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.
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