Author Archives: Snake

…and another thing

You don’t get to be “Visitor of the Week” by spamming the news page with 50 hits. I CAN tell these things, so you might actually have to look around some. I hate spammers: email spammers, gren spammers, chat spammers…I HATE SPAMMERS!

But spam is pretty good shit, though.

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I’ll just throw some news your way…

I got my heart broken today when I found out a couple things about the new Pentium IIIs (Tualatin). One is that Intel will be selling it in a position that will make its leading (shittier) Pentium 4 look more appealing, which is more expensive. Second is that it requires a special mobo that can handle the 1.5v core, as previous Pentium IIIs had a 1.65v core. This really sucks, cause I eventually wanted to pop one of them babies into my rig. Then again, it probably won’t be produced as a SEC (Single-Edge Contact) anyways. Gotta go for that 1Ghz Coppermine, then. Read more at AnandTech. I also got my heart broken over something else, but nevermind that.

Since I started working on the new DEMOBOARD, Loogie has been working on the new MOD section. Of course, you know that I finished the DEMOBOARD on Sunday, but Loog’s general stupidity of all matters made it take 3 times as longer to get the MOD section in working order. Today, I took the shell of what Loog left (he’s in New York, BTW) and ran with it. I rewrote some of the Perl to make all the entries show up in one table. That took a while considering that I don’t even know Perl. Anyways, I have a rather messy but functioning system up. It’s similar to the DEMOBOARD obviously in the fact that it uses DBMan as a base. I’m beginning to love DBMan for its overall customizability and power. Anyways again, you can find it here. The link in the Navigation frame still links to the old database for now.

I was supposed to get Quake II today, but of course I didn’t. I find the balance between story and gameplay to be uniquely fun in the demo version (1 of 3 demos to actually score a 10). I strongly suggest that you pick it up sometime if you have not yet ventured down that path already. The review for Star Wars Pit Droids is up, too.

This Snake better find some Quake II on his floor tomorrow or some retailer is gonna get some smack layed on them, Nine Inch Snake sytle!

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Visitor of the Week

Maybe this will be a new weekly feature on the news, but anyhow, I just looked at the new tracking system’s results for the week. The top visitor for this week (who has a very descriptive server name) is someone from Peoria, IL with 29 hits. I, Snake, would like to extend my thanks to whomever this is and keep coming back! :)

Also, as of this moment I’ve reinserted 86 demos into the new DEMOBOARD and have found a way to sort by letter. Loogie is also trying to put together a MOD system. By the end of the summer, about half of S&L will be controlled from the web. And just think…2 years ago this was all Chris’ Mysterious Universe. I rock.

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A New System for the DEMOBOARD

As part of my CGI madness, I’m working on putting together a database for the DEMOBOARD. It’ll hopefully have the same form as the previous DEMOBOARD did, but with plenty of new features. Some of the features include: searching, user logins with levels of access, online submissions, online modifications, online deletion, and a customized layout. I have ran into a few problems, though; I’m not exactly sure at the time of this post on how to display demos according to the first letter of the Demo_Name and eventually the database will become really slow when searching (that would be around 300+ demos).

I’ve inserted yesterday’s demos into the database. If you want to have a look, go to the following address:
http://www.s–l.com/cgi-bin/dbman/db.cgi?db=default&uid=default&view_records=1&Demo_Name=*

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New Demo Reviews

I’ve got two new demo reviews up today. I think I was supposed to review the D2 demo 3 months ago, but never got around to it. Well, check it out anyways.

Diablo II
Armored Fist 3

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VT6X4 Tweak Guide

I’ve made a great advance today in the research for my next column. I’ve scoured the net for any and all tweaks related to the Via Apollo Pro 133A chipset and found a really great one. In SANDRA’s memory benchmark, it brought a 103% increase in the FPU and an 89% increase in the ALU (floating point and integer units, btw). Supposedly it works for all Via-based boards, too; even the AMD ones (KT133). I have even left Loog’s (supposedly) higher performing Kingston RAM in the dust.

Now you’re asking what effect this has on real-world gaming. A lot! I’m talking about 9fps (frames per second) more on almost all FPS (first-person shooter) games. What would you do for 9fps more? Some people would suck dick for it, but not Snake. I’ve been watching the new S&L Half-Life timedemo closely and so far I have been able to tweak it up to 84fps; at the start of my testing, it was running at 67fps. And I also have finally broken 10,000 CPUMarks in 3DMark 99 Max. I’d like to know who it was that stated “the Via chipset and Viper II cards are not compatible”, cause they need to be slapped with a trout.

I should start my coding of the column by the end of the week.

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