Archived News:
TalonSoft has released a new movie trailer of Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven, the third-person mobster action game in the works at Illusion Softworks. The trailer offers nearly a minute and a half of mostly new gameplay footage in the self-running Bink format, demonstrating the action both on foot and in cars, and showing off various parts of the large city area they've modelled for the game. Additionally, the same page sports a new Outlive movie trailer showing off this upcoming isometric RTS by Brazilian developers Continuum Entertainment in over a minute of gameplay and cutscene footage.
Maybe Blue's incense nauseated the gods a bit, because all cable services were down in my home town today, only to be restored at midnight local time. Lots of people didn't get to watch their favorite soap this evening. ![=]](/miscimages/smiley4.gif) Anyway, time to catch up:
- Serious Sam
Daily Radar has posted twenty new Serious Sam screenshots along with some brief impressions from an alpha build of Croteam's upcoming first-person shooter, and GameSpot has a quick summary of the weapons that will be in the game.
- NOLF Bonus Maps
Both NOLF World and VoodooExtreme have posted a few screenshots of the next No One Lives Forever bonus map pack.
- Bridge Commander
Three new Star Trek: Bridge Commander screenshots on GA-Source accompany the news that sci-fi writer D.C. Fontana will contribute to the script of Totally Games' capitol ship space combat sim.
- Team Factor
The official Team Factor site sports another new screenshot in the team-based multiplayer action game currently under construction at Czech developers 7FX.
- Venom
GA-Source has posted a new Venom wallpaper in two resolutions, illustrating the first-person shooter by GSC Game World.
- Kohan
There is a mix of new and familiar Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns screenshots and concept art on GA-Strategy, including a giant panoramic shot.
- Dark Age of Camelot
As is their way, Camelot HQ has posted another weekly collection of their daily Dark Age of Camelot screenshots, offering more scenes in the medieval MMORPG currently in beta testing at Mythic Entertainment.
PC.IGN has posted a new trailer
featuring footage from Star Trek: Away Team, the tactical combat title from
Reflexive Entertainment and Activision. The trailer is just under 12 MB, and
like most of IGN's movies is in QuickTime format.
Also at PC.IGN this evening is a
preview of Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, 2015's upcoming Quake III Arena-powered
World War II FPS. The preview has a decent amount of background information
on the game, and explains the history of the (previously Playstation-only) Medal
of Honor series, as well as the same 10 screenshots that have already been released.
If you're tired of seeing those same shots in low-resolution, XGR.com has
posted them all in the decidedly high-resolution 1600x1200 format.
A pair of previews of Cossacks: European Wars are online this evening. Daily
Radar's preview has an overview of the game and five new screenshots, while
over at GameRaiders.com they have a
preview online that contains their hands-on impressions and some familiar
looking screenshots.
Sharky Extreme has conducted an
interview with Alan Emrich, the lead designer and writer on Master of Orion
III (thanks Slashdot). It's a fairly
lengthy interview, and Alan outlines exactly what Quicksilver's goals are for
the game, as well as his thoughts on the previous two titles in the series,
the challenge of balancing such an ambitious undertaking and lots more.
Interplay paid a visit to GameSpot today, and they brought along with them
a build of Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel. As a result, an
updated preview of the game is up at GameSpot, containing new screenshots,
impressions of the various missions in the single player campaign and a look
at the complete game's multiplayer.
Gamecenter has posted a
new preview of Wizardry 8, SirTech's upcoming RPG that reinvents the venerable
Wizardry series in 3D (thanks Stomped).
The preview contains quotes from Wizardry co-creator Charles Miles about the
game, and has a number of new screenshots as well.
GameSpot's nightly
preview this evening looks at Dark Age of Camelot, the massively multiplayer
RPG from Mythic Entertainment. The preview is based on their impressions of
the current beta test, and has lots of gameplay details along with 13 new screenshots.
An update
on the status of Zero-G Marines, the FPS from Strategy First is up at Stomped
this evening, along with four new screenshots. According to Lead designer Dan
Hoecke work is progressing steadily, and he mentions the progress they have
made to the AI, their Zero-G level editor, physics and other aspects of the
game.
Funcom has released patch
3 for their 3D action game No Escape. This update includes lots of networking
tweaks, including fixes for various server crashes and other miscellaneous bugs.
Blizzard has made the Diablo II 1.05 patch that was released last night via
Battle.net ( story) available for direct download
through their FTP site as well as FilePlanet.
This will no doubt come as good news for those that are experiencing copy protection
problems and couldn't connect to Battle.net to get the patch. Thanks Maximus
for the tip.
id Software's Graeme Devine updated
his .plan this afternoon with an update on the status of the Mac OS version
of Quake III Arena (as it's not very compatible with OS 9.1) as well as his
regrets about the loss of the Dreamcast. Here's what he has to say about Q3A's
future Mac OS support: Mac OS 9.1 Quake3Arena.
As many other developers have noticed, there's a little work to be done to make
our games compatible with the new 9.1 release of MacOS. I've yet to address
the issues, but will do as soon as I can. Once those are cleared up I'll release
a build. There's a significant speedup over the current debug build out there.
Mac OS 9.1 Quake3Arena Altivec.
The Altivec version of Q3A is awesome. Unfortunately there is a bug in the Metrowerks
compiler Altivec support which means I'm waiting on the update for the compiler.
Metrowerks is currently QAing a build of their compiler with this fix included.
For those x86 people out there who wonder what the Altivec is, it's the super
computer part of the G4 chip that Apple touts in it's commercials. It really
is incredible, and really does make a "super computer power" difference
in application that support it.
Mac OS X Quake3Arena.
I'll release it along with the next release of the Mac build.
An interview
with Gary Wagner of Gizmo Games is up at Stomped today, talking with him
about their upcoming 3D strategy game Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - Dominion
Wars. Gary explains how the game fits into the DS9 timeline, as well as why
it was delayed (originally it was supposed to be released just after The Fallen),
how the 3D interface functions and more. They have also posted five new screenshots
from the game.
Stomped has posted an
interesting article that looks back at the various commercial add-ons for
the Quake titles. The article looks at the official, the unofficial, and the
really really unofficial add-ons, and there are quotes in here from id Software's
Todd Hollenshead, Levelord (who worked on Scourge of Armagon, the first add-on
for Quake 1), Rogue's Jim Molinets and others.
Continuing their MechWarrior 4 week (celebrating the overseas release of MechWarrior
4: Vengeance), GameSpot UK has conducted
an interview with TJ Wagner and Heinz Schuller, the producer and art lead
on the game. The questions deal with MechWarrior 4's engine, cinematic opening
sequence, their favorite missions and more.
Although it's really been assumed all along, Valve has never confirmed that
Half-Life 2 is actually in production. Valve still hasn't commented on it, but
at the Entertainment for the Interactive Age conference, GameSpy
Daily heard NYU Computing Science professor Ken Perlin say that he is currently
working closely on some new technology with Valve that may be used for Half-Life
2. The technology he's working on will let players "fall in love"
with the characters, and may or may not actually make it into the game, but
the fact that he's talking with Valve at all about this means the game is at
least in production.
GameSpy has been attending the Entertainment for the Interactive Age conference
at the University of Southern California, and they have written
an article on one of the talks they attended yesterday. At this particular
panel, designers from EverQuest, Asheron's Call and Star Wars Galaxies square
off on issues related to massively multiplayer RPGs, and the article is loaded
with quotes from them and has an overview of the various opinions expressed.
Beta 3 of the TargetQuake mod
for Quake III Arena has been released (thanks GameSpy
Daily). There are no specific details available about this release, but
the brief update on the mod's official site says that it fixes various problems
from beta 2.
Sega's decision to scrap Dreamcast
is a Reuters press release dropping the other shoe on this long-rumored ( story)
announcement, while this story at IGN has specific titles listed for other platforms, and Rival Gamemaker Sees Sega Struggle with Other Boxes
quotes the CEO of EA on Sega's plans to program for other systems saying this
may be problematic, commenting: it's "not quite as though this is GM saying
we'll make BMWs, but it's the same kind of proposition." Meanwhile, one of
those other systems is revealed, as a story called Sega to Provide Game Content for Palm
reports plans to program for the hand-held, saying "Palm personal digital
organizers would be able to play Sega's games online." In what may be
related notes, System
Shock 2 For Dreamcast "On Hold," reports Stomped, while PS2s Available At PlayStation.com
on PS2.IGN.Com reports on the actual availability of some of the
unicorn-rare systems, while on the flip-side of that same coin, Sega expected to slash price of Dreamcast
reports CNET. Finally, Computer and Video Games
reports: Metal Gear 2 not heading to Xbox in a story that says "Metal
Gear Solid X, the recently announced Xbox version of the traditionally
PlayStation shooter, will not be a port of Metal Gear Solid 2," which more
or less confirms our conjecture yesterday ( story) that the end of
the MGS segment will not spell the end of the entire Metal Gear series.
The DiabloII.Net Bug Bytes
page has been updated with the read-me containing information on the version
1.05 Diablo II update released last night on Battle.Net
( story). The page details the changes in the new release, which
include solutions for those unable to start the game due to copy-protection
problems (which, since the patch is still only available as an in-game update,
kind of makes you wonder).
The AURAN Jet website has a new public
beta 2 of this preview of Auran's "next-generation game architecture."
They sent along this press
release detailing what's changed, which includes support for volumetric shadows,
changing textures on loaded meshes, and MP3s.
The cookies are baked, the red carpet is out, the sacrifices have been offered,
and the incense is burning... all that's left is to bury all the anti-Verizon
signs in the basement, and I'll be properly prepared for my visit from the telco
to add the wires for my upcoming DSL connection. In the spirit of my upcoming
new connection, Devin Emke sends word of a story on The Register
referring to a utility called RasPPPoE
that can help DSL customers when certain technologies are used (including those
used by Verizon).
Happy 50th birthday to Harry Wayne Casey. Thanks Chris
Morris. Who, you ask? Harry may be more familiar as KC of KC and the
Sunshine Band.
Story of the Day: Kentucky cashier falls for fake Bush $200 bill
(CNN). Thanks Big Dog and Chris Johnson.
Bonus Story: ABC TV to Wake Up Airwaves with Live Childbirth.
Apparently nowadays something that hasn't been done in 20 years re-qualifies as
"unique." Needless to say, this is scheduled during sweeps. Thanks
Brian "Third" Legge.
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