Archived News:
Civ III Play the World goes gold
on Gamespot has word that Civilization III: Play The World has gone gold,
and the expansion that adds multiplayer support to Firaxis's turn-based strategy
game is expected on store shelves as early as November 1. Also, Strategy First
sends word that Strike Fighters: Project 1, Third Wire's 1960s flight simulator,
has shipped to stores in North America. In a final related note, promising what
they call "The Ultimate Trainz Experience," Strategy First sends word
that Auran's Ultimate Trainz Collection has gone gold.
GameOver
Previews Asheron's Call 2: Fallen Kings with a look at the upcoming MMORPG
sequel, discussing the state of the MMO marketplace, the game's main story, side
quests, the allegiance system, monthly events, combat, graphics, issues with the
beta, and more. Also, the Asherons
Call 2 Video on MicrosoftGamesInsider.com (thanks Brent Schmidt) offers a
look at the game for the cost of a 22 MB download.
HomeLan Fed has news
of a press release from Electronic Arts announcing plans to release a
single-player demo for James Bond 007: Nightfire on Wednesday, October 30. Word
is the sample of the upcoming Bond shooter will offer a level set on a Japanese
estate.
There's a version 1.1 Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring patch for a
27 MB download on Gamer's
Hell. They also have
posted a mirror of the October 24 patch for Intent Software's Astonia 3
which includes another part of the Labrynth Quest and a new strategic area for
their MMORPG called the Ice Caves.
Worthplaying has
posted a gameplay trailer from Platoon, showing off almost a minute-and-a-half
of gameplay from the Vietnam War tactical combat game, and from Soldiers of
Anarchy, showing off over a minute from the post-apocalyptic strategy game that
is expected in stores as early as tomorrow ( story). Each trailer
is available in lower and higher quality versions. Also, the Colin
McRae Rally 3 Downloads Page has a new gameplay movie showing off the
upcoming rally racing sequel.
CDV Announces Revised "Breed" and "Imperium Galactica III" Dates
is the press release with word that Breed, Brat Designs' upcoming first-person
shooter, is now slated for a second quarter 2003 release. The release also
offers the official announcement that Imperium Galactica III has likewise been
delayed, but those beans were spilled last week when they updated the release
dates on the official website
( story). The other semi- revelation is the official word that
Mithis Entertainment, formed of former developers on this game, have rejoined
the project, something tipped off when these
IG3 screenshots showed up with Mithis watermarks ( story). The
IG3 delay is explained as allowing time to implement multiplayer play, while
reasons supplied for the delay in Breed's release is to allow time to implement
next generation graphics card support, as well as support for user-created
levels.
As noted in Robert
Duffy's .plan, the new Quake III Arena and Team Arena SDK's are up on id's
FTP server for both Windows
(direct FTP link) and Linux
(direct FTP link). These new versions have been updated to encompass the recent
version 1.32 point release.
A new version 1.4 patch for Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon
is now available for all languages. The complete release notes for the 5.8 MB
patch are here, and this is
the description from the main page: "Just as they promised, Red Storm came
through with yet another patch, this time fixing several issues brought about by
the previous 1.3 patch including the infamous 'No limp' removal which, thanks to
an extremely vocal and dedicated community, has been returned! The patch
addresses numerous other issues as well." Thanks Ghost Recon Platoon.
GameSpy.com's Age of
Mythology Q&A chats with Greg Street and Ian Fischer of Ensemble Studios
about their latest 'Age of...' game, and beyond. They discuss the pair's gaming
development background, some elements they planned for AoM that didn't work out,
the reasons for the shift in gameplay focus, managing such a large project,
plans for an expansion, and more.
HomeLan Fed's Highland Warriors Updated Impressions
offers their thoughts after playing with an updated press demo of Data Becker's
upcoming RTS game. They offer brief impressions on what has changed, which
includes how the game handles upgrading low-level units, the customizable
interface, weather effects, the in-game cutscenes, and more.
There's a Horizons Client Interface Engineer Q&A
on HomeLan Fed continuing their series on Artifact's upcoming MMORPG by
talking with Paul Tanganelli, the "client interface engineer" on the
project. Topics include his responsibilities as a CIE, the flexibility of the
game interface, how the game map is handled, hotkeys, item creation,
communication between players, inventory management, his background, specifics
about his job, and more.
Modmaker's Dedit Tutorial
offers what they like to think of as: "The single most comprehensive source
for mapping tutorials regarding AVP2 and NOLF1 (Lithtech Dedit 2.5 and 2.1
respectively) available on the net with over 40 pages of topics, and detailed
screens and instructions to create a world, skin a model, and script a Machinima
movie."
Things have been a little off kilter here this week as Kapi and Frans fight a
problem on the server over at 3D Gamers, which is unfortunate enough as it is,
but also impacts our mail here, since they have been kindly handling that over
there for a while to provide more reliability (but of course the Alanis effect
kicked in). This has only had a minor impact so far, as the mail has been
brought back a couple of times in between outages allowing me to catch up, but
this has certainly hurt my plans to get off this roll of later-than-normal
updates. Update: This mail situation continues to cause trouble, so if
you need to contact me, an alternative email address to use is bluesnews@abydos.com.
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