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UnrealEngine3:
 Work is still progressing on this, but there really isn't anything
 terribly interesting to report right now.


OpenAL:
 Working on the 1.1 spec. Also tossing around the idea of doing a new
 implementation from scratch...al_osx taught me a lot about how to structure
 this, and I have a lot of ideas about what I'd do differently if I had to do
 it again from scratch. Apple definitely seems to have the MacOS side of
 things covered, but there's some other Unixes and such I'd like to tackle
 with this, if I ever get around to it. As for my al_osx code tree, it's
 mostly a historical relic at this point, but it'll stick around on life
 support for awhile for things that need a tiny version until Tiger ships,
 like we did with this crop of Unreal titles and Feeding Frenzy and such.


UTPG:
 There's just no way around it...the UnrealEngine1 renderer totally blows
 on modern hardware. This really needs a rewrite before we're done. :/


Unreal Tournament 2003:
 One more Linux build on its way, then I'm taking this out of my .plan, honest.


Unreal Tournament 2004:
 Patch 3355 for Linux and Mac: http://icculus.org/news/news.php?id=2337
  Mac users no longer need a DVD in the drive, Linux/amd64 people should get
  a real framerate again.


Postal 2 Share the Pain:
 Free Linux demo: http://icculus.org/news/news.php?id=1816
 Buy Linux full: http://www.tuxgames.com/details.cgi?gameref=125&referrer=zakk
 Free MacOSX demo: http://icculus.org/news/news.php?id=2272
 Buy MacOSX full: http://www.gopostal.com/store/index.php

 Apocalypse Weekend will be made to work with Linux and MacOSX in some form.
 I'm not sure what the distribution model will be (seperate SKUs, one
 universal disc, buy Windows version and download Linux/Mac installer), but
 there will definitely be something.


America's Army:
 ArmyOps 2.3.0 for Linux: http://icculus.org/news/news.php?id=2333

 ArmyOps 2.3.0 for MacOS X is in beta testing right now. No release date,
  but it shouldn't be long, I hope.


Other stuff:
 (This rant brought to you compliments of:
  http://crystaltips.typepad.com/wonderland/2005/03/burn_the_house_.html)

 Look, anyone who tells you that piracy doesn't matter is full of shit.
 Anyone who tells you that he's an artist and writes video games
 because he loves the idea of creation is just jerking off.
 In my experience, the only people that legitimately don't care about a
 paycheck are already rich.

 That doesn't mean DRM isn't a broken concept, though. These two ideas
 aren't mutually exclusive...you can hate piracy and hate DRM (or, as Bill
 Maher explained about conflicting ideas vs opposing ideas: "OJ killed his
 wife AND the cops are corrupt").

 Spector is probably closest, though: the distribution model benefits the
 upper one percent at the cost of innovation, piracy, and well, the artists.
 If we can look at this from the music slant, Apple's iTunes Music Store is a
 good start, but a shitty end. Eventually we're probably going to need, uh,
 for lack of a better term, a distributed Steam...online, universal,
 incremental transfer of product without a centralized publisher. The problem
 with Steam as it currently stands, among other complaints, is that Valve
 escapes their oppressive publisher in order to become an oppressive publisher
 themselves. Apple's a little different in that they haven't escaped the whims
 of the publishers at all (which is why every few months you see a Chicken
 Little article on Slashdot about iTMS raising their prices by a whole 20
 cents...the poor consumers! Poor Apple! Why doesn't anyone ever say "poor
 musicians"?)

 Ultimately, we're going to need to forcibly remove the publisher and make
 each artist a publisher in herself, which means a need for more bandwidth
 (and ubiquitous bandwidth!) to make Wal-Mart, as a pile of bricks enveloping
 products, unnecessary. If you promise Best Buy that you'll ship on a certain
 date and slip, they FINE you. I'm not kidding. Most people don't know this.
 So add "pressure from brick and mortars to rush a title to market" to the
 reasons why the Tomb Raider franchise has been devalued.

 When we can all sell online without a central authority, stream the bits right
 to the user any time of the day, and be the backup when their hard drive
 fails (which would be a nice feature in iTMS that Steam figured out, in case
 you're listening, Apple), then we could ship when we're ready, do things that
 are awesome without 150-man teams and millions of dollars, make more money
 within a meritocracy, and not whore ourselves out to Big Publishing. Not to
 excuse them, but the fact that the EA Spouse blog exists says more about the
 industry as a whole than it says about Electronic Arts. I mean, it's a safe
 bet to say that everyone outside of EA has an chilly familiarity with
 those stories anyhow...put another way, when you see one cockroach, it's a
 safe bet there're hundreds more behind the walls.

 There are no benign dictators in publishing. The only sane thing to do is
 flush them altogether.

 Then again, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

--ryan.


When this .plan was written: 2005-03-12 22:08:28
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