Archived News:
The unofficial Quake III Arena FAQ by SilverStream has been updated, sporting yet more information and help on id's game of deathmatch extravaganza. And on a related note, Activision has opened their technical support page for Quake III Arena for Macintosh, addressing various problems one might experience with this recently released version of the game (hit the Go button for the initial list of solutions).
Game-Forge has posted an
interview with Headfirst Productions designer Andrew Brazier, talking to
him about their upcoming game Call of Cthulhu - Dark Corners of the Earth, which
Andrew says they're striving to make, "the scariest game ever." He
also says that the game will be played from a first person perspective with
a full co-op mode available, and they may opt to release the level editor along
with the game.
Bungie.org has posted an interview with Matt Soell, "Hot Air Artist" for Bungie Software, conducted during last week's MacWorld event. The talk addresses a couple of Oni and Halo questions, including the state of network support in those games, as well as an assortment of other topics.
Online commerce site CheckOut.com (funny, didn't think they'd have time to
do anything but make ads) has posted a
brief Q&A with Brandon Smith, Cavedog's communication manager regarding
their recent cancellation of Amen: The Awakening. Brandon says the game was
"50 to 60 percent complete" when they stopped development on it.
A new version of Quake 3 Control is now available on its relocated site. Quake 3 Control is a remote admin tool for Quake-series servers, and the new 1.0.31 beta release includes the first implementation of QuakeWorld support (carrying the "still experimental!" warning), as well as ban list support and a couple of other options.
AVault has posted a
news update with word that contrary to reports floating around late last
week, ASC Games has not closed their doors. They are, however, restructuring,
and have "downsized several departments" according to CEO Steve Grossman,
but they plan to continue development of their Unreal-engine title Werewolf:
The Apocalypse with the same producers.
Machinima.com has posted an interview with Jeff Mills, production lead on Nocturne, the spooky adventure game by Terminal Reality. Done by the cinematic buffs at Machinima, the interview concentrates on the filmic feel of that game, discussing cut-scenes, set design, and the possibilities of creating movies using the game engine. It also includes this bit on the Blair Witch Project game currently in development at Terminal Reality:
Machinima.com: It has been mentioned that
Terminal Reality will be producing a Blair Witch
game. The cinematic technique and style was very
important to the success of the Blair Witch Project-
in what ways will the style of the film translate
over to the computer game?
Jeff: The Nocturne engine is a fixed-camera
engine. Unlike the shoulder-mounted cameras of
BWP, our game will have the same look and
cinematic feel of Nocturne while telling another
story from within the Blair Witch mythology. Our
game is not based on the missing filmmakers.
Four new screenshots from Tread Marks have been posted at its
official site. These new shots show off the combat racing mode, as well
as some of the starting post sculptures.
Raven's Brian Raffel updated his
.plan with word that the Soldier of Fortune demo is currently in QA testing
and should be available soon, as well as the news that they are going to begin
working on a Playstation 2 title in the near future. Here's the scoop: Well,
The SOF Demo is looking VERY good and should pass through QA by the end of this
week. We will keep you posted as to when you will be able to down load the demo
and from what site. The Demo will include one single player level and two multiplayer
levels.
I am also proud to announce that Raven Software will be doing a Playstation
2 title, which will be announce in the near future. We are very excited about
venturing into the console market, particularly on the PX2. We finally got all
of our development systems and they are awesome.
Human Head Studios' Chris Rhinehart sent along an email to follow-up on the bit
posted earlier ( story)
referring to puzzles in RUNE, their upcoming Unreal-engine Viking game. In spite
of my having fun with the puzzle concept in calling it "Slash, Slash, Find a Key, Slash,"
Chris points out that there will actually be no keys at all in RUNE: Just
wanted to e-mail to mention that we have no puzzles in RUNE that I consider
lame. That's one of the big philosophies behind Human Head... everything about
the game should be geared towards the gamer. Meaning, any puzzles that are
"lame" or frustrating or just plain stupid shouldn't make it into the
game. Making game isn't about how devious the level designer can be (and how
many different ways that the designer can instantly smash, pulverize or totally
confuse the player)... it's about making a challenging and rewarding experience
that's fun as hell.
And, there are NO KEYS in RUNE. In fact, we have one scenario where Ragnar finds
a locked door and says to himself "Hmmm, I must have to find a key..."
Then says "Awww...forget it" and kicks the door off of its hinges. :)
There is, however, plenty of that slash slash slashin'...
t-break has posted details
on how to enable true 3D environmental audio in Quake III Arena on SBLive!
based cards. Q3A uses A3D 2.0, but by downloading the A2D files from Aureal
(which were created to allow A3D audio to play via DirectSound 3D on non-A3D
cards) you can get full EAX output. Directions as well as a direct download
link can be found on t-break.
In the largest such pairing of an Internet company with a media giant, AOL,
the world's largest ISP (with over 20 million subscribers) has merged with Time
Warner ( here's
the story on ZDNet). The deal seems to be motivated by Time Warner's extensive
broadband system (and AOL's recently announced WebTV style AOL TV service) but
remember that Time Warner also owns some of the most famous media names in the
world, including CNN, Time Magazine, DC Comics, and the entire Loony Toons library,
and that they recently canned their failed Internet portal Pathfinder. The new
company will be named AOL Time Warner, which is certainly the silliest renaming
since Excite@Home. ![=]](/miscimages/smiley4.gif)
The official Messiah site has a new screenshot of Shiny's third-person action game, which is currently receiving its final shine and polish for a release (hopefully) in the near future.
DoomWorld has word of a new launcher for ZDoom and ZDoomGL, called BloodSplash. This graphical launcher allows you to "start single- and multiplayer games, load WADs, DEH/BEX files, set skill, level, game and EXE (zdoom.exe, zdoomgl.exe)", and even edit bot settings and multiplayer DMFLags.
Don't talk back! You've got questions? They've got answers in the form of new or
updated FAQs, guides, and walkthroughs (and lots of 'em):
The StarLancer Weekly Screenshots
page on GameRush has been updated, but instead of the usual single shot, the
new posts include a pair of in-game screenshots, two pieces of concept art, and
four shots taken from the cinematic sequences in this upcoming space sim from
Microsoft, Digital Anvil, Warthog, and Jerry Mathers as the Beaver.
Phoebus sends word of a pair of posts by Human Head's Mike Werckle on the RuneNews Forums
that emphasize that while RUNE, their upcoming third-person Viking game is primarily very
action-oriented, the game will still contain what are referred to by one poster
as "lame puzzles," though Mike prefers to characterize them as
challenges, saying they "will be very straightforward, part of the
progression of the story, and hopefully add to the experience."
Computer Games Online's
Command and Conquer: Firestorm preview is online with some of their
face-to-face impressions from checking out this upcoming official expansion to
Tiberian Sun that will offer new single player missions and multiplayer options.
- This Daily
Telegraph article describes a four-year Australian government-sponsored
report on the effects of computer games that found "There is little
reason to believe that the activity itself should be a cause for concern and
little evidence that it is a major source of anxiety within the
community." Thanks jackel...
- The new online issue of GA-RPG's RPG Mythology with BioWare Corp.
is by Designer David Gaider who talks about creating personalities for
characters in RPGs when he writes their dialogue...
- X-Maps 2.0 for LMCTF is a new
21 map pack for this still-popular Quake II CTF variant...
- There's an Amen
petition looking to prompt a release of the portions of Amen: The
Awakening that are done so that someone can finish this now-cancelled
shooter...
- Graphtallica Free Textures for Game Designers and Artists
has a new texture pack with 25 textures used in Freeform projects such as
FvF:Redemption and G-Sector that may be freely used with your project...
Ugh, the server is all boxed up again, it looks like the messageboards might be
the culprit--It really looked like we were getting things shaped up, but this
weekend was a nightmare trying to get any scripts to run, and I can only imagine
it will be worse when full-blown weekday traffic shows up. furn just tried
something he hopes will help, but if it doesn't (it's kind of hard to tell in
the wee hours of Sunday night/Monday morning) I will be working on
this until it's solved, and I promise
to work something out ASAP if humanly possible, even if it's some sort of short-term emergency
measure--certainly disabling the messageboards is a logical option at this point
since the bogged down scripts often make posting to them impossible anyway. I am at the end of my
rope with all this, and I can only hope that none of you
are as frustrated as I am at this point, but I completely understand if you are.
Link of the Day: The Archive of Misheard Lyrics.
Thanks MrsBlue.
Story of the Day: Oh Barney! Nude image in sing-along book prompts publisher apology.
"I love you. You love me. And I love pornography..." Thanks nevermelt.
Bonus Story: UK Police floored by wrestling 999.
Thanks Jon "Pilgrim" Taylor.
The Savage UK - Quake TV website
has the debut release of this set of programs that promises to allow the viewing
of Quake II and Quake III Arena matches nearly live as they are played on the
Internet. Quake TV consists of a RocCam program that sends a demo as it is
recorded and sends it to a high-bandwidth server running the RocRelay program
which will distribute it real-time to viewers who connect using the RocStream
client to view a live game. The program is described as very useful for competitions
or tournaments, and a demonstration is promised next week.
Version 1.0 of Q3Post is now available,
offering a combination of an mIRC script and Quake III Arena key bind that can
transmit the IP address and description of the Quake III Arena server you have
joined to an IRC channel. Q3Post can also automatically respond to IRC chatter
that uses your nickname or other keywords with the info about the game to which
you are connected.
There's an Evolva preview
on TeleFragged with a look ahead at this unusual-looking action game from
Computer Artworks. In addition to the hands-on preview, the article also
includes a
half-dozen new screenshots taken at 1024x768 resolution in 32-bit color using a
GeForce 256 card.
A
.plan update by Raven's Rick Johnson gives word of a vote called Ban the Sale of Violent Video Games to Minors
on VOTE.COM, a political polling
site run by former Clinton politico Dick Morris and his wife. The site promises:
"We'll send your vote to your congressional representative, your Senators
and the President," and offers a chance to express whether you feel "These
brutal games are turning our kids into killers," or "Kids need better
parenting, not fewer games."
There's a small Win9x batch file on the odeesoft software productions
page that allows for more than one single player account on a single machine
running a single Quake III Arena installation where every player can have their
own fragcount, impressives, while opening up the tiers at their own pace. Also,
the new Quake3 q3config.cfg repair
page is now online, dedicated to helping you out if you've experienced
problems installing the beta point release patch, which they describe as possibly leaving
you in a situation where "your settings are gone, your previous level
progress banished, and the menu interface horribly broken." Disclaiming
that he "cannot not be held responsible if you destroy your q3config.cfg or
other files," the site's maintainer looks to help do the opposite, and
restore your gamestate to its pre-patched condition if you've experienced such
glitches.
A new version of the FightClub
Quake III Arena game configuration utility is now available as a full 3+ MB
download and a smaller upgrade for users of the previous version. This useful
utility can allow you to launch a dedicated or listen server (with map
rotations, user-defined or random bot lists, auto-kick of bots when humans join,
configurable client and rcon passwords, and more), connect to a server using a
built-in highly-configurable server browser, plus the ability to automate the
running of timedemos in any combination of video/sound configs and demo files
for easy benchmarking.
An updated version 1.1.2 of the Servarena
dedicated server launcher for Quake III Arena is now available, fixing a bug
that caused the program to crash when Nightmare skill was selected for one bot.
They also have a GameSpy tab if you are interested in isolating a list of
servers configured by Servarena.
The required plug-ins to accompany the Hand of Quad
game server access program were not included in the download when the story
about this new utility went up earlier ( story),
but have been added, so if you went by earlier and picked up a copy without the
plug-ins, you can head back and complete your download. Hand of Quad will allow
you to join a Quake II, Quake III Arena, or Half-Life server simply by clicking
a link on a webpage.
The Soldier of Fortune Official Australian Fan Site
has posted eight new screenshots showing off gameplay from Soldier of Fortune,
Raven Software's upcoming Quake II-engine game inspired by the mercenary
magazine of the same name. Like most SoF screenshots, these probably rate a
parental warning for graphic violence.
A post called John Carmack on Coding a Linux IP Stack & Winmodem
on Slashdot is posted anonymously, but professes to be from John Carmack
while honeymooning in Hawaii (hence his missing /. prefs) with a clarification
of his thoughts on the PowerPlay announcement ( story),
specifically refuting the subsequent report that he plans on rewriting the Linux
TCP/IP stack ( story).
Thanks Lawrence Ryan. Again, the post is anonymous, and I have not been able to
confirm that it is by him, but it so smacks of authenticity that I'm willing to
risk assuming it is. Here's a portion of the post:
No way do I intend to rewrite the linux TCP/IP stack.
I had mentioned to Yahn that it would be an interesting experiment to yank all
the networking code (TCP/IP + PPP + serial driver) into user space so some
cross-boundary optimization experiments can be made. I doubt there is any
apreciable latency in the TCP/IP stack, but there might be some scheduling
losses somewhere through PPP and the serial driver. Even if a send packet call
goes syncronously all the way to the serial ring buffer, giving no real
potential for latency reduction, there are still lots of possible experiments
with making decisions based on normally hidden data.
Just like the GLX driver work is Good For Me as a graphics programmer, going
through all the guts of the networking stack would be Good For Me as a
netowrking programmer. I may pursue this, and I may collect some interesting
data, but I seriously doubt it would be any contribution to the standard network
stacks.
I had a long talk with a couple people from Valve about the PowerPlay
initiative, but they couldn't give me enough specific technical details for me
to endorse it. I'm all for improvements in networking infrastructure, but at
this point, there isn't anything actually there, just an intention to improve
gaming. They need to tell me SPECIFICALLY what I am supposed to be endorsing. At
some point, bits have to go into packets and routers need to make decisions on
them. Changes at that level is what I want to hear about, not strategic company
relationships.
The entire
post goes further into "networking things that could be real
improvements."
The new DroneZ Screenshots
on GA-Source show off this third-person action shooter from Zetha gameZ.
Also, there are new Dreamland
screenshots on 3DGaming.Net showing off this tactical combat game in the
works from the folks who created X-Com. There are three
Metal Fatigue screenshots on Gamer's Alliance Strategy showing off this RTS
mecha game, with word on how to see more via their newsletter. Finally, there
are a few
new Art of Magic screenshots on 3DGaming.Net showing off Bethesda's tactical
RPG that will feature spell casting and summonable creatures.
Some assorted space stuff to boldly go: Some new Star Trek Klingon Academy
screenshots are online showing off a few ships and such (thanks Federation.Net)
and there is a new Klingon
Academy movie (direct link) with approximately 18 seconds of in-game footage
in .mpg format. Also seen on Federation.Net
(by way of ATFW) there's an interview with Relic's art director Rob Cunningham
on Relic News, as well as a new Homeworld strategy guide.
Finally, Allegiance Vault's
Stealth Fighter Basics is like piloting for dummies in Allegiance, or
something like that.
Otser's Site has a new version
2.02 of the QRec tool that helps automate the recording of Quake II and Quake III
Arena demos. The new version fixes several bugs, most notably a problem that was
causing lag when recording a Q3A demo.
The first version of the Hand of Quad,
described as the click 'n' go Quake launcher, is now available. Using "clever
monkey-brained™ technology," this freeware system-tray utility
lets you join a server playing Quake II, Quake III Arena, or Half-Life, just by
clicking a link on a website.
The Fragstats Homepage has
a new version 1.09 of the Fragstats log parser that supports QuakeWorld, Quake
II, and Quake III Arena with custom HTML output. Fragstats looks to restore the
original functionality of the QuakeWorld system, which provides player ranking.
Another log parser update, the Q3Logger Homepage
has a new beta 3 version 1.0.2.0 of this log parser that offers Quake III Arena
support. Q3Logger also offers HTML output, and in another back to the future
feature provides Doom-esque killer/killee tables.
KReGGeRs'
Q3A CTF Binder is a new utility designed to help the Quake III Arena CTF
player create a config file that can include a couple of handy aliases, and five
switchable offensive and defensive communication keys. The program is said to be
especially helpful to newbies, though they may balk at the programs need to be
run under a DOS box. Similarly, KReGGeRS'
CStrike Weapon Binder can help make a config file for Counterstrike for
Half-Life.
This
page on TeleFragged has the latest GlQuakeFX Win32 binary update from the Quake Standards Group,
which now adds colored lighting and interpolation, as well as several bug fixes
addressing problems with lighting on many popular video cards.
The XS Reality Razer Invitational
website has gone live, with more on this event that looks to assemble 12
world-class Quake III Arena players in Stockholm, Sweden for some deathmatch and
sauna. Here is the player list, directly from the site: "From the US we
have CPL 1999 Champion Wombat, his brother and top 10 CPL seed Vise, Frag 3 3rd
Place finisher Fatality, and the Quake 2 masters Makaveli and Immortal. From the
European side, Truegamers Invitational winner and runner up Lakerman and Kane,
Quake 2 EDL Champion Shub, recent LAN Arena 3 duel winner DOOMer, Logitech ECTS
Challenge champion Timber, CPL Danish Qualifying runner up Insane, and last but
certainly not least, Zibbo from Finnish superclan Z."
- The Rogue Warrior website is
for teams looking for players, and vice versa, for various games, including
Delta Force 1 & 2, Rainbow Six, Unreal, Quake II, and Quake III Arena...
- Descent Network Team has
posted Pyro GX model (V 1.2) of the Descent series, (a new one, not the
original Parallax version)...
- FvF World's FvF2 FAQ has been
posted with the questions and corresponding answers about the upcoming
sequel to the popular Quake RPG mod...
- Painful Detail has
posted five new custom voices for Unreal Tournament, as well as a tutorial
on how to create your own...
As loony mentioned yesterday it was Frans' birthday, although he failed to note
that yesterday is also the 65th birthday of Elvis Presley, which inspires me to
offer the king some well-wishes on the occasion, wherever he might be. This is
an interesting coincidence, since Frans' Dutch homeland seems to be the type of
place that might appeal to Elvis, with Amsterdam's coffee shops, window shopping
for companionship, and, of course, all those French fry stands all seeming to
fit in. My suspicions aroused, I got out the pen and paper, and sure enough,
Frans P. de Vries is actually an anagram for Ervis Pransdf, which of course, is
how Elvis Presley sounds when you say it with a mouthful of peanut-butter and
banana sandwich, which is Elvis' favorite food. Coincidence? I can't see how it
could be.
Oh, by the way, when I said a while back that I was sure I would make up for
a string of Out of the Blues about servers and stuff here that I would make an
extra rambling update to make up for it one day, so don't say I don't give fair
warning.
RIP
Don Martin. Thanks Randy Sims.
Link of the Day: The Empty Bowl.
Thanks Uncle Duke.
Story of the Day: Police say Florida man swallowed 55 crack pipes.
Thanks GreenMarine and Shawn Wallis. No word if this actually qualifies as a Guinness
world record or anything.
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