the silly false assumption that the customer is always right

When will EA learn to stop being silly with all their obscene profits? 

;) 

I thought it was a bunch of crap -- mainly, another case of someone trying to make an logical argument for their personal preferences. Ridiculous arguments -- he says Half-Life establishes believability and then throws it away, after we've already seen space aliens teleporting in, shooting lightning from their fingers ... guess what they come from somewhere, maybe free floating platforms in space aren't likely but neither is riding the draft of a big fan. Finally, the author has a limited imagination regarding the range of the truly unrealistic. 

Ninety percent of everything is shit. True also in the game industry. 

100% of shit is shit.

(via Too Much Coffee Man) 

or should I just go back to sleep? :) 

i heard that hl2 was supposed to run well on ati cards, but would have trouble on nvidia ones... just wanted to confirm this. 

I'd have to replace mine, though I wouldn't miss it much. Just the money it costs.
;D 

...follow the news, they are ensuring good performance on all cards is the latest reports AFAIK. 

there was a big rumble about NVIDIA insisting they use the latest .50 drivers.

/me admits to following half-life 2 news coverage. 

"/me admits to following half-life 2 news coverage."

whats to admit? The game looks the bollocks...

As for vid card compatibility, yes on the recent benchmarks Nvida was way below Ati on the performance, but Nvidia asure us that the detonator 50 drivers will fix speed problems and the performance will match ati.

Still, (and this is just my opinion - OMG opinion kill Daz now!!!) I will being buying an ati for my next vid card, after all the shite that nvidia have been pulling recently (the 3dmark03 scam being top) I just dont trust them anymore... 

i was planning on picking up an ATI Radeon 9500 Pro anyway, but i wanted to know if this was true or not. 

radeon 9800 pro is on special offer at aria for �208 if anyones interrested, I haven't been keeping up with prices recently so not sure if this is good...

http://www.aria.co.uk 

Here is something that may interest you

http://www.planetdoom.com/

"Since we have been hearing alot of hoopla lately about HalfLife 2, Direct X9 and ATI graphic cards compared with NVIDIA accelerators, BonusWeb.cz fired off an email to The Carmack himself to ask how DOOM 3 will be affected by the difference between the two graphics platforms running DirectX 9. Here's what he had to say"

"Unfortunately, it will probably be representative of most DX9 games. Doom has a custom back end that uses the lower precisions on the GF-FX, but when you run it with standard fragment programs just like ATI, it is a lot slower. The precision doesn't really matter to Doom, but that won't be a reasonable option in future games designed around DX9 level hardware as a minimum spec."

You will also find an interview with Tim Willits 

did you ever get round to writing any Quake related articles for your site? I remember you were planning to a good while back, and i was looking forward to reading them, especially the periods/eras of mapping one... 

i still plan to write some, when time permits. 

especially the periods/eras of mapping

Actually that particular one, i would be happy for someone else to write and submit it to me for posting.

Infact anyone who feels like writing about anything related to Q1SP is welcome to do so and submit it to me. Criteria are just a decent standard of writing and also a decent length. like 1 full screen at least, not just a paragraph, so its reasonably in-depth. 

articles page

http://www.planetquake.com/underworld/oa.html

as a side note, do you think the font used on this page [georgia] should be used on all the other pages? 

Just played this, on Easy skill for some reason that seemed obvious at the time but now eludes me entirely. It ran pretty fine at 800x600x32 until I tried to tweak the settings and thence got some problems. Anyway, seems quite nice, I like the lighting and atmosphere, the first level is like RTCW meets Blade. Love the Assassin's outfit too =) However a few questions...

1. Is there any rhyme nor reason to the Knight's attacks?? I'm using the big club, and the only thing that does anything is back+attack which produces a more powerful downstroke with area effect. Other than that, is it really all random key-mashing a la Rune??

2. Is the Dark campaign excruciatingly easy on Easy or is something going wrong for me?? The enemy attacks do 5-15 damage compared to 80-100 for mine so it's just a matter of wading through shooting randomly.

3. Ummm that's it. Any more comments, views, or things I might have missed?? 

I remember us tweaking the difficulty for continous attacks, meaning that you'll have to press attack at the right time for the next swing. I don't know what we finally ended up on, but it was fairly open - so it's not exactly key-mashing, but it's easy enough for it to feel like it is.
The last swing in the sequence is a more powerful hit with an area effect, and with some weapons you get a similar thing using back+attack.
I don't think it made much sense back then, and it doesn't now... 

I thought I'd ask for people's experience playing Quake on them new LCD panels. The new ones claim to have sufficient response times for games. I just thought I'd ask before investing in one, only to find out I can't run Quake on it. 

I thought I'd ask for people's experience playing Quake on them new LCD panels. The new ones claim to have sufficient response times for games. I just thought I'd ask before investing in one, only to find out I can't run Quake on it. 

. 

Personally, LCD still feels laggy to me. Go plasma if you can afford it, but I'll be sticking with crt for a while still. 

our next speedmapping session will take place soon! It's the big 50th event, so hopefully we can get a good turnout.... if you haven't speedmapped before this is a great time to try it out!

The time
8pm GMT on Saturday, 20th September
that corresponds to 9pm UK time, or 4pm EST
This is earlier than usual so it isnt too late for the majority of people

The place
on IRC, in #speedq1 on gamesnet.net

The plan
Make a map in 150 minutes or less.
That's a longer time-limit than usual so we can get some less crappy maps this time :)
Also it's easier for first time mappers.

The suggested theme is to make a map containing water in some way. How the map uses water is up to you.

You don't have to follow the theme but it's more fun when you do :). You can make a map for singleplayer, deathmatch, or miscellaneous. I hope to see you there, it'll be fun!

Oh and I'll release the pack on sunday, in case of people missing the deadline due to being busy at the time of the session, etc. So if you want to make a map before or after the session, just email it to me at starbuck@planetquake.com