Archived News:
There's an article on future
plans for No One Lives Forever on GameSpy with word on plans at Monolith for
future releases of both a tool package and an expansion pack for No One Lives
Forever 2, their spy shooter sequel. There are scant details on the add-on, except
that it's expected before the end of this year, and that it will put players in
the role of one of the bad guys, rather than as Cate Archer. What they have to say
about plans for a free multiplayer patch is more concrete, including word it is
expected within the next couple of weeks. Here's the deal: The “first
big release” (as Monolith put it) is a huge NOLF2 multiplayer patch
which will be released within a week or two, adding deathmatch, team deathmatch,
and a new gameplay mode called Doomsday. The patch should contain over 10 maps,
many based on NOLF2 single-player levels (including Siberia, Japan, and
Khios), but including large pieces of original architecture as well.
The official Vietcong
Website (thanks Unrealik) now offers the third
in their series of developer diaries for the upcoming Vietnam War game,
discussing characters, equipment, and missions. Also, RPG
Vault's Lethal Dreams Development Report #8 is written by Boolat's Olga
Saulenko describing the various schools of magic in their upcoming RPG, covering
Evocation, Incarnation, and Necromancy. Meanwhile, there's a
new Praetorians diary Volume IV on GameSpy.com written by Pyro's JJ Palomo,
who "details the difficulties and solutions he encountered working as lead
artist on Praetorians." Also, the first Broken
Sword: The Sleeping Dragon diary on Computer and Video Games is written by
Charles Cecil who kicks off what's planned as a monthly series of looks at the
upcoming adventure game sequel, describing work that's being done on the game's
intro. Finally (whew!), there's a new beta
journal on the PlanetSide website (thanks Loadedinc)
discussing the focus on the vehicles in this past week's testing of SOE's
upcoming MMOFPS.
The newly-launched Planet Prison Website
has the first screenshots and details on this upcoming tactical strategy game in
production at German developer Numlock Software. Here's the deal: "Planet
Prison, is a thrilling tactical strategy game which takes you, ( a stranded
starship captain), into the depths of space where an empire controls a planet of
prisoners enslaved for evil purposes. It will require a variety and a large
range of skills and resources to overcome the evil forces of a mean and powerful
empire in single or multiplayer game modes."
The EVE Online: The
Second Genesis Chat log on EveGate recaps the latest session with the
developers at Crowd Control Productions and publishers at Simon & Schuster
Interactive to discuss their upcoming online space game. The log has been edited
into a fairly orderly Q&A format.
This
is the press release from Valve announcing "immediate availability of a
64-bit version of the Counter-Strike dedicated server using the upcoming AMD
Opteron™ processor," though where this is available is not clear. Word
is: "In a straight port of code highly optimized for x86-32, Counter-Strike
dedicated server tests with both 32- and 64-bit versions revealed a 30%
clock-for-clock gain, and is expected to show further performance gains in
future upgrades."
A new beta 2.0 of the Western Quake³
modification for Quake III Arena is now available. The new release of this wild
western conversion is a 150 MB download, with versions available to accommodate
Windows, Macs, and Linux.
A new version 0.97 of the FoxBot
is now available, updating this artificial intelligence playmate for
TeamFortress Classic. Word is the update "works with steam HLDS and maybe
the next tfc patch!" The new release is available for both Windows and
Linux.
The CPL @ Gamefixx.com
Website is now accepting sign-ups for the USA qualifiers for The CPL Summer
2003 Event. Also, time is just about up to participate in the ongoing (endless?)
Galactic
Civilizations Game Giveaway on UGO. For a chance to win an advance copy of
Stardock Software's now-gold space strategy game signed by its developers you
can sign up on
UGO and locally
here as well as on Caster's Realm,
Gamer's Pulse,
and PC Gameworld. Five
copies being given away on each site, so signing-up at each will increase your
chances of winning. Sorry, this contest is open to U.S. residents only.
There is now an online Application System
for the Guildhall at SMU's game development program, which has now received Accreditation
from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. Also, XENTAX.COM
is offering downloads of a new version 3.8b of the MultiEx Commander utility
that can extract sounds and graphics from a wide variety of games.
I wimped out in my resolve to be anti-social yesterday and busted out my
semi-busted shovel to clear our walk. This was one of those cases of shifting
perspective... when I've shoveled the walk in the past, I took much more note of
those walks that hadn't been cleared, but once I decided not to clear ours, it
struck me just how many neighbors actually do shovel theirs off. Ah, social
pressure... the system at work.
A multimedia ad showed up here and drove people batty for a while
yesterday (especially since it was possible to have it playing twice at the same
time). I put in a request to have the noisy ad removed, and whole I did not
receive a confirmation that it had, I have not seen it since a certain point
yesterday, so here's hoping that's taken care of (particularly since it's
unlikely that it can still be addressed for this weekend should it still be
running -- apologies in advance if this does turn out to be the case.
|
Twitter 
