Archived News:
In what has become a sort of tradition, Epic's Tim Sweeney made a post
to the Unreal Technology Page, directly
rebutting statements made earlier today by Monolith's Jason Hall ( story). Specifically
Tim addresses the accusation that they are neglecting their licensees, and he
repeatedly points to the success of Unreal as a game as an example of their model
working. Here's an excerpt which sums up Tim's position nicely: Our engine
licensing business has always been driven simply by people seeing our games
and tools and saying, "Wow, that's exactly the kind of engine I need!"
All our early licensing success, with Legend Entertainment and Microprose, occurred
before we realized that a viable business called "engine licensing"
even existed. The Unreal community online developed the same way -- we never
said "let's recruit web sites for our game", we just released a cool
game (early on, just cool screenshots), and the community happened. Our philosophy
is "Build it, and they will come".
UnrealEngine.com has posted Q&As with Andrew
Scheidecker and Gregory
Wood, two members of the team working on UnrealtyED, the customized version
of UnrealED for the Unrealty real estate visualization project. Andrew is responsible
for rewriting the editor in C++, and Greg is the author of the new documentation
for the project, which he describes as "voluminus."
According to this
news story on AVault, Terminus, Vicarious Visions' massively multiplayer
(and singleplayer) space sim will be released for Mac, Linux, and PC (in the
same box) in April of this year. In addition to that, they've posted six
new screenshots from the game.
Also new on AVault are two
screenshots from Dark Reign 2, complete with detailed descriptions from
Greg Borrud, the director of the game at Pandemic Studios.
PlanetDaikatana
has posted a brand new screenshot from Daikatana that features the "Deathsphere
and Ragemaster" with more promised tomorrow, Wednesday and Thursday.
We missed their previous three screenshots from last week, which are still available
on their news page.
Hot on the heels of the new release ( story) comes a small patch for JHexen to fix two problems with its Doomsday engine. Also available is the source code of the JHexen DLL, which allows the creation of JHexen mods, or even of a new game DLL on top of the Doomsday engine.
GameSpot UK has posted an
interview with Steve Pearsall, the project director on Thief II: The Metal
Age at Looking Glass Studios. The interview covers the new features added since
the original Thief, both in terms of technology and new gameplay
features as well.
The Windows 2000 compatibility update that was released last Friday ( story)
on Microsoft's Windows Update site, has been posted
as a separate download (thanks Oleg Troyko). The update adds compatibility with a whopping 48
programs, many of which are popular games.
AVault has posted a
360-degree, panoramic screenshot from Monolith's LithTech 2 engine, or more
specifically their E3 '99 demonstration level. The shot was compiled from high
resolution BMP files, and is presented using a Java applet, so a Java-capable
browser is required.
United Recammers have released a
new Quake II demo movie titled United Recammers: Recamming Time, or simply URRT.
The demo is a composition of some of the most popular Quake II deathmatch movies,
including the CPL's Extreme Annihilation final demos, Makaveli vs Destrukt,
and GeekFest '99. It's available for download at
Machinima.com.
RPOV has posted an interview
with Jason Hall, Monolith's CEO (and resident ShadowMan lookalike), talking
to him about the history of the company, and their future, focusing largely
on their LithTech engine (which has been getting lots of press lately). Jason
is quite vocal about the company's plans for making LithTech the core of their
future plans, as shown in this excerpt: Quite frankly I find it unlikely
that some of our main competitors will step up to the challenge [of providing
support for engine licensees]. Competing with us at this point is going to be
extremely expensive and most of our "competitors" aren't specifically
focused on engine licensing. Most of them are focused on making "games
first" and then "licensing second."
...With LithTech, our licensees are the top priority. Nothing else comes before
them, period. The engine licensing business has evolved into a technology AND
service oriented business, where as you know, in order to be successful, the
customer always has to come first. And for LithTech, the licensee always does.
New Devil Inside Screenshots
on GA-Source show off nine new in-game shots of Gamesquad's upcoming
action/adventure game as well as three in-development shots in 3D Studio Max.
The shots are accompanied by a brief blurb from Designer Hubert Chardot, author
of the Alone in the Dark series.
WarCentral.com
interviews Kelly Hoerner talking with the producer on Daikatana, ION Storm
& Eidos Interactive's upcoming sword-wielding first-person shooter. The
Q&A gives a basic rundown on what to expect from the game, and the
WarCentral folks' expectations are obviously high, as one question begins "Daikatana
possesses some of the best AI in the history of First Person Shooters..."
Thanks sCary.
There's a
new piece of Soldier of Fortune concept art on SoF Operations showing off
the squad known as Red Guard, captioned "not the nicest army in the world."
A new version 0.98 of Fists of Fury for Quake
III Arena, the mod for Quake III Arena where you put down those guns and
fight like a man, is now available. The new release adds a new custom HUD, a new
Kamikazi Death ("bind a key to kamikazi...muhaha"), a
"functional" jump kick (when you have long jump), and the removal of
the Gauntlet Grapple (said to be "laggy...and almost useless").
A new version 1.4.2 update for LxDoom,
the Linux port of the Doom source code, is now available. There is nothing new
in the new release except for bug fixes, some portability improvements, and a
fix for some problems with "the network code not being compiled right on
many systems."
Stomped @ E3 is offering the opportunity to
win Diablo II, Halo, and Team Fortress II, to be awarded to the best "why I
should win" essay. Cached has posted
results from the Cyber-Arena tourney,
sponsored by CompUSA among others: congrats to the winner, nb.fatal1ty, and all
the other participants. Also, the UK qualifier for the Razer-CPL event in London
is complete, with Blokey taking the first prize, winning a trip to Dallas and an
automatic seeding in the final 64 at the tourney this April. Quake 3 skills earn Blokey a shot at $100,000 CPL prize
on gameplay.com, and Eurogamer.net's
Razer-CPL Qualifier Coverage is now under way, with reports on four of the
seeding free for alls and three of the first round matches already up, and more
planned on the way.
Today is President's Day here in the US, where we celebrate our great leaders of
the past by taking off from work and buying sheets and towels at low, low
prices. There used to be separate holidays here for Lincoln and Washington's
birthdays, but apparently there were concerns that another leader warranting
such treatment might come along some day, so the holiday was opened up to all,
though it doesn't seem very effective at ensuring that the likes of Millard P.
Filmore and Rutherford B. Hayes are not forgotten. Since the holiday covers the
whole gamut, just to be contrary, I'm going to spend the day remembering Andrew
Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton for their brushes with impeachment.
Link of the Day: RiksJotto II,
"the different soccer game." Thanks Are Nyseth. This has no socially
redeeming values (you are a sniper shooting at soccer players from the stands),
but a great web-based shooting game. Like many of the playable Links of the Day,
I hesitate to admit how long I played it once I tried it.
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