OpenAL:
So I'm maintaining my own MacOSX OpenAL implementation now.
http://icculus.org/al_osx/
I haven't played around with it at all, but I've been reading up on Altivec
(Ian Ollman's paper on Altivec totally rocks, btw...Google for it), and I bet
we can see more speed in OpenAL with proper usage of vec_dst...the altivec
mixers are pretty memory bound, so prefeeding the CPU cache might be a good
win...maybe I'll get down below that mythical one percent CPU usage after
all.
I just checked in some really embarrassing resampling code, in an attempt to
fix the ArmyOps crashes...it's not fast, but it should handle those weird
5000Hz wave files without pissing all over memory. This needs a better
rewrite. I wonder if Bresenham's line drawing algorithm can be applied to
audio resampling...you "move along the X axis" while writing the same sample
to the destination buffer, and "increment along the Y axis" when you need
to examine the next sample in the source buffer...this sounds feasible to me,
but after three days of not sleeping, anything sounds reasonable.
I have to be practical and accept that this isn't as hard as I'm making it
out to be, but for some reason I have some mental block towards the damned
thing.
Duke3D:
Stuff on the MacOS TODO list:
1) x86 compatibility for savegames
2) keeping Mac/PC networking in sync
3) Coming up with a server browser/matching service.
4) Add Cmd-Q as a quit key.
5) Race condition in audiolib causes occasional crash.
6) Ship it.
UTPG:
Please stop emailing me to ask if this is done yet.
We're doing some polishing to get ALAudio working on Windows and other
details at the moment. Some long-standing bugs that have been delaying a
release have been squashed recently, so progress is being made.
Unreal Tournament 2003:
Okay, so we didn't beat Panther out the door. There were some pressing OpenAL
fixes I really wanted to get in the first patch, and I wrote a patch program
to make the whole thing easier on the end user, which took about a day longer
that I wanted to reach a 0.0.1 version. You poor bastards are really just my
test subjects, though...the ut2003 patch will be pretty tiny, since it's just
a few files changing...but the patch program will be hugely helpful for
ArmyOps, since the upcoming 2.0 patch is, um, slightly larger.
At any rate, the patch isn't ready for primetime yet, but should be sometime
next week (then again, we all know how well I keep deadlines). If there are
any ATI users that installed Panther and need a fix, and don't mind running
prerelease builds, please contact me and I'll hook you up in the interrim.
Call of Duty:
Linux server will be ready in a few days. Infinity Ward is testing it in
house right now...the goal is to have this in the admin's hands before the
game hits shelves.
Please don't email me about a Linux or Mac client port...I'm really way too
busy to even consider it right now.
Postal 2:
Please stop emailing me to ask if this is done yet.
The karma source is in my hands now, but the legal paperwork is still
being done. :(
MOHAA:
Yes, I know the binary expired. A new binary will be along
shortly. Sorry about that.
Talked with EA today about Breakthrough, hoping source will be coming my
way shortly, once all the NDA stuff is cleaned up.
America's Army:
Linux 1.9 is live: http://icculus.org/news/news.php?id=1616
...and the Mac version: http://icculus.org/news/news.php?id=1622
If you're running on Linux and having trouble with Punkbuster because it
wants to write to a directory you don't have permission to, please read
this:
http://americasarmy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?topic=88357&forum=43
You do NOT have to run the program as root. We'll automate this for the
next release, but this'll get you running in the short term.
Other stuff:
Thank god: Apple's iBook line is now G4-based. Are there any current Apple
products now that don't have a vector unit? The eMacs and iMacs are G4 tech,
now, too...maybe we can stop worrying about whether a given user has
Altivec or not within the 2006 timeframe. Who am I kidding? People will still
be bitching at me about the performance of UT2031 on their Blueberry iMac
which they "paid good money for".
--ryan.