Archived News:
Game-Interviews.com
interviews Geoff Clay of Interactive Magic in the first of many interviews they did at
GamesCon. This conversation talks about Mortyr, the upcoming time-travelling World War II shooter.
Still more Starsiege TRIBES news: Dynamix' Tim "Slacker" Gift sends along an
announcement of a change in the TRIBES Master Server IP that may be leaving users who have
not upgraded past version 1.0 in the cold for the moment. Here's the deal:
Problems connecting to the master server? Or only getting a list of 8-9 servers?
No IRC? Here is the deal: the IP addresses of our master server, and IRC server, were
changed this morning. Unfortunately, we were not informed this was going to happen. It's
caught us by surprise and is causing some problems. Those of you with version 1.2 or 1.3
of TRIBES should not have any problems finding or connecting to servers. TRIBES 1.0
clients will only see a small list of server (8 or 9). We are changing the DNS entries to
correct the problem, but it may take until tomorrow evening before it all settles down.
You can either wait for it to pop back up, or try upgrading to 1.3 . There is nothing we
can do about the IRC server, if you are having problems connecting to IRC, it's because
the IP address change hasn't propagated to your ISP. This will eventually happen, but
could take up to 24hrs, doh! (for those that can't wait for their IRC fix, the new
IRC IP is 209.1.233.139)
Scott "Sissy Nancy Boy" Youngblood updated his .plan with a mention of the controversial change he's made
to the Broadside map, saying he is opening up a vote on the subject:
Ok,
I'm the 'Sissy Nancy Boy' that changed the Broadside map. :) I and other dev team
members felt that there were way too many stalemates happening on the original version of
Broadside. So I changed it to be a little easier to grab the flag. It seems that are a few
vocal voices out there who do NOT like the new map. So... I'll leave it up to YOU the
community to decide the ultimate fate of that map.
Email me with your vote with your
preference in the subject line: (only 1 vote per person please)
YES - you like the new map NO - you DON'T like the new map
If I receive a resounding majority of people who want that map changed back I'll change
it.
Voting ends in 1 week on Thursday the 14th of March.
CornBoy!
Word on PlanetStarSiege is that if you are
having OpenGL problems after installing the 1.3 mouse (lag, jittery mouse, etc.), make
sure your Windows desktop is not set to 32-bit color. Also, I and a couple of other folks
I know have been getting bounced out to the desktop when running version 1.3, and now
Sixxo from Insomniax.net sends word with a
solution that worked for me: Shadows are not working properly in the new version, so if
you've turned shadows on in your ClientPrefs.cs file, you must disable them
($pref::shadowDetailMask = "0"; and $pref::shadowDetailScale =
"0.000000";).
Jake "The Gent" Simpson updated his .plan with another status report on the upcoming
Enhancement Pack for Heretic II. The update is extremely lengthy, and touches on plans for
Soldier of Fortune as well. Here's a snip that gives a feel for what this is all about:
The EP. Is it just me or is this dragging on or what ? Well, it seems to be,
even from our end. The current state of affairs is that we are done with the code for now,
its in QA, its just a question of waiting for those guys to have at it. The problem here
is that there are other projects in the pipeline for Activision that are revenue
producing, so they get the QA teams first. And rightly so. However, it puts us in the
situation of waiting for 'as and when' time from the testers. Annoying, but
understandable. The EP can't go out un QA'd, no one wants a buggy product do they ?
Some people have asked 'can't we just have the bug fixes, then the rest later' ? Good
question but the answer is no, and here are a couple of reasons.
I was planning on a cross-country trip today, but as I mentioned in my little Out of the
Blue ramble, my healthy webmaster lifestyle has left me a bit too under the weather to go,
so updates will continue as they normally would today.
There's a new movie from Giants on www.kabuto.net.
The movie is over 40 MB in size, and shows off gameplay from this upcoming
action/adventure game. The movie is in .mpg format, and is not the same as the movie
included on a recent PC Games cover CD.
There's a Gabe Newell
Interview on GameSpot UK talking to Valve's
managing director about the success of Half-Life, what's in store for TeamFortress2, and
the industry in general.
3D Action Week on GameSpot UK continues full speed ahead with a Daikatana preview
titled "Daikatana RIP?," with a look ahead at ION Storm's upcoming game, as well
as some of the press that's surrounded it lately. also in GSUK is a new preview of Duke Nukem Forever, a Prey preview that offers
"New Info On The Hot Game Nobody Expected To See This Millenium," and a look
ahead at SiN CTF.
Descent 3/Outrage Visit
@ 3DGW is an article outlining a recent foray to the offices of Outrage to check out
progress on Descent 3. There's a Descent 3 Preview on GameLinks.Net.
Ripside.com has posted
a bunch of new screenshots from Quake III Arena that they received from Activision. Thanks
John Gotti from ClanWorld.
The Aliens vs Predator Network has posted two
new screenshots from AvP, as well as an image of the box art from this upcoming FPS
from Fox Interactive.
StormTroopers and ION Storm are conducting
their monthly Cabana Chat, an online chat with the Daikatana team. The session will be
held today at 8:00 PM CST. As always, you can connect to the chat via IRC using
www.ionstorm.com as the server and #ion as the channel, or through the online section of the
ION Storm website. Also, there's a big Daikatana Feature on 3DGaming.Net that professes to offer some never before
seen info. Even if it doesn't, it's a very complete rundown on planned features from ION's
upcoming shooter. Another large hands-off preview of Daikatana is on Ultimate Games.
A new version 0.16 of Roger Wilco is now
available as a limited test to demonstrate its new networking layer. An optimized version
of the new code will be available soon. RW provides real-time voice communication in multiplayer games,
even over a modem. Thanks Rasia.
Computer
Games Online previews System Shock 2 proclaiming "The hybrid returns... the world
is ready." Also, Matthew Rorie points out GameCenter's Sneak Peeks at
System Shock 2 is up, as well.
I've received several notices of sightings of the South Park game on store shelves,
including a confirmation from my bro, MrCoffee. South Park is a first-person shooter using
the Turok 2 engine.
Beta 3 of Terror Quake2 is now available. In
addition to fixes, the new version adds a new weapon, the Glock silenced pistol; and a new
item, the flashlight.
Version 0.90 of the confusingly named S][N mod for Quake II (nothing to do with Ritual's
Sin in there) is up on The Lair.
The new installment completes the new monster AI for single-player, fixes some performance
bugs, and adds a new decoy that is completely invisible except for its gun. word is that
work is beginning on a CTF version of the mod.
The Hercules Dynamite 3D/GL
Drivers page has new Windows95/98 drivers for Hercules' TNT-based accelerators. The
new release is based on the latest NVIDIA "Detonator" drivers, Thanks Planet RIVA.
The Canopus Japan site has
what seem to be new drivers for the Spectra 2500, though they are not yet on the US Spectra
Software Page. Thanks Billy at Voodoo Extreme.
I've received several complaints about the new 3Dfx mini-driver, including a couple of mentions of the return of
Half-Life ALT-TAB problems (thanks Mat Bettinson), and complaints of reduced framerates. I
haven't had any real confirmation that there's an identifiable problem on some systems,
but if you are having trouble with the new minidriver, you may want to try the older one
and see if it helps.
Rust Editing
Discussion Board has screenshots showing off the output of Arghrad 2.0, which is now
available. The updated version of this map compiling utility offers phong shading to
simulate curved surfaces in Quake II maps. Thanks Sat.
The BGR Software page has updates to many of
their utilities including new, or semi-new versions of TweakIt 4.0.0, DirectControl 3.0.0, and Matrox Overclock 3.0.0. Thanks Billy
at Voodoo Extreme.
Quake Nation has posted a whole
boatload of Clan UK vs. Clan 9 demos showing matches from their recent showdown from
various points of view.
I am supposed to make my way out to San Francisco today to check out Redline, but I'm
feeling quite under the weather at the moment, the remnants of dentistry combined with a
remaining feeling of queasiness from this weekend's episode of food poisoning (BTW, I've
been reminded of the restaurant, if you go to "St. Hubert's," for heaven's sake,
avoid the chicken fillets). This leaves me unsure I am up to another grueling travel day
today, which would involve some 13+ hours travel surrounding an eight hour visit, so I'm
going to try and grab a couple of hours shuteye in between and see if I'm up to it, so
I'll clarify whether I'm around today in a later update (when I know).
I fixed the bug in the search that was not going to the right bookmark on the search
result. Unfortunately, I believe the bug where the "last 2 days" link skips the
previous day will not be fixed until this weekend (sorry about that). Apparently I wasn't
the only one incredulous at that Windows uptime story, as the
reactions on CNET indicate. Thanks ZhiZi. If you're worried you are getting close to a
crash, ShellTime
sits in your system tray counting off your uptime. Yesterday's quote was Young
Frankenstein ("There castle!").
Link of the Day Part I: The Save MST3K Page. Part II:
The Penguin Dance (thanks Psyci
Tariani), which is getting old, but you may be collecting the whole set.
Aureal Semiconductor's David Gasior sent along an updated list of console commands for Sin now current
through the 1.03 patch.
John Carmack updated his .plan with a discussion of Quake III Arena Weapon balance, addressing
some of Thresh's comments about
the weapons. Here's the full Carmack update:
On the issue of railgun firing rates -- we played with it for a while at the
slower speed, but it has been put back to exactly Q2's rate of fire.
I do agree with Thresh that the way we had it initially (faster than Q2, but with the same
damage) made it an overpowered weapon in the hands of highly skilled players, which is
exactly what we should try to avoid.
An ideal game should give scores as close to directly proportional to the players reletive
skills as possible. The better player should win in almost all cases, but the game will be
more entertaining if the inferior players are not completely dominated.
Quake 1 had really bad characteristics that way -- Thresh can play extremely talented
players and often prevent them from scoring a single point. We wouldn't put up with a
conventional sport that commonly game scores of 20 to 1 in championship matches, and I
don't think we should encourage it in our games.
Eliminating health items is probably the clearest way to prevent blowout games, but that
has never been popular. Still, we should try to avoid weapon decisions that allow the
hyper-skilled to pull even farther away from the rest of the crowd. They will still win,
no matter what the weapons are, just not by as wide a margin.
A .plan update
by Mitch Shaw talks a bit more about TRIBES 2 (or II), as well as word that the tool
release will be soon, including the release of the mission editor and ZED, the interior
editor. Also, Tim Gift's .plan has more on what's upcoming, including word on what's
in store for version 1.4 as well as a 1.3.x beta:
Patch 1.3 is out. Dave Moore posts an update on OpenGL in his plan. We've
received a lot of feedback over the last few days :) Some of which has has led to
significant improvements in the performance of our driver. OpenGL is starting to look much
better. Soon as Dave get's it all sorted out, we'll release a 1.3.x beta for more
feedback.
We are starting to QA our tool patch today, this will probably be included in one of the
upcoming betas as well. Eventually there will be a Tribes 1.4 release, though I don't see
any major features being added at this point. There are a lot of ideas bouncing around for
TRIBES, but after 1.4 we'll have to see how many of those we want to implement. At some
point we'll move into more of a support role, fixing and addressing issues as they occur,
but mainly shifting our focus on to the next TRIBES product.
Some of the other issues still being thought about:
- Australian master server
- Expanding our dedicated server base
- Dedicated server stability
- Scripting/Mod documentation
- Better support for mod writers
- Better support for dedicated server operators
- Linux port - Patch/Update process improvements
- A number of improvements to the web site
A lot of it comes down to better community support. Comments? Feedback? I can't always
answer every email that comes in, but ideas are always welcome.
Tim's email is tim.gift@dynamix.com.
Something New to Do With Voodoo
2 is an article on GameCenter giving some new
tips on how to tweak some of your V2's settings, including settings to increase image
quality, all the way through the possible benefits of underclocking (that's right, under).
Dynamix' Dave Moore updated his .plan with what he's working on for TRIBES currently, with an
update on the status of the OpenGL code, which, as he says, did not hold up the release of
the 1.3 patch (next story). Additionally, among the subjects covered in Dave Meddish's .plan, is a bit on TRIBES II:
As of now, the Tribes team is starting to ramp up for Tribes II (or
2--personally, I prefer the Roman numerals), deciding what we can cram in for the sequel.
We'll no doubt have some things that didn't make it in the first game, and some wondrous
new things as well.
The Starsiege TRIBES 1.3 patch is out on Sierra's
FTP site. Thanks Sixxo from Insomniax.net.
Here's a local copy of the
1.2-1.3 patch (475 KB), and a local copy of the 1.0-1.3 patch (639 KB). Here's a list of what's new
thanks to schnoz at Datumplane::Starsiege:
- PrefPlayerFOV can now be set to change the client's first person FOV.
- The server menu ban feature has been remove for voted admins, but is still available for
Super Admins.
- The Join Server List now stores off game type between sessions. This allows filters
based on game type to work when the client is first started without having to refresh the
servers.
- Beta OpenGL support for i740 and TNT cards.
- Memory management has changed slightly to help reduce the amount of swap space being
used by the client.
Deus Ex Incarnate
interviews Harvey 'Witchboy' Smith, design team leader at ION Storm for Warren
Spector's upcoming Unreal-engine action/RPG, Deus Ex.
Insomniax.net sends along the latest copy of their
InsomniaX mod for Starsiege TRIBES, version 0.6b. In addition to features in previous
versions, the new release adds a new backpack (a "Heat Sink" which removes the
heat signature from your Jet Pack), weapon (the IX-2000 Sniper Rifle which kills lights in
one head shot, and is restricted to five rounds without the aid of an ammo pack), and a
new Vehicle (the Firestorm Bomber, a modified scout with a Multiple warhead bomb
launcher). There is also a new map included with this release called IX_Frostbite,
described as a large CTF Map that requires a lot of teamwork to defend successfully. The zip of InsomniaX posted here
(225 KB), mirror courtesy of the courteous folks at Walnut
Creek CDROM, also includes InsomniaX Admin Enhancements v0.6b, an additional Mod for
running a TRIBES server with the InsomniaX Admin Options added (Anti-TK, Out of Bounds
Kill, and Public Admin Controls) with none of the items or gameplay changes.
Version 1.0 of WinGlide is up on Chris' WinGlide Page
(the 1.0 is not meant as a significant release, it's just the number after 0.99). This
version adds new capabilities to the Overlay WinGlide modes so that it can use the ET6000
chipset and the PERMEDIA 2 chipset. WinGlide allows 3D in a window using a Voodoo
accelerator.
The Werewolf The
Apocalypse site has been updated again on the occasion of the full moon, with more on
their upcoming Unreal-engine werewolf ("there wolf!") game, adding part four to
the The Heart of
Gaia prequel story, two
new screenshots, the fourth Travis Rants,
talking about character development, and a new BBS where you can rant back.
Arcadia - Interviews
T.Elliot Cannon, talking to Epic Games' own Myscha the sled dog in a conversation that
starts up front with Myscha's warning that "these replies contain profanity."
Rage In A Cage: MechWarrior
3 is an interview on Next-Generation Online
with Zipper Interactive's Vice President of Technology/co-founder, Brian Soderberg, and
company President/CEO, Jim Bosler with all the skinny on the upcoming installment in the
MW series. The piece details the game's enhancements since MWII, and offers a page with
" tons of shots."
Tweak3D's Quake II
Autoexec Creator and Tweak3D's Sin Autoexec
Creator have both been updated with new commands, better explanations, and code
changes learned from updating the Half-Life version.
deConstruct has an updated release of
their BeerDM mod for Quake II, adding a beercan shooting grenade launcher to this mod that
replaces your health with beer. At 100 health you're totally drunk and have a swimming view,
at 1 health, you are cold sober and have the normal view. Definitely one that justifies
wearing the Homer Simpson skin.
The QuakeMovie page has a classic Quake mod
called Saturn Quake that allows you to play as Sailor Saturn, described as a must-have for
Sailor Moon fans. Includes a chasecam mod so you can see your sailor self in single-player
play.
The Sloshy Software Inc. page has a new version
2.34 of the QuickStart Eraser Bot Wizard. The new release of this front-end that allows
control over every Eraser bot option offers a bunch of fixes for various problems.
This md2 viewer is an OpenGL model
viewer from chUmbaLum sOft that can view models in
Quake II's .md2 format.
GA-Source's
Mini-Interview With Joe Lau of Hercules talks about the current happenings in the
graphic accelerator market.
Eric
Biessman's .plan has details of how to apply for an opening at Raven Software for a designer. The Want Ads are going to become
automated, and aren't very up to date, but I added this to the Help Offered Paid section.
More praise for GamesCon, this time in a debriefing in Pat "CodeKing" Lipo's .plan, he mentions the lounge singer
mpeg I said I may post... the video turned out too dark, but maybe I'll excerpt a bit in
an .mp3. Hmm, would I need his permission to do that? I want to throw out one of my
occasional heartfelt thank yous to Wouter 'JinXter' Teeninga, who diligently corrects
every typo I make (which can add up), right down to double spaces between words (and
English is his second language, no less). Thanks JinXter, I don't know how you do it.
Link of the Day: CNET News.com - Windows may crash
after 49.7 days (thanks Ant) which says that if
you can get Windows to run for 49.7 consecutive days without rebooting, it is possible
that it will crash on its own. This seems like warning people that if they flap their arms
fast enough to leave the atmosphere, they will suffocate, but Microsoft has nonetheless
posted a patch for affected users. No word on whether anyone has downloaded it yet.
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