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Archived News:

Friday, Dec 17, 1999

  

New Voodoo 3 Drivers

3dfx has released new drivers for their Voodoo 3 2000 and 3000 video cards. The new drivers have an updated OpenGL ICD that fixes bugs in various games, as well as issues with some Intel CPUs.

Thief 2 Shots

3dfx Gamers has posted five new screenshots from Looking Glass Studios' upcoming first person title (and the sequel to one of the only games to truly scare the fuzz out of me), Thief 2: The Metal Age.

Messiah Beats Romero

To follow-up on an earlier post, Messiah, the winner of the Daikatana deathmatch tournament has beaten Daikatana creator John Romero at his own game, with a final score of 5 to 4. I wonder if this means we'll be seeing a "Messiah Shrine" on ION's website soon?

Sid Meier's Dinosaurs Revealed

While there have been games with dinosaurs before, designer Sid Meier is taking them into a new, though for him familiar, direction: that of the strategy game. The official site for Firaxis' next game, Sid Meier's Dinosaurs (working title) has been opened, and offers the first insights into the game through the initial installment of "Sid's Dino Diaries". The game will be published by Electronic Arts and the official title will be announced early next year.

Tread Marks Gold

As expected two days ago (story), the tank racing/shooting game Tread Marks by Longbow Digital Arts has gone gold, and should be available for sale through their website in January.

Alice Update

The weekly update of the official American McGee's Alice site brings an image of a new enemy character, the Snark, which apparently lives in the "murk-filled undercurrent of Wonderland's scotopic waters."

Quake III Arena FAQs Updated

The unofficial Quake III Arena gameplay FAQ has been updated again, adding tips and info on Q3DM6 and Q3TOURNEY2, as well as a few other changes. Activision's Quake III Arena solutions FAQ has been updated too, with one more entry.

Daikatana DM Tourney Results

The Daikatana Deathmatch page has the results of today's Daikatana Deathmatch Tournament, which was won by Messiah (here's hoping someone named Daikatana wins a Messiah tourney one day to even the score). Messiah defeated R-Gauss in the final 10-1, and for his troubles will now get to go head-to-head with John Romero to see if he can beat the ION Storm designer at his own game.

Blitz Disc Arena Interview

Eurogamer.net interviews Magnus Bergholtz, co-founder and graphics designer at Swedish developer SouthEnd Interactive, talking about Blitz-Disc Arena, their upcoming multiplayer game. The Q&A discusses working in Sweden, and gets into detail about the recently-announced title, talking about gameplay and the storyline.

New NOP Log Parser

The flashy NOP page has a new version 4 of the NOP log parser that supports both Quake III Arena and Unreal Tournament. The new version adds daily / weekly / monthly stats generation, Q3A bots support, Q3A full and UT full weapons support, as well as more new features and some bug fixes. So many things have changed in the new version that they say you'll probably have to re-install the whole package, since old configuration files won't work.

Rune Screenshot

There is a new screenshot on Unreal Universe showing off Rune, Human Head's upcoming game that will use the Unreal engine to put you in the role of an axe-wielding Viking warrior.

Unreal Tourney LAN Guide

NetGames USA's ngStats for Unreal Tournament LAN Party Guide offers "a step by step list of 'everything you need to know' about how to get ngStats for Unreal Tournament going at your next LAN Party so that it will AUTOMATICALLY keep track of every game, score and ngStats for every player and provide for a permanent post event archive of the party."

Digital Extremes Interview

Games Domain has posted an interview with Digital Extremes president James Schmalz, co-developers of Unreal and Unreal Tournament. The talk covers the history of the company, their involvement with the Unreal series, and what's up next for them. Here's a quote on the latter topic:

GDR: What can you tell us about your "Next Big Thing"? Unreal 2 engine perhaps?

James: It will be a First Person Action game, but with very different gameplay than we have created before. For now, 3d Action games are what we love the most but in the future, after our next game, we may shift focus to something else. Certainly at this point, 3d action is where our skills and interests lie.

As for the engine, Epic is highly enhancing the current engine even beyond that is in UT. This is great for licensees who need the engine to remain current and cutting edge in the coming year. It's got some seriously cool features that are being added that we are very excited about.

Unreal Tournament Memento Mori

Legend level designer Matthias Worch is being productive even in his spare time, and is creating a free Unreal Tournament deathmatch level called DM-MementoMori, an adaptation of an old Memento Mori 2 level he made for DOOM II (a huge add-on fondly remembered by this old DOOMer). The level should be out before X-Mas, and Matthias has four screenshots on his site to show it off.

Devil Inside Interview

One day into the future, GA-Source has posted an interview with Hubert Chardot, writer at French developer GameSquad on their upcoming action/adventure game Devil Inside. As is to be expected from interviews of this kind, the talk examines the story and gameplay of the game, the engine technology, action vs. adventure aspects, and more.

Vampire Update

Activision's Vampire - The Masquerade page has been updated with a new letter from Lucita to Beckett, providing more mood settings for Nihilistic's upcoming third-person action RPG, as well as descriptions of the four new screenshots that accompany it.

Legend of the BladeMasters Screenshots

There are a couple of new screenshots of Legend of the BladeMasters on GA-RPG, showing off more game scenes from Ronin's upcoming 3D action RPG.

Daikatana Chat Logs

The aftermath of last night's Daikatana chat session is showing up online, there is a summary of the festivities on GameSpy.com, and there's an edited log of the session on Planet DAIKATANA. The session talks about gameplay, as well as discussing the recent announcement that the game's release has slipped beyond this holiday season. Thanks Daikatana HeadQuarters.

Wheel of Time Guide Updated

Shadar Logoth has updated their Wheel of Time Arena Strategy Guide, which now features a complete rundown of all the game's offensive and defensive Ter'angreal artifacts (for those unaware, these artifacts are the game's weapons).

UT Add-on Screenshots

Epic's Cliff "Pretty Fly..." Bleszinski sent along a pair of screenshots from Epic's upcoming free map-pack for Unreal Tournament. In addition to our shots, there is also a new shot on Unreality, and another on Unreal Universe. Here's what CliffyB has to say about this:

I'm firing over a pair of screenshots from our upcoming free-release pack for UT full.

At this time there are 6 maps that are ready to go with this pack.

There is a very high likelihood that this pack will also include some Unreal 1 characters that you can play as/against in UT.

When? Soon!

Fake id Chat Log

Multiplayer United Sydney Australia LAN Gamers have posted word that the chat log posted yesterday (story) turns out to have been faked. They express their embarrassment and apologies (along with some frustration), at having been duped, which was apparently the result of someone impersonating one of their sponsors.

Soldier of Fortune Screenshots

There are 14 new Soldier Of Fortune Screenshots on PC.IGN.Com taken in their own "testing laboratory." They don't feel these shots of Raven's upcoming Quake II mercenary game are for the faint-of-heart, however, as they actually posted them along with this warning: "Due to the graphical nature of the following screenshots, viewer discretion is advised."

New GameHost

The GameHost News page has the release of a new version 1.50.0001 of GameHost, the program that "allows you to easily setup, run, and manage most of your favorite network games, including Quake, QuakeWorld, Quake II, Quake III Arena, Hexen II, Half-Life, Sin and Starsiege TRIBES." The new version enhances the program's support for Quake III Arena, though the hoped-for Unreal Tournament support is not yet in, the update describes the difficulties they've had with that.

Tech Bits

MDK2 Preview & Shots

MDK2 Impressions and Screens on GameSpot is a preview of MDK2, the upcoming sequel to Shiny's offbeat action title, based on some face time with the game during a recent visit to the GameSpot offices by BioWare, the game's developer. In addition to their first-hand impression of progress on the game, the piece features some new screenshots. MDK, of course, stands for Mentally Deranged Kittens.

Half-Life: Opposing Force Guide

GameGuide's Half-Life Opposing Force Game Guide is online. The guide offers a Boot Camp and Enemy Guide, a Weapons Arsenal, a Weapons Arsenal (they like that one so much they list it in the index twice), as well as Cheat Codes and Easter Eggs.

Quake III Arena Mapping Resources

Rust has posted version 1.06 of Q3Build, the first front end compiler for Q3Map. I saw there that QERadiant.com has posted a tutorial on the new Curves menu for Q3Radiant. Speaking of QER, the first of RiceBug's On-Line Q3A Tutorials, with an introduction to the Q3Radiant editor. Finally, Rust has also posted a downloadable list of keys for the Q3Radiant editor.

Competitions

The map rotation on the Red 64 Q3A tournament has been set. They are "experimenting with maps that can be used as a standard for professional Q3 Tournament."

Reviews

etc.

Out of the Blue

DNapalm, always on the lookout for the wild and wooly from the world of entertainment, sends along word that apparently Mahir, famed as the Turkish stud, should be appearing on the Daily Show tonight, which leaves you only a short time to invite the friends and neighbors, set up the VCR, and of course, bug your local cable provider to add Comedy Central to your channel choices. Remeber to always be prepared... your 15 minutes of fame might be next!

Link of the Day: Devil Went Down to Dallas on PC Gameworld, an audio file in the vein of one of yesterday's entries in the MailBag. With apologies to Charlie Daniels, John Romero, and Charlie Daniels (who deserves at least two apologies for this one).
Story of the Day: Food Preservative May Fight Superbugs, Study Finds. The only thing that's cooler than a real news story about "superbugs," is one that hails the positive power of preservatives. Science marches on! Thanks DNapalm.



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