Archived News:
A new preview of Earth 2150
has been posted over at PCGN, which appears to be based on a build of the full
version of the game, and as such is fairly well detailed. Earth 2150 is an upcoming
3D strategy game from TopWare and Mattel.
NovaLogic has again released a new Delta Force 2 patch for download on their ftp servers here and here (8.8 MB), as well as through the auto-update feature. At this moment, their developer notes page has not been updated though, so version number and changes in this patch are currently unknown. Update: Maagic sends word this is version 1.06.15, and merely fixes a couple of bugs.
incitegames has posted a
brief interview with Human Head's Tim Gerritsen, talking to him about Rune,
their upcoming Unreal-engine game of drunken Viking glory. Tim talks about why
they chose to base the game on Norse mythology, the game's multiplayer, and
more.
Another day, another postmortem, it seems, as Gamasutra has posted an article examining the remains of Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings. The article, originally printed in the January 2000 issue of Game Developer magazine, has programmer Matt Pritchard looking back at the development of Ensemble Studios' medieval real-time strategy game, and of course addressing the questions of what went right, and what went wrong during the project.
NovaLogic has opened a personnel page for Tachyon: the Fringe, featuring profiles and soundbites (how appropriate, today ![=]](/miscimages/smiley4.gif) ) of the main characters in their upcoming mercenary space-combat title. The main character Jack Logan is voiced by Evil Dead actor Bruce Campbell, and naturally there are a generous five sound clips on offer from him.
The weekly update to the official Summoner site brings a new screenshot depicting the "Avrum Market", as well as an update to the character gallery to show off the Sornehan's Knight.
Undeterred by the recent demo release ( story), Interplay shows off more scenes from Star Trek: Klingon Academy on their screenshots page, presumably from areas not available in the demo.
Keeping with the themes of both previous stories, Star Trek and weekly updates, the official Star Trek: Armada site has also been updated with a new screenshot of the week.
GamePower has posted a hands-on preview of Evolva, featuring a handful of screenshots, a quick Q&A with producer Steve Baldoni, and a gameplay movie. Evolva is the tactical first-person action game in development by Computer Artworks, where you control a squad of so-called Genohunters.
Dynamix' Tim Gift updated his .plan with a new update on what's he been working on, mostly pertaining to the status of vehicles in Starsiege: TRIBES 2. It's a lenghty update, so check it out here.
SoF Center has posted an interview with Dan 'El Krem' Kramer, a programmer on Raven's mercenary shooter Soldier of Fortune. The talk covers a variety of topics, not all related to the game at hand, or equally serious for that matter, but there is a fair bit of info about his work at Raven.
A new set of Star Trek: Armada screenshots on incitegames show off more battle scenes from this real-time strategy game, currently in a space construction yard at Activision.
GameSpy has posted a
brief Q&A with Chris Taylor, the creator of Dungeon Siege (and prior to that, Total Annihilation). Dungeon Siege is an
upcoming isometric action/adventure game from Gas Powered Games.
A new version 1.0b of the Equilibrium mod for Quake III Arena is now available at its AZ Development Team page, providing the first non-beta, feature-complete version of this teamplay mod. Three custom maps for the Equilibrium Showdown mode are included, which is one of the four supported game modes (regular teamplay, CTF, Showdown, and Tournament).
The first alpha release of Zeroping, an Unreal Tournament mutator, has been released at the Zeroping site. This mod aims to bring LAN-like performance to UT players over any net connection, and needs only to be applied to UT servers, as "players can just connect to a Zeroping game and play."
GameSpy's "Engine Week" continues, with an
interview with Jason Hall, CEO of Monolith, the folk behind the LithTech
engine. Like yesterday's interview with Tim Sweeney, it reads a little like
promotional material for their engine, but also features some interesting comments
from Hall, such as this bit on the future of their engine: At this point,
our technology improvements are driven by licensee needs. We are very systematic
in our approach, not whimsical. Now I certainly could describe for you all the
neat little doo-dad features that we will be adding and give you tons of buzz
words, but to be honest, that is not what developers should be overly focused
on.
They can safely assume that LithTech will grow at the market's pace, and that
their technology requests will be considered and perhaps implemented immediately
if appropriate, but the real question to be asking is what is LithTech Inc,
going to do to increase its effectiveness at addressing the "golden reasons." To that end,
we are spending even more time and money on example applications, additional
documentation, more supplementary tools, etc. It will be items like this that
will be the determining factor in the future, not something like "Reflective
iso-linear-fluidic-radiosic-volume-mapping..."
Both Well-Rounded News and Adrenaline Vault report that Codemasters USA will be restructuring into an online gaming company, meaning that Navy SEALs, the tactical Unreal-engine shooter they picked up from Sierra last year ( story), has been cancelled yet again, along with any other single-player titles.
SimHQ has posted three more screenshots from Rogue Spear: Urban Operations, the upcoming expansion pack to Red Storm's tactical shooter (thanks SpecForce). This set shows off the RPD light machine gun, a new weapon in the pack.
ION Storm's John Romero wrote a post on the PlanetDaikatana forum addressing a series of questions regarding his first-person shoooter, as it is nearing the end of its three-year development span (thanks Stomped). There are several details about the game's content and features, as well as this bit about their post-release plans:
We will be splitting the one team into two teams. The bigger team will be working on a Fifth Daikatana Episode, marketed as a mission pack. We will start working on our next big game after finishing the 5th episode.
Quantic Dream has released nine more soundtrack MP3's from Omikron: the Nomad Soul, their 3D action/adventure of last year. The tracks last from 35 seconds to 4 minutes, and like the first three tracks, most are faithful to the quirky looks of the game.
A new version 1.1 of the Hulk mod for Quake III Arena is now available for download on the Hulk project page at Reactive Software. This version fixes several bugs and includes a sample config file for servers.
Red Storm has
announced Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Covert Operations Essentials, an upcoming
title in their Rainbow Six series that is being developed by Magic Lantern (the
company behind the LithTech engine title FORTS and the Unreal engine RPG Second
Genesis). Covert Operations is more of an interactive guide than a game, as it
features video interviews with counter-terrorism experts, information on the
making of Rogue Spear and Rainbow Six, an interactive "Officer Candidate School"
as well as "specially created game levels." A complete description
of the title, which will use Magic Lantern's ShowTech environment, can be found
in the
full press release.
Sierra Studios' official Homeworld: Cataclysm site has been updated with more on this stand-alone sequel to Relic's space-based RTS, currently in development at Barking Dog. There is now a full story write-up, and six new screenshots and eight concept sketches have been added as well.
Adrenaline Vault has posted a new set of screenshots from Kingdom Under Fire, an isometric role-playing RTS game by Korean developers Phantagram, which is scheduled for a release through Gathering of Developers this Fall.
How do game developers hack it?
on Salon Technology is on the subject
of game development crunch time (thanks elvis). The piece is part one of a
two-parter, focusing on the efforts being made at ION Storm to finish off
Daikatana, starting off calling crunch time a death schedule: "All-nighters,
18-hour days, sleeping at the office -- John Romero's posse keeps up a 'death
schedule' to get Daikatana out of beta."
Old Man
Murray's SWAT Guide is online, and as you might imagine given the nature of
the old curmudgeon, it's a bit unusual (but funny, of course). Also, Hellhound's
Q3A CTF guide is up. Finally, the Allegiance Vault's
Deployment guide offers tips on becoming an expert at deploying bases in
Allegiance.
Version 1.0 of T.E.C. for Quake III Arena
is now available, offering the first release of a mod that adds the four techs
familiar from Quake II CTF to Q3A, along with four additional techs, and a
grappling hook. The mod also offers a full-featured "Rocket Arena
style" overtime for team games.
The FragLan website has a
new version 0.90 of the FragLan mod for Quake III Arena, described as a
"major release." Like the T.E.C. mod mentioned above, FragLan adds
runes (techs) and a grappling hook, along with all manner of tweaked out
armaments.
Version 0.61 of the Admin Mod for Half-Life is now available on Alfred's Page,
offering a plug-in for Half-Life server operators that can give selected
administrative server functions to certain users, without giving them access to
the server's RCon. The new release adds a workaround for a Counter-Strike bug,
and adds the "admin_ban" and "admin_unban" commands.
Westwood sends along news of what seems to be another update to Command &
Conquer: Tiberian Sun, on the heels of the version 2.02 patches last week ( story).
While not yet available as a separate patch for download, the new version is
available through the in-game auto-update feature, and adds the ability to save
skirmish games, the ability to select all units of a type or types on the
screen, and more.
Seems I'm a bit under the weather, which is thankfully something that I don't
usually have to worry about noting in this space any more (along with other
mundane problems of life that would occasionally be mentioned), since loony and
Frans are both around these things don't usually result in interruptions in
coverage, and this won't either, but I refer to it here just because of
yesterday's mention of attending the GDC, which is at risk if I'm sick... I
guess I'll just have to play that by ear at this point.
Link of the Day: The Trepanation Trust.
If you are familiar with this bizarre subject, you'll already know this isn't
one to check out while eating. Thanks waterhouse. Please don't go drilling
brains in your head after reading this.
Story of the Day: Internet access over power lines nears reality.
Thanks CiKoTiC. Bringing us a step closer to the day when troubleshooting your
'net connection will finally include an enhanced risk of electrocution.
GameSurge has posted a
Q&A with Raven Software's Brian Raffel, talking to him about their nearly-complete
action title, Soldier of Fortune. While brief, Brian does talk a little about
the possibility of a sequel, as shown in this excerpt: If Soldier does
as well as I think we will have a mission pack and a sequel. I have
already taken steps to secure John Mullins (our mercenary) for the sequel and
this time I want the all the missions to be based off of real scenarios that
the military have had to do. I would also like to add more gore zones like
affecting the hands and feet as well as more unique animations. If we have time
I would like to implement our skeletal system so we can fit more animations
in general.
Warcraft III.net is reporting that
three former executive members of Blizzard Entertainment, Pat Wyatt (Vice President
of Research and Development), Mike O'Brien (Company Director) and Jeff Strain
(reportedly the Team Lead and Lead Programmer of an unannounced title) have
left to start their own company, called Triforge.
This news has been confirmed with Blizzard, who added that while they are sorry
to see them go, they do not anticipate any delays on titles in development.
No announcement about any future titles from the startup have been made at this
time.
3dfx has posted beta
Windows 2000 drivers for Voodoo 2 based cards (thanks Voodoo
Extreme). These beta drivers are based on their NT4 drivers (making this equivalent
to the unsupported "hacked" drivers floating around), and support
Glide and OpenGL (according to 3dfx, "DirectX switches to software rendering").
LucasArts has announced that Force
Commander, their 3D strategy game, has gone gold, and will be on store shelves
as soon as the week of March 20th (thanks Chris Ryan). In other Force Commander
news, StarWars.com has posted a
feature on the game, complete with new screenshots.
New Reality Gaming has posted a
Q&A with an unnamed representative from BioWare, talking about their
upcoming RPG Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn, which will reportedly take 100
- 150 hours to complete (!).
The official Star Trek: Armada site has been updated with a new page of screenshots, showing off the The Klingon Empire's fleet of starships and special weapons in Activision's space-based RTS.
Parsec.org has released a patch for the self-running demo of Parsec that was released last week ( story), which fixes a startup problem for Win95 users. It's not needed if you run another OS.
Red Storm has officially released the Shadow Watch demo for download. When this demo surfaced on the Internet last week, Red Storm stated this wasn't an official demo and requested not to post it, but obviously they have changed their minds now. Shadow Watch is an isometric turn-based strategy title in a retro, comic look that is scheduled for a release next month.
There is a new preview of Earth 2150 on GamePower, looking ahead to this 3D real-time strategy title by TopWare that is already out in Europe. As is their custom, they have included a brief Q&A, with producer Jim Tso, and some movie footage of the gameplay.
GA-RPG has posted an interview on Wizardry 8, the latest, 3D installment in the long-running RPG series by Sirtech. Project leader Linda Currie talks in detail about the game's features, and there are several new screenshots as well.
incitegames has posted a
strange interview with Epic's Cliff Bleszinski. If you're looking for in-depth
commentary on the making of Unreal Tournament, you won't find it here, but you
will find Cliff talking about how he wants to make, "sweet, sweet love
to our customers down by the fire" and other oddball topics.
As promised, here are local copies of all three versions of the Quake
III Arena point release beta 1.16m, complete with mirrors:
As reflected in Robert
Duffy's .plan update, beta version 1.16m of the Quake III Arena point release
has been posted to id's FTP
site (we'll have a local copy and mirrors up shortly). Here are the details: A
new point release beta is out and on the FTP. We anticipate removing the beta
tag in the very near future. We have been doing a lot of testing on connection
issues, cheat preventions, auto-downloading as well as running a lot of the
new mods through it. Things look good, some of the mods heading our way look
fantastic!
This also contains a CTF version of Q3Tourney6 which is tons of fun for 2 on 2 CTF.
One key thing is that when connecting to a pure server both sides will have
to be using the latest point release as we updated the pak2.pk3. This is not
much of an issue once this version propogates a bit but it is something to keep
in mind.
There are 3 issues of note with this version ( 2 of them Linux only )
- ZFree errors, on some Linux systems you may see ZFree allocation errors. This
happens mostly when fiddling with the mouse etc. during map loads. We are looking
into this ( as is Loki ).
- Mods directory does not show mods ( Linux only )
- Starting a team game with bots does not automatically assign the player (
you ) to a team.
As before, please forward bug and other information to raduffy@idsoftware.com
Gamasutra has posted one of their usual game postmortems, and this time, unusually, it's for a game that was released fairly recently: SWAT3: Close Quarters Battle. In the article, lead programmer Jim Napier examines what kind of game they set out to create, how they achieved that goal, and what went right and wrong along the way. A recommended read if you're interested in this tactical first-person action game by Sierra Studios.
Just in time for the Game Developer's Conference, Check Six Games has
announced the Maya Real-Time SDK, a set of code libraries available through
Alias|Wavefront to help designers put,"Hollywood quality content in their games"(obviously they've never seen a Pauly Shore movie). Screenshots
from the engine have
been posted at GA-Source, and here's an excerpt from the
press release: MARINA DEL REY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 6, 2000--After
a year spent building the ultimate game development tool kit for next-generation
hardware, the Maya Real Time SDK(TM), Check Six Studios will unveil much of
the technology behind the tool that truly will help game developers begin putting
Hollywood-quality content in their games.
Exclusively available through Alias/Wavefront, the Maya Real Time SDK is a set
of code libraries for implementing 3-D rendering, dynamics, animation, character
animation, inverse kinematics and particle systems, used for authoring game
and simulation applications. It is seamlessly integrated with Maya to create
a clean and efficient workflow from art tool to application.
``It's amazing to us that what started off as an ambitious idea we had about
how to converge Hollywood and the gaming industry has turned into the Maya Real
Time SDK,'' said Brent Oster, president, Check Six Studios. ``The Check Six
technology team comes from all aspects of the game industry -- hardware, PC
games, console games, animation software.
``We used this combined knowledge to build what everyone told us couldn't be
done -- a real-time 3-D renderer that provides animations which rival what you'll
see on the big screen, as well as an integrated animation and dynamics engine
that truly brings movie-like interactive content to life.''
E-tailer CheckOut.com has posted an
interview with Tim Sweeney, the programming madman behind the Unreal engine.
Tim talks about Epic's history, the upcoming importance of console systems for
developers, the mod community, and even touches on a favorite subject of mine,
Infocom's classic text-adventure, Zork.
According to Raven Sofware programmer John Scott's .plan
update, Soldier of Fortune, their Quake II engine title, is now in release-candidate
QA testing. Here's an excerpt from his full .plan update, which goes into far
more detail about all the stuff in the game than is listed here: Soldier
of Fortune is now with Release QA. This means that we have eliminated all known
bugs found at Raven and by Activision's QAs around the world. Release QA verify
that we have fixed everything and go through a set list of criteria that the
game must pass. They also give the game a thorough QA pass making sure the regular
QA didn't miss anything. The lawyers also get the last chance to stick a spanner
in the works. If all goes well (which has never happened), this process will
take 5-7 days. It is most likely that they will come back with a few minor issues
and we'll have to start the process over again. If they found nothing, then
they wouldn't be doing their job :)
After Release QA give their OK, the duplicators and distributors take over....
Also on the CD comes the Heretic2 demo, the Battlezone2 demo, the Vampire trailer,
DirectX 7.0a, the monolithic
install of GLSetup, WONSwap and all the usual help files (quickstart guide,
manual, compatibility guide).
...This is all the versions of Sof (US, UK, french, German). In all non German
versions there is the option for English, American or french text, the German
version has only German. You will require a specific build for localized dialog.
All versions have the violence locked out for Germany and German speaking countries
(this includes Luxembourg, Austria Liechtenstein and Switzerland). Please direct
flames to the German government, not us, regarding this.
In other Soldier of Fortune news, French games site GameData has posted a
whopping 68 new screenshots from the game, showing off a wide variety of
missions and locations. As we always point out, to translate any of the French
text, be sure to squish
a Babel Fish in your ear.
PopTop Software, the company behind Railroad Tycoon II, has
announced Tropico, a new, "3D building, strategy and simulation game"
(thanks GA-Strategy). The game's official
site features the full press release, along with the first two screenshots
from the game, which will be published for PC and Macintosh later this year, and in early 2001 for the Dreamcast. Tropico features a radically overhauled version of their S3D engine, which was used to power Railroad Tycoon II.
Thresh's Firing Squad has written up an
article with their impressions of all the games at Microsoft's GameStock
last week. The games include Mechwarrior 4, Mechcommander 2, Dungeon Siege and
Starlancer amongst others, and they've even posted thoughts on Microsoft's new
hardware, including their oddball RTS controller.
Since the feedback on their first batch of screenshots from Rogue Spear: Urban
Operations (the upcoming add-on for Rogue Spear) was so positive, SimHQ has
posted another
massive batch of screenshots from their build of the game. These new shots
show off the multiplayer levels, as well as the new Rogue Spear versions of
the original Rainbow Six maps.
GA-Source has posted some
new screenshots from New Media Generation's upcoming first person action
game Hired Team, which show off the environment mapped bump-mapping in their
original SHINE engine.
New screenshots and preliminary information from Incoming Forces, Rage's sequel
to Incoming, have been posted at GA-Strategy.
The game uses their Blitter Generation II engine, and features more strategy
elements than the original game, "allowing the player to research and develop
their own new craft and weapons."
Raven's Eric Biessman is overwhelmed with work finishing up Soldier of Fortune,
so this week's edition of SoF
Center's Soldier of Fortune diary is penned by Kenn Hoekstra, Raven's Project
Administrator. Kenn talks about the company's new promotional philosophy that
started with SoF, which includes an increased community outreach via .plan files,
message boards, and more.
GameSpot UK has conducted
an interview with Microprose's Christopher David Clark (designer), Martin
DeRiso (producer) and Chris Coon (Lead Programmer) about their work on X-COM:
Alliance, an upcoming Unreal-engine, team-based first person action game set
in the X-COM universe. Alongside the interview is a
new preview of the game, which features some new screenshots.
Also new at GameSpot UK this morning, is a
new preview of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - The Fallen, Simon & Schuster
Interactive's third-person Unreal engine title. The preview features a few new
screenshots (among familiar ones) from the game, that is being developed by The Collective.
GameSpy.com has posted a
new interview with Epic's Tim Sweeney, talking to him about the features
and benefits of their Unreal engine. The interview reads like a promotional
brochure for the Unreal engine at times, but Tim does talk a little about some
of their upcoming features. Here's an excerpt: We'll shortly be releasing
our new skeletal animation system for licensees and the Unreal community; shortly
after that, a supercool terrain system--already up and running--that moves the
Unreal engine into the realm of large, detailed outdoor environments; and support
for Windows, PlayStation2, Linux, and (when the time comes) X-Box.
There will be a lot more after that. We've always stayed on top of the latest
technology and hardware support, and are in the early stages of radically cooler
new features. But we're also trying to be up-front here, promoting and promising
what we have up and running well today, rather than the far-off speculative
stuff.
Version 1.22 of the Unreal
Movie Studio, a program used to make demo movies for Unreal Tournament,
has been released and is available for download at
Machinima.com. To get you started, there are three tutorials already posted
at the UMS site, with three
more on the way shortly.
Ryan "Ridah" Feltrin, one-time programmer at Xatrix, the recently-closed company that created Kingpin: Life of Crime, updated
his .plan describing what's up with the network code for the game, and the
timing of the release of the SDK and its subsquent updates, which he frankly describes
as having left Kingpin in a state of disarray. Here's the story: I would like to
take some time to explain a few things regarding some comments I've recently
read on the Shack boards.
First, regarding the status of the Kingpin netcode.
This is something I have looked at several times, after hearing some negative
feedback from a few users. Each time I've looked into it, I have failed to find
any hard evidence of network code inefficiencies.
I did spend a fair chunk of time cutting network traffic both during and after
the completion of Kingpin. I introduced more delta compression in the entity
packet stream, moved chunks of server code over to the client, and removed
single-player legacy fields that were not important to multiplayer gaming.
This does not equate to better network code, but it does at least suggest that
we made an effort to make things better, even if the end result is that the
network conditions will eventually decide whether the game is playable or not.
There is no action game made to date, that can seemlessly counter an unreliable
or lack of network bandwidth between you and the server.
My advice is to look for a server with a consistent ping in your server browser.
If a dozen pings return a wide range of times, it's probably not a very reliable
server, and will likely result in higher packet-loss.
Another thing to keep in mind, as that a higher percentage of win32 servers are
likely to be sitting on a cable or DSL link (read: unpredictable) than are linux
servers, which often sit on T1 or OC-x level connections (read: reliable).
Unfortunately, Kingpin has a high percentage of servers running on win32, which
increases the chances of players ending up on unreliable servers, due to the
typical links these machines are behind, and the likelyhood that they are used
for more than just a Kingpin server.
Secondly, the timing of the Kingpin SDK might not have been ideal, but given the
release schedule of the binary patches, it just didn't make sense to put out the
SDK until the game was all patched up. Unfortunately I was unable to compile the
1.21 release for Linux at the time of release, so that was left at v1.2, and the
v1.21 SDK was released only with win32 components.
This has left Kingpin in a state of dissarry.
Several changes have occured since the v1.21 release, which means I am not in
the position to make statements regarding any future releases, since Kingpin is
now officially the property of a company I no longer work for. All I can say, is
that I will do the best I can to alleviate the situation.
There is a new mission from Terminal Reality's Rick Felice on Spookhouse,
while the Spookhouse
Downloads page also offers downloads of fan-created missions for Terminal
Reality's third-person action/horror game. Rick's new mission is titled
Motel666, which is described as "NOT the kind of place you want to spend
the night."
There is a preview of
Rogue Spear: Urban Operations on CombatSim.Com looking ahead at the upcoming
expansion for Rogue Spear, itself the sequel to Rainbow Six, Red Storm
Entertainment's tactical first-person shooter. The preview features a bunch of
screenshots and a look ahead at the pack which will offer new maps and new
weapons, fixes for a few multiplayer issues as well as upgrades to terrorist AI
and abilities. The piece also discusses new game types in the pack, and the new
custom mission builder. Thanks SpecForce.
They may not cast reflections in mirrors, but they sure do show up in screenshots,
as there are vampires galore on display in Vampire.WON.net's
Vampire Gallery with no less than 56 screenshots from Vampire: The
Masquerade--Redemption, Nihilistic Software's upcoming third-person RPG. Thanks RPG
Vault.
A new release of the Half-Life Opposing Force
FAQ/Walkthrough on GameFAQs is now available, updating it to version 1.03.
The new version offers new Easter eggs and cheat codes, as well as various other
changes. Likewise, their Quake III Arena
FAQ/Strategy Guide has also been updated, adding bits about console
commands, a list of web resources, and various miscellaneous corrections.
Homepage of Erik Lydén has an .mp3
music clip from Nevolution's Shadows Of Reality. It is a background tune from
the 'Dorm' level of this upcoming Unreal-engine cyber-punk RPG. If you are into
gaming music, there's a
James Grote interview on Damage Gaming talking with the author of the Songs for Deathmatch 2
game music CD.
Version 0.5 of GLQuake for Macintosh
is now available, offering a Mac port of the public Quake source code. Among the
changes in this release over the game's original behavior is the newfound
ability to run commands from the console, allowing a wider variety of
third-party mods to run on the Mac version.
sYx66's Site has a small
mIRC script that allows you to ping Quake III Arena servers from an IRC session.
The script, an update of a similar script for Quake II, will allow you to join a
game by double-clicking.
Version 1.5 of Nerf Quake II is now
available, adding new game types and altering the behavior of the weapons to be
more like Nerf guns. The new version also includes a new front-end for the mod.
Word is to delete your old directory before installing the new version if you've
played previous releases.
The Oz Deathmatch page has a new
version 1.7 of the Linux port of Oz Deathmatch for Half-Life. Oz DM is a H-L
front-end that allows server admins to change many of the game's settings
without changing game dll's.
Demonstrating the power and flexibility of the scripting language in Unreal
Tournament, Tetris! for Uwindows Standard Edition
is now available, offering a full-featured Tetris clone (including patented
WhereDidTheTimeGo™ technology) that plays within the UT GUI.
Cambone's Crypt is a simple
"almost non awe-inspiring website" that serves as a roof over the head
of Campone's Unreal Script Editor. The current release is version 0.70 alpha,
which mainly supports Custom Syntax Highlighting and Command Line Execution.
Word from the Cyberathlete Professional League
is that id Software Lead Programmer John Carmack will be offering a workshop on
coding 3D games at the upcoming Razer/CPL event in Dallas. The session will be
Friday, April 14th at 4:00 PM CST, at the Hyatt Regency Dallas.
Running a bit late this morning, but this will help keep normal people hours (ooh, look... the Sun!), as
the BlueJet is being serviced and readied for a trip later this week to the Game Developer's Conference in San Jose, CA. Anyway, time is too fleeting for a
ramble, so if you feel I've deprived you here, a suggested alternative to
reading a typical Out of the Blue is to skip your morning coffee and whack
yourself in the head a few times with something like a telephone receiver....
you'll never know the difference.
Happy Birthday to the CPL's Angel Munoz, 40 years young today.
Link of the Day: Beaver
County Militia Photo Recon, offering an expose on A.O.G. (Amish Occupied
Government), MIB (Mennonites in Black), and all manner of other startling
conspiracies. Thanks Tom Byers.
Story of the Day: Imagining First Contact
(Wired). Thanks Cannelbrae. "Every year a group of renowned scientists,
writers, and artists gets together to simulate space explorers and aliens
meeting for the first time." Apparently this is what happens when the
D&D generation starts getting grants.
Bonus Story: Salon Technology: Can't take a joke,
regarding the JoeCartoon site, a former
Link of the Day. Thanks elvis.
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