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Tuesday, Jan 25, 2000

  

New Mac Voodoo Drivers

3dfx has released new MacOS drivers for their Voodoo 2 and Voodoo 3 based cards. These new drivers fix problems with Rainbow Six and Quake III Arena.

MDK 2 Shots

GameFan has posted six new screenshots from BioWare's MDK 2, taken from a beta build of the PC version of the game. MDK, as everyone knows, stands for Missiles Don't Kill (otherwise known as Famous Last Words).

Thief II Preview

Although labelled as a review, Jumbo Games has posted a brief preview of Thief II: the Metal Age, Looking Glass' upcoming stealthy action game (thanks Vault Network). The article includes a Q&A with the development team and several new screenshots from the full version of the game.

Nox Gold

Westwood sent along the announcement that Nox has gone gold and should be in stores by February 15 in North America, and February 18 around the world. Nox is their isometric action-RPG in a fantasy setting with a single-player game and several multiplayer options.

Soldier of Fortune Demo FAQ #2

HQH51, also the headquarters of the unofficial Half-Life FAQ, has posted an unofficial Soldier of Fortune FAQ as a zipped HTML file, providing detailed info on the game and its demo, as well as troubleshooting and performance tips.

Newer Jumbot

Just when the version 1.0 release earlier today was described as "probably the last in a long time" (story), here comes version 1.1 of the Jumbot for Half-Life at Rich's Project Warehouse. Thanks Fulgore. This versions fixes the "gauss fire-through-wall code" that was disabled in the 1.0 release, and tweaks the tripmine avoidance code.

On Soldier of Fortune Configs & Speeds

Raven's John Scott updated his .plan again on some issues and changes with Soldier of Fortune configs, and a request for feedback. Here's the deal:

A common issue that people seem to have is that there are too many keys. We have only really added two (the zoom in and out), which are not necessary (you can hold down the alternate fire to zoom in).

We will be putting in several predefined configs and I am pushing for 2 new keys that emulate the use and strafe left/right functionality in one keypress.

There has been much discussion internally, but what other ideas do you netizens have ?

Email: sof-demo@ravensoft.com

In related SoF news, Rick Johnson updated his .plan to mention three demo servers that are running at different player speeds, as promised earlier today (story):

I set up 3 servers here.
Raven-Speed-0.60 - player speed set at 60%
Raven-Speed-0.70 - player speed set at 70%
Raven-Speed-0.75 - player speed set at 75%

This is completely setable by the server operator, so in the end, you can pick whatever speed you desire...

Summoner Update

The weekly update to the official Summoner site brings the opening of a character gallery, where the Brass Golem character can be viewed as a traditional image, or in its 3D modelled glory using the MetaStream plugin. Also on offer is a fresh screenshot of the week.

SWAT 3 Patch Issues

The version 1.1 patch for SWAT 3: Close Quarters Battle that was released last week (story) turns out not to be meant for public distribution, as this post on the SWAT 3 message board explains, and a new version 1.2 patch should be released soon. Thanks Hastur.

Deus Ex Update

ION Storm lead designer Harvey Smith updated his Witchboy's Cauldron site with the current status of the development of Deus Ex, their upcoming 3D action RPG (thanks Vault Network). Summarized as "fixing bugs and tuning game-play," there's a rundown of the current tasks of programmers, artists, designers and writers on the team, and a bit about the overall feel of the game.

X-COM: Alliance Shots

Telefragged has posted three in-game, and three conceptual images from X-COM: Alliance, the Unreal-engine title in the X-COM universe. The concept images show off a character, a location, and a weapon, while the in-game images show some of the game's teammate interaction.

Voodoo3 2000/3000 Drivers

3dfx' Jason Wong sent along word that new Voodoo3 2000/3000 WHQL Win9x Retail Drivers v1.04.00 have been released. The 6.8 MB download includes updated Glide and OpenGL ICD's, as well as various bug fixes.

TRIBES 2 Q&A

TRIBES Skinners Anonymous has posted a Q&A with Barry Drew, the lead 3D artist on Dynamix' TRIBES team, talking mostly about the artistic side of the game's development, including some details on their usage of the PNG format for the skin files in TRIBES 2, and other techie stuff.

Soldier of Fortune Demo FAQ

Today's barrage of Soldier of Fortune news continues, as Raven has released a demo FAQ on their Soldier of Fortune support site, offering help with video and driver issues, the use of the console, a collection of past .plan updates, and other tips.

Cthulhu Interview

Another Call of Cthulhu interview has popped up, this time at the German Vampire: The Masquerade site Lair of the Vampire. The interview is with Headfirst's Simon Woodroffe, and covers the company's background as well as their upcoming Lovecraft-inspired first person title.

On SoF Movement Speeds

Raven's Rick Johnson updated his .plan with a reaction to feedback they've apparently been receiving about player movement speeds in the just-released Soldier of Fortune Demo. Word is a new cvar to govern these speeds will be created, which sounds like it can be run on the server side, as he mentions plans to demonstrate this on a server, possibly as early as this evening:

Whomever said we don't listen...

Based upon feedback of the DM players, we are going to add a cvar which controls (on the server) how fast movement rates are. So you can scale down the movement rates to whatever rate you desire. Few other things we are going to add: cvar to allow you to set a frag penality if you kill yourself and a dm flag to say that you only want bullet weapons in a level.

Sometime this evening, I'll bring up a demo server with the slower movement rates, so that you can judge it for yourself.

Soldier of Fortune Config File

Raven's John Scott updated his .plan with a config file that Soldier of Fortune dedicated server admins can modify. Here's the scoop:

Here is the config file that runs when a dedicated server is started.

http://www2.ravensoft.com/users/jscott/sof/dedicated.cfg

Just slip it in your user folder and edit to your liking. It will override the one in the pak file. It is heavily commented and about 300 bytes.

To get a list of dm flag bits, run the game with a console, set deathmatch to 1 and type list_dmflags (setting deathmatch to 1 is required for this).

I ran a cable server at home last night, it filled up in about 30 seconds! Have fun fragging!

FAKK2 Update

FAKK You! has posted an update from Ritual's Robert Atkins, regarding their third person Quake III Arena engine title, Heavy Metal: FAKK2. The update is fairly long, but contains the news that they've redone the Julie model yet again ("third time's the charm" says Atkins) and that she'll be able to wield two weapons simultaneously in the game.

Final Fantasy VIII Interview

AGN3D has posted a brief interview with SquareSoft's Kenji Mimura, talking about their Playstation (and now PC) RPG Final Fantasy VIII. Since the game has been out for so long, there's no new information in this interview, but it's still interesting if you're unfamiliar with the game. Like yesterday's Voyager interview, this was transcribed from one of their shows, which you can catch in their archives.

Call of Cthulhu Interview

GamersCentral has posted an interview with HeadFirst's Andrew Brazier, talking to the developer about their first person title Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. The interview deals with several gameplay issues, as well as how the developers plan to tie the game into the pen and paper RPG. Here's a brief excerpt:

One of the key features we will be keeping from the RPG is the element of the character's Sanity (and the loss of it!). This will take an important part of gameplay. We won't be incorporating all the stats from the RPG, but will be keeping parts of them.

Misc. Screenshots

GASource has posted a new screenshot from 4D Ruler's upcoming first person shooter Gore, as well as a quote from the game's lead developer regarding their technology and how it stacks up to the competition. Also, Voodoo Extreme has posted a new shot from Monolith's LithTech 2 engine, presumably from a demonstration level, as no game is named.

More on the Soldier of Fortune Demo

Raven programmer Marcus Whitlock updated his .plan with some comments on the Soldier of Fortune demo that's sucking up bandwidth across the globe:

Just like to say a couple of things about the Soldier of Fortune DEMO and in particular, the predicted view-weapons in Soldier of Fortune:

1) Though we're very pleased with how it turned out, the DEMO is at the end of the say, a snapshot of work in progress. So the final, retail version of SoF will contain many enhancements over what you're playing with now. In line with what I'm working on currently, the predicted view-weapons will be further refined.

2) A couple of things to note about how the prediction works. The server instructs the client to change weapons (e.g. in response to seeing that you pressed a weapon selection key). The server also instructs the client to reload your weapon's clip (either 'cos you hit the reload key or your clip ran out). And of course, the actual missile / projectile / bullet tracing / hitting something code is also done on the server. Everything else tho' is predicted.

Alice Update

After a month-long hiatus, a new update to the official American McGee's Alice site shows off a new enemy character, the Card Guard, which, according to the description, shouldn't be underestimated just because he appears to be limping along.

Sweeney on Programming Languages

Epic's Tim Sweeney has written an article for GameSpy.com, discussing the issue of programming languages in games, looking at the evolution of them from low-level assembly to C++ and Java.

Half-Life Jumbot

Rich's Project Warehouse has the release of version 1.0 of the Jumbot for Half-Life. This is described as "probably the last (new release) in a long time," and is also called "biggest release in a long time." The new version of this AI opponent for Half-Life fixes a bunch of bugs and other problems including trip mine avoidance and visibility checking, and adds new global waypoint code (replacing the old entity-based system), as well as other enhancements and fixes.

Soldier of Fortune Console Commands

There's a list of Soldier Of Fortune Console Commands on Gameaholic dot Com detailing known console commands in Raven's just-released Soldier of Fortune Demo (story). Starting with how to enable the console in the first place, the page offers a list of cheat codes, controls, WON commands, other multiplayer commands, and more.

New XQF

A new version 0.9.3 of the XQF Quake server browser and launcher for Unix/X11 is now available. XQF can help you find Quake, QuakeWorld, Quake II, and Quake III Arena servers, serving as a front-end to Steve Jankowski's QStat. Described as a "New stable version," this release offers new autoconf support, rewritten master list handling code, Debian/Linux support, and bug fixes. Thanks Jacek Fedoryński.

SoF Demo Feedback & Troubleshooting

Raven's John Scott added a fourth installment to his string of .plan updates about troubleshooting the just-released Soldier of Fortune Demo with a tip on how to sort the server list produced by the demo's in-game browser. Also, Raven's Rick Johnson added a note to his .plan in case it was necessary to point out they are eager for feedback on the new demo:

With the demo being out now, we would love to hear your Comments. Either Positive or Negative, just be descriptive, as one line comments don't really help us too much. For general questions, comments, etc, go to the SoF Message Board on that page.

Starlancer Screenshots

There are a pair of new Starlancer screenshots on Active Windows showing off the upcoming space combat game from Digital Anvil. In addition to the in-game shots, they've also got a shot up of the box art, and a list of key features planned for the game.

Arcanum Screenshots

The World of Arcanum (this is the English version of the native German site) has updated their gallery with more new screenshots showing off the isometric role-playing offered in Arcanum, currently under construction at Troika Games. Many of these are full-sized version of shots previously only available as thumbnails.

Tech Bits

Q3A Gibstats Support

An update to the unofficial Gibstats Quake III Arena support is available on Fuzzy's Logic. The new feature in the small download is the addition of Q3A CTF support, and there are also a few more new fixes (grenade suicides weren't showing up in the Grenade Launcher stats, BFG kills weren't being displayed correctly) to the full Q3A support for the Gibstats logfile parsing utility that currently officially only supports the Q3A Demo/Test releases.

Reviews

etc.

  • I.am/TFC has posted a collection of "a few dozen of the best recorded videos of tips, tricks, secrets, and techniques that are essential to keeping your team one step ahead of the enemy in Team Fortress Classic."...
  • Pixel Obscura on loonygames looks at The Wheel of Time and Unreal Tournament cinematics, through the eyes of their resident film critic...
  • Word from the folks at Game Commander is that an SE version their voice command and control software for games will be included in the bundle with Soundblaster Live! Platinum sound card...
  • Authors interested in the source code for the Jumbot for Half-Life should head over to Rich's Project Warehouse, where there's a deadline of February 5, after which requests for the source will no longer be honored...
  • 3D Realms Entertainment Web Site has a new table for download for Balls of Steel, their provocatively-named 3D pinball game. On a barely-related note, an updated version of the Crazy Marbles freeware OpenGL accelerated homage to Marble Madness is now available...

Out of the Blue

Hey, look at that... as I write these words, my SoF demo download completed! After over nine hours of downloading, Windows popped up a dialog box in the middle of my screen saying the file was being "copied" to my drive for the next 15 seconds or so, with a nice healthy "cancel" button in the middle. I can't imagine how unhappy I would have been had I been typing away at that moment and managed to cancel that process, but luckily that didn't happen (still gives me shivers to think about it). Is that ever a "feature" that could backfire! I seem to have stirred up some activity with that mention of RGB3, from what I've seen, some of the key players will be telling their tales in that article mentioned yesterday, and The Clan Rangers News reports: "The Rangers are proud to announce that we are finally releasing a high quality demo version of the highly anticipated Ranger Gone Bad 3. We are looking to release this innovative production sometime this weekend." Go figure!

Link of the Day: Y5B - The Year 5 Billion Problem. Hey, it's real, and pretending it isn't will not make it go away. Thanks David "D:)Man" Van Meter.
Story of the Day: Goat to Be Hurled From Belfry Is Spared. We like to avoid "oddly enough" and other categorized-as-odd news, but as I said when posting the original to which this is a follow-up, we'll go for any story about goat-tossing. And this one has a happy ending too.
Image of the Day: Womb Raider. It's taken that long to get around to Lara satires that don't include nudity. Thanks Ant.

Monday, Jan 24, 2000

Warcraft III Movie

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.

Soldier of Fortune on WON

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.

Wheel of Time Update & Levels

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!

Ground Control Preview

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.

Soldier of Fortune Demo Mirrors

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.

Thief II Interview

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.

On the Soldier of Fortune Demo

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.

Soldier of Fortune Demo Released

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.

Halo Preview

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.

New Screenshots

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 Released

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. =]

New Infiltration Released

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.

More Enhanced Q3A Server Browsing

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.

More RGB3, & Movie Stuff

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.

TRIBES 2 Update

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."

Wheel of Time Patch

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 (example: vote open arena_02)
    In order for the vote to succeed, all players voting in the affirmative must type the same command. If you wish to vote no, simply do not enter any command. A majority is required before the command is executed. Only players who have installed this patch will be able to use the voting system.
  • New log statements for players joining a team, leaving a team, and restarting the game, in order to better present the information to server administrators.
  • A "Net Speed" menu option in the "Player Config" section of the "Multiplayer" menu. There are three settings: "Internet" (for 28.8 to 56K modem users), "Fast Internet" (for ISDN and cable modem users), and "LAN" (for DSL or faster connections)

Rogue Spear: Urban Operations Interview

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.

Rogue Spear Add-On Announced

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.

Voyager Interview

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 Q3A Log Parsers

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.

More Q3A VMs and Linux

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.

Wheel of Time Patch Today

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.

On Game Stories

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.

Tech Bits

TecArena

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.

Competitions

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.

Reviews

etc.

  • 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...

Out of the Blue

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.



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