Archived News:
PC.IGN has posted a new installment
in their ongoing Summoner developer diary. This week's edition features
Character Artist Matt Kresge explaining how he goes about creating a character
for the game, and features images illustrating each step (from concept to 3D
model).
A new interview with
Blizzard's Rob Pardo is up at GameSpot, discussing the recent departure
of Mike O'Brien, the project lead on Warcraft III, as well as the recent changes
that the game has undergone. Rob says the changes were all decided on prior
to Mike's departure, and goes on to explain in detail just what (and why) they
are. Here's an excerpt: What we wanted to do, at the most basic level,
was to take a game - a fun RTS game - like the Warcraft series and add in the
concept of heroes, quests, items, and a more interactive environment.
Once we had that as our vision, we had to decide what technology supported that
and what user interface to use, and that's where we started going down a different
road. Since we had a 3D engine, we talked about different viewpoints and different
angles, and we chose one that was fairly flat. You could see a lot of the horizon,
and it was almost more of a first-person perspective.
It really showed off the engine at a beautiful angle, but what eventually ended
up happening to us was that we got to a point where we had to take the design
in one of two different directions. We either had to make it even more RPG-like
and cut back on the scale of units, how many characters there were, and things
of that nature, or we had to go the other direction and move the camera up,
allow free scrolling, and go more toward what we've done previously in our real-time
strategy games. That's the easiest way to explain the difference between the
two [directions].
Yes, we are moving back toward more of an isometric view.
You can still see a lot of the 3D terrain. You still get the sense of the 3D
engine. We're using all that. But we wanted to get the camera up high enough,
where free scrolling becomes an option for us.
New screenshots
from Thief II: The Metal Age have been posted at GameSpot News, where they're
reporting that the game is set to go gold "early next week" and will
be on store shelves by March 20th. Thief II was developed by Looking Glass Studios,
and will be published by Eidos Interactive.
Russian developer Nikita has released an updated self-running demo of Iron Strategy, their upcoming 3D action/strategy game. The demo shows various prescripted in-game sequences, and comes as a 37.5 MB full download, or eight parts of about 5 MB each.
There are two pairs of Devil Inside screenshots on ActionTrip, each pair showing two ever-so-slightly different scenes from the third-person horror action/adventure in development at GameSquad. Also, Telefragged has posted four very different Devil Inside screenshots, and received word from designer Hubert Chardot that the title is close to being finished.
- German gaming site nonstuff has added four more screenshots to their Daikatana screenshots page, showing off some new scenes from ION Storm's first-person shooter.
- Also in Germany on the Krawall gaming site is this gallery that mixes some new Deep Fighter screenshots with familiar ones, to accompany a preview of this underwater action/adventure game under construction at Criterion Studios (of course the text is in German, so you may want to stick a Babelfish into your ear).
- Jason Hall updated his .plan with a description of 12 screenshots from the LithTech 2 demo they will show at GDC, featuring a character with 15,000 polygons.
While it won't formally be announced until tomorrow, Microsoft's Bill Gates
appeared on CNBC's MarketWatch this evening, where he revealed their upcoming
console system, dubbed X-Box (thanks Trent Corney for letting us know in advance).
Gates was interviewed sitting in front of a giant monitor that featured a giant,
green, glowing "X" insignia, and said that the company's original
plan was to make the system, "over twice as good as what's ever been done"
and that the end result is, "far better than anything I had expected."
He also said the system wouldn't ship until the second half of 2001, and said
tomorrow's announcement will essentially be an explanation of the system to
developers.
GameSpot News has word that Totally Games, the company founded by X-Wing series creator Lawrence Holland, will be developing a new space sim entitled Star Trek: Bridge Commander for publication by Activision in 2001. Adrenaline Vault has additional details on the game, which will be set in The Next Generation universe and put players in the role of captain of large Federation starships.
The official Rogue Spear: Urban Operations site has been updated with a Q&A-type journal by lead artist Travis Getz, describing his work on the expansion pack that went gold yesterday ( story, as reaffirmed on Gone Gold today). Besides a general introduction, the update has a fair amount of detail about what will be in the pack.
incitegames has posted an
interview with with Interplay's Raphael Hernandez and Heather McLaughlin,
talking to them about Klingon Academy, their upcoming
Star Trek themed space sim. In addition to the interview, they've also posted
several new shots from the game.
In an early update, GameSpot News has posted a pair of new Shogun: Total War movies, as well as nine new screenshots and renders from the upcoming 3D real-time strategy game by Creative Assembly. The high-res movies shows two cinematic clips of about 16 seconds each.
Tonight at 8:00 CST is ION Storm's
monthly IRC chat session with members of their Anachronox team. Point your IRC
client to www.ionstorm.com, channel #ion, or use the Java-based client on
their web site to join in the fun.
GameSpy's "engine week" rolls on, with today's
interview with John Austin, the CEO at Numerical Design Limited, the company
behind the NetImmerse engine. Like their other interviews this week, it's laden
with self-promotion, but John also talks a bit about the company's background,
and their unique position as an engine provider, as they don't develop games
- just the engine.
GameSpot UK has posted a
new hands-on preview of Evolva, Computer Artworks' upcoming first and third
person action/strategy game. The preview features some new shots, as well as
plenty of gameplay details.
New Media Generation has released a public demo of their Shine Engine, which is used to power their upcoming first-person shooter Hired Team. This is a playable technology demo supporting Direct3D and OpenGL, and it includes a level showing various engine features. The download server is in Russia, so you may need to exercise patience while downloading. Update: a fast mirror is available at the Russian gaming site Daily Telefrag, who also have five screenshots showing off the demo level.
Visionary Media has released version 1.2 patches for their Unreal-engine shooter Nerf ArenaBlast. There is one patch to update version 1.1 ( 4.1 MB), and another to update the original retail version (11.3 MB).
Mirrors of both files are available at 3D Action Gamers.
Here is an excerpt from the ReadMe listing the changes:
Improvements include
compatibility with international servers, elimination of game-save
issues, more stable multiplayer play, improved character artificial
intelligence, elimination of the flying-out-of-the-tunnel bug and fixes
for Direct 3D video cards.
Daily Radar has posted a preview of Ground Control, putting a recent build of Massive's 3D action RTS through its paces. Besides a write-up of the game's concept and gameplay, there are also 14 new screenshots.
Computer Games Online has posted part 2 of their Starlancer preview, offering a look at the gameplay and mission structure in the upcoming space-combat sim from Warthog and Digital Anvil. Also, there is a brief hands-on Starlancer preview on GameSpot AU with a write-up based on a recent beta.
NovaLogic has released the French version 1.06.15 patch for Delta Force 2 for download, and with this first international patch is lending belief to the possibility that their long patch process is coming to an end. The Delta Force 2 developer notes now also list all the changes in this maintenance update.
That other space sim is another preview at CGO, sporting a brief look and a pair of new screenshots (and one familiar) of Freelancer, Digital Anvil's sequel to Starlancer.
There are a couple of new screenshots of Star Wars: Force Commander on GA-Strategy (though at least one is familiar), giving you another glimpse of the 3D RTS from LucasArts that recently went gold ( story).
Fantasy Gaming Network
interviews Scott Martin and Warren Spector talking about Deus Ex with two members of the team at work on ION Storm's upcoming Unreal-engine RPG.
Warren starts one answer "In case you hadn't noticed, the word 'brief' and
I don't get along too well," and sure enough the piece includes several
detailed answers to questions about plans for the game.
There's an
interview with Ben Smedstad on 3DGN talking with the producer of Baldur's
Gate 2: Shadows of Amn, BioWare's upcoming sequel to Baldur's Gate, their
AD&D role-playing game. The Q&A discusses progress on the follow-up, and
is part of a larger Baldur's
Gate 2 preview.
The Sims is (are?) the subject at hand as havokado
interviews Will Wright and Roxy Wolosenko talking about Maxis' "get a virtual
life" game. Also, Warcraft
III.Net's Triforge Interview talks with former Blizzard employees Pat Wyatt, Mike O'Brien, and
Jeff Strain about
Triforge, their new outfit composed of former snowflakes from Blizzard.
- There's a Deep Fighter teaser
on Ubi Soft's German page showing off gameplay from Deep Fighter, and
upcoming underwater action game for the PC and Dreamcast (the movie is mirrored
on GA-Source).
The teaser is in .avi format and is about 15 MB.
- The
LucasArts Force Commander page has some new music from the upcoming Star
Wars RTS for download in .mp3 format. Thanks FC Outpost.
- Actiontrip has posted a pair of small
.wav files with sounds from Devil Inside, the upcoming action/adventure from
Hubert Chardot, creator of the "Alone in the Dark" series.
- Finally, a couple of mod movies, as the 5thD
team page has a preview of their Q3A mod called REALq3 in .avi format, and Red Genesis Entertainment
has a new Chemical Existence movie showing a snippet of gameplay from this
upcoming Half-Life mod.
A new beta 2 of Quake 3 System Management Server
is now available. The new release adds "the ability to integrate with your
favorite Game Launcher," a fix for Client Monitoring, an Auto-Update
checker, and more.
The first release of Frag Tag,
a rare user-made mod for Descent 3, is now available. The About Frag Tag
page describes gameplay for the mod, which offers classic "tag"
gameplay, with one player designated "it," who must combat all the
other players in the game.
- There's a goodbye message on the Springfield
CTF site noting the closing of this very popular Quake II server,
including kind words for the L-Fire CTF
mod. Thanks Andrew Arace...
- There's a new FilePlanet
Alliance CTF Beta mirror up for this popular newly-released Quake III
Arena mod (story)...
- MS
to reveal gaming plans Friday reports ZDNet News announces that: "Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates
will disclose details of the new business in his opening remarks to the Game
Developers Conference Friday," which won't surprise observers who have
been certain for some time the "revelation" will be the
announcement of the still-theoretically theoretical X-Box....
I'm pretty sure my trip to the GDC, which has already
been pushed back two days at least, is not going to happen at all at this point.
We're in the midst of an interesting few days here, as both loonyboi's and my
ISDN lines are still both on the fritz, each line seemingly operational, but
unable to connect to either of two ISPs, spitting back simple "you have
been disconnected from the computer you dialed" messages. So far neither
Bell Atlantic nor our main ISP (loony and I live mere blocks from each other,
which doesn't help when a problem like this breaks out) have been able to
provide any help, though neither are ever very useful in spots like this, Bell
Atlantic because, well...because,
and our ISP because they're so used to trouble-free operation they are unable to
even return simple tech support phone calls (they probably assume such calls are
hoaxes). Oddly my friend Abraxas using a different ISP and different telco in a
different state (New Jersey), experienced the exact same problem, while MrCoffee
on the same ISP, albeit in Manhattan, has been fine, which muddies the water
when searching for clues as to the cause of problems. Wacky, huh? Well both of
us have our modems hooked up and running, but since troubleshooting also
continues in the background, your patience in what is still a bit of a crisis
here is appreciated... though of course neither of us expect any mercy if we
manage to join a game with our high pings--revenge on an LPB is always
appropriate ![=]](/miscimages/smiley4.gif) .
Link of the Day: The
Quad Damage Toothpick on The Bench (Penny Arcade). Thanks David Brooks.
.plan of the Day: Brandon
"GreenMarine" Reinhart. 'nuff said
PC.IGN has posted a new interview
with Human Head's Paul MacArthur, lead programmer on Rune, their upcoming
Unreal engine game of Viking bloody glory. While brief, the interview touches
on their reasons for selecting the Unreal engine, the various weapons in the
game, and some more gameplay-specific issues.
Also new at PC.IGN tonight, is the
latest installment of their Allegiance designer diary. Tonight's edition
features Curt Carpenter, the lead developer on this massively multiplayer space-sim
from Microsoft. Curt talks about the world of programming on the game, from
the level of their DirectX support, to a look back at the game's long development
("feels like almost three years").
GameSpot has posted an
in-depth preview of Anachronox, ION Storm's Quake II engine RPG, which is
based on a hands-on demonstration of the game. It's very detailed, and features
some new screenshots as well. They also promise an even more detailed preview,
which will be posted "in the coming months."
More 3D RTS viewing today, as incitegames has posted six new screenshots of Ground Control, showing off more scenes from this game that is under construction at Massive Entertainment.
Voodoo Extreme has posted two
shots from Quake III Arena, and two shots from Homeworld, taken from a computer
running 3dfx' VSA-100 chipset, which will be used in their Voodoo 4 and Voodoo
5 cards later this year. At the request of 3dfx the images haven't been downsampled,
but the images are in 640x480, so the download won't kill your modem.
There is a new preview of Earth 2150 on EuroGamer, offering a brief but hands-on look at the 3D real-time strategy game by TopWare and Mattel that should be released later this Spring in the US and UK, as well as a handful of new screenshots.
GameSpy has conducted a
brief Q&A with Jeff Strain, one of three former employees of Blizzard
Entertainment, who have opened up Triforge, a new development studio. They haven't
announced what kind of game they're working on, although Strain says in this
Q&A they plan to focus on, "strong multiplayer internet games."
Computer Artworks has revealed a new site for Evolva, their upcoming tactical action shooter. The site offers more info on the game, as well as a few new screenshots, and comes in Flash and non-Flash versions. However, the non-Flash links currently don't work, so you'll have to suffer the annoying browser shake effect to get to the main area.
The online Belgian magazine Infolder has posted four
new screenshots from Black & White, Peter Molyneux' upcoming strategy
game. The shots show off the game world during the day and evening, and during
a rainshower.
The weekly update to the official MDK2 site brings seven new screenshots, all featuring the Dr. Fluke Hawkins character, who obviously needs to rely more on brain than brawn to survive the game's huge levels. MDK, of course, stands for Me? Don't Know (or more accurately, last time I forgot ).
Fox Interactive has announced that Die Hard Trilogy 2: Viva Las Vegas has shipped to stores in the US. The hybrid 3D action game, in which you act out John "yippie-ki-yay!" McClane in third-person action and driving missions, as well as first-person Virtua Squad-type shooting, was developed by n-Space, and on the occasion Fox has added several more movie trailers to their Die Hard Trilogy 2 website. Thanks GA-Source for the tip.
Gone Gold, somewhat of an authority in these matters, reports that Rogue Spear: Urban Operations has been approved for duplication, and should be on store shelves soon. Urban Operations is the official mission pack to Red Storm's tactical action shooter.
Just in time for the Game Developer's Conference, Numerical Design has
announced their NetImmerse 3.0 engine. This latest version of their engine
features curved surfaces, character skinning, continuous level of detail and more. It is also cross-platform, and supports PC, MacOS
(including OS X) and Playstation 2. Previous versions of the NetImmerse
engine have powered such games as Prince of Persia 3D, Panzer General 3D and
Simon the Sorcerer 3D amongst others.
German site GamesZone has posted a preview of Star Wars: Obi-Wan, the upcoming first- and third-person action game from LucasArts. Thanks to our affiliate JediKnight.net for the tip. The text of the article is in German, so AltaVista Translations may help you out there, but there are also four new screenshots (and two familiar ones), as well as galleries of motion capture images and concept sketches.
There are three new Ground Control screenshots on 3DGN, showing off a few more areas from the futuristic 3D real-time strategy game in development at Massive Entertainment.
Xroads Gaming has conducted an interview on Project Entropia, talking to Patric Sundstrom about the massively multiplayer online role-playing game in development at Swedish company Mindark. There is a variety of details about the project, including the fact that the sci-fi setting of the game will be rendered using the NetImmerse3D engine.
Yep, it's that time of the day again:
GameSpy's "engine week" rolls on, with today's
interview with BioWare's Dr. Ray Muzyka and Dr. Greg Zeshuk, talking to
them about their various engines, and their features and benefits. The company
has three engines: the Infinity Engine (used in Baldur's Gate), the Omen Engine
(used in MDK2), and a third, currently unannounced engine that is being developed
for use in their upcoming multiplayer RPG Neverwinter Nights.
A new
preview of Psygnosis' 3D strategy game Metal Fatigue has been posted at
GameSpot UK. This being GameSpot UK, they've also posted one
of their screenshot galleries, complete with a whole bunch of new screenshots.
Alliance CTF version 0.5 has
been released, and is available for download at
FilePlanet. The Quake III Arena mod features five CTF maps, two different grappling hooks, pre-recorded voice and radio sounds for team communication
and lots more.
Adrenaline Vault has posted an extensive feature on Thief II: the Metal Age, the hopefully imminent stealthy action game by Looking Glass. On offer are a detailed hands-on preview, an interview with developer Emil Pagliarulo (a former AVault editor), and a gallery of 21 new screenshots.
Completing a trilogy of camera mods, Quake III Camera is now available on the Q3Cam page. Created by the author of QCam and Quake2Cam, this mod brings third-person camera viewing to Quake III Arena games, allowing you to watch games live or record them for later viewing.
Digital Anvil goes back to the basics, Part 1 on CGO kicks off a preview of Starlancer, the space-combat sim being designed by Erin Roberts that is in development at Warthog and, naturally, Digital Anvil. This part focuses on the setting of the game, and the absence of full-motion video (which surely few will mourn over).
Gamers Central has posted part two of their BioWare feature, an interview with Greg Zeschuk, who talks about the history of the company, the games they created and are working on now, and more specifically about the games based on the AD&D universe.
Interplay has updated the official Star Trek: New Worlds site with four new screenshots and a FAQ page, addressing a large number of common questions about their 3D ground-based RTS, where you can side with the Federation, Klingons or Romulans.
id Software's John Carmack wrote one of his trademark .plan updates, talking at length and in great technical depth about "virtualized video card local memory." I won't pretend to understand more than half the sentences in this massive update, so here is
just how John kicks off the discussion:
This is something I have been preaching for a couple years, but I finally got around to setting all the issues down in writing.
First, the statement:
Virtualized video card local memory is The Right Thing.
Now, the argument (and a whole bunch of tertiary information):
If you had all the texture density in the world, how much texture memory would be needed on each frame?
Heart
in Darkness is the name of the second (and last) part of Salon's massive
article covering Daikatana's crunch time. This piece features more ION staffers
explaining what it's like to work on Daikatana (and on games in general), and
focuses on two members in particular: Luke "Weasl" Whiteside (a recent
addition to the staff), and Stevie "KillCreek" Case.
A new preview of Loose Cannon,
an upcoming action game from Digital Anvil and Tony Zurovec, the creator of
Crusader: No Remorse, has popped
up at PC.IGN. The preview is pretty large, and goes into great detail about
the aspects of the game that were shown at GameStock (which didn't include the
mulitplayer, although it is planned).
Friday could be D-Day for Microsoft, as the entire world seems to think Bill
Gates will be announcing their not-so-secret console system during his keynote
address at the Game Developer's Conference. While no official specs have been
announced yet, NVIDIA and AMD are said
to be providing hardware for the system, and their respective stocks soared
yesterday on the rumor. GameSpot
is reporting that Japanese developers Capcom, Konami, Koei, Enix, and Namco
are all lined up to make games for the system, which will reportedly resemble
a stripped-down PC.
GameSpy has conducted a
Q&A with David Allen, talking to Artifact Entertainment's Chief Executive
about their 3D RPG Demise: Rise of the Ku'Tan. Allen describes the game as,
"the old Wizardry/Bard's Tale games on steroids."
GameSpot News has posted new
screenshots from Terminus, Vicarious Visions' upcoming space sim, taken
from a month-old build of the game. The game boasts a 700 page script, and over
600 lines of dialogue, and each of their four factions have 90 individual, open-ended
missions.
Why the
Hasbro Lawsuit Should Terrify Game Developers - And What We Can Do About It
is the name of a new editorial at GameDev.net by Diana Gruber, a veteran developer
and author of books and articles on the gaming industry. The editorial deals
with Hasbro's announcement that they will be actively prosecuting games based
on their Atari properties, including Asteroids, Centipede, and Missile Command
( here's the news
story at Daily Radar).
New screenshots
from Shogun: Total War, Creative Assembly's strategy game that puts you
in 16th century medieval Japan, have been posted at GameSpot. According to them,
the game has been pushed back to Spring 2000, allowing them to double the size
of each battalion from 60 to 120 individual soldiers.
The results of the first round from TRIBES World, an international Starsiege:
TRIBES tournament, have been posted at PlanetStarsiege,
along with links to streaming media play-by-play of some of the matches.
Sorry to interrupt your regularly scheduled ramblings...yesterday proved to
be a strange day for all of us here at Blue's News. The fun started when Blue
came down with one of those bugs that seem to always be going around, but things
really got interesting when both Blue and myself found ourselves with dead ISDN
lines. He's still off-line (hence this morning's update) but I managed to get
myself back online by hooking my laptop up to my regular phone line, and sharing
that over my network. So I'm using a 56k connection, but hey...at least I'm
back online. Frans proved yet again that he's just The Man when it comes to
this stuff, flying solo on the site for the majority of yesterday afternoon.
While I'm back online, this whole ordeal has turned my apartment into a mass
of wires, and the only hope I've got that it will be fixed at any point in the
near future is my "appointment" with Bell Atlantic, which will occur
at some random time between now and this evening. Whee!
Link of the Day: Enabler
2000: The World's First Nonviolent First Person Shooter (thanks Robert
"Sgt. Hulka" Waring). Update: It would appear that this is a repeat link of the day...oh, well. It's still funny.
Story of the day: PS2 Memory
Card Recall. Actual quote from Sony boardroom: "Doh!"
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