Archived News:
There's a new StarLancer Weekly
Screenshot on Gamerush showing off another look ahead at this upcoming space
sim from Microsoft, Digital Anvil,
and Warthog. This week's shot shows off
a view of a ship flying using the "warp cam" (and quite a lovely shade
of blue it all is).
In other space sim news, the BattleCruiser
3000 has been updated with a new appendix for download that explains in
detail what's added to BC3KAD with the version 2.08 update including Tactical
Operations Command. Also, the BC3020AD
Shots page has been updated with a bunch of new screenshots.
The Quake and Quake 2 News
page on Mplayer has the news that Mplayer is expanding the free services
they are offering Quake and Quake II players to included games on Mplayer hosted
servers. Benefits to players will now included guaranteed private matches and
automatic player rankings.
Its cricket-chirping quiet again today (is everyone off playing the UT demo?),
so since Kenn Hoekstra specifically mentions helping out on the slow news day in
his
.plan update it would be a shame to pass it up. The update covers a lot of
bases, including some assorted Soldier of Fortune bits, mentioning a new Soldier of Fortune message board
and stuff that, again, suggests the game is in its final stages of development:
Soldier of Fortune is trucking along... I've been doing a lot of writing
lately for the installer, the manual, the readme and a few other miscellaneous
odds and ends. It's not exactly like turning out a best seller, but I'll take it
where I can get it. When I'm not writing, I'm playtesting... And as fast as I
can report the "features" that I find, the programmers and designers
fix them and all is right with the world. Probably the nicest part about my new
Project Administrator position is being able to contribute to the project in so
many ways. It's a good feeling...
3DGameGeek's David "MoneyLuv"
Gaspar has posted a workaround for getting a dedicated server on the UT master
list if you're running a multihomed system on Win98 SE or NT Proxy. Here's the
scoop: Below is how it looks in the guide and how it should look in your
*.bat or run command line.
Does not work: C:TournamentDemoSystem> ucc.exe server mapname.unr?game=GameType
[port=portnum] [ini=inifilename] [log=logfilename] [multihome=ipaddress]
This is how it should read: C:TournamentDemoSystem> ucc.exe server mapname.unr?game=GameType
[port=portnum][multihome=ipaddress] [ini=inifilename] [log=logfilename]
Note how the multihome IP line is BEFORE the *.ini= line this is important!!
Now run your l33t bat file and look for your server in the UT gui on your gaming
machine.
The Game Name Builder Official Homepage
has a new version 1.44 of this utility to create colored and fun (animated)
names in games that support them. The program currently has support for Quake,
QuakeWorld, Q3Test, Hexen 2, HexenWorld, and any other game which utilizes ASCII
characters (Windows, DOS, and proprietary fonts).
- NT Game Palace sends word
that they've posted fixes to enable Glide with Banshee/Voodoo3 under Windows
2000 RC2. These fixes are for Glide only ("Direct3D will be
disabled").
- Sharky Extreme's
A-Trend ATC3970 Savage4 Pro Review looks at this bargain-prices Saveage4
Pro-based board. Also previewing S3 hardware is 3D
Alpha Hardware Station's S3 Savage 2000 preview, a hands-off look at the
features in this upcoming product.
- The Storm Platinum Drivers
page has new version 2036a drivers for these Xitel sound cards. Thanks
TonyT.
- Oops, loony said this was going in the AM Tech bits yesterday, but it
seems to have fallen through a crack. A post to the Silicon
Investor Messageboard quotes 3dfx' Scott Sellers as saying the Napalm
technology (often speculated to be Voodoo4) is in danger of not being
released fourth quarter this year, though of course, it won't be late at
that, since it hasn't actually been announced. Thanks Roscoe A., Sincero.
There's an
interview with Brandon "<color>Marine" Reinhart on Unrealtournament.co.uk
(the same interview is also on Qamex Games Centre).
The Q&A is from tracking down the Epic programmer at the UT tourney at The
Playing Fields at this year's ECTS to discuss the state of Unreal Tournament.
An update to the Unreal Technology page
gives the sound thinking behind 3D audio support in the Glide UT demo (or lack
thereof, though it will be in the next demo). There is also some helpful info
there for server administrators: A3D and EAX Support
3D sound acceleration is absent from the Unreal Tournament 3dfx demo while
we sort out some recent code changes, but will be in the full demo coming next
week. A big thanks to the A3D guys, Skip McIlvane and Scott Etherton for
helping us get the code back up and running.
-Tim
Quick Note to Server Admins
Server administrators - Please turn off the "Tournament Mode"
checkbox. It forces the game to wait for all the player connections
to fill up before the game starts. This is very frustrating for players
when the Max Players is set to 16.
Also, if you're getting DNS errors trying to connect to the remote server
administration, you might want to check Advanced Options. Under Webserver,
be sure your ServerName is BLANK. This setting is used by the webserver
and is not related to the server name as it appears in the Server Browser.
This corresponds to the ServerName entry in UnrealTournament.ini under the [UWeb.Webserver]
section.
Brandon
"GreenMarine" Reinhart updated his .plan with word that the
uber-cool NetGames stat output for the Unreal Tournament demo is going to be
offline until the release of the next version of the demo (should be "a
couple of days," according to the update) to iron out the
"multiple-UID problem" (though it might just be to upgrade "the
keep CliffyB at the top of the lists" algorithm).
AEon's HM F.A.K.K. 2 Kollage
is a new desktop wallpaper created using images from previously-released
screenshots of Ritual's upcoming third-person action/fantasy game based on the
upcoming film based on Kevin Eastman's Heavy Metal magazine characters. To
accompany the collage, which is spelled with a "K" because the page is
in German, is also a
German-language preview of Heavy Metal F.A.K.K. 2. As always, a fair translation
can be found at AltaVista Translations.
Also, there's a
new Rogue Spear desktop theme on FilePlanet.
Sharky Extreme's Rogue Spear Preview
is up, looking ahead to the second installment in the shooter inspired by the
Tom Clancy novel, Rainbow Six. You gotta love the gang over in the Shark Tank,
dig this intro: "The French Prime Minister's daughter is being held hostage
by Egyptian terrorists. You've been charged with saving her with a minimum loss
of life. What do you do? What do you do? Well, if you were Neo, you'd run in
guns blazing while bending the non-existent spoon. Too bad you're not Neo."
Sharky Extreme's
NOX First Glimpse is up as well, with a short rundown on this upcoming game
from Westwood they describe as "a Diablo II challenger."
IPlayGames First Look at MDK2
is another look ahead at the upcoming sequel to Shiny's MDK currently in
production at BioWare. The profile gives a rundown on what's expected from
gameplay in the third-person action game, as well as a sense for its nutty plot.
MDK, of course, stands for Musty, Damp, and Kold.
KT-imPAKt's Homepage has
released a new map-pack for Quake II offering eight levels of various sizes,
along with a server-side teamplay mod that offers map voting. The page has
screenshots of the maps, as well as more information about the mod, which has
been in development for some time now (delayed by real-life considerations).
QuakeStarter's Official Homepage
posted a new version 0.73b (on Friday) of this front-end for the Quake family of
games. Thanks Voodoo Extreme by way
of Demo News.
An update to the i.am.Team Fortress Classic
adds a collection of 50 new demos showing off different skills and techniques
useful to various Team Fortress Classic classes as a training aid. The site is
also sporting a redesign to make finding your way through content like that
easier.
GA-Source's New Titanium Angels Screenshots and More
offers new screenshots, artwork, box art, and even an in-game movie from SCI's
upcoming "3D action adventure where you control a futuristic bounty
hunter." The movie is about 70 MB, and apparently shows off a lot of the
goodies in the game that screenshots don't do justice.
Malcontent sends word that he got the Unreal Tournament demo working in Software
under Windows NT in a similar method to the one described yesterday for Windows
98 ( story),
"but in this case put the bogus Glide2x.dll under Winnt\System32."
- The RadioActive Software
Chronicles page has word that this upcoming Half-Life single-player
add-on is nearing completion, and that they will be seeking a small number
of beta testers soon...
- Word on Gibbed.Com is they are
"closing for an indefinite amount of time." Thanks Nick
"Meaties" Wilson...
- Birdman's Lair, home of all things
SpaceOrb, has posted a modified version of the Unreal SpOrb patch for Unreal
that works with Unreal Tournament...
- Hmm... gotta be a good sign that Pat
Lipo's .plan talks of the Raven programmer working on the installer for
their upcoming Quake II-engine shooter, Soldier of Fortune...
It was nice that yesterday was quiet, as it gave a good chance to check out the
Unreal Tournament demo, but certainly a shot at playing was all I needed, the
quietest news day in recent memory was certainly more than was required (be
careful what you ask for, you may get it). The demo is an awful lot of fun to
play, with a lot of neat detail. Also, the netgames stats stuff is really
tremendous, it's too bad a bug has it off line for the moment, I'm looking
forward to seeing some of the stats accumulate (I love that sort of thing).
Link of the Day: User Friendly the Comic Strip,
yesterday's edition was Quake-related (and a strategy guide, to boot!). Thanks
Dr. Bunsen.
News Story of the Day: ABCNEWS.com Mad or Rad When (Gummi) Bears Go Bad,
relating some experiments reminiscent of the peep torture tests in a past Link
of the Day. Apparently some light is being cast upon the theory of "herd
immunity" to disease among the little beasties. No, really. Thanks Geoff.
There are six Rogue Spear
screenshots on 24 Hour Gamer, or actually five screenshots and a shot of the
main menu, showing off action from the upcoming full version of Rainbow Six:
Rogue Spear, the sequel to the tactics-based first-person shooter Rainbow Six.
Those wascawwy wabbits over at PlanetUnreal
have posted a tip on how to play deathmatch on two of the non-DM maps in the Unreal Tournament demo. Here's
the trick: 1. Make copies of CTF-CoretDEMO and DOM-SesmarDEMO. These are
located in the C:\TournamentDemo\Maps folder.
2. Rename the copies to DM-CoretDEMO and DM-SesmarDEMO.
3. Now you can join any server that is running these maps in DM mode.
Word
is if you don't do this, but join a server that has followed this procedure, UT
will auto-download the maps for you.
The Licensed To Kill site
has a new beta 0.11 of this mod for Action Quake 2 that adds bot teammates and
opponents to this Quake II mod. The new version has been updated to use the AQ2
1.52 source code, adds a new node storage structure, and fixes some bugs.
There's a new MDK2 Development
Update on MDK2.com giving
the latest word from BioWare's Greg Zeschuk on development on the sequel to
Shiny's quirky mostly third-person action game. MDK, of course, stands for Merry
Danny Kaye.
The Unreal Tournament demo is Glide only, but Davis Lentz sends word that
creating a blank text file called Glide2x.dll in your Windows\System directory
will allow the game to be played in software mode, which, depending on the
horsepower in your system, may just allow you to check out a bit of what the
demo is like, or even allow you to play ( sCary
confirmed for me that it can be playable). Also, since the demo is actually
Glide-only, rather than 3dfx-only, many owners of Creative Labs-based TNT2-cards
are reporting excellent results playing the demo using Creative's unified
drivers, which, of course, support Glide.
Kokak's Hexen Page has
version 0.9 of GLHexen, an OpenGL compatible version of Hexen based on WinHexen
that shares an OpenGL engine with DoomGL
& GLHeretic (all
of which, of course, are based on the publicly-available source codes for the
original versions of the games). Word on GLHexen is that, though bugs may still
occur, all the features from the original Hexen should be present. Thanks Frans
at 3D Action Gamers.
The Unreal Technology page has been
updated with word from Epic Programmer Jack "Mek" Porter that he's
created a fix for problems server admins are having with the remote
administration tool. Thanks Del "DrDemento" Dhanoa. As for local
copies of this file and other UT stuff (like the demo itself), I'll try to get
some of that stuff going now that I'm back online (spent most of yesterday with
machines scattered in parts on the floor around me). Here's the update on the
fix:
I've made a fix for the WWW-based Remote Administration - In version
322 this seems to crash some machines instantly and works fine on others.
One of my machines had no problems but the other would crash as soon as I logged
in. If you're a Server Administrator you should download this
file and extract it into your TournamentDemo\System directory. Server
administrators only, please. No-one else needs this fix.
Speaking of TRIBES (following story), S.A.S's Guide to
TRIBES has been updated with more tips on how to cap the flag and frag like
a champion in Dynamix' online, multiplayer, teamplay shooter. They are also
interested in assistance creating strategy guides for each of the game's maps,
so if you are up to it, drop them a line.
3D Unlimited
interviews Tim Gift looking Mr. Gift's horse straight in the mouth to
inquire of the Dynamix programmer about the state of progress on TRIBES2, the
upcoming sequel to Starsiege TRIBES, the Earthsiege series, Starsiege, and
presumably the upcoming TRIBES Extreme as well (a contender for "sequel to
most games," one would imagine). The Q&A covers Tim's background, his
history at Dynamix, and of course, TRIBES2.
If you downloaded the wrong version of the Unreal Tournament demo (version
321 is the incorrect one), Epic has released a patch for you so you don't have
to download the whole giant file all over again (thanks PlanetUnreal).
Here's the dirt fresh from the Unreal Tech page: There is now a patch
available for users who have downloaded the older 321 version from sites which
accidently posted it earlier today. This patch updates your version of
the demo to 322. You only need this patch if your version
of the demo says "Version 321" in the top right corner. The patch is available here. The
file is 5.35 MB (5,612,778 bytes).
The newly opened Kingpin site Poisonville has posted an
interview with Ryan "Ridah" Feltrin of Xatrix, talking about violence
in games, programming, and of course, Kingpin. In other Kingpin news, The
Wastelands, a Kingpin editing site, has posted an editorial to help would-be
map authors set up Worldcraft to work with the game.
GameSpot
has posted the box artwork from Nocturne, Terminal Reality and the Gathering
of Developer's spooky third person adventure game (thanks GA-Source).
The box, if I do say so, is pretty cool looking, and sort of resembles the original
poster for the Blair Witch Project.
As always, thanks to Frans o' 3DGamers
for these.
- FilePlanet has a brand new look,
and now sports a new custom e-mail feature, which mails you the latest updates
from whatever sections of the site you select.
- BetaBites
has posted more of their Asheron's Call journal, with a huge rundown of what's
going on in this massively multiplayer RPG currently in beta.
- Wired has posted an
article on LAN Parties, that starts off by saying, "cancel the kegger".
Thanks [SOG]Nataraj (and everyone else who sent that in).
- According to AVault,
Sega's planned Internet networking is not delayed, as has been reported elsewhere,
and they're anticipating full online gaming by Q3 2000, complete with 12 online
titles including Half-Life.
- Also from AVault
is word that Douglas Adams is working on a new real-time 3D title featuring
Arthur Dent. I'd say it's a safe assumption that his towel will make an appearance
as well.
So the Unreal Tournament demo has finally been released, and I was able to
pull myself away from Final Fantasy VIII and Sonic Adventure long enough to
try it out. I'm impressed with it...I'll hold off from making any comments about
the game until I've had a chance to really play it a bit, but it's definitely
fun. What impressed me the most about the demo, however, was NetGames USA's
ngWorldStats. This is simply amazing
stuff...if you remember the original plan for QuakeWorld, this delivers it,
and it delivers it really well. It's definitely worth downloading just for that.
Link of the Day: God
to License Unreal Engine for Creation (thanks Martin Cracauer).
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