Send News. Want a reply? Read this. More in the FAQ.   News Forum - All Forums - Mobile - PDA - RSS Headlines  RSS Headlines   Twitter  Twitter
Customize
User Settings
Styles:
LAN Parties
Upcoming one-time events:
San Diego, CA 08/21

Regularly scheduled events

Archived News:

Friday, Aug 27, 1999

  

BC3K News

Here's some Battlecruiser 3000 news for you on this slow Friday evening...Release candidate 3 of BC3K version 2.08 has been released, and is available for download on the official Battlecruiser site. Like previous versions, this requires other patches to be installed first, so be sure to download the right file(s). In other news, a test demo of the Battlecruiser 3020 Strike Pak has been released over at GASource. This first person module for BC3K is an unsupported test release - so don't expect a full game demo.

New Science & Industry

Version 0.95 of Science & Industry, a teamplay mod for Half-Life has been released and is available for download on its official site. This version features a number of changes over its predecessor, including new maps, and a fix for a particularly nasty bug that caused network lag.

New Monster 3D II Drivers

Diamond Multimedia has posted new drivers for their Monster 3D II video cards, labeled version 4.10.01.0207 (thanks 3DFiles).

Vampire Preview, Shots

PC Gamer Online has posted a preview of Vampire: The Masquerade – Redemption. The article features several new screenshots, along with several quotes from Ray Gresko, president of Nihilistic Software, currently developing this third-person action game, based on the pen-and-paper RPG.

Daikatana Q&A

ION Storm's Daily Informant has posted a Q&A with Luke Whiteside, Daikatana's latest level designer, talking about his initial impressions of the game.

Vampire Screenshots

PlanetRiva has posted two screenshots from the upcoming 3D RPG Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption. The shots come by way of Activision, not Nihilistic (the game's developer) so I'm not entirely sure if they're new or not. But hey, for what it's worth, they look new to me.

Valve Team Fortress Birthday Interview

To celebrate the recent third "birthday" of TeamFortress Quake, the folks at Planetfortress put on their birthday suits and sat down with Valve/Team Fortress Software's Robin Walker for a short interview, discussing how TF began, looking at Team Fortress Quake. They have also posted a History of Team Fortress chronicling a timeline of the mod.

Tomb Raider 4 Preview

GameSpot UK has posted a Tomb Raider 4: The Last Revelation special, including an interview with Core Designs' Susie Hamilton and 10 new screenshots from the PlayStation version (thanks Frans).

PM Tech Bits

On Unreal/UT Version Numbers

Obviously as puzzled as we were by the most recent update to the Wheel of Time page that mentioned they were up to version 300 of the Unreal code, Apache at Unreal Universe (thanks PlanetUnreal) shot off an email to Epic's Tim Sweeney to find out what the story was on Unreal/UT version numbering, since Unreal is currently at version 225, and they previously said they are advancing the same code base for Unreal and Unreal Tournament. The answer, it turns out, reveals that this is no longer the case:

That's the latest version of UT (actually we're up to 303 by now). We separated the code a while back, and the versions are evolving separately:

Unreal: 225 (available), 226a (unreleased test version), 227 (next version coming up soon).

UT: 230-303 and still counting.

-Tim

Planet of the Babes

3DRealms' Joe Siegler updated his .plan with word that the 3DRealms page has posted an interview with Phil Gelber, producer at N-Space on Duke Nukem - Time to Kill 2: Planet of the Babes (cool title) talking about this newly announced (original) Playstation Duke Nukem title. They've also posted word that the N64 duke title Zero Hour will be released on September 1st, and the Color GameBoy title will be out on September 10th.

Lord British Interview

PC Zone interviews Richard Garriott talking to the man also known as "Lord British," about his life's work depriving people of food and sleep by creating addictive fantasy role-playing games.

More Descent 3 Levels

Frans points out that, as promised, the Descent 3 US Version 1.1 patch page now offers a six level pack of maps suitable for CTF play. The page is being hit really hard right now, so if you can't get through, Frans has mirrored them over here on 3DGamers.

Warzone 2100 Patch

The Adrenaline Vault Downloads Patch has a new version 1.07 patch for Warzone 2100 that offers "New weapons (Plasma cannon and EMP cannon), new cyborg reinforcements, new maps (Beggar's Kanyon, Gridlock City)."

Skout Demo

German developer Soft Enterprises has released the 26 meg Skout demo, showing off their FPS that recently went gold (story). This is the real demo, unlike the version that leaked a few weeks back. Thanks Frans, who's posted a mirror over at 3DGamers.com, who points out that the demo offers one single player level and one multi-player level, and is in German (the English version is expected in a few weeks).

Revenge of the QuakeCon Coverage

It's weeks later, and reports are still popping up...Ritualistic has posted their pictures from the event, showing a bunch of us goofy webmasters hanging out with the zany folk from 3D Realms (thrill as we eat and drink ourselves into a stupor! Woo!). If that's not too much excitement for you, we never mentioned the Cowboy Carnage Radio wrapup, a report from the guys who threw a live SHOUTcast stream from the show.

Battlezone II Demo

As promised last week, the Battlezone II demo has been released, and is available for download exclusively at the Intel Owner's Club (thanks DarkFriend). The 15 meg download is said to be a "US demo only" so US residents download and go nuts.

Rogue Spear Gold

Gone Gold has received an official press release from Red Storm Entertainment that Tom Clancy's Rogue Spear has gone gold, and will be in stores on September 22. Rogue Spear, you may recall, is the sequel to the immensely popular Rainbow Six.

Roll Your Own

The first release of Roll Your Own, a nutty mod for Quake II that lets you literally build your own mod using a checkbox interface. The options allow you to make your own DM/CTF/HeadHunters type game and compile it on the fly. Thanks Rorshach, whose eponymous Journal has posted the entries from the community caricature competition. There's still time to enter, as it doesn't close until tomorrow night, but you can view the current entries on the site now, including caricatures of Paul Steed and John Romero.

Surreal Technology

In the vein of the Unreal Technology Page, Surreal Software, the makers of Drakan: Order of the Flame (and its Riot engine) have launched the Surreal Tech Page (which sounds like some kind of Dali simulator, doesn't it?). Thanks VE, who have also posted a Drakan Gold Wrap-up, with developer Stuart Denman talking about getting the game out the door, as well as a full rundown of the features in the upcoming patch.

Mac D3 Beta Test

IMG Magazine, fresh off their beta program for the Mac port of Rainbow Six, has partnered with developers Graphic Simulations and are offering a drawing to beta test Descent 3. You've only got until September 3rd, so head over there if you're interested.

Quake III Arena Tour Day Four Report

Having returned home and shaken off his bus-burn, loony has typed up his (short) diary from his fourth and final day with the bus tour describing the proceedings as the tour reached the UT at Austin. Accompanying the piece are his Day Four Photos, which, due to popular demand, contain some new photos showing off the maps exclusive to the version of Q3Test being played on the bus for your drooling pleasure. Enjoy!

AM Tech Bits

RTS Stuff

Computer Games Online's Age of Empires II Photo Gallery offers a bunch of shots from the sequel that highlights "The Age of Kings," and likewise, Multiplayer United previews AoE II has more shots. Also, 10six Screenshots on BetaBites showing off SegaSoft's upcoming massive online multiplayer strategy game. Also, ThrushWave Technology has posted the first promotional poster for its upcoming 3D real-time strategy space title, "The Rift," featuring characters and races from the game. This is actually turn-based, but that's close enough for rock-n-roll, XCommand has a hands on look at "Email X-COM" (now if we could only get "Email Quake" going for those on connections too slow to play in real time =]). Finally, here's a fix from the newsgroups for a problem some may have with the brand-new Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun sent along by Steve Dessent, hope it helps:

I purchased C&C2 TS the day it came out and had some problems. Whenever I tried to run it I got the following message: "game has caused an invalid page fault in module <unknown> at 0000:5800190A" and the game would not run. I found a workaround on the newsgroups. Before running the game <ctrl> <alt> <del> to bring up task manager and do an end task on AMON32. I also think that someone on the newsgroup said that they had to disable their earthlink software and not the AMON32.

Slave Zero Interview

The Adrenaline Vault News interviews Jason Leighton talking with the Accolade programmer about his work on Slave Zero, the upcoming giant robot game, his work as a programmer on both Descent 2 and Descent 3, the next-generation of graphics chipsets, and more.

Homeworld Preview

The Adrenaline Vault also previews Homeworld looking ahead at Relic Entertainment's upcoming space epic with a detailed look at the story and gameplay, along with several new screenshots.

Newer Demise

As yesterday's beta release mentioned was possible (story), the Demise website has a new beta build 247 of Demise, the online RPG currently in free beta. The new release is actually slightly different than the build 246 from yesterday, as it fixes a sound glitch. Thanks RX News.

Game Name Builder

The Game Name Builder Official Homepage has a new version 1.32 of the Game Name Builder, which can create colored names and "fun-names" for many games that offer extended character support. The new release fixes a bunch of bugs and adds a WYSIWYG enhanced builder, support for Quake II mods which are "Fun Name Standard compliant" (such as Viking and rivCTF), and more.

More QuakeCon on Lilith & Eve

Tonight's Lilith & Eve show will offer part two of their QuakeCon wrap-up, with footage of the Press Tournament, interviews with people in the gaming community like Redwood and crash, and more. The show begins at 7:00 PM EDT with IRC in chat.pseudo.com channel #allgames, and in streaming video via G2 RealPlayer.

Live FreeSpace 2 Interview

There's a live interview tonight discussing FreeSpace 2 with Volition's Nathan Camarillo. Thanks The Descent Chronicles, where word of this was posted earlier in the week (so I tucked it away for when it was timely). Here's the update:

Combine WildWolf's rants with the SSC Radio Show and that's what you get, the one-and-only Chat Rant. This Friday, at 7 PM EST, Ground FreeSpace's Jennings will be doing a live interview with Nathan Camarillo of Volition. The biggest topics are SquadWars and, of course, FreeSpace 2. For those of you who can't make it to the show, Jennings will record it in RA G2 format.

Kingpin Level Editing

Optimizer's Kingpin Editing Guide is online attempting to convey proper brush techniques and other considerations when using QERadiant to build maps for Xatrix's Quake II-engine life of crime shooter. The tutorial also shows new map designers how to reduce r_speeds for improved performance.

Ant's Q2

Version 3.6 of Ants Q2 is now available. This is a class-based Quake II deathmatch mod that will work with any map, offering six classes, each with different armor, health, weapons, and special abilities. the new release fixes some bugs and adds a couple of sample config files for server operators. There is a server running at 24.40.50.57, and server ops willing to run the mod are asked to mail manvak@yahoo.com.

Reviews

etc.

Out of the Blue

It was recently announced that Bruce Campbell will be playing the voice of Jake Logan, the hero in Tachyon: The Fringe, NovaLogic's upcoming space game that's expected this fall. This seems noteworthy because Bruce is arguably the first-person shooter genre's favorite actor, and I'd say certainly its most influential, as lines and other forms of homage to Army of Darkness are sprinkled throughout the history of the FPS. These range from the obvious (half of Duke Nukem's dialog) to the relentless (we haven't verified it through the trivia computer, but it's possible that every shooter Monolith has made has an AoD reference), to what qualifies around these parts as subtle (the Doom Marine doesn't actually wear his chainsaw on his wrist). Anyway, congrats to NovaLogic and Tachyon on their heroic choice of a hero. For the record, Bruce has won every single "who should play the Doom Marine" poll ever conducted (over two million consecutive poll victories!).

Link of the Day: Net Nerds Need Medical Help Say Eu Shrinks*. Thanks furn.
* "what are you people... on dope?"



Blue's News logo