Archived News:
In what has become a sort of tradition, Epic's Tim Sweeney made a post
to the Unreal Technology Page, directly
rebutting statements made earlier today by Monolith's Jason Hall ( story). Specifically
Tim addresses the accusation that they are neglecting their licensees, and he
repeatedly points to the success of Unreal as a game as an example of their model
working. Here's an excerpt which sums up Tim's position nicely: Our engine
licensing business has always been driven simply by people seeing our games
and tools and saying, "Wow, that's exactly the kind of engine I need!"
All our early licensing success, with Legend Entertainment and Microprose, occurred
before we realized that a viable business called "engine licensing"
even existed. The Unreal community online developed the same way -- we never
said "let's recruit web sites for our game", we just released a cool
game (early on, just cool screenshots), and the community happened. Our philosophy
is "Build it, and they will come".
UnrealEngine.com has posted Q&As with Andrew
Scheidecker and Gregory
Wood, two members of the team working on UnrealtyED, the customized version
of UnrealED for the Unrealty real estate visualization project. Andrew is responsible
for rewriting the editor in C++, and Greg is the author of the new documentation
for the project, which he describes as "voluminus."
According to this
news story on AVault, Terminus, Vicarious Visions' massively multiplayer
(and singleplayer) space sim will be released for Mac, Linux, and PC (in the
same box) in April of this year. In addition to that, they've posted six
new screenshots from the game.
Also new on AVault are two
screenshots from Dark Reign 2, complete with detailed descriptions from
Greg Borrud, the director of the game at Pandemic Studios.
PlanetDaikatana
has posted a brand new screenshot from Daikatana that features the "Deathsphere
and Ragemaster" with more promised tomorrow, Wednesday and Thursday.
We missed their previous three screenshots from last week, which are still available
on their news page.
Hot on the heels of the new release ( story) comes a small patch for JHexen to fix two problems with its Doomsday engine. Also available is the source code of the JHexen DLL, which allows the creation of JHexen mods, or even of a new game DLL on top of the Doomsday engine.
GameSpot UK has posted an
interview with Steve Pearsall, the project director on Thief II: The Metal
Age at Looking Glass Studios. The interview covers the new features added since
the original Thief, both in terms of technology and new gameplay
features as well.
The Windows 2000 compatibility update that was released last Friday ( story)
on Microsoft's Windows Update site, has been posted
as a separate download (thanks Oleg Troyko). The update adds compatibility with a whopping 48
programs, many of which are popular games.
AVault has posted a
360-degree, panoramic screenshot from Monolith's LithTech 2 engine, or more
specifically their E3 '99 demonstration level. The shot was compiled from high
resolution BMP files, and is presented using a Java applet, so a Java-capable
browser is required.
United Recammers have released a
new Quake II demo movie titled United Recammers: Recamming Time, or simply URRT.
The demo is a composition of some of the most popular Quake II deathmatch movies,
including the CPL's Extreme Annihilation final demos, Makaveli vs Destrukt,
and GeekFest '99. It's available for download at
Machinima.com.
RPOV has posted an interview
with Jason Hall, Monolith's CEO (and resident ShadowMan lookalike), talking
to him about the history of the company, and their future, focusing largely
on their LithTech engine (which has been getting lots of press lately). Jason
is quite vocal about the company's plans for making LithTech the core of their
future plans, as shown in this excerpt: Quite frankly I find it unlikely
that some of our main competitors will step up to the challenge [of providing
support for engine licensees]. Competing with us at this point is going to be
extremely expensive and most of our "competitors" aren't specifically
focused on engine licensing. Most of them are focused on making "games
first" and then "licensing second."
...With LithTech, our licensees are the top priority. Nothing else comes before
them, period. The engine licensing business has evolved into a technology AND
service oriented business, where as you know, in order to be successful, the
customer always has to come first. And for LithTech, the licensee always does.
New Devil Inside Screenshots
on GA-Source show off nine new in-game shots of Gamesquad's upcoming
action/adventure game as well as three in-development shots in 3D Studio Max.
The shots are accompanied by a brief blurb from Designer Hubert Chardot, author
of the Alone in the Dark series.
WarCentral.com
interviews Kelly Hoerner talking with the producer on Daikatana, ION Storm
& Eidos Interactive's upcoming sword-wielding first-person shooter. The
Q&A gives a basic rundown on what to expect from the game, and the
WarCentral folks' expectations are obviously high, as one question begins "Daikatana
possesses some of the best AI in the history of First Person Shooters..."
Thanks sCary.
There's a
new piece of Soldier of Fortune concept art on SoF Operations showing off
the squad known as Red Guard, captioned "not the nicest army in the world."
A new version 0.98 of Fists of Fury for Quake
III Arena, the mod for Quake III Arena where you put down those guns and
fight like a man, is now available. The new release adds a new custom HUD, a new
Kamikazi Death ("bind a key to kamikazi...muhaha"), a
"functional" jump kick (when you have long jump), and the removal of
the Gauntlet Grapple (said to be "laggy...and almost useless").
A new version 1.4.2 update for LxDoom,
the Linux port of the Doom source code, is now available. There is nothing new
in the new release except for bug fixes, some portability improvements, and a
fix for some problems with "the network code not being compiled right on
many systems."
Stomped @ E3 is offering the opportunity to
win Diablo II, Halo, and Team Fortress II, to be awarded to the best "why I
should win" essay. Cached has posted
results from the Cyber-Arena tourney,
sponsored by CompUSA among others: congrats to the winner, nb.fatal1ty, and all
the other participants. Also, the UK qualifier for the Razer-CPL event in London
is complete, with Blokey taking the first prize, winning a trip to Dallas and an
automatic seeding in the final 64 at the tourney this April. Quake 3 skills earn Blokey a shot at $100,000 CPL prize
on gameplay.com, and Eurogamer.net's
Razer-CPL Qualifier Coverage is now under way, with reports on four of the
seeding free for alls and three of the first round matches already up, and more
planned on the way.
Today is President's Day here in the US, where we celebrate our great leaders of
the past by taking off from work and buying sheets and towels at low, low
prices. There used to be separate holidays here for Lincoln and Washington's
birthdays, but apparently there were concerns that another leader warranting
such treatment might come along some day, so the holiday was opened up to all,
though it doesn't seem very effective at ensuring that the likes of Millard P.
Filmore and Rutherford B. Hayes are not forgotten. Since the holiday covers the
whole gamut, just to be contrary, I'm going to spend the day remembering Andrew
Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton for their brushes with impeachment.
Link of the Day: RiksJotto II,
"the different soccer game." Thanks Are Nyseth. This has no socially
redeeming values (you are a sniper shooting at soccer players from the stands),
but a great web-based shooting game. Like many of the playable Links of the Day,
I hesitate to admit how long I played it once I tried it.
id Software's Robert Duffy updated his .plan with a lengthy essay on Q3A mod
support. It's pretty quiet, so here's the whole deal: Point Release Stuff
There was a lot of new functionality added in the latest point release,
primarily centered around mod development support. We are still sifting through
all the feedback e-mail but here are some problems and solutions based on what
we have found so far.
1. If you are are not seeing the new "Mods" menu, it is likely that
you are running something that replaces the UI. ArenaSpy and several other mods
have their own UI DLL's or QVM's so you will not be able to see the point
release UI. This can be remedied by removing any extra UI mods. This can also
cause a problem with auto-download in that if you connect to a server that sends
you something, you cannot see the download progress because the UI your using
does not support it. The download is working but you just see "Awaiting
gamestate" ( because your not using the new UI ). If you see partial files
in baseq3 or an fs_game path this is what happened. Again, using the UI that
comes with the point release solves this problem.
2. If you have chosen a 3rd party model or skin, you CAN still connect to and
play on pure servers. The caveat being that you will temporarily revert to Sarge.
This works just like it always has.
3. If you are using a cracked executable, you will no longer be able to connect
to pure servers. "You ruined the game, I cannot cheat anymore!" is not
a valid complaint.
4. If you are not able to join a server and you get an "unpure" client
message, it is likely that you are loading content from an invalid PK3 file,
loading DLL's for gameplay or loading content outside of PK3 files. If you have
modified any of the official PK3 files this will also cause you to not be able
to connect to pure servers. The other case in which I have seen this is if the
server was set to pure and not restarted. I am still looking into this one.
5. I have seen reports of non-pure clients not getting kicked fully and
remaining semi-connected. I have be unable to duplicate this problem. If you
have details on this please forward them to me.
6. If you cannot see a 3rd party model, I have tracked this down to the method
which it was zipped. It appears that some zip programs do not store directory
names as individual entries in the zip files. I use Winzip and it works fine.
7. You can use 3rd party UI's to launch games and connect to pure servers. Once
you have connected to a pure server, the client will reload the UI based on what
the server flags is ok. This will explain running a new UI ( like ArenaSpy ),
playing on a pure server, exiting back to the menu and ArenaSpy is gone.
8. There have been a couple of reports of not being able to load nn number of
maps, others have reported no problems. We load around 2500 maps from the
development directory here and with that and locally I have not been able to
duplicate this issue. And no, there are not 2500 maps we did not release.. these
are largely successive numbered versions of the same maps.
If you have any information that could help identify a problem or an exact set
of reproduction steps for unpure clients not getting fully kicked or not being
able to load maps from baseq3, please forward the information to me at raduffy@idsoftware.com.
And for those of you wanting to try out that new Mod menu, I highly suggest
HeadHunters or Fists of Fury those along with many others are Very Cool.
The AZ Development Team
page has a new version 0.75 of the Equilibrium mod for Quake III Arena.
Equilibrium is a teamplay mod that starts each team with 50% of the victory in
the match, and that ratio can swing back and forth with the momentum of the
match. The mod supports four game modes: regular teamplay, CTF, Showdown, and
Tournament.
It's been awhile, but there is now a new version 0.99.0 of JHexen, the OpenGL port of Raven's classic action game Hexen. This version boasts a number of major changes, including separation of the game proper into a Doomsday engine and a JHexen DLL, expansion of the 3D acceleration facilities to Direct3D, enhanced network play that uses a simulated client/server system, lots of new and improved console commands, and a ton of other changes and fixes. You can check out the complete list of changes here.
The newly relocated Fragstomp,
home of the Reload be Gone mod for Q3A has a new version 1.0 of their Bloodlust
mod for Quake III Arena, a client-side mod that causes players to throw body
parts and blood trails as they are shot, and makes gibs much bloodier, in case
you are just not getting the kind of gratification you seek disintegrating your
friends under the current system.
The One Must Fall Battlegrounds site has a
22 MB movie showing off gameplay from One Must Fall: Battlefields, an
upcoming fighting game from Diversions Entertainment. The AVI format movie
depicts the character named Jaguar. Thanks GA-Source.
These B&W Exclusives
on Infolder.Com offer six new looks at Lionheads' upcoming strategy offering
commonly classified as a "god game." The site is primarily in Dutch,
but the shots, of course, speak one of those universal languages.
Another release in today's run of front-ends for Quake III Arena comes on ShellShock's Crater,
where there's a new version 00.02.19.00 of the Q3Offline mod. The new release fixes some
bugs, and adds a few new features, such as map list drag and drop.
There are some new Hired Guns
screenshots and engine details on GA-Source showing off Psygnosis' upcoming
strategy/action hybrid. Along with the shots, there is a development update from
VR1, the team at work on the game, giving details about what is being modified
in the Unreal engine for Hired Guns. There's also a
Hired Guns Quickie on 3DGaming.Net giving a handy one-page rundown on the
game.
Slovenska Quake III Arena has posted an
exchange with id Software's Robert Duffy inquiring about CD key security after
the release of the Q3A CD security patch ( story),
learning, among other things, why encryption is not used on these keys. Though
their intro to the Q&A reads: "Kmalu po izidu novega Q3A Beta Patch-a
v1.16i sem poslal mail do idjevega frika Robert Dufffija in na moje zacudenje
celo dobil odgovor. No, pa si poglejmo . Ehm aja, sorry for my bad
english?" The Q&A itself is all English.
Bryionak.de
interviews Sergei Klimov from Snowball Interactive talking about
Stormbringer, an upcoming RPG based on the novels by Michael Moorcock (who is
involved in the Game's development). GA-RPG
interviews Jon Kromrey of Stormfront Studios
talking about Pool of Radiance Ruins of Myth Drannor, an upcoming "3rd
Edition Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game which uses a state-of the art 3D
animation system which brings D&D to life more than any product ever has."
There are more Chaser Details
on Actiontrip getting more details on this upcoming first-person shooter
from Slovakian developer Cauldron. Tech-Junkie's Ratbag Site Visit & Interview
goes on location to talk behind-the-scenes with Jim Rehn, Ratbag's lead game
designer. PlanetUnreal's
Unrealty Interview ( Unreal Universe
has the same Q&A on their main page) talks with one of the developers of the
Unreality Unreal-engine real estate sales
program.
A new version 1.6 of the Weapon Mod
for Quake III Arena "new minor additions and changes to the mod are grapple
pull speed, drop weapons after being fragged on/off, /drop weapons while playing
will spawn up above the player, 3 sec rule is gone, and offhand grapple. players
can choose the type of grapple they want using the two client console commands,
/onhand and /offhand." There's also a note there about a bug in lightening
discharge code in version 1.6 that's been removed, though it's not clear if that
means the version 1.6 they have for download has been altered from the first
version that was posted.
The El Niņo Quake Extensions page
has a new version 1.4.1 of the Viz mod for Quake III Arena, hot on the heels of
last night's 1.4.0 release ( story).
As could be surmised from the rapid fire releases, the follow-up is a bug
fix, addressing odd gauntlet behavior in action mode.
The Tectonic page has a new version
0.9 of the TecArena Quake III Arena front-end. The new release adds per map frag/capture/time
limits, a custom game type option, and a couple of fixes, including fixes to the
Maxclients and Capturelimit variables.
A new version 2.08 of the Servarena
Quake III Arena dedicated server launcher is now available, fixing a few
"map-related" bugs, as well as removing some obsolete code that
remained as a vestige of previous releases.
The third Q3A front-end release of the morning is a FightClub
version 00.03.02 patch. This is a configuration tool for Quake III Arena servers
and clients that offers support for over 20 modifications. The update is
currently only available as an upgrade to previous versions until "any bugs
are squished."
There are a few new Quake III Arena coding tutorials on GameSeek.com,
a 3-Way Plasma Gun Tutorial,
a Laserbeam Weapon Tutorial,
and a Model-Manager Tutorial,
and they also have a Quake 3 coding article titled How
to make a Vampire Mod for Quake 3. Also, there's now a Voice Pack Creation Tutorial
on Painful Detail. VRMagazine
has posted their second texture pack out of three, featuring textures for Q3A,
which are said to be easily adapted to other games.
- Deathmatching for Fun and Profit
on RivalWorks talks with CPL founder Angel Munoz about the viability of
making a living as a "cyberathlete" Also, loonygames presents Game, Set,
Match, another Angel Munoz interview, calling him "King of the
CPL," and tossing up a few softballs.
- eXtremeDomination.net's
Q3A pummel fest offers the chance to throw away those guns and fight
like a man in a fists-only Quake III Arena tourney.
- Planet
Daikatana's Looking For A Hiro contest offers copies of Daikatana when it
comes out, as well as joysticks and stuff.
- The Ticket to the
Limit contest on Gamer's Voice is an "instant-win" (albeit
promoting repeated "instant" visits) game with over 600 prizes worth
over $14,000, including swag from Microsoft, Eidos, Sony, Karna, Monolith
Productions, and more.
- Cached.NEt Red64
Tourney results are online, DM-Zero4 is the champion of this one-on-one
faceoff.
- Painful Detail has
been updated with six new voice packs and two new player models for Unreal
Tournament...
- Apparently the revived Pyropimps Show
features some references to not getting plugged here, so it's obvious they
are back in form over there. Thanks R2P2. This is an irreverent RealPlayer
audio program, that unlike most of its irreverent kin, is usually pretty
funny...
Yesterday was the two-year anniversary of the release of the Quake II point
release, and in addition to being Zoid's birthday
as previously mentioned (the big 3-0, so I'm told), it
was also the second birthday of one of his children, Threewave CTF for Quake II.
More birthdays: Raven's truly certifiable Jake
Simpson's birthday is somewhere around tomorrow (BTW, this is the second year
in a row I screwed up Chris Foster's,
which was last week (gotta love annual traditions), and id's Kenneth
Scott's
birthday is tomorrow, as well. Today is also the birthday of Ritual's Andrew
Collins. There... all set, including handy email links if you want to send
some birthday spam.
Link of the Day: Oklahoma Microscopy Society Ugly Bug Contest.
Thanks [m42]Tyger. They probably switched to microscopes from magnifying glasses
after one too many portrait subjects burst into flames while posing.
Image of the Day: Penguin Computing Graphics
has a bunch of Linux-oriented desktop wallpapers. Thanks Jeff Magill.
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