I hear]

Brian Hook, programmer at id Software, posted several test results they obtained with Quake III in his plan file :

"We ran some benchmarks tonight testing out some of our newer optimizations for Quake3, and decided to compare the top four accelerators that we consider relevant: Voodoo2 (for obvious reasons), ATI Rage128, and the NVidia RivaTNT and RivaTNT2.

We tested 640x480x16bpp very thoroughly, since this was the lowest common denominator among the accelerators, however we also made a few tests at 1600x1200x16bpp to test fill rate and 640x480x32bpp to test likely operating conditions. Tests were run on a best case machine, a P3/500. (All tests were also done at fullscreen and with vsync disabled if possible.)

640x480x16bpp (Thousands of colors):

• RivaTNT2 - 50.7
• Rage128 - 48.1
• RivaTNT - 48.0
• Voodoo2 - 44.7

640x480x32bpp: (millions of colors)

• Rage128 - 47.0 (16-bit textures- there's a bug in the ATI Rage128 that makes it only download 16-bit textures. They will have this fixed shortly.)
• RivaTNT2 - 43.7 (32-bit textures)
• RivaTNT - untested
• Voodoo2 -N/A [Can't do millions colors mode-Mike]

1600x1200x16bpp (16-bit textures):

• RivaTNT2 - 18.1
• Rage128 - 15.1
• RivaTNT - 11.7
• Voodoo2 - N/A [Can't do this resolution-Mike]

Comments:

I'm really really really REALLY amazed and giddy at how fast the Voodoo2 performed. John and I were absolutely dumbfounded at the performance we saw, which was just phenomenal given that it's fairly old by accelerator standards. Major kudos to 3Dfx's OpenGL team for improving their driver as much as they have recently. I wish we had managed to test the Voodoo3 we have at 1600x1200, since it should have performed phenomenally well because of its strong fill rate. Unfortunately I "upgraded" the BIOS on my V3 and it's not feeling very well right now. But if extrapolation proves correct, the V3 may actually prove to be the fastest board of the lot even at 640x480, since it's 38% faster than the V2 on a PII/300 and thus could be that much faster on the PIII/500. Once my board is healthy again I'll put up the numbers.

You actually don't notice much of a visual difference between 1600x1200 and 640x480 believe it or not. I think 640x480 is sort of the sweet spot still, but I could see gamers bumping up to 1024x768 when this resolution essentially becomes "free".

I plan on doing a very comprehensive set of benchmarks (hopefully with Permedia3 and Savage4) after Q3TEST has been released.

Finally, props go out to the OpenGL guys at ATI and NVidia (especially NVidia, which has shown a strong commitment to OpenGL for a very long time and who are one of the pivotal figures in making OpenGL a viable option for developers and players alike). NVidia has always had a very fast (and just as important -- robust) OpenGL driver, and their hardware has always been top notch. The Rage128 is giving TNT and TNT2 a run for their money, but we won't have anything definitive until actual production parts and drivers are available.

Note: the demo that this was tested on was an actual recorded demo of a very very violent game of deathmatch with about 7 players in a restricted space, so this should be actually be more aggressive in terms of performance requirements than a real deathmatch would be in actual game play. What this means is that Q3 should have higher average frame rates on modern systems than Q2 did a year ago, which is a good thing. In addition, Q3 is far more scalable than Q2 was, and should run on Rage Pro and Permedia2 fairly well (it will be ugly, but it should still be fast and playable). - Brian Hook, Id Software

[he recently added new comments about Voodoo II in SLI mode with Quake III:]
"Went and bought two STB Black Magic Voodoo2 boards and put them in an SLI configuration. Tested out at a little over 36fps, putting it in the same ballpark as a single V2. However, since you can't disable vsync in an SLI configuration, it actually runs SLOWER than a single V2 since it's formed to vsync. So at this point I think the V2 is driver limited at 640x480, not fill limited. When I cranked the res to 1024x768 the performance dropped about 19% even though the number of pixels over doubled, so they're definitely throughput limited. So, unfortunately, at this point a V2 SLI won't buy you much, if anything, with Q3 until 3Dfx's drivers are optimized a bit more."- Brian Hook

Mac Gamers Ledge reports that Interactive Magic will release Dawn of Aces next week. Dawn of Aces is a new online flight combat simulator based on World War I. Here's the press release:

Interactive Magic, producers of the World War II simulator WarBirds, is proud to announce that Dawn of Aces will be released on the Macintosh simultaneously with the new revision for Windows. Dawn of Aces allows players to pilot 10 different World War I aircraft in an online environment. Using Interactive Magic's MEGAplayer technology, up to 300 players can test each others' mettle in a single air arena! Aircraft include 9 different airplanes, including the Fokker Triplane and the SE5A, as well as the first player-controlled lighter-than-air aircraft available in a flight simulator, a Zeppelin! Dawn of Aces also includes player-directed artillery, with spotting from Zeppelins or two-seater airplanes.
Macintosh programmer Russell Mirabelli is particularly excited about this new release. "The new aircraft, particularly the Zeppelin, make Dawn of Aces a truly unique simulation. This is too cool for words."

Mac Game Databases now available: checkout MacSport site as well as GameDB. Mike is now trying to set up our own game review database. We will let you know when it becomes available.

Star fighter 1.6 updated: In Star Fighters, you make your choice from 6 Star Fighter space ships, each with it's own unique powers and draw backs, and blast off! Your in for a challenge as you choose 6 levels of difficulty that are guarenteed to test your reflexes. Your mission, to destroy your opponent (CPU or human opponent). Use torpedos, tractor beams, cloaking, lazers and many other things at your disposal! And you can also go 1 on 1 with another player. take a look at a screenshot here. Download it ! (note: The program is shareware )

Canopus Officially Drops Graphics Boards: Pure3D mentions that they officially confirmed that Canopus has decided to cease the Graphics Board portion of their business to concentrate on digital video editing products. Current cards will continue to be supported through the life of their original warranties. [Some say this is a fallout of the 3Dfx/STB exclusive deal on Voodoo3 cards, or just more likely in my opinion, the intense competition has driven consumer PC video cards to a point where there is little profit for companies that made superior designs like Canopus did. Many PC owners just buy the cheapest card (Banshee 16MB cards are as low as $89 on the PC now). Canopus made some of the best 3Dfx and TNT cards on the market, with innovative 'reverse passthru' designs for no video loss with Voodoo1/Voodoo2 cards, onboard fans, and very good drivers. They will be missed.-Mike]

Q3 vs. Unreal Tournament vs. TF2: There is a multiplayer showdown at U-Games.com : Quake 3 versus Unreal Tournament versus Team Fortress 2. Read it to find out who is going to be the next king of online muliplayer.

errata : Dan Daranciang , Contributing Editor at VersionTracker wrote saying he was the actual author of the following quote " If you play Unreal on Won servers, Bob Van Burkleo (Dan Darancing instead of Bob V. Burkleo ) reminds us that by utilizing some Java applets, it's fairly easy to find out who's on a server, what their score is, and some other"...voila :-)

[There were no updates for March 13th and 14th]

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