Archived News:
Westlake Interactive has updated
their news page with the news that they have been quietly working on a Mac
OS port of Clive Barker's Undying. The game will be published by Aspyr Media,
whose other recent Mac titles include Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force and American
McGee's Alice. In a separate update, Westlake
has also announced that their Mac port of Tomb Raider Chronicles has gone
gold, and will ship with the Tomb Raider level editor.
Vienna-based developers neo Software updated their official The Sting! site last month with the release of a German demo of this comic-style burglar simulation/adventure that has already been released in German speaking countries as Der Clou! 2. The demo clocks in at 59.8 MB and offers two missions from the game, which will be published in English through JoWood Productions later this Summer. Also, if you have the full German version, then the Service Pack 2 may be helpful to remedy a couple of problems with the game. Thanks John Bergerud for the tip.
- Medal of Honor
The official Medal of Honor: Allied Assault site sports three new screenshots this evening, illustrating the Quake III powered first-person shooter by 2015. The images show new scenes from the Normandy beach landing mission in the game.
- Steel Soldiers
PC.IGN.com has captured a dozen new Steel Soldiers screenshots from their review build of the 3D real-time strategy game by The Bitmap Brothers that will be out in a couple of days.
- Sudden Strike Forever
There are half a dozen new Sudden Strike Forever screenshots on Gamerush, illustrating the isometric RTS expansion by Fireglow and CDV.
Liquified.org has received a Battle Realms video from Liquid Entertainment which originally aired on TechTV Extended Play in March (but that we seemed to have missed at the time). The video offers a preview of Liquid's 3D RTS along with a minute of gameplay footage, and it comes as a 3.8 MB download in DivX AVI format.
There is a version 1.1.1 patch for realMYST on the Learning Company support site that was apparently released last December, but spotted only today by eagle-eyed Adrenaline Vault. The patch takes 2.7 MB to download and addresses a series of gameplay issues in Cyan's first-person adventure, as well as adding a number of new control options.
GameSpot has conducted an
interview with Javier Arevalo, the project leader at Pyro Studios on their
upcoming RTS game Praetorians. Javier talks about the different playable civilizations,
their plans to de-emphasize resource management, the various available units
and lots more.
Also new on GameSpot this evening is an
Anno 1503 video interview. This is another one of GameSpot's continuing
series of videos from last month's E3 Expo, and in it a representative from
Electronic Arts talks about the game while demonstrating it on a monitor behind
him. As this one was taped from E3 show floor, there is a lot of background
noise.
GameSpot has posted two movie trailers of Star Trek: Bridge Commander, the capitol ship space sim under construction at Totally Games. The first trailer offers mostly cinematic footage while the second one also includes some in-game sequences, and both run for about 50 seconds in downloadable MPEG or streaming formats.
- Wolfenstein
GameSpot has posted three new screenshots of Return to Castle Wolfenstein, featuring new scenes in the WWII first-person shooter sequel by Gray Matter Interactive.
- AquaNox
German site SpieleCity has appended three new AquaNox screenshots to the end of their gallery for the underwater 3D action game currently docking at Massive Development.
- LoMM
Ten new Legends of Might and Magic screenshots are online at EuroGamer, showing off the team-based multiplayer action game by 3DO that went gold last week (story).
- Camelot
Similarly, ten new Dark Age of Camelot screenshots have appeared on RPGDot, sporting more scenes in Mythic's upcoming medieval MMORPG.
- Anarchy Online
The token number of three new Anarchy Online screenshots are up at MMO@Gameznet, illustrating Funcom's MMORPG that is now mere weeks away from release.
- Watchmaker
Italian site Nextgame.it has posted two dozen new screenshots of The Watchmaker, a 3D adventure being developed at likewise Italian developers Trecision.
Gathering of Developers send word that their official Max Payne site has opened for business, showcasing the gritty third-person action game nearing completion at Remedy Entertainment. The site requires Flash and features game information, a FAQ, the already familiar E3 movie trailer, and eight new screenshots in medium- and high-resolution formats.
It's been a long time since we've had a contest going here, but with our
T-shirts on sale, now seemed like a good time to start a new one. Well,
that and the fact that I desperately need some extra space in my apartment.
So here's the deal: we're
giving away an enormous pile of stuff from my apartment. This includes dozens
of full, boxed games, hardware, swag, and crazy, unidentifiable things. And
these aren't b-grade games, either: we're talking about great ones like Unreal
Tournament, Serious Sam, Clive Barker's Undying and more, which for one reason
or another I have extra copies of. For info on how you can be one of three lucky
people to get a care package from us (plus a free T-shirt), head
over to our contest page!
The second part of the
Fighting Legends beta report at Massive Multiplayer.org is online this afternoon.
The brief preview consists of the author's impressions of the recent events
in the game, some new screenshots and a quote from Dale Lullo of Maximum Charisma
regarding player vs. player combat. In case you missed it, the first part is still online.
Activision sent out a brief statement announcing that Raven will be releasing
a patch for Soldier of Fortune in the near future that contains multiplayer
fixes and switches the game's multiplayer setup from WON.net/Flipside.com to
GameSpy. Here's the statement we received: Last year's critically acclaimed
action game, Soldier of Fortune(R), is moving to a new multiplayer home. Activision
and Raven Software will soon release a patch that will switch multiplayer to
GameSpy. The switch coincides with multiplayer server fixes that Raven has implemented.
All users of Soldier of Fortune are recommended to download and install the
patch. On August 10, WON.net/Flipside.com will cease hosting Soldier of Fortune
multiplayer.
The patch will be available at Activision.com, Ravensoft.com and FilePlanet.com,
as well as other sites on the Iinternet.
As is their way, Gamasutra has posted a Black & White postmortem, looking back at the creation of Lionhead's god-playing game that was released last March. Written by top lion Peter Molyneux, the article examines his goals for the game, describes what went right and wrong along the way of its lengthy development, and reflects on the end result.
CDV has released a new movie trailer of Sudden Strike Forever, available for download from FilePlanet (registration required), that shows off this isometric RTS expansion by developers Fireglow that is already available in parts of Europe. The movie comes as a 33.7 MB download and features a minute and a half of cinematic and in-game footage in MPEG format.
GameSpot UK has posted a
new preview of Age of Mythology, the upcoming 3D RTS from Ensemble Studios.
The preview contains new quotes from lead designers Bruce Shelley and Ian Fischer, as well as two
new screenshots ( shot
one, shot
two).
As expected, Dynamix and Loki have now also released manual patches to upgrade TRIBES 2 to version 23115, should you prefer that over the auto-updates. For Win32, there are patches to update the previous version 22755 (888 KB) and the older version 22460 (1.5 MB), while for Linux there is a client upgrade (5.9 MB) and a dedicated server upgrade (3.9 MB), and the full list of changes can be found here.
Recently we noticed that all mentions of the PC version of Titanium Angels had been removed from publisher SCi's website, suggesting that the third-person action adventure by Mobius was headed for a PS2-only release ( story). However, FGN Online now quotes SCi as saying "Titanium Angels has not been cancelled for PC. The title is still in development, but the PlayStation 2 version will be the lead platform," while it remains the only platform listed on the official site at this time.
It's not available for direct download yet, but Sierra has made the version
23115 patch for TRIBES 2 available via the game's auto-update system. Thanks
Tribal War, who have posted a full
list of changes on their news page. Here's an excerpt from the list of changes: -
(memory leak) Fixed a large memory leak. This plus the other leaks mentioned
here should finally put the nail in the coffin on the "degrading server
performance" issue.
- (improvement) Targeting laser prediction should be better now.
- (improvement) You can specify a server's IP address manually at the join screen
- (improvement) You can now specify "-password " on the command line
to join a server that requires a password.
- (improvement) Heavy armors are tougher against snipers. You now require four
headshots or five body shots to kill a Juggernaut with a laser rifle.
- (improvement) Footspeed of all armors increased slightly, as well as a minor
boost to jetpack performance. Some improvements made to air resistance for mediums
and heavy armors (very subtle).
- (improvement) The jetpack effect was reverted back to the old effect (by popular
demand).
Diablo 2 Expansion Set: Lord of Destruction (Part 2) - Preview on Games Domain continues their look at isometric action RPG add-on being beta tested at Blizzard. This installment describes the improved inventory system, the new 800x600 screen resolution, and various other enhancements, and naturally it comes with another batch of new screenshots.
Voodoo Extreme has posted a brief interview on Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, quizzing producer Vince Zampella about this WWII-based first-person shooter in development at 2015. Vince talks about some of the events in World War II that will take place in the game and the research they did to capture them authentically, the modifications made to the Quake III engine, how the game differs from the other WWII shooter in development (Return to Castle Wolfenstein), and a few other topics.
Part three of the Mimesis Online Developer Diary is up at RPG Vault, and this time Tannhauser Gate's Derek Handley talks about the "chaos and tension" in the studio as they enter the beta phase in the development of their isometric MMORPG, and shares a little insight into the creative process the game went through.
Fansite Payne Reactor has conducted an interview on Max Payne, grilling lead programmer Markus Stein and character modeller Henri Blåfield about the hard-boiled third-person action game that is nearing completion at Remedy Entertainment. The interview mixes article and Q&A formats and covers topics like the early development of the game, the "Bullet Time" feature, the editing tools that will be included, character modelling, and lots more.
IBM wins Playstation 3 contract
(BBC) is the announcement that Big Blue has nailed down the contract to produce the
next generation of micro-processors for Sony's Playstation 3 games console.
Thanks Chris Jones. Also, Microsoft admits worries over future of Xbox
(Computer and Video Games) quotes MS CEO Steve Ballmer expressing concern over
Xbox’s broadband future. Meanwhile, Core Magazine
is reporting plans for a live-action television series based on Perfect Dark,
while a report on Cube.IGN.com
announces plans for a Perfect Dark sequel to be released next year. There's also
a Miyamoto roundtable and an Activision
on GC interview on IGN, you'll need a free Snowball registration to view
either of those. Moving right along, there's a Game Boy Color Commander Keen Review
on GameSpot. Finally, the Xbox FAQ
has been updated.
Xezol.com's Half-Life-Blue Shift
Walkthrough is online to help if you're stuck in Gearbox Software's new
Half-Life game, taking no chances that any of it will cause confusion, the guide
is illustrated by over 450(!) screenshots. Also, there's a
room and space clearing guide on The Ice Terminal giving tactics to help
teams clear rooms in a coordinated manner in Counter-Strike. Finally, there's also a new Rcon In Depth
guide on GameAdmins.com as well as a Soldier of Fortune
server set-up guide on GameAdmins.com.
3DActionPlanet
Navy Seals: Covert Operations interview talks with Democritus of this Quake
III Arena modification.
As noted in
Paul Jaquays' .plan, there's an
announcement on Polycount with details on the QuakeCon 2001 Map Object Model
Contest being held in conjunction with id Software, with entries required by
August 3, 2001.
Okay, I just klunked my head on the low ceiling at the head of the stairs for my
attic office here at the Blue Tower. Were it an isolated incident this would
warrant no additional contemplation, but this is a problem that I've been so
successful at failing to learn to avoid that there are actual head marks at the
point of repeated impact. What's got me worried is a growing belief that
repeating the exact same simple mistake like this often enough is possible evidence that
you are part of a failed limb on the evolutionary tree (I mean seriously now!).
On the bright side, I think I only have to suffer one or two more good solid
klunks, and I'll probably stop worrying so much about this, or anything else for
that matter.
Happy Birthday to Brandon "GreenMarine" Reinhart, as well as a few
sent along by Chris Morris, who points
out that Malcolm McDowell is 58 today, Paul Lynde would have been 75, and the
Olson twins turn 15 (which means it's about time to start seeing stories about
their darker side(s)). On the subject of commemoration, yesterday is the first
anniversary of Deus Ex going gold.
Link of the Day: Escape from Monkey Island Insult Arm Wrestling (click
the banner atop the Escape From Monkey Island
page). Thanks Frightener.
Story of the Day: Japanese company to offer canned 'Godzilla Meat'
(CNN). Thanks Chris Johnson.
Weird Science: Marijuana users can gobble junk food without weight
gain (Boston Herald). Thanks Chris Johnson. Maybe they're just forgetting to
report having exercised?
Wild Science: ‘Rocket Guy’ reaches for the sky
(MSNBC). Thanks JumpingBean'.
Super-Freaky Science: NASA aims to move Earth
(Guardian Unlimited Observer). Thanks Captain Kaos[doh].
|
Twitter 
