Archived News:
3DGPU has posted an
interview with Epic's Tim Sweeney, talking to him about his background,
his thoughts on various hardware issues, and even what graphics technology he
feels will impact the gaming scene the most (surprise: it's the Playstation
2).
InciteGames has posted some
new screenshots from Looking Glass Studios' Thief 2: the Metal Age, taken
from an Alpha version of the game they received.
Also up on Incite are two
new shots from Klingon Academy, an upcoming space combat sim set in the
Star Trek universe. Word on their site is that a demo should be appearing "quite
soon."
Up Close with Vampire: The Masquerade is an interview on GameSpot with Activision producer Chris Hewish, bringing us up-to-date on the latest happenings with Nihilistic's upcoming 3D action RPG. There is also a hint at a possible sequel.
Origin has released a new version 1.18F patch for Ultima IX: Ascension, fixing a long list of problems listed here, including many gameplay problems, plot-stoppers and crashes, as well as adding GeForce support, Direct3D improvements, and more. Thanks Stratos Group.
Update: Matthew Rorie of Stratos Group sends a warning that the patch breaks the game or causes other problems, as messages on the Ultima IX Technical Support messageboard are reporting (registration required), so you may want hold off installing the patch until this is resolved.
MicroProse has released a set of multiplayer maps for MechWarrior 3. The 10 MB download includes 5 maps that can be installed individually, called Batchall, MechFactory, LavaPit, Snowfield, and Underground. As the ftp server appears to be rather slow, a mirror is online at 3D Action Gamers.
There is a new Thief II: the Metal Age interview on Vault Network, talking to project director Steve Pearsall to divulge more details about Looking Glass upcoming game, that puts you into the shoes of a thief called Garrett.
More map news, as PlanetDaikatana sends word of a post on the Daikatana forums, where ION Storm level designer Luke "weasl" Whiteside lists the maps that have been finished for the retail version of Daikatana. The lineup consists of 10 deathmatch maps, 4 CTF maps, and one deathtag and Blade-match map each.
The official Battlecruiser 3000 AD site has been updated with 12
new shots featuring the engine's new environment-bump mapping (on Matrox
G400 cards) as well as 4
new shots (non-bump-mapped) of a "Type 2" station from Battlecruiser
Millenium, the upcoming sequel to BC3K.
PlanetFortress has posted an
interview with Valve's Robin Walker, talking to him about all things TeamFortress
2. There isn't much in the way of new information, but he does say that they're
likely to roll the new networking code into Half-Life to test before TF2 ships,
and that the game's combat lies somewhere between Team Fortress Classic and
CounterStrike.
German site Nonstuff has posted a gameplay movie of Black & White. Shot from a computer screen, the image quality leaves a bit to be desired, but it shows two of the creatures in Lionhead's strategy/god-game in a fight. The 44 second movie requires Quicktime 4.
PlayNOW! has posted an interview with id developers Paul Steed and Tim Willits, conducted during their tour of Australia last month. The freely roaming talk covers all sorts of topics, such as working at id, Quake III Arena as well as id's previous games, their gaming influences, and much more. Here is a quote:
Simon: In the short time since its release, Quake III
Arena has been hailed by players as the ultimate
deathmatch game bar none. You have each commented
very publicly that "There will be no Quake IV". Where does
the future of multiplayer lie?
Tim: Quake III is probably id's last "I am a one man
army with no control or power over the environment around
me" game. I think that in the future multiplayer will
revolve around more team games, more role-specific
type deathmatch where maybe you're the guy who has
to guard something for X number of minutes, or maybe
you're the squad leader of a team of bots given some
mission, or maybe you're a mercenary hired out to
some clan or something. I think with Quake III we've
nailed down the pure, classic deathmatch style. In the
future we can develop new game types or new variants
of that, which will be pretty exciting.
Adrenaline Vault reports that Hidden & Dangerous: Devil's Bridge has gone gold, and should appear on store shelves by February 4. Devil's Bridge is the expansion pack to Illusion Softworks and TalonSoft's tactical squad-action game, and is already available in Europe under the title Fight for Freedom.
Eidos has released a new movie of Thief II: the Metal Age for download (13.4 MB), showing off a minute of gameplay and rendered sequences from Looking Glass' covert action game, with a soundtrack by Everclear.
Thanks FilePlanet, who has a mirror here.
Slashdot points the way to this Silicon Graphics press release that announces their release of the OpenGL Sample Implementation as Open Source. The Sample Implementation forms the basis of the OpenGL graphics acceleration in most of today's 3D video cards, and this release "clears the way for the emergence of high-quality OpenGL drivers for the Linux platform." The download is available from their OpenGL Sample Implementation page, along with further details and a FAQ.
After months of speculation, Electronic Arts has finally
announced that The World is Not Enough, a game based on the recent James
Bond movie of the same name, is currently in development using the Quake III
Arena engine. Today they issued a
press release stating that they had licensed the engine for the previously
announced American McGee's Alice, TWINE, and also additional games, "that
wiill be announced at a later date." Here's an excerpt from the
full press release with info on James Bond: About Bond, James Bond... The
World is Not Enough
EA previously announced it secured an exclusive long-term licensing agreement
with MGM Interactive and Danjaq, LLC to bring Secret Agent James Bond to the
interactive entertainment market. The first Bond title to come out of this deal
will be based on the 1999 blockbuster film, The World is Not Enough. The game
will deliver an action-packed, spy-inspired adventure true to the James Bond
legacy, when it is released in late 2000. More information on the movie can
be found on the official James Bond web site from MGM (NYSE: MGM) at http://www.jamesbond.com.
Raven's Chia Chin Lee updated his
.plan with some quick tips for users having problems with the sound effects
in the Soldier of Fortune demo. Also, Raven's John Scott updated his
.plan with a full rundown of all the various scalibility options in the
demo (as well as some links to comics featuring the game).
Rorshach, everyone's favorite Watchmen psychopath, has released the wireframe
files for Quake III Arena on
his site. These wireframes will allow artists to test their skins with ease,
and are under 1.5 meg.
Robin McLeod has released a new version 0.5a build 6 of wHeretic, his Win32 port of Raven's venerable Heretic. This release has a new sound engine, faster video handling, fixed Win9X keyboard code, and other improvements.
For the third week in a row (which has got to be a record) here's a
new edition of the Blue's News Mail Bag! In today's edition: DSL vs. Cable
Modems, the real creator of InstaGib, two different views of Kingpin, an Unreal
tech support nightmare, the translation to last week's mystery e-mail, and lots
more. Pull up a chair and take
a read.
Cthulhu keeps calling, as Daily Radar has posted a brief preview of Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. The article features quotes from Headfirst designer Andrew Brazier, such as this design choice they made to increase the game's immersion: "By dropping the onscreen interface entirely, gamers will be kept within the game world. All there will be on screen is what your character can see."
Hot on the heels of their galleries (see below), GameSpot UK has also posted a new movie of Ground Control, showing off over a minute of in-game footage from Massive's 3D real-time strategy game.
Adrenaline Vault has posted a hands-on preview of Nox, looking at Westwood's isometric action-RPG that went gold yesterday ( story).
Massive Entertainment's 3D RTS is making the rounds today, as there are new screenshots and some hi-res model images of Ground Control on GameSpot UK (although a couple shots are already familiar), a pair of new screenshots on GCCenter, and three more on VoodooExtreme.
PC.IGN has posted some new details
on the trillogy of Blair Witch Project games, including word that the mystery
third title is being developed by none other than Ritual Entertainment. Here's
the scoop: The Blair Witch Project: The Nocturne Chronicles: Rustin Parr,
which is due in the Summer and wins the award for most colons in a title, has
the Stranger investigating a mystery in the Blair woods in 1941. TBWP:TNC:RP
(that's not some sort of morse code) is currently under development by Terminal
Reality.
Human Head in the meantime is working on the second game, which will take place
in 1886 -- we're assuming the Stranger won't have a part in this adventure,
though you never know… time travel? The third in the series, taking place
way back in the witch-tastic days of 1785, is under development by Ritual, a
company busy at work on another movie-based game, F.A.K.K. 2. According to USA
Today, the other titles will release in September and October, respectively.
Word from Dark Mistress Kazi Wren of the Spookhouse
is that a new Nocturne patch is now available, as well as some models for the
Nocturne mission editor, including crane, cargo ship, and tug boat models by
TRI's Terry Simmons, with other models by TRI's Mike Porter. Here is a
local copy of the Nocturne Patch (3.4 MB), along with a list of mirrors, and
here's word on what it does from the Spookhouse:
WARNING!!!!! Some current saved games in Nocturne may be
"invalidated" by this patch. You can load your saved game, but if
Nocturne gives a warning, you SHOULD NOT use that saved game. This will not
invalidate all saved games, but if you have a saved game from a part of Nocturne
that got patched, that saved game may no longer work. Everyone needs to know
this before downloading the patch.
1. This version fixes problems with hardware mixing and SoundBlaster Live cards.
2. It allows 2MB ATI 3D Expression cards to start Nocturne.
3. This version fixes various script anomalies that could prevent Nocturne from
operating correctly under unusual circumstances. An example is little Tommy will
start his dialog in the church even if he has somehow gotten stuck on a pew.
4. The ambient sound for Act 1 will now play, but only if you have done a
complete install. 5. This patch version includes a fix that allows Voodoo3 cards
running the 1.03.00 drivers (or later) from 3Dfx to run at full speed with
hardware acceleration.
Unzip this file to any temporary directory of your choice. When you run
nocpatch2.exe, the patch file will locate your installed version of Nocturne.
Please, keep this patch file. If you reinstall Nocturne, or if you have done a
selective or minimal install, when you install a new Act in Nocturne, this patch
must be applied each time AFTER you have installed a new Act.
Unreal Universe
"Interviews The Father of the Unreal Engine" also known as Tim
Sweeney, lead programmer at Epic Games. The Q&A covers a wide range of
topics, including Unreal (1) updates (and the possibility of an Unreal
source-code release), UT mods, Unreal 2, and more.
There's a new Zoid
Interview on the Mean Arena talking with the father of ThreeWave CTF (I
figured I'd keep with the paternal theme) about his work as a contract
programmer for id Software, talking about his Capture the Flag work from its
beginnings as a Quake mod, through its present Q3A incarnation.
WON Director of Technology Stuart Seelye sends word of a workaround they've
implemented to overcome a problem that's been plaguing the in-game Half-Life
server browser, as well as news that this is just a temporary measure that will
be addressed in a future Half-Life update. Here's the deal: The Half-Life
server browser problem that a lot of people have been experiencing - the one
with about seventy message boxes saying something like "Expecting '{', got
'CS'" - is due to a bug in the Half-Life client that is invoked by a
particular misconfigured game server. The bug in the client will be fixed in the
upcoming Half-Life update. In the meantime though, I got the master server code
from Yahn at Valve and implemented an ip banning feature. The game server that
was causing the problem is now banned. This is only a temporary fix until the
update comes out.
The master server solution will prevent the problem from occurring again, but
users still need to delete the favsvrs.dat file in their half-life directory if
they get the error messages. Or they can just hit the update button in the
server browser. Either method will work to blow out the favsvrs cache.
GA-Source's Call of Cthulhu - Dark Corners of The Earth
interview is the latest in a flood of interviews about Headfirst Productions'
upcoming Lovecraftian adventure, talking with Andrew "18 Hour" Brazier
about progress on the PC version of the pen and paper RPG developed by Chaosium
that Andrew describes as the "second biggest RPG of all time, after
Dungeons and Dragons" (though it seems this isn't the only pen and paper
RPG I've seen described that way). Included with the interview are shots of
wireframes of a Shoggoth creature and a revolver being built in 3D Studio Max.
Though new 3dfx drivers ( story)
were released since the mention of problems with 3dfx hardware and the Soldier
of Fortune Demo in Rick
Johnson's .plan ( story),
a subsequent message from 3dfx Interactive's Developer Relations Manager Keith
Galocy gives word there are still some known issues (so it's not just you).
Here's the skinny: 3dfx has been working with Raven to fix a bug found in
our OpenGL ICD. We didn't get the problems fixed in time for the driver
release that went up today but we will have an update soon. Please
post the following message so 3dfx users recognize that any anomalies they see
in the demo are going to be fixed and are not Raven's fault:
"Some users may experience graphical glitches using a 3dfx card with the
Soldier of Fortune demo. 3dfx is aware of the problem and we are
working closely with Raven Software to correct the issue. We expect
to have a fixed driver shortly. We are sorry for this inconvenience
and would like to thank Raven Software for their patience and cooperation."
The first release of Mr. Pants' Excessive Overkill for Quake III Arena
is now available. Here's the concise description from the website: " Excessive
is basically a standard deathmatch mod with enhancements to the standard Quake
III weapons. Most of the weapons have been changed to increase their speed and
death-dealing power, resulting in mass mayhem anytime you join a server.
Self-damage is turned off, and you start off with all of the super-charged
weapons, so the hurting can start as soon as you enter!"
XSreality.com now has all the demos from
this weekend's international tournament in Sweden for download. The winner was
Fatality, who beat Makaveli in the finals, and was undefeated in 18 games
through the tourney. Quake-arena.de
interviews Fatality about his victory. Also, Finals
Frag Fest 2K on Siliconews is a recap of a very small LAN event, which can
hopefully inspire some to give it a tumble themselves.
The History Channel (AKA the War Channel) had a show on this evening about the
Monitor versus the Virginia (Merrimack), the first clash of ironclad steamships,
fought to what amounts to a draw back during the American Civil War. It turns out
an advantage the Monitor had
over the Virginia was that her turret could rotate, allowing her to bring
guns to bear on a target regardless of her heading, while the Virginia needed to
point the entire ship in the proper direction to properly aim her cannons. As I
watched this it struck me that after spending years searching for an easy way to
explain to people why the mouse was a more desirable controller for first
person shooters than the keyboard, that it is perfectly illustrated in this
naval engagement from 1862. I imagine there are other similar examples from
previous generations of other forms of combat, as this all smacks of "Those
who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." (George
Santayana).
Link of the Day: Ray's List of Weird and Disgusting Foods.
It's fascinating, and more educational than the title suggests, and though it's
clinical, it is disgusting, so it's probably best to avoid this at mealtimes.
Thanks Ant.
Story of the Day: Teen arrested in connection with DVD cracking tool.
Thanks Jeff Magill.
Bonus Story: Mbare
man loses his private parts. Apparently a prostitute cast a spell that made
his bits depart, and then cast another to return them when she was paid.
According to the story this whole affair is confirmed by the local police.
Thanks Lynsey.
Image of the Day: The Game Cook: Ubiquitous!
|
Twitter 
