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sooooo...here it is the 3dfx-dicussion...does anybody own 3dfx-graphic-cards or has 3dfx-tales he wants to share with us?

here is my 3d(fx)-gamer-story which made me to a truly fan of this awesome company:
i received my first 3d-graphics-card (a voodoo5 5500) in june 2000 (6 months before they got assimilated by evilllllll nvidia) and the very first game i started was ultima 9 where i thought something like "oh! no! my computer crashed! the intro stopped!" till it took me around 30 seconds to realize that this were game graphics. uh...this was quite a shock for me. a positive one. i think that's the usual business when you're used to "monkey island 1" vga-graphics... ultima 9 in glide. and then this 3dfx-logo every time when you start a game in glide. and so it was something like "3dfx? love! love! love!".

and then i discovered all this neat features of my voodoo5. 4xfull-scene-antialising. which lead to an incredbile image quality. and so my affection to 3dfx changed from an one-night-stand to "3dfx? even more love!".

and then i discovered this quake3-demo. running in 640x480 with 4xfsaa. in glide + depth of field. wooooooooohhhhhaaaaaa. sooooo cooolll.

but this company full of creative insane (who else would dare producing monsters like a voodoo5 6000 or voodoo2-sli???) people came down to earth. this nvidia-guys with their clever marketing campaigns bought this small familiar company. oh...well...the world is so unfair.

soooo....who else owns or owned a 3dfx-card? huh?

oh...and...here...is something for you:
an awesome 3dfx-spot: http://www.voodooalert.de/files/movies/violent.mpg (size ~3 mb)

some time ago i tried some very basic functions of sdl with visual studio and c++ and made a small (buggy) game called "catch the pig" out of it.

the - very bad - result of it can be found here (if there's anybody interested )
http://members.aon.at/affengottsekte/CtP/CtPv0.1e.rar

note: my knowledge of c++ is...hmm...limited because of the fact that i never really programmed in c++ and so had to improvise at some parts of the sourcecode, which makes him really really...oh, well...indescribable. yes. indescribable. and this leads to the inexact "collision control"...

4 of our 8 written final exams are done, but tomorrow we'll be confronted with something incredible thrilling:

9 hours programming. in java. with jdeveloper. suicide thoughts. a lot of swearing. a bunch of frustration. and insanity. great. great.

i only hope that i don't have to bang against my computer several times for stop it being noisy. oh, anyway. tomorrow will be really cool. if i'd stay at home...

ohhhh...and here...special feature...wuhaaa...windows task manager...
jdeveloper gets beaten by oracle! haahahahah!

i hope i post in the right forum.

i digged this text out i originally wrote in german some months ago and translated it into (in my opinion very poor) english.

i really hate it, but got a bunch of officious positive feedback on german forums for it.

but, anyway, here it is:

eye - prologue
Night. The sun was rising towards the horizon and a veil of darkness spread through Tr'Eah. A lot of citizens of the continent went to rest and sought for recovery of the hard work, they had to do the whole day. Only a few outdared sleep. One of these restless persons was the aging monk Baratus, who was the only one in his monastery still working. But the hours of work showed their exhaustion and elicited his mouth a yawn. After that he looked towards his notes, peered at the puce book in front of him, dunked his feather into his inkpot and continued writing. The candle, which was standing in the center of his marmoreal working desk spent brightness to support his weak eyes in reading his own words.

Suddenly he felt a stinging pain on his back. Baratus stood up and looked for a split second lethargic ? almost desperately ? at his desk. His bones got old and his backbone ached. He stretched for gaining energy to continue his work. The aging monk swept through his grew hair and sighed. The night will be a very long one for him. The pain he felt a few moments before vanished and so he sat back on his wooden chair.

Suddenly a wind gust irrupted through the small window in front of him. The monk contemplatively gazed through the window out in the nature. Black clouds were arising over the forests of Blythe. A storm seemed to announce. The salty smell seemed to distract him and so he decided to close the window. But the candle, which filled the room with light, had been blown out. Only afterglow?s last rays, which were infiltrating through holes in the wooden crate of the window, saved the room from absolute darkness.

His right hand stretched for the extincted candle, which was standing on the marmoreal desk. He spanned it unsafely and tremulously. Slowly he hobbled towards a torch, which was hanging next to room?s entry. On his way he looked humbling at the marmoreal floor of his chamber. Every footstep hurt. His right foot was blotched with scars, which were disguised by his red cape. The distance he had to cover was very exhausting. Finally he reached his goal. The old man firmed up on the wooden and moldy entrance door and put the candle carefully into the nearby torch. Then he started to hobble back to his working place. Sweat ran of his wrinkled, pale front. He didn?t see much daylight in the past. His work was much too important and decisive for the future. Halfway he stopped to mobilize his last forces. His thoughts circulated about his son and his wife. Again and again they poured out. The anger, provoked by his thoughts, gave him the force to continue his way.

Raindrops slugged against the wooden crate of the window. A thunderstorm built up. The raindrop?s noise turned louder and almost unbearable. Baratus closed his eyes.

A young girl. His wife. On her left hand a little boy. His son. Both run towards him. He spreads his arms to be able to hug them. Suddenly high waves occur and smash over them. His wife and his son were struggling for their life. Baratus cries and runs towards his wife to help her. But he can?t. They are too far away.

Baratus scared up. He opened his eyes, looked at the noisy crate and sat back on his chair. With shaky hands he grabbed after his feather and continued with his work.

In a few seconds bolts enlightened his working chamber to daylight. But Baratus didn?t got distracted by the rainfalls, bolts and thunderclaps and continued ? ignoring his growing tiredness ? writing. The book in front of him, which he used for writing down phrases combined with his own thoughts down on the scroll, went to its end. Baratus looked at the laterally embossment, nodded and held it slowly under the aflame candle. Every single page started to pucker and burnt. The paper discolored from grayish white to unreadable black. Nobody should retrieve information of this book ever again. During looking at the writ burning he tried not to loose his fight against his again grown sleepiness. This time he wasn?t able to resist and his head sank down on the marble top of his desk during he closed his eyesÃ,  slowly.

Again a young woman. While Baratus tries to come closer, she goes a few steps backwards. He seems to forget his infirmity and starts to run. Slowly he comes nearer, but the closer he comes the blurrier and vaguely she seems to be. Blank. Now he observes that the environment he is in doesn?t posses underground or heaven or nature. He is surrounded by emptiness. Suddenly noises. Whispering voices coming from all sides seem to tell him something. But he isn?t able to understand the language. Baratus turns his head into every direction but he can?t find anybody. As fast as the voices start they vanish. Footsteps. They get closer and closer. Somebody is coming towards him. Baratus wants to scan the environment again but now he isn?t able to move. Sough comes up and the empty environment starts to get darker and darker till he isn?t almost able to see his own hand in front of his eyes. The unknown creature now seems to stop right behind him, because instead of footsteps he was able to hear somebody breathing.

Bolts enlightened the room again. Baratus scared up. Confused about his dream he tried to reorganize his thoughts to be able to continue work as soon as possible. While his eyes were scanning for the remains of the burnt book he discovered that it disappeared. He looked around in every single direction, but he wasn?t able to find anything. He decided to think about this mysterious disappearance later on. A lot of work needed to be done and he had to concentrate on it. Baratus?s bony hands grabbed the still burning candle. Slowly he tried to stand up again and started to go towards the entrance door. When he arrived he grabbed after the stick, which was leaning next to the door.

Slowly he opened it and leant on his wooden stick while he filled the dark corridor with light. His footsteps echoed from the end of the corridor while he inched. Because normally there?s no one aboard and Baratus wasn?t engrossed in his work, he noticed the silence around him. After a few minutes he stopped in front of an alley way. He finally reached his aim. The monk held the candle in the room in front of him.

It seemed to be filled up with countless bookshelves. Here seemed to be the biggest accumulation of knowledge in whole Demelor. Only a small window, which laid opposite to the entrance spent light at daytime. The marmoreal floor had been replaced by a wooden one, which generated contradictory to the sophisticated bookshelves an unworthy atmosphere. With a small grin he thought back to the time he firstly entered the library and was stunned by the countless number of books.

Slowly he went to a bookshelf in the back of the room and shortly searched through it. When his gazes went towards an embossment of a small book he nodded, put the candle on a shelf and pulled it slowly out. He wiped over the cover for several times, to remove all the dust, which aggregated over the last years. While Baratus tried to decode the title of the book, the candle extincted, although no windswept blew into it. Darkness spread.

Again whipsering. The spooky silence broke away by voices coming from all directions. He desperately tried to find the origin of these actions. Baratus turned in every single direction while beads of sweat ran down his face. Suddenly footsteps. They got closer and closer. Both hands of Baratus enveloped the book, while the voice of the footsteps suddenly stopped. The rooms seemed to be filled with emptiness. Baratus recognized noises of someone breathing. Then again silence attached and remained till the break of dawn.

opinions?
and no "oh! it's so wonderful, how will it go on?"-posts please. the text doesn't deserve something like that.