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Archived News:
The Parsec Homepage has posted a new screenshot from
this upcoming "Fast-paced multiplayer cross-platform 3D Internet space combat"
game. Thanks BarrysWorld. According to the
page, a self-running demo will be released "in the next few months." Also, Man at game
Gallery shows off Iron_Strategy, an upcoming game of giant robot combat that melds the
action and RTS genres. And the BattleCruiser site
has some new screenshots from BC 3020AD.
Starsiege Ride
Your Herc to Victory is a CNET Gamecenter
Game Guide presenting strategies for Dynamix' game of giant HERC combat. Thanks Billy at Voodoo Extreme.
There are a bunch of TFC prefabs on the
Half-Life Editing Resource Center to ease the way for mod authors into the world of
editing TeamFortress Classic. Also, Billy at VE
sends word of another Unreal Technology page
update, this one for mod authors, talking of changes in the upcoming version 224 that will
prevent backward compatibility with older versions.
Mortyr.Net, who probably would have a tough time being carried in mainstream department stores themselves with a swastika in their masthead, have posted a story saying that Mortyr, Interactive Magic's upcoming World War II game, is not going to be carried by certain stores because of some of the game's content.
Gamers
Central's Hidden and Dangerous preview is online, offering a look ahead at this
upcoming World War II shooter from Illusion Softworks illustrated with a bunch of new screenshots.
GameSpot
TV's Quake III Preview offers the Quake III Arena video shown at the MacWorld Expo in RealPlayer format, with different versions available for
different connection speeds.
Earlier today 3dfx sent along a utility to fix a problem with the shipping drivers with
their Voodoo3 accelerators that prevented the "Use higher quality but lower
performance video" button in the 3dfx Tools utilities from working properly. The
utility was for reviewers only because it hadn't passed QA, but now they send word that it
has, and may be distributed for Voodoo3 owners until new drivers are made available.
Here's a local copy & mirrors
of the 3dfx V3 config utility (16 KB).
Sierra sent along the announcement of the first official add-on announced for Valve's award-winning shooter Half-Life. Here's the poop on Half-Life: Opposing Force ("Op For"), being developed by Gearbox, made up of members of the now-defunct Rebel Boat
Rocker:
Sierra Studios Announces Official Half-Life Game Expansion Half-Life: Opposing Force Due Fall 1999
BELLEVUE, WA (April 15, 1999) - Sierra Studios proudly announces that it will release an official game expansion for the highly celebrated 3D action thriller, Half-Life, this fall. Half-Life: Opposing Force (a.k.a. "Op For") is the official game expansion for Half-Life, the game named the 1998 "Game of the Year" by over 40
publications worldwide. Half-Life: Opposing Force is being developed by Gearbox Software for Sierra Studios.
In Half-Life: Opposing Force, players return to the Black Mesa Research Facility to engage in an entirely new episode of single player action and will be offered an enormous variety of new multiplayer content. Gamers play a soldier this time around, instead of Gordon Freeman. Having the option of playing on the opposing force, the player will experiment with a host of new military, experimental and alien weapons. Also a key feature will be to
battle a fierce new alien race as well as interaction with more human characters. Finally, in addition to the extensive new single player experience, gamers will compete in new multiplayer maps designed by industry all-stars.
"Gearbox is extremely psyched to be working with the superior Half-Life game system and universe," said Randy Pitchford, lead designer of Half-Life: Opposing Force at Gearbox. "Our number one goal is to preserve the integrity of Half-Life and provide new experiences that expand upon the sensation of the original-we intend to make Half-Life fans very happy."
"Sierra Studios is excited to formally announce this expansion and to be the first to work with Gearbox Software," said Doug Lombardi, product manager for the Half-Life franchise. "Op For will take full advantage of the remarkable technology that Half-Life produced; including: enemy AI, rendering technologies, skeletal animation system and the extraordinary multiplayer technology that helped Half-Life become the quintessential benchmark action game."
Raven Programmer Jake "the Gent" Simpson updated his .plan with a bunch of stuff on his GDC experiences, and his update
includes this bit on the recently released Heretic II Enhancement Pack:
So the EP is out there. And it has a couple of bugs in it. This highlights our
blind spot of real Internet testing. QA at activision didn't catch a couple of bugs, but
then we are lucky we got any QA time at all, since they had their hands full of Civ 2 and
a golf game. I just want to say thank you to them for putting in the time they did.
Anyway, we ARE going to fix the bugs that cropped up. Infact, they are fixed, and QA is
once again doing their thing on the code. Its just a question of time before we release
this fix. When its released, I'll do a .plan update listing what we fixed and why.
Frans at 3D Gamers sends word that while the Mortyr preview referred to earlier ( story) is new, the accompanying movies have actually been available on
the Interactive Magic FTP site
for a while now, and are not actually new themselves.
GA-Source
interviews Mike Maza, talking to the producer of Maximum Overkill about this upcoming
first-person action title from NovaLogic. Also, Voodoo Extreme
interviews Seamus McNally, lead programmer of the upcoming tank racing game, Tread Marks,
being developed by Longbow Digital Arts.
NVIDIA has announced that a new line of Medion desktop PCs will have an NVIDIA RIVA TNT
graphic accelerator embedded on the motherboard. Here's the word:
SANTA CLARA, CA -- APRIL 15, 1999 -- NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ: NVDA) today announced that the award-winning RIVA TNT 3D graphics processor will be featured in Medion's new desktop PCs. Directly integrated on Intel's newest 440BX motherboard,
NVIDIA's RIVA TNT delivers state-of-the-art 3D performance, in addition to 2D and video
acceleration to the mainstream PC market. The RIVA TNT is the first high-performance TwiN
Texel 128-bit 3D processor to be integrated into a mainstream motherboard offering.
"Incorporating the TNT-based BX Motherboard in their new desktop PCs allows Medion to
deliver a high-end visual experience to a broad range of users," said Jeff Fisher,
vice president of worldwide sales at NVIDIA. "NVIDIA's award winning RIVA TNT 3D
processor is not only the perfect choice for the end-user who wants the ultimate visual
experience in 2D and 3D, but it also gives Medion a winning edge in a highly-competitive
market."
The Medion line of personal computers is sold directly from Medion, and is designed to
meet user demands for the most advanced package of new technologies and features without
the premium price. Each Medion PC is built to order and comes with a number of advanced
features, including the integrated RIVA TNT graphics processor.
I figure if the idea of the bulleted collection of miscellany was fair game for adoption
by others, that I'd exact payment by borrowing the idea in return of posting a second such
collection in a day:
- The Doom LEGACY Home Site has version 1.28
of Doom LEGACY in two versions, a DOS and a WIN32 variety. Word is a new Linux version
will follow soon.
- Volunteer rebels
rock Web community is a ZDNN article describing a
U.S. Department of Labor investigation into complaints by former AOL volunteers who claim
AOL treated them like employees, but didn't pay them or give them benefits. It's possible
fallout from something like this trickle down, as the article quotes an expert saying
"If the Department of Labor pulls the plug on this you're definitely going to see
some domino effect with online companies [using] volunteers..." As you are probably
aware, several community gaming websites make use of volunteer labor...
- Be afraid: The Virtual Hunt
Gets Bigger and Better With WizardWorks' `Deer Hunter II Extended Season' for the PC.
Thanks Sharky...
- A monster Truck Madness competition on the MSN
Gaming Zone offers the chance to win a loaded Toyota Tundra...
- Joe Siegler points out that the Apogee/3D Realms Site
has a version 1.2 patch for their Balls of Steel pinball game. Yeah ,pinball is pretty
off-topic here, but this is etc., etc., and besides, how often do you get to type
"Balls of Steel"...
Zombie and RTIME Announce Spec
Ops II and Agreement to Co-Market Integrated Viper 3D Game Engine With RTIME Networking
Engine is the announcement of a new integrated Viper 3D (Spec Ops) engine with RTIME's
networking engine that will be marketed to developers. Thanks Sharky. Here's some of the release:
SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 15, 1999-- Zombie Virtual Reality Studios and
RTIME, Inc. today announced an agreement to integrate the RTIME Interactive Networking
Engine(TM) into "SpecOps II: Green Berets", slated for release in July, 1999.
SpecOps II, which is being co-published by Take-Two Interactive (Nasdaq:TTWO - news) and Ripcord Games, is the latest in
the SpecOps franchise that has sold over 250,000 SKUs worldwide. Zombie and RTIME also
announced a co-development and co-marketing agreement to sublicense the combined Viper 3D
Game Engine and RTIME Interactive Networking Engine(TM) to game developers and publishers,
allowing them to bring new, high quality titles to market in a fraction of the time and
cost.
I goofed earlier when I said The AVault News
story on Unreal 224 didn't contain new info ( story), as my recollection of a previous announcement of LOD (Level of
Detail) modeling in the upcoming Unreal-engine Duke Nukem Forever ( story) led me to think this had already been announced for Unreal, when
it had been not (sorry about that). Here's the part on LOD that's new:
Another major enhancement to be included in 224 is continuous level of detail,
which varies polygon counts on objects such as player characters and power-ups relative to
their distance from the camera, or player's perspective. In Unreal Tournament, this
will enable the engine to place more characters and objects on the screen and still
maintain a consistent and fluid framerate. Rein said this is an important feature not just
for Unreal and Unreal Tournament but also for engine licensees since it also
opens the engine to new game types, such as real-time strategy titles, that were not
previously obvious choices for the engine.
Through the Looking Glass has some information obtained from Looking Glass' Tim Stellmach about the possibility (or lack thereof) of Ultima Underworld 3 ever getting made...here's a quick quote:
Obviously we can't do Underworld 3 unless EA contracts with us to do it: it's their property. Just as obviously we could do a fantasy role-playing game without the Underworld brand. What we're actually planning I am, as usual, not at liberty to say, but we're keeping plenty busy.
Ultima Underworld 1 and 2, you may recall, were Warren Spector's projects while at Looking Glass (he now resides at ION Storm, where he's working on Deus
Ex) and amongst the first first person games ever. In other LGlass news,
Billy "shock the monkey" Wilson has posted two new screenshots from
an alpha version of System Shock II over on that
page of his that show off a bit of the standard HUD.
There are a bunch (six, to be precise) of in-game movies from iMagic's upcoming
Nazi-killing FPS Mortyr, over at pc.ign.com,
showing off a great deal of their architechture, as well as their various weapons
and character animations. If you haven't been able to get a feel for the game
from the screenshots ( see
story), I recommend checking out these movies as they are relatively small
downloads.
In a press conference this morning, Sega's Bernie Stolar made an announcement
about the launch of their new system, the Dreamcast. With its Microsoft OS,
modem, PowerVR graphics chip and Internet access, it resembles a mini-PC more than any console to date. According to Stolar, the system will retail
for $199, and will launch with ten to twelve titles at launch (including the
impressive Sonic Adventure, Sega Rally 2, and Virtua Fighter TB). No specifics
were given about their Internet strategy, although he did say that details will
be given at E3. The Dreamcast is set to launch stateside on September 9th (yes,
that's 9/9/99). Games of note in development include MDK2, and a Dreamcast version
of Unreal.
Creative
Shines a Light on that Mud is a Sharky Extreme
article following up on their recent discussion of
how clockspeeds have still not been revealed for upcoming TNT2 releases, discussing the
matter with Steve Mosher Vice President of Graphics Business at Creative Labs. The result
is some interesting stuff on clock speeds and Creative's TNT2 and "Ultra-TNT2"
plans (as well as a few shots at 3dfx, he keeps calling the Voodoo3 the Banshee2, for
instance), though the light he shines is limited, as he doesn't make any concrete
statements about planned clockspeeds either. Also, Planet Hardware has been redesigned, and to
celebrate they have posted a few new pieces, including reviews of the 3dfx Voodoo3 2000, the Elitegroup P6BXT-A+
Slot-1-S70 Motherboard, and the Matrox Marvel G200-TV.
Responding to my comment of not recalling seeing shots from the 2093 portion of
Interactive Magic's upcoming shooter Mortyr, Mortyr.Net
sends along word of this page and this page with a whole load of such future
shots compiled into one place.
Afflicted.Net has posted a new screenshot from
CaveDog showing off the editor being used to create their upcoming shooter, Amen: The
Awakening.
GameSpot's Preview of Descent 3
is up offering a look ahead at this upcoming action space flying shooter from Outrage.
DFWM, who sent this along points out that, like X-Wing Alliance (see the Image of
the Day from April 6 this year), this game contains its own Quake reference, as
evidenced by this
screenshot.
The Adrenaline Vault
News has posted an article about the version 224 of Unreal being planned for release
soon by Epic. The lengthy update doesn't offer any new info, but does summarize all the
features currently planned for the patch, as well as an outline for Epic's plans for the
release of an Unreal Tournament at some unspecified date prior to the release of the full
game (though it doesn't mention if it will be out before the Unreal shareware).
ION Storm's Mike "Tarix" Montague updated his .plan with a follow up on his recent interview on
PlanetDaikatana ( story), filling in some info he failed to provide about A3D sound
support. Thanks Daikatana HeadQuarters. Here's most of
the update:
In this article I failed to mention anything about A3D which caused a flood of
email. We currently do support A3D 1.0. Soon we will have support for A3D 2.0 as well.
Anyone with a card that supports A3D, D3D, or EAX and has a set of 4.1 or 5.1 speakers
will have an awesome sound experience! At the time of the interview I was working strickly
with the EAX features of the SoundBlaster Live! I now have a test computer with a Live!
and one with an MX-300 so I can test equally and they both sound great!
My tasks lately have been: Fixing sound problems in the engine, working on the save and
load routines, and tweaking monster behaviors and weapons.
We are showing single player stuff at E3. Stay tuned.
Designing Enemies with
Distinct Functions is a Gamasutra feature by
ION Storm's Harvey "Witchboy" Smith discussing what goes into making good bad
guys (posted a few days back).
A new version 2.0 of TOW Arena, the mod
that brings the competition of Rocket Arena to Shogo: Mobile Armor Division, is now
available. The new release includes a dedicated server, and offers improved stability,
many new features, and bug fixes. TOW Arena 2.0 now also prevents people from connecting
to the server if they don't load the TowArena.rez file.
An update for Beta 5 of Terror Quake2 is now available,
offering a couple of small new features, as well as several bug fixes.
The Boomstick Joint has posted what they modestly call one damn good guide to Team Fortress Classic, which includes descriptions of all the classes and tips with strategies for different maps.
- Just two more days in the fabulous Blue's
News name the two guys in this picture contest.
- Uberfest 99 has been announced, a
follow-up to last year's event which was held concurrently with E3. This time around the
event will be June 25-27, again in Atlanta GA, sponsored by the very cool PyroPimps Show. Info on this, and other upcoming LAN
events are on our LAN Parties
page. Also, LAN Arena.com has word of a large
event in Paris on May 8-9.
- The Dark Army 3 Half-Life Clan Page
is hosting a 16 clan, 4-on-4, double elimination Half-Life deathmatch tourney. Head over
and enter (if you can stand the Another One Rides the Bus midi on the page).
- Doomed's Armor Contest looks for
the best original Starsiege TRIBES light armor design, with a copy of TRIBES autographed
by the development team as the first prize.
- If you've got a clan or a league, you can add them to the database at LeaguePlay.net, "a meeting place for many
online, and offline, multiplaying gamers."
- The Line Up offers a site devoted to
beer, games, and cigars. I don't know if they chose that path to get a link from me, but
it sure worked...
- Birdman's Lair has a couple more new files
up to help with Space Orb support, one for the MechWarrior 3 Demo, and another for the
updated version 1.1.1 Descent 3 demo...
- GameCenter has got a Release Dates dealie up that I
think is new (thanks Matthew Rorie). These things are tough to pin down, but it's
something...
- One for the anti-bargain bin: Monster 3D II 8 MB.
Thanks Easterbunny. Sure, it's $5,192,508.02, but shipping is free...
Today is the day U.S. citizens are required to file their income tax returns, as well as the 87th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. I'll let you draw your own connections
between the two. There's something going on for some readers that's causing the site to
refresh, sometimes multiple times, I'm looking into it, but so far it has me stumped.
Also, as I mentioned earlier, we had a problem with a full hard drive for a short time
yesterday, it turns out that in addition to resetting a couple of .plans in the BlueTracker, this
resulted in a bad upload of the Diablo II movie, my apologies to anyone who had a problem
with the truncated file. Once we're sure the storage issue is under control, we'll get
back on the stick with the local copies of files. Thanks esses for today's Link of the
Day, which follows the full disk theme:
Link of the Day: Microsoft's
tips for Windows 3.1 to increase disk space.
The Interstate '82 intro
movie has been posted on GameSpot (thanks Auto Combat). This AVI is the "opening credit
sequence from Interstate '82 which reveals its main characters (including Taurus and
Groove from I'76), and offers a taste of the synth tunes you'll hear in the game. Note
this movie contains no real gameplay footage."
I just posted a new and improved Blue's News Mouse Resource Page with updated links. Seems the GamesNet FTP server that's been so kindly hosting the related files has gone away, so I apologize if you've had trouble with those downloads in the past few days. Also the full disk drive
we experienced here this afternoon caused a small BlueTracker spasm: it's back on line, but a couple of .plans that haven't been updated have shown up as new, including John Carmack's and Jason Hall's. Sorry about the confusion.
The qED3 Homepage has a new
version 3.0 update for this level editor for Quake engine games, which adds support for
Half-Life editing. The update will only work on version 2.0 or later, and will not patch
qED1. Thanks unitool [cM].
Updated. A new Diablo II movie is out, with a first look at the new
Paladin character in action (thanks DiabloII.net).
The 19 MB download is available locally, as well as from Blizzard's FTP server, so swing
by our download
page to get it. We're working out a couple of glitches on the FTP server, but as soon
as they're fixed we should have local copies of some other recent files up ASAP. Update:
One of the files we're having trouble uploading is now available elsewhere, as PCBlitZ.com has posted a new move from Acclaim showing
off gameplay from their upcoming third-person Voodoo extravaganza, Shadow Man, in both
large and small varieties.
Phoebus sends word that Raven is offering Soldier of Fortune T-Shirts for sale for a limited time, if you want a memento of this upcoming game like the ones to be distributed
at E3. Details on this limited time offer are up on Soldier-of-Fortune.com.
GuruTech interviews Greg MacMartin,
lead designer on Amen, Cavedog's upcoming first-person shooter.
The Tucows Network has a new build 1701 of beta 2.15
of ICQ 99a. Thanks Michael Work.
id Software's Graeme "Zaphod" Devine updated his .plan with word on the release of the test version of Quake
III Arena, which he says is "getting closer." Here's the word (ooh, more pop
culture: The Matrix... I'm unstoppable!):
We're getting closer to releasing the test version of Quake 3 Arena. It's worth
going over our expectations from the test vs. the world's expectations from the test. I
appreciate all the voice mails, faxes, and emails with suggestions, death threats, and
comments, and I do read each and every one of them. I try to respond to a lot of them, but
obviously I can't respond to them all.
At this point, we still have no release date on the test. We're testing builds here and at
Activision and continuing to go through cycles. As soon as feedback from both internal
testing and our testers at Activision dies down, we'll be ready, but while this is
providing heavy reports, as it still is today, we're still not ready to come out with the
public test.
There will be two maps in the test; these maps will also be in the final product. The
feedback we're looking for is specific to the technology in the test. We're pretty happy
with the design, and feedback on things like weapon switch times, models, gibs, and so
forth are not things we'll pay as much attention to as real issues with the technology.
We're looking closely at modem, ISDN, and cable play to see how our new network code
works, and how that works when a bunch of different connections are playing together on
the same server. We're anxious to gauge server load and use with the maps we have to see
how the server works under heavy use, and to make sure we've got a lot of the new
client/server communication working reliably and securely.
That said, we do and will watch you play, read the message boards, and try to gauge
feedback. But the main thing to remember is that this is a test technology build, not a
demo, there will be a demo, we plan on a demo, but this is a test. A lot of you will want
to wait on the demo rather than playing the test.
The test will be on all three platforms, Mac, Linux and Win32. We're still working on
minimum and recommended specs. There are no bots in the test. We do plan on revving the
test once it's out at regular intervals to get fixes out there.
There is no spoon.
A new version 0.94 of the TRIBES Administrator program is up on Tribes.de. This is a GUI Telnet program for
Starsiege Tribes to allow easy remote administration of a server. New features are BanList
editing, a Mission/Map editor (change the map with only one click), and more, and the new
release also clears up some bugs.
GameSpot
UK has a news bit on that new Tomb Raider freebie that's coming soon, including
their announcement that they'll have an exclusive one-level demo available for
download on April 22. For those Lara fans out there who aren't satisfied with
the free add-on or her upcoming commercial debut ( see
story), you'll be pleased to know that wheels are turning on that much talked
about, and even more delayed Tomb Raider movie. Here's the news, care of Dark
Horizons:
At last, things are moving on the film adaption of one of the decades
most famous computer games. Variety reports that Paramount has put the adenture
flick on the fast track, with plans to make it their big film release during
Summer 2000. Paramount won the rights to turn the project into a feature film
last year, with various writers developing scripts - none of which have caught
their eye, till now. Scribe Steven de Souza ("Street Fighter") submitted
a draft which Paramount snapped up right away and has deemed it ready for development,
with Director Stephen Herek ("Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure",
"Mr. Holland's Opus") very likely to helm it. No word on who'll be
playing the buxom Lara Croft as yet, but you can bet when it is announced the
Net will go wild.
The Aliens vs. Predator Network has a bunch
of new images of the box art to AvP, showing off not one, not two, but six
different boxes. Looks like Fox Interactive's
trying to give Unreal a run for its money here...I shudder to think of how many
boxes SegaSoft's 10six is going to end up
with. :)
Marcus Whitlock updated his .plan with some more skinny on Raven's upcoming Soldier
of Fortune:
Yummy Soldier Of Fortune stuff
Yikes... a whopping two months since my last update... still working on stuff for Soldier
Of Fortune. Just about finished porting the weapon and inventory system across into the
player.dll so that all the player view-weapon animations and sequences (fire, reload,
muzzle flashes etc. Hmm... the whole dang shop actually!) are predicted and animate much,
much nicer under laggy net conditions than the original Quake2 player view-weapons.
Course, all this stuff will be customizable, being in a separate dll and all that. Muchos
kudos to Gil for creating Ghoul!
Also decided I'm going to stay with Raven... after condiering everything... this had to be
the coolest place in the world to work... [at least for normal people like us anyway, i.e.
those of us who aren't porn stars, rock stars or movie stars with babes and cash coming
out of the upholstery :)].
Beyond 3D's Heavy Gear II preview
offers a look ahead at this upcoming giant robot game from Activision offering a couple of
new screenshots and some commentary from the game's producer Dave Georgeson.
3DFiles.Com has posted a
new version of APK 3dFx Tuning Engine 2000++ adding full Voodoo III capabilities to this 3dfx tweak utility. HardOCP has posted some
results from playing around with (and of course overclocking) a TNT2, though it's warned this is not a production board. Also, on the Mp3 front, Microsoft
Internet Music Format To Challenge IBM talks of a new standard that will allow music downloads theoretically without piracy. There's a new version of Winamp that should pop up soon supporting this dealie. The IBM part of that story in reference to IBM Enlists RealNetworks In Online Music Race, which reports "IBM said on Monday it had enlisted online multimedia company RealNetworks to help its bid to create a universal standard for sending music over the Internet." Thanks Phil Pierotti. Also in the world of legal
battles, U.S. Court of Appeals Rules for AMD in Patent Dispute With Altera. Thanks GA-Source.
Finally, Voodoo Extreme has posted some news
on how Voodoo3 owners can beta test the new 3dfx OpenGL ICD:
In anticipation of our public release of an OpenGL ICD for the Voodoo3 family of
cards, 3dfx is allowing a small number of beta testers access to a beta ICD driver.
This beta ICD is for the sole purpose of evaluating our OpenGL functionality on
individual or corporate OpenGL programming projects. It is not available for
evaluation of public applications or games (as we're doing that testing ourselves at
3dfx.) The beta ICD made available will not include full performance enhancements as
this beta program is designed solely as a test of functionality.
To be considered for the 3dfx beta OpenGL ICD program, please send an email to
devprogram@3dfx.com with "Beta OpenGL ICD request" in the header. The
email must contain the following complete information:
1) Full contact information of the individual including email address, shipping address,
phone/fax, and company information if relevant.
2) Brief description of your OpenGL programming projects that you will be testing and
providing feedback on.
3) Version of Voodoo3 card that you will be testing with.
Valid requests for inclusion in the beta ICD program will be followed up with a 3dfx NDA
and beta ICD agreement. The beta ICD program participant must fax back and agree to
the terms of both the NDA and beta agreement prior to being sent the beta ICD
driver.
GameCenter
has premiered the Starsiege (vanilla, not Starsiege: TRIBES) demo in Gigex format, so it's an 87k download followed by a 52 meg download. Here are the details:
The demo features two single-player campaign missions along with four
training missions to get you up to speed. It also features a mission recorder,
full customization of the controls, and save-game options. Other features include
native Glide compatibility, shell audio, and OpenGL compatibility for RIVA TNT
cards.
There are half a dozen new SEED Screenshots
on GA-Source along with a short update on the status of this upcoming shooter from HumanSoft saying, while they are still seeking a publisher, beta testing should begin in August, and the game will be complete in October. Also, Andrea from Matrox sent over a
screenshot from Rage's upcoming Expendable, that shows a still shot of some impressive looking water using environmental bumpmapping. Here's the shot:
PlanetUnreal
has posted an interview with Travis Williams, the Executive Producer of ASC Games'
upcoming Werewolf: The Apocalypse.
The audio-oriented Redchurch.com has a new interview up with 3D Realms' Lee Jackson
talking about his work creating game music and sound effects.
Quantum3D
Introduces New Product Configurations Featuring Pentium III & Voodoo3 at ITEC `99
is the announcement on some new products based on 3dfx technology from Quantum3D that
include an integrated V3/Pentium III product and a line of Voodoo3 accelerators that will
be available through the Quantum3D web store. Thanks Sharky.
Epic's Tim Sweeney made an update to the Unreal Technology page talking of his positive impressions of running a Voodoo3 with the
Unreal 224 beta (there are problems running Unreal 220 on the V3). Thanks Apache at Computer Gaming Review. Tim also slips word in there of some sort of performance enhancement in the works (it seems unrelated to the Voodoo3 comments):
Unreal 224 performance is also being helped by some new lighting optimizations,
and a major new engine feature, which Erik de Neve (Unreal optimization and algorithmic
texture guru) has been working on. But I'm not allowed to talk about that since Mark
Rein is writing a press release about it now.
N64.IGN.COM's new Quake II 64 Preview
is up, offering a brand-new account from some hands-on time with this Nintendo 64 port of
the game, offering a whole load of shots along the way, including some showing off the
split screen deathmatch views, both for two and for four players (remember, no camping).
ION Storm's Bob White made a post to a Music and sound effects thread on the ION Storm BB talking about the music and sound effects in ION's upcoming Deus Ex (thanks again Apache). Here's the content of the two updates (woo, Blues
Brothers in the pop culture quiz!):
Music and sound effects are being spear headed by Stan Neuvo. Stan is a great
sound guy with an excellent ear for the job. He formerly worked with a lot of us at Origin
and we were pleased then and more so now with what he has given us for Deus Ex.
We plan to use both types of music in our games...Country and Western....
We are trying still to find the "right" music style for the game. Once we get
that nailed down we will probably look at whether it will be dynamic or not. Several of us
would like to see a heavy duty techno sound (something along the lines of Prodigy) Others
see some modern electronic as a good choice (something like Patrick O'Hearn does).
The sounds are realistic. We are getting effects from all over and trying to stay away
form canned effects. On the NYC streets you here the horns honking, traffic rushing by,
the squeals of the subway trains, barking dogs, crying babies, people yelling...basically
the whole gambit.
...
A quick adindum to my previous post on music in order to clarify something. The music will
have to carry the mood of the game and some of those listed probably wouldn't.
We want to make sure there there is ambient music to match the scene and mood. Maybe
something of an Asian flavor in Hong Kong. Something moody and dark in the gehttos of New
York.
The news of the parents v. game/porn/movie companies lawsuit ( story1, story2, story3)
inspired a flood of reader responses, and it seemed like a topic worthy of a special mid-week edition of the MailBag
entirely on the subject of the lawsuit.
Ars Technica's Behind
the Benchmarks looks at "SPEC, GFLOPS, MIPS et al" in a piece by their
resident CPU guru looking at what makes a good benchmark, what makes a bad benchmark, and
discusses the make-up of some of the more common benchmarks. SciTech, the medical school behind the famed
Display Doctor software, has announced: " QNX and BeOS Support Coming Soon." Thanks DemoNews. The Tweaks at Tweak3D have updated their Modem Tweaking Guide. Finally, Tech Zone's Poor Person's Upgrade turns
"an old P233 into a 458Mhz screamer. All for a net cost of just $200!"
The Assimilation page has a new
version 2.5 R2 of the Assimilation Quake II mod replacing the old version 2.5 R2 (trying
to figure out why they didn't increment the version, like resistance, is futile). The
update addresses crashing problems and should reduce lag for most players.
The Prospect Vector site has a new version 1.01 patch for the Tread level editor, which fixes a bug that caused Tread to crash when loading some model files.
- If you think the twisted folks over at Twisted Half-Life were going literature crazy (as opposed to literally crazy) before, then it's time their commitment got them committed, as they've posted the first four chapters of an unofficial Half-Life novel! The part completed so far represents about a quarter of the final dealie, and they heartily vouch for its quality (I haven't been able to read it yet, since I've been having trouble dragging it into the bathroom where such reading is conducted)...
- If your favorite site in the Critical Mass empire is down at the moment, it may be because of a hardware failure over there that has resulted in some lost data. Things should get back up to speed pretty quickly, though apparently some sites may seem a little musty as they reappear, since they're being restored from an older backup...
- All the results of the 1999 Quake Movie Oscars have been posted on The Quake Movie Library...
- Yesterday's User
Friendly asks, is Quake III Arena porn, and today's
cartoon follows the Q3A theme as well...
To finish off the odd subject of Buffalo Sabres hockey player Miroslav Satan's devilish name (last couple of Out of the Blues), several readers (ColdFire was the first) point out that: "In Islam, Satan is called Shaytan," so the pronunciation becomes an
even thinner veil, eh? Alright, it's all just in fun, but... entry 666 in three different hockey databases?
Link of the Day: The Illustrated Guide To
Breaking Your Computer. A follow-up to yesterday's LoD since a picture is worth a
thousand words. Thanks devilbunny.
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