Archived News:
The version of the day for the Servarena
dedicated Quake III Arena server launcher is now available. Among a variety of
new features and enhancements, the new release adds what are described as
"two of the most requested features," the list of maps is now
alphabetical, and user definable defaults for all map and environment settings.
The Hercules website has new
version 3.72 drivers for the GeForce 256-based 3D Prophet DDR. Thanks Pdawg and
Bob James.
A comment on this Slashdot
article relates a letter from John Carmack to the Apple Darwin development
mailing list about a side project he's been working on: "I have a good,
functional X windows port running under OS/X right now. I just need to get the
keymappings fixed up and test some more, then I will release a patch for public
consumption." Thanks unclemeat.
LucasArts has released a version 1.2 patch for Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine, which resolves several mission problems as well as some technical failures with configuration controls, Infernal Machine Part sounds, and level opening views.
Raven's Eric Biessman updated his .plan to mention that they are looking to hire several new level designers, who should have experience in Quake technology in any form. So there, that's your second chance to break into the gaming industry today ( story), what are you waiting for?
games extreme has posted an interview on Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn, talking to Black Isle assistant producer Douglas Avery about their upcoming role-playing game. The discussion explains how this sequel relates to the original Baldur's Gate, describes some of its features, and reveals that they "are about halfway done with everything right now."
Incite Games has posted an
enormous (46 MB) MPEG movie featuring an interview with Bungie Sofware's
Doug Zartman, as well as a whole bunch of footage from Halo. The movie comes
right off the Incite Magazine CD-ROM, and is very high quality.
According to this press
release, AMD has demonstrated a new version of their Athlon processor, running
at the ungodly speed of a 1.1 GHz (1100 MHz). The processor was made at their
Fab 30 facility in Germany, and utilizes the .18 micron process (thanks Mark
Vaxman).
Planet Moon Central has posted a
brief Q&A with Planet Moon Studios' Tim Williams, talking about Giants:
Citizen Kabuto, their oddball multi-perspective action title. According to Tim, the game is, "Pretty
much at feature lock. We know everything we want to put into the game, so now
it's just a matter of getting it all in there and balancing it out, which is
what we've been doing."
After being contacted by concerned 3dfx users, AVault sent a series of questions
(as well as some of the e-mails they received from fans) to 3dfx' PR department,
regarding the current state of their tech support. The response
they received has 3dfx directly answering customer concerns over various
driver and hardware issues, so if you've been having difficulty with your 3dfx
card, be sure to read
their answers.
Outrage has announced that their Fusion Engine, employed in Descent 3, is now available for licensing for PC and Mac games, and this page provides details on the engine's features and the licensing cost.
Version 1.5 of HaVoC, a massive
mod for Starsiege: TRIBES has been released. The mod aims to be "the only
TRIBES modification" and amongst its impressive features are a powerful
suite of server administration tools (which control everything from security
to how often lightning strikes) and a ton of gameplay additions, including new
armor types, Smoke Bombs, and more. A full list of features (and there are many)
is available at the official
HaVoC homepage.
Shiny-News has posted an interview with Sacrifice lead programmer Martin 'Sophistry' Brownlow, talking about Shiny's upcoming RTS, and revealing more details about the gameplay, engine and multiplayer features of the game.
Matrox has posted a set of Hired Team screenshots to once more demonstrate the effects of Environment Mapped Bump Mapping on their G400 cards. Two side-by-side shots show off scenes with and without EMBM, and two more show enhanced lava and slime effects in New Media Generation's upcoming first-person shooter.
A tutorial
for making your own character voices in Unreal Tournament has been posted
at the German site UT World, with step-by-step directions, from the creation
of the sound files, to their implementation in UnrealED and final usage in the
game. The tutorial is also available in its
original German language.
AGN3D has posted an
interview with Brandon "GreenMarine" Reinhart, asking him questions
about his work on the Playstation 2 version of the Unreal engine. The text is
actually the transcript to a video interview, which is also available from their
archives. Here's an excerpt, where Brandon addresses the issue of whether or
not Unreal Tournament itself is going to be made for the system: If we
did an Unreal Tournament for the Playstation 2, we would probably do all new
levels and a lot of new content. We would definitely be taking advantage of
a much higher poly count. So we would have much more detailed characters, much
more detailed weapons. We have also been talking about changing it in gameplay
because the Playstation audience is a lot different then the PC audience. I
think that a Playstation 2 port of Unreal Tournament would be more of a new
game than a port.
Raven's John Scott updated his
.plan with a rundown of all the options in the Soldier of Fortune "video
settings" menu. If you were wondering how all of those switches affect
your gameplay, be sure to check it out.
GameSpot UK has posted a
new preview of Big Bang, a mission-based space opera from French developers
Rayland. Naturally, the preview contains one
of those GameSpot UK galleries with several new screenshots. In other Big Bang-related news, a newer version of the demo popped up on Rayland's web site the other day (although the date was never updated).
An interview with Martin Walfisz, Massive Entertainment's CEO, has been posted
in Real Video format on
the German site gXp, talking about their upcoming 3D strategy title Ground Control. The video is just over 4 MB, and the intervew is in
English, although there isn't any new gameplay footage.
A beta version of ComCenter,
a real-time voice communication program for Quake III Arena and Unreal Tournament
has been released. This version has been released to gauge the quality over
various modem connections, and has only thus far been tested on a LAN. The author
hopes to release the full program on March 1st.
The second map pack for the Science
& Industry mod for Half-Life has been released, and is available for
download on its official site.
The pack contains three new maps, and is available separately, or as a full
download with all nine S&I maps.
No doubt fans of the original Quake's lightning gun will appreciate this... The
House of Hard Havoc has released a Lightning Discharge mod for Quake III
Arena, which adds the ability to kill everyone by discharging underwater. The
source code for both the client and server versions is available as well.
Raven's Marcus Whitlock updated his
.plan with word that the upcoming Soldier of Fortune demo patch (which still
has no firm release date) will not be incorporating their new client prediction
code. Here's the scoop: One thing I'd like to point out regarding the
SoF demo patch (which has no firm release date yet - you'll hear from RJ when
it's ready, be assured)... most likely, it won't incorporate the improvements
to client prediction that I recently made (BTW - thanks for lending me your
ears Jake, Pat & James).
It's quite phenomenal - how you can loose sight
of the wood for the trees... when you're toiling away so close to a problem
- you can get stuck in this thought loop and don't realize you're stuck in it
until someone else points out the obvious that you just fail to see! Predicted
in-view weapons are now very stable, without the oddities and artifacts that
are present in the SoF demo. Needless to say, I'm sleeping a lot better now
too. More generally, we are all feeling pretty freaking good about the way things
are looking on SoF - it's really come together and will be our best game yet
for sure.
Voodoo Extreme has posted a
Q&A with Epic's Cliff Bleszinski, asking him about Epic's upcoming free
bonus pack for Unreal Tournament, their Playstation 2 port of UT, and the usual
bunch of zany VE questions.
CDMag has posted an
interview with Digital Anvil's Erin Roberts, talking to him about his work
on their upcoming space-sim Starlancer, and the bizarre story of how they ended
up with Microsoft as a publisher (apparently they got drunk and e-mailed Bill
Gates).
The Man Behind the Phenomenon is part 1 of an interview on Thresh's FiringSquad with newly-wed programmer John Carmack, talking about his life and work, his take on Mac and Linux, learning from other programmers, and much more. Part 2 is due on Wednesday, and here is a quote from today's half:
FS: Your focus is astonishing. It seems that you're uniquely suited to this time and place.
John: Focus is extremely useful. As far as this specific time and
place, I do think software is an almost uniquely wonderful medium. But if
it wasn't here, I'd be some other type of engineer or some kind of
scientist. I could have a fine time working in any kind of hard science.
Software is so wonderful in a unique way. The people who set up for a physics experiment spend a year of preparation time, tooling around doing things. And then you spend another year analyzing it. With software you can have an epiphany and just sit down and hash it out. You can make it happen right there. It's the most malleable media to be working in for any kind of intellectual pursuit. I do feel fortunate that I'm around in a time when all this is going on.
Adrenaline Vault has posted a preview of Hitman: Codename 47, the upcoming third-person action title by IO Interactive that puts you out on a contract. Half a dozen new screenshots illustrate the mission-based gameplay on offer, which is being delivered by a "new proprietary engine called Glacier."
GA-Source has a posted a new Project Overdrive screenshot from Buka's upcoming first-person auto-combat game, along with a few details about the engine developed for it.
The
dawning of the metal age, Part 3 on Computer Games Online offers more quotes
from Project Director Steve Pearsall talking about Looking Glass' upcoming
skulky sequel. Topics covered include 3D sound, and the difficult design issues
trying to devise appropriate multiplayer Thief play. Accompanying the piece are
several screenshots, some of which are brand new.
A new version 2.33d of the aGSM
alternative Game Server Monitor is now available. This free game server tool
that allows you to quickly find and monitor multiplayer LAN & Internet game servers
for 33 popular games including Q3A, StarCraft, Diablo, TRIBES, AoE (and AoK), Heretic
II, FreeSpace2, Unreal, Sin, Half-Life (a full list of supported games is
here). aGSM is a small multithreaded WinSock2 Win32 program that aims to
"give gamers a complete toolbox for all their multiplayer gaming needs - a
one small, fast, reliable, and handy freeware tool." The new version fixes
some Win2K issues and some minor bugs, adds Drakan Internet support, and more.
A new version 2.6.2000 of HQH's
Soldier of Fortune FAQ adds some questions and their corresponding answers
covering the console, levels, the manual, troubleshooting, tweaks, video,
weapons and items, in Raven's upcoming mercenary first-person shooter.
A Focus On Levels
interviews Richard Carlson talking to the one-time ION Storm, and current
Looking Glass Studios' designer (who is also know as Zdim) about the current
state of level design, both in released games, and in user-made maps.
A
.plan update by 3D Realms' George Broussard gives word that 3D Realms is
looking to hire an additional programmer for their upcoming Unreal-engine
installment in the Duke series, Duke Nukem Forever. Got mad programming skills,
and some experience with the Unreal engine, or other FPS programming (or perhaps
compromising pictures of George)? This may be your chance to break into the
gaming industry.
Ingava's Q3A Strategy Guide
#1 covers strategies on Q3DM0, Q3DM1, and Q3DM2. Also, the 26th(!)
mapping tutorial is up on Quake3mods.net
showing how to add arches to your map.
A new version 0.41 of the Counter-Strike Alias Binder
is out to help configuring your keys in Counter-Strike for Half-Life. This is a
rapid follow-up to the previous release to address bugs in the "Ping
Optimizer," and the page notes that "other miscellaneous crappy bugs"
have been fixed as well.
Version 1.0 of S.H.U.D. for Quake III Arena
is now available. Not to be confused with those nasty Cannibalistic Humanoid
Underground Dwellers, S.H.U.D. stands for Stats Head-Up Display, and it adds
some very cool enhancements to the Q3A HUD, including real-time stats on your
shots, hits, and hit percentage (optionally can be separated for each weapon), display
of rewards (impressive, excellent etc.), a frags per hour tally, a "new and
improved scoreboard," and more. All the HUD's options can be turned on or
off separately.
qwFIX for Q3A, or QuakeWorld for
Quake III Arena offers a Q3A mod that attempts to offer QuakeWorld-like
functionality, including QW-style air physics (Bunny-jump around corners)
de-balanced weapons (more powerful rocket launcher and a less super super-shotgun),
more powerful armors, fragged players drop Quake 1 style backpacks, new +/- commands to enable faster weapon
switching, a grappling-hook in CTF games, as well as Ghost Coder's HUD (version
0.90), and various other features. Word is they are at work on a qwPlain mod
that will offer qwFix's air control, but leave the other settings unchanged for
those looking for that without messing with weapon balance.
Version 0.5 of the Equilibrium
mod for Quake III Arena is now available, offering EQ Team DM, EQ CTF, and EQ
Showdown modes. What Equilibrium does to try and keep you off balance is require
a player (or team, etc.) get "100%" of the points in a game. Each
team, in a teamplay game, for instance, starts with 50 points, which can swing back
and forth in a manner described as being like MicroMachines in duel mode.
This Unofficial GLQuake Update
offers an updated version of GLQuake based on the release of id's source code.
The new release supports ARB_multitexture, bug-fixed shadows, OpenGL fog, "Quake
II-style sky rendering," distance attenuated torch flicker, various other
fixes and additions, console variables for controlling the new additions, and
more. The installer includes the option of installing the source code, as
required under the GNU GPL.
loonygames presents Inside Origin Systems
takes "a look at what got the company where it is today, who got it there,
the main man behind it (Richard Garriott) and where the company will be going in
the future."
After a false start last week, registration
for the $100,000 Razer CPL Tournament is
slated to get underway today at 5:00 PM EST (4:00 PM CST). To register you will
need a valid credit card. Feeling they've ironed out the problems, the CPL says
they are "confident that registration for the upcoming Razer/CPL Event will
be fast, efficient and accurate." Also, the previously European-only Man or Mouse
(MoM) Tournaments have opened their virtual doors to US competitors, having
launched three new LPB ladders, one Eastern, one Central, and one Western.
Finally, Armory Assault LAN Party
is looking like a big old event down at the Army National Guard Armory in
Jacksonville, FL (thanks Glenn Dube).
- GeN's GeNuine GeNerosity has
the release of the Reincarnation map pak for Quake (1), which features five
DM/teamplay maps with new textures, and what they describe as "new
innovative layout and never seen before tactical elements"...
- Another weekly update to Painful Detail
adds six new skins, four new voices, and three new models for Unreal
Tournament, as well as a new skin of the week (by Rorshach)...
- A Week In the Life of The Sims.
Too off-topic for reviews and too on-topic for a link of the day, but
certainly way too funny to overlook...
Spent a good long time messing with the network here at the Blue Tower yesterday
(gotta love a simple switch that provokes 12 hours of troubleshooting)... I wonder if there's a term for those orphaned wires that can end up
behind your desk if you tend to be as sloppy as I am swapping equipment in and
out? I can't think of anything good, but if it's as common a phenomenon as I
believe (I've seen it on plenty of LANs that I had no part in), then there probably is one already.
Link of the Day: Bob and
Doug McKenzie action figures from McFarlane Toys. Thanks Aaron Armstrong.
Who'd have thunk it?
Story of the Day: Zombie powder is new Colombian national drug problem.
Thanks Pyst. Serpent and the Rainbow anyone?
ZDTV's Game Blast Awards
features video footage ( RealPlayer, or
equivalent required) with Epic's Cliff Bleszinski and Tim Sweeney and
Digital Extremes' James Schmalz all talking about the selection of Unreal
Tournament as best PC game of the year. Thanks PlanetUnreal.
The deathmatch map winners in the $150 000 Make Something Unreal
contest have been announced. Also, there's a beginner's editing tutorial
on Unreal Envisioned and there are some
new UT texture tutorials on Muad'dibs Maps. Finally, upad, a simple Unreal
script editor is now available from Revolver.
Thanks again PlanetUnreal.
As promised when the first shot was posted yesterday, there's another new Obi
Wan screenshot on JediKnight.Net,
showing off more of LucasArts' upcoming shooter based on the Star Wars universe.
Here's a bit from the accompanying post to help clarify a couple of the common
questions about the game: The game has always been described by LucasArts
as a First Person Shooter, but apparently there is an option for a variation of
the camera angle. I should have a clarification on the camera angles this week.
Another question people are asking is whether Obi-Wan uses the Jedi Knight or
jacked up Jedi Knight engine... aka, Mysteries of the Sith engine. The answer to
that question is no. This engine has been built from scratch folks... and these
screens don't really do the game that much justice because of the resolution
they were originally sent in.
Gurutech.org's Industry
Hardware Introspective is the second installment in the series, quoting game
developers Jake Simpson, Paul MacArthur, Berenger Fish , Pat Lipo, Gil Gribb,
Kevin Lambert and Dave Moore, all answering the following question: "What
sort of decisions go into the hardware-of-the-end-user aspect of game
development? What is more important to you as a whole; great graphics on a
select amount of systems or great performance on the majority of systems? Do
these limitations motivate you to make a game that can be enjoyed even without
great graphics?"
The first beta release of Freeze Tag
for Quake III Arena, the Q3A port of this popular Quake II mod, is now
available. In Freeze Tag, fragged players are frozen, either to be thawed by a
teammate, or to be shattered into gibcicles if the entire team becomes victim to
the big chill. The new mode makes use of a new entity shader, thought to be a
first. Also included with the download are a GameSpy tab and an example
server.cfg file.
A public beta version 4.5 of The Heretic Fortress
is now available, an update to this modification that brings some of the
class-based teamplay action of TeamFortress to Heretic II, the Quake II-engine
sequel to Heretic. The new beta
code is only running on a single server at the moment, but an update for
previous version of the client is available, and testing is encouraged.
A new copy of the Q3A Shader Editor is now available for download on Bert Peers' Homepage.
This program handles these fully-scripted texture entities by parsing a script
and presenting it in a Windows GUI which is a bit more user-friendly than "the
bare C-like" Shader text files.
GameSpy.com
interviews Steve Pearsall the project leader on Looking
Glass' upcoming Thief 2: The Metal Age, talking about progress on the sequel
to Thief: The Dark Project, the non-Rambo first-person shooter. In addition to a
lot of detailed information about the game, the Q&A also discusses Steve's
start in the business, and even life before gaming.
Q3Center's Q3A One-on-One
Strategy guide offers some general tips on Quake III Arena tournament play. Also, K-Cheats Quake III Arena Tactics Helper offers all sorts of tactical advice, but it's written in German, so if you are not fluent there's always AltaVista Translations. Finally, FvF World's Q3A Modeling Tutorial Part II: Model Skinning for 3DSMax Users is up showing how make like Buffalo Bill and skin a large model.
The first beta release of Capture the
Gunz (CTG) for Quake III Arena is now available. CTG is a teamplay mod that
gives all members of a team access to a type of weapon when your team is the
last to control its spawn point, while none of the opposition will have that
weapon until regaining control, which likewise deprives their opponents. In
addition to control of the arms race, these captures are a significant part of
the mod's scoring, as grabbing a weapon nets you three frags and two more for
each of your teammates.
Continuing the TLA theme, The Black Knight Productions
page has a new beta version of the PoW (Prisoners of War) mod for Quake III
Arena, a teamplay mod where you can play The Great Escape. In addition to
the new beta, which adds a new HUD and other features, there are a pair of new
PoW maps for download.
A download called GameQuery
on PlanetQuake3.net is tersely described as: "An ASP component that can
do server queries against Quake2 & Quake3Arena servers." Also, Equims Emporium
has the first release of EliteHUD for Quake III Arena, a client-side HUD with
configurable options placing the health, armor, and ammo stats next to the
crosshair, adding a mini-scoreboard, and moving all the weapons but the railgun
to the center of the screen.
This TRIBES
World Championship Teams page on PlanetStarsiege has contact info for team
leaders of a planned upcoming quest for global Starsiege TRIBES domination so
you can head to the local recruiting offices and volunteer. Also, registration
for the DeCL is underway, with
Q3A CTF and UT CTF leagues for German clans, as well as clans from anywhere
close enough where they can have a competitive ping. Finally the CWN/Q3Center Q3 Ladder ends
in about ten days, which is still time to jump in and win one of several spiffy prizes.
- Software Makers Aim to Dilute Consumer Rights
reports a disturbing LA Times article about tech bills up springing
from the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA), saying:
"Microsoft Corp. and other powerful software companies are quietly
pushing state legislation across the nation that would dramatically reduce
consumer rights for individuals and businesses who buy or lease software and
database information."...
- The usual big old skin update at Synchroplay
has tons of Rollercoaster Tycoon rides, TRIBES skins, UT skins, NASCAR
3 Paint Jobs, and Kingpin skins...
- Brass Knuckles interviews
Jiho (Nara) Kim, head developer of Archmage, described as "one of
the largest, free, web based, games on the net" about Archmage II, the
sequel...
- There's a
new version 1.2.5 of Voodoo Lights on DemoNews.com, offering a non-beta
version of this cool screensaver...
My brother, WalterEgo of the teensy ping, pointed out that I failed to note the
best chance of a point of reference for most folks when rambling the other day
about Doug and the Slugs, which is that Too Bad, the theme to the Norm
show, is originally by Doug Bennett and his salt-fearing cohorts, so there's a
chance some of you are actually already semi-familiar. Not nearly as many if it
were the theme to say, Cheers, or some of those Ron Popeil infomercials, but
what can you do.
Thanks Brian Young for correcting a mistake I posted for a short while the
other day in the mention of the passing of comic book artist Gil Kane, who it
turns out was not actually the son of Batman creator Bob Kane (I have been
laboring under that misconception for a lot of years).
Link of the Day: Email
address based combat. Thanks Sean Cardus. Too bad the attributes actually
seem to be randomized.
Story of the Day: Coffee Is Your Friend
(where else but on Wired?). "Scientists are waking up to the health
benefits of coffee." Thanks Ant.
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