Archived News:
The official site for American McGee's Alice
has been updated again, and now contains a new riddle, as well as the answer
to last week's (which states the already public fact that the game is played
from a third person perspective). Thanks beachbum.
Stomped has posted a brief e-mail they
received from John Carmack regarding what things you'll be able to use the new
voting feature on in Quake III: Arena (see his worklog below). According to
John, as of right now it's just the specific map, the ability to restart the
map, and the ability to kick someone, although he says he can easily add other
things if necessary.
John Carmack updated his
.plan this evening with another installment of his worklog. Here's the scoop: *
allow cg_thirdPerson and cg_thirdPersonRange in games
* added execed .cfg files to journal file
* single pass plasma explosion effect to save overdraw
* rescaled and sized gib and mark blood to save a lot of overdraw
* fixed cg.time < snapshot time on vid_restart
* cl_showSend network debugging tool
* back to requiring a before commands on the console to distinguish them from
chat messages. Tab completion automatically adds the slash.
* new tab command completion with complete to longest common, multiple match
listing, complete first token, etc
* separate version check for game/cgame in addition to system
* show r_finish in gfxinfo
* never show self as attacker icon
* callvote vote
Caller automatically votes yes
vote has a 30 second timeout
each client can only call 3 votes a level
vote is displayed on screen with totals
* renamed cg_gun to cg_drawGun
* box cull triangle soup models
Epic's Brandon "GreenMarine" Reinhart updated his .plan with
word on why server operators running the Unreal Tournament Demo should not set
the player limit higher than 32, at least using the current release. Here's the
poop: I saw a CTF server running with a 50 playerlimit. Running servers
with more than 32 players is a no-no because there are hardcoded assumptions
about the max playerlimit. Maybe I'll talk with Steve about increasing it to 64.
(I guess there isn't really any reason to choose programmer numbers like 32 and
64 for something like this.) I seem to recall at one point there being a very
good reason for us keeping it at 32. Certainly server performance would
be...ah...highly questionable at 64 players :) Anyway, running with more than 32
in the current demo will probably cause a lot of odd error messages to get
logged when the 33rd person joins.
ION Storm's Daily
Informant has posted an update regarding this weekend's press reception
at their offices. There's a couple of pictures from the event, as well as one
new screenshot from each of ION's upcoming games (Deus Ex, Daikatana, and Anachronox).
Zombie's official SpecOps
II site has two new additions...first up is a new shot of all the weapons,
as well as a caption that reads, "SpecOps 2 is due to ship in Nov."
on their news page.
Up until now, Q4 1999 was the only public date mentioned. Also new are two new
shots on their Mission
Briefing page, showing off their North Korea and Thailand missions. Thanks
to Frans at 3DGamers for the tip.
VideoGames.com
has posted a preview with five images (the first to the best of my knowledge)
from Oddworld Inhabitants' Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee. The game at one point
was being developed using the Unreal engine, but they switched in favor of their
own, in-house technology, and is being made for the PlayStation 2 and "PCs
that don't exist yet."
Sierra has announced a new RPG called Arcanum, that's in development by Troika
Games. The title is an RPG in the pure sense, and Gamecenter
has posted an interview with one of the game's developers, as well as the first
batch of images from the game (early concept work for the most part) and even
a bit of the backstory.
E-tailer Checkout.com
has posted an interview with Rod Fung, producer of Sierra's SWAT 3. The inevitable
similarities to Rainbow Six are discussed, as is the oddball history of the
SWAT series (from adventure to RTS to FPS).
GameSpot
UK has posted their preview of Bungie's Halo (which is so high on my list
of anticipated games that it's got its own designated driver). The preview is
fairly skimpy, but its loaded with images, including a bunch of concept art
(that looks new to me), and a bunch of new, if somewhat odd (the gamma appears
to be funky) screenshots. There are 19 images in all, and naturally they're highly
recommended.
According to this
bit of news on AVault, Intel has officially announced the name of their
upcoming high-end processor that was previously code-named Merced. The new processor
is officially called the Itanium, and is on schedule for a mid-2000 release.
TSR (which was recently acquired by Hasbro) has posted the
first bit of details about their two upcoming pen and paper RPGs based on
the world of Diablo II, including descriptions, monster artwork, and more. Thanks
DiabloII.net.
GA-Source
has posted a brief Q&A with Vince Farquharson of Computer Artworks, the
developers of the title Evolva, which is one of the first games to fully support
NVIDIA's GeForce 256 chipset. The Q&A is the first place I've seen word
that a special version of the game (titled Evolva: Scout) has been developed
for OEMs, and will be bundled with the Creative Labs 3D Blaster Annihiliator.
Two big hardware announcements took place this morning. First up, is Creative
Labs, who announced two boards based on NVIDIA's GeForce 256 chipset, the 3D
Blaster Annihilator and Annihilator Pro (press release at 3DGPU).
The Annihilator Pro is the same as the standard board, only with 32MB of double
data rate RAM on board. Also announced this morning is Diamond's new MX400 sound
card, which suprisingly enough is not powered by an Aureal chip like its predecessors,
but instead the ESS Technology Canyon3D chip. A press release is up on GA-Source,
and a full preview of the hardware is up on Thresh's
Firing Squad.
CaveNews
has posted a Q&A with Cavedog's Greg MacMartin, talking about their recent
decision to let go a large portion of their design team (thanks VE). Here's
an excerpt which sheds some light on this decision: ...what it came down
to was this: The company decided that finishing the engine as soon as possible
was VITAL....and because of this, they wanted to do whatever it took to achieve
that. It was an extremely difficult decision for management to make, but it
was decided that without an entire design team on board it could allow the programmers
to finish the technology in the most efficient way possible.
A new Adrenaline Vault Editorial
written by Jane Jensen is titled A Love Letter, To: Sierra, From: The last
dinosaur on the block. The article, by this designer on Gabriel Knight 3,
attempts to answer "the question of the moment" on the heels of the
recent cuts and reorganization at Sierra: Are adventure games dead? Here's a
bit: Does that mean there’s no room for good, in-depth story-telling in
this business? No. Though I do think the gaming industry faces a serious,
serious challenge: to reach out to the kinds of players who would prefer
exploration and story over twitch and violence. Let’s face it -- we (and now I
presume to speak for adventure devotees everywhere) are not going to get some
joystick jockey’s heart and soul. Let him go. Send him positive thoughts. But
our very own audience does exist.
There's a new Giants movie on
PC.IGN.COM with new gameplay footage from Giants: Citizen Kabuto, Interplay
and PlanetMoon Studios' upcoming third-person action game. The new movie is 14
MB, and Fredrik from Kabuto.net, who was
kind enough to send along this news, also sends along his description of the
movie, that offers: "some very cool scenes of the Reaper Sea Dragon
attacking a bridge, lots of new shots of new monsters and the suave effects in
Giants and much more."
PlanetBattlezone has posted
what's described as an "unofficial" patch for Pandemic studio's
recently released demo for BattleZone 2. The unofficial Battlezone II demo patch
collects many of the established work-arounds for problems with the demo, and
provides changes to pilot handling, joystick support, and the demos included
editor.
There are a few new Nocturne
Screenshots on GameSpy.com showing off the later episodes of TRI's upcoming
action/horror game.
Optimizers has posted a
collection of no less than 80 new maps for Kingpin: Life of Crime, Xatrix'
gangsta-extravaganza. The maps are meant to be a resource to other authors, as
many represent experiments and works in progress, and the whole shebang also
includes a 9 MB texture file.
Synchroplay has posted a new skin pack
for Starsiege TRIBES that offers more than a gross of skins (146 to be exact)
for Dynamix' mutiplayer teamplay first-person shooter.
Beta Bites has had a redesign, and to
celebrate they are giving away a bunch of goodies all week long. The prizes will
be changing all through the week.
Thanks Frans at 3D Action Gamers
for help with what turns out to be a large list for a Monday morning:
Turns out a comment yesterday ( story)
about Tom Clancy's
Rainbow Six that I've made many times in the past is incorrect, it turns out the book is actually based on the
game, not the reverse.
Thanks Rogue Spear Retreat for
the clarification.
Wow, there were an awful lot of folks on the ball with the font sizing issue I
raised yesterday (I should have asked sooner, it's been driving me crazy).
Thanks to the many who wrote in pointing out that using the Eudora (yes Eudora
is the culprit again) with the "Use Microsoft's Viewer" option checked
will cause the font size setting in Eudora to override MSIE, so to avoid having
Eudora change your default browser font size, you either have to switch off the
MS viewer, or ensure you are using the same font size setting in MSIE and under
the Eudora's Font menu.
Get well soon wishes to my pal MrCoffee who is recuperating after being hit
by a car this weekend. Sounds like everything will eventually be fine
("luckily" he got away with just some nastily broken bones), but he's
offline for a while, so I guess those used to seeing the two of us pop into
servers together will just have me to contend with me alone for a while now
(though my brother, WalterEgo, has been playing some UT, so maybe I'll manage to
team up with him some).
Link of the Day: Official FoxTrot Web Site,
which finally has the Quake-related strip that recently ran in papers (the Sept.
20 strip if it's moved when you read this). Thanks Andy.
Story of the Day: Coke Employee Fired For Taking Pepsi Challenge
Thanks DNapalm.
Unreal Universe
has posted a hands-on preview of Legend's Wheel of Time, complete with a detailed
writeup and twenty four screenshots from what the author calls, "the most
graphically advanced game I've ever seen."
This Quantic Dreams download
page has some new movies from Quantic's upcoming third-person action game
Omikron: The Nomad Soul on the heels of the older one mentioned earlier ( story).
The newer ones, like the earlier one were spotted by our eagle-eyed friend Frans
from 3D Action Gamers. One movie
is a new collection of some FMV clips previously released, and the other a new
movie showing off more gameplay, and each is available as both a heftier mpeg
and in more svelte RealPlayer format.
The maXtron main site has
RiEvEr's port of his bot code to work in Kingpin: Life of Crime, Xatrix' Quake
II-engine game. This first release of the port from the author of the ReDeMpTiOn
Bot and the Licensed To Kill bot for Action Quake2 is intended as a base for mod
authors to include in their own Kingpin mods. Thanks Poisonville.
Speaking of which, there's a new Licensed To Kill bot for Action Quake2
version 0.14 beta on maXtron
as well. The new release has "the first version of the shiny new pathing
system so the bots get around a lot better..."
Epic's Brandon "GreenMarine" Reinhart updated
his .plan with word on why GameSpy users are having problems with their ngWorldStats,
a problem he says will be addressed in some way: GameSpy users won't be
able to properly create ngWorldStats account with the demo. My method of
ensuring correct account creation requires that the connect URL be created by
the game. I overlooked the fact that 3rd party programs use their own connect
URLs to open a game. This will be addressed.
Frans at 3D Action Gamers sends
word of the semi-recent release of another Omikron
movie on Eidos' FTP site to promote Omikron: The Nomad Soul, Eidos
Interactive's upcoming third-person action game. I call the release semi-recent
because though it is dated September 24, it doesn't seem to have been mentioned
yet, certainly not here. The AVI format movie is a hefty 47 MB, is 320x240 with
a 2:48 minute running time, and features a voice-over by David Bowie along with
appearances by his in-game character, among other cut-scene and in-game footage.
Doomworld has a re-released version of
id Software's source code for Doom, which was previously released, now available
as a GNU General Public License
release, which alters the terms of the code's availability. It is now
theoretically legal to sell programs based on the code, provided the new code
remains freely-available under the GPL. Here's the accompanying quote from John
Carmack: Any DOOM based EXE would have to have the source available upon
request. It doesn't necessarily have to be included, but you have to be able to
get at it if you wish. This would prevent a gldoom episode.
The GLDoom
episode to which he refers is the loss of the source code to one high-profile
Doom source port to a hard drive crash.
The Official DESCENT 3 Web Site
has the announcement of Descent 3: Mercenary, an official add-on for Descent 3,
their recent sequel to the flying and shooting Descent series. Thanks Descent3D.
The add-on will include some user-created levels, and there are details up on the
contest that for third-party map authors to get their work included in the add-on if
it's good enough. Not much more in the way of details about the new add-on are currently
available.
A new GameSpy 3D
version 2.16 shareware is now available. The new shareware release adds the
same Unreal Tournament Demo and Deer Hunter 3 support included in the just-released
registered version of this server browser.
The Tread Marks Screenshots
page has been updated with a couple of new shots from this upcoming
game that allows you to accelerate around in 3D accelerated tanks, racing (and
shooting) at similarly equipped opponents.
A new beta of SciTech GLDirect
is available updating this program that allows you to run OpenGL-based
applications using Microsoft DirectX 6.x or later drivers on "any graphics
card that supports DirectX 6.x." Thanks Demo News.
Mod Central Unreal has posted
a new Unreal Tournament Demo mutator for download. The new mutator changes all
the weapons and other pickup items so they are triple their normal size. The
weapons also remain absurdly sized after you are holding them if you check out
third-person view for some real anime-style action (though they remain
normally-sized in first-person view so you can see where you're going).
A new version 1.06 of the CronosBot for Quake
is now available. Thanks Jacek Fedoryński. The new release offers a new pathing
system that allows the bots to play any level ("but on a pre-programmed
level they move around more optimally"). The new gameplay offered by the
updated bots is described as "really very good for some nice one on one
action."
On the heels of the announcement that Thief Gold is gold ( story)
The Adrenaline Vault
has word that another of Eidos' upcoming games is nearing completion, saying
that the action./RPG Revenant should be announcing that it is gold (code
complete and off to manufacturing) any day now.
There's another listing of Q3Test
Console Commands on PlanetQuake 3 with a rundown on variables they say
should be complete, along with a command listing they are not as positive is
comprehensive (they are therefore eager of any new info on these anyone can send
along).
There's a JailBreak
report on PlanetQuake offering an explanation of what the current situation
is with this popular Quake II modification, clarifying that there will be the
promised version 2.5b of the Quake II version of the mod, in spite of some
recent events that left JailBreak fans fearing that this had been cancelled. The
article also puts rumors to rest about the future of the mod, saying there will
be a Quake III Arena version of JailBreak when the time comes.
Thanks Frans at 3D Action Gamers:
I have a new theory (ahem) that I wonder might not be true: it seems the last
few weekends have been quieter news-wise than the bunch that preceded it, and
I'm wondering if part of the cycle of this stuff is that the heavier news we
were just getting used to on the weekends is related to the summer somehow, though
I'm not really sure why this would be (just trying to read the patterns here).
Anyway the quiet time allowed me to find the glitch in the rollover code in the
menu bar that was causing the text size to jump for readers who have selected a
different than normal text size in their browser's preferences. Now if I could
only figure out why that font size seems to change for so many without
having selected a different text size. It happens to me all the time in MSIE
5.0, where I'll notice this setting has changed itself to "smaller."
Could there be something in the HTML of one or more of the sites I visit
(possibly this one included) that causes this? Theories and solutions are more
than welcome.
Link of the Day: THE REGISTER Games developer to eat insects if bugs infest software
(replacement for a dupe LoD posted earlier, sorry). Thanks Nick Morrow.
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