Archived News:
Interplay has released another new movie of Star Trek: Klingon Academy, this time far larger than previous releases at 23 MB, and consequently showing off over a minute and a half of in-game combat footage from their upcoming space-based RTS.
A new postmortem is available at Gamasutra, dissecting Red Storm's tactical squad-action game Rainbow Six. The article, written by designer Brain Upton, relates the creation from concept to release, and examines the successes and shortcomings of the game's development process.
EuroGamer has posted a developer profile of Marcus Whitlock, talking to the Raven programmer about his start in the industry in the UK, making the jump across the Atlantic, and of course his current work on Soldier of Fortune, of which a new CTF screenshot is included.
There are eight new screenshots of O.R.B. on incitegames, offering more visuals of this space-based RTS in development by Strategy First.
3DNews.net has an interview on Neverwinter Nights online, grilling BioWare producer Trent Oster in fifteen questions for which the corresponding answers shed more light on this upcoming online RPG.
Another movie of Nox is now online at Westwood's official Nox site, showing off more gameplay from their upcoming 3D action RPG. And if you'd like to have a look into the future, next week's movies are already available from their ftp server.
Sierra Studios has released a version 1.1 patch for SWAT 3: Close Quarters Battle for download (1.8 MB), fixing several mission ending problems as well as a number of AI problems, and adding a FAQ page (thanks 3DFiles).
The official 4DRulers page
has been updated with word that the upcoming GORE deathmatch demo is now 90%
complete, as well as a brand new screenshot from this first person shooter.
There's a multiplayer
beta sign-up for Star Trek Armada page on WONnet where 1,000 testers will be
selected to put Activision's 3D RTS set in the Star Trek: The Next Generation
universe through its paces. Testers will be selected based on a variety of
criteria, and they will be including International (non-North American)
testers. On this subject, ElWappo of Klingon Academy.com
sends word of an updated Star Trek Armada Preview
on PC.IGN.Com, and some
Star Trek Armada screenshots on GameFan.
A new version of Q3Post, a script
for mIRC that posts the server's IP address and description when you jump into
a Quake III Arena game has been released. This new version adds a few new features,
including the ability to set automatic answers via keywords to questions asked
of you in IRC.
A new version of Servarena,
a config program for Quake III Arena has been released and is available for
download at its official
site (thanks Michael Arnold). This new version fixes "one last bug"
as well as adding the ability to double click to select/deselect maps and a
new text box for the CD-ROM selector.
PsychoNews has posted three,
five question interviews with members of Third Law's KISS: Psycho Circus
team, talking about the maps, art, and AI in this LithTech Engine game. A new piece of concept art is available too, illustrating the BallBuster character.
HazardTeam.de, a German Star Trek: Voyager fansite has posted an
interview with Jeff Dischler, a programmer on Raven's Quake III Arena engine
Voyager game (thanks Voodoo Extreme). The interview is available in your choice
of English or
German. There
are two in-game shots and one concept piece posted as well, although the shots
look old to me (or at least similar to others previously released).
IcarusWeb has posted a
brief interview with ION Storm's John Romero, talking to him about one of
his favorite subjects, the original Doom (thanks to ION's
Daily Informant for the tip). John talks about the various Doom source projects, as
well as his pick for a star in the theoretical Doom movie (and no, it ain't Bruce
Campbell).
Jaakko Keränen has released second network test version of JHexen, his OpenGL port of Raven's Hexen, fixing the networking bugs that plagued the first release, and adding a few more features like choosing the player color.
Epic's Stephen Polge made a post to the
Unreal Technology Page with word that he's updated the Unreal resources
on the site, including a new version of the guide
to running a server, and a new performance
tweaks guide.
Daily Radar has posted a preview of Star Trek: Armada, looking at the upcoming real-time strategy game that puts the Federation, Klingons, Romulans and the Borg in a space that's too small for all four of them. Featuring quotes from producer Marc Turndorf, the article also offers eight new screenshots. In similar vein, there is a preview of O.R.B online at PC.IGN.com, describing a hands-on look at an early build of Strategy First's space-based RTS that goes by the full name of Off-world Resource Base.
Crusoe Chip's Rocky Origins
is an interview on Wired with Dave Taylor, formerly of id Software and Crack dot
Com, who now toils for Transmeta, who, of course, just unveiled their
highly-anticipated Crusoe multi-OS CPU. Thanks Andy. The interview discusses
Crusoe and life at Transmeta prior to the announcement, touching on the contrast
between the (up-until-now) secretive nature of his work at Transmeta after
working at id, "that divulged everything to anyone who cared." There
are also Crusoe previews based on all the newly revealed information on Ars Technica
and HardwareCentral,
and S3 comes to Crusoe's rescue
is a ZDNet article that says "OEM partner answers some of the lingering
questions about the profitability of Transmeta's new chip."
Thresh's FiringSquad
previews Thief 2 looking at Looking Glass Studios' efforts at following-up
on the success of their skulky single-player shooter, Thief: The Dark Project.
There's a Deus
Ex update on Unreal Universe where ION Storm's Bob White gives the latest
developments in the development of Deus Ex, ION's upcoming Unreal-engine science
fiction RPG. The update mentions "as a project approaches its final
days" relating to Warren Spector's freneticism, suggesting work on the game
is rounding into the home stretch.
A new version 0.3 of the Counter-Strike Alias Binder
is available fixing some bugs in this utility that makes it easy to knock out a
proper config for this popular Half-Life modification. Also, this NOTH1NG Interview
talks with Justin "NOTH1NG" DeJong about his work as a map author on
the Counter-Strike project.
A new version 1.6 of the Hand of Quad,
"the click 'n' go Quake launcher" is now available. Hand of Quad
allows you to join a Quake III Arena, Quake II, or Half-Life server simply by
clicking a link on a webpage. The small update addresses a few bug including
"the elusive 'shutdown' bug."
Version 0.3 of Requiem for Quake III
Arena is now available, with both Win32 and Linux versions of this Q3A
update of the popular QuakeWorld/Quake II mod. Requiem offers a bunch of
features, including an off-hand grappling hook, and supports single player, FFA,
team DM, or CTF.
A version 0.2 of the FragLan CTF mod for
Quake III Arena is now available. The mod is not very full-formed at this point,
but does offer the ever-popular off-hand grappling hook (grapple without
switching away from your weapon), which they point out "is too much fun not
to give to all..."
The Q3Logger Homepage
has the beta 4 version 1.1 release of the Q3Logger log parser that offers
several forms of HTML output to help analyze the results of games played on a
Quake III Arena server. One of Q3Logger's most noteworthy features is its
support of Doom-like "killer/killee" tables.
Gamasutra's Cyberspace in the 21st Century
is on "Mapping the Future of Massive Multiplayer Games,"
with a look at one of online gaming's most popular buzz phrases, Massive
Multiplayer RPGs.
The OzUT site has word
that their "Who is Da Man" contest for Unreal Tournament will now be
offering the opportunity to talk to the folks at Epic Games live on the
telephone to pump them for strategy tips and such (without CliffyB's usual
dollar a minute sexphone charges). Also, 20 Weeks Wars
is now recruiting clans for this TeamFortress Classic league.
- CheckOut Games
interviews Dukes of Hazzard Producer Steve Wartofsky, where they learn
that John Schneider and Catherine Bach's voices will not be in the game
because "They had other commitments and weren't able to
participate."...
- The Call
of Cthulhu First Look on Gamers Central looks at this upcoming
Lovecraftian horror game...
- Nomination Fun and Games at the Grammys
points out "For this year's Grammy Awards on February 23, the academy
has updated both its movie or television song and its instrumental
composition categories to include music composed for other visual media,
such as video games or the Internet. The funny thing is, all the nods in
those two categories have gone to music from films. There's not a video game
score or song in the bunch." Thanks Toughguy...
Thanks for all the kind words about the Yahoo Internet Life dealie yesterday,
you all are awfully nice... we'll try not to let it go to our heads (more than
it has already). It wasn't a Blue moon, or anything, but last night was a lunar
eclipse here in the US. Moon Moves Toward Total Eclipse
is an AP article with a shot of the event (which apparently made for the
even-rarer than blue red moon) for those outside the affected area (or if
looking skyward last night just resulted in an eyeful of snow, which was the
case where I am).
Link of the Day: The Beer Witch Project.
Thanks Manx.
Bonus Link: How to
Overclock your SoundBlaster Live! Thanks KaiBosh and Randy Perry.
Story of the Day: IBM offers ThinkPads for -- $1.
Woops! However, unlike some of these e-commerce glitch stories, they aren't
honoring the price. Thanks Ant.
Bonus Story: Hacker Wants To Go to College.
That's right, today's the day Kevin Mitnick will be released from jail. Thanks
Andrew Cruse.
As the Shogun: Total War demo released earlier today doesn't work due to incomplete parts ( story), the cover disk demo from PC Gamer UK has been uploaded and is now available from 3D Gamers as a single 95 MB download.
PC.IGN has posted a Summoner Developer
Diary, featuring Volition's Mark Allender, the game's lead programmer, who
discusses the pathfinding techniques they're using in this 3D action/adventure.
GamePower has posted a preview of Metal Fatigue, looking at the anime-inspired RTS in development by Psygnosis, with the added benefit of an interview with lead designer Jason Hough, as well as a movie trailer with nearly three minutes of cinematic and in-game footage.
Electronic Arts has released a demo of Shogun: Total War in the downloads section of the official site. Shogun: Total War is a 3D real-time strategy game set in medieval Japan, and this "Battle Trainer" demo includes tutorials to the gameplay, and a few small battles to put your acquired skills into practice. The demo comes as a jigsaw puzzle of 11 download files of about 10 MB each, with a batch file to glue them back together, but it is also available on the cover disk of the February 2000 issue of PC Gamer UK (which conveniently dropped into my mailbox today). Update: it appears that the 1st and 9th part are far smaller than the 10 MB of the other segments, so you may want to hold off downloading until this is resolved by EA. Thanks 3DFiles for the heads-up.
More RTS news, as there are three new screenshots of Ground Control on the newly opened Ground Control Center, showing more visual splendor of Massive Entertainment's upcoming 3D real-time strategy title.
TalonSoft has released a movie trailer of Hidden & Dangerous: Devil's Bridge for download (20 MB), showing off a round minute of game footage from the upcoming expansion pack for Illusion Softworks' tactical squad-action game, which is already available in Europe under the subtitle Fight for Freedom.
The official Age of Wonders site has been updated with a version 1.31 patch for the demo and retail versions of Triumph and Epic's fantasy strategy game, as well as an updated full demo download. The major changes mentioned are "improved AI, better multi-player stability, support for 5 languages and some balance tweaks," and a complete list of the fixes and improvements can be found here.
A new version of GLQuake q.a3 has been released on Quake
Engine Resources. This download is an executable only (it requires the full
download). This new version adds the "game" command for mods, and
fixes the "demo crashing bug" in addition to other changes. Also at
QER is a
tutorial explaining how to implement the "game" command within
the engine, as well as the latest news on a project to implement parametric
animation into the engine.
Today's Nox movie is
up, and at 5 meg, it's significantly smaller than the last two. Like all
the movies, it shows off in-game footage, and can be snagged from Westwood's
official Nox site. Look for another movie to be released tomorrow.
Incite Games has posted four
new screenshots from Icewind Dale, an upcoming RPG from BioWare, that utilizes
the Infinity Engine, the same engine that was used to power Baldur's Gate (thanks
A.J.).
3D Realms' Timothy Weisser updated his
.plan with some thoughts on his newly acquired Jolt Cola, but more importantly,
a request for fans to start a "Release the Code" campaign to convince
Ken Silverman to release the Build engine source code. The Build engine
powers such games as Duke Nukem 3D, Blood, and Redneck Rampage, and was authored
by Silverman when he was all of 19 years old. You can find out more details
on Ken's homepage.
The Tachyon: The Fringe
website, which like its namesake game, features the voice-over talents of
cult-favorite Bruce Campbell, has a page
up with info on how to beta test Tachyon, an upcoming space combat game from
NovaLogic. Thanks New Reality Gaming. You
qualify for their interest: "If you live in the greater Los Angeles area,
are 18 years or older, and are available Tuesday, January 25th from 5:45-10:00
pm." Those who are selected will be contacted later this week.
The version 1.04.26 patch for Delta Force 2 that was released Sunday through the
in-game auto-update function ( story)
is now available in downloadable form. The new version adds a new multiplayer
game type called Search & Destroy," and Maagic
warned at the time of the auto-update that this updates the mission editor to
version 1.36 "which removes some features from the version (1.31) that came
with the CD so if you don't want to use the less-complete mission editor, back
up your old files." Here is a
local copy of the patch (5.3 MB) and a list of mirrors.
The All Games Network's Lilith and Eve
play host to Raven Software's Jake Simpson tomorrow to talk about his work as a
programmer on Raven's upcoming Quake III-engine game, Star Trek Voyager-Elite
Force. The action begins live at 7:00 PM EST, RealPlayer,
or equivalent required.
The XSReality
Q3 Qizmo QTV page has the debut release of this Quake III Arena proxy by
Qizmo QuakeWorld proxy authors Zibbo and Perkele. Qizmo QTV allows multiple
spectators to connect to a single proxy and view action on a Q3A server. Word is
the proxy will be used at XSi this Friday.
FGNOnline has posted an
update on the port of Unreal (1) to the Playstation, featuring quotes from
a source at Pterodactyl Studios from the current issue of the Official PlayStation
Magazine (UK). According to the source, the game will be released in November,
and features a more single-player oriented experience, with 45 levels in now,
and more likely to be put in before its release.
Monolithic Illusions has posted an
interview with Epic's Alan Willard, talking to the level designer about
his work on Unreal Tournament, how he got his start, and his current work on
the (free) UT level pack.
The debut release of GameSpy's
ArenaSpy is now available, offering an enhanced version of the in-game Quake
III Arena server browser based on GameSpy technology. The new program offers
enhanced speed and a more complete feature set than the game's internal browser,
though it should be noted that it uses a compiled .dll, rather than the .vms
format that id Software recommends for game mods ( story), which crt tells me is because the server-browser stuff can't be done via .vms.
ArenaSpy is unsupported freeware.
Eurogamer.net
previews PowerPlay looking at the upcoming cross-company networking
initiative recently announced by Valve Software ( story).
Included in the preview are some quotes from Valve's Gabe Newell, and among the
tidbits mentioned is the point that even games that haven't been enhanced
to take advantage of PowerPlay will still reap some performance benefits from
the technology.
An Evolva Update and Screenshots
on GA-Source offers eight new screenshots from Virgin Interactive's upcoming
third-person action hybrid, Evolva, and a development update that says the game
is "well on target for an April release."
A thread titled invisible skin wtf !!!!!!
on the Quake3World.com Forums has inspired a response from id Software CEO
Todd Hollenshead on how to deal with the possibility that someone will sneak a
skin into a Quake III Arena skin pack that will allow them to unfairly hide more
easily (thanks Nathan Fahrenthold). Here's the deal: This stuff has been
around forever. In Quake II, people made models that were a one pixel cube and
tried to get people to download them. If you're afraid of getting a
"cheat" skin as part of a skin pack and aren't willing to check, then
you shouldn't download skin packs.
As far as whether we should "allow" this or not, we can't prevent it
without preventing all custom skins. There's no way to write a program that only
uses the "non-cheating" skins and disallows all of the others. If you
don't want custom skins, you don't have to get them. The game ships with 89
skins and 20+ models. And you can always use cg_forcemodel if you see someone
using a skin that you don't like until you can find it and delete it.
Lastly, you can always contact the skin download sites and ask them to remove
skins that appear to be cheats or at least give you the option of which skins
you want to download.
The Project C Gallery
has been updated with some new screenshots, and Lair of the Vampire's
Project C Interview talks with Larian Studios about their plan to establish
a strong universe as the basis for a series of games, the first in that series
being Project C, an upcoming RPG described like this: "Basically you could
say combat in Project C is a mix of Diablo and Baldur's gate, interactivity is
like Ultima VII, and has a better user interface than all those games.
Additionally, I think the immersion our world gives is really very high."
You may recall Larian Studios as announcing work on an action-rpg called "LMK,"
which has been cancelled, but the reference to that is simply: "We are not
a liberty to comment LMK for a variety of reasons." Also on the Project C
front is Blinkingdot's Project C interview
talking with Programmer Swen Vincke, and Sven also talks with The Vault Network
about the game.
GameWire.Org's
Allegiance interview talks with Executive Producer Joel "Solap"
Dehlin, Lead Designer Rob "Ribski" Girling, and Audio/UI Developer
Kendrick "Tesegar" Shaw about MS' beta space combat game. Also, the
Allegiance Vault has a list of known issues in the beta straight from the
game's developers.
There's a new Earth 2150 Movie on
PC.IGN.Com showing off 90 seconds of gameplay from this 3D RTS. The movie is
in .avi format, and is an 8.7 MB download.
The debut release of Domination-Q3A
brings Unreal Tournament's Domination gameplay type to Quake III Arena (I'll
spare the comments about who is flattering whom since it turned out my crack the
other day about the InstaGib Q3A mod ( story)
ignored the fact that InstaGib began as a Quake II mod). The mod allows you to
play domination on any CTF level, or build your own Domination-Q3 specific
levels. Word is the page is on the move over to PlanetQuake.
Last Man Standing for Q3A
page has the debut version of a Quake III Arena modification that offers classic
last man standing competition where players who are fragged must sit out the
remainder of the match until one combatant remains to be declared the winner.
The Strange Company page
has the release of version 2.98 of the StrangeSaver utility that allows the use
of demos in your screensaver, including demos recorded in Quake, Quake II, Quake
III Arena, Half-Life, Sin, and Heretic II, and the new version now adds the
ability to run any executable as a screensaver.
Red Storm Entertainment, Inc. Announces
U.F.S. Vanguard is the press release announcing an upcoming tactical space
combat game that will put you in command of a capital ship, as opposed to the
smaller attack/fighter craft of most such games.
The QuickTime Download page
has the release of version 4.1 of QuickTime, Apple's "complete technology
for handling video, sound, animation, graphics, text, music, and even 360-degree
virtual reality (VR) scenes."
Please allow me to brush humility aside for the moment and mention that we are
quite pleased, proud, and probably most of all, stunned, to learn that the
January print issue of Yahoo Internet Life, which features their 100 best websites for
2000, has picked Blue's News as their choice for best PC games
site. That's
right, the recognition comes not just for our coverage of our prime focus (action games and shooters in
particular), but for the whole durned genre. Needless to say, this
would not be possible without the world-class support we receive from all of
you, including the word-of-mouth advertising so essential to a site that does
zero outside advertising or promotion. So thanks to Yahoo Internet Life for
the recognition, and to all of you for making it possible. Rest assured we will
do our best to rate such an honor again in 2001.
Link of the Day: SexyMouse International.
CyberSex will never be the same. Thanks MwhahahA.
Repeat Story of the Day: Incompetence is bliss, say researchers.
The story from yesterday, but no registration required. Thanks Larry.
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