Archived News:
The just opened Warcraft III.net
has posted a new gameplay movie from Warcraft III, which is actually a compilation
of six movies taken at a recent press conference in Korea. Word is that the
movie contains some battle scenes between the Orcs and Humans, and features
a first glimpse at the new interface, as well as showing off some of the new
skills at your disposal. You can snag the movie on their files page, and be sure to check out their contest page for a chance to win one of those spiffy Orc pewter figures.
Raven's John Scott made another pair of .plan updates to point out a problem in making Soldier of Fortune servers visible on WON, and offering a pair of fixes either of which should resolve the public setting. Check out the solutions here.
Another massive update by Legend's Glen Dahlgren to the Wheel of Time site brings some background info on the release of today's patch ( story), as well as a fix for a problem some are experiencing with the patch, which may "change your movie and music paths so that they no longer look in the right place for these assets, which causes them not to play." Also on offer are the promised Arena levels, Legend's adventures at a launch party, a showcase of several community levels and (did I mention it was a massive update?) even the usual rundown of WoT reviews, and more. Here's the bit about the new Arena levels:
New Places to Go, New People to Kill
Now how much would you pay? Well, that's not all. Along with the features
and fixes and fun of the patch, we're also offering two additional maps:
Kingdom Come (the original map that used to be available only in the demo),
and the Inquisition (a spankin' new, large, ter'angreal-filled deathfest based
on the Whitecloak primitives).
The Legend servers will be inserting both of these maps into our arena
rotations. Although the newly repaired auto-download feature in the patch will
snag them, this puts a drain on the server's bandwidth, impacting performance
for everyone else. Also, the autodownload doesn't actually put the new map
in your maps directory, so you can't examine it in your off-line time. The best
course of action is to download them here first, and be prepared.
Click on the pix to download these bad boys. After you've installed them,
either double click on the files in your WheelofTime/maps directory to explore
(Arena_11 and Arena_12), or join a server with these maps in their rotations
and start playing!
Future Gamer has posted a brief but apparently hands-on preview of Ground Control, using an amusing Q&A format to discuss the various features of Massive Entertainment's upcoming 3D RTS. A couple of new screenshots are included.
Raven's Ken Hoekstra updated his .plan with a list of mirrors for the Soldier of Fortune demo that was released earlier this evening ( story), as well as a link to their demo tech support site:
Soldier of Fortune demo is out! BIG SHOCKER! =)
Here are some download sites:
GameSpot
Stomped
3D Gamers
3D Downloads
FilePlanet
Adrenaline Vault
3D-Unlimited
More mirrors will be added as they show up. For demo tech support, go to
http://sof.ravensoft.com
In related Soldier of Fortune news, programmer John Scott updated his .plan with more details about a couple of video issues with the game.
GameArena.net has posted an interview with Steve Pearsall, talking to Looking Glass' project director about their upcoming stealthy action game Thief II: The Metal Age. The article covers story, gameplay, the engine, and more aspects of the game, which is now in beta and should appear in stores in the early Spring.
Raven's Rick Johnson updated his .plan with some additional notes on the just released Soldier of Fortune demo. Here's the scoop:
Quick Note about Drivers:
If you play SoF on 3dfx hardware, you may experience a few driver bugs. On the DX7 Beta
drivers, when the screen flashes
to indicate you are hit, you may get random colors. Other cards / drivers may experience
complete texturing problems (though
SoF should disable those features in Gl which cause these problems).
NOTE that these bugs are within the 3dfx GL drivers themselves, and are NOT SoF bugs!
3dfx is aware of these bugs, but I'm not sure when they will be able to address them.
Should you need more information on what the demo offers before taking the plunge to download it, then Redwood's Soldier of Fortune Demo Review may prove useful.
As promised, the eagerly-anticipated Soldier of Fortune demo has been released on GameSpot. Weighing in at a hefty 95 MB, the demo contains two single-player and two deathmatch levels, as well as a tutorial and a cinematic level. Soldier of Fortune is Raven Software's mercenary action shooter built on the Quake II engine, and even more than some screenshots we've seen of it, probably rates a parental warning for graphic violence.
German game magazine has posted a brief Halo preview. Thanks halo.bungie.org, who have posted an English translation of the text so that we can spare you the usual Babelfish link. The first, high-res screenshot with the article is new, and the fourth screenshot comes in a much higher resolution than previously available.
AVault has posted two
new screenshots from Red Storm's just-announced add-on pack for Rogue Spear,
titled Urban Operations, showing off two different locations, which are, as
promised, in an urban setting. Also new at AVault are two
screenshots from Deus Ex, which as we reported last Friday ( story),
is in "its final days."
Fisheye
Quake, an oddball modification of the Quake 1 source code to create a pseudo
"fish eye lens" effect, has been released and is available for download
on its official site. There are also plenty of screenshots up if you're the
type that gets nauseated easily. ![=]](/miscimages/smiley4.gif)
Version 2.7 of the Infiltration
mod for Unreal Tournament has been released. There is a warning up, however,
saying that there are still some lingering bugs in this release, so you've been
warned. Infiltration, which was previously an Unreal 1 mod, adds realistic weapons
to UT.
Yak's website has release 2 of Yak's
modified Quake III Arena server browser. Like the recently released ArenaSpy
( story),
this offers a enhanced .dll-based version of Q3A's in-game server browser,
though the second release also includes a VMs version, which the author actually
recommends over the .dll for compatibility with other mods. The source code of
the program, admittedly an attempt to make a version of ArenaSpy more to the
author's tastes, is also included. Additionally, on the subject of both ArenaSpy
and source code, this
page on FilePlanet has the release of ArenaSpy's modified UI code for use by
other mod developers. This is not the code for ArenaSpy itself, which
they plan to make available in the future, but the code for the mouse wheel
(doohickey) support on list control, double click support on list control,
scroll bar control, and more.
Seemingly drawing inspiration from out of the blue, the KeyGrip 2 for Quake 2
page has the release of the pre-release footage of Ranger Gone Bad 3 that
was shown at QuakeCon '97. The footage is available as an 11 MB download, and
the original Quake is required. Appropriate to the occasion, crt points out The Rangers
Files page is still kicking around, if you are interested in checking out
the film-happy clan's finished movie projects that basically invented the art of
the Quake film from scratch. Also on the subject of game-engine cinema, there's
an Ozymandias
designers diary on Machinima.com about the production of this just-released
stand-alone LithTech movie ( story),
as well as part
two of their article on Unreal Film-Making by the director of Arcadia, and an
article on 10 quick transitions that game-engine movie-makers can use.
Dynamix' Tim Gift updated his
.plan with a rundown on what he's been working on of late. It's sort of
a worklog, but it's far more detailed than just a list of changes, and contains
some peeks at what we can expect from Starsiege: TRIBES 2. Some of the changes
include the news that the client-side prediction is complete and that work has
begun on the "wheeled vehicles."
As promised, the version 333 patch for Wheel of Time has been released by GT Interactive. The 1.5 MB patch includes a sizeable number of fixes, listed on the page, and offers the following new features:
There are several new features in Version 333:
- Player ID (point your cursor at a player and see their name). It
works with Disguise, too--moving your cursor over someone who is
disguised will show the correct disguised name. You can turn this
option off from the "Controls" menu.
- A voting system. Players can now vote to restart the server, kick
an abusive player, ban an abusive player, and change a map in
progress. In order for this to work, use the following syntax from
the console:
vote restartserver
vote kick (example: vote kick TheAmazingFoodMan)
vote kickban (example: vote kickban Badaxe)
vote open
The Rogue Spear Retreat has posted an
interview with Steve Cotton, the producer of Urban Operations, the just-announced
add-on pack for Tom Clancy's Rogue Spear (see next story). The interview covers a number of interesting
topics about the add-on, including their "custom mission" system,
which generates an original mission based on the user's preferences, and their
new "defend" mission type.
While it's been known to exist for some time now, Red Storm has officially
announced their add-on pack for Rogue Spear, titled Urban Operations. Here's
a description from the
press release, which has some details: This add-on pack is a counter-terrorist
team’s worst nightmare: an urban setting. In Rogue Spear: Urban Operations,
team RAINBOW now faces its most dangerous missions yet with every stray bullet
putting innocent lives at risk. Due to the public nature of these missions,
the secrecy of the RAINBOW organization is also at stake as the team fights
against the most deadly terrorists the world has ever seen. Luckily, John Clark
& newly appointed intelligence officer Kevin Sweeney will be there to guide
the team through these intense situations.
Urban Operations will include fantastic new spaces with new game types for
each one, all set in famous cities around the world. Players can also look forward
to new multi-player spaces as well as new weapons types and five classic levels
from the original game, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six.
AGN3D has posted an
interview with Raven's Jake Simpson, talking about their upcoming Quake
III Arena engine title Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force. The interview is actually
transcribed from last week's edition of Lilith
and Eve, so if you missed the show (and don't feel like watching it in the
archives) check this out.
New versions of two different Quake III Arena log parsers have been released.
Version 1.3 of MKLog has been
released for both Windows and Linux, featuring a whole bunch of bug fixes and
some new features as well. Also, version 0.92 of Q3Log
has been released, also squashing some lingering bugs. Word is that the next
version of the program will feature client-side logging.
Yumpee sent along a follow-up to his news about compiling Quake III Arena VMs
under Linux ( story).
As he requested, here's a
local copy of the updated files (8 KB), and here's word on what's new:
I've updated the README after replying to a comment in a Blue's News
forum, and checking out some other news:
- I tested my QVMs using the Linux CLIENT. And only cgame.qvm would load.
However it seems that the new qagame.cvm will load and run fine in the same old
Q3A dedicated server for Linux. So, you CAN do some server-side mods. It's just
that the present client (or a listen server) cannot load qagame.cvm or ui.cvm
built from the released source. A URL to the dedicated server news is included.
- You do not need MSVC++ headers. Somebody has put together a set of LCC ANSI C
headers containing only the functions required by the QVM code. It is not hard
to do this by hand also (see the README for details)
- You could also skip using Wine for running LCC and compile a native version of
LCC with a bytecode extension. However, this is not been tested yet. And you
still need Wine for Q3ASM. People in Quake3world forums have reported success
with using DOSemu as well.
A thread called Glenn, since GT is taking so
long on the GT Wheel of Time Forum inspired a response from Legend's Glen
Dahlgren giving an updated ETA on the WoT patch as sometime today. Thanks
Maniac.
Tell Me a Story on loonygames
is a look at the role of the story in game creation, talking with three game
designers who have noteworthy credits in this area, Marc Laidlaw (Half-Life),
Tim Schafer (Grim Fandango), and Justin Chin (Jedi Knight). In addition to the
cover story, loony's From
the Mouth of Madness is titled "Some Thoughts on Game Design,"
highlighting seven titles notable for their storytelling.
A new version 0.5.6.2 of the TecArena front end for Quake III Arena is now
available on the Tectonic page. The new
release now boasts full Q3A support as well as bot support, which can be enabled
via a separate plug-in.
The XSi Roundup is online with the final
results from this weekend's match in Sweden, and all demos are in the process of
being uploaded. The PlanetStarsiege TRIBES
World Championship is getting organized, described as more of an Olympic or
All-Star event, rather than a tribe/clan dealie, and the hope is to get
participants from all over the globe. Finally, the Razer CPL Event
website is online, word is registrations start February 1.
- Coalition for TFC Reform HQ Version 2.0
has a list of changes expected in the next Half-Life patch, one of which
sounds like it will be the network code being worked on for TF2...
- 3D Spotlight's Unreal Tournament Tweak Guide
has been updated...
- Open Quartz on SourceForge Project Info
describes "a project to supply GPL'ed artwork in the form of PAK and
WAD files to create a fully GPL game based around the GPL'ed quake
sourcecode. This includes models, maps, soundfx and textures."...
- This page has info on
how map authors can add the appropriate info to a Quake III Arena map so it
will show up under the game's tiers...
Okay, here are the promised links to Operation Bayshield: FilePlanet
and Machinima.com,
thanks Judas, Brimstone, and all the others who sent them in (FilePlanet was the first place I looked yesterday.
You can even type the filename, op_bays.zip, in the search
box and you get diddly-squat!). My mention of Ranger Gone Bad 3
yesterday inspired the game-movie
loving folk at Machinima.com to send along
a request for a little "Ask Blue's News" along the lines of Ask
Slashdot, so with all credit where it's due to the News for Nerds gang, here
goes: Hugh Hancock of the Strange Company is looking to write a
"Post-mortem" article on RGB3, trying to find out what happened to the
ill-fated film. Hugh is looking for information, background, screenshots, or
whatever you can offer about the film's production, please direct anything you
want to provide to admin@machinima.com.
I'd be interested in reading that story myself, having been around for some of
the filming and aftermath, I get the feeling this one could qualify for the E!
True Hollywood Story.
Link of the Day: Send Elian back to Cuba!!!
That's right... Cuba Gooding Jr.!!!!
Image(s) of the Day: Martin's
Cardboard PC. And you thought your dad was cheap.
There's a
Mac Descent 3 patch on Inside Mac Games that brings the Mac version of D3 up
to 1.3.2, fixing problems with PXO, Parallax's online service, problems with
peer to peer multiplayer, and more. Thanks Descent3D.
There's an interview with Robert Bob White
on Source.Net talking with the design team leader on Deus Ex, ION
Storm's upcoming action/RPG. The Q&A, which is also available en
Français, discusses progress on the Unreal-engine game, and offers four new
screenshots. Thanks Voodoo Extreme.
Uwe Girlich's Demo Specs page has a new version 3.3.0 of the Little Movie Processing Centre, as well as updated documentation by way of the unofficial DM2 specs v1.0.4 and the Recording FAQ v1.1.3. Uwe includes word on how these updates are related to the Quake II Relay project and how that could affect the handling of demo recording in Quake III Arena:
These 3 updates are strongly correlated and show my support for the
Quake II Relay project (http://www.planetquake.com/relay). This Quake II
server modification introduces an extension to the well known DM2 file
format and it was my duty to describe it and support it in LMPC.
This project may show a new direction for the Machinima community. The
modified server stores a recording during the game play in a file (similar
to server recordings). This file can be edited (with LMPC and a text editor)
and reloaded into the server. Now it can be replayed by any client, who
connects into this server. If we can recreate a similar modification for
Qake III Arena, we don't need any reverse engineering of the DM3 demo format
or the network protocol at all.
Epic's Brandon '<what-color-would-you-like-today>Marine' Reinhart updated the Unreal Technology page with some enthusiast words about upcoming mods for Unreal Tournament, and how creating a successful mod could land you a job in the gaming industry if you have the talent and will to pursue such opportunities. Here is an excerpt:
There are a lot of opportunities out there, you just have to drive
yourself. If you've done a Quake or Unreal mod, definitely consider
Unreal Tournament. Everybody at Epic is very open with answering
questions. We won't fix your code, tweak your level, or polish your
art, but we can point you towards resources and we can give you the
tools to educate yourself.
The days of garage game developers are not over. In fact, its a hidden
renaissance. You don't see entire game companies popping out of
nowhere, but you do see a large number of very dedicated people
getting into the industry. So you've always dreamed of making a cool
mod? Go for it. (And hey, do it for Unreal Tournament. You never know
where it will take you.)
SoFCenter has posted the first
part of their ongoing Soldier of Fortune Designer's Diary, by Raven's Eric
Biessman. In this first, brief installment, Eric explains what the past week
was like at Raven, as they were in crunch mode on the SoF demo (which is now
scheduled to be released tomorrow).
The Unofficial Half-Life FAQ has been updated to version 1.23.2000, and is
available for download on its
home page as a ZIPped HTML file. This update contains an overhauled Team Fortress Classic section in addition to other changes.
Tweak3D has posted a pair of new screenshots from Shadows of Reality, the upcoming Unreal-engine game by Nevolution. Earlier reports of new images ( here and here) referred to it as a yet-to-be-announced title, but a little digging in the archive unearthed this story that confirms Shadows of Reality to be the title of Nevolution's cyberpunk 3D role-playing game.
A new beta 2 version of Heretic II Siege is now available, offering a large number of improvements to this class-based teamplay mod for Heretic II, including a new Succubus class, customizable taunts, new models, skins and icons, map and item fixes, and much more.
This story on EvEm.org.au
gives the lowdown on how to restore the long-lost crosshair health function in
Quake III Arena without any files or modifications, simply by using some Q3A
console commands. The downside to the technique is that it involves setting
r_picmip to "0" which needs a pretty beefy system to handle without
too much of a performance hit. However, if you can run the game acceptably using
these commands, it will allow you a razor thin circular crosshair that indeed
gets redder as you lose health.
Unreal Universe Interviews Juan Pancho Eekels
talking with the lead level designer at Digital
Extremes about his work on Unreal Tournament, UnrealED, and an attempt to
pry loose hints about D.E.'s next Unreal-engine game for which he's heading up
the level design team.
The aGSM website has a new version
2.33c of aGSM (alternative Game Server Monitor), a freeware Win32 program for
finding and monitoring LAN and Internet game servers. The new release adds
support for 13 more titles, and aGSM now features support for 33 games,
including Quake III Arena, Unreal Tournament, and Age of Kings (the full list can
be found on this page). The new
version also features 100% customizable HTML output, loads of GUI improvements
and bugs fixes, and many more new features.
No, that's not the title of some sort of all-male Debbie Does Dallas, it's a
headline for this announcement
that game fans interested in getting in-person first impressions of Sacrifice,
Shiny's upcoming real-time fantasy multiplayer strategy game can do so at GamesCon's
upcoming game exhibition in the Bay area February 19-20, where Dave Perry will
be on hand to show off the game.
Adventure Gamer
interviews Adam Bormann of Sierra Studios about his work as a design assistant
on Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned. The Q&A goes
into the making of the game, the public's reaction since its release, and the
possibility of another installment of the Gabriel Knight series (I keep waiting
for the one where he gets the car named Kitt).
A new version .70 of the Sabaneta
2050 modification for Half-Life is now available. This is a deathmatch mod
that pits a pair of teams against each other in a battle to kill the opposing
team's leader while protecting your own. Among the new features in this release
is a new morale system that boosts players near the team leader, and a new
experience system.
Tharger's Gibs has the debut release
of their RailWars modification for Quake III Arena, where a player starts
with the railgun and infinite ammo, with no other weapons present in the game.
Accuracy and hit streaks are logged, and the server can change how much damage
the rail does. RailWars works with any map, any game type, and can be used with
bots.
The Checkered Flag-Gold Cup Website
has the first beta release of the Checkered Flag-Gold Cup modification for Quake
(1), which, in the style of the classic Quake Rally, and the seminal Quake
Karts, puts you behind the wheel of a large automobile. The new mod is described
as "Quake Rally with better physics, tracks, weapons," and in the
biggest difference from its predecessors, bot support.
A page for NovaWorld's
Delta Force 2 Lock-n-Load tournament is online. Though no dates are listed,
they're very specific about the starting time of 4:20 PM PST--the banner on top
of the page says "Wednesdays," though the graphic also says 5:00 PM
PST, so some clarification may be in order here.
A little foray into history this morning. I was tooling through the news
archive, and I noticed that this is about the one year anniversary of the
beginning of the Blammo project that resulted in our cool searchable news
database. It's also just over a year since first amused mention of Swatch
InternetTime, but it looks like this one hasn't caught on, at least around
these parts. Also, for you real old-schoolers, it's now been over two years
since last mention of Ranger Gone Bad 3 (and that mention was a
joke about its non-existence at that), the ill-fated Quake movie sequel that
would now be as over-budget as Heaven's Gate were it to still be in production
(I think it's pretty safe to give up on this one). To finish on a high note,
however, I'll point out this is about the three year anniversary of one of the
all-time great Quake cinematic efforts, Operation Bayshield... the
unfortunate note on this is I can't find a valid mirror of the movie anywhere.
If I can dig one up, I'll post it tomorrow, like AMC, someone has to try to keep
these classic films from fading into obscurity.
Link of the Day: Lunar Embassy.
It's like The Man who Sold the Moon without having to give Robert
Heinlein's estate a cut. Thanks Lord J.
Story of the Day: Greeks making waves over Sea-Monkey invasion.
Thanks Scott Ames.
Image of the Day: Tom
Arnold Never Dies. Thanks Larry Hastings.
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