Archived News:
A preview of The Awakened,
an upcoming 3D RTS game from Ubi Soft and developer Edgies, is up at PC.IGN
this evening. The author was able to take a look at the game during a Ubi Soft
press event, and so the preview consists of a report of what he saw there along
with the first 17 screenshots.
Also new at PC.IGN this evening is the
first batch of screenshots from Spider-Man, a 3D action/adventure title
from Activision that's being ported over from the Playstation. The 14 screenshots
show off a number of locations and enemies from the game.
There is a new video interview of Rogue Spear: Black Thorn on GameSpot, in which Ubi Soft producer Mathieu Ferland talks about this standalone tactical shooter mission pack by Red Storm Entertainment. The video runs for nearly three minutes in several streaming formats and includes plenty of gameplay along with Mathieu's commentary.
Valve sends along an update on two upcoming Half-Life patches that are due to be released in the coming weeks. The first patch will include the already available Deathmatch Classic mod, among other changes, while the second release brings the Voice and the Multicast Spectator technologies. Here is the scoop:
Two Half-Life Updates Coming Soon
Half-Life updates 1.1.0.7 and 1.1.0.8 will be released in the coming weeks.
Update 1.1.0.7, which contains Deathmatch Classic and introduces new
update/downloading functionality, will be issued next week.
Update 1.1.0.8, which contains Voice and the Multicast Spectator
technologies, and was previously referred to as 1.1.0.7, will be released
in mid July. This update also contains a fix for the GL wall hack, and
will be previewed at this week's CPL event in Dallas.
The Voice and Multicast Spectator features will be compatible with all
Half-Life Mods, and Valve will be supporting the Mod teams to have these
features working immediately in popular HL Mods such as Day of Defeat and
more.
The Bitmap Brothers have released new patches for Steel Soldiers, their new 3D real-time strategy game, which are available for download from FilePlanet (registration required). The 5.9 MB patches come in US, UK, German, French, Italian and Spanish editions, bring the game to version 1.20, and include a handful of single- and multi-player improvements and bug fixes as well as all the changes in the previous version 1.17 patches ( story) .
A new preview
of Yuri's Revenge, the upcoming add-on pack for Command & Conquer: Red
Alert 2 is up at GameSpot this evening. The preview features plenty of information
about how the mission pack differs from the original game, including details
on how the designers have broken the standard C&C rules and how Yuri's Revenge
fits into the Red Alert storyline, and there are seven new screenshots here as
well.
Mr. Pants' Excessive Overkill,
the incredibly over-the-top mod for Unreal Tournament and Quake III Arena has
made the jump to another game, this time bringing its insane gameplay to Star
Trek: Voyager - Elite Force. The mod is server-side only, so no download is
needed for those that just want to jump in and blow stuff up.
Fan page Liongames has posted an update
on the status of the various ports of Black & White in the works (thanks
Inside Mac Games). It was already
known that the Dreamcast version has been put on hiatus ( story),
but Liongames has learned by way of Lionhead Studios' Mark Webley that the Mac
OS version is still moving along, and they are hoping to release it before Christmas.
The Linux and BeOS ports seem to be dead in the water (due largely to the complexity
involved in porting the game), and the various console ports are moving along
as well, with the PSOne version expected to be complete within the next few
months.
- Sierra's Triple Dose
Like every Monday, Sierra Studios kicks off the week with a new screenshot of Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura, Empire Earth, and Throne of Darkness.
- RIM
Freelancer has posted three new screenshots of RIM - Battle Planets, a 3D RTS by German developers TriNodE Entertainment that has so far been released only in the German language.
- Orion Pirates
Just under the wire for the release of Taldren's space strategy expansion this week, over a dozen new Starfleet Command: Orion Pirates screenshots are online at GameSpyDaily.
- 3D WWII
Also on PlanetGSD today are five new 3D WWII screenshots, showing new scenes from the budget-priced FPS by LippieSoft for which an updated demo is expected shortly.
- Disciples II
A brief but hands-on preview of Disciples II: Dark Prophecy on Intelgamer is accompanied by seven new screenshots of the turn-based strategy game by Strategy First, and Voodoo Extreme has a few more shots as well.
- Fighting Legends
Also on VE today are seven new Fighting Legends screenshots illustrating the massively multiplayer RPS being beta tested at Maximum Charisma Studios.
- Camelot
Another massively multiplayer game in beta testing is Dark Age of Camelot, and RPGDot has expanded their gallery for the game with another dozen screenshots.
- Armalion
German develoepr Ikarion has updated the official Armalion site with three new screenshots of their isometric fantasy role-playing game (thanks IGZ).
- Patrician II
Ten new screenshots illustrate a hands-on Patrician II preview on Adrenaline Vault, looking ahead to this isometric medieval trading game by Ascaron Software.
Microsoft has announced Asheron's Call: Dark Majesty Expansion Pack, an add-on for Turbine Entertainment's 3D MMORPG that "will be available this holiday at retail locations throughout North America." The newly opened Dark Majesty page offers more game details, the first two screenshots, and a Q&A with Turbine president and CEO Jeff Anderson. Thanks Warrior for the tip.
id Software's Graeme Devine updated
his .plan this afternoon with a quick tip for the Mac OS X version of Quake
III Arena. Here's what he has to say: Quick update on Mac OS X
If you run with s_chunksize 2048 you get a noticable framerate improvement over
the default. Please note that I forgot to latch s_chunksize, so you need to
quit the game and restart after you've changed the value of that cvar.
Mac OS X 10.0.4 seems a lot snappier to me too.
A new preview
of Wizardry 8 is up over at Well Rounded Entertainment today. The brief
preview is based on the author's impressions of a limited press demo of the
game, and it contains his overall thoughts about the game along with 29 new
screenshots.
After two earlier test demos and, of course, the full game, Croteam has now released the final playable demo of Serious Sam, available for download from Games Domain. This new demo includes support for a variety of foreign languages and is based on the version 1.00c codebase, but still offers the same Karnak and technology levels from the test demos, and now takes 78.7 MB to download.
GameSpot has posted a
trailer showing off Shadows of Luclin, the upcoming add-on for EverQuest.
The trailer is available in a variety of streaming media formats, and features
50 seconds of gameplay footage. Update: The trailer is also available in low-res and high-res downloadable QuickTime formats from FilePlanet (registration required).
Belgian site SpelletjesGarnaal has posted a new ShakyCam movie of Command & Conquer: Renegade, the first- and third-person action game by Westwood where you command a commando in the Command & Conquer universe. The movie shows some three minutes of gameplay footage captured at last month's E3 event, and is available in streaming and downloadable Windows Media Player formats.
Digital Illusions sends word of an English video feature on the Microsoft Sweden website under the header of Bakom kulisserna! that offers a behind-the-scenes look at this Swedish developer in streaming Windows Media Player format. The four parts of the feature cover the history of the company from the Amiga demo scene to the their current racing sims (although their acquisition of Refraction Games, makers of Codename Eagle, and the upcoming title Battlefield 1942 are hardly touched upon), the game development process in general, the various developer roles, and a free-form coffee break chat.
Version 0.99v of the
Orange Smoothie Productions mod for Quake III Arena is now available (thanks
KiRiON). This latest release contains mostly bug fixes and minor gameplay tweaks.
Soldier of Fortune 2:
Diary from a Sound Designer #3 on GameSpy.com is the third installment in
this series by Zachary Quarles, the sound director on Soldier of Fortune 2,
Raven Software's upcoming sequel to their mercenary first-person shooter. As in
the previous entries, this is written in actual diary format, with a day-by-day
account of what he's been working on, which includes battles with a "hiss-demon"
or two, the creation of some weapon sounds, and planning out some preliminary
recordings for placeholder dialogue. Included with the update are some SoF2
sounds, described here in his own words: "one is an generic explosion that
could be used for scripting events throughout the game; one is a gunshot (I
won't tell you which gun); and another is a cutting of a piece of music that
will be using a reoccurring theme throughout the game (which I am affectionately
referring to as 'The Mullins Theme'). The last is a series of gunshots on a
couple different material types."
Hope you're feeling chatty, 'cause here is a trifecta of upcoming chat
opportunities, and a log of a completed one, to boot: Tomorrow night (June 26)
at 7:00 PM EDT, Terra Arcanum will
be hosting an IRC chat with the developers of Arcanum: of Steamworks and
Magick Obscura, Troika Games' upcoming RPG. The session will be in the channel
#arcanum on server irc.gamesnet.net, and more information can be found on this
page. Also, the following evening (Wednesday, June 27) the RPG Vault
Chat page (or, using an IRC client, connect to host17.webmaster.com in
channel #ignvault) is where to head at 9:00 PM EDT in order to catch up with
some members of the Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal team who will be on hand
to discuss their now complete Baldur's Gate II add-on. The third-straight chat
session in as many days follows on Thursday (June 28), where the RPG Vault
Chat page (again, IRC clients can connect to the channel #ignvault on the
server host17.webmaster.com) will play host to another soiree, as the folks from
Black Isle Studios will be on hand to chat about progress on TORN. The
festivities will again kick off at 9:00 PM EDT. Finally, there's a
chat log on Anarchy Online Stratics recapping their recent IRC session with
the Anarchy Online team.
GameSpy.com interviews Tim Wood
talking with a programmer "who has done ports of Doom, Doom 2, Quake 2,
Quake 3, and 3dfx Glide/MiniGL for Mac OS X, and is now porting games full time."
The subject at hand is "Reinventing the Mac OS for Gamers," and along
the way Tim offers thoughts on the strides that are being made towards a better
gaming experience on the Mac, takes some shots at the lack of user-friendliness
in Linux, and gives some thoughts on the improvements being made in Mac
hardware.
A
post by John Carmack to the Five Years of Quake thread on Slashdot gives the
id Software lead programmer's thoughts on id Software's accomplishments, trying
not to concern himself with "id's place in history" that some of the Five Years of Quake
thread is devoted to.
Cowboy Tribes Scripting
page ( "I wanna party with you, cowboy") has a new version
1.0.1 of SuperIP, an mIRC utility that allows you to capture and utilize game
links dropped in an IRC channel to join games and inform your friends what game
server you are currently using. SuperIP is for more than just TRIBES 2, as it
also supports TRIBES, Quake III Arena, and Half-Life (including "most major
mods"), and now also offers German language support (there's a request up
for translators for other languages, as well).
The PrBoom Project Homepage has a
new version 2.2.1 of the merged source for Linux and Windows for this port of
the Doom source code that features hi-rez software and OpenGL rendering, and
"aims to be the most stable Doom port with the highest compatibility to the
major Doom versions." In the new version, Linux RPM "is now a bit more
standardised," and a bunch of bugs have been eliminated.
MML2k has word on plans for a "Million
Man LAN" in Portland, OR, though somehow I doubt that many will show up (I
know, I'm such a cynic). Also, this AusGamers League
page offers details on plans for "an ambitious national project to
create first national computer gamers league in Australia."
Operation Flashpoint Editing Center
is open for business, hoping to supply those interested with the information and
resources required to make custom scenarios for Operation Flashpoint,
Codemasters' cold war shooter that's now available in Europe. Also, if you are
into creating your own levels, Mappers
@ Z-Axis offers a place to announce your work to the world.
A little follow-up for those who have the same problem I described recently with
grubs in their lawns that inspire predators (in my case skunks) to dig for them,
interested in whether the nematodes I recently spread on the lawn did their
thing (which would be to eat the grubs). In short, they seem to be a rip-roaring
success, as the holes in the lawn have ceased appearing. Of course this could
just mean that all the grubs have hatched, as we certainly are seeing our share
of Japanese Beetles now, but the cause-and-effect seems pretty clear, as the
digging stopped shortly after the 'todes were released. I wonder if the fact
that we live frighteningly close to a nuclear power plant means that this still
has the potential to turn into an apocalyptic science fiction movie?
Happy birthday to Steve "Wedge" Bond.
Story of the Day: Sex Shop Declares National Orgasm Day
(Reuters). Thanks Dan Leadbetter. A slow news weekend even evident in our
shortage of good Monday morning links!
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