Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway The
Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway Q&A Computer and Video Games talks with
Randy Pitchford of Gearbox Software about the upcoming continuation of their
World War II shooter series: "The Operation Market Garden battlefields are
diverse and interesting. There is Hell's Highway, of course, which earned
its nickname because of the thousands of vehicles and men that were
destroyed along its length during the fighting. There are cities, like
Eindhoven, that were populated as fighting pushed control back and forth
between the Germans and the Allies. Some of the cities were heavily bombed
during the operation creating a landscape of destruction and death that the
men had to fight through. There are many waterways cutting back and forth
along the highway - this creates rivers and bridges and even marshy areas,
all of which became battlefields or obstacles for the fights. There are
wooded areas and open fields. Hills and plains. Lots of diversity - makes
for tough, but interesting fighting."
Quake Wars: Enemy Territory Shacknews'
Quake Wars: Enemy Territory Q&A chats up Paul Wedgwood of Splash Damage
about their upcoming first-person shooter: "John Carmack at id Software
devised the MegaTexture technology as a way to generate and exploit a single
huge, unique, untiled texture to cover the entire landscape of a map. This
represented the first of several significant advances for the Doom 3 engine;
for example, the MegaTexture technology has a tool suite called MegaGen,
which really helps our Level Designers generate the initial map layouts.
MegaGen can automatically distribute materials such as grass, sand and rocks
across the landscape, based on altitudes and the angles of incline. MegaGen
makes moss grow up the steeper slopes and cling to rocks, grass grow in the
flatter areas, and sand and snow gather appropriately in the crevices
between rocks. Our Artists are then able to paint additional fine unique
detail such as cracks in road surfaces, or they can texture modeled elements
such as shell and plasma blast craters in the terrain."
Prey The
Prey
Weekly Development Update #16 on the 3D Realms Website offers a Q&A with
Human Head's Chris Rhinehart on the upcoming shooter, as he answers
questions submitted by fans: "There will definitely be a demo for Prey. The
timing of it has yet to be fully determined, as it may be shortly before the
game is released or it might be shortly after. Regardless, it will
definitely be around the time the game is released. I've never understood
the idea of releasing a demo so much later than the game -- by that I mean
like two months later. Seems that you should get the demo out at least
around the time that the game comes out. I can understand that a lot of
people might be on the fence about a given game, and a kick-ass demo might
be just the thing to convince them to buy that game. That said, as a
developer I can understand how difficult it is to try to create a demo at
the same time that you are crunching to finish the game in the first place."
Titan Quest The
Titan Quest
Q&A on GameBanshee discusses Iron Lore's upcoming action/RPG with
Michael Fitch from publisher THQ: "Equipment is a major aspect of the game;
for an RPG, it's right up there with character development, story, and
combat as one of the core mechanics, and we've devoted a lot of time to it.
We're using both a randomized affix system that will mix and match
characteristics with base equipment and a large inventory of unique
hand-crafted items. I believe there are over a thousand equipment models and
something like eight hundred of those are unique for items with hand-tuned
names and stats. We have equipment that is tailored to each of the regions,
as well as equipment that is themed for different monsters, and equipment
that is themed for different character archetypes, so there's a tremendous
range of visual style, as well as the range of stats and abilities that the
equipment has. Similarly to the character development system, players will
be able to explore the equipment in the world for scores of hours and will
probably never exhaust the variety that we've built into the game."
Joint Task Force There's
a Joint Task Force Q&A on Joint Task Force Headquarters discussing the
upcoming military strategy game being completed by
Most Wanted
Entertainment with HD Publishing producer Vincent van Diemen: "Yes, we
will include an extremely enhanced map editor with the game. With this tool
you can create maps as nice and big and challenging as any map in the
release version of the game. This function is primary meant for multiplayer
maps, but it will support some basic scripting functions so that players can
also create new single player maps."
Dreamlords RPG
Vault's Dreamlords Q&A - Part 1 discusses Lockpick's upcoming MMO RTS
game with Jon Selin: "Since a very large amount of the management is done
through a web interface, it can be accessed from computers that don't even
have the game installed. However, when you want to get down and dirty and
fight other players, you will need to have the client installed just like
any traditional game. There is a duality to the game; on one hand, we have
the slower-paced management interface, which is web-based and has a strong
sense of long-term strategy to it, and on the other hand, the fast- paced
action of the client where you play RTS battles against other players or
embark on different quests."