News

Almost two years since the last post. Gosh time flies. Anyway, I've been optimising this site recently to improve its cacheability etc, and while I'm pretty sure everything is still working, if anyone spots a problem either email me or post in the forum. Thanks. Maybe one day I'll have a ports update too.

I'm going to be changing ISPs for my DSL within the next few days, which means the files hosted at http://members.iinet.net.au/~jonof/ will no longer exist. I'll transfer them to my new ISP, but the old links that seem to have proliferated around the place will be broken. There is a solution though, which I admit I should have set up long ago: adjust the members.iinet paths to use http://jonof.edgenetwork.org/dl/ as the base of the URL. eg. http://members.iinet.net.au/~jonof/blah.zip becomes http://jonof.edgenetwork.org/dl/blah.zip. I can redirect that address to wherever I like that way without ruining everyone else's work. Sorry all.

I've updated a few things on the site, including new screenshots for all the remaining Build games that still had the old tiny pictures. Also, work on the JFDuke3D and JFSW ports is progressing and eventually there will be a new release.

I discovered quite by accident a fantastic port of Duke3D to Palm OS 5—the OS running such devices as the Palm Tungsten-series PDAs and the Tapwave Zodiac. It is the work of Henk "MetaView" Jonas and is based on JFDuke3D. On my Tungsten T, the oldest in the Tungsten family, it runs exceptionally well at a 320x240 resolution.

And for those wanting something a little more substantial, here's a four minute video (XviD encoded, no audio) of me playing E1L1. Owners of a Palm OS 5 handheld should certainly check it out. Grab it from Henk's site.

I've added a Build game entry for Corridor 8, the game that was to be the sequel of Corridor 7, but never made it past prototype.

After arguably a long time, I've released updates for JFBuild, JFDuke3D, and JFShadowWarrior. Most of the effort has been going into getting Shadow Warrior up to snuff, and this release of JFSW is the first to feature multiplayer, though only peer-to-peer mode works at present. I've also been working a lot behind-the-scenes on improving the portability of the engine and games, and in the not too distant future I hope to have a test of the Mac OS X ports for Mac users to try. Enjoy.

An update to JFBuild, JFShadowWarrior, and JFDuke3D has just been made available. JFSW and JFDuke3D now share the same version of the JFBuild engine. JFDuke's networking should not have out-of-sync issues quite as much. JFSW will get an update soon to make the multiplayer functional. Enjoy!

I've updated the PNGOUT for Linux port to reflect Ken's changes to date. I've also added i686, Athlon and Pentium4-optimised binaries for those who might find them useful. Enjoy.

The first release of JFShadowWarrior following the publishing of the original Shadow Warrior code by 3D Realms is now available for your enjoyment. Please bear in mind this is the first release so there will be crashes or bugs. Please report them as you find them. View the JFShadowWarrior section or go directly to the files.

An updated version of the JFDuke3D port is now available. This corrects the problem of command line parameters being ignored, makes the waiting period on netgame launch more obvious, and includes other minor improvements. Like the release prior, this release should be considered a test only.

No, this is not a joke. An update to the JFDuke3D port is out for everyone who wants to give the multiplayer code a try. We're considering it a test for now to see how things go, what problems arise, and so forth. An official stable release will be done at a later date to polish it up more. Let us know of any problems, and be sure to read the release notes to get familiar with how to use it.

A new compile of Ken's PNGOUT optimisation program is up. This includes the latest collection of updates found in the Windows version.

An interim release of JFDuke3D is available. It fixes a collection of really annoying bugs in the port and adds a couple of new features. I've disabled the multiplayer feature entirely because the old code is broken and the new stuff isn't ready. Folks making stuff for Duke may like to check out the sky box and multiple model skins support. See the release notes for details.

For those folks who like this sort of thing, I've created an RSS 2.0 feed of this news page. Bon appétit.

Due to popular demand, the site now has a forum/discussion board. Read my welcoming message here and enjoy.

An update to the PNGOUT port for Linux has been released. It brings it up to date with Ken's latest developments and adds the capability for the program to be used like a filter, piping the input in on stdin and out on stdout.

I'm capturing new screen shots of the games in the Build Games section and providing the full size versions as well. The new shots will be put online as they're ready.

Welcome to the new design. I've given everything on the site a thorough overhauling and modernised the back-end so that I can actually make new features a whole lot easier. I'm going to be tweaking the visuals a little and I'm also planning on setting up some forum software, but apart from that, things are primed and ready to go. Hope you like it.