Archived News:
It's time for our weekly collection of wackiness that we like to call the
Mail Bag. In this week's hermetically sealed edition: joking about the
Virginha Incident, Dhabih Maul, lame id interviews, and ( gasp) challenging
the Teeny Print TM.
Swing
on by and check it out.
Sierra sends word the official
Team Fortress2 website is now online, offering the latest on Valve's upcoming
multiplayer teamplay game, Team Fortress 2: Brotherhood of Arms. The site has new
shots up from the award-winning demo given at this year's E3, as well as new information
about the game.
The Activision Game News page
confirms the in-store date for Heavy Gear II, Activision's upcoming game of giant robot
(gear) combat (or as loony put it earlier, Rock-'em Sock-'em Robots), will be this Friday,
June 18. Thanks Grifter1.
There's a new SWAT
3 Screenshot on GA-Source giving a look-see at SWAT 3: Close-Quarters Battle
a tactical simulation shooter currently in the works at Sierra Studios.
Epic's Cliff Bleszinski updated his .plan with some enthusiasm for Legend Entertainment's
just-completed Unreal Mission Pack, Return to Na Pali, and a little more on gaming and
DVDs. Here's the part about Return to Na Pali:
Kudos to the homies over at Legend for completing their most excellent Unreal
level pack "Return to Na Pali." I have played this pack several times, and it
more than holds up to the orginal Unreal, in many ways exceeding it in ass kicking
gameplay and visual splendor.
For more information on "Return," check out the website:
http://www.gtinteractive.com/unreal/missionpack/
Raven's Kenn Hoekstra updated his
.plan with word that the Soldier of Fortune movie that was yanked from the
E3 show floor will be available for download soon: The Soldier of Fortune
AVI trailer that was banned from E3 should be making an appearance on the net
soon. We're still working out the details of who is going to post it and exactly
when, but it will be coming your way soon. The trailer shows some of the gameplay
and some enemies being gunned down by our mercenary hero... It's pretty slick!
I'll post more details on the AVI release as they become available. =)
The Developer's Corner sends word of a
chat session today with Shiny's Dave Perry. here's the lowdown:
David Perry Development Forum, Today!
DP will be speaking at the "Developers' Corner" website today about everything
and anything concerning game development, game design, starting your own company, or just
getting a job in the industry! If you've ever wondered how games are made, this chat is
for you!
WHEN: Tuesday, June 15th, 1999.
WHERE: The Developer's Corner Chat Room (www.developers-corner.com)
START TIME: 4pm Pacific Standard Time (7pm EST)
CHAT OVERVIEW: General game development and game design chat session. This is not a
promotional event for any particular Shiny title in development, but some may be used for
examples of Dave's design theories.
TOPICS WILL INCLUDE: Game Development and Design Theory | Dreamcast vs. PlayStation 2 | 3D
Hardware | Future of the PC Industry | Trends | Violence, Games, & Kids
There are some Freelancer
Sketches on PC Paradox showing off concept art from this eagerly-anticipated space sim
from Microsoft and Digital Anvil.
There's a short (two question) Messiah Q&A
with Scott Herrington on GA-Source asking the Shiny PR guy (as opposed to a shiny
PR guy) about what's involved in creating the PlayStation port of Shiny's upcoming
third-person cherubic action game, Messiah. Word on the release of the PSX port is
"With luck, we'll have the PSX version out about 2 months after the PC version."
That answer goes on to mention that this will hopefully coincide with a multiplayer patch
for the PC version: "Our schedule is PC version, then PSX version, and while the PSX
version is coming out, a multi-player patch for the PC version should hit about the same
time."
Raven's Chris Foster updated his .plan with some news on the state of their Star Trek Voyager game,
currently under construction using the Quake III engine. We haven't heard much details on
development of this game, so here's the whole update:
Now, that I'm out from under the shadow of scheduling and planning for a day or
so I thought I'd update this thing.
We're currently halfway through production on the Scavenger Base areas. I've nearly
completed the exterior portion of my airlock level, where Munro and others will hopefully
get the chance to utilize their Starfleet vac suits for a short spacewalk.
Most of the areas of Voyager have been completed in their raw form, just waiting to be
realistically roughed up and damaged.
Our design team is doing a terrific job of fitting the extremely complex areas from
Voyager into the sometimes restrictive limitations of a game engine. Quake3 is the only
engine that I would even want to try this in!
Any questions? Mail me!
PC
Zone's Diablo II Preview is online, like their previous efforts, this one is full of
content, including interviews with the development team, and several screenshots showing
off action from the game (again, the URL provided has a generic guest login built-in to
prevent the problems that can occur there when it starts asking all visitors for
registration information). Speaking of Diablo II, the busy beavers at DiabloII.net have
posted a French PC
Soluces Diablo II Movie, that's right, another gameplay movie from a foreign language
publication, this on the heels of the Chinese Diablo II movie they posted yesterday ( story).
There are nine new Codename
Eagle Screenshots on TotalGames.com showing off action from this upcoming shooter from
Take 2 Europe where "you play a special agent sent to defeat a power crazed Russian
Emperor in his attempt to dominate the globe. With loads of weapons, vehicles and a game
spread across Russia" Also, Billy has posted some new Drakan: Order of the Flame
screenshots on Voodoo Extreme showing off more
of Psygnosis' upcoming third person game.
Here you go kids, two new screenshots from Accolade's upcoming
Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots title, Slave Zero. Enjoy!
 
The Adrenaline
Vault News gives an update on the status of Mortyr, which has been acquired by Ubi
Soft, who say they are not going to publish it. The piece goes into detail about the
status of finding a new publisher, and the reasons behind the decision not to publish the
game, and Ubi Soft's other plans in the action gaming area.
A post on PlanetUnreal describes the Unreal
Mission pack as having just gone gold (off to duplication), citing the Wheel of Time page as the source of the information
(Legend Entertainment is behind both projects). Thanks Vængr3I=. When checking the WoT
page, however, I cannot find the update to which they refer, so the post may have been
pulled, which may mean there is a problem with the accuracy of this story ( Update:
the update is back on the WoT page, it seems there was just a temporary glitch). Here's a
portion of the update:
First, even though this isn't strictly WoT-related, I must congratulate the
Unreal level pack team on a job well done. They went gold over the weekend. While the pack
may appear to dwell in WoT's shadow a little, there's no question that it represents a
significant milestone in Legend's history. Heck, our last release (and most of the titles
that preceded it) was a strict adventure game. The Upak represents our first shipped
product in the FPS genre. My hat is off to everyone who worked on it; the end product
shows a lot of time, effort, and long nights filled with superheroic tales of hostess
advertising.
The Battlezone 2 Center has posted a new
screenshot showing off Pandemic Studios' upcoming sequel to Battlezone. The shot shows off
an "ISDF Assault Tank letting one rip," and is labeled as a "weekly
screenshot," suggesting such shots will be a regular feature.
OpenGL ICDs, minidrivers and
standalone drivers is an article on OpenGL.org by
ex-id Software programmer Brian Hook with a detailed outline of the differences between the
different kinds of OpenGL drivers. Thanks zerolight.
Holy Wars for Quake 2 page has version
1.2 of the FrogBot for HolyWars (for classic Quake) for download, allowing you to conduct your own holy war,
even if you can't recruit any zealots to join you.
- The Demo Plex is holding a Quake II CTF
tourney, slated to begin in July. The competition is an invitational, but there are
wildcard slots available for teams that wishing to sign-up.
- Gameart's Win a Voodoo2 SLI contest looks
to reward artwork with a pair of Voodoo2 cards.
- Quake3.dk is giving away some prizes, including a
pair of Voodoo3s, though the contest is only open to Scandinavians.
- Remember, our fourth
trivia contest went up yesterday, between the questions, the concept, and the small
print, providing a test of your knowledge, patience, and eyesight.
- Ministry of
Development's interview with Shov of Borderline talks to one of the team behind The Russian Front mod for Half-Life...
- If you've lost track of Stayne's House of Demos,
that location is new, please change your bookmarks accordingly and return your stewardess
to her original upright position. Thank you...
- The Computer Graphics Cafe describes itself as the
"1st Open Portal(TM) on the World Wide Web for all things computer graphics."
What does that mean? Hell, I don't even know how a website can be a cafe, but hopefully if
this is significant for you, you can work it out...
I'm still not sure if the iFrame browser reloading glitch is a problem on the server, or
certain clients' ends, but recent theories are that iFrame has certain bugs, and that if
it's browser-specific, it crosses corporate lines, because certain MSIE users are
reporting it as well. Just to add complications, I've received a couple of notes pointing
out that our theoretical all-browser support is not 100% as there seems to be a problem
with this site and the KDE browser for Linux, but I'm not aware of any HTML problems that
would cause this (perhaps it's related to the iFrame thingy?). I don't think there are all
that many KDE users out there, but I'm certainly open to any theories about the problem.
Link of the Day: NECCO
introduces "CyberSpeak" They're actually over a year-old, but these floppy
disk shaped variants on the old heart-shaped Valentine's Day classics are too crack-addled
to pass-up on a chance at a mention. Thanks Latkey.
The possibility that the Generations mod was in jeopardy of being shut down became public
the other day ( story), and now the other shoe has dropped, as the Generations Main News page has word
that this Quake II mod has been "terminated" as a result of correspondence with
id Software about its Trademark violations. Thanks The Last Doomer. Word is that the
reason they continued this long in violation was the result of a "misunderstanding
between [the generations team] and id," but the update also makes it clear that they
have not actually been "foxed," that is, id has not specifically asked them to
shut down, but rather, this is their voluntary solution to the situation. Here's the part
that explains that:
id Software has specifically stated that they are NOT asking us
to shut down Generations. Therefore, we are not technically "foxed," as the term
goes. But id has set guidelines as to what restrictions we are expected to place on
ourselves. Generations, as far as v.98 goes, is in broad, direct, and clear violation of
nearly all of these guidelines, in virtually every aspect. In fact, so is every version of
Generations that has ever been publicly released. In case you haven't guessed, the Files
page is down, and the mirrored downloads will soon be unavailable. In volunteering to
remove the files, we hope to avoid any further legal complications with id
Software.
Sierra Studios sends word that none other than Ritual's Famed Levelord™ has joined an
"all-star" team of level designers contributing maps on a contract basis for
Gearbox Software's upcoming official Half-Life add-on Opposing force. Here is a good chunk
of the press release:
BELLEVUE, WA (June 14, 1999) -- Sierra Studios™ and Gearbox Software
announced today that famed level designer Richard Gray, also known as
"Levelord™", has agreed to create a multiplayer map for Half-Life: Opposing
Force. Half-Life: Opposing Force is the first official game expansion for Half-Life, the
thrilling PC CD-ROM created by Valve Software and named "Game of the Year" by
over 40 publications around the world.
Levelord, best known for his work on Ritual's SiN, 3dRealms' Duke Nukem 3D, and id
Software's Quake: Scourge of Armagon, is the first announced member of an elite group of
"all-star" designers who have joined Gearbox Software on a contract basis to
create new multiplayer content for Half-Life: Opposing Force.
"Gearbox is very excited to have Levelord contributing to this project," noted
Randy Pitchford, co-founder and lead game designer at Gearbox. "His always clever and
unique designs are sure to bring a whole new level to the Half-Life multiplayer experience
with Opposing Force."
"We've been great friends since the days of Duke Nukem," said Levelord, "We
have a mutual respect for each other's work, and I'm very honored to work with Gearbox as
well as with Valve."
In addition to his groundbreaking single player creations for some of the most acclaimed
3d action titles of our time, Levelord has designed many of the most popular and creative
multiplayer maps of the genre. These include Duke3d's Tierdrops (where players exist in
the same space but in different dimensions), Hipdm1 for Quake: Scourge of Armagon (the
level that started a new genre of 'suspended in space' multiplayer platforms) and Spry for
SiN (where players are the size of mice in a huge living room).
Half-Life: Opposing Force (a.k.a. OpFor) will feature a dozen new multiplayer levels
created by 3d action industry All-Stars like Levelord. OpFor also features an expansive
new single player episode were players return to the Black Mesa Research Facility from the
exciting new perspective of a soldier to eliminate a new breed of fierce aliens. The
title, which is being developed by Gearbox Software, is scheduled to be released this
October.
The Blackmoon Development page has version
1.3 of Quake 2 2 player, the mod which allows two players to compete in a Quake II
deathmatch using a single computer (with the appropriate extra hardware), though they are
still looking for programmers who can program support for two mice into the mod.
Kokak's Heretic Page has a new
version 0.5 of Kokak's OpenGL port of the Heretic source code. Thanks Billy "Heretic" Wilson.
The Prax Entertainment page has a new
version 1.0 of Immediate Half-Life 2, their add-on that makes it easy to launch Half-Life
maps with custom settings for each map. The new version offers improved operation, and
compatibility with Half-Life version 1.0.1.0.
FTP.Netscape.com has a
new version 4.61 of Netscape Communicator. As usual with the earliest word on the new
release, currently only the English language version is available. Thanks Mike Rutkas.
Woo! It's time to see the
results of our third contest, kids...swing by and see how badly you did
(or just run over there to laugh at some of those goofy entries). And while
you're at it, don't forget to check
out our next contest. Hmm...maybe I'll start making these questions harder.
Too many people are actually answering all of them (there were a wopping ten
right answers last time).
PC Gamer Online has posted
noted level author Neil Manke's latest work, a level set for Half-Life called USS
Darkstar, along with some rave reviews about the collection, which they call a
"masterpiece," from Quake
Map Hotel, 3D
Map Realm, and 10 Four, along with the 11.4 MB download.
Computer
Games Online previews Quake III Arena starting with the past, detailing the game's
history starting with the project codenamed "Trinity" all the way through the
future, speculating about engine licensing possibilities, saying " Half-Life 2,
anyone?" Also, Benvenuti nel covo dei DSQ announces
the Italian language homepage of the Dark Side Quakers, home to their Italian language Q3A
preview (as well as some mind-numbing midi). Finally, ZDTV's
updated Quake III Preview offers an audio preview of the game in RealPlayer format, offering DM footage and commentary about
the game from Dennis "Thresh" Fong.
Computer
Games Online previews Thief 2: The Metal Age looking at the upcoming sequel to Thief:
The Dark Project, saying "Looking Glass' next first-person looter goes co-op."
GameSpot
UK's Descent 3 Screenshot Gallery has been updated with a dozen new shots of this
imminent game (shots 31 through 43 are the new ones). Thanks Frans from 3D Action Gamers.
There are some new Hired Guns
Screenshots on PC Paradox showing off more action from this upcoming Unreal-engine
first-person shooter that will put players in simultaneous control of four players.
Version 1.0 of AMD Zone's K7 FAQ is
up answering all your FAQing questions about AMD's latest and greatest processors. Also,
the AMD-K6 Technical Documentation page has
been updated with new info on the K6.
The Hive interviews
Outrage's Craig Derrick talking to the producer on Descent 3 about the game, which is
due in stores sometime this week.
Speaking of Interplay (publishers of Descent 3, from the story above), they send along
word that once again they are looking for participants for a focus group about gaming.
Here's the skinny:
Interplay is looking for more playtesters to participate in some upcoming focus
groups. Applicants must live in the LA/Orange County, CA area. If interested, please send
a message to betatest@interplay.com with the
words "focus group" as the message subject. Participants will receive a free
Interplay game of their choice.
Planet Daikatana
has posted a strategy guide for the Daikatana Mplayer deathmatch demo.
There's a Titanium
Angels trailer on GA-Source showing off this upcoming "3D action adventure where
you control Carmen Blake, a tough, futuristic bounty hunter, who rides on the back of
Titan, an intelligent spider-like assault vehicle with a personality." The AVI-format
trailer features the spider-like assault vehicle, Titan. Also, the Chinese Diablo II
Movie on DiabloII.net was apparently received through a Chinese TV station, and shows
off gameplay, as well as cinematics from Blizzard's upcoming sequel to Diablo. There are
also versions of the movie posted there with just the gameplay and just the cinematic
elements separated from the rest of the trailer.
Creative Labs
Products Graphics Voodoo2 page has new beta drivers for Creative's 3D Blaster Banshee
and the 3D Blaster Voodoo2. I've been told these drivers allow support for textures
greater than 256x256 (traditionally a Voodoo limitation) by breaking them up into smaller
textures (see this Maximum
PC article for details on that), and while the site doesn't mention that specifically,
it does discuss texture management improvements as part of the new release. What the page does
say is that the drivers support Quake II, GLQuake and Hexen II, as well as adding support
for Quake III (specifically Quake III Test 1.05) in a single mini-GL file. Thanks Chad Wills.
Preacher sends word that Epic's Mark Rein posted to the Unreality.org
Message Board with some comments on Saturday's Epic-hosted Unreal Tournament
LAN party: Actually what the event was was us showing up to do some testing
on a big LAN with a bunch of people who hadn't played the game before. We're
going to do it again next week. There's no point having 50 people come out if
there are only 14 machines. Next week we are hoping to bring some Savage4, TNT2
and Rage128 video cards to test. The TNT's would have performed considerably better were it not for a bug in
the version we brought that prevented us from using low and medium texture details.
We knew about this bug.
UT performance is roughly the same as Unreal - in some places it's maybe even
a little faster. If you have enough machine to play Unreal then you have enough
machine to play Unreal Tournament. The performance you witnessed on a Celeron
400 would have been roughly the same on anything from a PII 266 and upward.
All the improvements that are in the latest Unreal 225 version are also in Unreal
Tournament. It plays quite well over the internet.
We've improved TNT performance a LOT under D3D in the most recent version of
Unreal (225) and we're continuing to work with Nvidia to get even better performance
out of their cards. We did experience some problems with the TNT cards on Saturday
because a last-minute bug forced to use only the absolute highest setting for
texture detail (higher than the default setting) which isn't suitable for machines
that have less than 128Mb of RAM - these had 64Mb. That ended up causing lots
of disk swapping which gave an inaccurate picture of TNT performance which otherwise
would have been quite acceptable. This will be fixed in time for next week.
In related news, Billy "Screenshots" Wilson has posted two new UT screenshots on that newly redesigned page of his.
SamHell interviews Zoid giving the ten
questions once-over to id Software's contract programmer about his work, the growing
acceptance of Linux by the gaming community, and plans for the Q3A version of Threewave
CTF.
Thresh's FiringSquad previews
Shadowman, offers a hands-on look at this third-person action/adventure title
currently in the works over at Acclaim that takes place in the land of the dead.
Thresh's FiringSquad's Diablo
II preview is also up, offering pictures, descriptions, and accounts of Blizzard's
upcoming sequel to their insanely popular action/.RPG. The preview includes Q&A with
Blizzard's Bill Roper to get the inside scoop.
TrendKill dot Net's Quake3 Arena
Console Command List apparently actually has a few more commands listed than the list
mentioned as the largest yesterday ( story),
though the other list ( Mad Dog's
CFG) seems to have more complete descriptions.
The 3D Body Shop has posted a new VWEP pack to
allow visible weapons in Quake II for a load of user-created models. The pack has visible
weapons for over 25 models, as well as a bunch of new models, skins, and sounds.
AoW TFC League is a five-on-five mixed connection
(each team must have at least two high-ping players) TFC tourney.
- The Rift 3d page has the release of the
materials created for the ill-fated Jurassic TC, a never-completed Quake II mod based on
the big ole Spielberg movie. Other mods can freely adopt what they want from the release,
which includes sounds, models, and animation, but no code...
- Letting
the Chips Fall Where They May is a NY Times Online (free registration required)
article explaining that the PlayStation2 will not be exported to China, since its
(American-made) CPU is designated a super-computer (apparently soon HP calculators will
fall into this category as well). Thanks Kent R. Spillner...
- GX
Message Boards' Unreal Tournament Discussion board is online...
I learned a long time ago that there's a strong Murphy's Law in effect on the Internet,
which has made me superstitious enough about making predictions about things that are
going to happen that I'd be hesitant to write in this space that I plan to continue
breathing for fear of immediately dropping dead on my keyboard. Therefore I can't believe
I managed to make a comment a couple of weeks back about things settling into a
normal schedule around here because loony's DSL line installation was so imminent. Of
course that rat Murphy reared his ugly head, and that has still not come to pass. I won't
comment any further about when I imagine loony will be 100% online for fear talking too
much about it will cause what connectivity he currently does have, a single phone line and
a modem, will go away as well.
I've gotten several responses that suggest the page
reloading glitch I described yesterday is a Netscape problem (specific to one version) with
iFrames, but I haven't confirmed that this is the case (if it is, I'm afraid I'm just going
to ignore it).
Link of the Day: Catholics
want saint of the Net. Thanks TonyT.
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