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Archived News:
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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