Archived News:
German developer FIN arts has released a playable demo of Bacteria, their 3D shooter inspired by movies like Fantastic Voyage and Innerspace where you pilot a miniaturized vehicle injected in a human body. The site requires Flash but you can find the 54.1 MB demo on this Net-Games page. If you're having trouble accessing the download server, then a US-based mirror is available at 3D Gamers. Update: The original demo included content that publisher Net-Games "didn't mean to give away," but it has now been replaced with a trimmed 46.8 MB demo that also fixes a show-stopper bug.
- Conflict Zone
GameSpot has posted more Ubi Soft screenshots, starting with a Conflict Zone gallery that mixes new and familiar screenshots of this 3D RTS by MASA Group in roughly equal fashion.
- Evil Twin
Also on GameSpot are over a dozen new Evil Twin: Cyprien's Chronicles screenshots (with a few familiar ones) of this rather demented-looking third-person action adventure by In Utero.
- Anachronox
GameSpyDaily has posted four new, high-res Anachronox screenshots showing off the now-gold 3D role-playing game by ION Storm which, according to an Eidos press release posted on Gone Gold, is scheduled for a release on June 26.
- Throne of Darkness
Week 2 in RPG Vault's Throne of Darkness Elements Of The Week offers a look at the fire spells in the isometric action RPG by Click Entertainment illustrated with a dozen new screenshots.
- Throne of Bhaal
Moving into another throne-room, a dozen new Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal screenshots on XGR depict more scenes in the imminent isometric RPG expansion by BioWare.
- Shadowbane
The official Shadowbane site has been updated with several new screenshots and renders of the 3D MMORPG being crafted at Wolfpack Studios.
- Neocron
There are some new Neocron screenshots on Neocron / Online, sporting more scenes in the futuristic 3D MMORPG being beta tested at Reakktor Media.
- Anarchy Online
RPGPlanet couldn't resist posting yet more Anarchy Online screenshots, even though Funcom's 3D MMORPG will be in stores next week.
- Renegade
Norwegian site gibme has posted the box cover of Command & Conquer: Renegade, just so you know what to look for when Westwood's 3D action game hits the stores later this year (if you still remember it then).
- IL-2 Sturmovik
Finally, back on GameSpot, there's also a sprawling IL-2 Sturmovik gallery sporting so many images of 1C Maddox Games' WWII flight sim that likely no-one knows how many are new. ![=]](/miscimages/smiley4.gif)
PC.IGN attended Ubi Soft's press event in San Francisco yesterday, and so they
have posted a preview of Rogue
Spear: Black Thorn based on what they saw there. The preview describes the
game as "a stand-alone mission pack running on the Rogue Spear engine"
and it provides some information on the weapons that will be available in the
game and details on the mission they were able to play.
Also on PC.IGN tonight is an interview
with Mitch Gitelman, the program manager at Microsoft on MechCommander 2.
Mitch explains the challenges they have faced in bringing the MechCommander
gameplay into 3D, what it's like to work with such an established franchise,
how they implemented fog of war and more. Along side the interview are a handful
of new screenshots.
Sega has posted the Dreamcast map pack for Quake III Arena on
their Q3A site. These are the modified maps that shipped with the Dreamcast
version of the game, and so theoretically this means PC gamers can play against
Dreamcast players. A couple of quick caveats: the FTP site is woefully overcrowded with
its teeny 50 user limit, and in order to use these maps you'll need Q3A version
1.16n. Thanks Stomped
for the tip. Update: A mirror is available at 3DDownloads.
As promised this weekend ( story), Digital Reality has now released the official version 1.06 patch for Imperium Galactica II: Alliances for download at Infogrames Germany. This updates all previous versions of their 3D strategy game, and addresses a CD-ROM access problem with a recent budget edition of the game. Thanks Patches Scrolls, who have a mirror here.
RPG Vault's
Midgard interview talks with Ragnar Tørnquist of Funcom about their
massively multiplayer title that was announced at last month's E3 Expo. Ragnar
provides some background information about the project, and he also goes into
detail about the game's use of Norse mythology, how they are using "professions"
instead of character classes or races and lots more.
Blizzard has released a
version 1.08 patch for Diablo II. The patch is available for both the Windows
and Mac OS versions of the game, and consists of a number of bug fixes, as well
as gameplay changes and tweaks including skill and class modifications. A full
list (along with a FAQ for the patch) is available on Blizzard's
download page. The download server appears to have some connectivity issues, but you should also be able to use the auto-updater.
As is their way, XGR Radio will be broadcasting a Fighting Legends interview tonight at 9:00 PM EDT. Maximum Charisma Studios lead QA, Rick Mohan, will be at hand to discuss their upcoming massively multiplayer role-playing strategy game, and of course you'll need WinAmp or a compatible player to tune into the fun.
One Man's Journey to Rockville on Morrowind Summit is the account of a visit to Bethesda Softworks' offices to check out their upcoming 3D role-playing game, Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (thanks VoodooExtreme). After the mandatory travel perils, the report offers details on seeing the offices, meeting the development team, and of course checking out the game, rounding up a lot of game information in bulleted fashion.
The Eternal Arena site sports a new version 1.3 release of the Eternal Team Arena mod for Quake III: Team Arena (thanks Stomped). This release adds new gameplay modes, more configuration options, and several other improvements and fixes.
GameSpot took their trusty camera with them to the recent Ubi Soft press event, and has now posted a Conquest: Frontier Wars video of the space-based RTS in development at Fever Pitch Studios. The movie runs for more than seven minutes in various streaming formats, and offers plenty of gameplay footage accompanied by commentary from lead designer Eric Peterson.
GameSpot has conducted an interview on Heroes of Might & Magic IV, the latest installment in the long-running turn-based strategy series by New World Computing and 3DO. Associate designer Jennifer Bullard is at hand to discuss the game's premise and look, the capabilities and new types of heroes, the new magic system, and other improvements over the previous games. Five new screenshots accompany the proceedings.
A patch for Steel Soldiers has been posted at
the game's official site (thanks MaDDoX). The patch fixes problems with
Windows 2000, random freezing and other issues that were in the shipping version
of the game, and it also contains a new single player level and a new multiplayer
level. Update: The official site appears to be hammered, but you can now also get all patches at 3D Gamers.
A new movie showing off Rainbow Six: Takedown, the upcoming Korean Rainbow
Six title from developers Kama Entertainment is
up at Rogue Spear Retreat. The 63.7 movie is in AVI format and features
a brief history of the previous Rainbow Six games as well as interviews with
the development team (in Korean) and gameplay footage showing off the new maps
and models. Takedown has not been announced as being released anywhere outside
of Korea.
id Software's Paul Jaquays updated
his .plan this afternoon with the news that id has posted documentation
for creating new models, skins and teams for the latest version of Quake III
Arena and Team Arena. Here's what he has to say: For a while, I've been
hinting to folks on model making forums that there would be some changes in
the next point release regarding the creation of teams for Team Arena and also
some changes to skin handling for Q3A.
The primary focus of the new document is making new teams for Quake III: Team
Arena, but there's also huge amount of information in it on making TA and Q3A
models, and a look at some new code involving both TA and Q3A models. There
are RTF (Rich Text Format ... compatible with many Word Processors) and html
versions available as separate downloads. Anyone who has been itching to re-skin
James and Janet or make their clan team (and have it work in game) will now
have their chance.
The new release also supports new models for teams in TA, use of Q3A head models
on TA models (these are not modified models and most look ugly as sin when in
place on Janet and James), and a skin-naming convention that will allow the
team color variations of user made Q3A model skins to replace the skin in team
games, instead of the model's default skin.
The manual is about 34 pages long, but don't be overwhelmed by that. A good
share of the document is examples of scripts and irectory contents. As I write
this, id's ftp site is currently being hammered by folks wanting to download
the beta version of the 1.29f point release, so access to our servers may be
difficult. But you will be able to grab the documents from:
HTML Format version of Team Arena Team Creation Document
RTF
Format version of Team Arena Team Creation Document
Belgian site SpelletjesGarnaal has posted a
new movie featuring footage from Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor.
Like most of the movies released by this site, it features a decent amount of
gameplay along with commentary (and occasional singing) in Flemish. The movie
is available as a downloadable or streaming Windows Media Player file.
As the E3 slowly fades into the past, here are a few more blasts from the past: Belgian site SpelletjesGarnaal has posted a Dungeon Siege interview movie with streaming and downloadable ShakyCam footage in Windows Media Player format of Gas Powered Games' 3D role-playing game. Also, Raging Inferno offers another Warcraft III ShakyCam video in soundless DivX AVI format running for more than five minutes. The winners of the 2001 E3 Game Critics Awards are now online, with the Nintendo GAMECUBE taking Best of Show and Star Wars Galaxies logging another Best PC Game award, among their many categories. Finally, SimHQ's Best of E3 2001 narrows their awards down to hardware, tactical shooters, and naval and flight sims.
Now that the latest Quake III Arena beta patch is out, version 2.5 of the
Alliance mod for Q3A has been released. This new version features "drastically
improved" bots, a new "combat" mode where everyone spawns with
all weapons and lots more.
The Paradox Beta testing page
is now accepting applications from those interested in beta testing Valhalla
Chronicles (thanks AVault), an upcoming
adventure game "set in an undefined mythological/historical version of the Viking
world somewhere around the years 800-1000. The game will unravel an epic story
of a time of Vikings, discovery, adventures, raging wars and mythology."
(This is not to be confused with Halls of Valhalla, the RUNE Expansion which is decidedly not an RPG.) Sign-ups for the beta are
being accepted through the end of July. Here's a bit more on the game, since
this is the first we've mentioned it: Valhalla Chronicles will not only
take you to Miklagård (Constantinople) and Vinland (North America) but also to
Valhalla, Svartalfheim, Hel and Muspelheim. As one of four heroes you must
interact with humans and gods and choose your allies with caution in order to
complete your mission. You will meet the powerful and short fused Thor; god of
thunder, the wise Odin; god of magic and wisdom and the vile and deceitful Loke,
half god and half-giant.
Four heroes, four faiths, four adventures - prepare for a journey deep into a
dangerous world you have never experienced before and meet the challenges of
Valhalla Chronicles.
The Adrenaline Vault Preview MechCommander 2
with their look ahead at Microsoft's upcoming follow-up to their RTS BattleTech
game. The article provides lots of information about the sequel, detailing many
of the ways it will differ from its predecessor, including the impact of a fully
3D environment, vastly improved AI, and highly adjustable difficulty settings to
make the game more appealing to a wider audience, as the original MechCommander
was considered quite challenging. The report goes on with personal (rave)
impressions of the latest beta, and is illustrated by some MC2 screenshots.
An update on TOTALWAR.COM
has the announcement that Shogun: The Mongol Invasion (the upcoming Shogun
add-on) and Shogun: The Warlord Edition (the expanded full version of Shogun
that will include the add-on) "are to be released simultaneously in all
languages on the 20th of July." This is a few weeks later than originally
expected ( story), but as was noted at the time the earlier
planned released date was mentioned, this wasn't a completely firm date as the
add-on wasn't gold yet (actually, there has still been no gold announcement, so
this still not be a firm date either).
An update to Graeme
Devine's .plan has word for those concerned at the absence of a Mac OS
Classic build of the new Quake III Arena patch ( story),
saying: "The Mac OS Classic build is coming! Sheeeesh!"
Terra Arcanum
has posted news of a chat session next Tuesday to gab about progress on Arcanum:
Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura, Troika Games' upcoming RPG. The chat can be
accessed via IRC in the channel #arcanum on irc.gamesnet.net. More details on
joining are on their #arcanum page.
The session kicks off Tuesday, June 26, 2001 at 7:00 PM EDT. Also, this Sunday
(June 24) at 3:00 PM EDT, Stratics will hold a chat session with the developers
of Anarchy Online, details on how to join are on the Stratics
Chat page.
A post called 'Bring it on' on the Tribalwar Forums offers word from Sierra's Alex Rodberg that he's
interested in feedback on TRIBES 2 problems that he can bring to a meeting to
discuss clearing them up. To avoid confusing the issue, I'll reproduce his post
here: No, not an invitation to argue or flame. I have a meeting regarding
Tribes 2 at the end of the day. I'm giving you an opportunity to present your
cogent points to other people involved in the project who do not read the
boards. I invite you to post SHORT and CONCISE lists of critical issues you
would like us to be aware of. Please leave out gameplay issues (i.e. shrike).
For now I want to focus on things preventing tourneys and competitive play.
Also, thanks in advance, but please skip the "Tribes 2 runs great on my
machines" posts. I just want to hear from the people who ARE having
problems. It would be MOST helpful if you could structure your posts like this
(though I'm sure some of you will find more poignant ways to express
yourselves).
I am Tribes2Playa. I speak for a Tribe of 20. Out top tech issues are:
- ELF crashes tourney server I play on. (list some servers)
- Typically only getting 25 FPS (Machine specs here)
- Flag skips on ... whatever map.
- UE 20% of the time
That will make it easy to print out and bring to the meeting. I'll let you know
results as soon as I can.
New Game Boy Advance Already a Sellout
(Business Wire) calling it "America's fastest selling game system
ever" (with another half-million units on the way to fill the demand).
Also, there's an
Unreal Championship Q&A on Unreality talking with James Schmalz of
Digital Extremes about the upcoming Xbox Unreal game. Meanwhile, Not Given Half A Chance: The Cancellation of Half-Life
on IGN tries to answer questions about why the Dreamcast port of Half-Life
was cancelled ( story). Also, Sony Plans For Larger PS2 Hard Drive
on PS2.IGN.Com has word on plans for an annual upgrade. Moving right along: So-Net & Sony Ink Deal
on Core Magazine is the report of Sony's portal deal. While Final Fantasy X Shock Edition?
on Core Magazine describes an unusual bundle to be released in Japan that
will include FFX and an amplifier(?). Also, State of the
Xbox Vol. 5 on Xbox.com is online, while more on that state can be found in the
Ed Fries interview on TEAMXBOX.COM (thanks MSXbox).
Finally, Phillips to
provide DVD Drives on MSXbox is the report of a new Xbox hardware deal.
A new version 0.96 of ZDaemon is now
available (thanks Voodoo Extreme),
updating this client/server port of the original Doom source code. The new
version is mostly to address bugs, though it does also add an option to turn off
skin support on the client side.
A new version 3.0.2 of the Q_Check
mIRC Auto Away Plugin-Script for GameSpy is now available. Word on this release
is: "Although v3.0.2 is mostly a bugfix release, there are some new
features, including a "Quick Launch" and ZDaemon support. This release
is currently only available in English and Danish but more languages are
expected within the next few days."
GameSpy.com's Black & White Strategy Guide Part II
is online, offering individual walkthroughs for each of the five island
environments that must be mastered to complete the game.
Some more tweakage to the messageboards (more huzzah and kudos Bagpuss). Some
folks have complained about anonymous postings hurting the signal-to-noise ratio
on the news forum, but the problem is simply that this feature was introduced
earlier than its complimentary co-feature, which is a simple drop-down menu on
the messageboard display that allows you your choice of whether to ignore or
display anonymous postings. This has now been activated, so if you are not
interested in reading the posts by those who remain anonymous, just change this,
and they will be suppressed for you (optional is whether you hold your hands
over your ears and shout 'I'm not listening to you - nah nah, nah, nah').
Birthday-Meister Chris Morris sends
word that today would have been Nancy (Livia Soprano) Marchand's 73rd birthday.
Link of the Day: SFCave.
Today's time waster. Thanks Frostnick.
Story of the Day: Fox sets
"Simpsons" for DVD boxed set (Variety). Thanks Noctrine.
Bonus Story: Simmons Offers One Last Kiss.
Thanks Dan Leadbetter. Marketing from Hell.
Weird Science: UK Curry on two slices of
naan, please (BBC). Chocolate curry? Thanks Chris Jones.
Wild Science: Physicists solve the case of the missing neutrinos
(MSNBC). Thanks Captain Kaos[doh].
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