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Archived News:
Gamecenter has posted a
brief article on PowerPlay, the new venture started by Valve Software and
Cisco Systems that aims to make multiplayer online gaming better by working
directly with ISPs. The piece has quotes from Valve's Gabe Newell, but also
Epic's Tim Sweeney, who says they will be incorporating PowerPlay features into
the Unreal Tournament engine with future patches. Here's what Tim had to say: "We'll
be supporting the new game-side PowerPlay features in Unreal Tournament,"
Sweeney said, "released as patches since the game is already out. In addition,
all the support we add will become standard features of the Unreal engine, and
thus will make it into the products of our partners who are using the Unreal
engine.
"PowerPlay will do lots of cool things," Sweeney continued. "Rather
than being a spec for a very specific technology, PowerPlay is more of a broad,
end-to-end set of solutions and recommendations, encompassing some new technologies,
some tweaks, and a general awareness campaign to educate ISPs about gamers'
needs."
GameFan has posted three
new shots from BioWare's MDK 2, the sequel to the Shiny game of the same
name (well, except for the number two, of course...oh, nevermind). MDK, as everyone
knows, stands for Melons Don't Keep. Sound advice indeed.
Roll up your sleeves, here comes the Mac news...Sharky Extreme has posted day
two of their MacWorld San Franciso report, featuring details on those Mac
Voodoo 4 and 5 cards that were announced yesterday. Also up is IMG
Magazine's coverage, which features a full list of news from the show floor.
In still more Mac madness, Bungie's
bTV archive now has Thursday's edition of their Macworld video available
for download as either a 50 or 177 (!) meg download. Due to technical difficulties
the others haven't been posted yet, but keep an eye out for them, and look for
another live broadcast tomorrow at 10:30 PST. Lastly, Halo.Bungie.Org
has a bunch of pictures from Bungie's booth, as well as screengrabs from the
Halo footage shown in today's bTV broadcast.
id Software's Christian "Disruptor" Antkow made the briefest of .plan updates to point out that the denial of service attack they faced during the day ( story) has ended, and Quake III Arena connectivity problems should now be over:
Things appear to be back to normal.
The Cyberathlete Professional League has
announced that their upcoming Razer/CPL $100,000 Tournament and LAN Party
Event, which was originally set for this March in Los Angeles, has been moved
back to Dallas, Texas because they were unable to find the space necessary.
Instead, it will be held at a new 25,000 feet conference room at the Hyatt Regency
Dallas on Thursday, April 13 through Sunday, April 14, 2000. Full details are
available on the CPL's
site.
The Soldier of Fortune Nexus has posted an
interview with Chia Chin Lee, the sound designer and musician on Raven's
upcoming Quake II engine title Soldier of Fortune. Amongst the topics discussed
are the authenticity of the weapon sounds in SoF, which were critiqued by John
Mullins, their military expert.
With id still being hosed by a denial of service attack, Graeme Devine sent
along a beta of the Point Release patch for Quake III Arena so that people could
get a chance to check it out over the weekend. Here's a
local copy of the patch (1.1 MB) and a list of mirrors, and here's the word
Graeme passed along: We've decided to make the point release beta, but
public, because there's nothing like a few million beta testers! When running
servers using this release we highly suggest running them as non-pure servers so
that older clients can connect to them without problems. Please read the
enclosed FAQ for a detailed list of which bugs and UI features we've addressed
with this point release. If all goes well we'll go with a final version of the
point release very soon. The Macintosh and Linux builds of the point release
BETA will be out hopefully today as well.
Legowhore has released Q3ServerKit,
a Java-based server administration program for Quake III Arena. As it's Java
based, it's fully cross-platform, assuming you have the right JDK
installed. The program is available as a pre-compiled package, or as a complete
version with the source code included.
GameFan received
a clarification from Epic's Mark Rein regarding the current port of the Unreal
Tournament code to the Playstation 2. Here's what he had to say: "While
we do plan to do a product for Playstation 2, we have not made any decisions
if we will do Unreal Tournament for Playstation 2 or not." Explains Rein,
"For now, we are simply porting Unreal Tournament because it's the most
current Unreal engine code we have, and doing the port will provide us with
a very clear picture of what we and our key licensees need to do to work with
the Unreal engine on Playstation 2." As Mark told GameFan Online: "We
haven't made any decisions about releasing Unreal Tournament on any platforms
except, obviously, PC, Macintosh and Linux..."
It's time to roll out our updated messageboards, which now include the
oft-requested ability to comment on each news story, which as I mentioned some
time ago was being held back waiting for various server kinks we've encountered
to be ironed out. As our new server here is now humming along quite smoothly,
we've worked up the nerve to start the next phase of the testing, and launch
these comments. James "furn" Furness, our programming stud, has worked
out a few nice options for message thread viewing, so if you experiment, I'm
pretty sure you can find one of the many configurations to your liking. Hope you
enjoy, I guess the comments link for this story is as good a place as any to
pass along feedback on the new feature.
GameSpy has posted an
interview with Gabe Newell (the big cheese at Valve), regarding their just
announced joint venture with Cisco Systems, PowerPlay ( story). Here's an excerpt where
Gabe explains their reasons for getting involved: Although developers
have certainly made a lot of progress in addressing things on their end to optimize
for the current internet state-of-the-art, we ( and the people we've talked
to PowerPlay about) strongly believe that the state of internet gaming is far
from optimal. When we get together with other developers, we end up with a wish-list
of things that have traditionally been out of our control that we would like to
see addressed so that we can realistically deliver not just a solid experience,
but a truly compelling experience to gamers. Our fear is that the growth of
realtime interactive entertainment will hit a wall because the actual internet
infrastructure isn't really capable of providing for much more growth in complexity
than where things stand today.
PlanetDaikatana has posted a
report from the Daikatana launch party and deathmatch tournament that was
held recently, featuring a rundown of all the winners, candid photos of various
ION Storm goons and various other party related stuff.
GameSpy has posted a
strategy guide for Battlezone II, featuring tips from Pandemic Studios designer
Wil Stahl. It covers stuff like the team interface, giving units, and some easily
overlooked features as well.
GameSpot UK has posted another
one of their incredibly large screenshot galleries, this time covering SquareSoft's
PC version of Final Fantasy VIII. There are 44 screenshots to be found, which
cover the pre-rendered CGI, the battle sequences, some general location stuff,
and even the ever-so-exciting menu system.
GASource has posted a
Q&A with Cavedog's PR man Brandon Smith, asking him a few questions
about their just-cancelled title Amen: The Awakening. Brandon confirms that
the game was, "quite a ways from completion" and that they "will
hold onto the existing technology."
Hyperion Software has posted an
update on the status of their Amiga port of Raven's Heretic II (thanks Wipeout).
The rather large update also contains the first screenshots of the game up and
running on an Amiga using OpenGL.
The Adrenaline Vault News
quotes Epic's Mark Rein on the subject of UT development for Sony's upcoming
PlayStation 2 console system, reporting: "Although the developer has not
announced a PlayStation 2 title, Rein told us significant progress has been made
on porting the engine to the platform, and that the goal is to have Unreal
Tournament running on the console near the middle or end of February." The
article quotes Mark as saying: "It is our number one priority right now."
The article discusses that February date a bit further: This is no
hardcoded deadline, Rein stated, reminding us of the other high-tech mantra with
which gamers are all too familiar: "When it's done." Still, Epic is so
intent on meeting this goal, Rein said it would devote all its resources to this
project. Programmer Brandon Reinhart, who ported Unreal Tournament to Linux,
will lead the charge.
Rein said Reinhart was so proficient in porting to Linux that Epic is now able
to compile both Windows and Linux versions of Unreal Tournament from the same
source code--this is no easy feat and a bonus for engine licensees wanting to
have their Unreal Engine titles also run on Linux or other platforms. Epic is
optimistic that the PlayStation 2 version will also compile from the same source
code base.
GameSpot UK has posted the first screenshots of Gunlok, a 3D action RPG set in a robotic future that is being developed by Rebellion, creators of Aliens Vs Predator. There are some initial details about the title, and PC Gamer UK has a brief article on the premise of the game too.
id Software's Christian "Disruptor" Antkow sends word that problems
you may be having connecting to id at the moment are probably due to a denial of
service attack, or the measures being taken to combat it. Here's the email he
sent along, since even .plan updates are not working for them at the moment: Connectivity Problems with Q3A
To be blunt, we are currently the target of a major denial of service attack
which was started at 3pm CST this afternoon.
The perpetrators of this denial of service are saturating two full DS3's coming
into Dallas, and are affecting all Savvis, UUNet, and Sprint connections
locally.
To combat this attack, Savvis, UUNet, and Sprint have implemented access filters
blocking certain traffic to our entire class C, and are blocking our DNS server
entirely.
Savvis will be monitoring the situation throughout the evening, and I'm
expecting a wakeup call at 8am from the morning tech crew at Savvis for an
update. I will be calling the FBI in the morning to proceed legally on this
attack.
I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this is causing you. Believe me, we
are as frustrated as you are.
The Qtracker Homepage has a new
public Version 2.3 Beta 15 of this server browsing utility. The new release puts
the finishing touches on the program's new skin format and is described as very
close to a non-beta release. Here's
a list of what's new in the Beta, which includes Re-Volt support, tons of
new server listings, a skin browser, an Opposing Force filter, a Skin/Filter
auto-installer, bug fixes, and a bunch of enhancements.
Gamer's Playground has posted a
video interview with Epic's Cliff Bleszinski, talking with the lead designer on
Unreal Tournament about the game in a phone interview, while showing off some
in-game footage. The interview runs just over five and a half minutes, and is in
RealPlayer format. Topics include Epic, Cliff
himself, and UT versus Q3A.
PowerPlay
announcement on Voodoo Extreme gives word of work on a new "set of
standards and protocols for improving games and entertainment on the Internet"
to be developed by Valve and other developers in conjunction with Cisco systems. The plan is for a two-part
testing phase and then "PowerPlay will initially be deployed in the US as
dial-up service for PCs. It is expected that there will be announcements of
PowerPlay delivery for markets outside of the US, for higher-speed connections
(DSL and cable modems), and for non-PC clients."
Exxtreme3D.Com's Ask the Devs
section offers the opportunity to submit questions directly to game developers.
The newest wrinkle over there is the addition of Raven's Kenn Hoekstra,
currently at work on Soldier of Fortune and Star Trek Voyager--Elite Force. Can
you figure out a question for Kenn that he hasn't already been asked in his
numerous online interviews? Take the challenge if you dare. Other developers
available for interrogation are Eric Boeing of ABIT, Dan Hewitt of EA, Stuart
Roch of Shiny Entertainment, and Martin Walfisz of Massive Entertainment, with
more on the way.
There's a new strategy guide for Unreal Tournament on the Stratos Group.
Also, there's a
new Quake III Arena combat guide on Planet GeForce. Finally, getting into
detail, D2D Moo's Q3DM5 Tourney Guide
is a one-map guide.
The site is down at the moment, but I assume when this link to the
AnachroChat log on PlanetAnachronox comes back online, it will actually
contain the promised log of last night's chat session with the Anachronox team
at ION Storm, rather than some pr0n, or something.
Quake Done 100% Quicker
is the newest release by the speed freaks over at Quake done Quick. The new
release is another speed run through the original Quake, picking up every kill
and secret in the game, described as with "less short-cuts, but a lot more
blood and gore." Keeping with their goals of doing thing everything better
and faster, the latest run is completed in a remarkable 59:31.
The newly-opened Skillfactor is a
new free web-based service that will provide clan rankings with national and
international tables. If things go according to plan, they will be able to
create a worldwide clan-table based on all matches ever played to create a rank
that realistically reflects skill levels. They ambitiously plan on covering
quite a wide variety of present and future games, including Ages of Empires,
Ages of Empires 2, Action Quake 2, Alien versus Predator, Brood War, Command
& Conquer 2, Command & Conquer 3, Counterstrike, Diablo, Diablo 2, Dune
2000, Delta Force, Delta Force 2, Drakan, EverQuest, Half-Life, Jedi Knight,
Kingpin, Quake, Quake 1 CTF, Quake II, Quake II CTF, Quake II Rocket Arena,
Quake III Arena, Quake III CTF, QuakeWorld, Rainbow 6, Rainbow Six II, QW Rocket
Arena, Rocket Arena 2, StarCraft, Sin, Starsiege TRIBES, TeamFortress,
TeamFortress2, TeamFortress Classic, Unreal, Unreal Tournament, Warcraft, and
Warcraft 2.
Including the first review of the multiplayer OEM version of SoF that comes with
the 3Com gaming modem:
Eureka! Finally got the Windows login problem solved. Several of the tips folks
passed along referred to changing the value of a registry key called
"autologon," and the solution turned out to be related, as it was
actually deleting that entry that solved the problem. It was an email from Jason
that got me onto the fix, though Bagpuss points out that this
troubleshooting page he sent along also has that tip. Thanks to all who
offered assistance, I hope this helps some of the many of you that wrote in
saying you had the same glitch, which, of course, is the payoff for going
through all this in this space.
Link of the Day: cr0bar's parody of the matrix, brought to you by efnet #nerds.
Keep meaning to post that one. Thanks chiQ for the reminder that finally took
hold.
Bonus Link: This Penny Arcade
Cartoon. Hey, it gets like that sometimes (especially around the holidays).
Thanks LoneGunman.
Story(s) of the Day(s): New Data Show No Sign U.S. Economy Slowed
(Reuters-January 5) and Economy Shows Signs of Slowing
(Reuters-January 6). What a difference a day makes. Thanks Mark Krynsky.
Image of the Day: The Pimp
from Reebok. Thanks CausticPuppy.
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