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To: John Finley who wrote (9446)	12/8/1998 11:28:00 PM
From: Jeff Lins	Respond to of 16960

from VE: Just checking out the latest buzz on Sierra's 3D RTS (set in space), Homeworld over on Homeworld.org and spotted the following nugget of news (posted by Keith Hentschel, one of graphics programmers): As far as graphics cards go, Homeworld has been predominantly developed using Voodoo Graphics and Vooodo^2's w/ OpenGL, not only because of the quality of 3Dfx's boards but because of our choice of development OS - NT 4, which lacks a recent version of DirectX. We support OpenGL & Direct3D (DirectX 6), and I recommend using OpenGL if you've got a Voodoo and Direct3D otherwise (most vendors are putting more optimization effort into their D3D drivers, but quality of OpenGL support has improved by leaps and bounds in the past few months especially). Myself, I've switched over to using the TNT w/ D3D Homeworld - fantastic looking output, and framerate remains quite high even at 1600x1200 (you really have to see it to believe it). A note about Glide: we currently have Glide support for 3Dfx cards and may ship with it, but I have qualms about dedicating my time to support a vendor's proprietary API, regardless of their marketshare. I'll take another look at Glide after the final round of OpenGL optimizations is done and if 3Dfx's hardware runs just as fast in OpenGL as in Glide, Glide support will be axed (and not missed).

To: John Finley who wrote (9446)	12/8/1998 11:34:00 PM
From: Jeff Lins	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16960

More from VE from the designer of a game which has won two very prestigeous awards: latest game ever to ship and buggiest game ever. Ever. : Gimpy at AMDZone has posted an interview with Take Two's favorite guy, Dr. Derek Smart, the guy behind Battlecruiser. A little rogering for ya: Q: In other interviews you've stated that BC3K 3020 would use 16-bit textures and lighting. With Voodoo 3, the biggest complaints have been its lack of 32-bit color and its low resoulution texture size (256x256). Do you feel that this is important in games, and will you be doing 32-bit color and bumping up the texture size in BCK3K 3020? Which video card do you personally like the most and to work with? In general scheme of things, I don't think I'm going to miss much by not having 32-bit color. The industry is still wowing the gamers over 16-bit color rendering right now anyway and I don't see 32-bit being that much of a big deal. Besides, in my opinion, 1999-2000 will be the period during which the industry shifts focus back to what counts: gameplay. The 1997-98 period has been the period of glitz with games going from mediocre to just plain bad and hiding all that crap behind glitz. It sold for awhile when a 3D card was a novelty. Its no longer a novelty, its a must-have and as such, will go the way of the sound card revolution. I think we'll do just fine with 16-bit until Y2K. If anyone's going to harp it, it'll be those who want to be the first on the bandwagon. The fact of the matter is, let them, the rest of us will hop on at some point if we deem it feasible and if the gamers demand it. By that time, I'm sure the other cards lacking in this arena, Voodoo 4 (?), will follow suit. We have no intentions of doing 32-bit color in the near future because I do not feel that it is important for the reasons stated above