Archived News:
The Similis website ( Flash required) offers the first details on C.O.N.S.E.A.L., a third-person action adventure with the tagline "Last Girl Standing." The C.O.N.S.E.A.L. section features a story synopsis, the first nine screenshots and nine concept images, and the game is scheduled for a late 2002 release. A publisher is not listed, but Similis is also working on the futuristic flying racer Beam Breakers for Fishtank Interactive. Thanks Gameplex, where they have conducted an interview with project coordinator Rolf Klischewski on the game. Rof introduces the company and the game's premise, compares protagonist Lieutenant Kitty Hawk to other female game characters, details some of the game's features like their plans for its AI, and talks about a variety of other topics. The interview is available in your choice of English and German.
The present and the future is a post by id Software lead programmer John Carmack in this Slashdot thread on the subject of What is Happening with OpenGL?, discussing the relative merits of the 3D graphics APIs Direct3D and OpenGL (thanks Jacek Fedoryński). Topics include recent improvements to Direct3D, the viability of ports to the Mac and Linux platforms (on which there's another brief comment here), the features and extensions of each API, and an outlook on the future. Here's a quote from that part:
We are rapidly approaching a real golden age for graphics programming. Currently, cards and API's are a complex mess of hundreds of states and function calls, but the next two years will see the addition of the final primitive functionality needed to allow arbitrarily complex operations with graceful performance degradation.
At that point, a higher level graphics API will finally make good sense. There is debate over exactly what it is going to look like, but the model will be like C. Just like any CPU can compile any C program (with various levels of efficiency), any graphics card past this point will be able to run any shader. Some hardware vendors are a bit concerned about this, because bullet point features that you have that the other guy doesn't are a major marketing feature, but the direction is a technical inevitability. They will just have to compete on price and performance. Oh, darn.
The official jDoom site offers a version 1.01 patch for this DOOM source code port by Jaakko Keränen. This 417 KB download fixes some HOM (Hall of Mirrors) effects, new and improved configuration options, MD2 weapon model support (with instructions for modifying the weapons in the ZDoomGL model pack for use in jDoom), bug fixes, and more.
Star Wars Source.Net's
Galactic Battlegrounds interview is online talking with Garry Gaber of
LucasArts about the upcoming Star Wars-based RTS game they have in the works.
The conversation with the game's project leader covers things like his
background, the reason they are building a 2D game in these 3D days, the game's
plot, the inevitable comparisons to Starcraft, and more.
Neverwinter Vault
interviews Aidan Scanlan talking with the BioWare designer "and GenCon
Demo Mastah" after catching up with him at this year's GenCon. Topics
include the scripting capability being built into the upcoming RPG, some
gameplay stuff, and the functionality of the planned DM client.
The
latest daily update on the Anarchy Online website follows up on the recent
question they asked about their interaction with the community, offering lists
of both short-term and longer term changes they plan to make to the way they do
things based on the suggestions they've received.
The debut release of FAKK2 Capture the Flag
is now available (thanks Stomped), likely
to be the final release as well, as the page explains it has been on hold
waiting for Ritual to release a version of their game based on the animated
Heavy Metal movie that would support multiplayer play. They've given up the
ghost on that expectation, and are releasing the mod as is. Word is: "There's
only a few maps (one of which is almost complete), most of the sounds, models,
skins and menus were only supposed to be temporary so they're a bit on the pants
side and the mod has its fair share of bugs. But it's still fun, so it can't
hurt to try it out :)"
The Justice Department has released
version 1.1 of their Judgement modification for Half-Life. The new release is
only available as a full update, but the mod's format has changed so that future
updates can be release via a patch. Both a Win32 version and a Linux server
version are available. The new release is described as just a few tweaks and
fixes, "not a huge leap forward."
It's been a great weekend here, but we are preparing to say goodbye to the
Blue-in-laws, Mary, Lou, Ted, and all the locals and depart the lovely twin
cities area later today. If you are
as carnivorous as I am, and are ever in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, I can't
more highly recommend where we ate last night, Manny's Steak House, unless of course, you are picking up
the tab, in which case I can't more highly recommend peanut butter and jelly
sandwiches, but as I say, Manny's is first rate. Just remember that the
drinks tend to be large, something I didn't take into account when having a
second one with dinner, which was enough to make the computer spin when I was
trying to do this update upon returning, which forestalled the process until
this morning, as I finally find myself returning to sobriety. ![=]](/miscimages/smiley4.gif)
Media of the Day: APOD 2001 August 18 - Phobos Doomed Moon of Mars.
Thanks Alexander Dietrich and Norton. DOOMed I say, DOOMed!
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