so are you confirming that the delay is due to gamespy?<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Dec 17, 2007 2:00 PM, Ryan C. Gordon <<a href="mailto:icculus@icculus.org">icculus@icculus.org</a>> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<br>I'm going to answer a few emails here, but I haven't got anything to<br>announce at the moment. I also haven't read most of this mailing list in<br>the past week or so; I don't need to be reminded that people are still
<br>waiting for Linux binaries. You'll get them as soon as possible, honest.<br><br><br>> Questions:<br><br>(I don't speak for Epic, and have no real insight into why technical<br>decisions were made. But here are my best insights.)
<br><div class="Ih2E3d"><br>> Why did Epic choose GameSpy this time?<br><br></div>My guesses would be a) because the master server was a huge pain from<br>ut2003 onward (and maybe as far back as Unreal 1), and b) GameSpy gives
<br>them cross-platform tech roughly analogous to Xbox Live or Games For<br>Windows Live.<br><br>This is about more than just getting a list of servers. There's a lot<br>more competition for a baseline feature set nowadays. The fact that
<br>Valve added "achievements" to the Steam version of The Orange Box titles<br>suggests that this competition is only going to get more fierce. If I<br>were you, I'd go figure out who the major competitors are, and get the
<br>login name you like on their services before someone else takes it. :)<br><div class="Ih2E3d"><br>> Why did Epic choose Bink for videos? (Even the load screens!)<br><br></div>Almost every game you'll see on a console uses a prerendered movie for
<br>load screens (including static copyright text, like ut3 does).<br><br>Partially because it's quick to throw in contractually-obligated logos:<br>usually there's a prebuilt movie from these companies they just have to
<br>convert to Bink. Also, it's probably easier to put a movie together in a<br>movie making tool, than make the equivalent set of pixels light up in<br>the engine...especially since, say, Intel Corporation doesn't keep
<br>people with UE3 mapmaking experience around to make logos.<br><br>Also, rendering a movie is dirt cheap from a CPU viewpoint; lots of<br>games show them because Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo won't certify your game<br>if the load time is more than X seconds...but the stopwatch doesn't
<br>start until all the logos are displayed. Many games show the movies on<br>one thread, and then use this extra time to load the game on another. I<br>don't know if UT3 does this, but lots and lots of Unreal licensees have
<br>done just that.<br><br>Also, darn near every UE2 licensee tends to license Bink, and uses the<br>same piece of third-party code off the Unreal Developer Network to<br>integrate it, so it probably made sense to just do the integration in
<br>the official UE3 codebase, since Epic would still get bug reports from<br>it anyhow.<br><div class="Ih2E3d"><br>> As for PhysX I won't comment.<br><br></div>It's amazing to me how much hatred there is towards Ageia...I wonder if
<br>that's just spillover from ut200x's MathEngine contracts.<br><br>Then again, there's a lot of hate towards every piece of middleware,<br>depending on what a given forum's personal conspiracy theory is. Someone
<br>posted a petition on this mailing list about removing GameSpy. You don't<br>have to _like_ GameSpy, and I've certainly had my problems with them in<br>the past, but I don't think it's fair to play Kangaroo Court with them
<br>when there's really no actual evidence that they are the problem.<br><br>Likewise for Ageia.<br><br>Likewise for Bink.<br><div class="Ih2E3d"><br>> Lots of other routine middleware floating around in there too probably.
<br><br></div>I have no doubt that people will compare the final binaries with the<br>beta demo server for differences. It'll be interesting to see if the<br>incorrect parties will amend their petitions and apologize to those they
<br>slandered.<br><font color="#888888"><br>--ryan.<br></font><div><div></div><div class="Wj3C7c"><br><br><br>---<br>To unsubscribe, send a blank email to <a href="mailto:ut3-unsubscribe@icculus.org">ut3-unsubscribe@icculus.org
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