Archived News:
There are seven
new Spec Ops 2: Green Berets screenshots on Gibbed.com
showing off a pre-alpha build of the sequel currently in the works over at Zombie.
Doomworld interviews John Carmack
talking to id's lead programmer about the days way back when Doom was being created.
Good stuff, including the first revelation I've ever seen of where Doom got its name:
Carmack: There is a scene in "The Color of
Money" where Tom Cruse shows up at a pool hall with a custom pool cue in a case.
"What do you have in there?" asks someone. "Doom." replied Cruse with
a cocky grin. That, and the resulting carnage, was how I viewed us springing the game on
the industry.
After yesterday's April Fools joke about the Rainbow Six sequel, today comes the real
deal, as Tom Clancy's Rogue Spear has
been announced by Red Storm Entertainment. Thanks Billy at Voodoo Extreme. Here's the dope on the sequel:
Feedback from players showed an interest in a more realistic, real world
story-with that in mind, we're considering the idea of two vastly different, well-known
international terrorist groups forming an alliance. This alliance would join forces in an
effort to achieve even greater, more sinister goals worldwide than those they could
accomplish separately. As in the original, the missions will progress in a linear
storyline, with the first few crisis situations appearing to be unrelated, and leading up
to a challenging and explosive ending.
The sequel is currently scheduled for sixteen separate levels, and eighteen unique
missions (some levels will be used in different time periods during the game). Again, as
in the original, there will be a mix of hostage rescue, surveillance, and demolitions
missions.
SOME (not all) New Features:
- REPLAY: Players will be able to record missions and watch them later. Viewers
will be able to watch from the perspective of any operative on the team.
- Improved AI and Team Behavior: No more team members crowding, or getting stuck
behind you!
- Improved graphics: including revised special effects and lighting
- Weather Effects: including snow and rain.
- New Weapons and items: will include a grenade launcher
- Observer mode: (originally in the Mission Pack, but it will carry over into the
sequel)
- New Multiplayer game types
- Multiplayer Feature: A special Multiplayer "arm patch" option, so that
teams/squads can customize their uniforms and distinguish team members during multiplayer
firefights.
Version 1.17 of the Mac Descent/Descent II 3Dfx patch
is available. Thanks Billy at Voodoo Extreme.
Jenni from Valve just sent along word that the TeamFortress Classic release, originally planned for last Friday then rescheduled for today, has been delayed again. The bad news has some corresponding good news, a new map will be included when the release does occur. Here's the update:
The Bad News:
- TFC isn't going to release today. We have to do simultaneous releases in all languages, and we haven't finished QA on the international versions. Once that finishes up, we're
going to do final acceptance testing on all the different language versions for 24 hours, and then release. I'll let you know as soon as that 24 hour clock starts.
The Good News:
- There will be a new map in the release, called Push. We were going to keep this a secret until the release went out the door, but in a desperate attempt to reduce hate mail, I'm going to try to buy you off with this information.
- The Team Fortress Classic review in today's issue of 'USA Today' gives Team Fortress Classic 4 out of 4 stars, calling it "incredible" and "spectacular",
and saying it "rocks"!
- Remember, Team Fortress Classic will be the BEST FREE GAME you've ever played.
There is a Slave
Zero Q&A on GA-Source talking with Slave Zero Producer Matt Powers about
Accolade's upcoming third-person giant robot game, offering four new screenshots.
The Linux release of version 5.2 of Loki's Minions Capture
the Flag for Quake II is now available.
Jamie Zawinski has resigned as head of
Mozilla.Org, citing the reasons behind the decision in this post, which offers some interesting
commentary on the world of big software development. Thanks Beta Bites.
3DO's Official
Requiem: Avenging Angel FAQ is online offering frequently asked questions and their
answers about this just-released first-person shooter (here's a link to the Unofficial Requiem FAQ). The
FAQ mostly covers screen darkness, and similar video issues at the moment. Thanks Requiem HQ.
WarZone interviews Tim Sweeney
talking to the Epic programmer in a brief Q&A about progress on the 223 (or perhaps
now 224) Unreal patch and Unreal Tournament.
WarZone interviews Scott Herrington
of Shiny about their upcoming Messiah, and Avault's
Messiah preview is online, as well.
PC Gamer Online's Mortyr preview
is up with a hands-on look at Interactive Magic's upcoming World War II shooter (at least
I think the undated article is new, the PC
Gamer gang busted out the HTML manual and executed a re-design, so that may be
throwing me off here).
PCVelocity's AMD
Interview is up asking a few questions of Drew Prairie and Byran Longmire of AMD about
their upcoming K7 CPUs.
There's a Team Fortress
Classic preview on 3DGamers and another Team Fortress Classic Preview on
Beta Bites, offering looks ahead at this free
add-on, scheduled for release sometime today.
TOW Arena for Shogo: Mobile Armor
Division is now available. As may be evident from the name, this is the Shogo variant on
Rocket Arena, pitting two fully armed Shogo-go-gophers in an arena for a little of the old
two men enter, one man leaves style combat.
Can Linux score big
with IP gaming is a CNN editorial looking at the alternative OS' chances of making it
in the gaming world. Thanks Calico. The article briefly advocates the formation of a
committee of developers to create an open source-based API specifically for Linux IP
gaming. Here's a bit more on the challenges that the author says must be overcome for
Linux to succeed in gaming:
The problems for Linux are numerous, however, and need immediate attention. In
the first place, Linux needs a standard 3D API with broad support for hardware
acceleration. OpenGL is already available for Linux -- perhaps this would be the way to
go.
More important, Linux needs to support the vast majority of sound cards and their special
features.
Last but not least, Linux needs to support USB as quickly as possible. This is a subtle
performance issue that applies most of all to 3D gaming...
The Lord-X Home Page has a new release of
EZConsole for TRIBES, which allows simple point-and-click administration of a TRIBES
server.
Thanks to Anyware for the Blue's Clues masthead graphic that adorned the site yesterday in
honor of April Fools, he didn't intend it for that purpose when he sent it along a couple
of months back, but I think it served well (I got a positively frightening number of
suggestions to keep it). Doing the news on April 1 is getting pretty darned treacherous, I
think if I had to decide now, I'd plan on taking the entire day off next year and just
sort through the aftermath. If you didn't keep up with it yesterday, I have a fairly
lengthy list of April Fools stories from yesterday if you want a recap. Oh
yeah, according to the MDK manual, the initials stand for "Mission Deliver
Kindness." Finally, [A3D]HannoverFest sends along the following, inspired by the
Christopher Walken as Han Solo stuff yesterday. How about Walken as Obi Wan? "It's
your father's lightsaber. I've been keeping this uncomfortable hunk of metal up my ass for
a number of years now. Living out here all alone, waiting for the time when I could bestow
it upon you..."
3DO's
Requiem Support page has a new D3D 1.1 patch for the just-released Requiem:
Avenging Angel. The update enables dithering in the Direct3D version of the game (so
textures will appear smoother), disables auto-mipmapping (the textures in Requiem were
designed to look best without them), and greatly improves visual quality on all
3D-accelerated cards running in D3D mode. Thanks HissyFit, who says the rebate "convergence"
on Requiem mentioned earlier ( story) won't work, since each rebate requires a UPC symbol.
The AMD Optimized
Drivers for Quake II page has the long-awaited 3DNow! optimized drivers for Quake II
version 3.20. Also, the 3DNow! Software
Developers' Kit has been updated. Thanks Gimpy at the AMD Zone.
SubXero from Requiem-HQ sends along word of
a convergence of rebates that results in a nifty bargain on 3DO's just-released Requiem:
Avenging Angel. Here's the deal:
You can get Requiem Avenging Angel for only 19 dollars. When you buy Requiem not
only do you get a free poster, but also a $20 rebate from 3DO. And if you buy it at
Electronic Boutique not only do you get the $20 dollar 3DO rebate, but also a $10 rebate
from eb.
A recent audio interview with Epic's Cliff Bleszinski on Washington D.C.'s Tech Radio is online in the Tech
Radio Archives as well as on PlanetUnreal
in RealPlayer format.
ION Storm's Justin "Logic" Randall is interviewed on the ION Storm Daily Informant where Daikatana’s
weapons/deathmatch/network/ client-entity programmer explains his work, which includes
efforts to make the weapons responsive, optimizing network traffic, coding Daikatana's
CTF, DeathTag, and co-op play, and stuff like that.
Ritual Programmer mark Dochtermann updated his .plan with the announcement that Jack "morbid" Mathews
has joined Ritual. Just to be a party pooper, in the name of accuracy, the part about
Michael Abrash and Bruce Naylor is an April Fools gag (though my understanding is that the
part about Jack is not). Here's the update:
I would like to be the first person to "extend a wreath and hearty
handshake" to Jack "Morbid" Mathews for joining the Ritual Tribe. Jack
comes to us by way of 3DFX Interactive and is one of the creators of GameSpy.
Although he wasn't born until after Star Wars, he is a very talented 3D game programmer.
His knowledge of 3D accelerators and distributed network gaming will be put to good use at
Ritual, where he will be working alongside industry greats Michael "Optimize"
Abrash and Bruce "BSP" Naylor.
Say hello and drop him an email at jack@ritual.com.
The follow-up on User Friendly is that it was indeed all a joke.
PlanetBlood has the release of a version 2.1
patch for Blood 2. The patch makes a number of fixes and additions since the February
patch, but is not required if you've purchased and installed the Blood II: Nightmares
add-on.
There's an interview
with Rick Overman on Datumplane::Starsiege talking with the Dynamix programmer mostly
about the just released Starsiege, with a bit in there about plans for Starsiege 2.
Here's a Register article that seems to be on the User Friendly situation and a Slashdot article that is clearly about the UF dealie that suggest there is indeed a leg being pulled here. If this is indeed a joke, I'm sorry for getting fooled (and, um, haha).
A clarification about Dave's Classics. In my comments about the the site's closing ( story), I mentioned the availability of ROMs there as a possible cause, but Mental4 and jelenator point out that the ROMs previously posted there were pulled a few weeks ago (also apparenly under the threat of legal action). With the ROMs gone, and
only emulators themselves (so far proven to be legal) posted there, the reasons behind the closing are not very clear at this point.
3DFiles has posted a playable Demo of X,
the upcoming space combat action sim. This is the German version of the demo, and an
English version is expected within a few days. "Forcefeedback Input devices and 3D
positional sound acceleration through Aureal3D and Direct Sound 3D supported."
Word on the User Friendly site is that the popular geek comic strip has been "Shut Down Pending Litigation." I do not believe this is an April Fool, if it is, they've been laying the groundwork for this for a
while, since there have been rumors for some time now that one of the targets of some of UF's humor has been in legal mode. As the page goes on to explain, more details should be forthcoming: "Further information regarding this litigation will be made available within the next 72 hours." I'll certainly keep an eye out for any possible ways concerned fans of the strip can help. Similarly, Dave's Classics has posted a notice that they too have been closed, at least temporarily, due
to litigation as well (though posting ROMs for emulators certainly makes this a less unexpected move, since the legalities involved have been the subject of considerable debate). According to the site: "Due to recent legal action from a video game hardware manufacturer, UGO must temporarily suspend the service of the Dave's Classics website and FTP server. Unfortunately, until we have resolved this situation we may not be able to comment or update you on the situation." I'll post more on both these situations as information becomes available.
There's an interview with Todd
Hollenshead on Ultimate Games talking to the id
Software CEO about Quake III Arena.
Billy at Voodoo Extreme has posted a short
Q&A with Tim Sweeney after he fired off a few questions to the Epic programmer about
video cards, special 3D instruction support, and of course, Monica Lewinski.
GameFan Online's First Look at MDK 2 for PC and Dreamcast offers 10 new screenshots of the upcoming sequel to
Shiny's Murder Death Kill (Mediocre points out it's actually "Max, Dr. Fluke Hawkins & Kurt"), and GameCenter's Game Grabs has those shots (on the Dreamcast) as well.
Planet-Tribes - Tactics 101 Index
offers a bunch of different TRIBES tutorials that break the game down into different roles
for players to assume, with outlines on the best ways to put these roles to use in a team.
Sharky Extreme has posted an
email from NVIDIA's Derek Perez on TNT2 clock speeds:
"The ultimate frequency achieved in end user systems depends on the
chip cooling strategy, board design and the system environment that the board runs in.
Each board vendor will make design and cooling decisions, and environmental assumptions
and spec the part according to these choices.
The RIVA TNT2 chips were designed to operate at extremely high frequencies. The Diamond
V770 that you reviewed demonstrated that. With the right combination of advanced board
design, intelligent cooling strategies and high quality manufacturing, I fully expect to
see end users running TNT2 based cards at frequencies that meet or exceed the ones you saw
in your testing."
Version 0.75 of the Dirty mod for Quake
II is now available, described as "Action Quake2 meets BraZen," trying to add realism "that doesn't compromise gameplay." The mod allows you to climb up onto ledges, and do lots of other useful things with your bare hands, like break necks.
The mod also adds teamplay enhancements, radio communication, and more. Work continues on a Linux port, and they are desperately seeking servers.
A new version 1.1.1 of the Fast Card TNT
& 3dfx Overclocking Utility from PMS is now available, offering three new Matrox
settings (AGP on/off, AGP 1x/2x toggle and hidden settings enable), and a couple of
bugfixes, as well as better support for the Diamond and Creative TNT driver sets. Thanks DemoNews.
The QuakeFinder/UnrealFinder page has a
new version 1.0.2 of the UnrealFinder Unreal server browser program for the Macintosh. The
new release adds Unreal 220 compatibility.
Remember, any port in a storm: The Coven
Disposable Heroes Downloads page has Solaris x86 and Sparc ports of all of the latest
version of the Quake II mods released from the Disposable Heroes Quake II add-on.
I received a warning from Geburah that the MechWarrior demo seems to suffer from the same
serious uninstaller glitch as a couple of other recent releases (the subsequently patched
first version of Half-Life and the subsequently recalled first version of Myth II). The
problem occurs when you install the demo to a directory other than the default, and then
uninstall it, it wipes the entire directory structure you installed to (e.g., c:\games).
Three sets of matched twins:
April Fools' day is a dangerous minefield when you run a news site. Like last year, I'll try to avoid fostering genuine confusion by not posting any gags among the news (though I guess I'll reserve the right, should something too tempting come along, and of course, if
I fall for the joke myself, all bets are off). However, in the name of fun, like last year, I'll keep a running tally of the jokes I do come across today below this post. 3DRealms' Chris Johnson sent a more accurate version of the Splash quote that looks pretty damn verbatim (this is an all time favorite bit of mine): Hanks: "Where are you going Mister Fat Jack?" Fat Jack: "Back to the pier. It's only a couple of miles, I can swim it. I'll be back with the little boat."
Hanks: "The LITTLE boat?!" Seen in Robert Love's .plan, yesterday was Christopher Walken's birthday: many
happy returns Chris, you da man (okay, I know he's not reading). After reading that .plan I sit here trying to picture how different the Star Wars series would have turned out if Walken had gotten to play Han Solo. I'm having trouble conjuring the image.
Updated throughout the day: Rick Johnson offers a mind-plook in his .plan on the morbid news (like the UF gag, the straight-out
humorless lies as gags mystify me). Surprise Next Gen PlayStation
Launch in Japan reports NGO (thanks ACiDTRiP). The EQVault
reports all the EverQuest servers are moving to Tunisia to save costs (thanks Korac). Firearms is now for Trespasser
announces the Firearms mod for Half-Life (thanks Pels Interactive). Tom Clancy's Nuclear Weasel, the
announced sequel to Rainbow Six. loonygames'
Thinking About Boxes by Saul Peed. Planet RIVA
has word of the 3dfx/NVIDIA merger (thanks Chris Slatt). Here's Sluggo's Cooking Central, formerly Mod
Central. BSP Headquarters announces BSP to replace
Q3Radiant as the bundled Q3A editor (thanks Zedek). John Carmack is quoted on FPS Spectator saying the frag in Q3A will be
replaced by the more newbie-friendly "tone-of-death." Frozen Yak Entertainment, the company formerly known
as CaveDog (thanks Chris Rhoton and AGN3D). The Adrenaline Vault previews the
force feedback mousepad (thanks JetLag). PlanetQuake
for sale (farfetched?), thanks Psycho. Sgt. Hulka changes his site to.... PlanetTubby!!! (thanks DeadMeat). Tidal Wave Communications presents: Think your
mail! (thanks B K Ridgway). CliffyB announces in his .plan that he and others are leaving Epic to develop "GIRLZ
N GUNZ" on the Colour Gameboy. Epic
releases the Unreal demo (yeah sure). Plans for BattleZone 8X8, or Planet Half-Life's First Look at
Half-Life 2 for that matter (Phat Rips Entertainment?). How about the Grey Panthers Quake and Quake II
Clan? That's not as wild as the PC Computing
Online Bombshell about IT eavesdropping on the mic in your computer (thanks armyant).
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