WarFlail's Archives - December 1998

Go to WarFlail's Archives - January 1999

Well I'm off to the Hopman Cup New Year's Eve Ball - quite a prestigious event (how the hell did I end up hosting a table there, then?!). I hope you all have a great New Year's Eve party, too - see you in 1999! :-)

For some time now, I was troubled by my apparent inaccuracy in Action Quake2 - there were so many times when I was sure that my shot was spot on, but it missed the target. So I did some target practice and discovered some interesting facts... click here to find out more.

I received my copy of the Hârnic Heraldry Map from Columbia Games today - oh yeah! Columbia Games produces so few Hârn-related products every year, but the quality is always excellent, so it's a real treat whenever I receive anything from them. Although a lot of the members of the HârnList discussion group have blasted Columbia's latest product (US$25 for a pretty map?!), I think it is a worthwhile addition to my collection - I find having the heraldic devices of all the great clans of Hârn on one map to be particularly useful.

Ned Kelly and I spent most of yesterday at a large LAN party at New York Ranger's place. Ranger did a terrific job organising the whole event, making sure that everyone was connected properly and even supplying soft drinks - thanks very much, Ranger, you were an excellent host! :-) Although the main focus of the party was on Quake, there was quite a lot of Quake II Death Match, and even a bit of Action Quake2, Heretic2, Starcraft and Incoming. I tried to start a server for Half-Life but without success (maybe that upcoming HL multiplayer patch will sort the problems out for next time) and if I had stayed longer (NK and I bailed at about midnight) I might have started one for Power Slide... oh well. Anyway, besides the opportunity for online mayhem at low pings, it was good to put faces to the names I often see on Net play.

Boxing Day being a rather peaceful and relaxing day for me, I've taken the opportunity to revise a few of my HârnMaster House Rules, which I've been meaning to do for ages. Check 'em out here.

For the Action Quake2 aficionados out there, I've also posted an update of my Autoexec.cfg file for AQ2. It eventually became too large and caused an overflow problem in the game, so I had to create a second file (Radio.cfg) to ease the burden. Both files are available from here.

Merry Christmas!

Sorry about the lack of updates, folks, but it's that time of year again: I've been going out practically every night for dinner parties or Christmas shopping. By the time I get home I'm generally too drunk or weary to even switch on the computer! And just look at what I've missed: in the short time since I last updated this site, Iraq was bombarded by the Brits and the Yanks for four days straight (and now the show's over) and that American president - what's his name? Clinton or something :-) - is being impeached for being a very naughty boy. Way to go.

I've been trying out the new Thief: The Dark Project demo recently, and it is truly impressive. It's a bit like a medieval Quake II, but the object of the game is to sneak around undetected and steal treasure, rather than run about at top speed blasting everyone in your path. I love how you can get your guy to lean so he can look over ledges and around corners without showing himself - I wish Quake II (and Half-Life, for that matter) had that feature! The NPCs in the demo move and behave in a very life-like manner and combat is handled extremely well. Although the demo hasn't been optimised for low-end systems (like mine), it still ran at an acceptable rate and didn't detract from the gameplay.

I can hardly believe it has finally happened! Within days of receiving the necessary OEM DLL from 3Dfx, Canopus has released a beta of their Pure3D II driver update for Win95/98, which now supports Glide 3.0. If you have a Pure3D II (or Pure3D II LX), you will no doubt be rejoicing at this development - it has taken so long. Head on over to Canopus' Pure3D II Software Updates page to download it. Still no support for DirectX 6, unfortunately.

Cail and Suislide over at the Action Quake2! site have recently been discussing the development of Action Half-Life with Valve. Now this has me trembling with anticipation: my favourite mod merging with my favourite first person shooter... Capital! :-)

There's an interesting mod out for Quake II that lets you play the game from a third person perspective. It's very small and might be worth checking out (I haven't tried it myself yet) - download the Third Person Perspective Quake2 mod from Spine Design now.

Quake II v3.20 has been released! This is said to be the last official release of Quake II. You can download the relevant update patches from Blue's News.

I find Half-Life to be one of the most addictive games I've played in ages. Many sleepless nights this week have been attributed to this excellent First Person Shooter. And now - since I am the sort of gamer who loves to experiment with performance-enhancing variables - I'm pleased to see that Tweak3D has a cool autoexec.cfg creator for Half-Life and 3Fingers has put up some tid-bits on fast weapon binds and frame rate boosts to help make Half-Life even more enjoyable. Check 'em out.

Go to WarFlail's Archives - November 1998

Back to

Note: Some links may no longer be active.

All trademarks are the properties of their respective owners.
All rights reserved. Copyright © 1998 by Bill Gant.

Back to the top