Archived News:
The techies over at Tech Radio have posted an
audio transcript of their interview with Jens Anderson, one of the designers of Heavy Gear
II, Activision's newly released game of giant piloted robot (gear) combat in their show archive. The show
is in RealPlayer format, but an MP3 format version
could be made available if demand is high enough. Speaking of MP3s, while any of you who
are audiophiles are checking out their audio files, you may dig on
their Q&A with the Director of Advanced Research for Lydstrom about the Songbank
MZ3-5000, their just-announced home stereo component that plays digital music (up to 5000
songs on the main device) using compression technology from Lucent with audio quality said
to be better than MP3 (and the device is also MP3 compatible, to boot).
There's a Starsiege Sensors comparison on
Datumplane::Starsiege offering a complete rundown on the sensors in Dynamix' own game
of giant piloted robot combat. They promise more such articles in the future (you have
been warned).
The Los Angeles TFC Half-Life
Game Server File Downloads page has a new program to easily launch a dedicated server
to run the TeamFortress Classic Half-Life mod. Thanks Voodoo Extreme.
id's Graeme Devine updated his
.plan with details on Q3Test's new SOCKS support. Here are the details:
SOCKS Proxy Support
There are five cvars that control it. They are only settable from the at init
time (from the OS command line).
+set net_socksEnabled 1
+set net_socksServer
+set net_socksPort
+set net_socksUsername
+set net_socksPassword
Please note that you use the address (name or IP number) of the SOCKS server
(firewall machine), NOT a Q3ATEST server. The port number defaults to 1080,
you should not need to change this.
It supports no authentication and username/password authentication method (RFC-1929);
it does NOT support GSS-API method (RFC-1961) authentication.
L810C and Chris Kane both send similar news of a fun bug to play with in the new Q3ATest
using the cheats mentioned earlier ( story), and the lightning gun. Here's L810C's explanation:
I was trying the Devmap and the Give All mentioned in an earlier post when I
found this wierd bug. Use Grapple and grapple to something and hang there by pressing
another weapon. Then use Lightning Gun and you will be propelled anywhere you aim it, you
will be tethered to your original grapple spot, but can go anywhere. You can fly to the
upper limits of Q3Test2 and you can fly into other rooms in the other levels. You can fly
through tele's, but bounce pads will break it.
A tip for Linux server operators interested in running the latest version of Q3ATest that
is currently only available as a Win32 binary comes from moonbeam, who says, "Try
the wine!" BTW, I believe the proper address for the WINE emulator (or, more
correctly, the Wine non-emulator) is the Wine Development
HQ ( www.winehq.com/), rather than the address
listed in the quote (thanks Dave Slusky). Here goes:
Haven't seen this mentioned anywhere. The win32 binary will run under WINE (www.linuxhq.com) as a dedicated server. Works
surprising well actually. Just have to do the most basic of installations - it doesn't
need access to any windows dlls etc.
There's a Thief 2: The Metal
Age interview on GA-Source talking with Project Director Steve Pearsall from Looking Glass Studios about the upcoming sequel to their
stealthy stealing game. The interview discusses new features, new weapons, and
multi-player support, and offers two new screenshots as well.
There's a new tab on The Shugashack for
use with the GameSpy 3D server-browser to help
filter through servers to find the ones running the latest version.
A new Werewolf:
The Apocalypse Screenshot on GA-Source giving a look at the third-person perspective in this first and third-person action/RPG hybrid. Werewolf is based on White Wolf's pen and paper role-playing game, and is being created with the Unreal engine by Dreamforge Productions.
Thresh's FiringSquad has posted their own article on the new
Win32 Q3ATest release talking about what's changed from the previous release, like the
smaller smoke trails from rockets, and the 100 FPS cap on framerate. They top things off
by using the newly-fixed timedemo command ( story) to offer benchmarks on an AMD Athlon 600 MHz system, as well as
more SMP (Symmetrical Multiprocessor) results on both a dual Intel Celeron 366 MHz setup, and a dual Intel Pentium III 500 MHz (on the heels of Anand's, mentioned earlier ( story)).
The DEMISE site has a new Patch4TEST2 Pre-release for their OpenGL accelerated RPG. Thanks Voodoo Extreme. Word is "there could be many problems" with this pre-release patch, but the patch also "fixes many issues -- problems with drivers, Multiplayer, and more." One or two more tests before the full Patch4 release are expected.
Mikel Blanchard writes in to point out that you can check out the current effects and sounds (all mostly placeholders) of the Q3ATest grappling hook and the weapons not included in the current maps, simply by enabling the cheats. Start a map from the console using the
"devmap" command ( e.g., "devmap q3test1") and then grabbing the items using the command "give all," (or "give hook" for just the
grapple) to check them out. Again, most of this stuff is clearly just placeholders for the real deal, with temporary and missing graphics, effects, and sounds, but some of the stuff works, and you can grapple around the levels like Spider-Man if you so desire.
I.Am-KingPin has posted a new Skins department with new player skins available for download. There is also info there on how to create and edit skins for Xatrix' newly-released gangsta shooter, Kingpin: Life of Crime, including info on how to add your likeness to one of the player models (especially useful if you've got the Kingpin/John Goodman physique to begin with).
AnandTech has posted a bunch of benchmarks and commentary about Symmetrical Multiprocessor support in the new release of Q3ATest. Thanks Daniel. The numbers demonstrate that SMP indeed improves performance, though the difference between multiprocessor and single processor modes seems to narrow as the resolution gets higher.
Beta build 1043 of Q3Tweak, the Q3ATest
front-end, is now available, offering a way to "access Q3A console commands not found
in the in-game menus. The program allows you to tune Q3A for best performance, best visual
quality or a cross between the two."
Hardware reviews are up here this morning:
Kokak's Hexen Page has version
0.5 of Kokak's OpenGL port of the source code to Raven's Doom-engine shooter, Hexen.
Thanks Voodoo Extreme.
Thanks Frans at 3D Action Gamers for
these:
- Hero's Journey Vault has posted three AVI movies
featuring gameplay from Hero's Journey from E3 giving a low (320x240) resolution of this
upcoming 3D RPG...
- 3DFiles has posted a local copy of a new Dungeon
Keeper 2 Olympia Level just released by Bullfrog as a freebie add-on for for DK2.
Thanks Robert M Lowrey...
- A new version of the 3D Exploration OpenGL
3D viewer is now available...
To follow-up on the beans loony spilled the other day, he did indeed witness my purchase of a PlayStation: It is nice to be able to check out some of the games that have pushed the envelope of console systems lately, like Metal Gear Solid, it's been something I've been
meaning to do for a long time now. However, if loony thinks I am doing anything with those pokemon's other than creating a big smelly acrylic bonfire out of the cute little beasties, he's kidding himself.
Link of the Day: Squad Nuclear Slug: How to Start
Your Own Squad, a loving look at how to start your own totally 'l33t clan. Thanks
Densun.
Bonus Link: Game Development
Truisms, or, "You know your game is in trouble when..." Thanks Ben.
There's a new GORE Screenshot on the 4D Rulers page showing off their upcoming shooter with
an OpenGL shot of the medieval past episode.
The Adrenaline
Vault News is reporting that Fox has told them they are "investigating the
feasibility of including a dedicated server option in a future patch for its first-person
shooter Aliens vs. Predator," saying that "Fox admitted it will not be
easy to implement the feature at this stage of the engine’s development, but with two
add-ons forthcoming in 1999 and 2000, it could only add to the title’s long-term
appeal."
Moto Racer sends word that the timedemo, which was semi-inoperative on the last release of
the Q3ATest, seems to be fixed on the new release, or at least it operates, if it turns out
the benchmarks it returns are not reliable. Here's word of the testing they did on The Tech Zone's "Project 620" machine:
The timedemo function has been fixed in the new Quake 3 Test that was released last
night. To do a timedemo, follow these steps:
- Pull down the console
- Type timedemo 1
- Type demo q3testdemo1.dm3 or demo q3testdemo2.dm3
Here are the results I got with Project 620. The timedemo was ran on the default "high quality" setting found in the graphic options, which is 800x600 with everything on and texture quality set at 3:
Demo 1: 48.3 fps
Demo 2: 70.3 fps
I noticed over on Voodoo Extreme that the Bot Epidemic has posted an interview with Valve
Software's Robin Walker talking about Valve's upcoming multiplayer extravaganza,
TeamFortress2.
As promised last night, here's a local copy of the Win32 Q3Test version 1.06, complete with a list of mirrors.
Enjoy!
GASource
has posted a Q&A with Kelly Jones of Visionary Media, talking about their
oddball Unreal engine title, Nerf Arena Blast. The piece is illustrated with
nine new screenshots as well.
TacticalPlanet has posted another pair of new
screenshots showing off gameplay from Zombie's upcoming Spec Ops II with a zoomed-in
close-up from a sniper's point of view of an unfortunate enemy caught in the midst of
reloading, and the lethal result.
There's been a massive update to the Aliens
vs. Predator Designer Notes over at the official Fox Interactive site (thanks
Billy " parasite" Wilson). In these
updates (there's several) developer Jason Kingsley covers a wide variety of
topics involved in the creation of the game, from the materials they had access
to, to the development of multiplayer, and lots more.
id Software Designer Graeme "Zaphod" Devine updated his .plan again with some helpful info that was not included, or is hard-to-find, in the release notes on running the new Win32 Q3ATest:
Some variable things we missed or are hard to find in the readme:
g_gametype
A value of 0 here indicates classic “Free For All”, a value of 1 indicates
“Tournament Play” and a value of 2 indicates “Team Deathmatch”.
So, to start a dedicated server in tournament mode, you would use:
quake3 +set dedicated 2 +set zone tournaments +set g_gametype 1 +map q3tourney
The warmup time for tournament play is set with g_warmup. A tournament game is implicitly
a one on one match, and further players are automatically entered as spectators (note,
when the game starts, all clients, including the spectators respawn). You can follow the
players by using “team follow1”, “team follow2”, and you can be a
scoreboard by using “team scoreboard”.
We appear to have broken joystick support somewhat between the first IHV drop and the
final release of the test. We’ll address that (so don’t start the email
bombardment on it!).
Expect the master server to be up and down over the weekend, now we have protocol 38
servers out there in large numbers we’re able to tune that stuff so it works a wee
bit better.
Thanks for the support!
There's a new Skout
preview on Gamers.de (Spielenews für Deutschland) that offers a look ahead at this
German 3D shooter in the German language (remember AltaVista Translations if you feel like
sticking a Babel Fish in your ear), as well as offering four new looks at the game in the
universal language of hi-resolution screenshots. A little translated news passed along by
the site is "The Game should go gold in 4 weeks and there will be a special
(non-bloody) version for the German market and an uncensored international version as
well." Word is the game will support between eight and 12 players in multiplayer play
over LAN/Internet. Speaking of Skout shots, www.Screenshots.de,
"Die Ressource für Spieler," has posted "all 49 Screenshots from the
Beta³ Press Kit of Skout!" Whee!
UGN3D's Q&A with Mike Dussault
talking with the lead engineer on LithTech 3D, Monolith's own licensable 3D game engine,
about what's going on with LithTech 2.
3D-Unlimited interviews Mike
Werckle talking to the artist (and animator) formerly known as Chaos about himself,
his history in the business, and about progress on RUNE, Human Head Studios' upcoming third-person game
of Viking action (you know the combat, not the other kind of action). Included are nine
screenshots showing off this upcoming Unreal-engine game.
- Intel
to cut Pentium III prices over weekend reports CNET.com, saying "Intel will cut
prices on the Pentium III line by 10 to 15 percent on Sunday, according to sources, even
though low processor prices reduced the company's second-quarter profits and conspired to
hand rival AMD a $163 million net loss."
- Hot Hardware's New
Voodoo3 Drivers gives some screenshots that show off what is said to be the improved
visual quality of the new upcoming Voodoo3 drivers in the works over at 3Dfx, and Voodoo Extreme has posted a
screenshot of the drivers' new property tab.
id Software's Graeme Devine updated his .plan with word that there's a "zones" feature in
the new Q3ATest that he'll explain sometime today. He also posted a reminder about where
to send bug reports:
Okay, it's there (as I'm sure you all know).
I'll update tomorrow on how to set up servers in zones so you can easily find/check/get to
servers in groups. It's a nifty new feature. Until then I'm sure you'll all be slamming
each other down on Xian's excellent new tournament map.
As usual, send bugs to q3feedback@idsoftware.com
Tim Sweeney made an update to the Unreal Technology
page that covers how to obtain the latest NVIDIA RIVA TNT/TNT2 drivers "which are
required to run Unreal in Direct3D (previous drivers had problems with Unreal)." The
process is described in just 35 simple steps. The update also discusses patches and
updates, and the responsibilities of Software and Hardware makers, and finishes off with
instructions on how to patch Unreal.
Part
three of Computer Games Online's Mech Warrior III Tips are online offering more on how
to get ahead in the latest installment in the only Mech game that can actually call itself
a Mech game.
Computer
Games Online's Rogue Spear first look is online with a preview of Red Storm's upcoming
sequel to Rainbow Six from the busy lads at CGO.
Likewise, Computer
Games Online's Deus Ex First Look previews ION Storm's upcoming Unreal-engine RPG.
- If you're a non-Win32 user who wants to check out the new one-on-one Q3ATest map, FreeTextures has posted a bunch of new screenshots
showing it off. They also now have no less than 350 textures available for download. Also
posting new shots from the test are the QuakeCity
Gaming Network with a bunch in 1280x1024 resolution...
- A public beta of Panzer-Elite is out,
putting you ion command of a Tank platoon during the initial skirmishes between the German
and American forces through North Africa, Sicily, Italy and Normandy. Thanks
=ElmerFudd=[WIG]...
- Cowboy's Tribes Scripting Page has
a new version of FlagCapsHUD and
a new version 2.4 TribesIP
release...
Sorry about the later-than-usual first update this morning, our attempt so be online constantly to cover the new Q3ATest release left neither loony nor me in a state capable of an update by
the time the dust settled last night (I don't know about loony, but I haven't even gotten
to play the new release yet, I'll probably go for some breakfast frags after posting
this).
Our recent episode of Mutual of Blue's News Wild Kingdom continues ("you can see
from my vantage point safe in this helicopter that the crocodile loonyboi is wrestling with
has enormous teeth..."), as momma Mourning Dove has returned to set up another nest
already! I think MrsBlue and I will have to have a talk with her about birth control....
Link of the Day: Molecule-size circuits point to
ultrafast computers. Thanks Mr.Sarcasm (yeah, sure, great, a thank you).
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