If you dont know anything about the game this quote sums in up nicely

"Armies of Armageddon: WDK 2K takes place far in the future on a depleted and depressed Earth where game players must battle their way through 30 scenarios to complete the campaign game. The storyline is rich and beta testers have reported bonding with their in-game soldiers. With an awesome array of weapons and vehicles at their command, players have the variety they crave from today's strategy offerings."

This week Gamelinks has come up with a detailed preview on Diablo2. The preview doesn't show anything new but is a good summary for all of the newbies to the Diablo2 community. Read it here.

Let’s get this out of the way first: Nox may look like any number of the isometric RPGs that have appeared over the past couple of years, but it is, at its roots, an action game. Everything runs in real time, and a decent portion of gameplay consists of running around the various maps battling enemies with clicks of the mouse. The interface Westwood has created for all of this appears simple at first – run with the right mouse button, attack with the left mouse button – but becomes more complex as the player accrues spells or items. Luckily, there are also a series of hotkeys to make things easier.

SWAT 3 is a realistic style first person shooter, but this isn't just Rainbow Six with badges here. Unlike Rogue Spear, you do not have carte blanche to go around blasting everyone willy nilly. You are a police officer, and your first priority is to arrest and subdue the suspects in the game. From a more practical standpoint, you'll usually be on missions where there are innocent civilians or hostages present, so the less bullets you have to spray around, the better. Fortunately for us trigger happy Quake-types, there are times when you have no choice but to fire on the perpetrators. If you're good (or just feeling generous), you can choose to knock down criminals without killing them by double tapping them in the knees, or some other non vital area. In a lot of cases, it can be more effective to spray low anyway, because many of the enemies in SWAT 3 are decked out in body armor. But in general, you will get a better score if you can use tactics to get terrorists/bank robbers/kidnappers to surrender without having to shoot them. And yes, you perverts, this means that you get to play with handcuffs!

The first is a large article, found here on what info is revealed from the gameplay videos released a few days ago.

As for the weapons :-) we have ‘Pig Sticker’ Combat Knife, 9mm Black Panther, .44 Silver Talon Semi-automatic, B-42 (Berserker) 12-gauge shotgun, Raptor Submachine gun, Eagle Eye Sniper Rifle and M202A2 Rocket Launcher. The ‘Pig Sticker’ Combat Knife is the ultimate stealth weapon able to slice your enemies and a good aiming player can throw them. The 9mm Black Panther is compact but packs a nasty punch, especially to the head :-). The .44 Silver Talon Semi-automatic is basically a magnum and is very powerful. B-42 (Berserker) 12-gauge shotguns are devastating at close range but at a distance it will just piss them off :-). The Raptor Submachine gun is a nice fast firing gun good at taking people out fast. Eagle Eye Sniper Rifles are great for taking those long distance headshots. The M202A2 Rocket Launcher is very powerful but also make sure you are not standing behind it when fired due to the back blast.

The Rift stands out with its radical new unit designs, including two alien races like nothing ever seen in a 3D RTS, including an space-born race with organic, undulating motion; smooth Newtonian physics based motion, including intertia and angular momentum; and dynamic, 3D playfields across the galaxy that provide a new twist on gameplay: the solar systems are always in motion, so the battlefield is always changing.

Of course we all know that alternate timelines exist. Even academic types know it -- they just call them "counterfactual histories" to throw us off. The last such split between timelines occurred back in 1900. For a while, no one noticed the difference. The Boer War ended as normal, the teddy bear was introduced and Walt Disney was born. Seems normal enough, right? But things began to take a strange turn just before the Russian Revolution. Tsar Alexander murdered his aging father and took over control of the Russian Empire. The Revolution was averted and the Tsar got the drop on Hitler for the title of World's Most Evil Lunatic. He mobilized his country to invade all of Europe. The nations of Europe allied against him and World War II took a very different turn. Why hasn't Harry Turtledove picked up on this one?

The game based on this actual fictional history is Codename Eagle. At first glance it seems as if Codename Eagle is a simple first-person shooter with a WWII context. But this game is a lot more. Apart from the normal FPS action that you might normally expect, Codename Eagle also offers the chance to jump into the driver's seat of several vehicles including motorcycles, tanks and biplanes. You play as the special agent known only as "Red." Along with a lady named Goggles and a guy named Mortar, you will be sent deep behind enemy lines to sabotage the Russian war effort.

Battlezone 2 is a fun game that will keep you occupied, but is plagued with some fatal flaws in the AI as well as some simply boring missions. If you liked Battlezone I would definitely buy this sequel. If you never played the original you should consider picking up a copy, assuming you are a fan of other action/strategy games. While fun, it is nothing innovative, in fact the game may feel like a dumbed down version of the original to many veteran players. The game is fun, but is simply not groundbreaking.

In October 1999, C&C2: Tiberian Sun came along and stormed the charts. Yet it also divided the Westwood and Command & Conquer faithful into 2 opposing groups of thought. One thinks simply and straight that TS is the best ever, hands down. The extreme other yet thinks that Westwood is launching a freefall down to the depths of murky gaming, with worse and worse titles like Lands of Lore 3 and comical Red Alert expansion packs preceding TS. It's Firestorm's duty to unite these two... perfectly.

The first details from the Square Millennium conference in Yokohama Japan have just come in. Square has officially announced not just one Final Fantasy game but three. The focus of the show was the online capability of the PlayStation 2 and the future of the Final Fantasy series. Final Fantasy IX was officially announced for the PSX and Final Fantasy X and XI for the PS2.

- A number of changes have been made in order
to fix the slowdown problems that have been
occurring. A broken resource servicing loop has
been fixed. An optimization has been made to
rectangle calculations for floater messages to
avoid doing it more often than necessary.
Finally, the capturing and releasing of resource
shares in the AI thread have been optimized.

- The disc swapping bug between CD2 and CD3
(and potentially others as well) has been fixed.
You should not be asked to provide more than
one CD during area transitions.

- After level 20, fighter's Attacks Per Round will
no longer drop to 1.

- The bug where a blank dialog box would pop
up when trying to advance levels has been fixed.

- A cutscene firing problem when first entering
the Dead Nations has been fixed.

- Numerous items that were improperly being sold
for 1cp have had their prices modified.

- Numerous infinite experience and/or copper
bugs were fixed.

- Numerous spells have been fixed in their
interactions with cutscenes as well as player
death and resurrection.

- A number of stats rolling over to 0 have been
fixed.

- Lockup when leaving Ravel's Maze through
portal should be fixed.

- Interactions between and number of spells and
the Autopause function have been fixed.

- Dakkon is no longer able to equip any weapons
except for his Karach Blade.

- Many spell tweaks have been made.

- Numerous bugs concerning Lothar have been
fixed. He should no longer kill the player
inexplicably nor disappear.

- A problem with equipping a faction-specific
weapon while in multiple factions has been fixed.

- A fix has been applied for the problem of AI
turning off after application of the patch.

- A problem with swapping portraits causing loss
of tooltips has been fixed.

- The problem with mulitple stat bonuses not being
applied that was introduced in the beta patch has
been fixed (the Charisma bug).

*Possible Spoiler
- You should be able to Raise Dead with the
Divine Censer now.

*Possible Spoiler
- A problem with firing off the Fhjull betrayal
cutscene has been fixed.

*Possible Spoiler
- Bringing Morte to the Fortress after keeping
him out of your party for most of the game
should now allow the endgame movie to play
properly.

*Possible Spoiler
- Adahn's Dagger is no longer as fragile as it
was.

*Possible Spoiler
- Mebbeth can now cast Remove Curse on
the player.

*Possible Spoiler
- Training in axes with Marquez will no longer
allow you to get past 5 in proficiency.

*Possible Spoiler
- Nordom's infinite dialog loop when helping
Mourns-for-Trees is fixed.

*Possible Spoiler
- A number of problems with Morte's kidnapping
cutscene have been fixed.

*Possible Spoiler
- It is now possible to get fake letters for Juliette
even if the Print Shop is closed to you.

*Possible Spoiler
- Lenny can no longer repeatedly train you as a
thief.

*Possible Spoiler
- The Transcendent One should no longer target
your dead companions.

*Possible Spoiler
- Annah's infinite dialog loop when talking to the
dead has been fixed.

To help attract both casual and hard-core gamers, Microsoft will offer gamers both a free server and premium server. In addition, with 3 unique civilizations, 18 types of fighter craft, 20 types of weapons, and huge space stations, Allegiance looks to offer the gut-wrenching fighting that action players crave, as well as deep and involved strategy that will allow for massive, fully orchestrated battles.

The game’s split into three sections; each section sports a different playable hero (Kurt, Max and Doc). The three character’s abilities are radically different, resulting in three totally different gameplay experiences; Kurt dons his super-suit, allowing him to glide and enter super-sniper mode. Stealth is the key to his survival, and long-distance battles are won with the ultra-powerful sniper scope. Max, on the other hand, can take the most hits; frontal assaults and overwhelming firepower are his tools of the trade (and when you’re running around, wielding four gatling guns, few monsters will block your way for long).

The first website is Gamefoolz. Gamefoolz is a new webpage with some rather cute and funny articles. Presently they have an article up BattleNet adds, Starcraft+Crack and Diablo Spotlight. You can visit Gamefoolz at http://gamefoolz.virtualave.net/. A good site I think I'll add them to my board list.

Secondly we have a preview of Theif2 over at Daily Radar. Yesterday I mentioned a Theif2 preview at pc.ign, this preview however covers different information and give some new detail. Read the preview.

Finally here is a preview of Deep Space Nine: The Fallen. The Fallen is an action FPS sci-fi game that should definately be looked out for. If you want to read the preview head here.

"Here is the latest online only game from Microsoft and it's really neat. Join a space combat force as a fighter, bomber, or even the commander. Work with other players to organize your forces and destroy the enemy. This open beta is a chance to play the game for free while bug-checking it for Microsoft. It's a great game and a new twist to the online only genre. Have fun!"

For a list of download mirrors to download the game go to GameRevolution here.

PC.IGN have a detailed preview of the up and comming Thief2 with screenshots aswell as older information on the game for people who dont know anything about it. Theif2 looks like it will be an AMAZING game so I recommend all of the FPS fans check out the preivew. PC.IGN preview.

"Fox Interactive, entertainment industry leader and developer of computer and video game software, announced today that it will launch 'Aliens vs. Predator Gold Edition' this Spring for the PC. AVP Gold features an enhanced version of the original game, Aliens versus Predator, plus new game engine enhancements, the Millennium Add-on Pack and the Official Strategy Guide from Prima Publishing"

NWGN: Now for the question that is on everyone's mind, how much money have you made from all the various tournaments you have won, and if you were to go full-time professional gamer, how much do you estimate you could make?

X'Ds~Grrrr: During the last 6 months I earned almost $35k US$, but I guess that if I go to Korea my chances to get more is good. However, the standard of play has increased so much

Have you ever heard the phrase, "Same Kool-Aid, different color?" If not, you can extrapolate its meaning and apply it here. There is very little about this expansion that can be deemed original or innovative. If Outrage had simply added more of the same great gameplay, I would have given Descent 3: Mercenary a better score. As it is, a truly fabulous game model has been reduced to mere mediocrity. There are a number of really cool features in this add-on, yet sadly, none of them live up to the high standards upon which the series is now judged.

It's boring, it's unoriginal, and it doesn't even live up to the eight-year-old game it's attempting to copy.

GSN: Now the game is starting to wrap up... any plans for the future? We know that Activision has the rights to Vampire: The Dark Ages and Kindred of the East from White Wolf.... Any plans on pulling a sequel from one of these licenses?

CH: Somewhere deep in the secret laboratory that is Nihilistic Software there are the seeds of a sequel to V:TM-Redemption. As of now, nothing is set in stone, but the Vampire universe is a rich and tempting treasure trove of material. Also, just to clarify: This current game is set in both the Dark Ages and the Modern Nights, with half the game occurring in each, chronologically.

"September 5, 1999, Blizzard shocked the world by announcing Warcraft III on their website, blizzard.com. It appears as though they are taking a bit of a turn from the traditional RTS game. They are calling Warcraft III the first Role-Playing Strategy game, aka RPS. Blizzard thought that Starcraft signified the climax of the RTS genre and decided it was time to move on."

I was excited to learn about a new gameplay type I have mentioned in the forums before called 'defend'. Tell us a little about this new gameplay option. Will we be able to play this in multiplayer?

Defend is really a single player game type. What we’ve done is given the player a starting location (a base, if you will), and you have to kill all the terrorists before they overrun your base. In some cases, the actual things you are defending can vary (a denonation button, a hostage, etc) but the gameplay is the same – keep the terrorists from reaching their objective! They will throw grenades at you, come in swarms or alternate attacking areas. Eventually, you’ll have to secure the area once you’ve fended off their initial attack, and that’s when they’ll ambush you!

Quick Note about Drivers:
If you play SoF on 3dfx hardware, you may experience a few driver bugs. On the DX7 Beta drivers, when the screen flashes to indicate you are hit, you may get random colors. Other cards / drivers may experience complete texturing problems (though SoF should disable those features in Gl which cause these problems). NOTE that these bugs are within the 3dfx GL drivers themselves, and are NOT SoF bugs! 3dfx is aware of these bugs, but I'm not sure when they will be able to address them.

GameSpot and Activision present the demo premiere of Soldier of Fortune. Take the role of a military mercenary and hit the road. You'll have to use your reflexes and your wits to negotiate tense hostage situations or take down terrorist encampments in any number of international locales; from the dark subways of New York City to the roof of a speeding train in Russia.

Raven Software has enlisted the help of real-life ex-Spec Op John Mullins to assist in Soldier of Fortune's development. Soldier of Fortune also uses Raven's new GHOUL rendering system, which adds a complex collision detection system to the game.

There are several new features in Version 333:

-Player ID (point your cursor at a player and see their name). It works with Disguise, too--moving your cursor over someone who is disguised will show the correct disguised name. You can turn this option off from the "Controls" menu.

-A voting system. Players can now vote to restart the server, kick an abusive player, ban an abusive player, and change a map in progress. In order for this to work, use the following syntax from the console:
vote restartserver
vote kick (example: vote kick TheAmazingFoodMan)
vote kickban (example: vote kickban Badaxe)
vote open (example: vote open arena_02)
In order for the vote to succeed, all players voting in the affirmative must type the same command. If you wish to vote no, simply do not enter any command. A majority is required before the command is executed. Only players who have installed this patch will be able to use the voting system.

-New log statements for players joining a team, leaving a team, and restarting the game, in order to better present the information to server administrators.

-A "Net Speed" menu option in the "Player Config" section of the "Multiplayer" menu. There are three settings: "Internet" (for 28.8 to 56K modem users), "Fast Internet" (for ISDN and cable modem users), and "LAN" (for DSL or faster connections)

Once the demo hits code release we will begin the final stage of the production schedule; balance and play testing. It is in this stage that we make sure that the game's difficulty settings are fully tweaked and that the game is a well-rounded, exciting, burst of action. It is also in this stage that we find and crush any stray level problems, code problems, sound problems, and art fixes. In short, we finish the game. There's still a lot to be done but we can finally see the finish line!

These 3 updates are strongly correlated and show my support for the Quake II Relay project (http://www.planetquake.com/relay). This Quake II server modification introduces an extension to the well known DM2 file format and it was my duty to describe it and support it in LMPC.

This project may show a new direction for the Machinima community. The modified server stores a recording during the game play in a file (similar to server recordings). This file can be edited (with LMPC and a text editor) and reloaded into the server. Now it can be replayed by any client, who connects into this server. If we can recreate a similar modification for Qake III Arena, we don't need any reverse engineering of the DM3 demo format or the network protocol at all.

The sport of Swamp Buggy Racing has been around as long as NASCAR, but it really is sport of Florida. That is where you will find the two tracks, one in Naples and the other in Fellsmere. It started out as a sport among friends racing their hunting trucks in the swamp. I have seen several Swamp Buggy Racing events on ESPN and TNN. Last year I made the trip down to Fellsmere to see first hand. It is a fun different motor sport.

If you've drank deeply from the well of expensive, high-end exotics but still come up thirsty with a raw Need For Speed, you've come to the right place. Hot rodders heaven. Motor City. The place where it all began but never ends.

A big thing I got in trouble for as child was complaining about having to stop watching a TV show called something like, "Why Didn't I Think of That?" to go help my parents stack wood. I wouldn't have been quite so perturbed, but Popeye had just made a guest appearance and coming up was an 8 year old's burrito holder invention… and it made me upset that I was unable to finish the show. I got in a lot of trouble for complaining about that, but let's pretend you live in a mystical world and go by the name of Joseph. Imagine now that you summon a demon to aid your fellow villagers in defeating enemy attackers only for the demon to turn around and slaughter your loved ones.

And I thought getting in trouble for complaining was bad.

Allegiance is about teamplay, its as simple as that. Every aspect of the game is geared towards cooperating with team members, and believe me, there is tons of aspects to this game. A good place to start is the scout role. This is the default ship in the conquest game, and one that is crucial to a successful mission. Scouts are meant to be skirmishers as well as the eyes of the entire team, at least until better sighted ships are invested. There are variables that each ship has, sight range, agility, speed, amt. of afterburners, armaments, shield and armor, and the list goes on. Each different ship is equiped with a combination of guns, energy weapons, and missiles.

You made some pretty amazing capture the flag levels for Unreal Tournament, what inspired them?

Thank you, I'm glad people like em. Each map had sort of its own way of being created. LavaGiant for example used to be a canyon type map, but I never liked it. Then I took that .dxf brush and turned it inside out. This created this big rock you could walk upon. Then I thought about the environment and turned it into a vast lava sea with that one rock sticking out from it. CTF-HallOfGiants spawned from listening to the Riven soundtrack and it was supposed to be a hall from a lost civilization that the Liandri miners stumbled upon deep down the earth. I had this picture in my mind; the miners breaking through the wall at the bottom of the Hall and realizing what they stumbled upon with some dramatic music and camera angles etc. So, basically, I never know where it will come from next.

Q: The screenshots show very dismal, gothic settings, which are very appropriate in relation to the Cthulhu Mythos. What were some of your visual inspirations that led to this particular style?

Researching how the environments should appear has been quite a challenge, especially as a lot of Lovecraft's stories were based in New England, and we all live in the original England! We have been scouring the web and libraries for a number of months in order to find source pictures, and we have a load of the Chaosium RPG publications that have been a big help. I have also been in contact with a number of Lovecraft fans via the Cthulhu newsgroup, and some of them have been able to provide me with photos they snapped while on pilgrimages to "Lovecraft Country," which have also helped out a great deal. It is clear from reading Lovecraft's writings that the visual representation of the world is very important.

BETA 5.2 changes :
- modified chasecam (to reduce lag)
mp_chasecam 0 : ghostmode only
mp_chasecam 1 : chasecam only
mp_chasecam 2 : both modes
- fixed crashing bugs
- updated de_train.bsp, fixed crash bug
- fixed scoreboard bugs (20 players not showing up)

DM-Aggressive-Tendencies][- by Chris "Plutonic" Blundell
DM-Brutality][- by Rich "Akuma" Eastwood
DM-Meldrak][- by Sidney "Clawfist" Rauchberger
DM-Moribund][- by Rich "Akuma" Eastwood
DM-Observatory][- by Mark "Oz" Austin
DM-Urban Arena][- by Rich "Akuma" Eastwood
DM-Siberia][- by Eric "Ebolt" Boltjes

I know that I'm going to get a ton of letters from Diablo addicts, but I have to say, straight out, that Nox's single player and multiplayer games are both worlds beyond what I've seen before. As we stated in our earlier previews (just scroll down to see what we've already written about this title), you are given three character class choices that will not only determine the abilities of your character, but also the entire storyline of the game. If you start as a Warrior character, for example, your journey will begin in the fortress city of Dun Mir. Here you must find a way to become part of the Warrior Lord Horrendous' elite band of Fire Knights before you move on to the land of Ix to try and find a solution to the problems that have been plaguing that realm. Conjurors begin in Ix, and have to face an invasion of Ogres before they're able to start feeling out other dangers in the realm. Finally, Wizards will start deep in the Southern Realms where they must try and rescue a powerful mage's apprentice from a cave filled with vicious critters. No matter where the players start, they will eventually began to see a pattern behind the horrors that face the land.

"The first time that you see the Saitek CYBORG stick 2000, it will instantly remind you of the movie Terminator II and it's dark glance into the future. This 23.5cm tall, 4-button flight-styled joystick immediately ignites the imagination, sending you that much closer to the ultimate simulation of your favourite game."

If you wish to become a news poster, then you have to post at least 2-3 news posts a day, (the more the better) be consistent, and have good English and grammar skills. Having worked on any previous websites is a plus, but not needed. Benefits include being known around the gaming community and others.

If you wish to be a reviewer, you must be able to write nicely written thorough reviews, have good English and grammar skills, and be consistent. Having worked on any previous websites is a plus, but not needed. Benefits include getting games, and making a name for you.

Sony has acknowledged the bugs and plans on replacing the disc's that users bought. Here is what Sony had to say about it in their letter to IGNPSX.

"Sony Computer Entertainment America has been informed that a few consumers have experienced some technical gameplay problems with Gran Turismo 2. We would like to take some time to address this with you and your audience. As you know Gran Turismo 2 is one of the PlayStation's most highly anticipated titles. In an attempt to meet and satisfy the extremely high consumer demand, Gran Turismo 2 shipped with a few software bugs that, unfortunately, were not caught during our extensive product evaluation process.

We have made every attempt to rectify this situation by re-mastering the product and are confident that all discs in production are free of these technical problems. We understand that our loyal consumers have come to associate the PlayStation brand with quality entertainment and it is important to us to ensure each consumer is satisfied with their gaming experience.

Because of this, our Consumer Services Department (CSD) is currently handling all inquires about this issue by providing an immediate solution. Consumers who have questions relating to this matter can call (800) 345-7669 (SONY). A consumer service representative will be able to help them identify if they have purchased a disc with software glitches and a replacement disc will be sent within three to five working days.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. From our product lines to our customer service, we are committed to ensuring our consumers experience only the best from PlayStation."

Screenshots:

Movies

BUG FIXES:

AI:

- Parties sometimes attacked cities they could not hope to defeat
- When an ally attacked a location an instant before the AI tried to attack
the same location, sometimes the AI would attack his ally

Fast Combat:

- Heroes sometimes had negative Channeling Points after casting spells.

"Money, Power, and Prestige is that not what we all want. Well most of will never achieve it in the real world so why not go nuts in a virtual one. You can be a ravenous totalitarian or be a peaceful humanitarian in the world that is created by civilization. Civilization is a game that dates back to the late 80's. It's combination of great gameplay and originality that spawned a decade of wanna be's and it has a very unique ability to draw the audience in. Although it lacks a real story line it uses the parts of the best story every, the one of man."

"Efficiently cooling your processor is very important in today's world of super fast computing. Pentium two processors have been known to run hot enough to burn human flesh, that is with a heatsink and fan on. Proper cooling is not just important for stability but how hot or cool your processors runs can dramatically effect overall system speed."

I am not going to compare AOK to other similar games, because it has its own unique feel. For newbies to the real-time strategy (RTS), AOK provides a learning campaign where you control the Celts with legendary William Wallace as you fend off the English.

It is not often that a game can stir up the excitement surrounding Blizzard Entertainment’s Diablo II, the sequel to the action-RPG that started it all. The questions of the moment, however, center on the beta release: When will it be held? Who can participate? When will it be finished so the game can be released? Blizzard's Bill Roper addressed questions about the upcoming Diablo II Battle.net beta in a Blizzard Q&A released Tuesday.

First came confirmation that Blizzard will hold a Battle.net beta for Diablo II, with Roper indicating that betas are useful tools for game balancing, gathering direct input from core users, and compatibility testing. Regarding who can participate, Blizzard will be holding open sign-ups for the beta through their website in Quarter 1 2000. From these entrants, Blizzard will select 1,000 testers at random from the U.S. and Canada for the first phase of the beta program. Around seven days after the sign-ups, Blizzard will announce who the beta testers are and send out an e-mail with instructions that explain the beta and bug-reporting processes.

For those who are not included in the initial 1000 fortuitous testers, Roper said Blizzard will be doing something new with Diablo II--having a second phase beta program. This will be an open beta where people can go to Blizzard's website, download a specific build and jump onto Battle.net to help them stress test their new servers. As Blizzard gets closer to this date, they will announce more details on the second phase beta program.

The first phase will just consist of testers from the U.S. and Canada, but the open beta will be available to all people from around the world. There is no set amount of time for the beta testing to last, Roper said, as the team cannot predict the issues that will arise.

"Nowadays, the latest model Nokia’s, Motorola’s, and Ericsson phones bring you WAP internet and features only seen in PDA’s before. Living in Hong Kong, with the need for Chinese language based handheld systems, the competition is brutal and ugly. 3Com’s attempt to penetrate into the Hong Kong market has been slow and tedious. Only as recent as October, did I manage to find the Palm in Mong Kok Computer Centre. So, what is the reason behind the recent “Palm craze”? Having viewed PDA’s in contempt ever since our school banned public displays of affection and after I reverted to bachelorhood, I was pleasantly surprised when I was given the Palm IIIE Special Edition for Christmas."

The games Tutorial puts you, playing as the Scottish, up against the English, in a series of carefully constructed missions you are shown how to move, attack, build and basically everything you need to know to get out there and take another load of nations on, head to head! These missions are recommended to anyone who has not played the first, as each one focuses primarily on one certain part of the whole game to help you understand what’s what!
Some nations you pick are well adapted to fighting, others are adapted to defensive measures and all this shows in the way your meant to play the game and the range of units you get to play with. Some nations will get archers and bowmen, some will have siege machines and some will be adept at building strong walls and towers.

The Size of the Ships also comes into play, they are quite literally Massive, no, bigger. The biggest so far as far as I know. These games just keep pumping out massive capitol ships for you to combat, its feels like a never-ending nightmare in which you need to destroy a massive ship with your limited firepower. But no matter how big they are, they still die is a spectacular style showing off the lovely explosions to their fullest.

Competition mode is the final style of game you can play. This mode has quite a few different options on the different types of competition you can play. You can either play one of the pre-set competitions, which consists of playing in various of the top leagues, or in the European Cup. Or you can make you own cup/league up, where you can choose what other teams you want to play against. In a league you can compete against between 3 and 19 teams (you being the 4th/20th), and you can play either once or twice, with the winner getting either two or three points, depending on how you decide to set up the league.

"We'll soon be releasing an "bonus pack" for Unreal Tournament. Some of the fan sites have mentioned it and maybe posted a few screenshots, but nobody has really had many details. The pack is a freely downloadable set of additional toys for UT. Its not a patch and its not a required download, but will have some cool stuff. New models, new maps, and our runes system. Some of the runes are classics, some are new."

Some of the Runes included in the UT "Bonus Pack" are,

• Relic of Defense, cuts in half the damage taken.
  
• Strength: Doubles your damage.
  
• Relic of Regeneration: Regain 10 health every 2 seconds.
  
• Relic of Vengeance: If you die while holding this relic, a skull floats above your body for a brief period of time. About 1.5 seconds later, the skull explodes killing with the force of a Redeemer blast.
  
• Relic of Speed: Increased movement rate by 30%, also improves air control.
  
• Relic of Redemption: If you die while holding this relic, you are teleported away from battle with your weapons intact and health restored.

One thing I really didn't like about the game was that in the 4th quarter with about 1 minute left every time you get the ball the players on the other team will foul you, this really destroys the fluent game play. It means that you get loads of free throws, which may be good if you are behind in points but thought it was a bad idea. You can get round this though by turning off fouls completely.

Scripting is the link between the programmer's code, the artist's work and the game, which pretty much gives full control on the outcome of Messiah. The scripting language has been developed, and improved constantly, by Messiah's programming team (Michael 'Saxs' Persson, Torgeir Hagland, and Tony Bennet). Every little aspect of the game design has to go through scripting in order to make it into the game. Using C++ functions and visual art (textures and geometry) I can set up special sequences, script complex situations including a lot of character interaction, add impressive visual effects, and design cut scenes between the levels of the game. There are three people on the scripting team; Andrew DeLap, Joe Virskus, and myself. Scripting is specific to each project, but the logic remains the same.

Although we are not supporting Glide at this point, the game does run with the 3dFX line of cards. We are using an early version of their OpenGL that has all the instructions that we need. We are in contact with 3dFX and will make sure that when you open up that BG2 box that you can play it in 3d with whatever card you wish.

We are testing a new beta of UT's DirectX7 D3D rendering interface DLL. People experiencing problems in D3D mode may want to help test it, keep in mind this is an unsupported, largely untested beta. In particular, this should allow you to run UT on certain combinations of GeForce-based cards and drivers for which the original DLL crashes shortly after 'precaching'. To install, backup the d3ddrv.dll that's in your UT system folder and replace it with this file. Feedback welcome at utbugs405@epicgames.com.

Hinny:How many missions will there be?

White:There are around 20 missions, but we use that term loosely. Quite a few of them are not cut and dried chapters with briefings and debriefings. Sort of in the vein of a Pink Floyd CD. Yes there are separate music cuts but they flow together almost seamlessly. Each mission comprises multiple maps were up around the 70 range in maps.

Hinny:What types of missions will there be?

White:Everything from drug busts to enemy infiltrations and plain old "flat foot" investigations.

Hinny:What kinds equipment will there be?

White:There are different categories of equipment. Weapons, Ammo and support items Support items can be anything from keys, to soy food packets to binoculars.

Have you ever watched a cool mecha anime flick, and thought to yourself, "that would make a cool videogame!" Well that game is finally here, and it comes in the form of Zono Inc.'s real-time strategy, Metal Fatigue.

One of the best parts about having a successful product is the re-bundling a company can do after the title has been out for an extended period of time. Eidos Interactive has done it with their games, creating a "Gold" series to give both newcomers and their original customers a less expensive and enhanced product. Now GT Interactive is borrowing a page from Eidos for their Unreal franchise and preparing to release Unreal Gold, which Epic has told us will contain the original Unreal, the add-on developed at Legend Entertainment called Return to Na Pali, and the official strategy guide. Epic was unable to comment on what version Unreal Gold will be since it is “very much a future product.” The current release date from Babbage's & Software, Etc. is Feb. 15, 2000.

GV: Planescape is officially dead in the eyes of TSR (erm, Wizards of the Coast, erm, Hasbro). It looks like Torment's going to be madly popular, though. Do you think that Torment's almost assured success may prompt a resurgence of the campaign setting? And if not, would you be willing to fill out the copious worlds of the Planescape setting even more with other games or expansions?

CA: Torment's success may spur a re-surgence in the setting, but only Wizards of the Coast would really know for sure. I know that they have resurrected some game worlds in the past and made them better than before. As for future expansions and games, I don't think Interplay would mind doing more, but I don't know for certain.

24HG: What kind of system are you making Blitz for? Which will it support: OpenGL, D3D , etc? What kinds of effects will it have?

SouthEnd: The game is currently written for DirectX 7 and there are no plans for making an OpenGL version.

Hot topics are a new project at Gamesurge. This project is designed to uncover information about topics which people want to know about. Presently Gamesurge is looking for suggestions for hot topics and any input is welcome. You suggest the topic we'll research it for you and post it up, sound like fun? Well give a suggestion.

If you have a topic people should know about it, then send in an email to this adress with your suggestion. If your suggestion is chosen then you will be given full credit for it. Hot Topics are centred on specific information and in each case over 20 websites primary and secondary have been visited.

I noticed over at Thresh's Firing Squad that the Rocket Arena UT page has been updated with some stuff on the gameplay of the mod:

Rocket Arena

The game you are all familiar with. One on One or Two on Two in a series of tight deathmatch arenas. Everybody starts with full ammo, full weapons, and full armor. The focus in on gameplay through raw skill, not item manipulation. c0mp1le is working on a voting system to allow players the ability to kick out llamas, switch the default weapon loadout, or switch the map and gametype.

Clan Arena

Rocket Arena 2's pickup games given a new focus. Pickup games won't happen during Rocket Arena games in RA:UT. Instead, players will be able to vote on starting a clan arena (pickup) match. Alternatively, server operators can set up Clan Arena servers for team play. Clan Arena matches can take place on any regular deathmatch map.

Practice Arena

This is alot like the Practice Mode in Soul Caliber. You can't get hurt (except by lava, or traps) and you've got an infinite loadout of ammo. As you shoot other players, you get combo and damage tracking. The idea is a place where you can cool off for a bit and try new things. Scoring is based on the ratio of damage given versus damage taken.

Red Rover

A new gametype that is a lot of fun. Two teams fight in a deathmatch map. The setup is like clan arena (full weapons, armor, ammo). When you kill someone on the enemy team, they respawn on your team. You win when everybody in the match is on your team!

"Art Director Marcia Tofer gives us some background on what it's was like creating and entire fantasy world from the bottom up. In this week's article, you'll learn about the graphical side of Baldur's Gate, and hear how the colossal city of Baldur's Gate was built, and how the majestic city of Athkatla from the upcoming sequel Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn is coming along."

view it here

Pc Gameworld has snagged an exclusive demo of the game which you can download Here. The demo contains 3 different senarios, aswell as multiplayer support for up to 8 players. Its is a whopping 132mgs but for those of with ISDN or better its definately a worthwhile download. All reports about the game are very positive so if u can go DOWNLOAD IT.

Pilot one of the worlds most advanced fighter aircraft. Flanker 2.0 from Strategic Simulations Inc., puts you in the cockpit of the Russian built SU-27 or SU-33 combat aircraft. The SU-33 being a carrier based variant of the SU-27. This is an outstanding simulation in almost every way. The graphics are beautiful, the sound ear pleasing, the game play exciting, the learning curve and game complexity very high.

One thing that is a slight hindrance comes from the fact that the individuals you command aren't exactly the brightest people in the world. When walking in large groups, they will occasionally start walking right when told to go left, up when told to go down, etc... They also have some problems with trees and bridges. Don't be surprised if it takes a while for your army to make it though a heavily wooded area. They are also a bit of a burden to command; especially the peasants. If you assign them to work on a farm, you will have to check every two minutes to make sure that the farm's supply hasn't been depleted. If it has run dry, you will have to rebuild the farm. This becomes a major problem with you have ten farms in use and have to abandon your command on the line of battle to make sure there is some corn growing. You will also want to double check that your idle army units are set to guard the territory. If they are set to attack everything that moves, you will more than likely find several of your men half ways across the map because they were chasing a single scout.

How much strategy is involved in playing SoF? Is the game closer to a Half-Life/Quake or a Rainbow Six/Rogue Spear?

The weapons and enemies in Soldier of Fortune are deadly, so it takes a good bit of strategy and caution just to stay alive. If there is a happy medium between Quake and Rainbow Six, I think Soldier of Fortune has it. There's more strategy involved than in a basic killfest like Quake, but it's not a major brain drain like Rainbow Six. Action is the bottom line and we don't want the strategic elements to get in the way of the action or the fun. Soldier of Fortune is all about maintaining that delicate balance...

GA-RPG: What is the current status of the game build wise? Also, are you expected to ship NOX before March?

JohnHight: Well, build wise I have been playing the final build version for us all week, and having a good time whipping the Q/A guys’ butts. They have been trying to repay me by finding some vicious showstopper bugs, but as of yet have been unable to. I feel very confident GA-RPG that you’ll be able to play NOX in March and suffer my wrath on Westwood Online.

"Now, when you quiz all these gamers, you will probably find they use some lingo that most strategy gamers are aware of. Things like TBS, RTT, RTS, etc. This is where the huge presence of Strategy, gets down, and gets personal. Or, rather, divided. The first obvious division is Real-Time vs. Turn-Based. While most would say, 'Real-Time is more realistic', we come to our senses and realize that it doesn't take 1min 15 seconds to build a tank. Generally speaking, Turn-Based are suited for more genbuine strategists, involve more strategy, complex maneuvers, etc. Built for the more patient individual, they can be great fun - and some of the best games ever heralded have been Turn based. Civilization, Panzer General, etc. Heck, even Chess is a turn-based strategy game. however, chess also brings about another, finer division - Tactical and Strategy. Chess, which may seem to be strategic, is purely tactical; a small battle within your control. Strategy, despite popular belief, involves much larger grander affairs, uilt on the tactical, such as civilization. It requires expansion, cities, politics, and budget (no, not just sucking up Tiberium with your friendly neighbohood harvester). When you fight a battle between two armies at some-odd planet, you have just tactisized, and are using TBT - Turn Based Tactical. when you finish this battle, and revert back to the entire war, your empire, etc., you are strategizing, expanding, building, etc. this is called TBS - Turn-Based Strategy. Within the domain of turn based, strategy and tactical remain fruitfully very similar, and often can get confused. Just remember: Tactics for Battle, Strategy for War. "

Article URL: http://www.dapound.com/11100.shtml
Main Page: http://www.dapound.com

GX: Judging by the screenshots I have seen, it seems that Big Bang will be a huge game with lots on screen at once and Massive Spaceships, how have you managed to keep everything moving at a reasonable rate?

FG: A dedicated 3D engine is always what maximises a game frame rate. Of course it would have been easier to adapt an older version but we would certainly be far under the current frame rate if we had done so. On the new GE256 video card we can play BigBang in a 1600X1200 resolution and it makes the game look even greater...

Overall the game scored A- which is as high as they scored Unreal Tournament.

• destroy the "winch", not the "wench" in AS-rook description :)
  
• fixed problem with landing bob damping on slow systems with high time dilations
  
• fixed problem where client health gets set to zero (health was still correct on the server)
  
• fixed spectators drowning in water outside of galleon
  
• fixed problem with one of the 402 server optimizations causing pickups to be shown when they should be hidden if high packet loss
  
• fixed fog rendering in software
  
• fixed assertion line 714 network crash on slow connections
  
• fixed bad poly on Ripper weapon model
  
• fixed flag not dropped if killed by team cannon in CTF games
  
• fixed gold players showing up in CTF
  
• added BossSkins.int
  
• fixed clients hearing ambient sound on dropped weapons in some cases
  
• fixed teamtriggers
  
• fixed demo playback crash

Some of the new features added include

• much louder warhead explosion
  
• don't allow Turbo mode with assault
  
• bigger blood cloud when gibbed
  
• Menu and text formatting changes to support Japanese text
  
• Added "AddIni" command for umods to add lines to ini files
  
• Changed occurances of class'DeathMatchMessage' to DMMessageClass. Allows mod authors to use their own DMMessageClass in all situations.
  
• Made ngWorldSecret a private variable. So you can't read it from GetPropertyText anymore.
  
• Added CRT's query packet send improvements.

If you like before you download the movie you can view some Screenshots from the movie

"As you can probably tell from its name, Porsche Unleashed's lineup of cars is composed entirely of Porsches. In fact, every Porsche from the 1948 356 roadster to the monstrous 2000 996 Turbo are available for players to drive. Even the devilishly fast 959, banned from sale in the US, is included.

And a new career mode, called Porsche Evolution, lets players track the history of Porsches across four eras. You'll be able to buy, upgrade, repair, race and, maintain as many as 80 different Porsches in this mode, which you can then turn around and sell as a collector's item during a later era. The value of that car will depend on its rarity, the mileage you put on it, and the shape it's in."

Check the full article here

Time to get rid of the level-stucking nightmare. They've made a big update on their cheat section, all the latest games, uploaded cheats include:

Age of Wonder
Cabela's Big Game Hunter 3
Railroad Tycoon 2 : The Second Century
Toy Story 2
Nerf Arena Blast
Rally Championship 2000
Test Drive 6
South Park : Chef's Luv Shack
Unban Chaos
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire
Pharoah
Asheron's Call
Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine
Lego Racers
Unreal Tourney
Q3Arena
Wheel of Time... etc etc.

For all of those who are interested in the whole Violence and Video Games issue, please particpate in
this Vote!.

"I remember Alpha Centauri being enough of a headache as it already was with its mind boggling array of options from micro to macro management of your faction, careful consideration of diplomacy and “foreign” policy, and even weapons and units customisations. Too much! But when is enough, ever enough, if ever, there is enough? From civilization, to this, Sid Meier truly is a guru. But the question here today is simpler. Is Alien Crossfire a worthy extension to the original?"

If you head on over to Gamespy.com you'll get this message most likely.

Hi! This is web3

"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.

However before we look at why UT is so good, I'll take you over Ninja's rant and show you what's so wrong about it. To start, Ninja right UT does have a better single player game, but that's to be expected because in Q3A single PLAYER GAME IS ALMOST NON EXISTANT. All Q3A has is going against different bots that use different weapons and strategies. One of the best things about UT is that single player introduces all of the game aspects and modes so it's a great way to build yourself up for online warfare in all circumstances. That's something Q3A can't compete with.

Next up I'm a little curious about this:
But Q3 was coded with the future in mind. It was setup thinking of the 1ghz machine. Quake3 will still look good and feel good when UT is sitting on the shelf

Don't get me wrong I love cryptic messages with little to no point as much as the next person, but saying that Q3A was coded for the future and isn't designed for the present, isn't that a flaw point for Q3A. Ninja if your the type of person whose willing to wait for MPP (Massive Parallel Processing) to hit stores so you can "truly appreciate" Q3A that's find by me. However I know that right now UT runs brilliantly on my home computer and doesn't need to look to the future like Q3A does, as you put it.

I will concede that the skins for Q3A are better then in UT and in some cases Q3A does look better then in UT however that's only on occasions, but having a nice look and being pretty doesn't make up for the fact that something is lacking gameplay wise. If you're like me, then you've played both Quake and Quake2 previously, and if you're like me you'll also after something new in Quake world. Sure fraggin' is always fun, but why frag with a boring old game with boring old weapons and very little new gameplay, when you can play a game WITH EXCITING AND UNIQUE weapons, Diabolically good maps and loads of new and exciting modes of gameplay.

If you want to get into coding and get technical we can do that, one of the best things about UT is that EPIC have reworking the network code. What this means is that only key information is transferred in packets, and long string of information are cut down to shorter strings, think of it like "abbreviating" words in a sentence. The long and the short of it is that UT multi-player can run fine on 33.6 connection, again another thing Q3A can't compare two.

Don't get me wrong I used to be a big Quake fan and I was very good at playing both Quake and Quake2 however I needed something new in the Quake world of fragging and Quake3 didn't offer it. UT on the other hand has brand new and exciting modes of play; great weapons all of which are useful; good maps that are all different and require different strategies to do well in, and more importantly a game fell that is completely unique. The end matter is that whilst Q3A is a great game by itself its doesn't have anything to match the new gameplay additions in UT. Quake3A is good UT is simply better.

So TO ALL THE READERS, heres a nice little challenge respond to what Ninja and I have said, tear us apart and argue for your favourite FPS. I can bet all of the Gamesurge staff will become involved in this so why don’t you? Get your rant put on Gamesurge and take up my challenge, if not you can always walk away and turn your back on a the game you so dearly love, I have no problem with that.

The change in development direction will allow Cavedog to grow its better-established brands and provide an opportunity to create anticipated products, such as Total Annihilation 2, the third title in the Total Annihilation franchise.

The weapon placement in the game is bloody good, many a time I have just run out of ammo and turned a corner to find exactly what I need, although
sometimes the overuse of your guns can leave you in the shit every now and again. I did get to one place with only 1 point of health and a few grenades, just to find an alien was round the corner the other side of a broken bridge, now I ask you, why me?

Well before I start I have to admit that I normally love quake. My favourite game of all time has got to be Quake. Due to how easy it was to make mods for it and change all sorts of aspects about the game. But when I got Quake III I have to admit that I was disappointed in it. It just does not have the same feel that the past quake games have. It is just another
multiplayer game; the single player is just multiplayer with bots. Don’t get me wrong I like that sort of game but I just don’t think that this game is
up to the standard of the likes of Unreal Tournament.

Now that ive gotten that out of my system, the comparision features good points and bad points for both games and is worth a read even if your a Q3A fan.

• Starcraft season champion was "michin)sOnAta"
  
• Brood War winner was "Kim_Hyung_$uk"
  
• Warcraft Regular was topped by "ut@golfers"
  
• Warcraft Ironman finally, was dominated by "-Axolotl-"

8) Free Somethings
Free Internet, Free PC's, the something-for-nothing revolution will come in to its own in the next year. As the Free ISP's mature and work out how to make sustainable profits, you'll see two groups of Internet Access. Narrow, free traditional dialup access and the range of mid to high cost...

estimated download time: 14.4Kbps= 25hrs 28.8Kbps=13 hrs 56Kbps=6 hrs

Tried to remember a URL you bookmarked on a different computer?

Scribbled down a URL at a cybercafe and then lost the paper?

Do you want to make your links public and share them with others?

Suffered from a disk failure or hard disk crash and lost all your bookmarks?

After Microsoft released mice that utilized optical tracking or 'ball less' technology, a black version of the pad was released, because the sensors on the mice didn't seem to like the original white material. Reacting quickly, Everglide made new versions of all their pads available in black, which is compatible with the new mice. Q3, Y2K, Falcon Northwest and Alienware logos can be added to pads at no additional cost.

Anyways, GA-Source has posted a first look of Warlords Battlecry, which is a hero based real-time strategy game. Here's a little more about the game:

Warlords Battlecry is a real-time strategy that allows players to create a hero in one of nine races and then take him and his armies through campaigns, quests and multiplayer games. Drawing from the rich fantasy environment of the Warlords Universe, Warlords Battlecry delivers a unique blend of RPG and real-time strategy that can best be described as hero-based gameplay.

Well, I was hoping for a nuclear blast or something. Boooring.

I've released the open source archive at the sourceforge page. You can get there from openut.sourceforge.net.

The file is available in tar/gz and zip formats. The archive includes stuff for win32 and Linux. All of the public engine headers are included, so you can start working on extended mods and stuff.

Feel free to participate in the message boards and bug tracking system on the Source Forge page.

The next task is to get CVS up and running, but I'll probably put that off to the side for a few days and do some work on my other projects.

I've got a huge list of crap to do for the next UT patch.