Archived News:
Apache sends word he's posted a message on VE
sent along by EA about their plans to unveil a bit more about their upcoming Quake
III-engine game, Alice, tomorrow, on the occasion of Friday the 13th:
'tis Friday 13th on the date on the wall,
And light's growing dim at the end of the hall.
The clock has expired, the windows are locked.
Now Jack is undead, and he's out of his box.
http://alice.ea.com
You visited once to my world of absurd,
Come visit again if you have half a nerve.
Redwood's QuakeCon 1999 Wrap-up is up
with big Red's write-up on the proceedings, along with a bunch of photos (including one
where I stood on a step and tip-toes where I was sure I'd come out taller than both Red
and loony, but I just barely edged loony, if that). Stomped
also is home to Paul Steed's
QuakeCon 1999 Wrap-up, complete with the id Software 3D artist/modeler's account of
the event, which saw him serve as mac-daddy to a bevy of booth babes. Also now online is GameGirlz - Quake Con '99 Diary as well, also
illustrated with photos.
Sierra just sent along word that they're offering a bounty for TeamFortress Classic levels
that will be included with Gearbox' upcoming Half-Life add-on, Opposing Force. In addition
to being part of a commercial release, the level authors will earn $1,000 (from my Doom
level making days I think that's about .25˘ an hour, but a thousand bucks is a thousand
bucks!). Here's the deal:
Bounty Offered for New Team Fortress Classic™ Levels Three User-made Levels
to be Included in Half-Life: Opposing Force™
Bellevue, WA (August 12, 1999) - Sierra Studios today announced that it is now accepting
new Team Fortress Classic (TFC) levels for inclusion in Half-Life: Opposing Force (Op
For), the official game expansion for Valve's award-winning 3D action thriller.
To enter, users go to WON.net and then follow the directions for submitting their TFC
levels at the following URL: http://www.won.net/lounge/contests/opposingforce/.
Then, a panel of judges from Valve and Gearbox Software will select three winning levels
for inclusion in the official game expansion. In addition to being listed in the game
credits, each of the winning level editors will earn $1,000 for their work.
"The amount of high-quality content being created for Half-Life and TFC by the mod
community and other amateur developers is incredible," says Gabe Newell co-founder
and managing director of Valve. "We hope this effort will help spawn the creation of
even more great content and give exposure to the people creating it."
"Many of the most renowned designers started out by making mods and custom levels for
popular commercial games," says Randy Pitchford, director and chief designer of
Gearbox Software. "We feel it's very important to give the most talented designers
from the community a chance to have their creations showcased. And, we feel this is yet
another great component of Half-Life: Opposing Force."
Sort of the same report of non-news, but if you were wondering about that 1.0.1.3
Half-Life patch that was originally possibly going to be released Sunday, and then around
now, HalfLife Dot Org is reporting that Jenni from
Valve told them "It's looking like it won't be out for a few more days yet." So
that's the story on that.
The Bot Epidemic is reporting that Rich's Project Warehouse has the release
of a new Quake bot called the Sigmund Bot that plays both coop and deathmatch. The source
code is also available. If you are really a fan of bots in first-person shooters, or a
Duke3D fan, for that matter, you may be interested in another post they made yesterday
about how to activate the undocumented bots in the 'Atomic Edition' of Duke3D.
Joel Huenink from 4D Rulers sends word that he's
updated the Gore Images page with a new
24-bit color OpenGL screenshot depicting the medieval past setting from their upcoming
first-person shooter, Gore.
SShock2.com has posted the
chat log from last night's chat with Irrational Games' Ken Levine. Irrational
Games developed System Shock 2, which is now on store shelves, and sucking up
my free time.
Take Two Interactive has purchased a 19.9% (let's just call it 20, okay?) stake
in Bungie Software, as reflected in this
press release. Bungie is best known for their Marathon series of FPS games,
the Myth series of RTS games, and of course their two products currently in
development, Oni and Halo. The press
release goes on to say that Take Two's Jack of All Games subsidiary (a games
distributor) will have exclusive rights to four upcoming games: Oni, Halo, and
two more undisclosed products.
Dynamix' Rick Overman updated his
.plan with a status update on the next update for their giant robot game
Starsiege. Here are the details: Starsiege Patch 1.004 left the building
this afternoon for final approval. If all goes well it could be posted as early as tomorrow, but monday might be more realistic.
This will be a simultaneous US, UK patch release.Win2000 installer patch is
in the final phases of testing and should also be posted sometime next week.
Strategy Planet's Battlezone 2
Center has posted this week's Battlezone 2 shot of the week, as released
by Pandemic Studios. Also of note, is that Pandemic has posted a
new insider report on their site, featuring Jack Davis, the guy who takes
all these screenshots (not the Mad Magazine artist), talking about how he does it.
Registration is now open for Ground Zero,
the CPL event taking place here in sunny NYC (thanks Redwood).
As there is a limited ammount of space, all attendees must register. The event
takes place from Thursday, September 9, 1999 through Sunday, September 12, and
while it isn't taking place in a hotel (as opposed to many other recent LAN
parties), they will be posting a list of hotels with discounted rates at some
point in the next couple of days.
IMG Magazine
has posted an interview with Bungie's co-founder, and code jockey behind Halo's
impressive engine, Jason Jones. The interview's a good one, as Jason answers
several good questions, including ones about the engine's origin (it was supposed
to be the next-generation Myth terrain system), as well as this one that helps
explain why it looks so damn good: One of the reasons it looks so good
is multipass texturing. Every major object in the Halo world has at least two
texture maps, and many have several more. For example, the alien hover vehicle
seen in the keynote trailer has four maps, a base color map, specular map for
lighting effects, a "dirt" map for the scuffs, burns and pitting that
objects in a real battlefield might have, and a per-pixel reflection map for
varying levels of reflectivity from shiny objects.
PlanetShogo has posted a new version
of the server-side cheat protector titled Servfixr. This version corrects a
problem ping reporting, as well as adding a new spectator mode.
3D Action Planet
has posted a preview of Raven's Soldier of Fortune, complete with new screenshots,
background on the game (including info on their mercenary consultant), info
on their GHOUL modelling system, and quotes from Kenn Hoekstra.
Today's edition of the New York Times contains an article titled, "Peace
and Love at the Quake Tournament" ( also
available on line) which talks about last weekend's QuakeCon '99 gathering.
The article is a good reflection of the general feel at the event, which was
full of shiny happy people. It also contains quotes from John Carmack, and mentions
numerous people from the community, including Rix, Kornelia, and more.
SimHQ
has posted an interview with Carl Schnurr, producer on Red Storm Entertainment's
Rogue Spear (thanks Rogue Spear Retreat).
Carl talks largely about the changes they've implemented to the game since it's
predecessor (Rainbow Six), and the piece is illustrated with screenshots galore.
Here's some console related news for you all on this slow news day...several
places are reporting (here's PSX.IGN's
report) that the PlayStation 2 (or whatever it winds up being called) will
ship in Japan on January 23, 2000 (that's 1-23, get it?) and retail for a price
of about $390. Turok: Rage Wars has been getting a great deal of press of late,
with a hands on preview popping
up at IGN64, and the
official site having gone live. Rage Wars, you may recall, is Acclaim's
Turok game that uses a gameplay format similar to that of Quake III: Arena,
or Unreal Tournament. A PC version is not planned. Acclaim also announced recently
that they will in fact be making a Turok 3 for release in 2000. Currently it
is planned for release on the N64, with no word on a PC or Dreamcast version
as of yet. Lastly, Acclaim's Shadow Man (which recently went gold for the N64
and PC) will be ported to the Dreamcast, as reflected in this
Next-Generation Online story.
Following up on the "OSA" character details that were released a
few days back ( story),
EA has sent out a press release
that details the "Navy" character from the game. System Shock 2 has
shipped, and is in store shelves now.
CNET Gamecenter's Drakan Order
of the Flame Game Grabs has some new screenshots from Surreal and Psygnosis' third-person
dragon-riding action game, due in stores next week (the 20th).
Sega Elevates Kezuka to Top Post
of North American Operations is a press release saying that "SegaŽ of America,
Inc. announced this afternoon that Toshiro Kezuka has been named vice-chairman and chief
operating officer of the company, effective immediately. Kezuka succeeds Bernard Stolar.
Effective Aug. 11, 1999, Bernard Stolar is no longer with Sega of America, Inc. It is
Sega's policy not to comment on personnel decisions." Sega, Stolar Split reports
Next-Generation Online in their story on the subject, discussing the shakeup that
removes the architect of the Dreamcast launch (and the launch of the PlayStation) has been
replaced less than one month before the Dreamcast's launch.
Gamecenter's
GenCon '99 Wrap-Up gives their retrospective on this past weekend's gaming festivities
in Milwaukee, WI. Also, the Glide Underground's
GenCon report covers the event on a day-by-day basis. In the intro to the GC piece
they point out that a mere 162 fans attended the first GenCon Game Fair over 30 years ago,
and now it's North America's single largest gaming convention.
To celebrate their grand opening, Head Trauma,
dedicated to hitting you upside the head with news and goodies related to Remedy
Entertainment's upcoming Max Payne, has posted a pair of new screenshots from this
upcoming John Woo-inspired third-person action thriller.
MacGamer's Ledge and World Without Borders are holding an online
chat session this evening with Epic Games' Cliff Bleszinski, currently hard at work on
Unreal Tournament. The chat is at 7:00 PM Pacific/10:00 PM Eastern. You must register
beforehand for a free login/password and are warned to try to arrive early, since the
session may completely fill up.
The Hive
interviews John E. Williamson of Zombie Studios, talking with he co-producer/designer
of SpecOps 2: Green Berets about progress on this sequel their seminal tactical shooter.
MGON's QuakeCon '99 coverage is up
with pictures, descriptions, and accounts of the festivities at this year's Texas LAN
extravaganza.
In this week's MailBag we have... last
week's MailBag, which just never got posted until now in the chaos surrounding QuakeCon.
In our old & new collection of epistles we find the real dirt on the fish-eye effect
and HALO; scholarly analyses of an over-used cliche, an over-rated novel, and an
over-hyped movie; folks terribly unimpressed by doves and third-person games, and folks
terribly impressed with The Blue's News Effect and "Large & Realistic
Anuses" (as I think it's safe to say any normal person would be). All that and more,
if you can believe it, await in this week's
MailBag.
3d Wars Diamond Viper 770 Giveaway is
underway, giving away one of these TNT2-Ultra cards. You can enter once a day all week for
the drawing.
The way loony talks about the System Shock 2 demo, I am worried that when the full game
shows up, I might have to send him off to rehab, but as long as he steers clear of that
Everquest (video crack), I guess he'll be okay. Relating to yesterday's OotB, today looks
to be Ritual's third birthday, so happy anniversary to all you ritual killers, glad to see
you're out of your terrible twos.
Link of the Day: Kansas Board Votes To
Bar Evolution From Classroom. Thanks Damion Schubert. That sound you hear is Clarence
Darrow spinning in his grave.
Bonus Link: Drowned man
awakens in Alexandria morgue. More real news of the day. Thanks Drews (first of many
to send this one).
|
Twitter 
