Archived News:
PlanetStarsiege has posted part
one of their two part, "mondo interview" with Mark Frohnmayer, code
monkey behind Starsiege: TRIBES, and currently TRIBES 2. In this part of the interview, Mark talks about TRIBES' beginnings, game ratings, and that warm, fuzzy feeling he gets deep down inside (hey, I just report this stuff, don't look at me).
The Symbiosys Software has the release of
Absolute Terror Test Release 1, described as a new 3D accelerated shoot-em-up title. The
test release is so they can tweak the game engine and gameplay before releasing the
finished game, and to test compatibility on different systems. While meant to be fun to
play, this is a test and not a feature complete demo, which they say will be released
"in due course." Absolute Terror uses a proprietary OpenGL engine, and has been
in development for 18 months. Symbiosys' next product, a LithTech-engine military-themed
team-play action game, is already in the planning and initial coding stages.
Raven's John Scott updated his
.plan with some common questions and answers about Soldier of Fortune development:
The IRC chat the other night was a lot of fun, thanks for so many people turning
up! There were a few common questions that I'll give the official line here - please bear
in mind that this is the official line and not necessarily my opinion.
1. Will there be a Linux port ?
There are no plans at the moment, however, we realise that this will increase the number
of servers out there and will be a big support for the Win32 users. It all really
depends on how many units are sold, we are not in the fortunate
position of being able to support an OS because it would be cool to do so.
2. Will the tools be on the CD?
No. They will be available for download soon after we go gold. It is just one thing we
don't need to deal with during the stress of getting a game finished. There isn't enough
space on the CD either :) This also gives us chance to write help files and make
demo maps and sample models.
3. Will it be as violent as people say it is ?
Yes. There will be a strong parental lock option, however, so there is an option to turn
off the gore and sanitise the violence. We have made the game for adults and there will be
a warning on the box.
The Q3TStats Home has
beta 2 of version 1.0 of Q3TStats, a program to output stat from a Q3Test server. The new
release offers various fixes in stat parsing, adds frags per hour, and adds the ability to
limit player list size. The website has sample output so you can see what the program
does.
Glen Dhalgren has updated the
official Wheel of Time site with this week's development update. In this
installment are a couple of new screenshots (thumbnails only, I'm afraid), the
revelation that they're, "really focusing on getting this bad boy done"
and a whole slew of other stuff.
Well, it's a day late, but here's the
answers to last week's Test Your Game Knowledge Contest. Swing by and see
how you did. And once you're through with that, we've got a
whole new contest to keep you up at night. Evil, aren't we?
Ritual's Robert Atkins updated his .plan with word that they're looking to
hire two new artists to work on their Quake III: Arena engine title Heavy Metal:
FAKK2. Interested? Here are the details: We are looking for a "professional'
2d artist with game development experience to work on Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K.2.
If you want to work with some of the coolest and most talented guys in the industry
on one of the wildest games ever, then get over to http://www.ritual.com/inside_ritual/help_wanted_2d_artist.html
for the details.
It would be ideal to get someone here no later than the first of September.
So, if you are in a contract or obligation that you are unwilling to break free
of, I understand, we can't wait.
With the changes of sounding like a real dick - if you are straight out of school
and without professional game development experience, chances are you are not
going to have the skills we are looking for, so please don't send me your work
unless you meet the criteria.
Thanks for understanding.
A new beta patch for Kingpin (version 1.14)
has been released in both Win32 and Linux flavors (thanks Billy " b*** a***"
Wilson). Like always, download at your own risk. Most people are advised to
wait for the next official patch release. This version has the following changes:
- + (server) unlimited ammo in single player (DF_INFINITE_AMMO)
- + (server) last player killed when reaching fraglimit gets overflowed (made
scoreboard message unreliable)
- ? LINUX: crashes during fighting with sewer guy with guns
- + skin: "male thug/sku sup sup" causes Sewer skin in teamplay
- + Player ID always RED
- + old chat style option
- + (server) shotgun doesn't always change when out of ammo
- + (server) real-mode option in start server menu
BeGamer has posted
an interview with Andrew Kimpton, the engineer at Be responsible for the BeOS
port of Quake II, talking about gaming on the OS, as well as the revelation
that he (like American McGee) suffers from Quake-induced nausea.
GameSpot UK
has posted a preview of Tachyon, NovaLogic's space shooter, complete with 11
images (some of which are concept art, others actual screenshots).
GA-Source
has posted three new screenshots from Massive Development's upcoming aquatic
adventure, appropriately titled Aqua. Where's Kevin Costner when you need him?
- Part two of Extreme
Hardware's Voodoo 2 experiment is up, showing the results of getting mismatched
V2 cards to work in SLI with a variety of different drivers.
- Matrox has opened up their online store
to European users, now allowing them to purchase other products including
the Marvel G200-TV, Millennium G200, Rainbow Runner-G series, and others,
in addition to those already available.
- Joystick maker Thrustmaster has been sold to Guillemot, makers of the popular
Xentor line of video cards for a whopping 15 million dollars, as detailed
in this press release.
In addition, Thrustmaster will no longer be manufacturing joysticks at all,
as they plan to focus on "the significant opportunities in Internet community
and communications." Thanks Well-Rounded
Games for the tip.
- AGN
Hardware is reporting that IBM has announced a new high-volume storage
system code-named "Shark" which can hold from 420 gigabytes of data,
all the way up to 11 terabytes. Yowza.
3drage.com has posted a spiffy-looking screenshot
and a piece of concept art from Titanium Angels, a 3D action/adventure where you play
Carmen Blake, "a tough futuristic bounty hunter"
Voodoo Extreme's
interview with Richard Garriott (a.k.a. Lord British) is the first VE interview I can
ever recall not to mention a chimp or Vaseline. The tasty, saucy, spicy Q&A does
discuss gaming though, obviously focusing on the present and future of the Ultima series.
The Game Name Builder Official
Homepage has the first release of this program that can add fun names (names using
colored, and/or special characters) to Quake & QuakeWorld, Q3Test, and "other
games that support namefun," which got me curious enough to check to see what other
games that could be, but the remaining choice in the program turns out to be support for
"generic games."
Thresh's FiringSquad's Q3Test 1.07
Overview offers Thresh's observations about what has changed between the Q3Test
version 1.05 and 1.07 releases, as well as some analysis of the brand-new one-on-one
tourney map. The piece discusses footstep sounds, strafe-jump protection, and
other gameplay factors.
The bleem! site has a new version 1.4 of the bleem! PC
PlayStation emulator. The new release offers significant Direct3D speed optimizations,
significant Direct3D texture improvements, improved Direct3D support for background
graphics, improved Direct3D clipping, and more. Thanks Wario64.
Ritual's Mark "Markgyver" Dochtermann updated his .plan with word that he's fixed the invisibility bug in
Sin, which will lead to a version 1.06 soon. Here's the poop:
I fixed the invisibility bug (I think) in Sin. The new version is running at
sinctf and debugctf. If anyone can still cheat, please let me know directly.
Version 1.06 should be ready to roll, as long as this bug has been squashed.
MDK2, Gothic, Blade, SoF, Vampire, and Star Trek: Armada on tap this morning:
Games on Line's Il
ritorno del Messiah gives a look ahead at Shiny's upcoming third-person
(third-cherub?) action title en Italiano with a conversation with Shiny's Scott
Herrington. There is also an English version of the
Messiah Interview to help out if your Italian is rusty. The piece includes 33
screenshots (the first 10 are brand-new exclusives), and discusses plans to include nude
codes, in case you want to see the little cherub with his diadie off.
GA-RPG's Shadows of Reality Interview
talks with Steve Adkins and David Gallay, Lead Programmer/Producer and Lead Designer
respectively for Nevolution, talking about their upcoming Unreal-engine cyberpunk RPG, Shadows
of Reality.
A new version 2.5a of the PingTool
server-browser is now available, fixing a big bug that slipped through in the just
released version 2.5 that locked up the installer, as well as a pair of other bugs. Thanks
Umberto. Details can be found in the new release notes.
Here's news on a mod developers' chat slated for tomorrow that's open to the general
public, focusing mainly on Half-Life mods, though some Q2 mods will be represented:
The Mod Developers chat is here!
It will take place on Wednesday, July 28th. At 9:00 PM Eastern Time on 3dnet.
[telefragged.3dnet.net port 6667]
in rooms #mod-bash and #mod-questions
Many mod development groups will be there, but the chat will rotate focusing on different
mods every half-hour. Many mods will be represented including, Opera, Squadron: Ghost,
Swarm, Aftershock, and more!
The mod is not solely focused on these four mods, and all mod developers are encouraged to
attend, and will get a chance to answer any questions about their respective mods.
The aftermath of the full disk here has left BlueTracker completely on the fritz, I'll get out a monkey wrench later and bang on it and see if that helps (sorry). Yesterday was the first anniversary of Sinday, Bloody Sinday, the debut of the Sin demo, which coincided
with last year's QuakeCon, so this is the anniversary of that too. Today also marks the third
consecutive business day that loony has been assured his ISDN will be turned on, which I
believe officially marks the half-way point in what for me was an over three month
process. Poor loony actually believed 'em the first couple of times, but the phone company
can pound cynicism into the most wide-eyed optimist.
Link of the Day: Starcraft
Online Lessons With Kain-The-Feared (yup, another eBay
item). These are at US $78.00 at the moment, but apparently got as high as $350!
Thanks John.
Sierra's Team Fortress 2 site
has posted two all-new screenshots in their Media section to
"start your week out right by checking out the latest in Team Fortress 2
splendor." Thanks Tymetodie.
Future Games Network's Giants
preview is up (we were sent word of this earlier today, but had trouble accessing the
site before now) looking ahead at this upcoming game of living large talking with Bob
Stevenson, "Co-Art/Design Director, Vice President, and Wine Taster at Planet Moon
Studios." The preview offers several exclusive new screenshots.
I see on Voodoo Extreme that The
Adrenaline Vault Downloads Demo has a playable demo of Force 21, a turn-based strategy
dealie from Red Storm Entertainment. Also, FalconŽ 4.0 update page has a
Version 1.07 US and UK update for Falcon 4.0. Thanks VeeSPIKE.
Inside
Mac Games has posted their MacWorld Expo wrapup, featuring the author's
opinions of the various games and game hardware shown on the show floor, including
the iBook, Halo, and some new Mac-only games.
Just because we care so much about you, we've gone and posted two new shots
from Accolade's big angry robots game Slave Zero. Cool, huh?
Bungie.org has posted
a 10 minute
interview with Bungie co-founder Jason Jones, in what they describe as "20MB
of NOT high quality video." Halo is the topic of the hour, as the interview
was conducted at last week's MacWorld Expo, and amongst the questions are, "will
Halo have body count?" and the ever important, "how cool is Steve
Jobs?"
PC Gamer Online's FreeSpace 2 preview
is up looking ahead at the sequel to Descent FreeSpace: The Great War in a preview that
features exclusive screenshots and an interview with Jim Boone, the game's producer.
U-Games interviews Chris Norden
talking with the lead programmer on ION Storm's upcoming action/RPG, Deus Ex talking about
the enhancements they've made to the Unreal engine that cause him to say "you won't
even recognize it as the Unreal engine when you play the game."
Halflife.org has posted a new edition of Yappin'
With Yahn, their regular column by Yahn Bernier, the author of BSP and the networking
geek over at Valve Software. Contained in this edition are Yahn's favorite games,
how to reproduce that Daikatana rain effect in Half-Life, and porting HL mods
to Team Fortress 2.
GameSpot UK has updated their Unreal
Tournament Screenshot Gallery, but there's definitely something freaky-deeky with that
first image, now isn't there? I'm thinking that's concept art (actually, I'm thinking it's
Alicia Silverstone). They've also delivered the Unreal
Tournament Hands On they promised last week, giving their impressions of the game
after some time with the latest build in their grubby little hands.
Also up on GameSpot UK is an article titled Developers At Play
asks the top names in game design their winning game strategies, tapping the minds of
Levelord, Firaxis' Brian Reynolds, Brad Wardell, Gabe Newell, LucasArts' Tim Schafer,
PopTop's Phil Steinmeyer, Blizzard's Bill Roper, and SimCity designer Will Wright.
MDK 2 Preview on
GameLinks.Net declares "wackiness ahead" as the look forward to the upcoming
sequel to MDK, which of course, stands for Mom Doesn't Know.
A New Venom
Screenshots and Demo Update on GA-Source has word on the planned release later this
week of the Venom: hardware test, the first demo of GSC Game World's Vital Engine ZL. The
update clarifies that as the hardware test name suggests, this release is not actually a
game demo, but is intended for testing compatibility with your hardware. The update goes
on to say: "The next demo will include two levels and a full set of special effects.
It will be released in late August." The update also includes four new screenshots of
Venom. Thanks Matthew Rorie for pointing out a couple of areas in this story that needed
clarification after it was first posted.
3dfx Interactive Targets
Business Users with New Velocity Brand is a 3dfx press release announcing a new
business brand called the Velocity, which I think it's safe to say should be avoided by
hardcore gamers. Thanks kabloie. The release describes the debut of the Velocity 100 and
Velocity 200, 2X AGP cards with 8 MB and 16 MB of RAM respectively. The Velocity 100's
MSRP is US$69.
TalonSoft to Ship Hidden & Dangerous is a company press release that has word of the completion of the US version of the game that the release calls the "No. 2 on UK PC Sales Charts According to
ChartTrack." Thanks GA-Source. Here's the
lowdown:
Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: TTWO - news), and its subsidiary, TalonSoft Inc.,
announced today that "Hidden & Dangerous" will be shipping to stores
nationwide beginning today, Monday, July 26. The game was developed by up and coming
international game developer, Illusion Softworks.
Hidden & Dangerous was released to the UK market in early July, where it was met with
immediate success. The game is currently at number 2 on the PC sales charts according to
ChartTrack. A resurgence of interest in World War II and strong word-of-mouth is expected
to help fuel strong sales in the US.
Hidden & Dangerous sets a new level of excellence for the squad-based combat genre.
Players will find the game to be an extraordinary combination of tactical combat,
strategic planning, and exciting action. Gamers will be responsible for leading a four-man
squad of elite paratroopers on daring commando raids behind enemy lines.
Using a revolutionary new graphics engine called the Insanity engine, players will
experience World War II combat action like never before. Hidden & Dangerous is set in
a truly 3D universe that incorporates beautifully rendered backgrounds, objects, and
vehicles, as well as realistic terrain. Players can easily toggle between 1st and 3rd
person views during gameplay, including combat sequences. The game offers support for a
wide variety of 3D accelerator cards, such as the VooDoo product line from 3Dfx.
Players will have 23 unique, immersive campaigns to choose from in Hidden & Dangerous.
The game includes a roster of 40 international commandos, from which players must build
their squad of soldiers to complete a series of missions. The advanced overhead mapping
system allows for precision planning of squad movement and attacks. The game's powerful AI
will put players' skills to the test as enemy soldiers can see, hear, and react to
player's movements and sounds. In addition, sophisticated environmental effects like rain,
snow, fog, and sleet will affect mission difficulty.
The Rocket Crowbar Home has a
new version 11 of this Half-Life modification. The new release fixes a single bug and also
adds "old school style" CTF play. Also, Prax Entertainment's Immediate Half-Life
version 2.0 is now available, a tool that allows you to launch Half-Life maps with
individualized custom configurations.
An HTML version of the BattleCruiser
3020 Development Update that I attempted to summarize earlier ( story) is now available online with more detail about planned BC3020,
BC Online, and even BC 3030 news,
which is the new name for the planned BC Strike Pack.
The Kingpin Beta Testing page mentioned
earlier ( story) already has a newer beta patch for Kingpin that brings Xatrix'
Quake II-engine game where you live a life of crime, up to version 1.13c. It looks likely
that this binary will be updated fairly frequently. Thanks Cliff Yaun.
Results are rolling in from Rapture '99. There are several sites with extensive coverage of this international tourney, I'm cleverly excerpting (and heavily editing) some stuff from Challenge.AU because it gives links to so many other site's coverage along with an idea of some results. Thanks Aardappel. Checking out some of the fine coverage in the links is recommended for the full story:
It's all over and the big news is not so much the EU win over North America (US
team) - although that is certainly huge news, it's the Irish team beating England to take
out the 4 Nations finals. In the third game (out of the best-of-three) they came back from
30-down to win by a single frag...In other results, Kane beat his SK teammate Timber in
the "Elite 1-on-1 Tourney" to cement his rep as the best Quake player still
playing the game today. The other two contenders would be LakermaN and Thresh. LakermaN
has "retired" and may be back for Q3, and Thresh, well, he seems to have other
things to do these days (does he spend hours practicing Q3A? We'll have to wait and see).
Is this the last we'll see of serious 1-on-1 in Quake? I hope not, considering that the
1-on-1 Q3A demos I've watched so far are very slow and tedious by comparison.
The "US vs EU Clash of the Continents" was a victory for Europe by five games to
four, after a grueling nine games of DM3. All the games EU won were close, in the case of
the third game only 7 frags separated the two teams. NA (North America) apparently got a
40 frag lead in the 9th game, but the EU guys came back to win another very narrow
victory...There's some good coverage on FPSGamers, some
match-by-match commentary on Methos
Quake, and there is lots of useful stuff on Quake Nation. Over on Spores
Den, Bert (who watched the games by proxy) offers his thoughts on the match,
suggesting that one of the problems the NA guys had was "poor pent
control"...I'm still waiting to d/l and check out more demos (watched Cable's POV in
EU-vs-US game 2 last night). Some of them (including Kane in the EU vs US games) are up at
Quake Nation and some more
(including duel demos) are at FPSGamers. All in all Rapture'99 appears to have been a huge amount of
fun, and it certainly produced some of the biggest and best games of Quake ever. Now if
only we can all do it again with Q3A, and actually have the US and EU teams both playing
"current" games with the same level of excitement. I guess that's all up to JC
and his sixth sense for what makes good gameplay.
Chris sends word that he's posted a new version 1.02 of WinGlide on Chris' WinGlide Page.
WinGlide allows 3D accelerated output in a window using Voodoo-based accelerators, and the
new version fixes a thread synchronization bug that could cause problems when
multiprocessor optimizations are enabled (this problem only occurs in version 1.01's SMP
support).
News from a couple of noted Half-Life mods under construction. The Sherman Project site has been updated with 30 new screenshots of this "realistic military mod that focuses on teamplay multiplayer aspects." Meanwhile, word over on the Action Half-Life site is that they probably won't post any more screenshots, but that's because they give word (as of last week) that they plan on releasing the first Half-Life version of their popular Quake II mod on Thursday of this week to coincide with an on-location event in San Francisco's Club-i (thanks Mang).
There is a new version 1.12b beta patch for Kingpin on the Kingpin Beta Testing page. Xatrix
Programmer Ryan "Ridah" Feltrin updated his .plan mentioning the Kingpin Linux forum
mentioned below ( story),
as well as word on a problems ( story) with the just-released version 1.1 patch ( story), that have caused him to open up Kingpin Beta Testing to the public (thanks
Planet Kingpin). Here's the scoop on that:
It appears there was a major crash in the Kingpin patch client, which only seems
to occur with the particular binaries that were released. I believe this may be the
unfortunate occurance of a MSVC 6.0 bug, which causes some builds to screw up. At any
rate, the onus falls on me, for not having that particular build tested before release.
As a result of this, I have decided to open up the Kingpin beta testing to the public.
With most of us on holidays (yes, that includes me) at the moment, I'm thinking the best
thing to do, is to make what would usually be internal builds, available to anyone willing
to help the testing process. Then, once these builds reach a state where things are
running smoothly, I'll release that build as the official patch.
This way those that are experiencing major problems with the commercial release, can get
access to builds that may fix their problems, or at least they can help me get their
problem fixed sooner, rather than later.
The beta page can be found here
Before It's Done interviews Kenn
Hoekstra in another Q&A with Raven's project administrator about Soldier of
Fortune, currently under construction over at Raven.
No bullets, but you can take it: GA-Source's
Exclusive Slave Zero Screenshots are up with two more looks at Accolade's upcoming
rock-em sock-em robots game. There's also a GA-Source
TreadMarks Screenshots and Development Update with five shots and a blurb from Seumas
McNally. Also, GA-Source's
BlockWar screenshots showing off this 3D Real-Time Urban Warfare game in-progress at
KaosKontrol Productions. There are a bunch of new Star Trek New Worlds screenshots
on Interplay's site. These new Homeworld
shots add some action shots from the latest build. Also 3DFiles.Com's Ultima IX
Ascension Movie is a mirror of this walkthrough of Ultima IX: Ascension "by Lord
British Himself." Thanks Ian Kell.
LinuxGames
Forums offers help for those trying to run the Kingpin Linux ports.
BattleCruiser Online's Galcom News Network has
word of some new BC3020AD Shots
(the six at the bottom) as well as shots of new units and some in-ship shots with some prelim
place-holders (the game will feature the entire four deck interior of a ship). Word
from BC high command is that plans are on the boards for BC3K Online, an online version of
the game, which will feature a free beta test period, as well as BC 3030, the planned sequel.
NPR
Online's Weekend Edition Sunday has a RealPlayer
format version of a show
on LAN Parties, something they call a new trend in Southern California (it's hard not
to believe that voice-over guy isn't goofing, a la Brian Unger, the ex-Daily Show
correspondent). The show hypes the Beat
Down (you never new how desperately you wanted to be invited to that, did you?), and
offers commentary from Bastard about violence in gaming. Thanks Camp Trexler.
Goldbug's code-mods page has a
Railgun for Quake 1 mod. While you're cool-ifying your classic Quake weapons, you might
want to check out The NecroHunter's Lair
which has a new mod that replaces the oh-so-suckful axe with a much cooler (but likely
equally suckful) lightsaber.
The GSLogMod site has the the latest
version of the standard logging DM mod (sl-dm) for Linux (other platforms will be
supported soon). This Quake II mod logs games using the Logging Standard. Logs
can be sent to a file and/or remote machine (using UDP and/or TCP), and game statistics
can be generated and displayed on the remote in real time.
AMD's Know the Code! Contest
offers a trip to ECTS as grand prize, and a loaded Athlon system as first prize in a
competition looking for the best piece of 3DNow! optimized code. Thanks AMD Zone. Also up for grabs are copies of CodeWarriorŽ
Pro 5, and TNT2-Ultra cards, and each complete entry will net the entrant a free AMD
Athlon t-shirt.
- The Wanted page has word that this Quake II
conversion devoted to the old west is being ported to Half-Life, with the ultimate goal of
a commercial release...
- The ILL Clan (makers of Apartment Huntin') together with StarFury (of the Devil's Covenant movie) will present a
QMovie workshop on Friday Aug, 6 from 7:30-9:00 PM at QuakeCon99.
The workshop will discuss production techniques for creating movies with the Quake or
Quake II engine...
- Tzar Heaven's Beta signup
offers a chance to test this game, described as "fantasy-medieval realtime strategy
game with a touch of RPG"...
- The Quake Sanitation Authority has info
of a new private beta of LFire CTF 2.0 B125 with enhanced bot protection...
Wow, sometimes things just refuse to go smoothly. While loony was tending the fort, the
database ran out of space in spite of a week-old 10 GB drive that was just added (it
apparently is currently serving some sort of decorative capacity). Things are under
control now, but I find that a stretch of the thousands of emails (a down server generates
a lot of mail) that arrived over the weekend are munged together (perhaps due to the same disk
space problem), making catching up all that much more difficult. Oh yeah, and the airline
lost our luggage (no kidding). Like I said...sometimes things just refuse to go smoothly.
Neat thing of the weekend was definitely seeing American Pie with my in-laws,
just to see how impossible to embarrass they truly are...we all laughed until our ribs
hurt.
Link of the Day: TV's
Springer Says He Will Weigh U.S. Senate Bid. Thanks Apache. Why do I fear the voters
will cry Jer-ry! Jer-ry! Jer-ry! Jer-ry!
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