Archived News:
3D Realms' Matt Wood updated
his .plan with a minor correction to something mentioned in this
morning's article by Brandon "GreenMarine" Reinhart. Here's what
he has to say: With Brandon's approval, I'd like to make a correction
to the article that he wrote for GameSpy a couple of days ago....
You can link to the original article here.
In it, Brandon says, '3D Realms has a motion capture studio in-house and brings
in external actors.' This is only half true ;) The only external actors we have
ever brought in have been female. The reason being, we currently don't have
any females working at the company and I seriously doubt I could act out the
subtilty of female movement on my own. Along with the fact that I'm sure most
of you would probably oppose to knowing that the sultry dancing being performed
by the girl you'll see on stage was actually performed by a guy. I know I would.
It would just ruin the whole mood, wouldn't it? ;)
So in closing, all of the acting/movement for DNF (so far) has been done in
house except for the girls. And thank goodness for that too!
Pandemic Studios has released this
week's new level for Dark Reign 2. Today's release is titled "2flea"
and is a two player one-on-one style level that takes place on the "Sprawl"
world.
Totally Games founder and lead designer Larry
Holland is interviewed on PlayNOW, talking about their upcoming Star Trek
title Bridge Commander, which puts the player at the helm of the U.S.S. Icarus. Larry talks about the single
player experience, how Star Trek-accurate the game will be and their streamlined
interface, which has been designed to make it simple for people to jump in and
fire away (just be sure not to fly too close to the sun).
GameSpy.com has posted two
new movies featuring footage from Westwood's Red Alert 2. Both movies are
in QuickTime format, and the first one contains a mixture of in-game footage
and live action cut-scene excerpts, while the other shows some behind-the-scenes
action, including brief interviews with members of the cast. Be warned, however,
as they're a bit on the large size, clocking in at 44 and 71 MB respectively.
Three new
shots from TalonSoft's Hidden & Dangerous 2 are up at GA-Source. The
shots show off the impressive detail possible with Illusion Softworks' Insanity
2 engine, which also features object morphing, real-time shadows and fully deformable
terrain. Update: it turns out all of these have already been released on the somewhat awkward official site.
Also at GA-Source this evening are five
new shots from Mafia, the upcoming third person title from Illusion Softworks
of gangster-style action which is also powered by the Insanity 2 engine.
A brief interview
with Arena.net's Pat Wyatt is up at RPG Vault this afternoon. Pat talks
about the company's plans to establish an Internet-based game distribution system,
as well as their planned (free) gaming network and the world of fan communities
in general.
The shareware version 2.22 of GameSpy 3D has been released, and is available
for download on FilePlanet. Like the registered-users only version that
proceeded it, this release adds support for KISS: Psycho Circus - The Nightmare
Child (as well as eight other games).
Fan page Crossroads of Neverwinter Nights has conducted a
brief interview with the Neverwinter Nights development team at BioWare.
As this is a NWN fan site, they forgo the usual introductory questions and get
right into gameplay issues and the level of support they'll be offering for
mod authors (or game masters, as the case may be).
A brief Q&A
with Julian Gollop of Mythos Games is up at GameSpy.com. Jullian talks about
his day-to-day work as a game designer at the company, where he's working on
their upcoming turn-based strategy game Dreamland Chronicles: Freedom Ridge,
as well as the plot of the game and what they've learned from the original X-COM
title that several people at Mythos worked on.
Raven's Brian Pelletier updated
his .plan with details on the various international shipping dates for Star
Trek: Voyager - Elite Force, as well as the reason why it's taking so long for
the game to hit store shelves. Here's what he has to say: Elite Force
shipping updates:
The CD's are being replicated and packaged as you read this. Everything is on
track for our scheduled ship dates. The world wide ship dates are as follows:
9/15: UK, France, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxemburg and other Europe
countries.
9/19: US, Canada
9/21: Australia, New Zealand
These are dates that the products leave our warehouses and are shipped to stores.
In store dates will vary by retailer. Other countries will ship over the next
month.
Many people are asking why it's taking so long to get into the stores compared
to when other games go GOLD. The reasons are many, but the main reason is that
we were not in a rush to get the product in the stores because we were on schedule
with our internal GOLD and ship dates. This way we can take the normal time
to get them manufactured and sent to retailers without paying extra fees for
express handleing & shipping. Had we been behind schedule, then we would
have had to painstakingly rush the manufacturing and do express shipping to
get it to retailers when we said we would and that costs a lot of extra money.
Also it takes longer to manufacture and ship products overseas and within Europe
and since we are doing a simultaneous release we have to make sure all versions
of the game are ready for shipping.
Thanks to everyone for your enthusiasm and support and we know you will enjoy
your playing experience.
GA-Source has obtained preliminary
information and the first screenshot from Battlefield 1942, an ambitious
first person action title from Refraction, the developers of Codename: Eagle.
The game aims to recreate the most famous World War II battles such as Iwo Jima,
El Alemien, and of course the D-day invasion at Normandy.
A new Q&A
with members of Dynamix' TRIBES 2 development team is up at Gamer's Pulse.
The questions deal with a number of TRIBES 2 topics, including the planned mission
types, the effect weather has on the gameplay, the difficulty of multiplayer
balancing, and more.
AVault has posted a
new hands-on preview of Sea Dogs, the upcoming "RPG at sea" from
developers Akella and publishers Bethesda Softworks. The preview is based on
their impressions with a build of the full game, and contains details on Akella's
internally developed 3D engine and overall gameplay, which harkens back to
the classic Pirates! game by Sid Meier while adding RPG aspects and original
elements of its own.
As noted in
this press release, publisher THQ has acquired Volition, developers behind
the upcoming titles Summoner and Red Faction (and prior to that the Descent
and Freespace titles). Also purchased in the transaction was Volition's Parallax
Online service, which powers online games for Descent 3 and Freespace 2. Thanks
Stomped for the tip.
The Alice fan page alice.trintee.net
has conducted a Q&A with American McGee, talking with him about his twisted
game American McGee's Alice. American talks about the game's relation to the
original Alice books, the original soundtrack (which is by former Nine Inch
Nails drummer Chris Vrenna) and the evolution of the Alice character model (which
looks different in the game than the first sketches that were released).
Gamelink version
1.8c has been released. Gamelink is a chat/server monitoring program that boasts
clan-specific features, and this latest release contains a tweaked interface
and bug fixes in addition to other changes.
Two new previews of TRIBES 2 are up for your reading enjoyment this morning,
both based on the latest alpha build of the game. GameSpot's
brief write-up has some details on the new collision detection system that
Sierra is showing off at ECTS, while PC.IGN's
preview contains their impressions of the terrain system (which has been
overhauled since E3) and the new character animations.
Just when you thought it was over, comes more ECTS reports. The remarkably
comprehensive coverage at
BarrysWorld contains details on seemingly every game they saw at the show,
along with any screenshots they picked up along the way. Also, GamesDomain has
posted a
number of news items from the show floor (covering PC and console systems),
EuroGamer.net's coverage
winds down, and PC.IGN has written a
report on Peter Molyneux' Black & White demonstration. Finally, MGON
has posted a
look at Red Faction (complete with screenshots galore) as well as a
general write-up, Machinima.com
has started their recap, and Daily Radar UK has also
been reporting from the show, however at the time of this writing they appear
to be having some server difficulties.
The first installment of Brandon
"GreenMarine" Reinhart's Developer Corner at GameSpy.com is online.
In this edition, the former Epic and current 3D Realms programmer offers some
advice for those looking to get into the gaming industry, however those looking
for new information about Duke Nukem Forever will be sorely disappointed.
Also new at GameSpy.com this morning is the third edition of their
Sacrifice Developer Diary. As the game is wrapping up, art director Joby
Otero talks about what is still left for the developers to work on as they approach
their limited beta test, along with a laundry-list of what is complete.
Version 1.40 of the Mac OS port of StrikeForce UT has been released, and is
available at
the mod's official site. In addition to this latest release, there are also
details on the status of the Linux version 1.40 up, as well word that a new
distribution of the Win32 version which is split into smaller files for the
bandwidth-impaired, will be released shortly.
While brief, GameSpot has written a
new preview of Delta Force: Land Warrior, which contains their hands-on
impressions of a new build of the game. They have previously published one with
their thoughts on the Cairo level, however this latest version contains more
of the full game, and there are details on the later levels as well as a description
of the new "sniping effect."
A new interview
with Brian Babendererde of Valkyrie Studios is up at 3DNews.net. Brian talks
about their recently unveiled Unreal Tournament engine title of angelic deathmatch,
and gives some general information on the game, its storyline, the planned single-player
missions, and more.
Version 0.96b of the
Science & Industry mod for Half-life has been released. This comprehensive
update contains a number of optimizations and gameplay tweaks, as well as new
research options, and new "llama" and "employee of the month"
status options.
Computer
Games Online interviews Bruce Shelley, talking with the founder of Ensemble
Studios about his early days in the industry (where he worked alongside Sid
Meier) as well as the two wildly-popular Age of Empires titles. Bruce discusses
the importance of the hardcore market, multiplayer gaming, the future of turn-based
strategy titles, and even what Railroad Tycoon II would have been if the version
started at MicroProse had ever been finished (years later PopTop would create
their own).
- Compu-sickle?
PC Rivals has created their
first PC project, a freakish box they call a "Computerator"
which is a supercooled computer made out of a refrigerator (next time guys,
make room to hold some beer!). There are explicit instructions and details
up, including photographs of the locations they purchased the parts from.
- New CPU Stability Test
CPU
Stability Test version 6.0 Beta 8a has been released (thanks FileFlash).
- Exorcise Your PC?
Exorcising
Demon Spirits from your PC is the name of an article at The-CTRL-ALT-DEL.com
that helps you track down all those little annoying bugs that pop up during
daily use of any Windows PC.
- Price Guidance
A new
guide at I am not a geek helps you pick out systems ranging from $500
to $4000.
- On Athlon Overclocking
Tweak3D's
latest guide shows you how to overclock an Athlon Thunderbird, while AllHw.com's
Athlon Overclocking Project chronicles their experiences overclocking
an Athlon 500 Mhz system.
Blizzard has unveiled their official
site for the Diablo II Expansion Set, which oddly enough appears to be titled
"Diablo II Expansion Set" for the time being. The site contains a
collection of screenshots from the add-on, as well as some new desktop images
and preliminary information about the new classes and monsters and a brief FAQ
(which includes the all-important question of whether or not people with the
expansion set will be able to play against regular Diablo II users).
Beta 5 of the Tier of Admiration mod for
Quake III Arena has been released. This new version adds new weapon sounds,
a new muzzle flash for the chaingun and a new level in addition to other changes.
Also available is an additional patch which fixes some texture problems that
popped up after their initial Beta 5 release the other day.
A new interview
with Rick Goodman and Stefan Arnold from Stainless Steel Studios is up at
Game-Interviews.com, talking with them about their upcoming RTS game Empire
Earth. Rick was a designer on Age of Empires, and the pair discusses the ambitious
time period covered in the game (500,000 years) as well as how it will separate
itself from other strategy titles out there. The interview is illustrated with
some new shots from the game.
Proving that today's the morning for diaries comes the second week of Dreamcast.IGN's
Evil Dead: Hail to the King diary. In this week's edition, Heavy Iron
Studios' Steve Gray talks about the technical aspects of the game's design,
from what languages it was written in to the programs used by the art team.
He also answers the all-important question, "is this game going to suck?"
BigWorld fan page BigWorld Vault has conducted an
interview with Simon Hayes of Micro Forte. Simon talks about the 3D engine
that powers BigWorld: Citizen Zero, along with some gameplay issues and the
expected system requirements.
Xeno Clan has posted an interview with Daniel
Awadalla, the organizer of the
Canadian Cyber Championships, an upcoming $15,000 Toronto-based tournament.
The new tutorials section at Err...Network
contains a whopping 530 tutorials for Half-Life, Unreal, Unreal Tournament and
Quake titles, all available via their searchable database. Also, the
second part of AMD Zone's 3D Now! programming tutorial is online.
The official site for Front
Line Force, an action-oriented mod for Half-life has been updated with six
new screenshots. This press
release at HalfLife.net announces the split of the
Matrix Half-life team, half of which has spun off to create the
new Existence mod. New shots from the Half-life mod The
Battle Grounds are up at its official site, showing off the Pipehawk weapon,
and TF2Source talks to
Shaka and Daz from the Hostile Intent mod. In non-Half-Life news, SoFCenter
kicks off their week-long look at SoF mods with an
interview with Hostile of the Hostile Intent mod (which apparently has no
relation to the HL mod of the same name).
Well, I'm back after three days of vacation, and of course, I lost all my outstanding
eBay auctions (oh well). Just before I left, I was shocked to receive a call
from my DSL provider (assuming it ever works - I'm still not sure it ever will)
telling me that they had at long last been given an install date from Verizon.
It just so happened that the date Verizon was going to show up at my doorstep
happened to be Saturday, which of course was when I was going to be out of town.
Now, I've long been convinced that my luck will forever prevent me from getting
a DSL line, but this was downright silly. So, I told the nice woman on the phone
that due to it being a holiday weekend, they would have to reschedule it. I
was told they would call me back. The next morning, I was awakened at an ungodly
hour (okay, it was 8:00 AM and I get up at 8:30...but it's the principle here,
people) by a smiling Verizon employee, who was here to install a new DSL line.
Incredibly, he wasn't struck by lightning during the installation (although
there were "complications" which lead to it taking a significantly
longer period of time than I had expected) and I've actually got a third phone
box now that has the letters "DSL" written on it in the almighty marker.
Of course, my apartment could still self-destruct if I ever plug anything into
it, but it's a start.
Link of the Day: DataPimp (thanks
Will). For those that were wondering who registered ThePopeShinesMyShoes.com
before they did (warning: contains adult language).
Story of the Day: Making
a Game of Web Searches (thanks kevin).
eBay Auction of the Day: Mario,
the CRAY Y-MP C90. Thanks _blue (no relation).
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