Half Life 2 is GOLD!

No, really! Vivendi has even announced a release date, or as they call it, "a planned retail street date of November 16th, 2004." In other HL2 news, ClanBase has closed down their CS:S ladders do to built-in cheats and unfair gameplay, with no way to stop it. I really hope Valve uses Punkbuster, Valve's in-house cheat detection just isn't good enough. November 16th is also the release date of Eminem's new album, now I know how to spend those two Best Buy Bucks I got from McDonald's.

DOOM 3 SDK is out

So now you can make things... and stuff. From filefront.com. It's only 10MB.

Men of Valor MP Demo

The MoV MP demo is out, it's really nothing special. If your CPU is below 1.3GHz it won't even load them game, which is complete BS. My 1.2GHz (Dual) Athlon MP can certainly hold its own against a 1.4GHz P4 any day. To get around that arbitrary rule, add -CPUSPEED=1400 to the end for the Target field of the shortcut properties. I was able to play at 1280x1024 at the highest detail the demo allowed, without even a jitter.

Updates and demos

The DOOM 3 1.1 patch is out, you can grab it at FileFront. It's pretty much the same as 1.05 beta. The SDK is not included. If you don't have DOOM 3 yet, try the demo.

There are lots of new UT2004 files, including new demos for PC, Mac and Linux. And an Editor's Choice Bonus Pack from Epic, it has 4 new maps, 3 new vehicles, and 6 new characters. You'll need the 3323 patch to use it.

An MP Demo for Tribes: Vengeance has been release. It's not my cup of tea, but many people are big Tribes fans. It's only 472MB :)

The latest in Futuremark's bi-annual series of "I need a new computer" benchmarks is out. You can get 3DMark05 from FileFront.

You may be wondering why I link to FileFront. Well, even with the short wait they sometimes have, I still find it the fastest place to get game files. They can always max out my 3Mb connection.

DOOM 3 1.05 Beta Patch is out

An unsupported beta of the DOOM 3 1.05 patch has been released by id. It includes improved widescreen support, and a bunch of tweaks/fixes, mostly multiplayer. According to Robert Duffy's .plan the final version of 1.05 will include the SDK(Software Developers Kit), and a future version will include PunkBuster anti-cheat software. He also mentions the DOOM 3 demo is coming soon... who doesn't have DOOM 3 yet?
The beta patch is only 17.3MB, you can grab it from:

• FileFront
• 3DGamers
• FileShack

Doom 3 Tips

To benchmark Doom 3 use the command timedemo demo1 from the console(~). See the previous post for accessing the console.

Some people claim increasing image_cacheMegs to 96, 128 or even 256 makes the game run smoother. Benchmarking with demo1 shows no difference for me. So what's it do? "maximum MB set aside for temporary loading of full-sized precompressed images"

If you want to increase the maximum players on your server above 4, add +set si_maxPlayers "x" to the shortcuts target line, where x is the max players.

Doom 3 cvars and commands

I've posted a list of Doom 3 cvars and commands. It's in the download section, or just click here. To use the cvars/commands you will need access to the console. I recommend creating a new text file in Doom 3/base/ and renaming it "autoexec.cfg". In it put the line:

seta com_allowConsole "1"

Now you can use the tilda(~) key to access the console. You can also put any other cvars/command/scripts in autoexec.cfg and they will be loaded everytime the game starts.