Archived News:
As promised earlier tonight, the Mac version of the final Quake III Arena demo has been released on the official site.
Here is a local copy of the demo (45.8 MB) with a couple of mirrors.
id Software Designer Graeme Devine updated
his .plan with good news for eager Macintosh owners: Mac demo will be
out tonight. Mac full version is also complete.
Future
of Teamplay on GameProWorld is a four-page feature that examines teamplay,
starting with a bit of history, examining some variants, and as the title
suggests, casting an eye towards teamplay's future. It's an interesting piece,
quoting Valve's Gabe Newell and 3D Realms' George Broussard, though a couple of
facts are a little garbled, perhaps due to a time lag between when the article
was written and published, as it refers to Unreal Tournament as a future
release, expects TF2 by the end of the year, and talks of plans for TRIBES
Extreme, even though it has been announced the game has been cancelled.
The Adrenaline Vault News
reports that Daikatana will not make it out in time for Christmas, quoting ION
Storm's John Kavanagh as saying: "After much effort, we finally have Daikatana
to the point where we can say we have a great game on our hands. Unfortunately,
we are too late for Christmas, but as always, we have put quality first. I
realize this is frustrating to anyone supporting this title, but I'm sure you
will agree it is imperative that we begin building the reputation of Ion Storm
as a premier quality developer."
20 Questions For
Darrin Hart on the Mushroom, is a legitimate interview of the sort
they occasionally run on this usually satirical website. Darrin creates
animations for the lead character and other supporting characters for F.A.K.K.2,
Ritual Entertainment's upcoming Quake III-engine action/adventure game. The
Q&A was conducted in July, but is not very time sensitive, and so does not
really seem dated.
Star Trek: Creative has posted an interview with Eric Dallaire of Presto Studios, writer and game designer on their recently completed 3D adventure Star Trek: Hidden Evil. The article looks back at how the game turned out, the public's feedback, and briefly examines Presto's future plans.
In anticipation of their Daikatana chat tonight ( story), CheckOut.com has posted a brief interview with John Romero, covering his imminent game Daikatana, as well as a few other topics. Thanks Daikatana HQ.
The appropriately named DarkStoneNews.com has some news about the 3D role-playing game, reporting that instead of developing an expansion pack, Delphine will be releasing a new set of quests and their quest editor for DarkStone around the turn of the year. There are a couple of screenshots to show off the editor.
id Software's Robert Duffy updated his
.plan with word that he'll be releasing a patch for QERadiant soon addressing
some common problems (as well as adding an ASE to MD3 converter). Here's the
scoop: I should be releasing an update to the editor soon. There are a
few outright crashes I have fixed and I am looking into some other issues. If
you are seeing stability problems, it is more than likely a driver issue. I
am doing what I can to get these resolved.
We are seeing quite a few reports of fullbright levels when you preview new
levels in the game. If you are having this problem can you drop an e-mail to
tools@idsoftware.com along with your
video configuration and whether or not bringing the console down solves the
problem ( press ~ to bring down the console and see if the level lights ).
We will also be re-releasing the .shader files soon. The .shader files in the
shipping PK3 and the ones I included in baseq3/scripts include a lot of unused
( and in many cases non-functional ) shaders that are left over from the entire
project. We are going to trim that down to the actual shaders used in the game.
'q3data.exe' will also be in the update which will allow you to convert ASE's
to MD3's. This should help getting new player and map models in the mods.
A couple of items that slipped through the cracks in the newsdesk earlier today (anyone got some virtual kit to seal up this virtual desk we have here? err... nevermind :-) PC.IGN has posted an interview on Anarchy Online, talking to lead programmer Martin Amor about Funcom's upcoming online 3D sci-fi RPG. The sci-fi setting means that the traditional magic system has been replaced by something called nano-technology, as this quote describes:
It is true that AO will not have a true magic system but we have tried
to keep the magic element by using nano technology. Players can develop
skills in learning and using nano formulas that control a swarm of small
nano-bots which are everywhere in the environment. Highly skilled players
will have a bigger swarm of nano-bots around them at all times which they
can use to produce direct damage, shields or order them to create items,
etc. The nano-bots can also be used to enhance certain weapons or invade
other players like a virus or parasite.
There's a triplet of new RUNE screenshots on 3D-Unlimited, showing off some (dark) scenes from Human Head's game of third-person Viking combat.
Another RPG interview, as GA-RPG has a talk with Neverwinter Nights producer Trent Oster about the AD&D based role-playing game, which is being developed by BioWare and Black Isle Studios.
More screenshots too, as GA-Source has posted a square nine screenshots of Evolva, the colorful action/strategy game in development by Computer Artworks.
Just in time to perk up a slow afternoon comes this
week's edition of the Blue's News Mail Bag! In this edition are some truly
tasteless (but very funny) letters, as well as the meaning of Bleem, some Blue's
News (and GameSpy) history, and lots more. Hop
on by and take a gander.
The Vault Network has posted a
profile of Chris Taylor, featuring a brief Q&A with the Dungeon Siege
designer and Total Annihilation Creator. As no real information has been announced
about their game as of yet, the questions are all about his background in the
industry.
Q-Workshop-3 has posted an
interview with Paul Jaquays, talking to the level designer about his work
on Quake III Arena, including some specific questions about level design, and
some comparison questions to previous games he's worked on.
During their "tour" of Australia, id Software's Paul Steed and Tim Willits stopped by GameSpot AU for an interview, a somewhat free-form chat about all things Quake III Arena. Among the topics discussed are talking to the bots, features that got chopped, copy protection, the female characters, the inanity of "Trinity", and much more. Here's one intriguing quote about the Bones character:
Tim Willits: The secret character in the game, the one no-one has found
yet, is, well, you know how you can play Bones, well there's the
Fem-bot. That's on this side.
Ed Dawson: Yeah? How do you unlock it?
Tim Willits: Well, it's a secret.
Paul Steed: Yeah we'll put all that out.
CheckOut SpeakOut! is holding a
live chat session with ION Storm's John Romero and Stevie "KillCreek"
Case today at 8:00 PM EST (7:00 CST). The session is referred to as a Daikatana
pre-release chat, and obviously enough, will focus on ION's imminent
era-spanning Quake II-engine shooter.
id Software's Tim Willits and Paul Steed participated in another
spontaneous IRC session that occurred after the Australian launch event the
other day, and Multiplayer United Sydney Australia LAN
Gamers has posted a log of the informal unmoderated chat. One tidbit
mentioned along the way is word that Q2DM1 (The Edge) will be ported to Q3A.
The OnTheWay Quake 2 server utility
page has the release of version 1.00 of the Quake III Arena version of this
front-end that makes it easier for a server operator to set up a Q3A server,
offering automatic level rotation, easy configuration of gameplay and server
options, the ability to save multiple server profiles, and more. The new version
includes a level preview window.
Black Hand of MPU is home of the BH Q3A
Demo Helper, a simple system tray utility to assist in the recording of demos in
Quake III Arena by assigning demos unique names automatically as part of its
one-touch operation.
Q3Logger Homepage
has the debut release (beta 1) of Q3Logger, a freeware utility to parse Quake
III Arena game logs and create several pages of HTML output offering statistical
analysis of the logged games. There is some sample
output from the program here.
The ClanRing Mod Development Home
has the release of CRMod++ 5.1. The new release of this competition modification
for Quake offers some new features like support for up to 10
admin codes (so that you can give different codes to different people, and if a
code leaks you know who leaked it). Included with version 5.1 is DeQuake,
a utility for converting files with extended characters to normal text files (so that you can actually read player "fun" names in the log).
The Webdog page has been updated with the
news that the glitch in the new release mentioned yesterday ( story)
has been cleared up, and that a fixed new version of this website watchdog
utility is now available.
MPU Tournament Registrations
are underway, offering Australian Quake players a chance to compete in a four on
four team tournament this weekend. In more competition-related news, The Online Gamers Association
(OGA) is now accepting entrants from outside of Europe.
Epic's Brandon "BlueMarine" was in New York yesterday appearing on the
Pseudo Online Network, so loonyboi and I
managed to hook up with him for dinner last night to catch up on what he's up
to. It's not really worth sharing how we got to this moment, but at one point in
the conversation, loony made up an example off the top of his head suggesting that yesterday was the eighth anniversary of the release of the
first Commander Keen game by id Software. This struck a familiar chord in me, as
I've been poking through the year-old archives recently for various reasons.
Sure enough, after looking it up, I can verify that yesterday really was the
eighth anniversary of the release of a Commander Keen game (actually the second in the series). loony swears
he didn't know, making that one freaky episode of psychic phenomenon/weird coincidence,
or whatever you want to call it.
Link of the Day: Just Who
is That Rotund Man in the Red Suit? On the lookout for unsavory Santas. Hey,
this is not a horror of these modern times... remember the first Santa in
Miracle on 34th Street was a drunk. Thanks Jim.
Story of the Day: Catholics go modern to revive the traditional.
"...the Archdiocese of Newark is going to announce today a modern
promotional campaign that will include a major billboard campaign and, of all
things, a toll-free number that will be answered by a priest." Thanks
BrainDead.
Bonus Story: Bank
Robber Botches Own Getaway, the story of "...a bank robber who botched
his own getaway by locking his keys inside his running car..."
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