Archived News:
An update to EA's Alice Site adds a new
riddle, as well as the answer to the previous one in case your bat-computer
couldn't dope it out. The latest boggler continues the series of riddles to
promote American McGee’s Alice, the upcoming homage to Through the Looking
Glass that will use the Quake III engine. Thanks American McGees Alice Webring.
GA-Source Star Trek Deep Space
Nine interview talks with the folks from Collective Studios
about their upcoming Star Trek: Deep Space 9, a third-person action game based
on the Trek franchise of the same name.
NF proxy support site has an updated
version 0.48 of the Nitro 2 proxy is now available. This version offers support
for Quake, Quake II, Q3Test, and Half-Life, with support for QuakeWorld
planned for the upcoming version 0.50.
3D Rage has posted a
Q&A with Greg Zeschuk, the president of BioWare, talking about their upcoming
third person action title MDK2. MDK, as everyone knows, stands for My Daughter
Karen.
An Interstate
82 Development Update and Screenshots The Adrenaline Vault with no less
than 15 screenshots from the first 11 missions from a beta of Activision's
upcoming sequel to Interstate '76, which is powered by the
same 3D engine used in Heavy Gear 2. Look for them to post a full-blown preview
of the game based on this new build soon.
Vampire: The
Masquerade Design Log on the Vault Network offers a designer diary from
Nihilistic's Ray Gresko, giving the lowdown on progress on Nihilistic's upcoming
Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption. Part one of his diary is titled "Origins
of the Masquerade," which goes into the background of the game and
Nihilistic. Saw that on PC.IGN.com
where they've posted a Vampire screenshot that looks familiar: I believe it was
previously published.
There's an Elite
Force Interview on 3D Nexus offing a conversation with Michael Gummelt,
programmer at Raven Software about his work on Raven's upcoming Star Trek
Voyager game, Elite Force, which uses the Quake III engine. The questions were
sent off to project leader Raven's Brian Pelletier but were apparently more
appropriate for Mike to answer.
There are new version 1.0b3
Beta 2 Voodoo3 Macintosh OS 8.x Beta Drivers on 3dfx Gamers. The new drivers
feature bug fixes to 2D acceleration code among other things. Word on the beta
drivers is "They are primarily intended for use by programmers wishing to
develop applications utilizing the Glide API on the Macintosh platform. 3dfx
will not offer end-user support nor warrant any hardware used in association
with these drivers." Thanks Colomb.
Pandemic's official Battlezone
II site has been updated with this week's screenshot of the week, as well
as two new units: the ISDF and Scion Turret. If that's not enough for you, PlanetBattlezone
has posted three new screenshots from this first person strategy game.
The newly redesigned 3D
Unlimited has posted five new screenshots from Monolith's LithTech 2 engine.
No specific game is named, although my guess is that they're from Monolith's
LT2 title No One Lives Forever (working title).
PC.IGN has posted a preview
of Volition's 3D role-playing game Summoner, the first RPG by the developers
of the Descent series. The preview is loaded to the hilt with screenshots, giving
a good look at the title.
3D Unlimited
has posted eight screenshots from The Collective's third person Unreal engine
game, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - The Fallen. Some of them look familiar, but
either way they are impressive enough to warrant a look.
AliensvsPredator.com
will be conducting an interview with Fox Interactive's David Stalker, the producer
of Aliens vs. Predator, and they're soliciting questions from fans. If you're
interested in participating, swing over to their site and make your voice heard.
- Leadtek has announced that
their WinFast GeForce 256 card will be available in a separate version with
Double Data Rate RAM. This version will be priced $100 more than the standard
board (thanks Tweak3D).
- ChipTesters
has updated their weekly hardware price guide, which features a full list
of processors and their prices.
- 3D Unlimited
Reviews the Matrox G400 video card.
Thanks, as always, to Frans for most
of these.
After the Smurf-colored guy pointed out Next-Generation's typo in referring
to this here site as "Blue's Clues" yesterday, we received a deluge
of mail about the children's show of that name. We are all quite aware of Blue
the Dog and his wacky adventures...some even think they're modeled after our
own Blue (okay, so maybe those people are delusional...but around here, who
can tell the difference?). A
follow-up post at Next-Generation last night corrects the typo, which blames
the mistake on their just receiving Humongous Entertainment's newest Spy Fox
title, which of course, is called Blue's Clues. Worry not, those responsible
for the error have been sacked.
Link of the Day: Tom
Hall vs. The World. Yes, I know it's been a link of the day already...but
dear lord, he actually won (thanks Mike "D3" Lovell). I have
the sinking feeling that the end is nigh.
After a few false starts, the third Nocturne AVI has been released, and is
available for download over at GameSpot.
Thanks to MeccaWorld,
who also have a mirror of the 24MB ZIP file up on their site.
GameSpot
has posted a new, multiplayer enabled demo for Mechwarrior 3. This demo has
three mechs, two new multiplayer levels, and a single player mission too (thanks
Ant).
A version 1.2 patch for Descent 3 has been released, and is available for download
via the game's auto-update feature (thanks Steel). The patch fixes a whole bunch
of bugs, as well as adding the following new features: - Reduced network
traffic in multiplayer games by not sending position packets for dedicated servers,
dead players, and observers.
- Additional Pentium III enhancements: motion blur on robots and powerup sparkles.
- Under Linux, service mode (invoked with -service) now works like a true service.
- Secondary weapon fire packets are now sent relialbly.
- Added support for EAX 2.0.
- Changed the controller (joystick) code to use by default the Windows API.
Version 1.0.0 used the Windows API, but 1.1.0 used DirectInput. To use DirectInput
under 1.2.0, use the "-directinput" command-line option (which does
the same thing as the
"-alternatejoy" option.) DirectInput should be used with joysticks
that don't work with the Windows API, such as the Wingman Interceptor and other
multiple-hat sticks.
As Morpheus said, unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is... but
fortunately, the Matrox Graphics
Drivers Home can tell you exactly where to find the new version 5.3 drivers
for Matrox accelerators. Here's the deal on the new release, which includes a TurboGL dealie that should be of
interest to gamers: In addition to providing excellent Direct3D
performance, the 5.30 driver contains a full ICD for use with all Matrox
Millennium G200 as well as all Matrox G400-based cards, across all platforms
running on Microsoft Windows 95 or 98. The full ICD’s solid OpenGL performance
will be further optimized on a continuing basis with performance enhancements
and increased support for high-end OpenGL applications.
In an effort to offer Matrox Millennium G400-based game enthusiasts an immediate
performance increase in four popular OpenGL game titles, the Matrox 5.30 driver
also includes an additional ICD, named the Matrox TurboGL driver.
The Matrox TurboGL driver provides Intel Pentium III and AMD Athlon system users
with impressive performance increases over the previous driver release. Gamers
can expect a 19 percent increase in Quake II™ and 31 percent increase
in Quake III Arena™ from Activision/id Software; a 31 percent increase
in Half-Life™ from Sierra Studios/Valve Software; and an astounding 116
percent increase in Unreal™ from GT Interactive/Epic Games. To attain
such high levels of performance, the Matrox TurboGL driver makes full use of
Intel’s Streaming SIMD Extensions and AMD’s 3DNow! instructions.
Games, applications and systems that are not supported by the Matrox TurboGL
driver will use the full ICD by default. The appropriate drivers will be used
automatically, and do not require the user to manually configure any parameters.
The official 3D Realms
site has posted an interview with Petri Jarvilehto, project lead on the
Remedy/3D Realms title Max Payne (thanks Frans).
Max Payne is a third person action game that's being published by the Gathering
of Developers.
Westwood's official
site for Command & Conquer: Renegade has gone live. There's several
shots posted, two in-game (which were previously released) as well as two images
of the vehicles and one of the power plant which appear to be new. The shots
are accompanied by descriptions, as well as links to previews of the game.
Raven Programmer Jake Simpson updated
his .plan with more on the Apple/Raven saga, which seems to have taken a
positive turn, as they have a G3 to use (but no compiler) making the possibility
of Mac ports of Soldier of Fortune and Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force more
likely. Here's the deal: So, this Apple thing. I would urge all who've
been following this to read Rick Johnson's .plan update
for the full scoop on that.
The practial upshot of all this wrangling is that Raven now has two G3's, that
came to us from Apple via
Activision (one of them doesn't work though!).
We took a look at the Heretic II mac Port, and it looks pretty damn good
actually, identical for the most
part to the PC version. Which is the point I guess. :) When it'll get released I
can't say - its not my
call.
Anyway, since we have these machines, we are going to attempt to build a mac
Star Trek : Voyager - Elite
Force version. However, we do want to make it clear that while a Mac version of
this game is on the cards,
we don't want to make any promises that we end up not being able to keep. With
what we've done to the Q3
codebase, putting in single player and all the modifications we made, it may
make building a mac version of
Voyager a lot of trouble. I realise that Q3 is supposed to have cross platform
compiliation built in, but
since non of us here have that much experience with the Mac OS, and the
extensiveness of all the changing
and addition of code we've done, we are being cautious at this point.
Suffice to say, we have apple hardware - thank you Jim Black - and we are
definitely exploring the Mac
port option for Voyager.
Now all we need is a mac compiler. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?
One thing I'd like to add on this subject before we bring it to a close is the
emails I have received over
this issue from the Apple Mac community. To a one they have been courteous,
helpful, and full of positive
comments. I knew that 99% of the apple community were good and decent people,
but it's always nice to have
this re-inforced by unsolicited emails.
If your bored, take a trip around JAKEWORLD!
The TRIBES Players site has posted the version 1.9 patch for Starsiege TRIBES is now available as both an
update for version 1.0 or for version 1.8. Thanks Frans at 3D Action
Gamers. Here are local copies and lists of mirrors for the
patch to update version 1.0 (767 KB), and the
patch to update version 1.8 (385 KB). The patch is described as fixing, "some server side bugs".
Gamers Extreme has posted their full
guide to System Shock 2, which boasts a complete walkthrough, as well as
rundowns of every item, weapon, cheat and monster in the game. Of course, this
is loaded to the hilt with spoilers, so don't even think about reading it if
you don't want to ruin your experience.
GameSpot UK,
already well known for their posting well over 100 screenshots from Tomb Raider:
The Last Revelation, has decided to turn their function keys on Legend's Unreal
engine title Wheel of Time. There's over 100
screenshots up, as well as word that they should have a hands-on preview
of the game up sometime next week.
AVault
has posted an in-game MPEG movie of Mythic Entertainment's Spellbinder, a combination
RPG and first person shooter. The game uses the NDL NetImmerse engine, which
was utilized in Prince of Persia 3D.
While I'm fairly sure this was already announced, Well-Rounded
Games is reporting that THQ has acquired a five-year license to make games
based on the Evil Dead movies. The first one is called "Evil Dead: Ashes
2 Ashes" and will be a 3D single-player game with 2D pre-rendered backgrounds
(think Resident Evil). One can only hope the game will feature stolen lines
from Quake, Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Blood, Unreal, and pretty much every game Monolith
has ever made.
A Sin-ful
Movie is the name of an article over at Wired News that takes a look at
the upcoming anime movie based on Ritual's Sin. It's an interesting article,
and is the first place I know of that mentions that the DVD version of the film
will have a complete copy of the game on it (thanks devilbunny).
Gamasutra
has posted an article (which originally appeared in the October issue of Game
Developer Magazine) which has Outrage's Jason Leighton and Craig Derrick looking
back on their experience making Descent 3 (thanks Billy).
No, not "I am the eggman" kind of surreal, the Surreal Software kind,
as The Adrenaline Vault
Riot Control: A Surreal Software Q&A talks with Surreal's Stu Denman
about the Riot engine that runs under the hood of Drakan: Order of the Flame.
The Q&A discusses 3D engines in general, the Riot engine's strengths and
weaknesses, and its extensibility. On the subject of extensibility, at one point
Stu points out that "There will be at least four games in the next two
years that will use Surreal's Riot Engine."
Computer
Games Online's Battlezone II Designer Diary #3 is online with an update from
George Collins, the director at Pandemic Studios, on progress on Pandemic's
upcoming action/strategy sequel, BattleZone II. The update makes it clear that
things are moving right along, apologizing for the delayed diary caused by the
game's crunch time. George goes on to discuss the feedback they've gotten on the
demo, outlining in detail what they're working on to finalize the game, and
throwing in a little plug for their Battlezone2 Ecard
promotion.
John Carmack updated
his .plan with another edition of his worklog detailing his progress on
Quake III Arena. Here's the latest:
* r_primitives 3 path for non-vertex array testing
* specify sex in model animation.cfg file
* proper dropping of failed bot inits
* removed identical pain sounds
* serverTime strictly increasing across levels
* added GL_DECAL multitexture collapse
* windowed mouse on mac
* fixed byte order issue with curve clipping on mac
* made com_defaultextension buffer safe
* fixed levelshot and added antialiasing to image
* don't clear bot names before kick message
* made servercommand sequences strictly increasing across
level changes
* unpause on vid_restart
An update to the Surreal TECH Page
adds some possible help for those having problems playing Drakan: Order of the
Flame because the game keeps asking for the CD even though it's already in the
drive. Saw that on Drakan.Net. The bigger
news is that the release of the editor so folks can cook up their own levels for
the dragon-riding action game is "close." Here's the skinny:
The Drakan Editor is Close
Just finishing up the setup program and README for the Drakan Level Editor
before I take off to Tuscany on Vacation! Woohoo! The Level Editor will be
available for download on this site, and also mirrored on various Drakan Fan
Sites. I am expecting to see some very cool stuff produced from the editor,
especially in the way of multiplayer levels (I see a lot of potential variations
here, including some bigger arenas). Stay tuned...
There's an Anachronox
screenshot on Penny Arcade with a new scene from ION Storm's upcoming Quake
II-engine RPG, apparently part of the payoff for having tortured ION Artist Lee
Perry during their recent interview ( story).
We mentioned this the other day ( story),
but here's the official word, as Septerra Core
Goes Gold is the press release from Monolith announcing that Septerra Core,
the futuristic RPG from Valkyrie Studios has gone gold (off to manufacture).
Septerra Core looks to bring "the anime-inspired art and distinctive
gameplay of Japanese-style RPG gaming to the PC." The game is expected to
ship on October 26.
There's an Exclusive Alien Crossfire
Demo on Gamecenter that offers a playable demo for this add-on for Sid Meier's
Alpha Centauri. The archive is about 24 MB. Also, there's a
Nightlong Demo on PC.IGN.com with a 36.5 MB playable demo of this puzzle
game they say will "remind you of nothing so much as Blade Runner" in
the only post I have ever seen to use the phrase "the Mexican click
dance" to refer to a hyperlink. Thanks Ant.
The -AA- Sniper Tournament
has got over 100 contestants signed-up for this TeamFortress Classic Sniper
tournament. This will be a double-elimination tourney, with separate brackets
for high and low ping players, as well as a special bracket for "those
pesky -AA- guys."
Guess what? Thanks Frans at 3D Action
Gamers... that's what!
- The modestly named Godlike Q3Test guide has been updated on the
newly-relocated GODLIKE Quake III Arena Page...
- Stuck in Homeworld? There are some cheat
codes on Gamecenter...
- James Bas sends word the Oct. 15, 1999 issue of Entertainment Weekly
(Brad Pitt and Edward Norton on the cover) has a three page article on John
Romero and Daikatana...
A whole bunch of readers wrote in asking why on earth Next-Generation would call
this site Blue's Clues in a story yesterday. The answer is I don't know
(attempted humor perhaps?). Of course the idea on the Internet is the name
doesn't matter as long as you get the link right, but they didn't provide a link
either. ![=]](/miscimages/smiley4.gif)
Hey, look at that... speaking of the site's name, we have an anniversary in the
offing! I'll point this out today, since Saturday is loony's weekly episode of
Out of the Loon, but I don't want to let tomorrow pass by without noting that it
will be the third anniversary of this site moving to the bluesnews.com domain,
shedding the old name blue's Quake Rag along the way (though I know some who
still occasionally refer to the site as that to this day). So there. Cake's on
me.
Link of the Day: Work
Well With Others. Truly freaky. Nicely illustrated, to boot. Thanks John
Guajardo.
Story of the Day: Artificial and real nerve cells linked.
One step closer to realizing the dream of the bionic lobster. Thanks Ansai.
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