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Archived News:
Raven's Rick Johnson updated his .plan with a status report on the Soldier of
Fortune demo, which is sounding pretty imminent: The Demo is currently in
final release testing (i.e. a 2nd QA group who has never touched the product
before hammers on it for a day). They came across one crash bug, which we've
identified and corrected. They are now verifying the fix. The demo would have
been out tonight or early Thursday morning if it wasn't for this last minute
bug. In other words, very soon... Bake me an SoF!
GameSpy 2.19 Shareware
on FilePlanet is the shareware release of version 2.19 of this server
browser, for which the registered version came out last week. New to the new
version is full Quake III Arena support and full BattleZone II support.
Monolith's Jason Hall updated
his .plan with word that programmer Mike Dussault has moved to Valve
Software. Here's the lengthy update, which includes a bit on how this shouldn't
impact LithTech2 development too badly: I would like to congratulate Mike Dussault on his recent acquisition
of a new position at Valve!
I have worked with Mike for nearly four years and it is very tough to see him
move on, but I'll be the first to admit that the opportunity that was presented
to him was very much in his current area of interest - so it was definitely the
right move.
I'd like to clearly state for the record that LithTech would not be where it is
today without Mike's incredible talent and effort. He has helped to build a
great and highly skilled engine team, and his personal efforts have been nothing
short of spectacular over the last few years.
I am proud to have worked with him from the beginning, see him learn and grow,
and now spread his wings and meet new challenges...hmmmpphh, it kinda makes me
feel old though...
Mike we will miss you, and you know where the luv is. You have done a great job
of making sure your "baby" will flourish and continue to grow.
Now - to help alleviate any future gossip or rumors regarding Mike's departure,
here is his "All Monolith Personnel" farewell e-mail. I share it with
you (unedited) because it says it all so succinctly:
-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Dussault
Sent: Sunday, January 16, 2000 2:39 PM
To: All Monolith Personnel
Subject: farewell
Dear Monolith,
The time has come that I must leave Monolith. I have received an offer from
Valve Software that is extremely difficult to refuse. I will be staying at
Monolith for one week (until January 21st) to finish my current tasks, then I
will be going over to Valve. My Monolith email address will be setup to forward
mail to me at Valve, and I'm more than happy to provide any engine help that I
can.
It should be stated that Valve came to me - I never would have sought a job away
from Monolith. Monolith is one of the best game companies I've ever encountered
and it has been great to me. The past 3.5 years I've been here have been some of
the best years of my life, and I had no complaint that would have caused me to
leave. It's simply that Valve offered me an exorbitant amount of money to go
work there.
The timing for my leaving is very fortunate for several reasons:
· We have recently gotten some great programmers onto the Lithtech team who
will be able to take over my work.
· All of the features in Lithtech2.0 are virtually complete. The remaining work
entails bug fixes and optimizations (although I'm sure Kevin Francis and Jeremy
won't restrict themselves to that!!)
· About 95% of the engine is in various people's heads at Monolith. A year ago,
this wasn't the case so it would have been very difficult for people to move it
forward if I wasn't there.
I will greatly miss everyone from Monolith. It's hard to imagine there being a
more colorful group of people anywhere else. I'm very glad Valve is in the area
so I can stay in touch. I look forward to seeing the kickass games Monolith is
working on come out.
If you have any questions, concerns, or things you want me to do before the
21st, please drop me an email or come by my office.
Farewell, Mike D
....Mike, you will be sorely missed...
Good luck in your new adventures!
Your friend,
Jace
The NewMod homepage has the latest version 1.9.2 of this Quake III Arena utility that "can create a new source code project (mod) from an existing project which will compile into the mod's proper
folder in your Q3A folder." This release includes a new backup command and a CompileMod utility to build your mod from anywhere on your path, and the author says it will likely be the last release "until someone decides to port the code to other OSes or make a GUI version."
The latest update to ION Storm's
Daily Informant has a rundown of the Daikatana team, with each person detailing
what they've been working on as the game wraps up. Most of them seem to be working
on crushing those last few bugs, and Romero says he's been working on finalizing
the multiplayer game.
Westlake Interactive updated their
news page with the status of the upcoming 405b patch for their Mac port
of Unreal Tournament. Here's the scoop: The 405b (b is just an internal
version number, it doesn't stand for Beta) Mac update for Unreal Tournament
is currently being worked on, and will include all of the fixes from the PC
405 as well as several Mac specific changes. We hope to have all of the changes
integrated and tested with in a week or two, so we can release it.
The current 400 version of UT Mac works perfectly well with 402 and 405 PC servers,
so you can still keep playing UT on the hundreds of Internet servers while we're
working on 405.
Among the Mac specific fixes we've implemented already are:
- Fixed a bug that caused custom skins & maps to not auto-download when
joining a server.
- Added some extra code to the RAVE driver to boost performance on newer AGP
Rage 128 cards.
- Added an option for dedicated servers that will detect if the server has stopped
accepting connections (which can happen after 2 to 10 hours of running). If
the server sees this has happened, it will relauch itself with all settings
entact.
- Fixed remote web administration code, you can now change settings, kick/ban
players, and even type directly into the server console of a Mac server all
from a standard web browser.
Lionhead's official Black &
White homepage (actually, the site's in color, but...oh, never mind) has
posted ten new
screenshots from this upcoming genre-busting "god game" (thanks non).
TheMasquerade.org has posted a
new screenshot from Nihilistic's Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption, which
they say shows, "Christof decapitating a szlachta." I have no idea
what a szlachta is, but it sounds like something my Grandmother might call me.
![=]](/miscimages/smiley4.gif)
Volition has revamped the official Summoner website, releasing a boatload of new screenshots of their upcoming 3D RPG, as well as some new concept art and a new soundtrack MP3. Summoning some related news, Inside Mac Games reports that the game will be ported to the Mac for a scheduled Fall release.
Federation HQ has posted a brief interview on The Rift, with Trushwave's founder James Thrush giving a rundown of the features in their upcoming 3D space-based RTS. In related news that also fits into this space, there are three new screenshots of The Rift at GA-Strategy.
Monolith has
announced that Hyperion Software, the company behind the Amiga and Macintosh
ports of the LithTech Engine, has been contracted to port the technology to
the Linux OS. The first game to benefit from this will be Shogo: Mobile Armor
Division, although other titles in development, such as Monolith's Sanity, or
Third Law's KISS: Psycho Circus may benefit from this as well. Details are available
in the
full press release.
Well, lookie here, it's a
new edition of the Blue's News mailbag. On time, nonetheless! In this week's
installment are still more guesses at the mysterious number (let's keep flogging
this one guys), beating those pesky bots, an issue with the GPL license, downloading
PK3 files with Netscape, and lots more. Lay
back and take a load off.
CheckOut has posted an interview with Chris Taylor, talking to the designer of Total Annihilation about his new venture Gas Powered Games, and the hybrid 3D RPG-adventure game Dungeon Siege he's working on now. The article also covers a bit of history about games he did before TA, at Accolade.
At a live press conference broadcast
online by ZDNet, Transmeta officially unveiled their Crusoe processor, which
uses the .18 micron process and their own, custom "code morphing"
software based system. The hardware is ideal for laptops, as it uses very little
power, generates very little heat, and actually optimizes x86 instructions on
the fly. Details will be available at their
official site when it opens at 12:00 PST this afternoon. For gamers, the
real highlight of the conference occurred when Linus Torvalds (the "father
of Linux") and Dave Taylor (former id designer) actually did a live Quake III Arena deathmatch
with one PC running Windows, and one running Linux.
Now there's a novelty: instead of the familiar screenshot-a-day features we see every now and again, Westwood plans to release a new gameplay movie of Nox every day (without specifying for what period). The first pair of 12 MB movies is now online.
According to this
story on AVault, Jay Wilson, former designer at Monolith where he headed
up Blood 2, has been hired by Electronic Arts to work on an unnanounced game.
Expect an announcement Real Soon Now™ as to what the mystery game is.
XQ's Deus Ex Zone has posted an interview with Warren Spector, grilling the lead designer about his 3D action RPG currently under construction at ION Storm. Thanks Vault Network. A variety of topics are covered, including this bit on the overall story and plot of the game:
How important to the overall story of the game will be the path of enhancements and skills, chosen by the player, be?
If enhancements (or augmentations, as we call them) and skills aren't vital to the way Deus Ex unfolds we've done
something very, very wrong! But, remember, there's a distinction (in my mind at least) between "story" and "plot." The
Deus Ex plot -- the sequence of major events in the game -- is going to be the same for all players. Skills and
augmentations won't affect that at all. The story -- the specific, minute-to-minute events that lead to the major plot points
-- that will differ radically, I hope, from player to player. And the skills and augmentations are two powerful tools for ensuring story differences.
There is a preview of KISS Psycho Circus: the Nightmare Child up at Daily Radar, with most of the article actually consisting of an interview with level designer David Namasky, going over the various features in Third Law's upcoming first-person shooter that is inspired by the Todd McFarlane comics.
GameSpot UK has posted one of their sprawling screenshot galleries, displaying 32 new images of Thief II: the Metal Age, along with a brief introduction to Looking Glass' upcoming stealthy action game.
If you don't have enough after that, incite games has another seven screenshots with a brief preview up as well.
There is a new interview on Dragon's Lair 3D online at PC.IGN.com, quizzing producer Steven Parsons of Dragonstone Studios about their upcoming 3D adventure. This sequel to the 1980's game Dragon's Lair is still early into production, but the article contains a fair amount of info, as well as the inevitable comparisons with other third-person action adventures.
Adrenaline Vault has posted half a dozen new screenshots from Earth 2150, the futuristic 3D real-time strategy game in development by Topware, along with some basic info on the premise of the game.
The Mod Shop has the release of
version 2.0b of the Pinger console based interactive game server browser for
Linux. Pinger currently offers support for QuakeWorld and Quake II, with plans
to add support for other games soon.
WOTGame has word of a post to the Official
Wheel of Time Forums by Legend's Glen Dahlgren that says that a patch for WoT is
complete and is now in GT's hands for pre-release testing, so that can probably be expected soon if there turn out to be no problems.
An updated beta 2 of the Decimal
Mod for Quake III Arena is now available, adding scoring bonuses for awards accumulated during the match (don't you wish awards were tallied on the
Q3A scoreboard anyway?) to this mod that rewards damage dealt to your opponents,
rather than frag count. There is also now a Spanish translation of the read
me.
There's a new beta version 2.64 of the FightClub
launcher, which describes itself as the "Swiss-Army Knife" of Quake
III Arena launchers, offering "comprehensive support for listen servers,
dedicated servers, connecting to servers, and automated benchmarking." The
new release features a new map preview window, a player model preview window,
automatic scan for custom maps and player models, support for Q3A point release
cvars, and much more.
A version 0.03 of the Q3A Waradmin Mod
is now available, offering various remote administration options for Quake III
Arena servers, including the ability to have elected admins. They are also at
work on a future release of a custom HUD for Q3A clients.
The SDL Hexen
page has a new version 0.2.3 of SDL Hexen, an unsupported cross-platform SDL
port of Raven's class-based Doom-engine fantasy shooter. Thanks Jacek Fedoryński.
Team 5150 (TRIBES tribe) has the debut
release of TeamStream, their freeware voice communication program "for
extreme game players." TeamStream features computer generated speech for
battlefield sequencing, a powerful commander mode for multiple channel support,
DirectX 5-7 compatibility, "and perfect voice quality modes for
professional teams."
The next GamesCon event has been
announced, slated to be in the Bay Area February 19 & 20 offering gaming
exhibits, a LAN tournament, and a "celebrity challenge." The first Quake III
Arena ladder is open on The 99 cent Value Ladder,
offering Q3A CTF, with plans to add a Q3A DM ladder and a Quake II CTF ladder.
The set up is fully automated, so little user or administrative intervention is
required. GameCreate is the Queensland Gamers League's
new extension of PowerUp Internet's
official Server Creation system,
developed for online gamers in Australia that offers a fully-automated system to
setup, customize, and run your own game server that will run for four hours
before automatically shutting down. Games supported include Quake II (L-Fire CTF
v1.20, Rocket Arena v2.50, and Action Quake2 v1.52), Quake III Arena (FFA, 1-on-1,
Team DM, and CTF), and Half-Life (Counter-Strike, TeamFortress Classic).
WOTGame's Wheel of Time level design
contest offers the chance to win a Voodoo3 3500TV for the best WoT level.
Yesterday's mention of the cold the previous day was a bit premature, as it was 2 degrees
(without the wind chill) yesterday in New York City(!). We've always suspected the
heat was on the fritz to some extent here in the Blue Tower, as it's never
really too warm in the winter, while some New York City apartments can be famous
for their all or nothing heat that can put apartment dwellers in the odd
position of cracking open windows in the winter to ease the heat. However, when
folks from the building came in to do a storm window inspection, and one of
them commented "it's pretty warm in here," I knew our radiators were
doing as well as could be expected. Next stop, the local appliance-atorium, to
pick up a couple of space heaters that promised "instant sun-like
warmth" (that is really what the box says--needless to say we didn't
believe it, or one would have sufficed). I also picked up some long underwear to
boot, which is probably way more than you wanted to know about what's going on
here, except the image of myself sitting here doing the high-tech news in a
genuine low-tech red Walter Brennan union suit (complete with the flap in the
rear), amuses me, so I thought I'd share (just call me Gran'pa Blue). Oh, for
the record, I believe the space heaters may actually be a few degrees cooler
than the actual sun, but it is helping... if it gets any warmer, I can take off
the mittens, which should improve my typing.
Link of the Day: mIRC
Announces 10th Registration.
Story of the Day: An ordinary Dutchman stumbles into African kingship.
Thanks NippleEye.
Bonus Story: Among the Inept, Researchers Discover, Ignorance Is Bliss
(NY Times registration required). Thanks Jeff Magill. This reports "...that
the skills required for competence often are the same skills necessary to
recognize competence," quoting a researcher saying "Not only do they
reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence
robs them of the ability to realize it..."
Image of the Day: The Game Cook
- The Game Patch.
GameProWorld has posted their
guide to Ultima IX: Ascension, focusing more on strategies than a real walkthrough,
so while there are spoilers in here, they're easily avoided.
A new beta version 5.2 for Counter-Strike has been released, available in both full install and upgrade files for Windows and Linux. Counter-Strike is a popular counter-terrorism mod for Half-Life. This release has a modified chasecam, fixes various crashing bugs including those in the "de_train" level, and fixes scoreboard bugs.
Ozymandias, the first film
created with the LithTech Film Producer, has been released, and is available
for download at its official site.
The LithTech Film Producer is a completely stand-alone run-time product, and
no game is required to watch the film (which is a reasonable download at only
five and a half megs).
Several readers have sent in this
press release regarding Eidos' slow holiday season, pointing out a section
that says Daikatana has been delayed to "the quarter ended 31 March
2000." This is not an announcement about further delays for Daikatana,
as it had already been announced that the game was going to be released in the
first quarter of 2000, and the first quarter ends, on the 31st of March. If
the game has suffered another delay, no word of it can be found in this press
release.
Nearly a month after the other European patches ( story), Sierra Studios has released the Spanish version 1.0.0.1 patch for Half-Life: Opposing Force for download from their ftp site (685 KB).
Insomniax.net has posted a
brief multiplayer guide to Battlezone II, featuring some handy hints, as
well as some entertaining diagrams for this recently released first-person title.
Steve Pearsall: Live From the Thieves' Guild is an in-depth interview on GamesMania with the project director of Thief II: The Metal Age, the upcoming sneaky action game by Looking Glass. The five-page article covers a lot of ground on the title, including the story (with a separate page containing spoilers), the mechanical technology depicted in the game, the AI, the possibilities of a multiplayer game and another sequel, and much more. There's a bunch of (mostly) new screenshots as well. Here is a bit of speculation on those sequels:
GM: Thief Tournament?
SP: (laughs) Theftmatch? I don't know. We're struggling with the name. We just call it Thief Multiplayer as an in-house title. I'm sure the marketing guys will be able to think up some catchier name than that.
GM: What about a Thief 3 with a single player campaign? I know it's hard to think that far ahead, but should the sales merit, do you have ideas for a third one?
SP: Oh definitely. To tell you the truth the backstory behind Thief was originally conceived as a trilogy. So we actually have design documents and fiction documents already covering Thief 3 that were in part developed both in Thief 1 design phase and in the Thief 2 design phase, and there are elements in Thief 2 to support the continuation of the storyline into Thief 3.
According to this
story at ZDNet, Transmeta, the super-secret company that's working on some
sort of processor code-named Crusoe, will be announcing details of their technology
tomorrow. A statement from the company says that tomorrow will herald, "the
introduction of Transmeta and our new Crusoe processors, the world's first family
of software-based smart microprocessors." Two Transmeta employees of note
are Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, and none other than former id Software
designer and Crack.com founder Dave Taylor.
FVFWorld has posted a
tutorial by Hap, the lead programmer on the original Future vs. Fantasy
mod, as well as FVF: Redemption, and G-Sector. The tutorial deals with compiling
the Quake III Arena game source using Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0, and promises
to be the first in a series.
Epic's Erik de Neve has released a new version of the beta Direct3D patch for Unreal Tournament on the Unreal Technology site. Here is the update:
This second incarnation of the
beta now draws double sided actor polygons correctly - i.e. fixes the mysterious disappearance of the CTF flags! ;-)
As before, to install you need to backup the d3ddrv.dll that is
in your UT system folder and replace it with the new file.
There is a new FreeSpace 2 Guide online at GameFaqs. The comprehensive document provides general tactics, detailed tips on all the missions, and overviews of the weapons and ships in Volition's acclaimed space sim.
Damage Gaming
interviews David Msika, talking with the lead level scripter over at Shiny
about his work on Messiah, Shiny's upcoming third-person game of possession.
Level scripter is not a common job description, which is because of the unusual
way events are handled in Messiah. Here's David's description: Scripting
is the link between the programmer's code, the artist's work and the game, which
pretty much gives full control on the outcome of Messiah. The scripting language
has been developed, and improved constantly, by Messiah's programming team
(Michael 'Saxs' Persson, Torgeir Hagland, and Tony Bennet). Every little aspect
of the game design has to go through scripting in order to make it into the
game. Using C++ functions and visual art (textures and geometry) I can set up
special sequences, script complex situations including a lot of character
interaction, add impressive visual effects, and design cut scenes between the
levels of the game. There are three people on the scripting team; Andrew DeLap,
Joe Virskus, and myself. Scripting is specific to each project, but the logic
remains the same.
GA-Source interviews
Russell Ritchie talking with the managing director of Promethean
Designs about Picassio, their upcoming game that puts you in the skulky role
of an art thief. In an interesting quote, Russell says the game "has a plot
with a twist in it that puts 'The Sting' to shame."
If you are one of those experiencing an "Expected { got (B3)" error
when trying to play Half-Life or TeamFortress Classic online, this is due to a
temporary problem with Sierra/Won.net's network. I.am/Half-Life
sends word of a workaround that can overcome this until the problem is fixed,
which they say should be within a few days. If you get this error, just delete
the Half-Life temp file "favsvrs.dat," and you should be in business.
For more details, see the "What's New" section at I.am/Half-Life
or I.am/TFC (where there are also nine new
maps for download).
The [NME] Homepage has a new
quickie Quake III Arena mod that adds an encumbrance system to the game, where
carrying a BFG causes you to move at 80% of standard speed, scaling all the way up
to the gauntlet which makes you "a veritable human torpedo" moving at
130% of normal speed. The mod is described as a quick hack, but may be the basis
for a future class-based system.
DecimalWeb has the first
release of the Decimal mod for Quake III Arena, which replaces the standard
scoring system with one that rewards you incrementally based on the amount of
damage you deal out to your opponents.
Merc's Teamplay Mod is a small
beta Quake III Arena modification that adds voting rules to Q3A that govern
joining teams, kicking players, and the game's time limit.
There's an article
on Unreal Filmmaking on Machinima.com that goes into the basics of making
Unreal movies, though some knowledge of UnrealEd (or a willingness to acquire
some) is going to be required to put this to use.
The Playing Fields CPL
qualifier will fly the winner of this UK tourney to the US to compete in the
upcoming $100,000 Razer/CPL tournament in addition to their own £1,000 first
prize. Also, the Savage UK
Q3ctf league is now accepting clan sign-ups. In addition to the
registration, there is a survey to fill out to express preferences as to how the
league will be run. Finally, Artificial Intelligence-Bot Challenges
will offer weekly challenges in Unreal Tournament offering specified objectives
under various scenarios on different game types, with the best time to complete
each challenge to win.
- In the latest installment of GA-RPG Mythology with BioWare Corp.,
Designer Brent Knowles talks about the skills needed in becoming a game
designer...
- PC Top Games now has over 500
game-related desktop wallpapers for download and The MeBot Pages
has got seven Unreal Tournament wallpapers and three more from Half-Life,
all in various resolutions. While we're at it, oGL
rules has a Quake screensaver with the Quake, Quake II, and Quake III
Arena logos...
- ThrushWave Technology sends word
The Rift, their 3D RTS, is a first round winner of the Game Developers Conference's
Independent Game Awards. They expect the game to be available "early
this summer," and a playable demo "featuring several missions and
many of the novel units from the finished game" on February 9...
Wow, it's so cold up here in the northeast US that folks are walking around with
witch's breasts in their pockets to keep their hands warm. A Sopranos
anecdote to share before the subject of the show gets a well-deserved rest here,
my sister-in-law has been telling my wife and I for a while that her friend (who was at our wedding)
would be appearing in a few of this season's episodes, but this did not prepare us
for the premiere where it turns out she plays Tony's sister Barbara, which means we had one of the Sopranos sitting
at our table at our wedding(!). Just a good thing it wasn't Anthony Jr., since we
didn't serve ziti.
Link of the Day: YourMom!
Yo' mama jokes in the style of Yahoo! Thanks
Tymetodie. There doesn't seem to be a customizable portal yet... too bad, I like
the sound of my.yourmom.
Story of the Day: Microsoft certificate bug crashes Netscape browser.
Thanks Rabbi Bob by way of PC911.
Bonus Story: Spanish town abandons annual goat-toss.
Basically we'll post any story that touches on the subject of goat-tossing.
Thanks JLF.
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