Archived News:
Eidos revamped their website yesterday, and, presumably in connection with that,
today a whole load of media has showed up on their FTP site, though none of it
is yet noted on the respective web pages, so here's a quick rundown on the
goodies:
- Anachronox
An
archive of 19 Anachronox screenshots in an 8.4 MB zip file and an
Anachronox trailer, a 39 second QuickTime trailer with in-game
footage as a 9.2 MB download. Update: as per ION's Daily Informant, these two files were removed because they do not properly represent the game.
- I'm Going In
A new I'm
Going In (A.K.A. Project IGI) trailer with in-game footage, an 8.4 MB
movie that runs 40 seconds.
- Startopia
A new Startopia
movie is an 8.8 MB 33 second trailer with a combination of in-game &
cinematic footage.
- Commandos 2
Finally, there are a pair of new(ish) Commandos
2 trailers, the
first one a 14.5 MB 1:58 trailer with both in-game & cinematic
footage (some of it already familiar from the previously released 85 MB
trailer-story), and the
second one an 11.7 MB 1:03 trailer with in-game footage, some of it new,
and some of it the same as from the first movie.
The Corporation interviews
Graeme Devine is part one of a two part Q&A with the id Software
designer that took place at the recent MacWorld Expo. The questions in this
installment (as well as the next one) cover progress on Quake III: Team Arena,
the upcoming Quake III Arena mission pack.
In another id Software Q&A, Hypothermia
interviews Robert Duffy talking with the id programmer about life at id,
working in the 'game game,' and asking some frivolous Hypothermia-style
questions along the way.
Westwood Studios'
Nox page has more details up about plans for the release of Nox Quest,
saying if all goes as planned the free multiplayer add-on for Nox will be out
this Tuesday at 3:00 PM EDT (Noon PDT). They are tight-lipped about where the
release will debut, but a proud post on Gamecenter's
front page spills the beans that it will be there.
The Giants: Citizen Kabuto
website has been updated with word of a special offer for those who choose
to order this offbeat upcoming action game directly through the Interplay Web Store, saying they will also receive a "free" bonus level CD.
LucasArts Entertainment Company
website has a new screenshot of the week online (in the upper left-hand
corner of the main page) from Obi-Wan, the upcoming first- and third-person
continuation of the Dark Forces series. The shot shows off some third-person
light-saber action (as well as the pelvic thrust from The Time Warp), set
on a city walkway.
Rogue Spear.Org
interviews Paul Schuytema from Magic Lantern talking with the former Prey
designer about the informational content in this upcoming follow-up to Rainbow
Six and Rogue Spear that will include detailed background/reference material on
the world of counter-terrorism. Thanks Stomped.
- SF Command Vol. II
Interplay's
Starfleet Command Volume II Empires at War website has been updated with
a half-dozen new screenshots "showing off a couple of the newest models
in the game - the Gorn Freighter and a Listening Post." In a little
racy cameo action, the page points out "If you look very close you'll
get just a glimpse of the new Shuttle Conversion panel, too."
- Flashpoint 1985
ColdWar FlashPoint
has posted some new Flashpoint 1985: Status Quo screenshots, showing off
this upcoming military tactical combat simulation game being developed by
Bohemia Interactive Studio. Continuing on the Flashpoint front, as is their
custom, the official Flash Point 1985: Status Quo
website has posted a new "unit of the week," this time out
showing off the formidable T-72M1 tank, featuring a 7 MB, 32 second in-game
clip showing off one of these steel beasts on the wrong end of an anti-tank
missile.
- And of Course...
With a press build making the rounds, another
bout of Crimson Skies screenshots are online, this batch on Alloy
Gaming, numbering 14 in total.
Hail to the king, baby, the THQ Evil Dead
website has been updated with five new short clips showing off in-game action
from this upcoming game based on the cult-favorite movies that starred
square-jawed Bruce Campbell, a cult-favorite himself (Mr. Campbell's voice
talents will be featured in the game, as well) . The avi-format movies are
160x120 resolution, and range from three to 13 seconds in length.
- Blair Witch: Volume II
Vgames
interviews Mike Flynn "a Junior Level Designer From Human Head"
to get the latest on their work on one of the upcoming Nocturne-engine games
based on the Blair Witch Project.
- Red Alert 2
Redalert II Xtreme
interviews Harvard Bonin asking some questions about some specifics in
the upcoming installment in the RTS series. RA2 is also mentioned in this Computer and Video Games News
piece that goes on to post some unconfirmed details about the future of the
Command & Conquer series.
- MOO3
The Orion Senate
interviews Tom Hughes, talking with one of the primary designers on
Masters of Orion 3 about the upcoming latest installment in this space
strategy series. In addition to details about what will be included in the
game, the Q&A also discusses a bit of what Tom does when not working on
games.
- Age of Sail II
GameStone's
Age of Sail 2 interview talks with Russian-based developer Akella about
progress on this simulation of the days of wooden ships and iron men.
Accompanying the article are several new
screenshots.
The Neverwinter Nights
website has been updated with an "NWN Project Update for June &
July 2000" by BioWare's Trent Oster, the producer on this upcoming RPG. The
report covers a wide range, with separate updates on programming, art, and
design, under the following overview: "The last couple months have been a
very hectic. We've been meeting on a large number of design issues and nailing
down everything we can. The various aspects of the project are moving along
quite nicely and things are progressing smoothly."
- Mafia
Illusion
Softworks' official Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven website is online,
dedicated to this upcoming simulation of 'this thing of ours.' At this point
the site is pretty particular about your browser, requiring the Flash
plug-in, and to the best of our understanding, is currently really only working
properly in IE 5+.
- Dungeon Slaves
A new Dungeon Slaves website is
online, the official homepage of this top-down action game from Enjoy
Entertainment that recently had its first screenshot showing
(story), the page is offered in both German and English versions.
- Ramnathep
At the same time those Dungeon Slaves shots were
posted, Enjoy also posted shots of a new 3D FPD/adventure game under the
codename 'Project Y,' a game that is now revealed as Ramnathep,
as its official homepage has likewise launched. Like the Dungeon Slaves site, this one is
planned as bilingual, but for the moment the English version is still on the
drawing boards, with only the German version currently online.
As promised, the updates have begun on Planet
Romero, where a status report on the site is now up, which includes the
following word on the upcoming version 1.2 patch for Daikatana as well
as news of a planned Daikatana Map Pack release: The Daikatana v1.2 patch
for all languages is currently in final testing, as is the Daikatana Map Pack (9
Deathmatch maps, 2 CTF maps). After Eidos gives us the OK, we'll release
them all.
The Rocket Arena UT website
has word of the release of version 1.40 of Rocket Arena for Unreal Tournament,
the first public release of the mod since the release ( story),
and subsequent recall ( story), of the first UT version of the
popular last man standing mod. The new release offers four new maps (making ten
total), a new menu, and fixes all known bugs in the mod. Version 1.40 is
available as a 15 MB full release, or a 9 MB update for possessors of the
short-lived version 1.25, each variation available as both a umod and non-umod
version.
The Alliance Games website
has a new version 1.1 of the Alliance CTF mod for Quake III Arena, offering
"numerous improvements and bug fixes," the new release is presented as
a patch or a full installer. In addition to the new version, they also have a
new Combat Map Pack,
a collection of third party maps they hope "will become favorites on the
ACTF servers."
There are some new Star Trek:
Voyager-Elite Force screenshots on GameSpy.Com showing off some of the
warp-speed action from Raven Software's upcoming Quake III-engine game that sets
you and your phaser in the final frontier.
On the heels (or tail section, as it were) of the load of Crimson Skies
screenshots mentioned earlier on various sites ( story), there are
also some new Crimson Skies Screenshots
on GA-Source showing off more of the aerial action from a press beta of this
upcoming alternate history flying action game from Zipper Interactive.
A new version 2.0 of the Half-Life Weapons Patch is now available from Spine Design,
the new release addresses some bugs and updates the code to operate with the
latest version of Half-Life, which, as they point out, "means you also
benefit from the new network code." At this time there is only a new Win32
version.
Curious as to whether or not Ritual had met their hopeful Friday completion
date, VGames' Adi Targownik fired
an e-mail off to Levelord to find out the status of the game. Here's his brief
response, no doubt influenced by the four or five days it's been since he last
slept: ;) not yet, Monday it looks to be, yippeeeeee, there's light at
the end of the tunnel!
A new MP3 featuring an excerpt from the soundtrack from American McGee's Alice
is
up at Daily Radar. The track is almost five minutes long, and was composed
by former Nine Inch Nails drummer Chris Vrenna.
Interplay producer Shawn
Jacoby is interviewed on ZDTV, talking about the upcoming oddball action/strategy
game Giants: Citizen Kabuto. The interview is in streaming video, and quite
long, clocking in at almost 15 minutes. Thanks PlanetMoon
Central.
GameSpot's GameGuides has posted their
guide to Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption. The guide contains a complete
walkthrough, as well as general strategies, and like all of their guides, is available online for free in HTML format, or as a pay-for-download PDF
file.
Just when you'd forgotten that beta copies of Crimson Skies are circulating
among the press, comes a whole boatload (or planeload, as the case may be) of
new screenshots. GameSpot is happily snapping away with 13
new shots from the game, Gamer's Pulse has 18 shots in
their preview, PC.IGN has a
whole lot of their own (along with their impressions after playing the beta),
and GameSpy.com has an additional seven
shots online.
A new interview with Bitmap Brothers'
Steve Whittle is up at PC.IGN, talking to the head of development about
about their recently unveiled strategy game Z2. Steve explains the large number
of changes since the original game, both in terms of gameplay and technology,
and also touches on the things it shares with the original, such as the basis
for its AI code, and story elements.
A new
article at RPG Vault chronicles the author's recent trip to BioWare's offices
to check out Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn and Neverwinter Nights, the two
RPGs in development at the Canada-based studio. The piece contains some impressions
of the state of each game, and plenty of photographs of the designers in action.
Version v0.99 Beta 2 of the Monkey
server browser for the Quake series, Half-Life, TRIBES and Unreal Tournament
has been released. The site hosting the browser when it was first released last
May was hacked, so this is the first version available for some time now, and
along with the release is the source code (which is released under the GPL license).
PC.IGN has posted a new Q&A
with Todd Vaughn, talking to the director of new business development at
Bethesda Softworks about Echelon, the upcoming space-sim in development at Buka
Entertainment. Todd says the game is about 85% complete, and he goes into detail about the complexity of the
gameplay, the engine and more.
Loki Software has released a
demo for their Linux port of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (thanks GameSpy.com).
The 25 MB download allows for 100 turns as any of the seven factions from both
Alpha Centauri and the Alien Crossfire expansion pack.
- New Matrox Drivers
New
beta Windows 9x drivers are available for the Matrox' G400 based cards,
numbered version 6.01.015.
- Gainward BIOS Updates
Gainward has released new BIOS drivers
for all of their NVIDIA based video cards. There are far too many individual
ones to list here, but Savage News has a list of all of them (with download
links) on their news
page.
- NVIDIA Registry Tweak Patch
Version 1.7 of TimmyC's
registry patch for NVIDIA 5.xx Detonator drivers has been released, optimizing
your system for the best performance and quality (use at your own risk, as
registry hacking can be a major pain to recover from if something goes wrong).
- ABIT KA7 BIOS
Speaking of those that like to live on the wild
side, Overclocker's Workbench has
posted beta BIOS
drivers for ABIT's KA7 and KA7-100 motherboards.
- Voyager Tweak Guide
Thomas McGuire sends word that the
first portion of his tweak guide for the Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force
demo is online. The rest will run on 3D
Spotlight in the near future.
- Price Guidance
Quantum 9 has this
week's video card price guide up, showing some major reductions in ATI's
prices. Also, Digital Web 3D has the latest editions of their
CPU and Memory price guide and their value
gaming PC buyer's guide.
- MP3 Player Roundup
A new roundup
of portable USB MP3 players is up at Neoseeker, looking at players from
Yuan, Diamond, Creative Labs and others.
New
details from Westwood's Red Alert 2 are up at GameSpot this morning. According
to their news update, each of the game's factions will have a great many more
units than originally announced (as many as 20 for the Russians), with each
faction having its own unique units. Also, each unit in the game is capable
of earning experience points, which will change its appearance and add
more powerful weapons.
Beta 2 of the ChaosUT mod for
Unreal Tournament has been released. This new version adds a new poison
arrow ammo for the crossbow, improvements to the Kamikaze (including a new "KamiCam"),
new rocket propelled bullets for the sniper rifle, and a lot more chaotic additions.
A full list of changes is available on the mod's official site.
GameSpot has conducted an
interview with Will Wright, creator of the wildly popular "people simulator",
The Sims. It's an interesting interview, with Will discussing everything from
the original concept that became The Sims to their decision to keep a fixed
perspective, and a good portion is devoted to Livin' Large, the upcoming expansion
pack for the game.
GameSpot proudly proclaims that Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn is nearing
completion, and to celebrate, they have posted over
40 screenshots from the game. As you might expect with that many screenshots,
there are quite a few that simply show off the same location you've seen a dozen
times before, but there are also plenty of images of the game's menu screens,
various spells and characters.
Version 2.0 of Blender,
a modeling, animation, and rendering package for multiple platforms has been
released (thanks Andrew Cox). Would-be Dark Reign 2 authors will be pleased
to know that Pandemic Studios has released a
manual for the Dark Reign 2 Construction Kit. It's available online, or
as a downloadable ZIP file. Also, FlipCode's
latest tutorial deals with using Microsoft's DirectShow for streaming media
playback using C++.
Pandemic Studios has announced their
Dark Reign 2 Cineractive Contest, in which entrants create mini-movies using
the Dark Reign 2 construction kit. Winners will walk away with all manner of
Pandemic swag, from mousepads to T-Shirts and a signed DR2 poster. Also, you
can win GameSpy swag in the Quake II mod D-Day:
Normandy's level design contest.
Team Evolve's Robert Waring and Wil Jensen are
interviewed on Stomped, talking about the upcoming PainKeep Arena mod for
Quake III Arena. The interview also contains two new screenshots. A shot of
one a pistol from The Battle Grounds,
a Half-Life mod that takes place during the American Revolution is up at its
official site, and one of the team members is
interviewed on ModNation. In other interview news, Telefragba of the Urban
Warfare mod for Half-Life is
interviewed on Crossfire, and Soldier of Fortune mod author Foyleman is
interviewed on Z-Axis.
I'm at a loss for words this evening (a rare thing, I know) so I'll just take
this opportunity to congratulate the entire Rocket
Arena 3 team on making one heck of a mod. If you haven't checked it out
yet, you're missing out on something great. A total class act all the way.
Story of the Day: Ill
wind 'killed dinosaurs' (thanks Mark).
Story of the Day (2): Couple
fall victim to Vulcan neck pinch (thanks Jeff Magill).
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