Semi-realism mod for Unreal Tournament 2003/2004 OS X

Semi-realism mod for Unreal Tournament OS 9 and OS X

An unparalleled giggle collection, from any semi-realism FPS

(Oct 31): Feral News: Feral Interactive has just made three announcements. First, Chessmaster 9000 is now available for pre-order, very nice news because this is the first Mac update of the Chessmaster series in five years (Chessmaster 6000). Yes it really is worth it (compared to the nonexistent AI in the otherwise fun & slick Big Bang Chess), and it can really teach you how to play better no matter what your level of play. Most chess programs, I can up the difficulty until I start to hopelessly lose (or I the AI takes too long, so I just quit), but don't really learn what I can do better (and the AI simply suggesting the next move isn't particularly insightful either). CM 9000 will be a welcome breath of fresh air and a tremendous resource... just ignore the CM version 10 that exists for windows, the changes are very small. Anyways, also read about Feral's Commando Battlepack and Bionicles. Bravo to Feral!

nongaming: Look for Virtual PC 7, the first version released directly from Microsoft since it bought the franchise from Connectix. The app itself will need a minimum of 256M RAM, so I would recommend having at least a gig if you want to run this. That reminds me, I have to go check on the latest news on the Cherry OS (OS X on Intel) controversy (see Oct 18-19 news). And regarding the latest iTunes update, I totally forgot about the Real Harmony hack of Apple's DRM (digital rights management). Although I haven't seen direct confirmation yet, because the iTMS now requires you to have the latest version of iTunes to purchase music, you can almost be sure that they've patched the Harmony hack so that iPods will no longer be capable of downloading & playing songs purchased from the Real store. Some critics liken this move to Apple's disastrous string of decisions including not licensing the Mac OS back before Windows was born. I guess we'll have to wait and see, because neither did Apple have the market dominance back then as it does today. Of course, I'm still worried. On a happier note, the latest rumor running around about the iPod Photo's ability to show photos to a TV is that it will be able to drive Keynote 2.0 presentations... with further speculation that a Keynote 2.0 alpha was used by Jobs in his speech Oct 26. On a more far-flug note, there's the new Eclipse Solar backpack, that can recharge your cell, PDA, or iPod. Probably works better in Arizona than the UK, or Seattle...

(Oct 29): More Google vs. Yahoo: Google CEO today Eric Schmidt today announced that the super-fast Google Desktop search app will be ported to OS X. Of course, OS X's file find feature Sherlock is pretty damned fast already. I mean, sure I have had some slow searches, but mostly it's ok... then I get a hard dose of Wintel reality when I try to use the file find function in XP. OMG that cute animated dog doesn't cheer me up one bit when it runs for 10 minutes searching for a Word file, and here I was steaming about a full-minute search (at worst) in OS X, if I'm searching multiple local and networked hard drives simultaneously. Of course I'm still undecided. Google's revenue strategy here is the same as GMail, which means targeted ads. Do you see the rub? There's potentially a huge privacy hole here-- if the search browser app is delivering you targeted ads based upon what if digs up inside your hard drive, who's to say the information of what ads were served to your IP is not mineable? Google's famous snapshot of the web could be a snapshot of your hard drive... everyone's hard drive... The jury's still out, but David Burns of Copernic is very worried, and quite loudly so. What's his stake? Well his company makes a search app for Windows, but also was connected to a business which was sold to Overture. Overture of course runs the pay-per-click ad serving based on keywords, which, bingo, is a direct competitor for Google Ads... and Overture is now owned by Yahoo. By the way, do you want to know how much a click on a keyword is worth? Google won't let you see, but you Overture does, click here for their search function. You'll note that "unreal" only gets $0.10, but if I had a website on, say "mesothelioma", I'd get more. Like $90 per click. Why? It drives customers to litigators for this asbestos-associated cancer, where $90 would be a drop in the bucket. Makes me want to write a FAQ...

Garageband: I was sequencing some music this week, and I wanted to import it into Garageband. I figured to just export it to midi, and that would work right? Nope. GB won't take midi files directly. I found a utility, "Dent du Midi" (DDM), that did the trick. It combined multiple tracks, so I made a midi file for each track, the converted it using DDM, which resulted in a folder containing, among other things, an AIFF file which I could drag into GB. Cool. Later I found that Apple lists a utility (GB Midi Import) that might be more full-featured, but I haven't used it yet. BTW this is really old news, but if you didn't know already there are now three Jam Packs (expansion packs) for GB available at the Apple Store, as well as newer versions of Logic. Of course there are some wonderful fully-compatible GB AU instruments and loops available by third parties (well known ones being samples4 and macjams), and while you're at it check out the great sites thegaragedoor, osxaudio, and homerecordingconnection. I first ran into thegaragedoor when I was looking for a full listing of instruments included in the three Apple Jam Packs. I was actually interested in a list of the instruments in stock GB, because I had Jam Pack 1, and wanted to send a file to someone without it, and didn't want to use and instrument they didn't have. No such luck, the site didn't have it. Maybe some day I'll list the instruments, but I'll i have to uninstall the instruments in my root Library, because that's where GB stores them. Anyways I guessed right on the non-Jam Paqck instruments, but my frineds didn't have some of the JP effects, but they managed to download those (legally), so I'll find out what they found and post back.

(Oct 28): New Software Updates: Apple has revised iTunes, Quicktime, and has a new security patch all in the last week, so if you haven't done your software update, do it now. The iTunes update of course enables the new photo iPod as well as minor enhancements like listing duplicate songs, while QT improvements improvements AAC and Apple Lossless, although I haven't heard if lossless compression ratios got better. Also, QT for Windows apparently has a security vulnerability, and I saw an article mentioning Windows QT should be patched to 6.52, but Apple's site only lists 6.4. Did they get it wrong, or did Apple pull the Win QT patch? Apple's URL for Win QT 6.5.1 gets a 404. iPods: Still not sure what to think about Apple's U2 iPods, and I don't have a particular desire to watch the Apple Event video introducing the item. I can see that some people would like the black-and-red color scheme (it even comes in a customized box), but with the band members' signatures etched on the chrome backing? If I wanted a dark iPod I might prefer one of those black ones they used in the Jaguar promotion a while back. Anyways Apple is flying high these days, so I guess they have some free rein for odd promotions... they now have 92% of the high-capacity HD music player market, and their stock just topped $50, the highest in four years, with no signs of a slowdown in this trend. Mini Stores: I also noticed a section on the mini-Apple Retail Store phenomenon at Apple's retail store page, check out the right column of that page for the Minis (and check out the right column of this webpage for real news on Mini humans, or Hobbits). Virus: There's an interesting report of an OS X virus called "Opener", and the interesting part is the grass-roots forum-based response to the problem, rather than the established industrial anti-virus complex that exists on the Windows side... Yahoo vs. Google: Yahoo announced an interface for US cell phones to search the web, to compete with Google's recent announcement to enable searches via SMS. Yahoo is pushing the offensive against Google and MS in other domains as well, with their acquisition of Stata labs, which makes the Bloomba email app, that like Google GMail, uses a search-based approach to email, unlike Hotmail. Bloomba had had some hot rave reviews, but analysts were skeptical of its future prospects without the marketing muscle of a larger patron, and Yahoo fits the bill, as they will apparently use Stata's expertise to develop their own product, rather than Bloomba.

Gaming: UT2k4 Benchmark: I added a quick little workaround application to enable doing a flyby benchmark for the UT2k4 Demo. A true flyby is impossible because the flyby camera paths (called "matinees") do not exist in the maps in the Demo, but I made a demorecording of me flying around in admin mode with audio off and at high speed (slomo 10), and it works well enough to do the job. It's now included in the Toopak download. Icculus update: I was reading Icculus' .plan again, and noted he was actually spending some time on UT99, aka UTPG, but not with promising results. I guess a final OS X version of Unreal Tournament (99) is still far off, so don't bother looking at utpg.org any time in the new future. He also notes extra work on Unreal 3 (w00t), as well as a close-to-release of America's Army 2.20 for Linux and Mac. Finally, he publicly announced that Postal 2 is Gold, so IMG picked it up today. Speaking of IMG, they note that OS X beta testers for a Zelda Classic remake are being sought, so sign up if you're interested. Sony Playstation Portable is set a lower-than-expected $186, and for the holiday shopping season, GTA:SA: Hype = Xmas sales. Nuff said.

(Oct 26): New IPod Photo: The long-rumored 60G and color-LCD iPod has been released by Apple, see their site for more details. Could video really be far behind? We'll see a lot of articles on this. If you want to hear the buzz in the "in" crowd, head over to ipodlounge and check their site and of course their forums. By the way, I realized I'm not alone. I prefer the 3G iPod design over the 4G iPod-- the glowing red buttons, as well as the futuristic touch-screen quality of all the buttons, and the all-white scheme. The 4G's darker clickwheel turns me off, and depressing the center button is depressing-- it's a cheap rubbery 80's Sony feel-- I'll take the glassy 3G buttons any day. I was reading this month's issue of MacWorld, and they reviewed the 4G and basically agreed with me. Yay. I guess... Maybe the 3G lead designers got carted off to do iMac G5 duty, and the second tier team did the 4G iPod. Ah well, I'd still take a 4G happily though, but since I don't need one right now I'll wait and see if my wallet is cued by the 5G design cues. BTW I'm really impressed by MacWorld, I hadn't read it in a few years when it was only slightly more technical than the abysmally stultifying MacHome, which made me an easy convert for MacAddict magazine. But now in 2004, MacWorld had some meaty technical articles including Terminal hacking, and in-depth reporting that is meaningful and not just a sugary summary. Bravo, I'll be reading more in future months, although I'll keep my MacAddict subscription since MA has maintained their youthful irreverence and cheeky humor, born back when they were the lowly startup mag.

UT Benchmark Update 2: Again, Rob-ART of barefeats.com was asking innocent questions, such as "Why isn't there a flyby benchmark in your utility for UT 2004 DEMO?" The easy answer is that it is impossible, since the camera path that the flyby takes is actually built into the map, and the only maps that have these are the ones that had flyby benchmarks in UT2003. None of these maps are included in the Demo, hence no flyby-- if you try, the camera just sits sullenly still. Then I had an idea from a poorly implemented flyby demo by Leonidas a while back. It involves making a demorecording, then playing it back. That's what I did... for some reason it only worked for me on ONS-Primeval. I logged in, "killall"'d the weapons and bots, went into admin fly/ghost mode, set slomo to 10, then flew around the map for 50 seconds in a demorecording. Due to changes in the updated demo, I can't automatically quit the benchmark & spit out the results-- but Rob-ART really wanted it, so I've added it to the Santaduck Toolpak-- when the flyby benchmark ends, you will find yourself in the UT Main Menu, then you must press the tilde "~" key to see your result. It's not elegant, but it works.

(Oct 23): Community Bonus Pack 1 for UT2004 Released: The Community Bonus Pack (CBP) that was originally created for UT2003 has now been completely converted & released for UT2004. Previously, some of the map content still worked, while other content didn't, but now all issues have been addresed for UT2004. See the official release thread at Atari forums for screenshots, and the latest download URLs. The maps in CBP1 include: CTF-Betrayal, CTF-Concentrate, CTF-Ferris, CTF-Techdream, DM-Arkanos, DM-AugustNoon, DM-BlackJackal, DM-Downgrave, DM-Elegance, DM-Emperor, DM-Finale, DM-GoldenDawn, DM-Neandertalus, DM-Ougaldwin, DM-Shifter, DOM-Aphrodite, DOM-Hathor, DOM-Verde, BR-Breaklimit2004

I recommend manual installation. Note that if you use the DropInstaller from the Santaduck Toolpak, it has a bug where it does not install .upl files, so be sure to do that manually. For manual installation control-click on Unreal Tournament 2004 and select "Show Package Contents". Install all files from CBP1 into the appropriate folder according to the filetype extension (e.g. .utx into Textures).

(Oct 21): Santaduck UT2004 Benchmark Update: At the request of benchmarker Rob-ART of barefeats.com, I've written a version of the Standard & LCD benchmarker that will measure FPS in the UT2004 Demo. I think he wants to compare results he obtains from a demo benchmarker that french site Hardmac (MacBidouille) has made. I've also revised the earlier benchmarkers for Retail UT2k4-- the benchmarks themselves run exactly the same as before, but I've added 1280x1024 as well as having it report the version of UT2k4 that it found. The updates are included in the new Santaduck Toolpak download. I haven't yet updated the rest of the Toolpak, I still have to change the DropInstaller to install .upl files, but that's about it. Enjoy.

In more general news, I recently read that the 'extreme gamer' segment, those people who purchase the fastest,1337-est, and priciest computer rigs is extremely small, perhaps only 20,000 users. That's small! I wonder if this small market segment is actually profitable, or whether it serves as a "halo" effect (No, not Halo), much as in the automotive industry where the sexiest sports car doesn't actually sell profitably, but does drive buyers into their dealerships for lower-priced offerings which seem cool by virtue of association... Intel did get bad press from backing down from 2006 4Ghz plans, so maybe they don't believe in the halo effect. Free wi-fi: Did you know that you can get free net access in Philadelphia and Spokane, and if the mayor has any say, San Fracisco in the near future? Are any European or Asian municipalities doing this, or is it an American trend? I wonder if it will spread as a standard of public service; I'll be looking at the "we'll take care of you" government of Sweden to implement this on the national level first, but not anytime soon. I just wonder, how do they distribute enough IPs for everyone, and how do they control bandwidth abusers-- you can't have kids from the local college campuses downloading P2P music from the city, bypassing the blocks on the campus network services... I gotta read up, and maybe the next time I'm in California, I'll be bringing my iMac G5 to browse the web from the Golden Gate Bridge...

(Oct 20): Firefox promo: There is currently an effort to buy a full-page NY Times ad to promote Firefox, which will include the names of all the donors. Yup, they say they can fit all the names... I think it's about $30, or $10 if you're a student. Speaking of browsers, if you're using Safari and don't used tabbed browsing do it now, and I mean now: Safari-->Preferences-->Enable Tabbed Browsing. Then try command-clicking links as you browse the net. Thank me in a month whe you realize you can't live without it. I have no idea why this preference box isn't checked by default. :rolleyes Oldschool 80's: I was browsing around for online gaming with original code for arcade games from the 80's-- Think Galaga, and Donkey Kong. Of course the most complete way to do this on your mac is MacMAME, Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator, if you're not familiar with the lingo. However the relatively new Cottage aims to bring MAME to your web browser via Java so that the casual user can simply go to a website, click, and play, without installing applications or ROMs. I found a list of such Java games here, and saw that the list is rather short, and somewhat buggy. In summary, use your control key & space bar for fire, your arrow keys for movement, 1 & 2 for starting a game, and 5 to insert coins. In OS X, these Java apps simply didn't show up in Safari, showed up then promptly crashed my Firefox, but seemed to work in IE (it's probably lingering there in your Applications folder). However I had a problem with it recognizing keystrokes. I solved it by 1) placing my cursor in the game window 2) pushing the control key, then letting go 3) clicking the mouse, then letting go, 4) pushing the 5 key to insert coins. Cottage needs more work, but it's certainly interesting! This little adventure has given me some impetus to try a few more online gaming avenues, I'll report back later this week.

Humor: An old tacops acquaintance 'firehawk' turned me on to Red vs. Blue, an online comedy series using the Halo engine for animation. Although fairly casual, it's attracted a very large following. I don't get some of the humor, but a lot of it is funny, for example the episode Real Life vs the Internet .

(Oct 19): The Cherry OS controversy continues with a very interesting article at Wired, which purports to have some evidence in oddly-named variables that open source PearPC source code was in fact used, while other theories include a hoax lanch simply to stress test the parent company's java-based video streaming capability. The public release is scheduled in a few days, with a free trial version also to be made available; their website remains down while they claim persistent hacker attacks. I must say this reminds me of the controversy surrounding supposed claims of human cloning a while back. However I'm hopeful the claims are true and that OS X can run as fast as a 900Mhz G4 on a 3Ghz Pentium, because that may actually force Apple to develop OS X for Intel as an alternative to Longhorn, something Steve Jobs has said he would not do (for some good reasons, and some not). Speaking of Intel, which recently retreated from the goal of a 4Ghz Pentium, AMD kicked them while they're down with the announcement of the Athlon 64 FX-55 and the Athlon 64 4000+, the latter seemingly named in a curious jab at the 4Ghz letdown. Furthermore look for AMD's PCI-Express support to usher in the post-AGP age with vendors such as Alienware and Fujitsu Siemens leading the way with AMD. I can't wait for both PC & Mac laptops to sport PCI-E. Anyhow back on topic: Garageband and the rest of iLife on an Intel rig? iPods, iTunes, and Powerbooks are having a halo effect towards powermac sales, and OS X would only do the same, since we find ourselves at a point in time where many large institutions are considering a mass exodus to alternative OSs such as Linux. Why not OS X, in that ideal dream world. Carpe Diem, Steve, you can have it all.

Apple news: If you hadn't noticed, score two for the rumors mill-- Apple today released iBook & Powermac revisions. The iBooks come in 1.2 and 1.3Ghz flavors at lower price points and with Airport now included, putting serious pressure on the powerbooks. The Powermac revision is a very strange one, it's an addition at the lower end which is laudable, with a 1.8Ghz processor. This means there is no shortage in 1.8Ghz G5s processors, but the strange thing is its stunted front side bus, which is equivalent to the iMac G5, and at a poor price point which of course does not include a monitor. A sub $999 price with a full-speed FSB would have been happier news for consumers. In other news, Apple also denied new powerbooks are coming before the end of the year, so I imagine we won't see those for a while, and perhaps a whole series of dual-core G4 PBs before the G5s roll around. Cmon Apple, we're rooting for you, the iPods & Powerbooks are popular, so don't slip now...


(Oct 18): OS X on Intel? Cherry OS: The equivalent for Virtual PC on the other side has been PearPC, an open source emulator which allows you to run an OS X on Intel x86 hardware, albeit at a snail's pace of perhaps an equivalent of 5% processor speed. Recently Maui X-Stream software surprised itself and various the mac & windows communities by announcing Cherry OS, an emulator for PCs that they claim runs OS X at 80% of processor speed-- in other words, if you had a 3.2 GHz Pentium rig running CherryOS, it woiuld be equivalent in feel to OS X on a 900MHz G4, see the math in an interesting interview here. Also read this article from Wired. One of my macs is a 500 Mhz G4, and that's fast enough for almost anything but games & video editing, so if this claim is true there is the potential for enormous fallout: PC users could opt into OS X at a reasonable speed, and perhaps learn to like it enough to buy Apple hardware down the line. Apple could be forced to finally code & release an x86-native OS X to compete head-to-head with Window's Longhorn, which would in turn force current Apple devotees to consider buying cheaper PC hardware for the same OS X experience. However the jury is still out. The Cherry OS folks have refused to release demos, and their website cherryos.com got rapidly overwhelmed by both DOSers and legitimate hits. Some people are crying 'hoax', and nearly everyone is extremely skeptical, but we'll just wait and see if this $49.95 product is what it says it is, and whether it's legally solid (with regard to Pear & Apple). Apple Mini Stores: The rumors from ifoapplestore were true, Apple is indeed rolling out a series of well-designed, smaller-footprint miniature versions of their Apple Retail Stores. Here is a report on a new 500 sq. ft. mini store in Oakridge Mall of San Jose, CA, and you can read about what they do and don't carry and how they communicate with the mothership stores. That reminds me, a new London store should be opening in November, the third international store after ones in Osaka & Tokyo, Japan. U2: If you've visited Apple's site lately, you've seen the U2 video promoting the iPod, but there have been hints from Apple that more is coming, and now there's news of a big Apple event involving U2 next week, so expect some product announcements then, perhaps regarding that color-display iPod we've been hearing rumors about. And tomorrow we'll see if those iBook revision rumors were true.

(Oct 17): ATI X800: At the Digital Life Expo in NYC, ATI just showed an X800-based card, which can actually drive Apple's 30inch Cinema Display. Previously, the only card able to drive the 30 incher was the massive two-slot BTO Nvidia GeForce 6800 Ultra. The ATI prototype shown takes only one slot. The card has not been officially announced, but this stealth intro has caused quite a splash already-- I'll be very curious about gaming framerates on the smaller-than-monster displays that most of us have. BTW I'll be editing the Santaduck Benchmark soon for a few websites who apparently will be benching the 6800 Ultra driving 30 inchers. In other Apple news, there's a rumor that a new iBook will be introduced this Tuesday. According to a product-cycle buying guide, it's certainly due for a revision soon, and we just saw the Cram and Jam promotion (free iPod w/iBook or PB for educational buyers), presumably intended to clear out inventory. In gaming news, there's a new Strike Force (UT2k4 mod) patch out, read more at Macologist.

(Oct 15): Apple earnings: The 4th Quarter financial report from Apple has really stunned everyone. iPod sales has been astronomical, surpassing already-lofty expectations, and together with high powerbook and iMac sales, have boosted Apple's earnings, doubling it to the best 4th Qtr report in 10 years. The marketing reach of HP for the "h-Pod" can't hurt either. Read more at Forbes... and Jobs is back on the Job. Appearing for the first time since his surgery, he helped open a new Apple Retail Store near Palo Alto, CA, which of course is just a few minutes' drive from Cupertino and the flagship store near Stanford on University. In non-Apple news, Google is at it again, releasing a public beta for a Desktop Search utility that uses your browser. Apparently, they're making the jump on Microsoft's delayed Longhorn, which is with great fanfare to be built around a revolutionary new file system which sports metatags to allow for fast searching. Tiger (coming sooner than Longhorn) will also have its own version of file metatagging, read more here, here. But Google is changing the rules entirely, basing such searches via browser. Currently, the Google Desktop public beta is only available for Windows (XP/2000 SP3). It looks like Google is almost becoming a quasi-iLife for windows, considering its photo organizer Picasa, Google News Beta, its support of Blogger, and of course their formidable free Gigabyte email sytem GMail Beta. . . which by the way highlights yet another shortcoming of Microsoft, in this case Hotmail, which still hasn't finished rolling out its supposed disk capacity upgrades-- everyone I know with a free Hotmail account is still stuck at a miserly and wondrously inadequate 2M. If you're currently a Hotmail user, look around for a GMail beta invitation, and you'll never look back, I promise.

OS X downloading tip: Have you ever had Safari fail your needs when downloading a large file such as a 600M+ disk image? Although Firefox's file downloader is often better, sometimes no browser will be able to handle connectivity issues for long and large downloads. This is when you should brave a trip to your Unix shell by going into your Utilities folder inside Applications, and double clicking on Terminal. There is a command called curl which will allow you to do long downloads with resistance to disconnecting, and the ability to resume downloads that are disconnected. It's been a lifesaver to me when downloading disk images in my game betatesting duties. The downloaded files will end up in your user home folder by default if you type the commands after launching Terminal.
If there is no password to download the file do this:
curl http://www.thesite.com/folder/filename.dmg -o filename.dmg
and if you are disconnected, do this to resume the download (yes with the trailing hyphen):
curl http://www.thesite.com/folder/filename.dmg -o filename.dmg -C -
If there is a login and password required do this:
curl -u login:password http://www.thesite.com/folder/filename.dmg -o filename.dmg
and to resume a download:
curl -u login:password http://www.thesite.com/folder/filename.dmg -o filename.dmg -C -


for example to download the UT2004 Mac demo:

curl http://0day.icculus.org/ut2004/UT2004-MAC-Demo3334.dmg.bz2 -o UT2004-MAC-Demo3334.dmg.bz2
and to resume the download:

curl http://0day.icculus.org/ut2004/UT2004-MAC-Demo3334.dmg.bz2 -o UT2004-MAC-Demo3334.dmg.bz2 -C -

Talking about Firefox just reminded me how behind it is compared to its Windows version. Firefox in OS X seems to crash on me about twice a day (Safari never does), and speaking of downloads, still has the bug where if your download window is open, and your browser windows are closed, you cannot open a new browser window. However Safari is still so slow I often stick with Firefox. =\

(Oct 12): WoW patch: There's a new patch for the WoW closed beta (N. American and European). Read more at the full changelog. The most interesting thing to me was some comments on Mac graphics compatibility: "The Mac OS X client has all shader-based features disabled for this patch. The GUI for those preferences will be grayed out. A number of GPU driver issues are being addressed by Apple, ATI and NVIDIA - when these fixes have been completed and made available to the public we will re-enable these features in the game." Curiously, AppleInsider just noted these vendors as working together to iron out some new OpenGL updates in the new OS X 10.3.6 that has already been seeded to developers. In related news, the WoW open beta signups will begin soon, and the official Chinese WoW site has launched. Men of Valor was just announced by Aspyr, and due for a release in mid-December, only weeks after this Vivendi title went to Xbox & Windows-- Hopefully we'll see more Vivendi-Aspyr coziness, for a fruitful season for mac gamers.

nongaming: If you're an eBayer, you might have noticed Paypal has been having severe difficulties over the weekend, possibly stemming from a bad software update. eBay reports that as of Monday, things have begun to get better, although not before they received some bad press. On the iPod front, it looks like a lot of players are getting in on the war, including BenQ (as mentioned Oct 5), Olympus, & Virgin, the latter which is testing the interesting 5Gig capacity, which puts it head-to-head with the Mini, so I'm sure we'll see something cute & colorful. Makes me wonder what would happen if Apple licensed its iPod OS for a hefty fee, but of course vendors who own music content (like Virgin & Sony) wouldn't bite... and neither would vendors pushing their own stores or DRM schemes (MS), but everyone else would jump on. Apple would just set the licensing fee gougingly high to keep a nice profit, which would be acceptable this digital music goldrush period, even for vendors testing the waters of multiple product (read: DRM) lines. Ah I'm day dreaming, especially with Apple seeing an incredible 82% market share. In other Tunes-news, the Supreme Court declined to hear a RIAA case, letting stand a decision that the music industry can't force ISPs to name their users who are pirating music-- this is a very significant blow to the RIAA, because this was the first major test of the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act).


(Oct 10): Postal 2 Gold: We are finally done with
betatesting under Ryan Gordon, and he has made the last fixes and announced that Postal 2 is now gold. The game has been tested in multiplayer with windows machines (as both servers and clients), although since the game is relatively old on the PC side, the servers are not too populated atm-- upon release I suspect it'll mainly be mac players meeting each other serverside. Of course the real treat here is the single player mode, and as I've said before it's actually quite an incisive commentary on society, including you as the game player. There is no final word on the distribution of Postal 1, but it too has been ported & betatested, so look to see it become available in some form. And yes, that is in fact Gary Coleman seemingly oblivious to the fact that he is on fire. You can read more about Gary at the official Postal 2 site, as well in a UGO interview-- and don't forget to see the hilarious photos of Gary at E3 2004.

nongaming: Apple homepage shift: I don't really use home pages, but I take it a lot of people do, and if you use the default livepage.apple.com, you should know that Apple is soon to promote apple.com/startpage instead. The bottom line is that you'll see less Netscape-sourced information and more Apple related links. Ultrawideband: Just in keeping up the news, you should know that a new wireless standard that absolutely flies at 1 Gbit/sec is being hashed out. How fast is that? Imagine streaming real time HDTV feeds to your plasma screen, or having a wireless firewire/usb2 hard drive. Apparently it's a former military technology, and works at fairly short distances, which means it will work with, rather than against, Wi-Fi and the coming WiMax. Look for the first appearance of the bleeding edge devices in 2006. Read more here. Imagine an airDVD to complement airTunes =D . Whatever it ends up looking like, we know that Apple's version will look a lot nicer that Sony's version, although both companies will try to throw something proprietary into the mix. Talking about airTunes reminds me that if you want to see what instruments & loops are actually included in the new Jam Packs 2 & 3 for Garage Band, iCompositions has them listed. From the other side: I read two very interesting articles recently, and neither was pro-Apple, but I wasn't turned off. The first was a review of Macs & OS X from the proprietor of the diehard PC site anadatech. The article is entitled A Month with a Mac, as is a very lucid and honest try at the power user's view of switching-- it's very thoughtful and thorough (it's at least 10 pages with copious screenshshots), and if you're a Mac-only user you might learn new information. The second is more directly negative and is one side of a debate at Fool, and when you get past all the trolling, there are some interesting points about Apple's stock valuation. The URL to the other defending side is also given at the beggining of the article. On the political newsfront, if you just can't get enough of the US campaigning, the iTMS is again hosting a free download of the latest Presidential debate between Kerry & Bush. This reminds me... if you're a user of Google News (which is still in beta for legal reasons after 3 years), you might have noticed certain biases one way or another for each candidate. It turns out one explanation is that there are lots of sites, and the big ones tend to headline with last names only, whereas smaller sites tend to include the first and last names more often, especially in the case of negative headlines-- and user searches of Google news tend to be of the latter variety, with both first & last name.

(Oct 8): Mac BF1942 Server: Aspyr just released the Battlefield 1942 Dedicated Server for Mac, allowing you to run a multiplayer server with support for more players than through hosting via the retail client app. Download it here. In further Aspyr news, our Aspyr reporter Rogue found that the Mac version of the Call of Duty expansion pack Call of Duty: United Offensive has just gone beta. He writes "The expansion pack offers 13 all-new single-player missions distributed among historical U.S., British and Russian campaigns, an expanded multiplayer experience featuring 11 new maps and three new modes of play, plus new weapons, player abilities and special effects. Featuring three all-new campaigns, the game lets players join the U.S. 101st Airborne during the Battle of the Bulge, the British campaign as an airman shooting down German ME-109s from a B-17 bomber, and the Russian frontlines as a conscript in the crucial eight-day Battle of Kursk." Is it just me or has Aspyr been on a full scale release-roll since the summer? Bravo Glenda, keep cracking those whips over at Aspyr. =D

iMac G5 benchmark updates: Robert Morgan of Barefeats has again updated the iMac G5 gaming benchmark results. Apparently this all hinges on Apple's claim that the 17" G4 iMac 1.25 is almost half as slow as the equivalently-configured 20" at the UT2k4 benchmark-- their other comparison machines did indeed compare nicely with Barefeats' machines, so this may be believable-- however, Robert is awaiting his own evaluation G4 Macs. I originally asked him about his bootROM versions, which is how Apple discovered that he had the faster-gaming 20" G4 iMac. If these results are indeed valid, then it's even more stunning with UT2k4's 3323 patch. The original tests were done with what was the latest 3236 (I asked Ryan Gordon, the coder for Epic/Macsoft, and he said he didn't provide Apple with a prerelease 3323, so that fits), and showed a 212% improvement: 3 times the performance when using the G5 iMac 17" 1.8Ghz. However the G5 shows a great improvement in FPS whereas the G4 does not... therefore using 3323, Rob-ART sees a 300% improvement: 4 times the performance! We're still awaiting his G4 iMac 17" measurements, but I won't be totally convinced yet until I see an equally-slow benchmark result from a 17" G4 iMac that didn't come from Apple's Performance Marketing division lab. That said, Rob-ART is also running some Altivec Fractal CPU benchmarks for me using various RAM configurations. It almost seems as if my 2G configuration is marginally slower, but we're not sure if that's a software installation difference, or an actual speed difference possibly due to 1G dimms sometimes running more slowly, according to him. As always: stay tuned!

Color iPods? The big rumor making the rounds today is from ThinkSecret, which claims a holiday release of a 60G ipod within the 4G lineup with a color LCD screen for viewing photos. In other Tunes news, apparently the music industry is bringing copyright lawsuits to music pirates in Europe now. In other Apple litigation news, there is some word that Apple Computer might have a strong case in its legal battle with the Beatles' Apple Corps for the use of "Apple" to distribute music online, based on their 1991 settlement (...and btw it looks like Safari, but not Firefox gets around the news registration page at that URL). Also, the popular Taiwanese company BenQ is about to launch a HDD music player to rival the iPod-- BenQ is known for their high quality and cut-throat prices. I was first acquainted with BenQ when browsing around the Alienware site when shopping for a possible desktop-replacement PC notebook. Yes I admit, the cyborg green alienware notebooks with glowing LED eyes might be the only computer that might rival the iMac G5 if brought to a Starbucks for an eyeball-attracting contest. Did I buy one? No I got the iMac G5 instead silly! Truth is, it was good timing, because I'll be waiting for PCI Express to replace AGP for 1337 graphics in "desktop-replacement/gaming" notebooks on the PC side.

Icculus update: I was reading Ryan Gordon's updated .plan today, and I think his Unreal3 entry is new. He writes: "UnrealEngine3: Work officially begins. Time to get this building under gcc again. Since
we changed up the source tree layout, the Makefiles from UE2 are basically useless. Rather than rewrite them, I'm going to spend some time exploring SCons, which came highly recommended by TTimo, the Doom3/linux guy. First Unreal steals their colored lighting, then their build system! :) Obviously, there's a lot to be done at this point, but best to start now so I'm not scrambling to port a whole engine when UE3 games get closer to shipping. Updates as I have them." Finally as the last line of his .plan, I noticed he plugged a game called Gish. I'll take a look today. From a brief glance, the site graphics looked more intentionally well-done than that of Kingdom of Loathing, an online RPG that is intensely popular among the Linux folks at #icculus.org. I'll make a brief review of some web-based gaming soon for a fuller report on KoL.

(Oct 7): Anomaly Racing (UT2k4 mod): I'm back in the swing of converting mods again, and the latest is the high speed racing shoot-em-up mod Anomaly. The devs were actually requesting the mac community via Macologist forums to do a conversion, isn't that great? We have to positively reinforce that behavior! We'll have a launcher & dmg soon. Meanwhile you can check this thread at Macologist for lots of screenshots that'll give you some idea what fun this mod is, as you develop your vehicle, engine, and weapons as you progress. Partner site: In other mod news, Zweibel and his site Mods4Mac will be the newest partner site with Macologist. He's got a bunch of mods for BF1942 and UT2004 already available, and he's already worked with our other friend, Cannonfodder and his mac mod conversion site macfpsgames, which is where he got his distro of the BF1942 mod Desert Combat. Hopefully he can help us, and he might find our launcher scripts useful (for BF1942 and UT2004) too.

iMac G5 news: Well Barefeats.com is almost done with its work. You can check out his latest game benchmarks here, the results were updated today. The last big piece of the puzzle is the benchmarking of the iMac G4-- after all, if Apple used a slow one, then the benefit of the iMac G5 is all the greater. Barefeats' G4 atm is a 20", which Apple says is much faster than the 17". Go figure, we always thought they were about the same speed in most tasks. He's waiting for confirmation on that, but in the mean time, if you have an iMac G4 1.25 17", please contact me or post your results here. We're also waiting on different RAM comparisons, as well as RAM configurations (i.e. same RAM total, but different-sized dimms composing that total).

(Oct 6): New Reviews at IMG: I was browsing around insidemacgames.com, and saw some new reviews worth taking a look: Republic, The Revolution from Feral Interactive received a 7.75, and last week, SimCity 4: Rush Hour received an 8.0. Republic looks to be a fascinating single player strategy experience as you try to gain popular support to overthrow your government, which is modeled after the former USSR.

Political iTunes: The recent first Bush vs. Kerry debates on 9/30 are a free download at the iTMS here. This is in addition to free downloads from the 2004 Republican and Democratic National Conventions-- both are available in the Audiobooks section of the iTMS.

Apple Commentary, news, history: I've been reading some of Tera Patrick's Mac 360 articles and fictional opinion pieces with great interest, and so should you. Yesterday's piece was on MIcrosoft's plan to defeat iPod, iTMS, and Open Source. Of course Microsoft has such a plan, and here she guesses it may be related to the recent spate of patent wars, although the patent holders don't always win. In cautionary news, I have two items... Podlounge has been keeping tabs on the 4G iPod "Audio Defect" problem-- they describe exactly what the problem is, how to diagnose it, how to tell Apple to repair it, and Apple's current stance on the issue. Also iMac G5 owners are experiencing clicking and humming issues. I'm not sure exactly what the problem(s) are, but there's a long thread at Apple Discussion Forums, as well as thorough and continuing coverage of the issue by MacFixit. There's also an online recording of one user's noise problem. Apparently if you report this problem, the Apple agent will ask you to try tapping F14 and F15 to adjust your brightness to see if the sound volume rises & falls with the brightness. Reminds me of a HD parking noise problem in the G4 LCD iMacs as described in this Apple thread. Somehow it all just got me thinking (as I was with my Sep 26 URLs), about the old days of John Sculley as Apple's CEO, and how different things might have been without his disastrous decisions-- such as allowing Microsoft wiggle room to essentially copy the Mac OS without royalties. It really is as bad as that sounds. =\ If you want to know more, read here or here.

(Oct 5): iMac G5 controversy picked up by Wired: If you've been following along the past few days, you already know about the Barefeats benchmarks of the iMac G5 beginning to refute Apple's claims of 212% performance gain of the G5 iMac when compared to the G4 in UT2004. Rob-ART of Barefeats is reporting approximately 80% at the most in some cases, although he isn't finished yet with all of his G4 measurements. He is also currently closely conferring with Apple's Performance Marketing lab, and hoepfully I can find a G4 iMac 1.25 to test as well. If you have a G4 iMac 1.25, we would LOVE to have your results, using the Santaduck Benchmark on Asbestos at 1024x768 max and min detail, using either UT 3236 or 3321 in OS X 10.3.5. Ideally we are looking for a 1G (512Mx2) configiuration, but I'll take anything. Remember to quit all other applications & close your finder windows and even disable your network before testing. Oh yeah and about Wired... much of what I've been writing about has been picked up by Wired in an article here. Rob-ART told me today that the factual information regarding him is all correct. We are all awaiting the final results, but he's taking great care to compile all the info and get it airtight first.

(Oct 4): Postal 2 (almost) Gold: Icculus issued a "last call" for all Postal 2 beta testers for Mac & Linux, and we should see the news that Postal 2 is Gold momentarily. I must say the game looks great and plays well. Speaking with Icculus, he was saying it was one of his favorite games because, although being saddled with the violence it inherited from Postal 1, it has since transmuted it into a rare sort of incisive social commentary, as well as on showing the inhibitions inherent in you, a member of this society, as the game player. No word yet on whether Postal 1 (a 3/4 top down 2D third person shooter) will be bundled with Postal 2.

FragOps Wallpapers by Ektophase: I'm hosting two wallpapers from Ektophase over at Macologist's album page. You might have to click on the image twice to get the high resolution version-- if it looks pixelated, click on it again. Mac FO: BTW I've finally gotten back into full game testing w/the new iMac having arrived... and now I notice that Frag.Ops is having some odd keyboard issues, specifically the numpad doesn't seem to work, and FO-specific INI files are no longer generated by the mod switch. I'll have to investigate whether this is a UT2k4 3323 issue, or a FO issue.

(Oct 3): osxgamefiles update: The http navigation is still down at Macologist's FTP sistersite osxgamefiles.com, but you can still browse via ftp using ftp://www.osxgamefiles.com. So now you can grab all those mod files for BF1942 like Desert Combat, or the UT2004 mod files, or Tacops for UT99. I'm still lacking upload access, so these will be files from about a month ago at the latest. Also check the MacFPSgames download page for files your are looking for.

iMac G5 benchmark saga: As reported from Oct 1, I'm still assisting Barefeats.com to try to validate Apple's claims of UT2004 performance. We've been mixing various RAM, graphics settings, and versions of UT2004. Apple might be helping him to determine the settings they used; after all they made some very specific number public, with respect to the G5 17" iMac's benefit in UT2004 and Halo over the LCD G4 17" iMac. Curiously (within 3 days of some of Barefeat's original postings) Apple gave a memo to all Apple Retail Stores (ARS) that their policy to deny the use of their machines for in-store benchmarking-- it's purely speculation if there is any relevance between the two matters, but I've heard that a reporter from Wired was asking questions. I hope Apple has realized that with all of the wonderful publicity the iMac has been generating in the press lately that this is definitely not the right time for stonewalling at the risk of a black eye-- even smaller websites such as Barefeats & Macologist could cause a ruckus if it was picked up by the likes of Wired. Thus it seems that Apple will try to be helpful with testing details from its Performance Marketing division. Bravo. (Although apparently the ARS test policy has not been retracted).

So far it seems that they were using DM-Asbestos botmatch, which is a great choice, as results from this benchmark are very consistent from run to run, differing at MOST 0.3 FPS, compared to difference of 4-5 full FPS I've seen using DM-Antalus as the test map. Furthermore, Asbestos is also the official test map for UT2k4 at xlr8yourmac.com's benchmark database and submission page. Apple told us they were using 1G RAM with UT2k4 v3236, which was the latest patch available at the time of the iMac G5's release in Paris. In my testing, there is fairly minimal benefit of using 2G (2x1G dimm) over 1G (1G dimm), which is interesting because matched dimms results in a 128bit path, instead of 68bits, according to this Apple dev page (also see here for architecture notes). However I found two interesting configurations. I've therefore asked Rob-ART to run the CPU benchmark Altivec Fractal 1.2 if possible on various RAM configs. Running the benchmarks at the iMac's native 1440x900 (with minimum detail settings) results in slightly faster FPS than at the smaller 1024x768 mode, which has to drive 40% fewer pixels. Also, specific to version 3323, 1024x768 at maximum detail yields a particularly high FPS figure... but this is odd since I believe Apple was saying they used 3236 (which was the latest version at the time) swat 1024x768 at minimum detail. I've posted my full results at the thread at Macologist .

Even more on iMac G5: MacFixit reports that Apple has a new online Troubleshooting & Support Assistant for the iMac G5. It will walk you through diagnostics & ordering replacement parts if necessary, it sounds like a really great service to have online-- Now I don't have to convince the tech on the other side of the line that I'm not a n00b and I've already tried everything they are about to suggest, and more. Bravo Apple. There are still some holes in Apple's enormous online resources, such as the iMac G5 being missing from the pulldown at the Customer-Installable Parts page.

(Oct 1): Myst IV released: UbiSoft has released the latest incarnation of the venerable graphic adventure game... Look for more puzzles, lavish layouts, and revelations about Atrus, Sirrus, Achenar, and Yessha. The game comes on a combo DVD with modest (700 Mhz G4/Jaguar/Radeon 7500-Geforce 2MX) requirements on the Mac side. The demo is hosted at MGF. MMORPG news: Blizzard released the new World of Warcraft (WoW) "Beta 6 build" patch. The Warlock animation & model has been tweaked, in addition to smaller changes as listed in the changelog. If you're not in the beta, you'll just have to be patient =D In related news, the WoW European beta has started, and the European beta forums are now open, and are in French, German, and English.

iMac news: My 17" G5 iMac has arrived yesterday, and I'm beginning some very in-depth UT2004 beta testing, in conjunction with Rob-ART of Barefeats.com for his ongoing iMac benchmark report here and here. Actually our results look like they might contradict Apple's results (we're not sure yet) and he has even drawn the attention of Apple... Read more at my article at Macologist. I'm currently testing four RAM configurations ranging from 256M to 2G, as well as three versions (3204, 3236, and 3321) of UT2004. Of course the CPU setting is set to "Highest" in the Energy Saver CP. I've typically seen more benefit with better gfx cards at higher detail & resolution settings, and nearly similar results at the lower levels-- we'll see if this pattern holds for the difference in jumping from a G4 to a G5 iMac. Also on slower G4s, I've seen better FPS up to about 1G of RAM, but not above that, but I've heard that benefits in typical apps and games are seen up to 2G from G5 PM owners. It remains to be seen which of these trends will hold in the G4iMac vs G5 iMac comparison, and whether Apple's benchmark result of the pre-release iMac G5's 212% performance of the G4 holds water with the shipping version.

iMac early report: Just a few quick comments, I'm fairly happy with my first day with the iMac G5-- It wasn't apparent from the pictures I'd seen on the internet, but it has just scads of beautiful clear acrylic, reminding me very much of the beauty of the Apple Cube. The hinge is very securely attached, but it may come off easily, I'll post a photo series soon. The RAM is not clearly Samsung, I'll post a pic soon. Finally, the unit is quiet & cool, with the CPU usage set at "automatic" in the Energy Saver CP. However, when it is set to "Highest" (the only other setting is the anemic "Reduced"), the unit quickly begins to ramp up its fans and is soon roaring out the vertical vent in the rear. It is really quite loud, with a high pitched component (that might be the Maxtor 250G drive, but I hadn't heard it earlier from a distance). It is easily as loud as my Compaq P4 laptop when it is overheating, which means I can hear it from 10 feet across the room-- and this is with the OS X desktop sitting idle with no applications running. More on this later... but we already know Apple engineers bumped down the bus speed to 1/3 CPU (instead of 1/2) to cool the unit. One last comment, is that the speakers are serviceably loud enough, and easily louder than most laptops or PBs. The speakers fire directly out the thin bottom of the unit, so if the iMac is sitting on carpet, it sounds distinctly different (muffled) compared to when it is sitting on a hard surface. That's all for now...