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News: January 1-7, 1999 Kingpin
will support 3D sound Kingpin: Life of Crime is Xatrix's Quake2 engine powered game which Voodoo Extreme picked as on of the games of 99 (future guess). I haven't seen it on either Creative's or Aureal's charts so I fired off an e-mail to get the details about 3D sound and got the following reply from Courtney Erin: I've just spoken with our development group
about your question. And this was there reply: If you want to know more about Kinpin you should checkout the preview PC Games just posted. Here's a taste: Developed by Xatrix, the folks who brought us Redneck Rampage, this Mafia massacre was crafted with the Quake II engine, taking it in directions no one had even considered going before. Forget about the medieval passageways and castles of Quakedom: Kingpin takes place squarely in a downtown near you. Grimy alleys and dimly lit city streets, garbage cans used as fireplaces by homeless people, mazes of chain-link fence this is the squalid empire you aim to control in the game, which casts you as the head of a ruthless criminal organization bent on destroying rival mobs in your path to power. Starsiege beta and Tribes 2 Thanks to Voodoo Extreme for catching that Dynamix wants your input on what Tribes2 should include. Here's the message: Basically it comes down to this... we made
Tribes for you. If you are having technical difficulties with the game. Don't like how
something works and have an idea for making it better or you have an idea for something
new...send them to me. We're making our Tribes2 list of features as well as identifying
things that we need to improve for Tribes. With the volume of messages on this board I
tend to miss messages at time. All of your feedback is important to us. I can't promise
that I'll be able to provide immediate help to your problem or that your feature idea will
make the 'final cut' but I can promise you that I'll read your mail. I know that I'm
probably going to get flooded with email... so if I don't respond to you personally please Unreal
Tournament is revealed Gamespot has slapped up all the details on Unreal Tournament. Here's a taste: Unreal: Tournament will include styles of
play such as Capture the Flag, Domination, and Assault, where players attempt to either
attack or defend a fortress for a specified amount of time. There's also a vastly improved
user interface, as well as several new weapons and 35 new arenas. More On How To Buy Hardware Cheap FiringSquad has just posted Part 2 of the "How to buy hardware cheap" guide, a FAQ on hardware purchasing, answering such issues as "Is it fraud to apply for a resellers' license for personal use" and other such tantalizing questions. Check it out! Sonic
Foundry Acid Review Acid, Sonic Foundry's newest consumer music package has made a big hit on the 3DAI scene! If making your own music is your bag, check this review! A3D 2.0
Titles Aureal A3D Central reports that Deus Ex by ION Storm will support Aureal A3D2, X-Com: Alliance by Microprose and Duke Nukem Forever by 3D Realms will support Aureal A3D2 & DirectSound3D. That makes sence as we expect most Unreal engine titles will be getting the full A3D 2 and EAX 2 treatment. Speaker
Reviews Thanks to Aureal A3D Central for pointers to two speaker reviews. First up is a review of the Labtec LCS-1040 USB speakers at NetExcite Hardware Zone and next in line is a review of the the Midiand/S2 4030 at WarZone Online Gaming Network Aureal
On AGN Hardware Show Thanks goes out to David Gasior of Aureal for pointing us to the most recent edition of the AGNHardware show where he and Bob Safir chat with Jeremy Alford of AGN3D. Here is the clip from AGN3D: On today's edition of the AGN Hardware show, we talk to Aureal. With Vortex 1 and 2 winning major OEM wins, (The biggest one has not been announced yet) Creative is getting more and more scared of losing marketshare to the relative newcomer Aureal. Lawsuits continue to popup from both sides, creating waves in the relatively calm industry of sound cards. Remember you need Realvideo. WIN! - You can watch the show to find out how to win 1 of 2 Diamond Monster Sound MX300 sound cards! It is rather simple to win and you have until 1/13/99 to send the correct answers to jeremy@agn3d.com Dave Rossum Interview In MaximumPC Thanks to ALive for pointing out that there is an excellent interview with Dave Rossum, Chief Scientist for E-mu and Creative Labs in the January issue of Maximum PC. Head on out and pick up a copy. Messiah
Preview Thresh's Firing Squad has posted a preview of Messiah, which will have support for EAX, 3Dsound and maybe A3D2 (just guessing). Here's the reason why people are waiting for Messiah (the one you need a soundcard to hear): According to most accounts, the characters in Messiah are rendered with anywhere from 180,000 polygons to half a million polygons. When scaled down to gaming conditions the characters are drawn with anywhere from 80-8000 polygons, depending on what kind of hot rod system you have. As a point of reference, Tomb Raider's Lara Croft is drawn with around 600 polygons so you can see the potential for vastly better and more detailed graphics in Messiah. It would be awesome to see how Messiah might play on next generation chips that come out after its release. Maybe the game would play out with near fully rendered characters all the time! Duality
To Use 3D Audio Thanks to a post on Voodoo Extreme I saw that Duality, an upcoming 3D action/adventure game from Double Aught will be supporting 3D audio. I have fired an email off to the developers to see if we can get some more details on API(s), etc. New
MX300 Reviews Thanks to 3D Audio Immersion and Aureal A3D Central for pointers to two more MX300 reviews. One from PC Fan and the other from PC Blitz. Ensoniq On
EAX Lee over at ALive has scored some information from Ensoniq on (1) their involvement in the development of EAX and (2) some information on EAX 2.0. His contact also speculates about A3D 2.0. I say speculates as they state that they have never seen the actual API. Head on over for all the details. Tuesday January 5, 99 How
To Buy Hardware Cheap Not directly audio related but everone should be interested in saving some dollars. Thresh's Firing Squad has posted an excellent article on how to buy hardware cheap. Starsiege
Tribes FAQ updated Once again thanks to Voodoo Extreme for catching the fact that the Starsiege Tribes FAQ has been updated and here's the latest on the 3D sound in Starsiege Tribes: The box says that
Tribes supports A3D, but I can't find an option to turn it on anywhere. I've seen a list of
upcoming EAX titles on the web, and it included Starsiege: Tribes. I still can't find EAX
anywhere in the game! ...well, not quite. DirectSound 3D and A3D support are implemented but not activated. EAX, on the other hand, is not implimented. EAX does stuff like real-time DSP effects (echo, flange, etc.) and we don't support any of that (i.e. we aren't likely to ever support EAX). However, boards like the SBLive support 3D positioning via DirecSound3D... and that is almost working in the release version and should get fixed up at some later date. Unreal,
EAX2 and A3D2 Carlo Vogelsang, sound guy at the Unreal team, let me know their current plans for EAX2 and A3D2 Unreal Tournament and Unreal 2 will use the
same audio engine, so yes they will support A3D/EAX. Right now we're working with both
Aureal and Creative to add support for A3D2 and EAX2. 3DsoundSurge
Moves! O.K. lets just cycle through the thanks. We would like to thank Dave from VUP3D for getting us the domain and hosting us for several months. Dan from Negativezero for the help with the site layout, hosting, and all other little things we cried to him about, all the hardware and software companies for their awsome support, our friends on the web such as 3D Audio Immersion, Aureal A3D Central and AGN3D and most of all we would like to thank you, our loyal readers for all of your support. Sim City 3000 Programmer Interview Our sound system lets us use plenty of huge samples, so we don't have to use loops and built-in effects to save space. Most of the audio effects are rendered off-line. The only exception we're planning is Creative's EAX. EAX lets us change the sound to reflect the surroundings. For example, cars will sound different when driving between skyscrapers. I/O
Magic PCI Review Skywell Magic PCI Review Cambridge SoundWorks 4Pt. Surrounds Review David Gasior Interview MX300
Review Another OEM Montego II Review Monday January 4, 99 Turtle Beach Montego II OEM Review Thanks to Hardgame for the pointer to a review of the Vortex II based Turtle Beach Montego II OEM over at Planet Hardware. A comment on the conclusions at the end of the review. I believe that the board was made specifically to meet the needs of Dell, so IMHO the question is not whether it should have been made, as it was made to a meet a need, but whether Turtle Beach should have bothered offering it at a retail level. Keep in mind that Turtle Beach will be offering owners of this card an upgrade with a break out board, adding RCA and optical digital outs as well as quad speaker support. That upgrade should cost somewhere between $70 and $99 which will put it in the same price range as the MX300 with its full featured add on board. However, the difference is that for approximatey the same money the MX300 plus add on board will offer full 5.1 speaker support (for AC3 not A3D). Sunday January 3, 99 The HeaveWeights: Round 2 Infiniteplanes (a cool hardware site that has little to do with the PowerVR now, which is where they got the name from) has taken a good look at the crystal ball to tell you how the battle between Team Fortress 2, Unreal Tournament and Quake3: Arena will turn out. They have 6 categories, here's what they said about the sound battle Sound To know which game that won the other categories head over to their site and read The HeavyWeights: Round 2. Terminus preview Gamer's Alliance has posted a preview of Terminus, a space action/adventure game set in the year 2197. Nothing about 3D sound in the preview put Terminus will support A3D, DS3D and EAX, which you could read in my previous Terminus post. The preview says the game will ship in May so I guess you will be able to pick it up next Christmas :-) Starsiege Tribes FAQ and Review Thanks to Voodoo Extreme for the following two pointers. First off Gameplex has done up and excellent unofficial Tribes FAQ from which I snagged the following two items: Q: The box says that Tribes supports
A3D, but I can't find an option to turn it on anywhere. Q: I've seen a list of upcoming EAX
titles on the web, and it included Starsiege: Tribes. I still can't find EAX anywhere in
the game! For more on Tribes check out a review of Tribes posted over at Bomb Net. Saturday January 2, 99 Half-Life FAQ HQH has put together a Half-Life FAQ (v1.1) so if you have a Half-Life question that has been asked frequently enough you will find the answer there. If you can't find the answer to your question you could always send e-mail to HQH. Unreal stuff Avault has kicked up an article with some info about Unreal Tournament and they have also done an interview with Mark Rein about Epic's current plans mostly about Unreal related stuff. Talking about Unreal Tim Sweeney made another update to the Unreal Technology page yesterday. Nothing about sound but a lot about graphics and he also mentions that the 221 patch is still a few days off. Aliens vs. Predators and SB Live I cut the following from the readme file from the Marine's version of the demo that I grabbed from AGN3D. The fact that its affecting the CD music must also mean that EAX is enabled in the demo but I don't have my Live installed to confirm it. The full version of Aliens versus Predators is supposed to have EAX support. KNOWN ISSUE WITH SOUNDBLASTER LIVE! CARDS: Currently with SoundBlaster Live! cards, the EAX environmental extensions are applied to all the audio being played from the CD. While this does not necessarily interfere with the game; to stop it from happening, follow these steps: If you have the demo and a SB Live card read the readme file for the steps. The internet demo will play what ever music CD you have in the drive. Planet Quake Thief Review There have been quite a few reviews of Thief: The Dark Project on the net, but I though I would point out this one posted a couple of days ago over at Planet Quake as I enjoyed the style of the review. Here are a couple of quotables: "The whole game drips atmosphere - the constant background hum of the dark ambient soundtrack which keeps you on the edge of your seat without ever distracting you, the guards complaining about their bosses and chatting amongst themselves as you sneak past them, the cartoon cutscenes and mission briefings..." and "And after a few days you're so drawn into the game that you find yourself walking on the grass instead of the pavement to muffle your footsteps, standing still against the wall when you see somebody coming, and edging your way around streetlights to stay in the shadows..." Friday January 1 - New Year's Day Combat Sim Montego II Review Thanks to 3DAI for the pointer to a review of the OEM version of Turtle Beach's Vortex 2 based Montego II sound board over at Combat Sim. This is a good review for 3D audio skeptics to take a look at as the reviewer was coming from that same perspective. Here's a clip: Ok, time to talk brass tacks. How does the Montego II's 3D sound actually work? In practice, far better than one would rightfully expect. With only a two-speaker board, I really didn't expect anything more than the classic stereo panning that we already get from many games. How wrong that turned out to be! Labtec APX 4620 Review @ Firing
Squad Just as it says. Firing Squad has kicked out a review of Labtec's APX 4620's. Web Site Best of Year Awards Thanks to ALive for pointing me to the following at AGN3D. I will probably throw something up a little later today with our own picks. So from AGN3D we have: Best Sound Controller - Aureal's Vortex 2
Even though Creative's Soundblaster Live is my pick for sound card of the year, Aureals
A3D 2.0 supporting Voretx Best Sound Card - Creative's Soundblaster
Live! Line And I caught the following from Voodoo Extreme: Best Sound Card: VERY, VERY hard choice here. I finally received an MX300, and prior to that was using a Live. As far as SOUND QUALITY, I'd say the MX300 and Vortex2 take the cake. But as far as drivers (and all the nifty features and such), I'd say the Live. You honestly can't go wrong with either of these bad boys. Help Wanted @ ALive I just ripped this right from ALive, so if you fit the bill and are interested drop Lee a line. Help Wanted I'm looking for someone to help out at the website. The workload is not very heavy. Just occasional reviews of EAX titles that is "sponsored" by a local game distributor, New Era, here and maybe some update of news. The candidate needs to fulfill the following requirement :
If you think you fit the bill, drop me a mail and tell me a bit about yourself. Kert's Definative MX300 Review Our friend Kert has posted his definative MX300 review. MX300 bugs and problems A3D Central has put together a page with all the known problems that people have with the MX300 with solutions for some of them. I know Aureal is working on their own list of known Vortex2 problems and they have of course also been working hard to fix them. Interview with Steve Stringer from
Activision Heretic II.com has popped up an interview with Steve Stringer about what Activision does and Heretic II is one of the topics. Here is the only audio related answer. Cracker: There have been a few
reports of problems with such things as; Co-op crashing bugs, a few animation bugs, and
little quirky things. I know the joystick bug has been fixed, what kind of fixes will be
in the Enhancement Pack?
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