Apparently the iSight is opened in "hog mode" by default. I suppose that
makes this issue a corner case and not a bug. :)
Duke3D:
Apparently jonof and Ken Silverman have an OpenGL renderer for Build...that's
awesome work, guys! We're looking at integrating it with the icculus.org
tree if possible, so the Linux and Mac people can take a looksie at it, too.
UTPG:
We're bringing in Steven Fuller ("relnev") to do some UTPG hacking. Beyond
doing consistently quality work, I expect his mere presence will keep my ass
in gear to get the Mac and Linux ports done.
Unreal Tournament 2003:
Mac patch is out:
http://www.macgamefiles.com/detail.php?item=17882
Unreal Tournament 2004:
The Mac version is now gold. Look for it in stores soon. Whew.
If you're installing the retail version (DVD or CD-ROM) on Linux, please
note the following:
1) If you don't have Joliet support in your kernel, the thing will ask
you to insert the disc and not be able to find it, and thus will just
keep prompting you to insert it. Rebuild your kernel with Joliet.
2) If you are on an amd64 chip running a 64-bit OS, you'll get the amd64
binaries installed. If you wanted the 32-bit ones, install on a 32-bit
OS or rip up the installer (email me for details on this).
3) amd64 build is broken for net play...win32 developer broke it right
before we went gold, but the fix is trivial. It'll be fixed soon.
In other news, I just learned the hard way what happens on Win64 when you
overflow your allocated stack space. Nothing. The process goes away, but
there's no warning to stdout, no "report this bug to Microsoft" button. If
you set up a SIGSEGV signal handler, that doesn't run. The process just
vanishes, and you go back to a command line without any explanation. Kinda
annoying. For the record, Linux and MacOS will both treat this as if you
overflowed a buffer (since that's basically what you're doing anyhow) and
segfault.
Unreal's garbage collector uses an insane amount of stack space...it's not
unusual for it to go 4000 and more stack frames deep in recursion. MacOS
gives your process 512k of stack space by default, and this overflows it.
I'm not sure how much Linux gives you, but it was never a problem (at least,
I didn't have to tweak it manually like I did for Windows and Mac).
Call of Duty:
1.2 Patch is out! http://icculus.org/news/news.php?id=1861
Postal 2:
Share the Pain demo for Linux now available:
http://icculus.org/news/news.php?id=1816
There is likely going to be a retail boxed Linux version of P2:STP...do NOT
buy the Windows version yet. This should be announced soon if it happens.
Mac version will be coming soon...so, so busy right now...
MOHAA:
Non-expiring version is out:
http://icculus.org/news/news.php?id=1846
This one was built with gcc3, which fixed some other odd bugs, like some
static meshes being positioned incorrectly. You can see this in the first
mission ("Lighting the Torch"); the building you storm has a room with a
medpack floating in space in the original binaries. In this version, there's
a table under it.
I wonder if gcc3 would fix the falling-through-the-floor,
final-boss-won't-die, or platforms-kill-camera-view bugs in Serious Sam, too.
I'll have to check that someday.
(UPDATE: No, it doesn't. Oh well.)
America's Army:
The 2.0.0a patches for GNU/Linux and MacOSX are now available. Details are
here: http://icculus.org/news/news.php?id=1829
Other stuff:
I'm going to spoil Metroid: Zero Mission for you if you haven't finished it,
so if you plan to play through it, don't read this.
The Old Coot in me says: Is it just me, or have games gotten easier?
Seriously. Alan just leant me Zero Mission, and three hours and 24 minutes
later, I'm done. Granted, I only had a 61% item collection, but I'm not
interested in hardcore gathering...I don't imagine that anything other than
missile tanks are optional in this game (unlike the Varia suit in the
original, which I'm sure lots of people didn't find, and the wave beam, which
no one who expects to make it through Tourian alive picks up), so I can't
imagine I passed up anything interesting.
I plowed through Mother Brain and the (ahem) rest of the game without a
strategy guide, took almost no damage their entire game, and only died a few
times in the extended mothership romp. Now that I know my way through, I
could probably shave an hour off the run.
Now, here's the challenge. Go play though the game, unlock the original
Metroid, and try and beat THAT in three hours. I bet you can't, short of
the JUSTIN BAILEY cheat. The fact of the matter is that the original Metroid
was hard (insanely hard, at times). Are we afraid that today's gamers are
going to get too frustrated? Metroid 1 had no map, no waypoints, no clue as
to what was going on. If you played this back in the 80s when the closest
thing to GameFaqs.com was Nintendo Power and recess conversation, I bet you
walked right into Kraid's room without any clue you were about to get
stomped. I bet you not only didn't kill Ridley on your first try, but you
also ran out of missiles shooting at him. I firmly expect a remake of
Super Mario Brothers 1 to show up now where World 8 has no bottomless pits.
I bet you stared at the statues at the Tourian bridge and wondered what the
hell that was. The game might have been less, uh, cinematic, but it still
was extremely good at conveying its story.
And speaking of conveying story, Metroid Fusion is much better than Zero
Mission in this regard, too. Some things in ZM feel rushed (like, say, the
entire tacked-on Mothership sequence), and other things are confusing (was
Ridley just showing up on the planet when you first take the elevator to
Brinstar?) and others were interesting, but lacked followthrough (motherbrain
first "awakening" was basically awesome...I really wanted to feel a sense of
panic rising in the space pirates as Samus progressed.)...sometimes it's
better to say nothing, I guess.
Overall, I'd say Zero Mission is targetted at nostalgic players...it's a
very brief, watered-down memory of a childhood masterpiece.
--ryan.