Currently I am playtesting a lot of MMORPGs and today I tried out Dark Age of Camelot (DAoC). It just didn't work for me. The entire moving feels sluggish, the interface feels clumsy and the non-player character (NPC) interaction reminds me of dealing with old-style MUDs. The setting seems promising though, especially the inter-realm warfare, but to me the pleasure was quickly drained due to the highly annoying user interface (UI).

There's no easy way by default to get to the option screen. I mean, people nowadays almost expect the escape key to be bound to the game menu or options menu. Nearly every game has this. The entire UI handling is slow that it feels like trying to maneuver through syrup or something. Not to mention that the talking with NPCs is grating, you get a window with some text, some word is underlined, you click on it, you get more text and it goes a few times like this, and you wind up with some quest.

The graphics do not look too bad or dated, but didn't really inspire much. And the weird thing is that I already experienced some strange glitches where one moment I saw a bunch of enemies standing around and next they just disappeared only to rematerialize a few seconds later.

Perhaps the game gets better later but it just couldn't keep me enticed. The slugginess is compared to World of Warcraft, Ryzom, and EverQuest II.

Got to love it when one standard says to either use a date format like CCYY-MM-DD or CCYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ and the other says only CCYY-MM-DD is allowed. In this case the outside XML container uses the verbose granularity whilst the encapsulated part only uses the small ISO 8601 variant, of which MM and DD are optional too.

Now that Microsoft allows you to download the Consolas font the question becomes how to add it to the list of choices for the command prompt properties.

In the Microsoft Knowledge Base article 247815 you can find instructions on how to add a font.

Basically on most default Windows XP installations it boils down to adding a String name '00' to the HKLMSoftwareMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersionConsoleTrueTypeFont with a value of 'Consolas' (the corresponding name from HKLMSoftwareMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersionFonts).

An item over at the Inquirer said that at the E3 they were unofficially informed that Intel is working on getting back into the games graphics market. This was in May.

In July we have the following item over at the Inquirer in which Intel reveals their G965 graphics solution, which is using technology licensed from PowerVR, back then codenamed Eurasia and now known as GSX (Graphics Shader Accelerator. Now furthermore the article tells us that Intel will also start work on using Muse (Media Unified Shading Engine) for its graphics offering. Simplistically compare Muse to what Cell did, cheap cores in a parellel setup thus enabling improved calculations. In this case with multiple GSX cores (due to the Universal Scalable Shader Engine I think, which combines the pixel and vertex shaders into one design) it might even build a multi-pipeline graphics solution. The only funny thing is that Wikipedia's PowerVR article lists Muse as a mobile solution according to a company presentation. And indeed, when one checks another article at the Inquirer you see that the roadmap indeed introduces Muse and Athena, the first aimed at portable computing, the latter aimed at desktops (introducing programmable shaders). Of course, if the GSX is a SoC design the lower energy consumption and die size (and gate count)

Funnily enough on the Intel site right now there are two job openings (posted end of July and early August) in the United States for a Senior Graphics Software Engineer and Software Engineer 3D Graphics. The first focusing on what seems to be identify from the end-user (including game developers) point of view where the bottlenecks in the hardware design lie. The latter job seems to focus on driver improvements and driver support for OpenGL 2.0 and DirectX 10. Coincedence?

According to a what older article at LaptopLogic NVIDIA has an idea to make the system use its integrated simpler GPU for handling day-to-day desktop graphics, while switching to the stronger and more featureful (and often more power-consuming and warmer) GPU when needed for 3D work or gaming.

Interesting idea, but with SoC designs coming from Imagination Technologies, Falanx, and other designers that reduce a GPU's power-consumption and warmth build-up you can wonder if such a design is interesting enough to work out.

In a SIGGraph 2006 presentation by NVIDIA it shows that Microsoft has revisited its stance on how they will support OpenGL within Windows Vista. You may recall when I first wrote about this last year that Microsoft's initial plan was to layer OpenGL through DirectX:

This time last year…

The plan for OpenGL on Windows Vista was to layer OpenGL over Direct3D in
order to obtain the Aeroglass experience

The situation today…

OpenGL accelerated ICD now fully supported under Windows Vista
OpenGL works fully with the Aeroglass compositing desktop
Performance and stability will rival Windows XP by driver release

So it seems some complaining still works given sufficient pressure.

According to [a post by Keith Packard on the Linux kernel mailinglist](http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=115536806403908&w=2 "Re: Announcing free software graphics drivers for Intel i965"):

This module contains stuff which Intel can't publish in source form, like
Macrovision register stuff and other trade secrets. It's optional, so if you
don't want to use a binary module, you don't get to use code written by
Intel agents for these features. And, we also haven't figured out how and
when to release this binary blob, so there's no way you can use it today.
The driver remains completely functional in the absense of the binary piece,
and in fact has no reduction in functionality from previous driver releases.

So much for that idea eh?

In Zen buddhism we are often in contact with the mondous (read as mondo, with a long ending o). A mondou is a Japanese word standing for a dialogue, or rather a rapid-fire question and answer session, that tries to push the student closer to enlightenment (nirvana, <span lang="ja">涅槃</span> - nehan). Mondou in kanji is <span lang="ja">問答</span> (<span lang="ja">もんどう</span>). One can easily see mon (<span lang="ja">問</span>) from problem/question and kotae (<span lang="ja">答</span>), read in this case as dou, which is solution/answer.

According to a statement by AMD/ATI:

We've always supported open source, and for relevant markets such as
servers, we release open source drivers so that companies such as Red Hat
can include them in their distros.

[...]

However, for other markets, such as workstation and consumer, performance
and feature differentiation are key metrics. Proprietary, patented
optimizations are part of the value we provide to our customers and we have
no plans to release these drivers to open source.

[...]

In addition, multimedia elements such as content protection must not, by
their very nature, be allowed to go open source.

This makes one wonder. AMD has also, like Intel, always publicized their specifications and programming manuals for their processors and chipsets.

In related news Intel asked to be able to serve a subpoena (a legal writ which calls you to attend and function as a witness in a judicial proceeding under a penalty in case of disobedience) on ATI in the anti-trust case versus AMD.

A few days ago the OpenGL ARB released version 2.1 of the OpenGL standard.

And also, according to a press release on the Khronos website, the Khronos group will now maintain the OpenGL standard.

This might in effect mean that development of the OpenGL standard might speed up.