Jan 13th-15th News Archive

January 15

Note: The news is lighter today. I had a day off and decided to spent some quality time with my family.- Frank

Rage128 Rave Comments: Farther down in yesterday's news here was a comment from a MW show attendee that the Rave Quake demo on the Yosemite as done with fullbright on. ATI's Chris Bentley tells me this is not true for the official demo at MW - it was run with shadows on. He said with fullbright he gets 76+ fps with on a Yosemite *300Mhz*. I ran 55.3FPS at 640x480 Rave Quake on the Yose 400 - see the updated Yosemite Gaming Page for scores in Rave Quake at resolutions as high as 1024x768. All RAVE options were enabled for these tests and it's faster than any reported scores I've ever gotten or seen, Voodoo2 included. The page also has new Unreal scores (much higher) for the Rage128 under Unreal (using beta drivers and latest Unreal beta version, which will have Voodoo2 boost as well)-Mike.

Myth II crippled in 3DFX mode: analysis The bugs: As far as I can tell, Myth II randomly crashes entering and exiting Glide mode (or 3Dfx, or Voodoo...whatever you want to call it). This occurs with both Voodoo-1 and Voodoo-2 boards. It does not seem to be an extension conflict, since no combination of removed extensions solves it. Also, no other game that utilizes 3Dfx has the same problem on hardware/OS combos with the Myth2 bug. Therefore, it is a bug with Myth-2. [not sure if this is Frank's comments or a reader's, but based on the number of misspellings I had to correct, I hope it's not Frank ;-).-Mike]

The benchmarks: When I first got the Myth II benchmarks obtained with the Myth II FPS kit I prepared to measure the average frame rate per second in a playback sequence, I imediately noticed how bad 3DFX rendering was. The scores I received for the Voodoo I and II chipsets are inferior, barely higher that in software mode. Most of all, Voodoo I scores are identical to voodoo II scores. in some cases. As you can see below, the ATI 128 in the Yosemite performs at nearly 2x as a Voodoo II in the Yosemite. This makes me think that Myth II was developed for and with the ATI 128. In fact, Bungie apparently got cards from ATI last summer so they could tweak and improve Myth II around this chipset. [As Mike said , ATI is famous for collaborating closely with game developer-Frank] {However to imply this is some conspiricy is not realistic - Bungie knows that there are many 3Dfx owners out there that are their customers. Perhaps 3Dfx and other companies did not provide assistance in areas for Voodoo2/Mac optimizatio-Mike}

Apparently after seeing the scores below, the Glide version of Myth II was not optimized at all. The evidence of this can be seen if you compare the scores obtained with a Voodoo I or II. They are identical. Most of all, the scores with the Voodoo II at 800x600 are identical to 640x480. This by itself indicates that the Voodoo II is not responsible for the sluggish Myth II performance in 3DFX mode. [That can mean many things - including the CPU was not providing enough data for whatever reason-Mike] The reason seems to be a bad implementation of Glide by Bungie in my oppinion.

[Glide is the driver extension, not the game. They had to use std Glide calls or it would not run at all. Perhaps they did not add specific tweaks (multitexture support, etc.) for Voodoo2 but then again consider how few Voodoo 2 Cards were sold in the last year to Mac owners. With few sales during the developement stage of Myth II is it logical to expect them to optimize for it? I had reports last year of game developers that could not even get any Mac voodoo2 cards (that's why the generic drivers were made - to allow them to get PC Voodoo2 cards to worth with). We need to relax here - I'm sure Bungie will improve 3Dfx performance in future updates. The tone of this story is like some paranoid conspiricy theory. -Mike]

Other things I noticed which are really weird : go around the map and find a spot where there is nothing but landscape. Normally, when there is no animation, the frame rate should rocket sky-high (this is the case for Quake , for Unreal and for every game I saw before). But in Myth II, not at all, you will still get sluggish frame rate when nothing is moving on the screen (still 20 fps with voodoo I ). If you pan and move the mouse, surprisingly, the frame rate goes up ! Again illogical.

My personal test with my Techworks Voodoo 1 3DFX card were very dissapointing. See other scores below also.

We are missing a lot of configuration benchmarks but I thought you might want to see the results so far (If you can, get the Myth II benchmark toolkit and fill the blanks below). Note :measure the FPS when the bridge when the bridge goes UP .

Note: on all cases below, Myth II was given 65 MB of real RAM.

[This table looks bad but I didn't have time to clean it up. I'll try to do that later tonight-Mike]

Machine type	Software mode, refresh 60 Hz 640x480	ATI Rage II (800x600)	ATI Rage Pro (Nexus card) 8 MB (640x480)	Voodoo 1 50 Mhz swap default refresh 75 Hz	Voodoo 1 60 Mhz swap default refresh 75 Hz	MacMagic 8 MB (640x480)	Game Wizard 12MEG Voodoo II (640x480)	Game Wizard 12MEG Voodoo II (800x600)	ATI 128 GL millions of colors
Apple 7600, G3 330/132/512K cache, 43 Mhz bus	15 fps			20.2	20.5		19	19.05
Apple PowerMac G3/333 128 megs of RAM, 1MB cache, bus 83 Mhz,				27.91
Apple 7600/132, 256K cache	6						9	9
Apple G3/233 (66MHz bus), 96 MB RAM [RageII or RagePro??]		6.70
300Mhz G3 Minitower [RageII or RagePro??]	17.14		20.00 (16)
Apple Yosemite G3/350									34.29
PowerCenter Pro 240 (604e/240, 1 MB cache 60Mhz bus)	12						17	16
PowerTower Pro 250 w/224 MB						14

(scores in parenthesis are in millions of colors when not indicated)

I went today to my local computer store here in Japan to take a look at the new Yosemite. I was surprised to see in the specsheets given there a mention by Apple saying the Yosemite with ATI 128 was outperforming the Voodoo II chipsets in Myth II, also saying that this proved that the Mac was superior as any PC for gaming! In big blocked letters! The marketting of the Yosemite as a superior machine for gaming was necessary for Apple. (Remember what Jobs said: We want the Mac to become the platform of choice for gaming). Apple needed to show some benchmarks to back up their claims. For this, they were looking for one of the best game around, like Myth II. I am sure Apple would have love to show Unreal running much faster with the ATI 128 equipped Yosemite than other machines equipped with the voodoo II chipsets, but it did not. (Note: the new ATI drivers and Unreal beta brings the ATI 128 chipset on par with the Voodoo II but not outperforming it in frame rate like Apple would like maybe). [And note the Unreal Beta has 3Dfx Voodoo2 tweaks as well - finally adding complete multitexturing support I hear (Rage128 also has this feature)-Mike]

Then came Bungie.. and Myth II. Crippled implementation of glide [coding] was the best opportunity to show the ATI 128 Yosemite beating any PC out there running Myth II with the Voodoo II chipset. What Steve seemed to forget is that a very large number of PCs will ship with the ATI 128 card built-in also ...;-) [So what's the excuse on the Rage128 being faster than the Voodoo2 in Quake? ;-) -Mike]

Myth II - all levels saved Films: I put a file containing the saved films for all Myth II levels here. Most of them have no casualties. Might be useful to take a look at them if you are stuck :-) Grab the pack here.

DMBronxdeluxe (Dark Metropolis) update: Rich sent info regarding his latest creation Dark Metropolis:

"Hi Frank,
Man, I wish you could see what I've done in the last 2 days - it makes the DM level look like lego in comparison. I'm not bragging, (well, a little ;) but it really is comparable to a real time resident evil 2. I've upped the poly count & detail on some buildings (doubled it in most cases) and used walls & fences to restrice the field of view and keep the poly count down and create a horribly claustrophobic back street atmosphere..and I've added dustbins, rubbish & litter that blows in the wind. Stat FPS never drops below 250, which means that it ain't gonna run on cheap Pc's/Mac's. I've also added some 'zombies' - well, gibbed bots with no AI and slow walks. The way I've restricted the players view means that I can have up to 6 of the little fellas on screen at once with NO frame rate hit, which is pretty cool. I'll post a zipped version of 'level one' of the TC in the next couple of weeks, and you'll see why I'm so damn excited about this. It really is at least twice as good looking as the best bits of the DMBronxdelux level with some really,really intricate architecture which is so far ahead of anything else out there for Unreal that no comparison is possible... It looks like NOTHING else I've ever seen in realtime 3d on the PC...(and only 6 new textures have been used) I just can't wait until Voodoo3 gets here.. imagine what games will look like with that & a 700mhz processor.. Unreal running at 1024x780 @ 90fps? This year should be a good one for hardware! Later -Rich

Note: At the present, This unreal mod/map is not compatible with Mac Unreal 1.02b2. It will with the latest Mac Unreal soon to be released by Westlake Interactive.Make sure to save it to try it as soon as the new patch is available !

Take a look at the latest screenshot from Rich - Here Brilliant work!

Westlake Interactive comment on OPEN GL implementation for older games:

Q: I was just wondering...is there any chance of updating some of your older games (such as Quake) or your current ones (Unreal, Tomb Raider series) to take advantage of OpenGL when Apple releases the specs?

A: Quake- probably not, we've long finished our maintenance on the original Quake, and with Quake2 and 3 coming out it'll probably be less in demand. Unreal- possibly, I might do it just to see how well the OpenGL drivers are working, since the GL support in PC Unreal is supposed to be much improved in 221. For games that already support both RAVE and Glide, there isn't a lot to be gained from OpenGL. Speed won't be quite as fast until the drivers are more mature, and unless the game speaks GL natively its a lot of work to add GL support.- Mark Adams President, Westlake Interactive (http://www.westlakeinteractive.com)

If you want to efficiently search Mac newsgroup with sherlock, take a look at this page. Great idea!

January 13 th and 14 th

Myth II secret levels (warning SPOILER)

1. On the Murder Of Crows (Soulblighter's Camp) level, you should try this after you have rescued the Deciever and Soulblighter has been banished from the camp. Instead of going in the southern exit that the Deciever takes, move your units north to the supposedly empty area. Kills the captured wights if you want to. There is a dune leading to another exit which takes you to a secret level much like the secret level in Myth 1.
2. In the level "Along a Broken Path" when you come to the creek, instead of crossing have a couple of archers follow it walking in the oppositedirection from town. You will see a rock in the middle of the creek with three frogs. Have your archers shoot the frogs until they turn into what looks like green rocks.Then, complete the level as normal and when the stats screen comes up, select "Next Level." I think you will enjoy what you find. ;-)

Connectix CEO Roy McDonald told MacWEEK that their new Playstation emulator will ship to retailers as soon as the packaging is done.

TIP: Jeff Hirsch says that to get PlayStation games to play at all bit depths in your Yosemite, you need to turn off the ATI Rage 128 driver in favor of the ATI 3D extension installed by VGS. [ATI 3D is a standard extension on the Yosemite - I have it and never installed VGS. I was puzzled why it was included on the Yosemite.-Mike]

SONY will not sue connectix according to this WIRED article.

Mac Gamer's ledge posted exclusive Futurecops tips recently. Here they are if yoiu missed them:

• F2 F1 F4 F3 = Reload shield
• F2 F1 F4 F3 F3 F4 F1 F2 = Blue player => black
• F2 F4 F1 F3 F1 F3 F4 F2 = Reload weapon 0
• F4 F3 F1 F2 F4 F3 F1 F2 = Reload weapon 1
• F2 F1 F2 F4 F2 F1 F3 = Reload weapon 2

These passwords have to be entered by using the F10 and F1 -> F6
keys:

F10 has to be pressed while pressing any keys between F1 and F6.
F10-F1 to F10-F4 are keys for entering a password itself
F10-F5 is used to validate a password (make it work)
F10-F6 is used to reset a password

Once a password has been typed, you can validate it again as many
times as you want (or until you reset it to type a new one)"

Status on the Map of the Week page: I decided to wait until Westlake Interactive's release the new Mac Unreal patch before posting posting further maps. At the moment, all the new maps are incompatible with the 2.20 PC version of Unreal.

Next Generation offers preview of Bungie's Oni: Next Generation Online has a preview of Bungie's upcoming game, Oni.

Unreal Open GL drivers in the work! Tim sweeney mentionned in a small interview to TotalUnreal that Epic is now developping Open GL TNT drivers for Unreal. Drivers for other cards that support open GL should follow right after. Check it out at http://totalunreal.questgate.net

What does this mean? (I'll let Tim Sweeney explained)

"Speed: Reducing state changes. Adding options to reduce the amount of dynamic textures sent to the card (this has been a huge source of slowdown on TNT). Supporting more compact texture formats. Rearranging some high-level rendering code to be optimal for OpenGL.
Reliability: Using a more broadly supported subset of OpenGL (glVertex3f, glTexCoord2f), and maintaining a list of 3D cards and driver versions that Unreal is known to work on. Having the correct driver version is vital, because the Unreal OpenGL code (old AND new) works on hardly any 1+ month old drivers, since they all had to be updated to fix bugs that Unreal exposed, largely in texture management and resolution switching.
Visually: I'm not doing much here (other than speeding it up), but there are some new tricks to improve visual quality with 16-bit frame buffers.
-Tim"

Apple has more info on OpenGL at http://www.apple.com/opengl/.

I am still looking for MacMagic, ATI rage pro , Voodoo II and ATI 128 benchmark with Myth II. Download the Toolkit I prepared and send me your score. As soon as I get enough data , I will post the results. So far , the ATI 128 is leading over all the other chipsets in Myth II.

Following John Carmack's comments at PlanetQuake on the Macintosh as a gaming platform (Carmack is the presidet of ID software (makes of Quake II and III ) , MacKido did an almost "Freudian" analysis of of the man .. Take a look, it is a must read imo.;-) [Carmark said some things that need to be told (after 10 years the OS is not native, and lacks modern features, etc.). His comments are blunt but accurate in most cases, and he has far more experience at hardware/OS/3D than any one of us that writes a web page. The MacOS at the user level is far better in many respects than any other but we have to get OS/developer issues out in the open if they are to get addressed. Anyone that thinks OpenGL isn't a massive improvement in Mac 3D should try Lightwave 3D before and after the OpenGL patch. Night and Day difference in speed and looks far better as well. And that was just the software accelerated version - the coming hardware enabled version is twice as fast I'm told. OpenGL is not perfect but it's a major improvement overall in my opinion. It already has provided Mac owners with far better Lightwave performance and something we'd not ever have gotten otherwise - Quake II and Arena. "Beautiful" is the comment on Quake Arena from those that have seen it. And get this - I hear there may be a Mac version of Half-Life in the works.-Mike]

Matt Burch new multiplayer 3D space sim game called Exobattle is available at http://falcon.cc.ukans.edu/~mburch/exobattle/. Matt plans on releasing all the source code for it for free."This is my way of trying to increase the number of cool Mac games out there, by letting people with a good knowledge of C++ get a head start on game development." he said.

Are you holding to get a G3 upgrade for your Mac before knowing if Mac OS X will be supported ? MacOS rumors said that from Apple sources, MacOS X server should run fine on older Professionna PCI-based Powermacs (7x00, 8x00, 9x00 series). I myself was told the same thing 2 months ago from a friend at Apple. [Maybe last year's OSX Petition did some good-Mike ;-]

Awesome Quake Mod called challenger quake is out. ChallengerQuake is a mix of Coop and DM. Everybody plays against everybody, but you don't get frags for killing other players, but for killing the monsters which are in the levels. Should be great fun to hear screams like: "That was my monster you d$*§#d s*#@%r -ehrrr- i'll kill you for that!" Quite interesting isn'it ? grab it at http://www.converted2.com/creators/cq.htm

Nate Birkholz from Macsoft comments on Voodoo II and the ATI 128:

"Here's my whole take on it, especially after talking to the ATI folks and the MicroConversions people:

The Voodoo 2 chipset is a 3D gaming set, and it is geared for this alone. The ATI set is 2D _and_ 3D, and it does both pretty well. The ATI 128 is a fantastic new addition to the Mac world. Dark Vengeance looked and ran fantastic on it, with almost no glitches. It comes in the new machines and is decidedly superior to the Rage Pro which has been the best available ATI chipset to date, giving better RAVE game performance and great 2D support, as well as being capable of accelerating 3D in a window, such as for various 3D-rendering software applications. If you are doing a lot of productivity, the ATI 128 may well be the best card for you if you need to choose one or the other. You will get higher resolutions with greater pixel depth in all applications running in a window, increasing the amount of a page or object you can see at once. Games with RAVE support will run faster and look prettier, and the cards will support OpenGL when it becomes applied in Macintosh games. The Voodoo 2 cards, and the Voodoo 3 cards when they become available this summer, provide better performance in most applications when Glide is enabled, however. An independent test was performed during the show pitting the ATI 128 versus the Voodoo 2 card. In the opening castle flyby sequence, the ATI 128 scored a very respectable 19 frames per
second. The Voodoo 2 card scored 36 frames per second. [Update: With the latest Beta drivers last night I obtained 34.66 fps at 640x480 and 25.13 fps with a Rage128 in a G3/400-Mike] The Voodoo 2 chipset works with textures a bit better, too, and it does things like explosions a little bit nicer IMO. [Note - the Voodoo2 is limited to 256x256 pixel textures, and 16-bit color, where the new 2D/3D chips like the Rage128 and TNT are not. This may be a bonus in future games like Quake III which run in 32-bit color mode-Mike] The ATI 128 will get better quickly, however.

In talking with people from Apple and ATI, they are planning on optimizing a lot of things, and the system and the drivers will work together better as more info comes in from users and the programmers can get some more work on the drivers. There was actually improvement in the card's performance over the course of the show as tweaks were made to the drivers in response to software testing. [Chris Bentley never sleeps I think - he made tweaks as late as Wednesday and is continuilly working on improvements-Mike]

The Voodoo 3 is coming in June, and that will raise the bar even more; 3Dfx vowed to increase their involvement in and support of the Mac market, meaning the drivers and hardware will be developed for the Mac with 3Dfx's full cooperation. Voodoo 1 is still an extremely good card, and they are now very affordable and they will provide good acceleration for a long time as well.

In other words, it's going to get interesting around here. So my advice to people at the show was based on what they use their computer for. The ATI card is more versatile, and I recommended it to people who do a lot of productivity work on their machines. The Voodoo 2 is my current suggestion for people who want to do mostly games, because it still provides the best performance. It's kind of like comparing a shovel and a hoe -- the shovel is a bit more generalized, but a hoe is better for its specific job. Ubergeeks like me will get both cards, of course, and that may be an option for some of you. Gardeners will have a hoe and a shovel.

In the balance, both cards are great, and either one will improve the performance and appearance of your games. Let me just state that these are my own personal impressions of the cards; MacSoft does _not_ officially endorse _any_ card, and we will continue to support as many schemes of acceleration as possible for a long time to come. I would recommend going to ATI's website http://www.atitech.ca/, MicroConversions' website http://www.microconversions.com and Village Tronic's website http://www.villagetronic.com/mac/index.html for more information on the various acceleration chipsets available -- I am not, by any means, a hardware guru, and my information comes from these folks.- Nate"

Nick posted more info about the coming ATI 128 card line-up

"I had a brief conversation with Ray Swartz about the Rage 128s and he said that all three boards offer the same performance after you take into account the video RAM, which is hardly surprising but good news for VR fans out there. He also told me that ALL of the 128 cards will work in the new G3s 66Mhz slot and that the card in there will work in any 33Mhz slot (it is a Rage 128 Orion). This is very interesting to me as I was missing the VR aspect which I can now get by selling the one in the G3 and replacing it with a VR. He said the main difference between the 33 and 66 slot is the texture loading speed (which makes perfect sense). He told me that they hoped to ship the cards in late Feb/early March (something about Apple buying all the ones they had...)-Nick"

[Since the card speed is the same - only data fetched from disk or main memory should be faster on the Yosemite. As reported at the main site yesterday, the retail cards will autodetect the 66MHz PCI slot in the Yosemite as well-Mike]

MP 850 new 2D drivers available at http://www.villagetronic.com/mac/index_support.html. Villagetronic says the pinkness will dissapear and some copybits functions will be faster. I can't wait to see how the card will perform with the 3D drivers. Softhut mentions on their web site that the 3D drivers will be available around February 1st. If you bought this card, I suggest you subscribe with IE explorer to the download page. This way , you will be informed immediately as new drivers are released.

Banshee card from IXMicro They expected the street price to be around $250 and for it to ship in a couple of months. The driver appartently works fine in 2D and 3D but is not quite working with both according to a source who attended Macworld. [Rumors say this card is being licensed from another mfr.-Mike]

I apologize for forgetting to mention yesterday that the new Unreal map by RichE is only compatible with Unreal 2.20. If you installed it you probably had an error message about "shared something" .As soon as Westlake releases the Mac version of the patch, you will be able to apreciate his gem.

Other Site Games/Unreal Info:

• VOrb Review
• Game Wizard Preview pages - framerate comparisons, screenshots and more.
• Site Game Related Articles Index