Small Site Additions
I’ve added a little bit to the space under the menu bar on the left. First up is a request for people to hire me, with a link to a page asking the same thing and offering two forms of my resume for possible employment prospects. This will probably be expanded a bit in time if I don’t find some work fairly soon through more conventional job-hunting efforts. Second up there are a few sites listed there that are on my daily reads list. If you see a site you’d like to see there, or if you run a site and you’re a friend of mind and you’re disappointed it’s not listed there, don’t despair, as that list is far from done, and it will grow over time. That list of sites also doesn’t include the two sites that have their buttons slapped on either side of my site title banner.
3dfx vs. the Glide Emulator Crowd
I went to check the latest news at 3DNews.net and noticed this poll they were running about whether or not 3dfx is doing the right thing in shutting down the web site of one of the Glide Emulator authors, along with a snippet from said author. I immediately checked Glide Underground and discovered that 3dfx has sicced legal counsel on almost all the Glide Emulator authors, and the ftp site which hosted the downloads for Glide Underground has had to remove all the files. Glide Underground has all the details on this, including copies of the e-mails sent from 3dfx’s lawyers. *GROWL* I find it particularly interesting, though it’s possible it IS just coincidence, that this happens shortly after a couple of the emulators actually start reporting usable results on PC games, rather than just with UltraHLE.
Attention: Marius
Yes, they’re out, but not the 3500 yet. If you’re going to get one, please tell me you’ll get the 3500. The TNT2s will be out soon though – are you going to want one of those too, or are you abandoning the as-yet-unreleased TNT2 Ultra?
(ERG-MAD.COM)
Two New Voodoo3 ‘views
First, TarLung e-mailed me about a new Gamespot Voodoo3 review. The e-mail amused me, in that TarLung says, “Given your feelings towards 3Dfx I wouldn’t have brought this up, but the reviewer mentioned this in his review:
“So, on a high-speed Pentium II or Pentium III system, there’s no clear winner in performance. The TNT2 offers a more robust feature set. With TNT2 cards slated to ship in mid-to-late April. A Voodoo2 owner looking for better performance might do better to wait for one of those products.”
“On a K6-2, the story is different. 3Dfx’s early work with AMD is paying off, with Voodoo3 way ahead of both Nvidia-based cards. Although Nvidia is working on 3DNow-enhanced drivers, 3Dfx enjoys a clear lead. So unless 32-bit rendering is a critical path item for a particular application, K6-2 and K6-3 users are clearly better off with Voodoo3 today.”
There you have it, another good reason to stick with Intel processors. Second up is a brand new Voodoo3 3500 Preview by Thresh’s FiringSquad. This preview gives a good overview of things leading up to the new top-end Voodoo3 3500, including a summary of 3dfx’s products from the original Voodoo Graphics up to their new toys. One thing I found interesting in the article that I’d forgotten about previously is that multitexturing capability was designed into the original Voodoo chipset, but wasn’t included in the original Voodoo Graphics due to cost restrictions. This to me means two things: that the original Voodoo was (and I haven’t disputed this point, despite the reputation my views on 3dfx seem to carry) one helluva good piece of work. It also further tends to reinforce my opinion that 3dfx really has NOT innovated much from their original Voodoo, and are relying more on leveraging the Glide API and name recognition (their $20+ million dollar ad campaign) than on innovation and superior product design. For 3dfx to win back my desire to own their hardware (away from NVIDIA) their next product after the Voodoo3 better be damned remarkable, AND will have to blow away the NV10.
3DGN’s Far From Ultimate Challenge Poll
It seems my editor Rick is determined to outdo my own Pointless Polls. Last time, they polled people on the merits and differences of orgasms and frags in Quake, and this time they’re dragging me into a showdown (for the record, I’ve sucked at Shooters ever since I moved back to Texas and had a lack of frequent competition and practice) against the staff of another major gaming site. The catch is that 3DGN is letting you, the readers, pick which gaming site is going to receive our challenge to a Quake 2 tournament by voting on a poll there. Here’s the spiffy release I got from Rick about it:
“Why waste time playing the game yourself, when you can watch people you don’t even know play it!? You all know that 3DGN is pretty wacked-out, but now we’ve finally gone over the deep end. We actually think we’re so damned good at games that we’ll challenge the best there is! And lose! Badly! Now we present to you a poll of gaming sites (we just picked them out of a toilet), and the unlucky winner will get a challenge from us to play in Quake 2 Tournament. There will be demos, screenshots, flying cats, possibly even have guest announcers! So, who do you want us to fight? We might win, we might tie, or we might get sorely whipped, but it’ll all be up to you.”
Personally, my vote is going for Thresh’s FiringSquad. I’d like to be able to say I’ve even played in a game with Thresh (yes, I know, dubious geeky honor there), and I still owe CalBear for the last thrashing he gave me in the original SC beta test when he demonstrated advanced Marine & Tank-fu on my poor zealots. So, get on over to 3DGN and vote!
New Lost Scrolls Diablo II FAQ
My bud Smoke’n'MirrorZ has added something new to his AlterNet’s Diablo II Crypt: The Lost Scrolls and now has a FAQ up with information that was previously in the NAQ (Never Asked/Answered Questions) list, but has now been answered in the latest Diablo II Webmaster chat. The Lost Scrolls also has a sneak peek of other information contained in the chat that will be explored in more detail over the next few days, and of course, as always, has the wonderful interactive Skill and Spell trees.
All Female StarCraft Clan
There’s a new all female StarCraft clan that was recently created named Mistresses of Blood. The new clan “is dedicated to searching out women players from all walks of life and giving them a unique opportunity to meet others like themselves while promoting fun and fair play!” Go check their web site out and help support this new all female clan, as we can never (in my opinion) have too many active female gamers. So many guys tend to be real jerks to women in online gaming (or simply refuse to believe that they’re really women) so I’m happy to see anything that encourages more female gamers.
Source:StarCraft Infoceptor
3DGN MechWarrior 3 Demo Review
3DGN has a new demo review of MechWarrior 3 up. My editor there, Rick, e-mailed me with this nifty release about it:
“This game has been in development for a while, and that can be either a good or a bad sign. Sometimes it means game companies are honestly concerned with the product and are working at making it the best it can be. Other times it means they’re lazy. Find out which is true for MechWarrior 2 in 3DGN’s newest demo review. Actually it’s MechWarrior 3, but 2 rhymed with true better.”
Yes, I Really Do Work at Tech-Base
Yes, with much evidence to the contrary, I actually am one of the staff members at Tech-Base. I made an effort to justify that position today, and actually spent some time this morning playing Newshound. Before any of you yell at me for seeing some of the news there cross-posted here, it’s stuff I’d post here at any rate because I like it or support it.
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