Archived News:
ActiveWindows has
gotten a confirmation from Microsoft, that DirectX 7 has "gone gold"
internally (in quotes since there's no gold pressing involved) and will be released
to the public soon (they're reporting by the end of the month). The final version
number, they say, is 4.07.00.0700.
The Half-Life site Area
13 has posted a list of "bloopers" from Half-Life (complete with
screenshots). They're not exactly bloopers in the literal sense, just a bunch
of goofs that nit pickers have been able to find. Some of them are pretty funny
though, such as incomplete keyboards on the scientists' computers, and a fan
that isn't connected to anything (thanks Ant).
An email from Brandon Reinhart on the
story about an Unreal Tournament Test next week says the Unreal Tournament
release that Mark Rein called a test is, in fact an actual demo. Also, thanks to
Unrealism for pointing out another
post to the UT put back till nov - GT Forum
thread from that story has more from Epic's Mark Rein on the release:
The demo/test will have 4 or 5 maps. The plan right now (it is still
subject to change) is 3 deathmatch maps, 1 Domination map and one Capture The
Flag map. Of course there will be bots and a single player ladder (albeit
shortened to the 4/5 levels that come with the demo).
The Sincest page has a new
version 1.0.8 of SinEd Omega that fixes "the MAX_SUBMENUS problem"
with editing Wages Of SiN maps, adding lots of other stuff to this Sin level
editor along the way.
The Adrenaline Vault Ground ZERO Coverage
has two new screenshots from Half-Life: Opposing Force being shown off at Ground
ZERO (loonyboi is there even as I write these words). Word there is that they
are working on an OpFor movie to be appearing as a covermount with some upcoming
gaming magazines and on some websites. Also, fhibbard sends the following about
a short OpFor FAQ available for download: I compiled all (Well, most
anyway) currently known information on Opposing Force into an easy to read faq
which you can download at http://sol.wctownhall.com/downloads/OpForFAQ.zip
(9.47k) You'll need Microsoft Word to read it though. Let me know if it needs
any corrections or new info... Sincerely, Jeremy
Dunn.
Epic Designer Cliff
Bleszinski updated his .plan with word that he'll be speaking in the Raleigh
area at a GDC roadshow, so as he puts it "If you're in the area and have 90
bucks to spare, the GDC roadshows are worth checking out." While you're in
the area it's a good chance to visit Mayberry and Mount Pilot, as well.
There's a big old SWAT 3
preview on TacticalPlanet (or as they call it "big-ass"), giving a
look ahead at the upcoming game of tactical police operations currently in
production over at Sierra. In addition to a look at gameplay in SWAT 3: Close
Quarters Combat (perhaps to distinguish it from a future SWAT 3: Long Range
Tear-Gas Attack) based on hands-on experience with the beta, the preview offers
no less than two dozen screenshots.
A pair of new Giants screenshots have quietly popped up on CitizenKabuto.com
(I spotted the news over on IPlayGames News)
giving a couple more looks at in-game scenes from Planet Moon Studios' upcoming
third-person action game. These are before-and-after shots of Kabuto the giant
himself, gobbling down one of those pastoral big-macs that graze the hills in
the land of Giants. Would you like fries with that?
GA-Source's KISS Psycho Circus The Nightmare Child
interviews doesn't actually talk with Gene Simmons or anything, but rather
with several of the folks at Third Law Interactive where they are working on a
LithTech-engine game based on the comic book exploits of the only-sometimes fictitious
but almost always made-up rock band. The Q&A includes some screenshots, including a pair that are new (the bottom two).
A thread titled UT put back till nov
on the GT Unreal Forum has word from Epic's PR maven Mark Rein that we may
be seeing a test release of Unreal Tournament (with another quickly to follow),
as early as next week. Thanks Syclone. Here's the post: Next week (and
again the week after) we'll be releasing a demo/test version that will help us
find and shake out some of the last few bugs in the game. Once we see what users
report then we'll have a much clearer picture of when the game will be ready.
[This message has been edited by Mark Rein (edited 09-11-99).]
Ritual's Heavy Metal F.A.K.K. 2
Gallery has been updated with a bunch of F.A.K.K.2 concept art from Kevin Eastman showing some the illustrated inspiration for Ritual's upcoming Quake
III-engine Heavy Metal F.A.K.K.2 game. Thanks again Frans at 3DGamers
for spotting these (I have to take his word for it, every time I go to that page
I get terminally stuck in the Julie Strain section).
BW.Wire has posted eight new screenshots
form LionHead's upcoming god-game Black & White, of course, based on
the Michael Jackson song of the same name (or was that Black or
White... anyway). The shots are taken from the build of the game that was being
shown off at the recent ECTS in London.
The Tread Marks Screenshots
page has been updated with a pair of new shots showing off this OpenGL
accelerated tank racing game. Thanks Frans.
Both shots show off "the volcano level,"
one with a descending lava ball, and the other a "post nuclear" shot
(think more yellow than an ABC ad campaign and you've got the picture).
GameFan has posted
a hands-on preview of Legend's Wheel of Time, based on the author's experience
playing a build of the game from start to finish. There's a bunch of new screenshots
there to boot, and the report is very detailed.
Drakan.net has posted the log
from last night's chat with Surreal Software, the developers of Drakan: Order
of the Flame. The big news of the evening is that the patch that's currently
in limited beta testing will be out next week (although these things have a
tendency to change on a day by day basis).
More coverage of this weekend's Ground Zero event here in NYC can be found
at Next-Generation
Online, where Mista Gamez has been dispatched to file daily reports. His
first report is from Thursday, which means it's a writeup of the Female Frag
Fest. For stats from the whole weekend, stay tuned to NetGames
USA's Ground Zero page, where they'll periodically be posting tournament
stats (there's no Internet connection at the show, so they're not live).
The Rogue Spear
Database has posted a complete walkthrough for the Rogue Spear demo, complete
with screenshots and a downloadable replay file (thanks RainbowSix.net).
Possibly because they really want to give Blue a new GeForce 256 card, the
screwballs over at Maximum PC are throwing a Gordon
Freeman Stunt Double Contest. Entrants only have to send a high-quality
picture of themselves looking like Gordon, with the grand prize winner walking
away with an NVIDIA GeForce card, and the runners up getting Maximum PC swag.
The QuakeWorld Server Launcher
has been released. This program will allow you to launch as many as 20 servers
at once, and the author recommends it for use at LAN parties.
Thanks as usual to Frans of 3DGamers
for most of these.
Well, the Dreamcast launch date has come and gone, and since I'm still waiting
for mine (hopefully it will arrive tomorrow - or heads will roll) I decided
to fire up Final Fantasy VIII. Since I was a huge fan of its predecessor, I
wasn't planning on doing that until I had the time...I have a tendency to get
horribly addicted to this sort of game. I'm pleased to report that it is very
good...I'm not far enough into it to point out the flaws that many people say
it has, but I'm getting my money's worth, that's for sure. Of course, right
after I post this, I'm placing it back on the shelf, where it will remain until
next weekend - I can't afford to lose whole days during the week to the game.
Link of the Day: Perpetual
Bubble Wrap. Surely the product of someone with waaaaaaaay too much time
on their hands.
As part of their coverage of Ground Zero,
the LAN party going on in NYC (under the shadow of the Blue Tower, of course),
AVault has posted MP3 interviews with
several key players in the tournament, including DieharD (winner of the QuakeCon
'99 tournament), Sujoy, Lilith (winner of the Female Frag Fest last night),
and others.
This week's Unreal Tournament Level of the Week has been posted over at GT's
official Unreal Tournament site (thanks PlanetUnreal).
This week's level is "AS High Speed", an assault mission that takes
place on a train. It's pretty cool stuff, and there's three screenshots posted
to show it off.
GameSpot has posted a
massive preview of Blizzard's "RPS" game, Warcraft III. The preview
contains four new pieces of concept art, a complete rundown of the known races
in the game (there are still at least two other races that haven't been revealed
as of yet), a detailed description of the demo they were given, and if that's
not enough for you, an
interview with Rob Pardo, the producer and senior designer on the game.
Thanks yet again to the tireless Frans from 3D
Action Gamers.
GameSpot has
posted another one of their "ten best" articles, this time focusing
on the ten best heroes in gaming (thanks to the ever vigilant Frans
for pointing it out). Notables on the list are Duke Nukem, and Garret from Thief:
the Dark Project (Wolf3D's BJ is sadly missing from the list, as is everyone's
favorite silent hero: Gordon Freeman).
As promised earlier, GameCenter
has posted the demo for Thief Gold, a "special edition" of Thief:
The Dark Project that should be hitting store shelves next month (thanks again
to Frans). The demo is available as a
massive 70MB download which includes the cinematics, or as a less portly 42MB
version without them.
Gearbox Software's Rob Heironimus updated his
.plan with a brief announcement regarding the music that will be featured
in the upcoming Half-Life add-on Opposing Force for those of you who can tell
the difference between "hardcore beat box" and "ambient-techno-trance"
(I plead total ignorance on this one, I'm sure it's quite obvious for many of
you). There's also a startling revelation about Randy Pitchford's career before
joining the software industry (insert tongue firmly in cheek before reading):
I'd just like to make a short announcement about the direction we'll
be taking with the musical score on Opposing Force. We've dropped the ambient-techno-trance-style
music of the original game, and have decided to go with 100% hardcore beat box,
featuring the vocal talents of Randy "Grandmaster Phat" Pitchford.
It's widely known that Randy was a talented magician before entering the ranks
of game development, but very few people are aware of the fact that he was actually
the fourth member of the popular '80s group "Fat Boys." We realize
this is a bold move for the type of game we're making, and that many people
may disagree with such a drastic change in genre. However, I assure you that
once you've heard Randy's dope beats in the context of the game, you'll want
to bust out your Members Only(tm) jacket and your parachute pants every time
you fire up Half-Life. As a testament to the viability of beat box in action
games, the one and only Valve Software is rumored to be featuring the beat box
grooves of their own Gary McTaggart on the upcoming release of Team Fortress
2.
/Snicker of the Rogue Spear Retreat
sends along word that by entering "Rogue Spear" 0 3000 to the games.txt
file for Roger Wilco, you can enable
support for the Rogue Spear Demo in the popular voice communication software.
GamePower
has posted a preview of Terminal Reality's Nocturne, with a general writeup
of the game (thanks Billy " spooky"
Wilson). There's nothing in the preview that can't be found out by playing the
demo, but if you can make it through the first four pages, you'll be treated
to an
interview with Jeff Mills, the production lead on the game (a role which
involves both artistic and programming duties).
According to Looking Glass' official Thief:
The Dark Project page, the demo for Thief Gold will be released this weekend
on GameCenter, and will be
available there for two days only (thanks Frans).
Matrox has released new
drivers for their G400 series of graphics cards (thanks Byron Hinson). In
addition, they've also released a new beta
OpenGL ICD, which should give a minor performance boost to GL powered games.
Specifically Matrox says these have been optimized for Quake II, Q3Test, Half-Life
and Unreal.
- 3DWars has posted
an interview with Scott Sellers and Brian Burke, 3dfx' CTO and PR manager
respectively, discussing next-generation technology.
- She's
the Baddest Fragger is the name of an article up at Wired News, that provides
a full profile of Anne "Lilith" Chang, the winner of last night's
Female Frag Fest tournament (thanks [SOG]Nataraj).
- Speedy3D
has posted an interview with Bernd Lehahn of EgoSoft, discussing their space
shooter X, which has already been released in Germany and is set for a release
this month here in the US.
3DActionPlanet has posted a picture
showing off the lead character from Raven's Quake II engine title Soldier of Fortune - the first published,
to the best of my knowledge.
Pandemic has updated their official
Battlezone II site with two new unit profiles: the mortar bike and scion
scout. There's details on each one, and swanky animated GIFs showing off the
models (thanks GhostFire).
BeNews has posted a report
from ECTS, talking about the stuff available for the BeOS at the show (thanks
Pete). There were pretty much only three games of note that were shown, Civilization:
Call to Power, Quake II and Quake III: Arena. Here's what the author had to say about
the Be version of Q3A: Quake III was running at the booth, alongside
Quake II. At the moment it is very very beta. The frame-rate is quite bad and
there is something wrong with the mouse. This is however no indication of how
it will be when it is finished. The main thing is that it runs and that it is
looking good. People were generally very impressed by the mere fact that it
was running on BeOS already.
Well, today's the day that last
week's contest was supposed to end, but due to the fact that not a single
person managed to get all three questions right, well, we've had to extend the
deadline. You've got until Tuesday now kids, so head
over there and enter if you think you know your stuff.
- This week's Matrox
Enhanced Game of the Week is Carmageddon: Death Race 2000, and they've
posted a handful of screenshots that show off the new environment bump mapping in the game.
- PCArena
has posted some new screenshots from Jane's USAF.
- GASource
has posted a handful of new shots from InteractVision's BHunter.
Sierra has announced more
of the "all-star" level designers who are contributing deathmatch
levels to the Half-Life add-on Opposing Force. In no particular order, they
are Richard "Zdim" Carlson, David "Kevlar" Kelvin, Marin
"Kandyman" Gazzari, and Eric Reuter. These four join Levelord, who
was announced a while back. If you don't know who some of these guys are (shame
on you), check the press release,
which has full details on all of them.
PlayNOW! previews
Soldier of Fortune looking ahead at Raven Software's upcoming mercenary game
currently being constructed using a modified version of the Quake II engine. The
preview discusses the game, as well as its background. For instance, did you
know that rather than play just any mercenary in the game, you play a specific
mercenary? Here's a quote about that: The main character, believe it or
not, is based on an actual person of the same name - John Mullins. John is an
ex-mercenary and highly decorated soldier with an extremely impressive record
and amazing military history. The in-game character is particularly well
developed and (apparently) not terribly unlike that of Johns true identity. Part
of the reason Raven Software contracted John is because a major focus in the
game design of SoF was to make gameplay as immersive and realistic as possible
in every conceivable way.
Datumplane::Starsiege is reporting that
StarsiegePlayers.com
has posted a tutorial by Dr. Awkward on how to make a mission in Starsiege,
Dynamix' latest edition in their giant robot combat series that began with
Earthsiege. The article also has a zipped walkthrough for download that
contains the mission from the tutorial, and a printable .rtf version of the
text.
3DNow!'s Drakan: Order
of the Flame Interview talks with Surreal's Stu Denman discussing how Drakan
takes advantage of the 3DNow!™ instruction set, whether it was difficult optimizing
for 3DNow!, and more details about the game's support for AMD's special 3D
instruction set.
FGNOnline has posted
a Q&A with GearBox Software's Brian Martel, the art director on their official
add-on pack for Half-Life, Opposing Force. There isn't much in the way of new
information here, but he does describe the new weapons in detail.
Strategy
Gaming Online has posted an interview with Robin Walker of Valve/Team Fortress
Software, talking about a variety of issues with Team Fortress 2. There's a
lot of good stuff in here, especially for those of you planning on making custom
TF2 maps, so check it out.
GameSpot
UK has posted an enormous preview of Unreal Tournament, which the author
says, "rocks his world". It's very much hands-on, and loaded to the
hilt with screenshots to boot (thanks Billy " wacky"
Wilson).
GameSpot
News has posted a brief preview of SpecOps II: Rangers Lead the Way, that's
based on an alpha build of the game they received. It's a short preview to be
sure, but they've posted nine new screenshots along side it.
A new official release of the Crystal
Space engine (0.14) has been released, and is available for download in
all its various formats. This new version updates the OpenGL and Direct3D renderers,
adds support for vertex based volumetric fog, adds a new LOD system and more.
Well Rounded Entertainment's
FreeSpace 2 Preview is up offering a hands-on look ahead at Volition's
upcoming sequel to Descent FreeSpace: The Great War. In addition to accounts of
gameplay in the space opera, the piece also offers nine new screenshots.
The Jumbot site
has a new version 0.5 of the Jumbot for Half-Life. The new release fixes a bunch
of bugs, and adds some tweaks, including my favorite: "Bots try harder not
to blow themselves up," which is always helpful. Word is the new release
also eliminates the crashing problem users on certain systems were experiencing.
TheFatal says: "If you were previously getting crashes and this version no
longer crashes, please send me an e-mail to let me know. If it does still crash,
don't bother sending e-mail, because I will already be dead and hanging from a
towel on my bedroom door."
This Brian Love Chat Transcript on DiabloII.net or Brian Love Chat transcript on MacGamer's Ledge each give the play-by-play for last night's chat with Blizzard's man of Love talking about "new Mac efforts for Blizzard, WarCraft III, Diablo II, the upcoming Diablo II Beta test, and much more."
ATFW's
ECTS '99 wrap-up concentrates on all the space sims at this year's show, and
Sharky Extremes' ECTS Highlights
are up, here's Sharky's description: "We've got dibs (and shots) of Rage
Software's Incoming Forces, Midnight GT, Offroad and Hostile Waters. Then
there's Interplay's Giants: Citizen Kabuto and Klingon Academy, then X-COM
Alliance by Hasbro. To wrap it up we look at Acclaim's Trickstyle with a brief
look at the Hardware goings on. And yes, we explain what those Hari Krishna were
really doing at the show."
Once again, Frans is the man when it comes
to reviews:
- i2e2,
describes itself as "the first international standards organization and
Web site for the competitive gaming community. This fall, the company plans
to introduce competition standards and universal rankings, as well as begin
the sanctioning of professional gaming events." The newly-launched
project is the brainchild of former online events manager of Total
Entertainment Network Joe Perez, and former commissioner of the CyberAthlete
Professional League Frank Cabanski...
- The GameSpy 3D Jobs page has
word of their hunt for a Gaming Site Content Manager...
- Sega unleashes a 128-bit monster on the gaming world
is a CNN story on the big console release
yesterday...
Well I actually did end up picking up a Dreamcast of my own yesterday instead of
just checking out MrCoffee's. I'm not really a console person myself, but so
many rave reports were rolling in, that I decided to take advantage of the
availability of units at the local Software Etc. where they had a bunch that weren't
preordered because they were only open a short time when the chain cut off
pre-orders, but they still got their full share (apparently
available units were the rarity, with
sellouts reported all over). The graphics and ergonomics on the new system
are pretty unbelievable, certainly raising the bar for this kind of gaming. We
mostly played with the fighting games last night: the boxing game "Ready to
Rumble" is the early favorite, Soul Calibur is cool for multiplayer, but
the arcde mode had to be the easiest single player game I've played (I beat it while my friends
were digesting their pizza). I wonder what the Internet stuff
is like? I'm told this site is readable, if a bit wonky on it, so at least we're
compatible.
Link of the Day: American Express
Blue Card. Thanks Agrajag. An actual new Amex service. Don't leave the Blue
Tower without it.
News Stories of the Day: Wired
reports a tiny startup is set to launch an engine that requires no fuel,
produces no pollution, and is free to run, and ABCNEWS
reports on The World's Smallest Motors. Both from SlashDot
(thanks Randy Waterhouse). They both seem worth mentioning for perspective, as
others claim to be changing the world with things like video cards and games.
|
Twitter 
