Archived News:
PlanetDaikatana
has posted an edited version of the chat log from last night's Cabana Chat with members of the Daikatana team. One of the topics is the eagerly anticipated
Internet demo, which according to the chat is still quite a way from release
(as it takes time away that team members could be spending working on the actual
game).
U-Games has
posted an interview with TRIBES 2 designer Scott Youngblood, talking about well...TRIBES
2 (you were expecting something else?). Thanks Frans.
A new version of Creative
Labs' MiniGL driver for their 3D Blaster Banshee and Voodoo 2 based cards
has been released (thanks JTJJ). This version (which is dated yesterday, June
16th) fixes a few bugs that plagued the last release (just a few days ago) including
the gamma calculation error and problems that occurred when switching from 3dfx'
driver to the Creative driver. A reminder: this is for Quake engine based games only.
GameSpot
UK has posted a preview of Max Payne, with a hands-on test of the game,
as well as a whopping 14 (!) new screenshots from this action title set in good
ol' NYC (unfortunately, I don't believe there's a Blue Tower level in there).
The Strange Company has released
a public beta of NiSplit, a Quake II utility that can be used to make Unreal-style
flythroughs in any normal level. A technology demo is also available, showing
off the utility's capabilities.
HepCat{WFC} sends along this letter that was posted to the hlds mailing list
from a Won.net employee, detailing the soon-to-be-released Half-Life server
update that is now internally testing: The new version of the Win32 server is now
posted on our FTP site for testing. This new server is backward-compatible with
the existing Half-Life client codebase, so players will be able to connect and
play on your server immediately after you upgrade.
In this new version:
* All known cheats/exploits are fixed
* Running hlds +<mapname> from the command line will heartbeat to theWON
master server.
Hlserver.exe (~80 MB)- This is the full download of the latest version of the
Win32 server. This includes all the files necessary to run a Team Fortress Classic
or Half-Life server.
Hlserver10101012.exe (~500k) - This is the update to the Primary Server Package
that will upgrade you from the previous update from WON (hlserver10011002.exe).
The current version of the Linux server is linux1010d.tar.gz, which was released
last Thursday the 20th.
It should be publicly available within a few days.
Next-Generation
Online is reporting that the Hyde Amendment has been rejected by a vote
of 282 to 146. This potentially prescedent-setting amendment would have made
it a criminal act to show any violent material to a minor.
Soldier-of-Fortune.com
has posted a couple of new screenshots from Raven's action-packed Quake 2 engine
title. Also, they're reporting that GameSpot
will have the E3-banned SoF movie available for download tomorrow.
The Extreme Audio Reality site has a new version
1.57 of the Interactive Around-Sound(R) audio engine that provides 3D sound placement,
even on soundcards with no 3D support. This is the same version of the IAS patch that
ships with Heavy Gear 2.
Apache sends word that Computer
Gaming Review has posted a new preview of Dynamix' upcoming sequel, Starsiege:
TRIBES 2.
Gamers'
Crypt interviews Paul Butterfield of Monolith, chatting about Monolith's upcoming
LithTech-engine James Bond shooter, No One Lives Forever.
Gamelinks previews
System Shock 2, looking at Irrational Games' imminent sci-fi RPG sequel to the cult
classic original System Shock in a piece that includes a bunch of screenshots. Also Billy
has posted a status report on Voodoo Extreme
from Irrational Games' "Art p1mp," Scott "Skarz" Blinn saying the game
is "basically done as far as implementation and content go," and that the
"play testers are working around the clock to try and catch any last minute
bugs."
The Adrenaline
Vault News has posted a couple of screenshots showing off what the David Bowie
character will look like in Omikron, the upcoming third-person action title from Eidos and
Quantic Dream.
AVault
has conducted an interview with Fox Interactive's Aliens vs. Predator producer
David Stalker, talking about the much debated save game feature, which will
be implemented into the next patch ( story).
There are a bunch of
new unreal Tournament screenshots on Unreal Universe showing off action from Epic's
upcoming game of head-to-head deathmatch.
A post to the OutCast
Central Forums by Appeal's Douglas Freese answers some of the frequently asked
questions from the forums about Appeal/Infogrames' upcoming action game, OutCast. Thanks
Certis at Altered Worlds.
Hardware reviews are up here this morning:
Computer Gaming Review interviews Dave
Perry talking to Shiny's happy shiny person about Messiah and other Shiny projects.
The Creative Labs interview
at Glide Underground talks with John Danforth, VP & General Counsel and Steve
Mosher, VP, Graphics Business Unit from Creative Labs, talking about the recently released
Unified drivers from Creative that allow Glide games to play on a TNT2, and the subsequent
legal action from 3dfx about those drivers.
Raven's Chris Foster updated his .plan with some clarifications about how gameplay will
unfold in Raven's upcoming Quake III-engine Star Trek Voyager game, mentioning that
even more detail on this stuff can be found in Mike Gummelt's .plan:
Ah, the joys of less than perfect communication!
In order to clear up a few items regarding our game, I felt it was necessary to update my
.plan file today.
First off...you play the Game as Alexander Munro, a security specialist aboard the
Voyager. A member of an elite force of away team operatives, Munro will be called upon to
defend the ship and its crew from the dangers in a hostile environment. Trapped in an
artificial pocket of space by alien beings, Voyager is disabled and beset on all sides by
ruthless scavengers as well as the race which has them trapped.
He will explore many areas on Voyager, (yes even the mess hall...), as well as numerous
alien craft also trapped within the pocket.
The game will be a single-player affair, with Holomatch options; including Deathmatch,
other team games and possibly Multiplayer Co-operative missions outside of the regular
single-player game.
Munro will have a number of weapons at his disposal throughout the game, some Federation
tech... some not.
Holomatch will basically be a Holodeck generated combat stage with the ability to fight
other players and score as if running a training exercise. When a player is 'killed' he is
transported back to the command staging area to reset himself, re-arm and then 're-spawn'
(i.e. randomly be transported back within the playing area).
As an aside, what do you all think about the idea of 'Siege' type missions for Holomatch?
Hope this answers most of the questions I got.
And No, you are not going to be able to play as Tuvok in the game, sorry! Possibly in
Multiplayer, but not in the single-player game.
Also...for a more concise definition of the Hazard Team (the 'elite force' mentioned
earlier) as well as a synopsis of the characters, see Mike Gummelt's .plan file!
Also, Raven's Jake Simpson updated his .plan mentioning an interview with him on
GameDev.net, and more on his unsolicited (and apparently un-agreed with) opinion about
the value of publishing Carmack's worklog, along with some accounts of his own work, which
I'm going to risk the possible disinterest of other programmers by quoting here, since it
covers some interesting stuff about LOD support in Star Trek Voyager game as well as a bit
about eye-candy in Soldier of Fortune:
So it looks like the LOD stuff I looked into may not be going into Star Trek.
The reasoning here involved low poly count models. Traditionally, Raven has been extremely
good at producing attractive low poly count models. This has come after years of
experience that our modeler have had, plus large amounts of beatings until they get it
right :) However, one of the things that LOD is traditionally NOT good at is reducing low
poly count models even further and making them look ok. Yes, it is understood that they
are reduced in size, so you don't notice this so much, but still, there comes a quality
issue and at some point, modelers and designers need to say "enough". Really and
truly, to do LOD so it looks correct, you should be building high poly count models to
begin with. Since we already have a decent amount of work done on the models and animation
for Voyager, there comes a point where the amount of time to redo it all is not balanced
by rebuilding everything and pushing our delivery date back. We are still investigating
the whole dynamic LOD approach, and are still undecided on its final form for Star Trek
right now. As my father would have said, if we have the time to invest in code
experiementation in an ongoing project, then we'll suck it and see.:)
I'm doing some eye candy for SOF right now. Its really cool to be free enough to have the
time to experiement with fluff stuff to try and get it right. Since I'm a free resource
right now, they are applying me to stuff that otherwise may not have been so addressed. It
looks like I'll have my hands in the effect scaling code too, which is fine by me :)
Nathan Albury has added a very cool Special Effects generating tool into the game code
base, something we've all been talking about for while. This takes effect generation out
of the coders hands, (thankfully, since it takes longer for a coder to do it than an
artist) and places it in the designer hands. I know I'm happy about this :) Doesn't stop
me making effects but it sure does allow everyone a fair crack at it now :)
PC Gamer Online previews Shadow Man
taking a look ahead at Acclaim's upcoming third-person action game based on the eerie comic
of the same name.
The Genesis 3D Engine Screenshots page
has new screenshots from GDemo1, described as a "wonderfully sculpted, technological
display of the power of Genesis3D." Word is the demo will be released soon, and the
update goes on to say "We have targeted this demo at high-end 3D cards (second
generation 3D accelerators or better) so that we could pack in all of the features of
Genesis3D for mass public consumption in the shortest amount of time possible. Don't worry
if you do have a first generation 3D accelerator, you will still be able to ooh! and aah!
as well. Who says you can't have it all!"
A couple of reviews of Descent 3 among this morning's festivities:
We're having a little trouble with Blammo since yesterday, it was difficult getting the
database to update after stories were added, and this causes a few glitches when it
occurs. Your patience is requested if things happen like getting CGI errors in place of
the headlines in the left frame which is an example of one of the problems that's resulted
from this at certain times, though I'm not sure this will continue to be a problem today,
as it seems to be okay so far (fingers crossed).
Yesterday was MrsBlue's birthday, and I will be spending the day today celebrating with
the light of my life, so I'll leave you in loony's able hands (wings?)... you've been
forewarned if he manages to crack his way into the liquor cabinet (or lick his way into
the crack cabinet).
Link of the Day: US scientists clone first human embryos - reports the Sydney
Morning Herald's Breaking News. Wild stuff. Thanks $ikander.
Image of the Day: This animated .gif mentioned
in Patrick Magruder's .plan, yeah that's pretty mean, but damn am I glad
Divx is gone.
GameCenter
has posted a new exclusive movie from 3D Realms and Remedy Entertainment's upcoming
title, Max Payne (thanks Ant). The 31 meg AVI uses Intel's
Indeo Codec, so you may need to download that first.
GamesDomain
has posted an interview with Bungie PR guy Doug Zartman, talking about their
upcoming third person action title Oni. The interview was conducted during the
last hour of the last day at E3, and contains this quote that serves as a good
introduction to the game: Oni is the first 3rd-person game that will
"do action right". The core idea behind Oni was to mix hand-to-hand
combat (kicks, punches, throws) with gunplay in one unified interface. 3rd-person
games are notorious for having controls that are either awkward or oversimplified,
and for having action components that are essentially "rail" experiences.
Oni changes that by using standard first-person action controls, that most gamers
are familiar with, and uses the mouse buttons for punching and kicking when
Konoko (the main character) is unarmed. Konoko's special martial arts moves
are done with key combinations. For example, a player might hit the kick key
once to kick forward, then hit it once while moving backward and jumping, to
do a spinning backward kick in midair.
Brandon "GreenMarine" Reinhart updated the Unreal
Technology Page with details on two new tricks for mod and map authors that
are in Unreal Tournament: "mapshots" and "mutators" (thanks
Bink-er... Vangie).
Tetrad of Descent 3D.com sends along
word that Descent 3 has been sighted in both Electronics Boutique and Babbages
stores. A few quick calls from the Blue crime lab verified that it is indeed
available in stores throughout the NY area, and most likely across the US as well.
The Hive
has posted an interview with Valve's Harry Teasley, talking about mods, the
Half-Life SDK, and Team Fortress 2.
GASource
has posted a follow up to yesterday's
Q&A with Shiny PR guy Scott Herrington, with a clarification on their
reasons for releasing the multiplayer patch for Messiah after the game is finished.
ASC Games producer Rich Rosado posted to the ASC
Games Message Board with word that they're looking to hire some beta testers
for their upcoming Unreal engine title, Werewolf: The Apocalypse (thanks PlanetUnreal).
Here's the scoop: Well folks, you've read about it and dreamnt about
it, now you can test it too!
We're currently looking to hire a few lucky beta testers to test Werewolf and
other ASC product.
Before you jump up and run out the door to our offices, make sure you fit the
following:
You must be at least 18 years of age,
live in the NY/CT area,
be able to travel to our office on a daily basis,
have flexable hours (Werewolves don't sleep!),
Have good writing skills, and
Have some kind of PC knowledge.
Were offering both full-time and temp positions (I'll explain it if you get
an interview ).
If you think you have what it takes, e-mail me with a contact number and resume
at:
rrosado@ascgames.com.
Good luck to those interested,
-Rich Rosado
Well-Rounded News
is reporting that Fox Interactive has decided to add an in-game save feature to Aliens vs. Predator.
Here's a quote from David Stalker, AvP Producer for Fox: We have received
a lot of feedback from our consumers on both sides of this issue. Some gamers
enjoy the suspense and excitement of this game without the option of hitting
the save button. On the other hand, we understand the frustration of some players
who are used to an "in game save" feature available in this type of
game," said David Stalker, Producer, Fox Interactive. "The 'save patch'
ultimately takes care of this debate."
Q3Arena.net
has posted an interview with id software cartographer Paul Jaquays, that features
this bit of advice for dealing with curved surfaces, amongst other topics: Proceed with caution.
They can chew up your poly counts extremely quickly. Use them in grand and obvious
ways. Try to keep the curve patch dimensions in even integer multiples of the
size of the texture being used (2x, 3x, etc.). That means if a texture is 128x128
pixels, try to make the curve patch be a multiple of 128 (256, 384, etc.).
Planet-Tribes has posted a quick
Q&A with Dynamix' Tim "storm over" Gift, talking about the transition
from Starsiege: TRIBES to TRIBES 2.
It's off-topic, but as many sites (including this one) were part of the "stop
DIVX" campaign, it seems necessary to point out that according to this
ZDNet article, the baffling format is dead in the water (thanks Jason Bruce).
It's screenshot mania! The BattleCruiser Online
Screen Shots page has been updated with some new shots of Tamara, the female commander
character in BattleCruiser 3020. Act Three -- Screen Shot
13 is the new Diablo II screenshot of the week, and there is also a new render of the Diablo
II barbarian character suitable for wallpaper and stuff like that. There are also a
bunch of new Blade
screenshots on oneZone. The Dawn of
Darkness News page has a pair of new shots from this upcoming Quake II conversion.
Finally, the Redemption page
has new shots up from this Half-Life mod in-progress.
Fredrik at mdk2.com sends word that The unofficial MDK 2 FAQ has been
updated, and I'll take his word for it, even though the version number is the same
(version 0.5) as after the last update.
SailorScout's GC has posted a
short Q&A with ION Storm's John Romero, mostly soliciting his opinions on the
circumstances surrounding the termination of the Generations mod ( story).
New Intel740 drivers and an Intel Roadmap the Sharky team smuggled out of Taipei in this
morning's Tech Bits:
Today will be the monthly Daikatana Cabana chat session with the ION Storm team working on
Daikatana. The chat is at 8:00 PM Eastern Time, and you can connect through IRC at
www.ionstorm.com and join the channel #ion, or through the online section on the Ion Storm
web site.
Version 0.99a of Gunslinger Quake 2 marks the
first release of this Quake II old west conversion that gives you an arsenal of 10
"cowboy-action" weapons, and a bunch of other authentic features (like no
armor). The page has 20 screenshots from the mod if you want to window shop before
downloading.
- The ICQ FTP directory has new files
dated yesterday, and the ZDNet
Software Library calls it a new beta version 2.22 of ICQ (though it says version 99a
Beta 2.21 build 1800 just like the last few versions--the app is dated May, so it's hard
to be positive how new it really is). Thanks BetaNews...
- Version 4.0 beta 1 of GetRight, the
resumable download manager, is now available. Thanks BetaNews...
- The Official GX Mouse Cam is probably
proof the GX guys have a little too much time on their hands...
Regarding the KDE dealie mentioned here yesterday, this is not just a browser, but
actually a desktop environment (hence the "DE" in the name), and the problems
are with the integrated file browser, which can display simple HTML as well as contents of
the hard drive, which is what I meant I thought not too many people were using (seems KDE
is becoming pretty popular in the Linux crowd). While a couple of loyal KDE users defended
it against being dismissed as not widely used, others were quite willing to concede the
integrated browser's shortcomings, saying there are many sites it will not display
properly.
Link of the Day: Innovation
Ray gun freezes victims without causing injury reports the London Sunday Times, an
article sent along by Ryan "Joltox" Greene who comments it sounds like a working
lighting gun, though it seems the way the Quake lightning gun works would probably
actually cause some injuries (or at least nasty static cling)... Cool science fiction/fact
cusp stuff nonetheless.
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