Nuclear Monster

  • Today, I just received my copy of the OpenSolaris Bible by Nicolas A. Solter, Gerald Jelinek, and David Miner. While the post office only dropped this off today, I’ve been frequenting my local bookstore to read this book several times over the past week. To be honest, I haven’t yet finished the book’s meaty 971 pages, but I’ve read enough that I feel confident in telling you: I love it.
    (more…)

  • Battlefield 2

    Battlefield 2 has been updated again, Patch 1.50 Beta 2 brings these changes from Beta 1:

    • Consensus to revert to 0.3 second delay between jump and prone – Fixed
    • Mouse wheel acceleration on jeeps and APC’s – In Test
    • Mouse wheel acceleration on parachutes – In Test
    • Falcon controller prevents joystick controls being assigned to work especially on jets and helicopters. Falcon always acts as primary controller for pitch and roll. Resets to Falcon at the start of every round. – Fixed
    • The jets on Highway Tampa were replaced with attack choppers in 1.50 – Fixed, Highway Tampa is now as it was in 1.41
    • The graphics for Highway Tampa are the same as Mashtuur City on create a local match in the menu and load screen. – Fixed
    • Picking up the kit of a player who disconnected causes crashes – In Test
    • Audio settings do not always save after clicking APPLY – Fixed
    • Registry Version remains at 1.4 after Update 1.5 is installed – Fixed
    • BF2OpenAL.dll was version 1.1.1.0 – Fixed – Updated to version 2.1.8.1
    • ch_gas_station collision mesh on Dragon Valley was inconsistent with other gas station buildings – Fixed
    • MEC artillery piece on Operation Clean Sweep changes to the USMC’s control when they capture the Airfield flag – Fixed
    • Challenger2 HUD icon was incorrect showing M1A2 HUD icon instead – Fixed
    • Road to Jalalabad has PLA FAV spawn in place of a MEC FAV – Fixed
    • Dragon Valley Chinese artillery used default respawn time instead of 360 seconds as other artillery uses – Fixed
    • Bizon (PP-19) had no delay time after weapon switch – Fixed (this now has a delay of 0.666)
    • F35B had a lock delay of 1.5 compared to 1 second lock delay of other aircraft – Fixed
    • Incorrect camo Humvee was being spawned in Taraba Quarry – Fixed
    • UH-60 (Black Hawk) guns had 0.25 splash damage setting, down from 3 making it difficult to hit infantry. – Fixed (this is now set to 1.5 to improve the UH-60’s usefulness while not allowing it to dominate)
    • It was impossible to pass a claymore unless an engineer disarmed it first. – Fixed (players can now go prone to pass the claymore)
    • Allow BF2.exe to use more than 2Gb RAM on machines that support it – Fixed

    Download the 1.3 GB monstrosity via Fileplay.net.

  • 1984: The masterpiece that killed George Orwell | Books | The Observer.

  • Duke 3D

    Shacknews reports, and Joe Siegler confirms that 3D Realms is kaput:

    Originally, I had written some lengthy article on the passing of 3D Realms, but it wouldn’t really mean anything if you need to be informed of their accomplishments. Suffice it to say, they were at the top of the game with Duke 3D’s 2.5D features that I had never seen in anything prior. Even today, the only game that is really comparable to Duke 3D is Serious Sam, and it cannot hold a candle to the personality in Duke.

    Two of the most prominent developers to work on the open-source code released by 3D Realms (Duke 3D and Shadow Warrior, mainly) are Jonothan Jonof and Ryan “icculus” Gordon. I’ve gotten their comments on this (all links are added by myself):

    I was shocked to hear they were shutting down. George has always been really good to me personally, and I’ve had a lot of fun working with their games…Duke, Prey, Shadow, and even Kroz. It’s the end of an era.

    -Ryan “icculus” Gordon

    It’s unfortunate and a little sad, because I was quite looking forward to playing Duke Forever. Still, work will continue on the ports as I get time to devote to them.

    -Jonathon “JonoF” Fowler

    Thanks to them for their thoughts.

    3d-realms-team

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  • A lot of webmasters such as bloggers or webcomic authors have fundraisers from time to time. It’s usually for something like a new computer (they are upgrading so they can better bring YOU content. How benevolent!), or some other piece of electronic equipment, or maybe even a medical procedure.

    This practice is of course self-indulgent bullshit. If you need money for something, go get a job and save the money yourself. Shaking coins from your readership like a piggybank at the threat of suspended content or hiatus is a crass move indeed.

    Unless you have a really good reason, that is. Like me.

    via Andrew’s Blog: Need for the Steed.