Archived News:
3dfx has released new
drivers for their Voodoo 3 2000 and 3000 video cards. The new drivers have
an updated OpenGL ICD that fixes bugs in various games, as well as issues with
some Intel CPUs.
3dfx Gamers has posted five
new screenshots from Looking Glass Studios' upcoming first person title
(and the sequel to one of the only games to truly scare the fuzz out of me),
Thief 2: The Metal Age.
To follow-up on an earlier post, Messiah, the winner of the Daikatana
deathmatch tournament has beaten Daikatana creator John Romero at his own
game, with a final score of 5 to 4. I wonder if this means we'll be seeing a
"Messiah Shrine" on ION's website soon?
While there have been games with dinosaurs before, designer Sid Meier is taking them into a new, though for him familiar, direction: that of the strategy game. The official site for Firaxis' next game, Sid Meier's Dinosaurs (working title) has been opened, and offers the first insights into the game through the initial installment of "Sid's Dino Diaries". The game will be published by Electronic Arts and the official title will be announced early next year.
As expected two days ago ( story), the tank racing/shooting game Tread Marks by Longbow Digital Arts has gone gold, and should be available for sale through their website in January.
The weekly update of the official American McGee's Alice site brings an image of a new enemy character, the Snark, which apparently lives in the "murk-filled undercurrent of Wonderland's scotopic waters."
The unofficial Quake III Arena gameplay FAQ has been updated again, adding tips and info on Q3DM6 and Q3TOURNEY2, as well as a few other changes. Activision's Quake III Arena solutions FAQ has been updated too, with one more entry.
The Daikatana Deathmatch page
has the results of today's Daikatana Deathmatch Tournament, which was won by
Messiah (here's hoping someone named Daikatana wins a Messiah tourney one day to
even the score). Messiah defeated R-Gauss in the final 10-1, and for his
troubles will now get to go head-to-head with John Romero to see if he can beat
the ION Storm designer at his own game.
Eurogamer.net
interviews Magnus Bergholtz, co-founder and graphics designer at Swedish
developer SouthEnd Interactive, talking about Blitz-Disc Arena, their
upcoming multiplayer game. The Q&A discusses working in Sweden, and
gets into detail about the recently-announced
title, talking about gameplay and the storyline.
The flashy NOP page has a new
version 4 of the NOP log parser that supports both Quake III Arena and Unreal
Tournament. The new version adds daily / weekly / monthly stats generation, Q3A
bots support, Q3A full and UT full weapons support, as well as more new
features and some bug fixes. So many things have changed in the new
version that they say you'll probably have to re-install the whole package,
since old configuration files won't work.
There is a new screenshot on Unreal
Universe
showing off Rune, Human Head's upcoming game that will use the Unreal engine to
put you in the role of an axe-wielding Viking warrior.
NetGames USA's ngStats for Unreal Tournament
LAN Party Guide offers "a step by step list of 'everything you
need to know' about how to get ngStats for Unreal Tournament going at your
next LAN Party so that it will AUTOMATICALLY keep track of every game, score and
ngStats for every player and provide for a permanent post event archive of the
party."
Games Domain has posted an interview with Digital Extremes president James Schmalz, co-developers of Unreal and Unreal Tournament. The talk covers the history of the company, their involvement with the Unreal series, and what's up next for them. Here's a quote on the latter topic:
GDR: What can you tell us about your "Next Big Thing"? Unreal 2 engine perhaps?
James: It will be a First Person Action game, but with very different gameplay than we have created before. For now, 3d Action games
are what we love the most but in the future, after our next game, we may shift focus to something else. Certainly at this point, 3d action is
where our skills and interests lie.
As for the engine, Epic is highly enhancing the current engine even beyond that is in UT. This is great for licensees who need the engine to
remain current and cutting edge in the coming year. It's got some seriously cool features that are being added that we are very excited
about.
Legend level designer Matthias Worch is being productive even in his spare time, and is creating a free Unreal Tournament deathmatch level called DM-MementoMori, an adaptation of an old Memento Mori 2 level he made for DOOM II (a huge add-on fondly remembered by this old DOOMer). The level should be out before X-Mas, and Matthias has four screenshots on his site to show it off.
One day into the future, GA-Source has posted an interview with Hubert Chardot, writer at French developer GameSquad on their upcoming action/adventure game Devil Inside. As is to be expected from interviews of this kind, the talk examines the story and gameplay of the game, the engine technology, action vs. adventure aspects, and more.
Activision's Vampire - The Masquerade page has been updated with a new letter from Lucita to Beckett, providing more mood settings for Nihilistic's upcoming third-person action RPG, as well as descriptions of the four new screenshots that accompany it.
There are a couple of new screenshots of Legend of the BladeMasters on GA-RPG, showing off more game scenes from Ronin's upcoming 3D action RPG.
The aftermath of last night's Daikatana chat session is showing up online, there
is a summary of
the festivities on GameSpy.com, and there's an
edited log of the session on Planet DAIKATANA. The session talks about
gameplay, as well as discussing the recent announcement that the game's release
has slipped beyond this holiday season. Thanks Daikatana HeadQuarters.
Shadar Logoth has updated their Wheel
of Time Arena Strategy Guide, which now features a complete rundown of all
the game's offensive and defensive Ter'angreal artifacts (for those unaware,
these artifacts are the game's weapons).
Epic's Cliff "Pretty Fly..." Bleszinski sent along a
pair of screenshots from Epic's upcoming free map-pack for Unreal Tournament.
In addition to our shots, there is also a
new shot on Unreality, and another on Unreal Universe.
Here's what CliffyB has to say about this: I'm firing over a pair of
screenshots from our upcoming free-release pack for UT full.
At this time there are 6 maps that are ready to go with this pack.
There is a very high likelihood that this pack will also include some Unreal 1
characters that you can play as/against in UT.
When? Soon!
Multiplayer United Sydney Australia LAN
Gamers have posted word that the chat log posted yesterday ( story)
turns out to have been faked. They express their embarrassment and apologies
(along with some frustration), at having been duped, which was apparently the
result of someone impersonating one of their sponsors.
There are 14 new Soldier Of Fortune Screenshots
on PC.IGN.Com taken in their own "testing laboratory." They don't
feel these shots of Raven's upcoming Quake II mercenary game are for the faint-of-heart,
however, as they actually posted them along with this warning: "Due to the
graphical nature of the following screenshots, viewer discretion is advised."
The GameHost News page has
the release of a new version 1.50.0001 of GameHost, the program that "allows
you to easily setup, run, and manage most of your favorite network games,
including Quake, QuakeWorld, Quake II, Quake III Arena, Hexen II, Half-Life, Sin
and Starsiege TRIBES." The new version enhances the program's support for
Quake III Arena, though the hoped-for Unreal Tournament support is not yet in,
the update describes the difficulties they've had with that.
MDK2 Impressions and Screens
on GameSpot is a preview of MDK2, the upcoming sequel to Shiny's offbeat
action title, based on some face time with the game during a recent visit to the
GameSpot offices by BioWare, the game's developer. In addition to their
first-hand impression of progress on the game, the piece features some new
screenshots. MDK, of course, stands for Mentally Deranged Kittens.
GameGuide's Half-Life Opposing Force Game Guide
is online. The guide offers a Boot Camp and Enemy Guide, a Weapons Arsenal, a
Weapons Arsenal (they like that one so much they list it in the index twice), as
well as Cheat Codes and Easter Eggs.
Rust has posted version 1.06 of Q3Build,
the first front end compiler for Q3Map. I saw there that QERadiant.com
has posted a
tutorial on the new Curves menu for Q3Radiant. Speaking of QER, the first of
RiceBug's On-Line
Q3A Tutorials, with an introduction to the Q3Radiant editor. Finally, Rust
has also posted a downloadable list of keys for the Q3Radiant editor.
The map rotation on the Red 64
Q3A tournament has been set. They are "experimenting with maps that can be
used as a standard for professional Q3 Tournament."
DNapalm, always on the lookout for the wild and wooly from the world of
entertainment, sends along word that apparently Mahir, famed as the Turkish
stud, should be appearing on the Daily Show tonight, which leaves you only a
short time to invite the friends and neighbors, set up the VCR, and of course,
bug your local cable provider to add Comedy Central to your channel choices.
Remeber to always be prepared... your 15 minutes of fame might be next!
Link of the Day: Devil
Went Down to Dallas on PC Gameworld, an audio file in the vein of one of
yesterday's entries in the MailBag. With apologies to Charlie Daniels, John
Romero, and Charlie Daniels (who deserves at least two apologies for this
one).
Story of the Day: Food Preservative May Fight Superbugs, Study Finds.
The only thing that's cooler than a real news story about "superbugs,"
is one that hails the positive power of preservatives. Science marches on!
Thanks DNapalm.
As promised earlier tonight, the Mac version of the final Quake III Arena demo has been released on the official site.
Here is a local copy of the demo (45.8 MB) with a couple of mirrors.
id Software Designer Graeme Devine updated
his .plan with good news for eager Macintosh owners: Mac demo will be
out tonight. Mac full version is also complete.
Future
of Teamplay on GameProWorld is a four-page feature that examines teamplay,
starting with a bit of history, examining some variants, and as the title
suggests, casting an eye towards teamplay's future. It's an interesting piece,
quoting Valve's Gabe Newell and 3D Realms' George Broussard, though a couple of
facts are a little garbled, perhaps due to a time lag between when the article
was written and published, as it refers to Unreal Tournament as a future
release, expects TF2 by the end of the year, and talks of plans for TRIBES
Extreme, even though it has been announced the game has been cancelled.
The Adrenaline Vault News
reports that Daikatana will not make it out in time for Christmas, quoting ION
Storm's John Kavanagh as saying: "After much effort, we finally have Daikatana
to the point where we can say we have a great game on our hands. Unfortunately,
we are too late for Christmas, but as always, we have put quality first. I
realize this is frustrating to anyone supporting this title, but I'm sure you
will agree it is imperative that we begin building the reputation of Ion Storm
as a premier quality developer."
20 Questions For
Darrin Hart on the Mushroom, is a legitimate interview of the sort
they occasionally run on this usually satirical website. Darrin creates
animations for the lead character and other supporting characters for F.A.K.K.2,
Ritual Entertainment's upcoming Quake III-engine action/adventure game. The
Q&A was conducted in July, but is not very time sensitive, and so does not
really seem dated.
Star Trek: Creative has posted an interview with Eric Dallaire of Presto Studios, writer and game designer on their recently completed 3D adventure Star Trek: Hidden Evil. The article looks back at how the game turned out, the public's feedback, and briefly examines Presto's future plans.
In anticipation of their Daikatana chat tonight ( story), CheckOut.com has posted a brief interview with John Romero, covering his imminent game Daikatana, as well as a few other topics. Thanks Daikatana HQ.
The appropriately named DarkStoneNews.com has some news about the 3D role-playing game, reporting that instead of developing an expansion pack, Delphine will be releasing a new set of quests and their quest editor for DarkStone around the turn of the year. There are a couple of screenshots to show off the editor.
id Software's Robert Duffy updated his
.plan with word that he'll be releasing a patch for QERadiant soon addressing
some common problems (as well as adding an ASE to MD3 converter). Here's the
scoop: I should be releasing an update to the editor soon. There are a
few outright crashes I have fixed and I am looking into some other issues. If
you are seeing stability problems, it is more than likely a driver issue. I
am doing what I can to get these resolved.
We are seeing quite a few reports of fullbright levels when you preview new
levels in the game. If you are having this problem can you drop an e-mail to
tools@idsoftware.com along with your
video configuration and whether or not bringing the console down solves the
problem ( press ~ to bring down the console and see if the level lights ).
We will also be re-releasing the .shader files soon. The .shader files in the
shipping PK3 and the ones I included in baseq3/scripts include a lot of unused
( and in many cases non-functional ) shaders that are left over from the entire
project. We are going to trim that down to the actual shaders used in the game.
'q3data.exe' will also be in the update which will allow you to convert ASE's
to MD3's. This should help getting new player and map models in the mods.
A couple of items that slipped through the cracks in the newsdesk earlier today (anyone got some virtual kit to seal up this virtual desk we have here? err... nevermind :-) PC.IGN has posted an interview on Anarchy Online, talking to lead programmer Martin Amor about Funcom's upcoming online 3D sci-fi RPG. The sci-fi setting means that the traditional magic system has been replaced by something called nano-technology, as this quote describes:
It is true that AO will not have a true magic system but we have tried
to keep the magic element by using nano technology. Players can develop
skills in learning and using nano formulas that control a swarm of small
nano-bots which are everywhere in the environment. Highly skilled players
will have a bigger swarm of nano-bots around them at all times which they
can use to produce direct damage, shields or order them to create items,
etc. The nano-bots can also be used to enhance certain weapons or invade
other players like a virus or parasite.
There's a triplet of new RUNE screenshots on 3D-Unlimited, showing off some (dark) scenes from Human Head's game of third-person Viking combat.
Another RPG interview, as GA-RPG has a talk with Neverwinter Nights producer Trent Oster about the AD&D based role-playing game, which is being developed by BioWare and Black Isle Studios.
More screenshots too, as GA-Source has posted a square nine screenshots of Evolva, the colorful action/strategy game in development by Computer Artworks.
Just in time to perk up a slow afternoon comes this
week's edition of the Blue's News Mail Bag! In this edition are some truly
tasteless (but very funny) letters, as well as the meaning of Bleem, some Blue's
News (and GameSpy) history, and lots more. Hop
on by and take a gander.
The Vault Network has posted a
profile of Chris Taylor, featuring a brief Q&A with the Dungeon Siege
designer and Total Annihilation Creator. As no real information has been announced
about their game as of yet, the questions are all about his background in the
industry.
Q-Workshop-3 has posted an
interview with Paul Jaquays, talking to the level designer about his work
on Quake III Arena, including some specific questions about level design, and
some comparison questions to previous games he's worked on.
During their "tour" of Australia, id Software's Paul Steed and Tim Willits stopped by GameSpot AU for an interview, a somewhat free-form chat about all things Quake III Arena. Among the topics discussed are talking to the bots, features that got chopped, copy protection, the female characters, the inanity of "Trinity", and much more. Here's one intriguing quote about the Bones character:
Tim Willits: The secret character in the game, the one no-one has found
yet, is, well, you know how you can play Bones, well there's the
Fem-bot. That's on this side.
Ed Dawson: Yeah? How do you unlock it?
Tim Willits: Well, it's a secret.
Paul Steed: Yeah we'll put all that out.
CheckOut SpeakOut! is holding a
live chat session with ION Storm's John Romero and Stevie "KillCreek"
Case today at 8:00 PM EST (7:00 CST). The session is referred to as a Daikatana
pre-release chat, and obviously enough, will focus on ION's imminent
era-spanning Quake II-engine shooter.
id Software's Tim Willits and Paul Steed participated in another
spontaneous IRC session that occurred after the Australian launch event the
other day, and Multiplayer United Sydney Australia LAN
Gamers has posted a log of the informal unmoderated chat. One tidbit
mentioned along the way is word that Q2DM1 (The Edge) will be ported to Q3A.
The OnTheWay Quake 2 server utility
page has the release of version 1.00 of the Quake III Arena version of this
front-end that makes it easier for a server operator to set up a Q3A server,
offering automatic level rotation, easy configuration of gameplay and server
options, the ability to save multiple server profiles, and more. The new version
includes a level preview window.
Black Hand of MPU is home of the BH Q3A
Demo Helper, a simple system tray utility to assist in the recording of demos in
Quake III Arena by assigning demos unique names automatically as part of its
one-touch operation.
Q3Logger Homepage
has the debut release (beta 1) of Q3Logger, a freeware utility to parse Quake
III Arena game logs and create several pages of HTML output offering statistical
analysis of the logged games. There is some sample
output from the program here.
The ClanRing Mod Development Home
has the release of CRMod++ 5.1. The new release of this competition modification
for Quake offers some new features like support for up to 10
admin codes (so that you can give different codes to different people, and if a
code leaks you know who leaked it). Included with version 5.1 is DeQuake,
a utility for converting files with extended characters to normal text files (so that you can actually read player "fun" names in the log).
The Webdog page has been updated with the
news that the glitch in the new release mentioned yesterday ( story)
has been cleared up, and that a fixed new version of this website watchdog
utility is now available.
MPU Tournament Registrations
are underway, offering Australian Quake players a chance to compete in a four on
four team tournament this weekend. In more competition-related news, The Online Gamers Association
(OGA) is now accepting entrants from outside of Europe.
Epic's Brandon "BlueMarine" was in New York yesterday appearing on the
Pseudo Online Network, so loonyboi and I
managed to hook up with him for dinner last night to catch up on what he's up
to. It's not really worth sharing how we got to this moment, but at one point in
the conversation, loony made up an example off the top of his head suggesting that yesterday was the eighth anniversary of the release of the
first Commander Keen game by id Software. This struck a familiar chord in me, as
I've been poking through the year-old archives recently for various reasons.
Sure enough, after looking it up, I can verify that yesterday really was the
eighth anniversary of the release of a Commander Keen game (actually the second in the series). loony swears
he didn't know, making that one freaky episode of psychic phenomenon/weird coincidence,
or whatever you want to call it.
Link of the Day: Just Who
is That Rotund Man in the Red Suit? On the lookout for unsavory Santas. Hey,
this is not a horror of these modern times... remember the first Santa in
Miracle on 34th Street was a drunk. Thanks Jim.
Story of the Day: Catholics go modern to revive the traditional.
"...the Archdiocese of Newark is going to announce today a modern
promotional campaign that will include a major billboard campaign and, of all
things, a toll-free number that will be answered by a priest." Thanks
BrainDead.
Bonus Story: Bank
Robber Botches Own Getaway, the story of "...a bank robber who botched
his own getaway by locking his keys inside his running car..."
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