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Archived News:
The Adrenaline Vault
interviews Brian Burke with another Q&A on the same subject as the the
previously mentioned ( story),
the departure of CEO Greg Ballard that was announced earlier today ( story).
Don't put away those silver bullets just yet, as an update to the Werewolf The Apocalypse - Heart of Gaia
site declares "Werewolf Still Alive and Clawing." To prove their
point, there are new screenshots
and character
art on the site. All this is to point out that this upcoming Unreal-engine
horror game is not cancelled, or postponed (apparently there have been rumors),
but simply, as so often happens, delayed. Here's word that ASC Games passes
along on that subject: Hello Werewolf friends and fans. We wanted to take
this opportunity to clear up any misconceptions about the future of Werewolf The
Apocalypse: Heart of Gaia:
YES, the game has been delayed. This first person shooter not only has a huge
story, it also has enormous depth. These things take time.
YES, the game is now scheduled for a Spring 2000 release.
YES, the game will feature incredible graphics, real-time morphing, and three
forms with which to massacre the forces of evil - human, wolf, and werewolf.
NO, the game has not been cancelled, put on hold, delayed indefinitely - IT IS
ALIVE AND CLAWING.
Visit our Werewolf web site, located at http://www.ascgames.com
- for more of the latest information. We have screenshots of NEW enemy models,
sketches, and new character art which you can find at http://www.ascgames.com/100-GAMES/werewolf/index.html
There are new Voodoo3 3500TV Windows 9x Retail Drivers - AGP version 1.02.18
on 3dfx Gamers. Thanks Voodoo Extreme.
The new drivers offer improved stereo support, and a fix for a recording bug.
There turns out to be some confusion with the Nocturne AVI mentioned earlier ( story),
which is not actually the third AVI in the series of new gameplay movies being
released by TRI. Smitty from TRI points out the 50 MB movie from earlier is
actually the same movie released at E3, which he describes as one of the oldest
movies from the game. Never fear, however, as the third AVI is probably going to
be released tomorrow. Word is to look for that to pop up on GameSpot.
A redesign to Sierra's
official SWAT 3 website adds a bunch of new content (including an intro .wav
that sounds like Alvin & the Chipmunks) from this upcoming shooter that features tactical police operations. Among the new goodies added is a three-dimensional screenshot that uses QuickTime VR to show off an
environment from the game in a full 360 panorama.
There's a
mini-interview with Brian Burke on Thresh's FiringSquad talking with the PR
dude at 3dfx about the just-announced resignation of now former 3dfx CEO Greg
Ballard. According to the conversation, the move has the company's best
interests in mind, saying "He is doing what he thinks is best for him and
3dfx."
There's an interview with Todd Hollenshead
on the ViolentFemmes Q3 page chatting up the id Software CEO on a variety of
topics, including his Texas roots, how he got hooked up with id, and of course,
a bunch of questions and answers about Quake III Arena.
There are some new GeForce 256 Q3Test
screenshots on 3DGPU.com showing off scenes from Q3Test on NVIDIA's upcoming
chipset in side-by-side comparisons against the same shots running with the
lower level of curve detail on some non-GeForce accelerator or another.
3dfx Announces Resignation of L. Gregory
Ballard is the press release announcing the departure of 3dfx' CEO. Thanks Tweak3D.
Here's the sort announcement in its entirety: SAN JOSE, Calif., Oct. 7
/PRNewswire/ -- 3dfx Interactive® Inc. (Nasdaq: TDFX
- news) today announced that L.
Gregory Ballard, its president and chief executive officer, has resigned
effective October 31, 1999. The Board of Directors announced that an immediate
search would begin for his successor.
"I have had an extraordinary three years at 3dfx, in which sales have grown
from almost nothing to an annualized revenue rate of over $400 million,"
said L. Gregory Ballard. "During this time we have created a dominant
worldwide brand and have been the consistent leader at retail. We have put in
place a strategy and management team that will solidify our leadership position.
"I truly believe that the challenges in this next phase of the Company's
growth will be more technical than marketing and strategic and that 3dfx can
benefit from the fresh perspective that a new CEO can bring," he added.
"3dfx has a great future, and I look forward to watching its progress as an
investor."
"Greg has contributed greatly to the success of the Company, and we are sad
to see him leave," said Gordon Campbell, founder and chairman of 3dfx
Interactive, Inc., on behalf of the Board of Directors. "The Board will
take this opportunity to bring in an executive to continue the exceptional
growth that 3dfx has enjoyed. I have pledged my time and efforts to seeing that
the transition is smooth and causes no disruption to the conduct of our growing
business."
Ballard, with Gordon Campbell, who is also managing director of TechFarm, will
organize and direct a search committee from the 3dfx Board of Directors to find
his replacement.
Dynamix' Nels Bruckner updated his
.plan with word that the next patch for Starsiege: TRIBES (version 1.9)
is currently in QA and should be released soon. Here's the whole (brief) update: A
quick update - the Tribes 1.9 patch that I
mentioned a while back (which primarily addresses a server-side crash) took
a little bit longer to put together than I had originally anticipated. It is
in product certification now and should be available very soon. My apologies
for the delay.
GameFan has
posted three new shots from SWAT 3, showing off Sierra's new tactical shooter of anti-terrorist combat.
The Civilization II - Test of Time
site has a 3.4 MB patch to update this updated version of the sequel to Sid Meier's
classic strategy game. Thanks Gamer's Voice.
Terminal Reality has released the third AVI from their spooky adventure game
Nocturne. You can find it at Spookhouse's
media room, and presumably at the official
site soon. Like its predecessors, this movie's a big one, at 30MB.
In case yesterday's 100 new shots weren't enough for you, GameSpot
UK has posted another preview of Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation, offering
a look at the "Lost Library" level of the game, complete with, of
course, new screenshots.
Don't Shoot While
I'm Talking is the name of an article on id Software and Quake III: Arena
that's up on Forbes' web site (thanks Chris Van Doren). The article is a typical
mainstream look at the id phenomenon, with a particular emphasis on the money
making aspect of the title (hey this is Forbes, what did you expect). Also of
note is the mention of this here web site, as well as our friends at GameSpy.
ATI has announced their new product, the RAGE Fury MAXX, a dual processor,
64MB card (thanks Redwood). The card is
expected to ship, "in the fourth quarter" and retail for about $299.
Here's an excerpt from the
press release: Superior to single chip solutions, ATI's MAXX technique
achieves maximum efficiency by having each graphics chip render alternate frames,
cutting the rendering load in half. With the two chip setup, one chip renders
even frames only while the other renders odd frames only. Each chip performs
triangle setup for its own frame without having to wait for the other chip.
Since the complexity of a scene tends to vary only slightly from frame to frame
(unlike the complexity of different parts of each frame, which can vary widely),
the load between the graphics chips tends to stay well balanced. Also, because
each chip has its own dedicated frame buffer space in local graphics memory,
the final image is buffered to prevent any tearing, discontinuity, or other
artifacts.
GASource
has posted six new high resolution screenshots from Nocturne, Terminal Reality's
game of spooky horror, as well as word that the new AVI movie as well as the
second demo will both be released "in a matter of days." Nocturne
isn't gold just yet, but is expected to be gold on the 15th of this month, with
the game in store shelves on Halloween weekend.
Darkstone News has posted the official
1.0.3 patch for Darkstone. This patch has similar features to the one that was
released last month and promptly recalled (although I would assume that this
one is ready for primetime) including a new difficulty level, new monsters and
weapons, a larger chat box, fixed disconnect problems, and more (thanks Frans by way of VE).
Raven's John Scott updated his
.plan last night (we seem to have missed this one too) with details on the
video card support in their Quake II engine title, Soldier of Fortune. There's
a full list of cards that work great (the expected ones, naturally), as well
as a rundown of other cards on a case-by-case basis.
Well-Rounded
Games has posted a preview of Infogrames' third person game of giant robot
carnage, Slave Zero. There are 20 screenshots up, and they promise a full hands-on
preview in "the next week or so."
Ritual's Jack Mathews updated his
.plan with some thoughts on Rick Johnson's .plan update from yesterday ( story),
as well as some info on the possibility (or lack thereof) of a Mac version of
their title Heavy Metal: FAKK2 (thanks to Vangie for the reminder): Wow,
haven't updated in a good six months. Anyway, I just wanted to follow up on
Rick Johnson's .plan update about Voyager and SoF not having Macintosh support.
Well, it'll be hard to give Heavy Metal: FAKK2 Mac support as well without any
Macs here as well. So unless that situation changes we're not going to be able
to have mac support either.
Which is actually pretty sad considering we're using an engine that has Mac
cross-compiling built right in and no boxes to do serious testing and development
on. While developers and the dominance of Windows are being blamed for the disparity
in number of Macintosh games versus PC games, it's showing that Apple really
doesn't seem to care. We here have been begging for Mac equipment, but apparently
it has been into deaf ears. If Apple is going to pick and choose among five
or so companies to support and force everyone else to farm games to dedicated
porting houses, I don't see how they're going to even make a dent in the gaming
market at home.
So to let Mac Gamers know, this is Apple's misstep, plain and simple. If Apple
would support us in entering the Macintosh market, we would. If they're gonna
ignore our requests, I'm sorry, but we're not going to fight an uphill battle.
If you want games written for your Macintosh, give them a hollar. Tell them
to support developers, and developers will support them. That's the way it works
with every other hardware company we support.
At this weekend's Mac
Games Event, a Mac LAN party of sorts, you'll be able to check out the Mac
version of Unreal Tournament, as well as Heretic II, Rainbow Six, Descent III,
Civilization: Call to Power, Tomb Raider III, and more.
Version 3.0 of The Heretic Fortress,
a class-based mod for Heretic II has been released, and is available for download
at its homepage. There's a few new screenshots of the new spells for you to
look at while you're downloading as well (thanks Frans).
There's a movie from BioWare's upcoming MDK2 on Gamers Central
showing off gameplay from this upcoming sequel to Shiny's first and third-person
action game featuring the hang-gliding and sniping biathlon. MDK, of course,
stands for Miles Davis' Karma.
RIVA 3D Interviews Torgeir Hagland
talking to this programmer for Shiny Entertainment in a short Q&A about his
work on Shiny's upcoming third-person cherubic action game Messiah.
Particle systems' official Independence War
website is online, the definitive repository of all things related to this
series of space sims. In the works over there is the Independence War Universe,
described as "an indispensable guide to the Independence War story,
characters, and technology; including never-seen-before concept artwork and
in-depth articles." Look for that to be posted soon.
The Rocket Arena website has a
new version 2.25 of the Rocket Arena 2 server for Quake II. The new release offers an improved
Competition Mode (you can only track your team), a new Damage Scoring option
(individual points come from damage, not kills), and selectable arena.cfg files.
Word is the improved competition mode should help reduce the accusations of
cheating in clan matches by using RW or BFC. New versions are available for
Win32, Linux i386, Linux AXP. The SGI and Solaris Sparc ports are still at
version 2.22.
This BattleCruiser Millennium
announcement details plans for a new release of the BattleCruiser space sim
with all sorts of improvements over BC3K version 2.0. To make it easy to tell
what will be different, the release includes a link to this
list of changes for the new version.
Thresh's FiringSquad's
Asheron's Call Preview is up with a look ahead at Microsoft's upcoming
online RPG. Included in the hands-on preview are a bunch of new screenshots from
a beta build of the game.
3 on 3 Invitational @ The Frag 3
will be held at the Frag3 October 29-31 open to any team that will be attending.
Word is there will be prizes, and the German clan Schröt Kommando and possibly
other European teams will participate.
Thanks Frans at 3D Action Gamers
(but you knew that already, didn't you?):
I'm still pretty out of it, so I'd best not ramble at this point. I was going to
promise to be extra incoherent next go 'round to help make up for the
"loss," but I realize I've probably posted enough extra incoherent
stuff in this space to last a lifetime, so there's no sense in trying to balance
the books. Ooops I'm rambling already. See how naturally it comes? On to the Ls
of the D:
Link of the Day: Stupid Salt & Pepper Shaker Collection.
Thanks bryan. some of these are really freaky. Check out "Spice of
Life" and "I'm full of..." and remind yourself these are supposed
to sit on your dinner table (midi warning, but at least it's the blues).
Story of the Day: Hackers
Ascend Upper 'Echelon' (Wired News). Thanks DNapalm and Incubus439. Oh what
the heck. Let's see if we can get them to listen in here: FBI CIA NSA IRS ATF BATF DOD WACO RUBY RIDGE OKC OKLAHOMA CITY
MILITIA GUN HANDGUN MILGOV ASSAULT RIFLE TERRORISM BOMB DRUG HORIUCHI KORESH
DAVIDIAN KAHL POSSE COMITATUS RANDY WEAVER VICKIE WEAVER SPECIAL FORCES LINDA
THOMPSON SPECIAL OPERATIONS GROUP SOG SOF DELTA FORCE CONSTITUTION BILL OF
RIGHTS WHITEWATER POM PARK ON METER ARKANSIDE IRAN CONTRAS OLIVER NORTH VINCE
FOSTER PROMIS MOSSAD NASA MI5 ONI CID AK47 M16 C4 MALCOLM X REVOLUTION CHEROKEE
HILLARY BILL CLINTON GORE GEORGE BUSH WACKENHUT TERRORIST TASK FORCE 160 SPECIAL
OPS 12TH GROUP 5TH GROUP SF
PC.IGN has posted a decent
sized writeup of Daikatana, which is based on the author's experience at the
recent ION press reception. There's a rundown of each episode, a lot of details
on the gameplay, and even some new screenshots for you to look at.
Epic's Tim Sweeney made an update to the Unreal
Technology Page, with some thoughts on the new Windows 2000 RC2 - and he
likes it. According to Tim, the localization features of Windows 2000 will make
international versions of Unreal easier to make, since it's all done using Unicode
(which Unreal uses as well). Thanks to Frans
for the tip.
Eidos'
FTP Site has posted four movies from their upcoming game Tomb Raider: The
Last Revelation. The movies show off both the PC and Playstation versions of
the game, and are available in both large and small versions. Thanks to Frans,
who's mirrored the PC movies at 3DGamers.
AGN3D
has posted an interview with Timothy Gerritsen, Human Head's business director,
talking about his background in the industry, and some questions about their
Unreal 2 engine title of Viking glory, Rune (thanks Frans).
According to Gone Gold (who tends to
know about these things, hence the name), Septerra Core, the console-style PC
RPG that's being published by Monolith has gone gold. Expect it to arrive in
stores soon.
AVault
has posted a patch for Acclaim's third person action title Shadow Man, which
fixes an annoying bug that would throw some users back to the desktop after
launching the game.
Frans sent this along yesterday, but somehow both myself and Blue managed to
forget to post it... Gamecenter
has posted a preview of Crusaders of Might and Magic, a new 3D action/RPG game
set in the Might and Magic universe, complete with screenshots.
3D Palette
interviews Steve Theodore talking to the Valve Software modeler/animator
about his work on their team-based first-person-shooter, Team Fortress 2.
GamePower's Omikron The Nomad Soul
First Look is online with a preview of Quantic Dreams' upcoming third-person
action game. Thanks Outcast Central.
In addition to a rundown of the game, a pile of screenshots and a copy of the
gameplay movie, the piece also offers conversation with Quantic Dreams founder
John Cage about the game.
Raven's Rick Johnson updated his .plan with some pointed comments on why there
will likely be no Mac ports of Raven's upcoming Quake II-engine Soldier of
Fortune, or their Quake III-engine Star Trek: Voyager--Elite Force. Here's the
deal: Just had a management meeting, and the topic of Macs came up. We
haven't had any support from Macintosh at all to do ports, haven't received any
equipment, and they won't even do us the courtesy of returning emails. So this
is starting to look like we just won't be doing any Macintosh ports, which
includes our Quake3 engine game Star Trek: Elite Force. Macintosh has typically
been one to ignore the gaming scene, and it appears that they still haven't
changed.
Official Imperium Galactica II. Homepage
has been updated with "the latest movie trailer" from this upcoming 3D
RTS. The trailer seems to be presented in some sort of proprietary executable
format. Thanks The Adrenaline Vault News.
A demo version of Unrealty, the
oddball real estate demonstration program that's based on the Unreal engine
has been released, and is available for download. You'll need a retail Unreal
CD to run it, but here's what's contained in the 12 meg download (which does
in fact feature network support): The demo features the full demonstration
level of the headquarters of the Heartland Business Park, a real business park
on Long Island, NY, including an interactive, talking tour guide who leads you
on a seven point, repeating tour.
GameSpot
UK has posted a preview of NovaLogic's Delta Force 2, offering a look at
this voxel powered (and now somewhat 3D accelerated) tactical shooter.
GameSpot
UK has posted ( cough) 105 new images from Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation,
including 7 new images from the CGI sequences in the game. The new images start
on page 21 of their previous Tomb Raider gallery, so jump straight
there to check them out.
The official
Westlake Interactive site has been updated with a status on the Mac version
of Unreal, including word that there will not be any further updates released
in the forseeable future (thanks Tim Tibbetts of 3DFiles).
Here's the whole thing: Unreal 224b7 is the current version of Unreal
Mac, and will be the last update for the foreseeable future.
It has been a very difficult decision, but after over a year of providing free
updates to the Mac community in an attempt to keep the Mac version of Unreal
up to par with the rapidly changing PC version, we have to move on. During the
past year we worked on Unreal updates in the spare time between other projects,
outside of our normal contracts, but this has become increasingly difficult.
Because of changes on the PC side, we have almost completely re-written Unreal
Mac several times since the 1.0 release, even though we were contractually obligated
only to fix Mac specific bugs. We thought each update would be the last, and
would finally allow the game to be played to its fullest. But every time the
Mac version caught up, another patch was released for the PC. And with version
224, the Mac version is now up to the last public version of the PC that it
is possible to update to. We are aware some third party maps only work with
the 225 PC version, but unfortunately we never received the 225 PC code, and
the original PC developer no longer has it (after releasing the PC 225, the
code was modified to a 226 version that was never cleaned up enough to be released).
Unreal Mac is still supported (as it always was) by MacSoft, and they are the
technical support provider for anyone who has questions or problems with the
game. Any email about Unreal sent to Westlake email addresses will only receive
an automated response with this message and the contact information for MacSoft
technical support.
Work continues on Unreal Tournament Mac, which is still scheduled to be released
within a month of the PC version. We are doing extensive testing of Unreal Tournament
to provide the most stable and fun experience possible when it ships. And with
the cooperation of Epic(the original PC developer), we hope that Unreal Tournament
Mac will require few if any updates after it ships.
We hope our decision to suspend maintenance on Unreal Mac and concentrate on
bringing great new games to the Mac will be understood by Mac gamers, and they
will continue to enjoy Westlake products.
RPOV has posted
an interview with Raven Software's Kenn Hoekstra, talking primarily about his
work on Soldier of Fortune, where he's Project Administrator, but also other
subjects, such as his thoughts on hardware, and his transition from level designer
to administrator.
Stomped has posted
an interview with Mike Kulas, Adam Pletcher, Jasen Whiteside, Dave Baranec and
Jason Scott, the head group of designers on Volition's space sequel Freespace
2. The interview contains a number of questions about how the game turned out,
as it was conducted after the game went gold.
IMG Magazine
has posted their look at the new line of iMac computers from Apple, and have
taken a look at how it will be able to handle games. The new iMac DV features
a DVD-ROM in addition to the ATI Rage 128 card that's in all the new iMacs.
Raven's official Soldier of Fortune
site has been updated, and now contains a full list of the voiceover actors
in the game. The cast includes alumni from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as
well as the Terminator films, and Armageddon.
GA Source has
posted an interview with Scott Draeker, the president and founder of Loki Entertainment,
the company behind the Linux ports of Railroad Tycoon 2, Civilization: Call
to Power, and Myth 2: Soulblighter.
FGN Online, who posted
word that Nocturne had gone gold yesterday, has posted a follow-up from Terminal
Reality's Jeff Smith, who says, "I work in house here so I can tell you
for sure we have not gone gold." He does, however, insist that the game
will go gold on its intended date of October 15th.
There's a Nathan Bitner Interview
on Halonews.com talking with the Producer and Creative Developer on Halo, Bungie Software's
upcoming third-person single-player and multiplayer action game. Thanks opiate.
Here is a bit that talks about the single-player portion of the game that addresses possible comparisons to TRIBES: Creating a really finely tuned
single-player game is more of a challenge than multiplayer, where you don't have
to worry so much about AI, balancing difficulty with different player skill
levels, relating a compelling story, etc. As popular as multiplayer is, there
are still many more people who play single player, so in that respect, Halo is
practically guaranteed a larger audience than competing titles.
I have to add that Halo is not just “Bungie’s answer to Tribes”, as many
people have commented. Halo is going to bring aspects of both multiplayer and
solo gaming to the table that no other game has ever seen before. It is fair to
say that both the Sierra series and Halo are going to focus on teamplay when it
comes to the multiplayer environment. However, just a few of the things that
will distinguish the game (and, believe me, there are many others that I can’t
yet talk about) are:...
An update to John
Carmack's .plan offers the latest edition of the id Software lead
programmer's worklog, detailing progress on Quake III Arena. Here goes:
* fixed steady snapshot test
* fixed incorrect 0 ping if past client messages
* fixed loser-disconnecting-at-tourney-intermission sorting problem
* general purpose flood protection, limiting all user commands to one a second by stalling the client, so the commands don't actually get dropped, but are delayed as needed
* replace headnode overflow with lastCluster
* fixed bad extrapolation on unpausing
* fixed player twitch on unpausing
* print client names on loading screen
There are five new screenshots on BZ2.COM showing
off action from Activision and Pandemic Studios' upcoming action/strategy hybrid
sequel. Four of the shots are of land-borne combat, and the fifth shows off some
scenery in outer-space (looking, as they describe it, "like something out
of Homeworld"). Also, Pandemic Studios'
Official Battlezone II Site has a new contest
underway offering prizes for helping to pimp the game.
Computer Games Online
previews Vampire: The Masquerade—Redemption looking ahead at Activision
and Nihilistic's upcoming third-person game of blood-sucking fun. If you're
confused about Vampire's pen-and-paper roots, reading the preview will either
help or hurt, as they offer the following explanation: Now, some
"traditional" pen and paper role-players may immediately mention a
company called White Wolf and its very popular Vampire: The Masquerade
game system. Others, who tend more towards the collectable card market, will
remember Jyhad, a Magic-like game based on White Wolf's vampiric
socio-political structure. And some poor few will recall the wicked stepsister
of this family, a thoroughly rancid Aaron Spelling TV show called Kindred.
However loosely, these disparate properties all tie into a game universe called
the World of Darkness, where vampires rub shoulders with faerie-folk, and
werewolves become the ultimate eco-terrorists.
The Adrenaline Vault
previews X - Beyond the Frontier looking ahead at this upcoming space sim
that's still on the way in the US, in spite of the impression it may be out
already, since there's been a version out in Europe for a while now (not to
mention that X benchmarking tech demo release oh-so-long ago). The preview
describes an open-ended game that allows for differing styles of play: For
example, you know you have to make money -- so, you can become a legitimate
businessperson, buying and selling goods from the many outposts and factories
scattered throughout space and playing for profit within X's fully
functional model of supply and demand. If you're so inclined, you can even
purchase factories and refineries, hire ships to provide it with raw materials
and haul goods, and become a corporate mogul. On the other hand, it's also
possible to operate on the fringes of society, preying on above-board trade as a
bloodthirsty pirate. Or, you can do something in between.
Penny Arcade has posted an
interview with Lee Perry with a fairly crazed conversation with the art director
on Anachronox, ION Storm's upcoming Quake II-engine RPG. The Q&A talks a bit
about the game, and offers a lot of all caps screaming, apparently as part of
the interview's torture theme.
CaliGirl sends word of an online Revenant chat at 7:00 PM EDT (4:00 PM PDT) in
the Eidos Chat Lobby on Mplayer.com. Game
Designers and Producers from Eidos' RPG/Action game Revenant
will be in attendance to answer questions and give away some prizes.
A new installment in GameSpot's Designer Diary for Dark Reign 2
is online, in which "Greg Borrud sizes up the competition and answers some
commonly asked questions about Dark Reign 2." Thanks Frans at 3D Action
Gamers.
Craig from NetGamesUSA sends news of a bug in the ngWorldStats for Unreal Tournament
rankings system he describes as "minor but important." Word is the bug
will be fixed before the weekly stats are reset on Saturday, when they will also
be revealing details behind how the ranking algorithm works and launching a
forum to discuss such things. According to Craig: "We are very open to
players thoughts on the subject and look forward to their feedback in order to
make the system the best it can be when the retail version ships."
3D Spotlight's Unreal Tournament Tweak Guide
is online, offering some thoughts on improving performance by cracking open that
intimidating-looking advanced properties tab and tweaking away.
Thanks Frans at 3D Action Gamers:
There are some questions in this life that we never can answer properly.
Fortunately, the chicken or the egg question about the Rainbow Six game and book
that's gone around the block in this space a couple of times in the past couple
of days is not one of them, as Red Strom Entertainment's Jeff "Mad
Samoan" Wand, modeler/artist on Rogue Spear, sends along what's hopefully
an authoritative explanation of which is the cart and which is the horse here:
The book was based on the game. The original concept for the game was
conceived in a brainstorming session with Clancy. The original idea was that it
be a 3D first person SWAT game, but Clancy threw in the idea of taking it on a
grander scale and giving it an international antiterrorist angle. Some time
later after the brainstorming session, he decided it was such a great idea that
he'd make a book out of it, tie it in with the game, and maybe someday, a movie.
Hopefully starring me.
- Word from the folks behind Voodoo Review is that the upcoming Fall '99
issue (with Battlezone2 on the cover) of this 3dfx-centric gaming magazine
will be its last. Dimension Publishing will be contacting subscribers about
refunding the remainder of your subscription...
- Captured.Com's Editorial To Grapple or Not To Grapple
complains about the planned lack of grappling hook in Q3A CTF, with an
editorial on the anti-hook side of the issue to follow. Imagine
how heated opinions on this subject might be if Q3A CTF were actually
available to see how this all worked?...
- The Info_Design Files
section has posted a utility called StripEmpty for Quake-engine game mod
authors "to remove any key information that is empty." Word is
this will solve "Entity text too long." error messages...
- Computer Games Online
has posted a short list of three cheat codes for Sinistar Unleashed, THQ's
new arcade space shooter...
- PlanetDeerHunter is
underway. No, this is not a parody. The site refers to its own launch as
"long anticipated," though no word as to by whom...
I'm working on day three of a backache, which is no fun... if it persists, look
for me to rename my nick Igor or something similar. I braved the pain to play
some UT today, and found that even a short period of inactivity really costs you
in the ladders, as I played pretty well, but have fallen way down the list
nonetheless. This is bad news for my cohort MrCoffee, who although due out of
the hospital any day now, is still going to be offline as far as gaming goes for
the foreseeable future, as it turns out one of the things he busted was his
mouse hand (removing a lot of gaming from what could have been part of the
bright side of being at home recuperating). Thanks to all who send along well
wishes for him, and apologies for the shock to the couple of acquaintances of my
busted-up buddy who learned of his accident reading about it here (I didn't even
consider that).
Link of the Day: The Pump Room.
Woah! Please make sure you aren't eating when you check out the gallery. And please
don't try this at home (or anyplace else for that matter). Thanks ShanMonster.
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