Archived News:
There is now a Jane's Attack Squadron Petition
online, created in reaction to the understanding that Electronic Arts is in the
process of deciding whether or not to fund continued development of Jane's
Attack Squadron, the ambitious WWII flying combat game that could be one of the
casualties of the closing of Looking Glass Studios ( story and
story). Here is a plea from Rich "Zdim" Carlson (a former member of Looking Glass himself) on the
subject: Thief lead designer Tim
Stellmach, from yesterday's GameSpy interview:
Looking Glass was stuck in a position of trying to run a couple of projects that
weren't bringing in much money up front. Jane's Attack Squadron was slipping its
schedule significantly due (at least in part) to a major redesign of the game
partway through, at the insistence of the publisher. We also had an
action/espionage title in early development, originally contracted out to
Irrational Games. When they pulled out of the project, so did its publisher
(Microsoft), along with a lot of expected advances.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Looking Glass's JAS, Jane's Attack Squadron (formerly FLIGHT COMBAT), is not
quite dead!
As we speak, 20 or so Looking Glass employees, Con Hantzopoulos and his
extraordinary flight sim team, are waiting vigil until Tuesday when EA will
announce whether they plan to take JAS to its June release or not.
For those of you who haven't heard about it, JAS is a revolutionary single AND
multiplayer 3D WW2 action-oriented air combat game, with ALL of the trimmings.
As if the multiplayer component (solo fighters and team bombers, etc.) wasn't
enough, the game would ship with its excellent and very easy to use
game/mission/terrain editor. Also, JAS is very extensible with regards to
user-created aircraft and coolstuff like that.
I have seen this game in production, and it is a marvel of gameplay, physics,
art and technology.
So, and I'm going to stick my neck out a little bit here, if you truly want to
help LGS out, write EA and tell them to SAVE JAS/FLIGHT COMBAT!!!
With a little oomph, and luck, we all may be able to play and enjoy one more
game infused with that special LGS magic this summer!
There's a Deus Ex
interview on In the Trenches that discusses ION Storm's upcoming
Unreal-engine action/RPG with Harvey "Witchboy" Smith, the game's lead
designer. The short Q&A discusses the conspiracy-heavy roots of Deus Ex's
plot, efforts to pigeonhole it into one genre, the Unreal engine, and more.
The New Screenshots Gallery
on Vampire Vault has been updated with another half-dozen screenshots from
Vampire: The Masquerade-Redemption, Nihilistic's upcoming RPG that celebrates
the joys of anemia. "The new Featured Image shows a hall with many
characters roaming, and some nice reflection and shadow effects visible. In
another shot, we see someone attending to the bat on his shoulder."
The AZ Development Team has
released public beta 2 of version 0.75 of their PowerPillz mod, a teamplay based
mod where "both teams hunt for the powerpill, a bubble-like object in the
map which gives that team ultimate control over the enemy team." The new
version adds new gameplay functionality and some tweaks to the HUD.
CrazyPetes Toolbox has a new version
1.60 of CrazyLaunch , the "MultiMod" launcher for Quake, Quake II and
Quake III Arena. From the page: "The QuakeRunner has now the ability to
select a startmap and offers some special OpenGL-settings (resolution,
color-depth, transparent liquids and more). The Quake3Runner now recognizes all
installed playermodels and bots."
GameSpy
interviews Looking Glass Studios talking with Tim "EvilSpirit"
Stellmach, previously a game designer at Looking Glass, the now-defunct game
design outfit that announced it was shutting down late last week ( story
and story). The Q&A mainly deals with the abrupt closing,
with Tim offering the following assessment: TS: Looking Glass was stuck
in a position of trying to run a couple of projects that weren't bringing in
much money up front. Jane's Attack Squadron was slipping its schedule
significantly due (at least in part) to a major redesign of the game partway
through, at the insistence of the publisher. We also had an action/espionage
title in early development, originally contracted out to Irrational Games. When
they pulled out of the project, so did its publisher (Microsoft), along with a
lot of expected advances.
This put Looking Glass in a very bad position in terms of cash. The Thief line
was bringing in profits, and in the end JAS was only about a quarter out from
shipping, but we weren't due to receive royalty payments on Thief II yet and
were basically faced with the prospect of running out of money.
Eidos was publisher on the Thief series, among other games.
Management saw this coming, of course, and was pursuing outside investment to
get us over the cash crisis. We had basically completed all the due diligence
for a deal to be acquired by Eidos. They were sufficiently serious about the
deal that in the end they were floating us advances to meet our cash needs.
This, of course, was a very vulnerable position if for some reason the money
from Eidos stopped coming in.
That is exactly what happened. For financial reasons of their own, Eidos found
themselves rather suddenly unable to close the deal. Looking Glass was, in
corporate slang, "left at the altar." There was a scramble to find
another potential investor interested enough to meet our cash needs, but very
little time in which to do so. The decision to close our doors therefore came
very quickly.
The Any Questions
thread on the New-Legends.Net Forums has been updated with more responses to
questions about New Legends, Infinite Machine's upcoming third-person
Unreal-engine action title. The thread has inspired answers from programmer Dan
Chao as well as some another response from head cog at I.M., Justin Chin.
There are eight
new Soulbringer screenshots on Beta Bites. The shots are high-resolution
jobbies, taken after some hands-on time with a beta of this upcoming RPG from
Gremlin.
This
FilePlanet page has a 39 second AVI-format movie showing off gameplay from
Submarine Titans, Ellipse Studios'
upcoming RTS that offers waterlogged underwater action and strategy. On the same
subject, Subtitans.net
interviews Raaj Menon and Craig Thomler of Ellipse, talking about progress
on the game, following-up on its showing at this year's E3.
There are some new Pharaoh
screenshots on GA-Strategy showing off gameplay from Cleopatra, an upcoming
expansion pack from Breakaway Games for Pharaoh, Impressions Games' strategy
title where you can build your own empire in ancient Egypt. In addition to the
shots, there is also some conversation with Breakaway's Alex Xander Rodberg
about plans for the expansion.
It's wabbit season... it's duck season... no, it's scientist season! Rich's Project Warehouse
has a new version 0.7 of the Scientist Hunt
mod for Half-Life. The new release now boasts three separate modes of play:
Standard Hunting, Stealth Hunting, and (to the delight of scientist haters
everywhere) Traditional Slaughter. There are a couple of bug-fixes, and a couple
of new options to control the amount of gore in the mod.
The off-the-shelf folks at PrefabLand
send word that their repository of pre-fabricated 3D items for use by map
authors is now home to over 1300 prefabs!
- An update to Alan
Willard's .plan gives word from Epic on four-flag CTF support, which
some folks apparently think was planned and abandoned. Not so, says Alan,
who points out the four flags are just for color variety for mod authors in three flag games
(he also adds some E3 impressions)...
- There's a
Gooseman interview on Counter-strike.dk and another Gooseman
interview on Cold-ice.com talking about the past, present, and future of
the Counter-Strike mod for Half-Life. Thanks Gavin Cooper...
If I seem filled with "quazy energy," it's because the case of Quisp I
mentioned ordering the other day has arrived. I have to agree with the reader
who pointed out they don't taste exactly like Cap'n Crunch, though they
are awfully close. The scary thing is that this reader was also correct, that
Quisp is actually sweeter than Cap'n Crunch (even when crunchberries are
involved!), so these things really aren't formulated for adult tastes, unless
the adult happens to be as juvenile as me. The quazy energy would have come in
handy earlier, as Frans arrives back in his native Holland tomorrow after gallivanting
about the US in the time following E3, and any boost in keeping pace in his
absence would have been welcome (so if you hear cheering off in the distance
around the time Frans plane sets down, it's probably loony and me).
Link of the Day: Piper's Precision Products,
home of his (not a toy) bb-firing minigun. Thanks Chrisw.
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