Archived News:
Warcraft III.net has posted two
new screenshots from Blizzard's Warcraft III, as well as a
transcript of the webmaster's chat held on Blizzard.net, which featured
Mike O'Brien, Rob Pardo and Bill Roper from Blizzard talking about the game.
Version 1.0 of Q3 Clan Arena,
a remake of the Clan Arena mod for Quake 1, has been released, and is available
for download on its official site.
This new version adds a modifiable server .CFG file for server customization
in addition to other tweaks and fixes.
The TRIBES Vault has posted their
unofficial FAQ for Starsiege: TRIBES 2. The FAQ contains pretty much all
the known information about the game, from the various technologies it supports
(A3D, SSE, etc.) to all the different mission types and other gameplay issues.
GameSpot has posted a detailed preview of Soulbringer, the 3D adventure-RPG under construction at Gremlin. The article covers storyline, gameplay, the combat system, and more, and sports quotes from producer Doug Avery and a host of new screenshots.
Also online at GameSpot tonight is a shorter but equally hands-on preview of Evolva, examining the upcoming tactical action game by Computer Artworks, and posting a couple new screenshots from a recent build of the game.
GameSpot has a pair of stories on recent Zombie happenings. First Details: Spec Ops M.O.U.T. reveals that the next Zombie game will be called Spec Ops: Military Operation Urban Terrain, or M.O.U.T. for short, also built on the LithTech 2.0 engine like their earlier announced Spec Ops 3 title. This game will trade the tactical aspects of the first two Spec Ops games in for fast-paced action, like "Team Fortress Classic with licensed weapons and realistic environments." Also, First Details: Zombie's
Shrapnel has a few more details on their recently announced game based on the Wildstorm Comics.
Raven's Jake Simpson updated
his .plan with an update on all things Soldier of Fortune (as well as his
usual brand of nuttiness). Jake confirms that Soldier of Fortune now supports
A3D 3.0 (previously it was only 2.0), force feedback, and even ACT Labs' Gun
System, in addition to some general thoughts about the game as it wraps up.
Incite Games has posted a
new movie (which originally appeared on the Incite Magazine CD-ROM) featuring
an interview with John Romero, and lots of in-game footage from Daikatana. The
movie isn't puny at 43 megs, but it's in MPEG format and very high quality.
Also new on Incite Games are eight
new screenshots from Soldier of Fortune, featuring that trademark violence
that Incite loves so much.
Matrox has released new beta drivers for their Millennium G400, Millennium
G200, Mystique G200, and MGA G200 cards. Separate drivers are available for
Windows 9x,
Windows 2000,
and Windows NT4.
GA-RPG has posted some
new screenshots from Icewind Dale, an upcoming RPG from Black Isle, as well
as preliminary details on several different locales in the game.
3dfx has released new
drivers for cards featuring the Voodoo Banshee chipset (thanks Voodoo
Extreme). These new drivers fix a ton of problems, including game specific
issues with Unreal, System Shock 2, Quake III Arena, and others.
Dynamix' Tim Gift updated his
.plan with an update on what he's been working on, and he gives a great
deal of detail on the status of vehicles in Starsiege: TRIBES 2. Here's an excerpt,
which sounds remarkably like something a used car salesman might say: At
this point you can drive around in the scout vehicle. It has four wheel drive
and independent suspension. It handles pretty well, though at high speeds it
tends to under-steer. Have to be a little careful going fast on the uneven ground
or you can end up upside down. Vehicles are going to be pretty fun :)
All the engine, suspension and tire parameters are specified in the datablock.
The number of wheels, which ones steer, and suspension travel is all extracted
from the shape file. It should be fairly easy for mod authors to build and customize
new vehicles.
A new interview
with Human Head's Tim Gerritsen is up on 3D Action Planet, talking to the
biz guy about the origins of the company, his background in the industry, and
their upcoming action title Rune (thanks to The
Shugashack for the tip).
GameSpot UK has posted a whole bunch of new stuff related to Allegiance, Microsoft's
massively multiplayer space sim that's currently in beta testing. There are
three
new in-game AVIs available, as well as new
screenshots, new
concept artwork, and a
report from the beta test. Also, Games Weekly has posted a
new interview with members of the development team.
A new version (1.43) of Weapon
Mod, a mod for Quake III Arena that lets you tweak all kinds of gameplay
options, has been released and is available for download on
its official site. This new version adds variables for starting, minimum,
and maximum health and armor in addition to other changes.
The official Phoenix site has a version 1.1 patch for the English edition of Phoenix, the space exploration and combat game by Team 17. There are no details about the changes and fixes though.
PlanetQuake is hosting an IRC session
with id Software's Robert Duffy, the author of QERadiant and the Q3Tools package.
The fun starts at 7:00 PM PT on irc.gamesnet.net 6667, in channel #PlanetQuake.
The Unofficial Soldier of Fortune
Demo FAQ has been updated, and now contains new sections on system requirements,
video settings and supported hardware in addition to other changes.
German games site Ultimazone has posted a
new strategy guide to Quake III Arena. The text is all in German, but of
course, if you want it translated, just stick
a babel fish in your ear.
Rising from the Ranks: Rating for Multiplayer Games is an article on Gamasutra by old-school Quaker (and Loki Entertainment developer) Bernd Kreimeier, examining scoring and ranking systems such as those employed in ngWorldStats, which currently ranks multiplayer Quake II and Unreal Tournament games. The article makes a comparison to the ELO ratings of the chess-playing world, and while it is heavy on statistics and mathematics, it makes an interesting read if you're into this sort of thing.
Interplay's official MDK2 site has received a new look, and posted seven new screenshots from BioWare's upcoming third-person action sequel. MDK, as everyone knows, stands for My Dangerous Kangaroo.
Another new screenshot has been posted on the official Messiah site, depicting a scene (reminiscent of the opening area in the demo) from their third-person possess-em-up that should now be released in March.
There is now a Multiplayer
Nox Demo on PC Zone, with a playable version of Westwood's isometric-view
action game that is due in stores next week. The demo is a 44 MB download, and
here is the description from the page: You are the 20th century savior of
Nox - summoned to the land in a cosmic accident. Being from Earth, you are the
only living being on Nox that may touch a magic Orb in the possession of the
wicked-evil queen of the undead - Hecubah. You must find this Orb and harness
its power in order to construct the staff of oblivion and defeat Hecubah.
There's a new In
Game Warcraft III Shot on Warcraftiii.net that was recently posted on
Blizzard's site, along with an analysis of what's shown in the image, which is of
an Orc assault on a mining encampment. The shot gives a clear view of the new interface,
"including all the new action commands." Also, GameFan's
WarCraft III preview gives the scoop on a visit to the Blizzard offices to
get some hands-on impressions of the upcoming installment in the WC series that
will add role-playing elements to the familiar RTS elements from its
predecessors.
There is a
log of last night's moderated Allegiance chat on Allegiance Vault
giving a progress report on development of Microsoft's space combat game,
currently in open beta.
The Wyrm2 World of Destruction
page has a new beta 2 version of Wyrm 3 for Quake III Arena. In an apparent
fit of Duke Nukem-inspiration, the new release replaces the BFG with the Shrink
Ray. Shrink your opponents to 1/10 their normal size, then crush them with your
boot (be sure to laugh maniacally).
CheckOut Games'
LucasArts Profile looks at the past, present, and future of LucasArts from
the SCUMM engine adventure games, through the recent key departures, and hopes
that Star Wars: Force Commander and Jedi Power Battles "returns
them to the days of original gameplay." Speaking of Force Commander, DailyRadar.com
previews Star Wars: Force Commander, saying "Did Star Wars:
Rebellion turn you off from Star Wars strategy gaming? LucasArts finds your
lack of faith disturbing."
The Quake Wedding website
has word on one of the most unusual Quake-related human interest stories I can
recall, as BadBoyBubba, and db_High intend to tie the knot on a public Quake II
server. The ceremony will take place in a custom map & mod at 7:00 PM South
African Time (GMT+2) on February 14, the always romantic Saint Valentine's Day.
GameSpot's Tomb Raider Interview
celebrates the imminent four-year anniversary of Eidos' Tomb Raider franchise by
sitting down with Eidos' Phil Campbell and Mike Schmitt to talk about Tomb
Raider: The Lost Artifact, "set to ship to stores nationwide the first
week of March."
There's a Desert of Death
strategy guide on the newly-opened Tribes Vault
as part of their Tribes Vault Academy.
The guide is filled with screenshots and a marked out map pinpointing the
locations of every item. Also, K-Cheats
Unreal Tournament guide and K-Cheats
Quake III Arena guide each offer playing tips in German. As usual AltaVista Translations
can play semi-functional BabelFish for you. Thanks Neo.
CnCRenegade.com
talks with Westwood about progress on C&C: Renegade, the action sequel to the C&C RTS franchise. There are a whole
load of new Invictus Screenshots and Artwork
on GA-Source showing off Interplay's just-gold ( story)
RTS/adventure title. Finally, in addition to the new screenshot of the week
mentioned yesterday, there are three more new Star Trek: Armada screenshots
showing off Ferengi Marauders on the Star Trek Armada
site. Thanks Tymetodie.
The first release of Q3
Toolbox, a Quake III Arena compiling front-end is now available. Also, Code3Arena
is now underway featuring Quake III Arena editing and coding resources, offering
no less than 15 tutorials from the get-go, with more to be added soon. The Unreal Department of Engineering
is likewise just underway, offering Unreal/UT mapping resources, as well as beta
testing, just like the Half-Life DoE
does for Half-Life. This Q3 Tutorial Adding Customizable Weapon Switching
can help add QW style weapon switching to Q3A, as well as Unreal-style custom preferred
weapon order.
Registration is underway Free Range Action Gaming,
scheduled for March 31-April 2, in Burlington, NC, offering Q3A, UT, Half-Life,
and AoE competitions. Likewise, the UVA
East Coast LAN Conference will offer TRIBES, Q3A, UT, Rogue Spear, and
AvP gameplay February 18-20.
3D Palette's
Quake III Arena Skinning Contest is now offering the chance for everyone to
vote for the winner among the best entries they've received. Unreal Kingdom
interviews Sean "devilbunny" Bonney, who had the winning entry in
the Best Deathmatch Map
segment of the Make Something Unreal Contest
(he's also submitted dozens of stories and Links of the Day here over the
years).
A couple of letters in recent editions of our wacky-as-ever Mail
Bag made a minor point about the usability of this website. Historically to be
able to scroll down the news page using your mouse wheel doohickey or arrow keys
you would need bring the focus here by clicking somewhere on the page first.
Paul "trauma" Ghilarducci sent along a simple solution for this minor
"problem," a single line of the dreaded JavaScript that brings the
focus to the news frame by default. It certainly seems to be a harmless bit of
code that shouldn't cause problems in any browser (famous last words), and works
in several versions of Netscape and Explorer, so hopefully most of you are
covered.
Link of the Day: It's A Dysfunctional Life picture #512
(related to the Nori nasal cleaner). Thanks Schwab. It's an add your own caption
dealie...my entry would be "Earl Grey's secret tea recipe."
Story of the Day: Salon Technology-You, too, can be a drug kingpin.
Thanks ozh. And I quote: "...police officers in Perth, Australia,
reportedly made a fortune selling virtual drugs before their superiors erased
the program."
Bonus Story: Supersonic Aircraft Engine Planned
describes an upcoming "new generation of supersonic aircraft capable of
linking New York and Tokyo in just three hours." Thanks Jeff Magill.
Image of the Day: A custom cow spotted case on Chick's Hardware UK.
The gateway folks will be so jealous.
HD Interactive, the European publisher of Mortyr, has opened their website today ( Flash required) and posted a small patch (no Flash) for Mirage's first-person shooter, to fix problems with several Pioneer CD/DVD drives.
Gamecenter has a new movie of Thief II: the Metal Age available for download, showing off a minute of new gameplay and rendered footage (but some of it familiar from this movie) from Looking Glass' upcoming sneaky action game.
Also up at Gamecenter tonight are a dozen new Might and Magic VIII: Day of the Destroyer screenshots, the latest first-person installment in the long-running role-playing series by 3DO.
incitegames has posted ten new screenshots of Soldier of Fortune, the mercenary first-person shooter that is in the final stages of development at Raven Software.
EuroGamer has posted a brief preview of Ground Control which, while not based on a playable version, does include a couple of new screenshots of Massive's upcoming 3D RTS. In similar vein, but using a pre-beta build, is Happy Puppy's preview of Earth 2150: Escape from the Blue Planet, the real-time strategy offering by TopWare and SSI.
Digital Anvil's official Loose Cannon site ( Flash required) has been updated with a new design journal (no Flash). Andrew Sega gives a rundown of the state of development of their upcoming game of car combat and on-foot action, which is apparently going to be demonstrated at Microsoft's "Gamestock" event in early March.
TRIBES Players has
posted a fix for a problem with the Diamond Sword base turret on the "Raindance"
mission that was introduced with the 1.10 patch. The fix is all of 5k, and according
to their
downloads page, is "more fun than a barrel of fun things."
3dfx has released new
drivers for their Voodoo 3 3500 TV video card (thanks [Montella] Dennis
Claesson). These drivers fix a ton of issues related to the card's video capture
features, and there are now localized versions for each region.
GameSpot's GameGuides has posted their
guide to Battlezone II, featuring general strategies as well as full walkthroughs for both singleplayer campaigns, multiplayer strategies and even cheat
codes.
AVault
is reporting that Invictus, Interplay and 14 Degrees East's strategy/adventure
title has gone gold, and will be arriving on store shelves later this month.
The game uses a unique hybrid engine that utilizes both voxels and traditional
polygons, and is fully 3D.
In the Trenches has posted a
brief interview with Raven's John Scott, talking to him about the changes
in Soldier of Fortune since the demo version, the retail version's multiplayer game modes,
and even what kind of beverage he'd like to be (mmm....Guiness).
StrangeCompany has re-released Ozymandias,
their first movie made with the LithTech Film Producer, as a
new "director's cut" which now has the film taking place in "in
a surreal black-and-white world." You will need to have already downloaded
the original real-time movie
in order to watch this new version. For those not using Windows 9x machines
(which at this time is required for the Film Producer's run-time client) they've
also released the
original movie in Real Media format.
As promised, ThrushWave has released a playable demo of The Rift, their space-based real-time strategy game. The demo is currently available for download at the Adrenaline Vault, and weighs in at a very reasonable 16.6 MB.
Three new screenshots from Battlecruiser Millennium (showing off the "type
1" and "type 4" space stations), and two new screenshots from
the Battlecruiser Strike Pak have been posted at the
official Battlecruiser 3000 AD site.
In a strange turn of events, S3 and NVIDIA, each of whom had filed patent-infringement
cases against the other, have decided to enter into a cross-licensing agreement
in exchange for dropping the lawsuits (thanks Jeff Magil). Here's an excerpt
from the press release: "Access
to intellectual property is rapidly becoming the highest barrier to entry in
today's PC graphics market," said Andrew Wolfe, Chief Technology Officer for
S3 Incorporated. "Over the past ten years, S3 has built an incredibly strong
IP portfolio through internal development, as well as through licensing agreements
with Intel, Exponential, Cirrus and now NVIDIA. Based on our IP strengths, S3
and NVIDIA rank as possibly the only two companies positioned to win long-term
in the PC graphics market."
"With this announcement we have reached an agreement that is mutually beneficial
to both companies," said Jen-Hsun Huang, President and CEO at NVIDIA. "Over
the years, S3 has developed and acquired a rich portfolio of technologies in
graphics, multimedia, microprocessors and system logic. Our license agreements
with SGI and S3, combined with NVIDIA's rich technology patent portfolio, gives
us a strong technology base on which to build winning products."
New information reported
on PS2.IGN about Square's Final Fantasy XI (no, that's not a typo - they
recently announced IX, X, and XI in Japan) states that the company is planning a simultaneous worldwide
release of the game, which will be a massively multiplayer RPG. Gamers in the
US will be able to play with those in Japan, and perhaps most intriguing, because
the information is all stored on their central server, you will be able to switch
between the PC and Playstation 2 versions without losing your character. The
title is not set to be released until Summer of 2001, and very little is known
about the gameplay at this point.
Well, it looks like Wednesdays are officially Mail Bag days now, here at Blue's
News, as we've just posted a
brand new edition of our Mail Bag. In this week's oddball collection of
mail: TRIBES 2 authentication, Trekkies, more on the Ultima IX boards, a reply
from 3D Realms to last week's open letter, and the truth about the mysterious
number revealed. Swing
by and read all about it.
The official Star Trek: Armada site has been updated with a new screenshot of the week from this space-based RTS, and kicked off the first development diary by producer Marc Turndorf, discussing the co-operation between Activision and Paramount in recreating the Star Trek universe into a gaming world. Thanks Tymetodie.
Games Domain has posted a pair of movie trailers for Command & Conquer Tiberian Sun: Firestorm, showing off a few dozen seconds each of cinematic footage from the upcoming expansion pack to Westwood's real-time strategy game.
Pterodon, the Czech company that is co-developing Flying Heroes with Illusion Softworks, has opened their website to provide more information, a couple of screenshots, and some music samples, from their upcoming fantasy 3D action/strategy game where you apparently get to act out "those magnificent men in their flying machines."
A new version of Q3Log, a log-parsing
program for Quake III Arena, has been released, and is available for download
at its official site. This new version
supports client-side log files in addition to other changes.
Gamers Central has posted a preview of Project Overdrive, an upcoming first-person shooter and racing game by Russian developers Vistage and Buka. As the title is scheduled for a Fall release, the preview is not based on a playable build, but there are seven new screenshots (and one familiar) to give you an idea of the look of the game.
Dark Corners of the Earth: Call of Cthulhu Interview is a talk with Andrew Brazier of Headfirst about their 3D horror adventure that is based on the pen and paper RPG. As the title is still early in development, the discussion mostly covers the storyline, building up a feeling of horror, and the gameplay, which will include these multiplayer features:
IGNPC: So there's going to be an emphasis on help in multiplayer?
AB: Yeah, it's going to be totally cooperative. We're going to put a
deathmatch in as well, just because it's like, "why not?" really. So action
fans will still want to pick it up. But Lovecraft's stories weren't really about
running round with guns shooting everything, so that's not the focus of the
normal game, but yeah, we'll put a deathmatch mode in anyway just to
have a bit of a laugh really.
There is a new preview of Hitman: Codename 47 online at Daily Radar, looking at IO Interactive's upcoming third-person action game that sees you acting out the ways of a professional hitman. A couple of new (and some familiar) screenshots demonstrate his stealthy operations.
GameSpot News has posted a set of new Quark screenshots, showing off the recently announced 3D action/adventure in development at French company Quantic Dream ( story).
The weekly update to the official Summoner site brings a new screenshot of the week, as well as a new entry in the character gallery, the Brown Bacite, viewable in plain 2D or glorious 3D.
Part two of Thresh's
Firingsquad's John Carmack Interview is online, with more Q&A with id
Software's lead programmer about the gaming industry, the possibility of
self-publishing, what happened to Trinity, loads about the future, and a bit
about his favorite genre, the first-person shooter. This means that id's next
title will be another shooter, right? Well, maybe, but maybe not, according to
this answer: It's very likely to still be a first person game, but it may
not be an action game. Graeme and I have been sitting around talking about game
design ideas for different things, and they cover a pretty fair range, exploring
a few different choices that we've got, but we're not prepared to talk about any
of them yet. They are likely to be first person, almost certainly.
Here's an interview
with Brandon "GreenMarine" Reinhart translated from the
original German language version. The Q&A catches up with the Epic
programmer on his current slate of projects, which includes work on PSX2
programming, Rocket Arena for UT, and picking his hair color of the week.
MSN Gaming Zone Chat Events
is hosting one of their events this evening, a chat session with the developers
of Allegiance, MS' upcoming space combat game, currently in open beta. Attending
will be Joel "Solap" Dehlin, Rob "Ribski" Girling, Curt
"DontMess" Carpenter and David "Tkela" Pugh, discussing tips
and tricks, upcoming events, current issues in the game, and more. The chat will
begin at 9:00 PM EST (6:00 PM PST) in the Zone Theater Chat Room.
Architecture of
Aggression Part Two on Damage Gaming offers opinions from several developers
about their favorite video game villains of all time. The article offers entries
from Lee Perry, Kenn Hoekstra, Tom Hall, and others on the topic. My personal
runner-up vote would go to Ensemble's Mark Terrano's and my bro Rogue's Robert
Selitto's pick, the Doom Cyberdemon, but for the scariest and most intimidating
of all time would be the Arch Vile from Doom II (which is also picked by
LithTech's Paul Butterfield).
After a semi-private initial beta, build two of the HeadHunters Classic beta for
Quake III Arena is now available on the tarot
gaming site in preparation for a planned session of beta testing tonight on
a few different servers. The festivities begin at 8:00 PM EST (7:00 PM
CST/"GMT –6") in IRC irc.enterthegame.com #headhunters. More details
on the site and their
messageboards.
The Veterans Clan page has
version 0.1b of the TFC-Bot, which rather than an AI playmate for TeamFortress
Classic, is a program that announces TFC games in real-time through IRC,
reporting captures, scores and all kinds of player statistics. TFC-Bot can also
be used as an easy IRC-based server admin tool to kick/ban players, etc.
A new version 1.0.32 of the Q3AControl
remote admin console is now available. Q3AControl can govern Quake, QuakeWorld,
and Quake II servers in addition to Q3A servers, and the new release fixes some
bugs, and adds several new features, including the ability to create a custom
cVar file for each server.
The SignoSoft Homepage has the
first release of MapMan for Quake III Arena, designed to make managing your Q3A
map collection easier. The project is still under development, but much of the
basic functionality is in place, but the final version of the program as
planned will offer loads of neat functionality.
A post to The Oxygen Tank Forum and Comments System
by Mark Hirsch, executive producer at S3-Diamond Inc. clarifies that versions of
the S3TC-enhanced maps converted for use on non-S3 cards is not a problem for
them. Local copies can be found on Z-Axis
(thanks quake3nation) where
we first heard word of local copies on FilePlanet
(the first name on each of these is the map author's): Learth's Asunder, AzrKnight's
The
CrossRoads,
SPoG's Lonely
Planet, Mr. Clean's Last
Rites, Peej's Face
to Fate, ztn's Bad
Blood, and Wolfen's Conflicting
Interests.
Gamecenter's Sneak Peek at Warlords Battlecry,
due this spring from SSG & Strategic Simulations, Inc. HavenGames
previews Earth 2150 looking at this upcoming apocalyptic RTS. There are some new
Gangsters II screenshots on World Online. Finally, there are new Sudden Strike
screenshots on the SS homepage (warning, this is one of the most intrusive
non-pornographic browser hijack links I've ever seen).
Ranger Gone AWOL
on Machinima.com tells the story of Ranger Gone Bad 3, detailing the history
of the on-again, off-again, and now apparently on-again Quake movie, including
some of the behind-the-scenes stuff surrounding the project's post-production
woes.
Registration for the Razer CPL Event,
which opened Monday, is now complete, with all the spots in this upcoming
$100,000 tournament filled.
- Sorry to see word on UnrealNation
that this old school Unreal news site has thrown in the towel, in their
words, and will no longer be updated. Thanks deCyber...
- Houston Native Digital Tome Set to Launch Computer Game Industry’s First Episodic Game
Novel...
- Act One-No. 172
is the new Diablo II Screenshot of the week (no, it's not the 172nd of
these, just the 49th)...
- Panty Raider
has been announced, from the folks that brought you the Deer Avenger series.
The plausible premise? "This May, To Save the Earth from Nasty Aliens,
Gamers will Seek Out Supermodels to Strip Them Down to Their Bra and
Panties." There are screenshots
on GameDaily...
- Speaking of GameDaily, here is the weekly best-selling
PC games list and the Mac
bestsellers list. This week UT surpasses Q3A on the PC list by only
dropping one spot to #9, while Q3A plunges 10 spots to #15. UT and Q3A both
hold steady on the Mac chart at #1 and #3 respectively. Until next week this
is Casey Kasem saying keep your feet on the ground and a fire extinguisher
in the kitchen...
- FGNOnline reports
Hasbro Interactive and its subsidiary Atari Interactive have filed suit in
federal court to enforce the companies' copyrights to some of the world's
most popular computer and videogames. The complaint alleges that eGames, GT
Interactive and several others have blatantly copied games for which Hasbro
Interactive owns the exclusive copyrights. These games include Centipede,
Asteroids and Missile Command among others." Thanks GreenMarine.
- A press release on NovaCentral
reports attempts by a US Marine to convince his superiors to spring some
taxpayer cash to play Delta Force 2 on a LAN as a training simulator (sounds
like something that will be brought up in these school shooting lawsuits)...
From the vast "I probably should know this stuff already" department: Some interesting comments
in the messageboards about the weapon respawn times in Q3A teamplay games I
mentioned yesterday, enlightening me on the reasoning behind the respawns in
team games being longer than in free-for-alls. The main concept is map control
where teams end up taking certain portions of the map, only allowing teammates
access to the weapons that spawn in their area, and fighting to take control of
areas held by the other team (of course the last time I clamped down a weapon in
a teamplay game, I was called a camper). It has been pointed out with shorter respawns,
teamplay would tend to be more a team free-for-all, rewarding FFA skills, which tend to emphasize aim over team
tactics. This makes sense, though some
server operators did express some frustration with the inability to change the
spawn times to create their own balance, as apparently the 30 second respawn
time is indeed hard-coded (though one comment seemed to recall that changing the
"weaponrespawn setting AFTER you set the g_gametype setting" will
change the spawn time). Being able to shorten the respawns certainly would help in the situations like MrCoffee
and I were encountering, since I realize an extra factor in our
situation was that we were looking for servers where the player limit was
tweaked a bit high, to maximize the chance we couple play on the same team
(difficult to do when you join a two-on-two). Anyway, though the point is well
taken that that having trouble finding a weapon can be a sign the other team is
doing a good job of map control, as I mentioned, the skimpy default ammo
loads had lots of players on both teams fighting like Muhammad Ali with the
fists, but not with the guns.
Link of the Day: YETI@Home.
Help in the search for BigFoot from your home PC. Thanks DarkNinja.
Bonus Link: NetSlaves Combat Manual 10 Surviving Silicon Alley.
Thanks Redwood. A good insight into
surviving in the Big Apple even if you aren't some Internet startup billionaire.
Story of the Day: Russian
Stripper Newscasts on ABCNEWS. Thanks Judo Chop. From a few days back: Its
embedded RealMedia stuff may be rough on your
browser's digestion (as it was on mine), but this is a classic, and another case
of life imitating art for any that recall Jane Curtain's open-shirted complaint
about Chevy Chase nostalgia on an old SNL newscast.
Quote of the Day: "I will be happy to NOT see Daikatana at this
years' E3." John Romero (Stomped @ E3).
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