Archived News:
Tritin Films' Quad
God, a Quake III Arena movie that was made using the demo/test version of the
game, has been released, and is available
for download at its official site (as well as Damage Gaming). The movie is available in low and high bandwidth
versions, and is in the Windows Media
Player's ASF format.
New Reality Gaming has posted a
brief Q&A with Chris Taylor, the creator of Total Annihilation and the
madman behind the recently announced title Dungeon Siege. Since no information
about the game is being discussed at this time he doesn't reveal anything new,
but he does give some thoughts on working on a RPG instead of a RTS game.
GameSpot News has posted nine
new screenshots from Monolith's upcoming isometric action title Sanity,
which is powered by their LithTech 2.0 engine. The shots are fairly low-res,
but they show off a number of the game's many different characters and locales.
SquareSoft
has posted a free, downloadable version of "Chocobo World" the mini-game
that was originally developed for the PocketStation, and is included with the
PC version of Final Fantasy VIII. As the PocketStation was never released in
the US, PSX owners couldn't play it (although the functionality is there, should
it ever come out stateside), but now it's available for everyone to download
on the official
FF8 PC page (thanks Dre for the tip).
A Focus on Levels has posted an
interview with Iikka Keranen, a well-known community level designer before
making his way into the gaming industry (he's currently at Looking Glass Studios).
Ikka talks about a number of level editing issues, including some general tips
for designers.
Another preview of Final Fantasy VIII has popped up, this time at Game-Guru.net. While not as lavishly illustrated with screenshots as today's earlier preview (see below), the article is based on a beta of the game, and particularly highlights the various improvements made over the previous installment in SquareSoft's long running role-playing series.
Dynamix has posted a
new image showing off the BioDerm Light Carapace model and skin from TRIBES
2 at TRIBES
Players. The BioDerms are a completely new class of character for this sequel,
and the image should give you a good idea of what they'll look like in the game.
John Matthews sent word of his latest shell script released on LinuxGames, which will install the first Unreal game (which was released for Win9x only) on a Linux system with Unreal Tournament, and allow most of the Unreal single-player game to be played with the UT Linux client. Several maps, as well as save games, don't work yet, though.
3DO has posted their support FAQ for Crusaders of Might and Magic, sporting an array of tips and solutions for problems you might be experiencing with their recently released third-person action adventure.
GameSpot UK has posted a
preview of the PC port of Final Fantasy VIII. The text has a pretty good
introduction to the game for those who missed out on the Playstation version,
and they've posted a great deal of new images, including some conceptual artwork,
and plenty of shots of the game's guardian forces and CGI sequences (which really
have to be seen to be believed).
There is a new preview of Command & Conquer: Renegade up on CGO, looking at Westwood's upcoming third-person action game set in the Command & Conquer universe. While the article has no new screenshots, it does offer a fairly comprehensive overview of the game based on a recent build.
Asheron's Call Vault has posted a developer profile of Sean Huxter, lead artist on the massively multiplayer 3D role-playing game. The brief article mainly covers his work on the project, and his gaming and other interests.
Firaxis' official site for Sid Meier's Dinosaurs (working title) has been updated
with a new installment
in Sid's Dino Diaries (thanks GA-Strategy).
This installment has Sid debating whether or not to make the game real time
or turn based, and while no answer is given, pros and cons for both are explained
in detail. There's also some new concept art to gawk at as well.
Damage Gaming has posted ten
new screenshots from Shiny's Messiah, as well as six of project lead Stuart
Roch's favorite previously released images. Messiah is nearing completion, and
should (hopefully) be finished soon.
A post by id Software's Graeme Devine to the
Quake3World.com seems to indicate that Mac Quake III Arena CD key
authentication issues should be a thing of the past (thanks Matthew
Riddle). Here's the poop: Hey.
As of today there should be no more issues with the Mac authentication process.
You do not have to download a patch.
If anyone is still having a Macintosh CD key problem please email me at zaphod@idsoftware.com
and I'll do my best to get things resolved.
Graeme.
Computer Games Online
previews RUNE with the first part of their look ahead at this upcoming game
of melee combat set in the heyday of the Viking warrior. Here's a quote that
includes word from Human Head's Chris Rhinehart on their straightforward manner
for handling puzzles: "There are machines you're going to have to
shut down [in particular on the dwarven level], but you're not going to have to
do a bunch of tiny things to something that you don't know what it does in the
first place." Some of the dwarven machines, for example, will be powered by
goblins running on wheels, which means that you can slaughter the beast to shut
down the machine.
GA-Source interviews Craig Alexander
talking with the general manager of Codemasters’ US development studio, who
have restarted development of their Unreal-engine squad-based tactical simulation (after Sierra cancelled it) that's based on the
adventures of the Navy SEALs. The game is now expected to ship in early 2001.
The Allbots Site has an updated
version of the Allbots mod for Quake III Arena. Allbots will allow you to set up
a Q3A game with more than one user-made bots, which would otherwise cancel each
other out when run together. The new version has code to allow 23 user-made bots
to coexist with the 32 original Q3A bots for a total of 55.
Version 1.1.0 of the Servarena
Win32 front-end for Quake III Arena servers is now available on their newly
relocated website. Servarena offers support for server and console passwords,
FFA, Tournament, Team Play, and CTF modes, automatic generation of map-cycling
scripts, one-button selection of all CTF, DM, or Tournament maps, and more.
A new version 1.0.9 of Q3 Build
on Rust offers the first non-beta release of this program described as the
"first and best compiler front end for Quake3 level design." The new
version includes "all the compiling options and full .aas, bot navigation
file, support."
The Quake3 2k Bash Tourney is accepting
clan sign-ups for an upcoming Q3A teamplay tournament. Word is that this is
"a selective tourney that will host and view every match that takes place
on the ladder."
The Force Clan's
Dork Hunter Contest is another politically incorrect celebration of
dorkiness from "The clan that needs no legs or cerebellums," looking
to highlight the "dorkiest" clan pages on the Internet. Remember,
please, no wagering.
Any question that the holidays have ended should be answered by comparing the
length of this list to the several that preceded it:
I mentioned recently that the routing problem that had many complaining of slow
access to this site had cleared up, which clearly they have for some (me
included) if not all that were experiencing the problem (I believe most folks
never experienced the problem in the first place). Since then, however, I've
gotten a couple of odd "the site is still slow for me" emails, so I'd
like to request anyone having what they believe to be an unusual problem
accessing the site to send along a copy of a traceroute or something to help
make a quick determination if there is some problem of which we're not aware, or
(more likely) just a couple of folks having some of the problems typical of the
Internet (by the way, it's not an indication of a problem once your
traceroute hits a string of time outs at the end, that's just the firewall).
Like I said, the site has been lightning fast for me for a week or more, but
then again, I am in the same area of the country as the server (New York City)
for the first time since 1996 when it was hosted on my local ISP, not that
physical location always matters on the Internet.
Link of the Day: 2000 Uses for Peanut Butter,
following yesterday's theme. Actually they list no less than 2,574 uses. Thanks
gw.
Story of the Day: Sperm survey by mailshot
(BBC News). "A major fertility survey being carried out by researchers in
Edinburgh will see 1,000 Scots agreeing to send samples of their sperm
through the post." Thanks Braindead.
As promised, the new Tread Marks demo is now available for download on the official site. Tread Marks is the tank racing game by Longbow Digital Arts, and the new demo features three maps to race (and shoot) on with three tank types in single- and multi-player. The demo weighs in at a reasonable 22 MB.
Bungie has
announced that they will be broadcasting thirty minutes of new footage from
every day of this week's MacWorld expo in San Francisco. A full schedule is
listed in the press
release, with each day featuring a preview from one of their upcoming games
(Oni or Halo) as well as a brief interview with a staff member and a behind
the scenes at Bungie piece. Look for the first broadcast on Wednesday at
their official site.
More FAQing updates today, as the unofficial Quake III Arena FAQ by SilverStream has been updated with new and augmented questions and their corresponding answers, and also moved to a new home. Additionally, the System Shock 2 FAQ on GameFAQs has been updated with "more stuff" too.
The semi-regular StarLancer Weekly Screenshots
on GameRush have been updated with a new image of a pilot character, a
change of pace from what had previously only been screenshots taken from
controls of various spacecraft in this upcoming space sim from Microsoft,
Digital Anvil, and Warthog.
There's another Digital Extremes
interview on GameFan talking with Everton Richards, a modeler and concept
artist on Unreal Tournament. The Q&A discusses his work on UT for Digital
Extremes, as well as touching on their next project, and offers up some concept
art of a spaceship.
Killer's Map Repository has a
new version 1.2 of MKLog, a Quake III Arena statistics generator. The new
release adds HTML templates to the output options offered by this log parser,
and fixes a load of bugs from the last version.
Skinning 101 has a new
release of the Skinlinker utility for Quake III Arena that creates the .skin
files needed to link the skin image files to the models in Quake III Arena. The
new version allows you to add new skins to existing pk3 files, add extra
descriptions to each skins readme file, and offers improved error correction.
The program still only works with about 10 Q3A models, with the promise of the
config files for more soon.
The Quake Info Pool has
posted some interesting news for those of you tooling around with the recently
released Quake 1 source code. They've posted an e-mail exchange they conducted
with id Software's Dave "Zoid" Kirsch, which confirms that the source
code does in fact contain the previously unreleased GL Quake version 1.0, complete
with a list of changes. Also, they send word that there's a
tutorial for compiling the source with LCC up on Jeff Ford's site.
A new version of DeeP97, a level editor
for Doom that's compatible with the ZDoom, Legacy, and DosDoom ports has been
released and is available for download on
its official site (thanks Jacek Fedoryñski). This new version has
improvements for ZDoom users amongst other changes.
Wired's Vaporware '99 The 'Winners'
is online, offering their annual commentary on software that did not appear
during the year as expected. This year's list, topped by the now aptly-named
Windows 2000, has a pair of gaming entries, as Diablo II is number four, and
Daikatana makes the list at number five, referred to in the article as "still
a gleam in John Romero's eye." On the optimistic side, Unreal has gone on
to be a successful franchise after being the last game to receive this dubious
distinction in Wired's
Vaporware 1997 list.
We've got just the cure for a slow Monday afternoon - a
new edition of our wacky Mail Bag. In this week's thrill-packed installment:
lots of talk about the Quake (1) source code, Q3A mlook, Rise of the Triad,
game music, and naturally much more. Swing
by and check it out.
Epic Programmer Brandon "GreenMarine" Reinhart updated
his .plan with word of a resource for C programming in Unreal Tournament,
suitable not only for mod authors, but full-blown licensees: If you are
interested in C++ programming with the UT open source, please join the
openut-development list at sourceforge. We are getting into some nitty gritty
details that will definitely help programmers get to know the Unreal engine.
In fact, licensees might be interested in joining as well.
You can find the list signup at openut.sourceforge.net
on the root project page.
You got questions? We've got answers in the form of updated FAQs and walkthroughs: There's a new GameFAQs Nocturne
walkthrough on how to successfully navigate TRI's
horror game. Also the GameFAQs Unreal Tournament
FAQ is now online. Also the semi-official
Half-Life Opposing Force Frequently Asked Questions has been updated to
version 2.0. Finally, Part
II of the Wheel of Time strategy guide is up on ShadarLogoth.com.
Talkin' Nasty
With Nihilistic's Rob Huebner on Voodoo Extreme is one of those saucy
Q&A's this time talking with the Nihilistic programmer about work on
Vampire: The Masquerade--Redemption, Nihilistic's upcoming third-person vampire
RPG.
A few updates to classic Quake based on the recently released source code: The Quake Standards Group
has released a small collection of graphical modifications to GLQuake to
"demonstrate some of the nifty new stuff that's being done with Quake. The
showcase feature of this quickly assembled package is SaRcaZm's coloured
lighting." Also, the Quake Info Pool
has released a new version of the Quake source that fixes some bugs as well as
an "enhanced QuakeC with an EndFrame function without breaking
compatibility with older PROGS.DAT." Finally, Wally's Home
has a bug fix from Neal White to allow GLQuake to properly display fullbright
textures like the software renderer does. Word is that Neal's bugfix will be integrated
in the next code release from the Quake Info Pool.
We received a follow-up from John V. Matthews, the author of the script for
Linux Unreal Tournament operators posted yesterday ( story)
to clarify the script's true purpose, which was not accurate as first written
(though it turns out it can be used for that purpose as well). Here's the dope:
As the author of the bash script (for UT Linux + Unreal) you mentioned on
your page, I think I should clarify what the script does. I was curious if, as
had been mentioned before the release of UT, Unreal maps could indeed be played
with UT. Yes, you can play the DM maps that came with Unreal and my script
allows Linux users to set up symbolic links from their UnrealTournament/Maps
directory to a mounted Unreal CD-ROM, thus allowing them to play the original
Unreal maps without actually installing them on their hard drive. The links are
named such that the new maps will show up in UT's in-game map browser.
While this trick could be modified to work with all of UT maps themselves (so
that the UT maps need not be stored on the hard drive but remain on the UT CD),
that's not what my script is for and I thought I should point it out.
Another $100,000 Event for the CPL
is the announcement that in addition to their upcoming tournament in Los Angeles
that will offer 100 grand in cash prizes, the FRAG4 is going to offer $100,000 in cash prizes as well. FRAG 4 is scheduled to take
place at Hyatt Regency Dallas Hotel on October 27-29, 2000 and the online
registration site will be located at www.frag4.com.
The website will go live in April 2000.
- The Millennium
Fashion Awards on 3D Palette offer recognition for user made skins and
models for various games including Half-Life, Quake II, Quake III Arena,
and Unreal...
- DSLReports.com has a whole
bunch of resources for the pursuit, care, and feeding of your high-speed
Internet connection. Thanks Ryan Stotts...
- Toutes les commandes Quake3
is a rundown on Quake III Arena console commands in French...
- Housemarque.com
has posted a new patch for SupremeSnowboarding that updates the game from
version 1.033 to 1.035. Thanks 3DColony.
Well the startlingly slow New Year's weekend has crawled to a close, I hope all
of you who partied had a safe, happy, and healthy celebration. Things are
looking up in my battle against Xaero on Hardcore... I got two frags in one
match! I thought his ability to rail me from the air when I used a jump-pad was
funny until I saw the way he can rail me while he is in the air after
bouncing. Ouch.
Link of the Day: 104 Things To Do With A Banana.
And not one of them the obvious! Thanks Alex.
Story of the Day: Man Raided Homes for Pricey Lingerie, Cops Say.
Thanks Shambler.
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