Archived News:
Editing site Rust
has posted the transcript from their chat with Raven programmers John Scott
and Dan Kramer. This is a heavily edited log, so it's fairly easy to read (which
is something of a rarity with logs of this kind). The talk focuses on both of
Raven's games currently in production: Soldier of Fortune, which uses the Quake
II engine, and Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force, which uses the Quake III: Arena
engine.
Several members from Legend's Wheel of Time team have been taking questions
from gamers over on GT's
Wheel of Time Forums (thanks Apache).
There's a lot of subjects tackled in here, including the WoT scoreboard, rocket
jumping, air control, and a whole gaggle of others for you to read up on.
Just a quick caveat to anyone planning on downloading the just released Kingpin
version 1.1 patch ( story):
we've gotten several reports that you will not be able to use any previously
saved games, as well as many reports of people randomly being kicked from multiplayer
servers. Also, we received details on how to use the vehicles in Kingpin from
Daniel "Milamber" Woods of WA Gaming
Zone: I was just fiddling around with Kingpin and found out how you
can test the very cool vehicle code that didn't quite make it into Kingpin.
As you probably know, before being hired by Xatrix, Ryan "Ridah" Feltrin
coded the immensely popular Q1 TC, Quake rally. So, the vehicle code is pretty
damn special. Anyways, start the game using +set developer 1 and the bring down
the console and type g_vehicle_test 1 and for a really authentic feel, turn
on the rear-view mirror by typing cl_rearviewmirror 1. Now map one of the DM
levels, kpdm1 works fine, and try being, from what I can gather, a motorbike,
complete with fairly realistic physics and sounds.
3D Action Planet
has posted an interview with Kenn Hoekstra, the Project Administrator on Raven's
Quake II engine extravaganza, Soldier of Fortune. The interview features a bunch
of new information about the game, including the available graphics resolutions,
and word that there are no plans for a Linux SoF client at this time.
Billy "screenshots" Wilson has
posted two new images from Shiny's diaper wearing Messiah, which is due
to be released in early November (if you trust release dates, that is).
The Kingpin 1.1 patch has been released, and is available for download over
at PlanetKingpin.
This patch has a ton of fixes and changes, including a fix for those long level loads,
the new "dm_realmode" which is sort of Action Quake-esque, and lots
of other stuff. Also available is the 1.1 Linux version of the Kingpin client/server,
which is available for download in both TAR and RPM format (download links are
available in Ryan
Feltrin's .plan file).
John Carmack updated his
.plan with details on the QVM, or Quake Virtual Machine, that he has implemented
into Quake III: Arena over this past week. It's a giant update, but here's an
excerpt: The basic setup is that I have a modified version of the lcc
compiler that generates assembly files that are processed by a new tool "q3asm"
into a .qvm file that can be interpreted by q3. You can still use normal dll's
for debugging, then release interpreted code. You can release a binary dll if
you need some native system services (some networking stuff, for example) or
are doing very compute intensive work, but I strongly encourage everyone to
try to use the virtual machine.
The interpreted code has two prime benefits: portability and security.User mods
done with qvms will automatically work on mac, linux, and any other oddball
ports that get released.
A qvm program cannot modify anything outside its private address space, and
the "system calls" to the game strictly limit what can be touched.
I was scared about the binary dll's in Q2, but rationalized it to myself that
people running public servers should be aware of the dangers. With Q3 allowing
client side programming, it just needs to be safe for everyone.
Gamasutra
has posted a big article on level design, featuring tips from such industry
luminaries as Levelord, The Romero, Paul Jaquays, and Cliff Bleszinski (thanks
Billy " yoink" Wilson).
Mortyr.net has posted another fixed EXE for the Mortyr demo, this time fixing
the "nie monza otworzyc pliku avi" error message that some people
have been getting (thanks Frans). Also
of note is Damage
Gaming's extensive walkthrough of the demo, for those of you who are stuck.
Next-Generation
Online has posted a preview of Nihilistic's upcoming 3D RPG title, Vampire:
The Masquerade - Redemption, featuring the usual descriptive text, as well as
nine new screenshots from the game.
This week's Unreal
Tournament level of the week is up over at GT's
official UT site. This week's level is called DM-Tempest, and it's described
as having been, "created strictly for large scale arena combat, with multi
layered areas and dark hiding spots." Swing by for more details, as well
as three screenshots from the level.
GameSpot
has posted a news bit about NVIDIA's next-generation graphics chipset, currently
called the NV10. They're reporting that the chip will have, "more than
twice as many transistors as a Pentium III CPU" as well as, having a triangle
rate that's "three to five times that of a Pentium III CPU, which can put
out about 5 million triangles per second." Yowza.
PC.IGN has posted a new
preview of Nova Logic's Delta Force 2, featuring some new images, as well as
a handful of information about this Voxel powered tactical game.
Pandemic Studios has released their Battlezone II shot of the week, and it
can be found over at StrategyPlanet's Battlezone
II Center. More BZ2 info can be found in GameCenter's new preview of the game (thanks VE).
Unreal Nation has posted an e-mail
they received from Epic's Tim Sweeney, asking about their future plans in regards
to cross platform portability. Here's a quickie excerpt: We will develop
the next engine on at least two platforms simultaneously. At least PC and Playstation2
(pending arrival of a development system). I can't promise Linux, but it would
be pretty easy I think. The big complication we've faced porting Unreal Tournament
is that our C++ code needed lots of modifications for Gnu C++, but since that's
the Playstation's compiler too, our code should be Linux-friendly all along
The official Freespace 2 website has
been given a complete overhaul, and to celebrate it, they've posted two new
ships in their ship gallery. They plan on adding two ships a week to the site
until well, the game ships.
A new version of Kali, the server browsing IRC program, has been released and
is available for download on their
FTP site (thanks Scott). This is a beta, as it warns you as you install
it, "everything is new!!! THIS IS A BETA! PLEASE REPORT
ANY BUGS IMMEDIATELY!" Oooookay then.
So okay, here's the latest on my ISDN situation - sadly, it's not up and running
yet (like nobody saw that one coming, right?). I'm not 100% positive that it's
been turned on yet (I was told it would be, but that doesn't mean anything)
but believe it or not, the showstopping problem at the moment is simply that I
don't have a cord long enough to reach my computer! Oh well. I've got one that
will be here sometime this morning, so once that arrives I'll be able to see if
the phone company has done their part in getting me online (I can only hope they
have). So check back tomorrow, and hopefully I'll be able to say that I'm a happy
ISDN user (if there is such a thing).
Link of the Day: As I'm gearing up for QuakeCon in a few weeks here, it's
only appropriate that today's link be Virtual
Cow Tipping. It's a source of endless amusement, I tell ya.
|
Twitter 
