Archived News:
GameSpot has posted a massive feature accounting the Final Hours of Quake III Arena, a look behind the scenes of id Software as they were finishing up the game last November, as well as a look-back at the entire development period. The sprawling article has many quotes by, and photos of, id's staff sprinkled throughout, and is a highly recommended read.
id Software's Graeme Devine update his .plan with a short word on Churn time, the number of unique players that authorize Quake III Arena in a five-minute period, as well as a humorous account of a series of Y2K compliance tests they have performed on the game. Rather than single out any particular laugh you may get out of this, read the entire update here.
Gamer's Voice has posted a statement from Hasbro Interactive regarding the future of several MicroProse titles that are in development, now that they have decided to close down two development studios. Of note to this here site's audience in particular is the statement that X-COM: Alliance, the first-person action/strategy game based on the Unreal engine, is still on track for a release next year, with X-COM: Genesis to follow in 2001, and the statement also lists military sims Gunship!, Tank Platoon! and B-17 Flying Fortress II and racing title Grand Prix 3 to remain on schedule for releases in 2000.
There is a set of new screenshots from Star Trek: Armada on Star Trek: Creative, showing off more intergalactic gameplay from Activision's Trekkiest of all real-time strategy games.
The unofficial Gameplay FAQ for Quake III Arena has been updated with more general tips and tactics for survival in the deathmatch arenas, as well as more level specific hints.
This week's streak of Soldier of Fortune screenshot pairs continues, as Telefragged has posted their double dose of imagery from Raven's game of mercenary mayhem.
id's Christian Antkow updated his
.plan with a clarification of a common misconception regarding the Quake
III Arena soundtrack: A frustrating part about reading reviews on Q3A,
is how reviewers don't state the correct facts sometimes. 98.2% of the reviews
I've read state that Sonic Mayhem did the background music for Q3A. This is
only 50% true =) There are 12 background tracks in the game. 6 were indeed done
by Sonic Mayhem, and the remaining 6 were done by Bill Leeb and Chris Petersen
of Front Line Assembly / Delerium fame.
If you view the PAK file with WinZip under baseq3/music, you'll see 6 sonic*.wav
tracks and 6 fla*.wav tracks (Some of the FLA tracks were broken up into two
parts for an intro and a repeating loop part)
Dynamix' Tinman updated his
.plan with some thoughts on the cancellation of TRIBES Extreme, as well
as word that he's released a new version of his add-on for TRIBES, Hunters.
Here's what he had to say: This fall has been a bit of a rollercoaster
ride, so I thought it was about time to do another update. The cancellation
of Tribes: Extreme was of course, dissappointing. Being part of the AI team,
we had some great successes with the bots - there were some levels I worked
on and playtested for hours, and am very sorry to see that they can't be released.
But thinking of what we'll be able to do with an extra couple of months - I
can't wait. Tribes 2 will leave everyone with no doubt that concentrating our
efforts on one product, *without* having to cut features because of such "Extreme"
time constraints, will pay off bigtime!!!
On a happier note, an improved Hunters1.3 is now available!
The highlights are:
- Three new missions have been added. PandorasBox by Matt "Ptavv"
Timlin, ValleyOfTheWolf by Tyler "MITTENMAN" Sten, and PathOfDaggers
by Eric "Griffon" Soulvie. Much thanks guys - especially for how much
work I made you all do until your levels got the golden "thumbs up"!
- The official website for Hunters has moved to http://www.tribesplayers.com/tribesplayers/hunters
Much thanks to "Starlord" and "Schnoz" from Datumplane (R.I.P.)
for all their hard work and support!
- When a person has picked up enough flags to break the current record for
that map, an announcement goes out to everyone. Hopefully this will paint a
bullseye on him and make setting a record just a bit harder! :)
- A minor bug fix: for people who call: remoteEval(2048, HuntersFindTarget);
to find a target, if they set themselves an alternate waypoint, it would be
overwritten once the previous target picked up another flag. A new function
has been written to cancel the auto-targetting. Execute: remoteEval(2048, HuntersCancelTarget);
SOF Center has posted an
interview with John "Pagan" Scott, one of the programmers on Raven's
upcoming Quake II engine title Soldier of Fortune. John talks about the few
things that are still to be completed in the game, the perfect hardware setup,
and other SoF related fun.
In somewhat game-related news comes this bit about the Heavy Metal: FAKK 2
movie. Ritual, you may recall, is currently hard at work on a third person action
title (utilizing the Quake III Arena engine) based on the film's characters.
The following was posted to Stay Tooned,
an animation news and information site, regarding the future of the movie:
Since 1998, "Heavy Metal: FAKK2," the sequel to the cult classic,
has owned theatrical distribution rights with Sony/Columbia/TriStar, but now
Kevin Eastman's film will only be aired directly on HBO and then distributed
on VHS/DVD shortly after. The following is a blurb from Mike Dobbs' wonderful
Animation Planet E-Newsletter (which can be subscribed to by sending an e-mail
to mdobbs@javanet.com).
"The story is just an excuse for nasty characters to do nasty things. Although
the movie had been announced as a PG-13 production, this is clearly R material.
I'm no prude, but "adult" material can indeed have sympathetic characters
and wit. When one of the major moments of comic relief is scene of two lizards
copulating, you know the film is in trouble."
The technical sides of the production also present challenges. This film was
animated in studios throughout the world and incorporates both cel and computer
animation. The scenes with characters are cels, while any scene with vehicles
are animated by computer ( with one ill-conceived exception). There's really
no effort to blend the two styles together and the change-over from one to another
is jarring. The computer scenes are actually fairly well-realized and had interesting
designs for the spacecraft. The cel animation, though, is fairly life-less just
a couple of steps above Saturday morning fare with a washed-out color design."
Russian developers New Media Generation have released a test demo of Hired Team: Trial (31.3 MB direct link), the multiplayer-only version of their upcoming first-person shooter Hired Team. This work-in-progress demo features two deathmatch levels and a few weapons from the full game, is playable over LAN and the Internet, and supports Direct3D and OpenGL accelerators. One note is that you need to start the demo via the 'bin/Shine.exe' executable and not from the Start menu, due to a setup error. Since connections to NMG's ftp server are easily saturated, 3D Action Gamers is hosting two official USA-based mirrors.
Delta-Force2.com has posted a new utility called IP 4 DF2, which allows Delta Force 2 players to connect to servers directly through IP (although not from behind a firewall or proxy server), rather than going through the NovaWorld servers, and it can handle up to 10 servers in this release.
Games Domain has posted a brief preview of Deus Ex, looking at the story and gameplay of ION Storm's upcoming 3D RPG. The article is based on a meeting with Warren Spector, and also draws relations to previous games he was involved in, such as System Shock and the two Ultima Underworld games.
GameSpot has posted some preliminary information and screenshots of Turrican 3D, an upcoming third-person shooter in development by German company Rainbow Arts. Turrican 3D is the modern-day remake of a shooter that, according to the story, originally appeared on the Amiga.
There are half a dozen new screenshots of BladeMasters on GA-RPG, showing off new scenes from this upcoming 3D action/RPG in development by Ronin Entertainment, which apparently goes under the full title of Legend of the BladeMasters.
Yet more screenshots, as GameSpot UK has posted a new gallery of Messiah screenshots from Shiny's upcoming third-person action game, as well as a character gallery. According to this news blurb, the game won't be released in the U.K. until early next year though.
Q3A Australia IRC
Chat with Paul Steed and Tim Willits is a log of last night's chat session
with id Software's Tim Willits and Paul Steed, who have journeyed down under to
celebrate the release of Quake III Arena in a launch party in Australia. The log
has a full recounting of Tim's answers to the questions posed by the
participants, as well as a frightening documentation of what seems to be Paul's
oncoming case of Tourette Syndrome.
TeleFragged interviews
James Monroe, talking to the fifth President of the United States about his
more recent work at Raven Software, which currently has him hard at work on
Raven's upcoming Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force, which uses the Quake III
engine to recreate the word of Captain Janeway and her crew (she'll always be
Mrs. Columbo to me).
Raven Software's Eric Biessman updated
his .plan with a rundown on "What's up in the world of Soldier of
Fortune?" Here's the poop: What's up in the world of Soldier of
Fortune?
That's a question that I ask myself from time to time. Luckily, for the most
part the answer is pretty good.
Currently, we are tweaking the playability of the game. We are constantly
gauging if it is fun, if it is challenging, if it is frustrating. I definitely
think that we are heading in the right direction.
The levels are all in a pretty stable condition, but they aren't technically
'finished.' We're at that point in time where we are going through them on a
level by level basis and really tweaking the hell out of them.
All in all, I am pretty happy with where we sit. Sure, we still have a sizeable
chunk left to go, but it's just a hunk of little things, which should make them
easier to crush. Definitely looking forward to getting this out there for you
all.
This page on
AliensversusPredator.Com has the first new screenshot in a series of 12 to
be posted from Fox Interactive's upcoming Alien's versus Predator Gamer's
Edition. The news
section over there has word of a contest where nine winners can take away a
prize pack by naming nine of the new multiplayer levels to be included in the
Gamer's Edition. Also, the Fox folks (try saying that three times fast--just
don't practice in front of grandma) have started their own .plan
files to help keep fans informed on the progress on this project.
New York Post Online Edition
has word that "One of the masterminds behind sexy computer-game heroine Lara Croft has been charged with trying to procure a nine-year-old girl for sex." The report goes on
to say, "Kenneth Lockley, 28, an executive with Core Design Ltd., was
arrested late last week at the Regent's Hotel in London." In spite of the
way the article is phrased, it is my understanding that Mr. Lockley is not
actually one of the games designers, but is rather one of the business guys at
Core. Thanks Hutch.
- Jon Stewart, apparently just milking the opportunity to get publicity here
(hehe) mentioned Quake again last night on The Daily Show,
asking Joan Lunden if she played. Thanks esses...
- PC Fight Club on loonygames
is a feature by Raven's Jake Simpson (who used to work at Midway) on
fighting games...
- Here's the official
press release from SquareSoft announcing plans for the PC version of Final Fantasy VIII. Thanks Savitar, God of Motion...
- Birdman's Lair, where they
continue their firm grip on the SpaceOrb controller, now has a config file
up offering SpOrb support for Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation...
- UK gaming provider ibgames has
announced new monthly flat-rate-based billing...
- XSreality.com is online, a new
site devoted to gaming run by such noted gamers as Sujoy Roy, and FRAG3
winner Hakeem...
As threatened, I posted the holiday logo yesterday. This is indeed the same one
posted last year, done by Walter "2" Costinak. Actually that's not a
logo, it's masthead art -- more on that soon). Thanks to all who sent in their own
holiday variants on the masthead, it's not that they lost out to Walter's
version, as much as his goes up by default, since he's the original artist.
Link of the Day: Coalition to Ban Dihydrogen Monoxide Homepage.
Thanks Aleron. Who knew?
Story of the Day: Singing hamsters threaten Sir Cliff.
Thanks Phil Wheeler.
Bonus Story: 'Tonight Show' guest sues after being hit with a flying T-shirt.
Might as well get some pain and suffering money for listening to Jay's
monologue, too. Thanks Scott "Cyclops" Summerton.
Image of the Day: Office 2000.
Definitely safe from the Y2K bug. Thanks Chris McGuirk.
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