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Yeah, it's called Bio-Metal, and we are at war on the dark side of the moon to this day...

it'll also be interesting to see if the new GTA will be able to compete with other games coming out like True Crime: Streets of LA which is Multi-platform.

See note at bottom of page: Return to Castle Wolfenstein

Day of Defeat has all hand done animation. It is published by Activision and is from Valve .

I also believe Counter Strike has all hand done animations as well.

I hope that the games.slashdot crew is well versed enough that I don't have to go and link to a gazillione interviews with Miyamoto on why GTA3 and its kin aren't great for the industry. Manhunt only proves that violence without purpose in games is only escalatory. So Manhunt sells billions of copies. What subject content does Rockstar tackle next? There's not much left beyond the prison brutality espouged in Manhunt's (now defunct) promo website.

Meanwhile, in the other corner, we have Miyamoto who's busy making the Amelie-inspired Pikmin 2 and a revamp of Pac-Man. I think this represents the beginnings of a rift in the gaming industry. Rockstar and everyone trying to copy them on one side, and luminaries like Miyamoto, Spector, Wright, etc on the other side; essentially, people who see purpose-less violence as self-defeating.

Here's the paradox: if GTA3 and Manhunt are "art" as nearly every video game enthusiast espouses, then it does - as art is prone to doing - affect the way we think. If that's the case, then why not examine it? I am by no means suggesting that games like Manhunt should be legislated, but I think it's extremely naive of gamers to assume that GTA/Manhunt does not change our social consciousness. Shouldn't we then be concerned about its effect, be it good or bad?

Every Manhunt/GTA-esque game casts a vast shadow on the game industry that obscures gems like Pikmin or Viewtiful Joe or Animal Crossing. Those are the games that should be on the forefront of the industry, not GTA or Manhunt. "Everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial." Merely because we can makes games like Manhunt doesn't mean we should.

By the way, if you're looking for more great retro gaming on your PS2, get the Activision Anthology (go to that site and you'll have "The Safety Dance" stuck in your head all day). Plus, I think it's dirt cheap now. Over 45 games, classic commercials. Tons o' fun.

Return to Castle Wolfenstein has a cooperative mission mode

1) Unreal Tournment 2003, Enemy Territory, Quake3, Neverwinter Nights, etc. And much, much more with Wine such as Soldier of Fortune 2.

2) Grip, VERY good CD Ripping app. Will auto download CDDB, run the encoder of your choice, etc. As for raytracing Povray can do a lot too, but you just need a good modeler, such as Kpovmodeler. As for a one click installer, check out RPMs or RedHat's Package Management System, looks just like Install Shield.

3) KDE,Gnome,etc. You DO know that they can be themed to look just like the crappy Windows GUI too don't you?

I know it took me a while to find the free version of this as the Activision site doesn't mention how to get it for free. Head on over to Splash Damage for the announcement. There are Linux and Windows versions available for download. Both versions have a BitTorrent link available.

I suck. I preview every other message I post, so why couldn't I preview this one? For those who don't want to copy/paste/type, here's the link. (Damn PHPBBs confuse me brackets.) :)

Try the new free Enemy Territoy test. It's available from the good folks at splash damage, et al. You can go to the main site here and grab the ~100 MB files from any number of mirrors, in both Win32 and Linux flavors.

It's not a whole lot different from CS or other FPS, except that it has a skills system that lets you rack up experience points and get promotions that enable better weapon handling or stamina, for example.

It's still a teset now, but runs very smoothly - in native Linux as well as Win32. Best of all, you don't need Return to Castle Wolfenstein to run it, and, did i mention, IT'S FREE!!!

Gotta love it.

I believe that it doesn't require the original game primarily because it's a demo/test. It would be like downloading the demo for the original RTCW... the full version wasn't required for that either (it would kinda defeat the purpose of the demo)

"This is a stand-alone, free multiplayer test of the ... game Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory." Wolfenstein (on the April 23 link)

The final (full) version will likely require the full version of the original RTCW, I figure.

You guys can download it directly from this link in the bottom left corner.

http://games.activision.com/games/wolfenstein/inde x.asp?section=april03

I have to go to class soon but I'll sure as hell be playing it when I get back. I hope the single player isn't like the first one. I was impressed until those uber soldiers and skeletons started coming out. I love those realistic WWII games.

I think sony was abusing the license for movie spiderman. Prime example is the game "Spiderman the move", Notice how there is no mention of marvel. Sony got the royalities since it was "based" on the movie. Also blockbuster used spiderman to advertise their products and same goes with bestbuy with spiderman in their commerical. These royalities were paid to sony not marvel.

people into retro gaming, or required to use other old software. I'm so glad we are slowly approaching this point. UT2K3 has Linux support out of the box. The demise of Loki is something that I initially thought was going to set back the Linux gaming community for years, but then I've seen games like UT2K3, Castle Wolfenstein, and if you want to count their late to the punch arrival Never Winter Nights come out native. If we could only get Blizzard on the bandwagon, and Maxis more firmly seated the other developers would have little choice but to jump onboard. gatesh8r is right. If Wine gets to good to fast not only will it slow some developers to adopt Linux natively, it may loose a couple that we already have. I'm counting Apple as our new Ace in the Hole. The Mac actually has the attention of the developers, and porting from BSD to Linux should be much easier than porting from Windows to Linux. Of course if everyone adopts and improves on SDL and OpenGL they will have little to worry about when porting anyways. Especially if OpenGL2 ever makes it way to daylight with all the Active X type replacements it's supposed to have available.

You guess right.

Die Nazi scum.

A new sequel, Pitfall 3D was released very recently. I don't know much about it.

Ummm...

b) Budgetary reasons and the decline of the adventure game market.

These guys should take a look at what one guy can do, without millions of dollars. Jonathan Boakes basically wrote "Dark Fall" by himself, with some help from some friends. It's really good, scary and FUN TO PLAY.

While million dollar graphics can be nice, you can easily get a really bad adventure game like "Star Trek: Hidden Evil", which was not at all well received. Game companies have to put people who really like adventure games in charge, then they can make a great game without breaking the bank. The fact that they don't is why adventure games are in decline. The players are still out there!

... in 1998, called "Battlezone", by Activision. It's homepage is here, there is a downloadable demo too.

... in 1998, called "Battlezone", by Activision. It's homepage is here, there is a downloadable demo too.

jvmatthe: I see what you're getting at, and agree for the most part, but I wanted to take issue with one bit:

How about another story-driven game that people would compare to Deus Ex? Or an all-out action game in the same vein as Soldier of Fortune?

Deus Ex took professional, full-time game developers 3 years to make with a licensed engine. Solider of Fortune took (I believe) about 1.5 years with a licensed engine.

High-quality single-player content is incredibly time-consuming to produce. I'm not saying good single-player games can't/haven't/won't come from the community, but it may be unreasonable to expect professional-quality, professional-length single-player games from folks who don't have the resources to work on them full-time. (But hey, feel free to prove me wrong! :)

It doesn't really have anything to do with what type of program it is....even single player games would be affected. it's simply an infectable executable that was run.

> I shouldn't have to run external programs to play games online.

So you won't run the wolfenstein demo? Or even the full install from the CD? If you would, then you could theoritically get a virus (no, not starting any rumors here). You do understand that you're limiting yourself to games that run solely from the browser and even then, there's no guarantee that you won't get malware.

Pitfall, though played on the Atari 2600, was created by Activision.

Here is some further information on the toolset taken from nwn.bioware.com/downloads/toolset.html

The BETA version of the Neverwinter Aurora Toolset provides most of the functionality of the final toolset that will be included in the retail version of Neverwinter Nights. The final toolset will allow users who purchase Neverwinter Nights to create their own adventures with the fully functional game editor that has been used by BioWare in the creation of the official NWN campaign. Just as a Beta Test provides consumers an early look at a game while the development team continues to test the game and define issues, Infogrames has determined that this toolset can provide that experience to players but is in NO WAY FINAL, and thus technical support will not be available.

There is also an introduction on how to use the toolset at the Bioware website. It will be interesting to see what creations this toolset yeilds because there has been many games with great toolsets but almost no mods to speak of. An example that springs to mind is the underrated Dark Reign 2.

Actually, the new version, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, is multiplayer. It's a pretty sweet game, and it even runs under Linux. Now if only multiple copies of the game can be used to build a Beowulf cluster...

• X-Team Racing
• Return to Castle Wolfenstein

Vampire: TM - Redemption was written entirely in Java and it was a pretty decent game.

Heh, did anyone else see "CS Cheaters" and automatically think "Counter-Strike cheaters?" Maybe a sign I've been out of school for a while...or maybe there are some of you currently in school who thought the same thing. ;-)

For those of you who may not have heard of it, PunkBuster is one of the leaders in trying to stop online cheating. It first gained popularity for Counter-Strike use, but it seems that id is going to work with the guys for Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Interview here

For those like me who have had problems with RTCW 1.0 you can get the Patch Here

there are some people who play games like this and end up being worse for society as a result from what they would be if games like this were not available.
In Germany, games like this (heh, this one is particularly appropriate) come with 25% taxes and may only be sold in adult stores. Games for mass-market must not have red blood or human figures.
Germany has one of the lowest rates of violent crime in the world.

This has been a thoughtful, on-topic post.
To make it more-so, here is a link to:
a review by gamespot.com (eg
"
. Return to Castle Wolfenstein's development actually involved two separate teams, both overseen by id Software. The first team, Gray Matter Studios--which, under the name Xatrix, had previously produced Redneck Rampage and Kingpin--was hired to create the single-player campaign, while a new development house, Nerve Software, concentrated its energies on the multiplayer component

")
and
the homepage. (eg "The Game / Downloads / Gallery / Press / News")

• MindRover - Publisher: Loki - Robot Programming Puzzle Game
• Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns - Publisher: Loki - Fantasy Real-Time Strategy Game
• Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri - Publisher: Loki - Sci-Fi Colonization/Civilization Turn-Based Strategy Game
• Uplink - Publisher: Introversion - Sci-fi "Hacking" Sim
• Return to Castle Wolfenstein - Publisher: Activision - Modern remake of the classic 3-D shooter, now with suberb multiplayer

Another note: Linux Game Publishing is shipping a port of Creatures Internet Edition which should reach resellers after Xmas.

• MindRover - Publisher: Loki - Robot Programming Puzzle Game
• Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns - Publisher: Loki - Fantasy Real-Time Strategy Game
• Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri - Publisher: Loki - Sci-Fi Colonization/Civilization Turn-Based Strategy Game
• Uplink - Publisher: Introversion - Sci-fi "Hacking" Sim
• Return to Castle Wolfenstein - Publisher: Activision - Modern remake of the classic 3-D shooter, now with suberb multiplayer

Another note: Linux Game Publishing is shipping a port of Creatures Internet Edition which should reach resellers after Xmas.

Well, gameboy advance version is NOT rated M. it is rated Teen [warning warning shockwave intro]

Unless you find green blood realistic.

But how are they going to solve the halflife port. That had a lot of blood in it!

The only two big names that haven't slipped until 2002 are Civilization 3 and Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Both are excellent.

Return To Castle Wolfenstein Linux Binary Released - Tuesday Nov 27 23:30:38 2001 - Updated by Michael

id Software has released the multiplayer Linux binary for Return To Castle Wolfenstein. The announcement was made in Christian Antkow's .plan file. Big ups to Timothee Besset. The 4.57M download is available at:

ftp://ftp.idsoftware.com/idstuff/wolf/linux/wolfmp -linux-1.0.b2.x86.run.

Disclosure: I am an employee of Activision, Inc.

Here are the install notes:

This setup will install the linux binaries for Wolfenstein Multiplayer in /usr/local/games/wolfenstein (or any other location you request). It WON'T INSTALL ALL THE FILES REQUIRED TO RUN WOLFENSTEIN MULTIPLAYER. You will need to manually copy a number of files to the /usr/local/games/wolfenstein/main directory.

From a win32 Wolfenstein installation, copy the following files to your /usr/local/games/wolfenstein/main directory:

63211149 Nov 13 22:14 mp_pak0.pk3
4449596 Nov 13 13:45 mp_pak1.pk3
1118 Nov 13 16:59 mp_pak2.pk3
315823656 Nov 13 12:50 pak0.pk3
293887431 Nov 12 17:20 sp_pak1.pk3
11026123 Nov 12 17:27 sp_pak2.pk3

ENTERING THE CD-KEY:

The first time you run the game, you will need to go to 'Options', and click on 'Enter CD Key' button. Enter the CD key (it's on your CD Jewel case).

NOTE: you don't need to give a CD key if you are installing a dedicated server.

SINGLE PLAYER:

This release doesn't contain the single player binaries of the game. The menu command to switch to single player is present in the interface, but it is completely inoperant.

Useful files in this installation:

- see CHANGES for a summary of wolfenstein linux changes
- see QUICKSTART for quick instructions to configure your dedicated server
- see Docs/Dedicated Server Notes.html for more dedicated server information

How to get help and report issues:

- A FAQ with known issues and information about the linux binaries of Wolfenstein Multiplayer is maintained at the following address:
http://zerowing.idsoftware.com/linux

ttimo@idsoftware.com

Isn't this exactly what we don't need right now?

The face of war has changed. We don't fight countries; we fight for the hearts and minds of the world. The most important fight we have right now is the fight to convince the Arab world that our cause is just. And we are losing badly.

The way we can win is not through applying the tried-and-true formula of demonizing our enemies, but through compassion and humanitarian relief. Where we used to drop bombs, we need to rebuild.

Enter the timely release of "Castle Wolfenstein", in which one gun-toting American saves the world by killing everyone. And when I say that we are teaching children to "demonize our enemies", I am being completely literal. That's a screenshot from the game, showing Nazis as inhuman monsters.

Perhaps there was a time and a place for this game. In my opinion, that time was over September 10th. If it had to be released, couldn't it have waited at least until Christmas? Must we celebrate the birth of christ by giving children a game which teaches them to dehumanize their enemies and mow them down?

Enough already. Castle Wolfenstein: good game, wrong time.

Isn't this exactly what we don't need right now?

The face of war has changed. We don't fight countries; we fight for the hearts and minds of the world. The most important fight we have right now is the fight to convince the Arab world that our cause is just. And we are losing badly.

The way we can win is not through applying the tried-and-true formula of demonizing our enemies, but through compassion and humanitarian relief. Where we used to drop bombs, we need to rebuild.

Enter the timely release of "Castle Wolfenstein", in which one gun-toting American saves the world by killing everyone. And when I say that we are teaching children to "demonize our enemies", I am being completely literal. That's a screenshot from the game, showing Nazis as inhuman monsters.

Perhaps there was a time and a place for this game. In my opinion, that time was over September 10th. If it had to be released, couldn't it have waited at least until Christmas? Must we celebrate the birth of christ by giving children a game which teaches them to dehumanize their enemies and mow them down?

Enough already. Castle Wolfenstein: good game, wrong time.

Return to Castle Wolfenstein is actually primarily a single player game. You play an army ranger who wakes up in a mysterious german castle. You fight your way out, see firsthand the nasty secret weapons of the nazi's, and (presumably) play a major role in destroying the nazi regime. So there is a rather extensive single player story to the game.

However, with the sucess of Half-Life (decent multiplayer on its own even before team fortress and counterstrike), they're including a rather sophisticated multiplayer side to the game. I got the impression that it was a side project...just another selling point to what looks to be an excellent game.

All this is based on my interpretation of the information on the official site (http://www.activision.com/games/wolfenstein/home. html) and a video I found somewhere with interviews of the developers.

Despite the fact that 2.4.11 is tagged "Don't Use This" it's the only kernel that works for me for Very Very important app - Return To Castle Wolfenstein :) With all other kernels tried I can't connect to multiplayer servers through 56k modem connection. It might be some configuration options that does it but with other kernels it just stays forever in state "Getting game state". Too bad i didn't install that SuSE's patch which stores the active configuration in /proc/config.gz so it could be copied as a basis for the new kernels (Yes I ran make mrproper before applying the 2.4.12 patch so I lost old .config)

Here here, it's not like there's any official mirror list that I know of anyway. Id's always been kinda slack on the web page updates. Hrm, after looking I guess there is a mirror list on the www.castlewolfenstein.com, it can be found here btw, it's id. They've never done that funky thing with caps that people like to do. Just fyi :)

Just as long as id doesn't forget about those of us who dig good, fun, singleplayer gameplay, as opposed to ho hum multiplayer. Don't tease me with release date shenanigans or release yesterday's product without doing something interesting to it.

Oh, and I ain't suckin' nothing down, neither.

DD

DOOM®

Based on the most popular action-shooter of all time, id Software's DOOM for Game Boy Advance features all of the frenetic, adrenaline pumping action and immersive gameplay from the original PC game. True to the original, the game features an advanced 3D graphics engine and an onslaught of horrific demons. DOOM challenges players to face off against attacks from cyber-organic creatures and demons in a timeless battle of skill and firepower.

Infact, I'm DIEING to play a true Doom/Quake style FPS! Doom 3/Wolfenstein/DNF/Serious Sam are the only ones I know about, and most of them will prolly take more then a year to be released! :(

Try Soldiers of fortune.

Activision may still have a clerk somewhere looking after Pitfall, in the event they think to revive it

Actually, Activision has already revived the original Pitfall

- Sam

id's been pretty good about that, actually. go here to buy the game.

X-Men

Tenchu

Spiderman

Orphen: Scion of Sorcery

Sky Odessy

Call to Power II

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2

and some other stuff. Anyway, there's some stuff to consider, assuming anyone has any money left after actually buying a PS2.


--

Activision is making money off classic games for the Atari, C= 64 and even the Intellivision

Activision is making money off classic games for the Atari, C= 64 and even the Intellivision

The eds and writers at Gamecenter.com aren't exactly the greatest source for true gaming information. The purist and hardcore gamers get their information from sites dedicated to their favorite type of gaming, even to the point of shunning the psuedo-targetted gaming sites like the GameSpy network (www.planetquake.com, www.planetunreal.com, etc).

The future of the gaming industry is my forte. Hell, it'll be my thesis when I hit the point where I want a doctorate. And believe me when I say that the biggest cause of any genre of game "dying off", as they put it, is due to corporate and VC pressure to stick to things that they know work. Gaming companies are less likely to go out on a limb and innovate in their games. The few that do don't end up with the funding for the mainstream marketting thats needed to compete with the big publishes. Its alot like the music industry right now - except no Napster.

Gaming is becomming more and more about making profits than it is about making games. Companies are producing things that are very much clones of things that sold well. Instead of trying to recreate a good engine, and possibly comming up with new interesting innovations, the companies opt to simply license the engine and make minor upgrades to it. Look at all the various commercial games (not player-made mods) that came out on the Quake2 engine. It was pathetic in my opinion. The only game using the Q2 engine which caught my attention was KingPin: Life of Crime, and still that was only a so-so game. It was only different in that it offered much more of a story than the others.

Its the large publishers like Interplay and Sierra who are just drowning the game market with these 2-bit titles based on other games. And its these clones that are tiring players out, and confusing them. Titles that are truly different from the pack get hidden behind the clones. FPS games like Rainbow Six and its sequel Rogue Spear that were very much different from the fragfests of Quake didn't get noticed. But games like Soldier of Fortune take the spotlight because they're using the hottest latest (licensed) engine, when all they're really doing is adding some new graphics and more blood and making the genre a little more stale.

What game design teams really need to do is stop producing clones of other peoples' work, and start working on their own innovations and interesting games. Licensing of engines is fine, when done to a degree and when signifigant changes to the original game are made. Quality games are becomming more and more difficult to find due to the flood of clones. Not all licensed engines turn into junk games, but the amount of them coming out is making it very difficult for gamers to choose which ones to own and which to ignore. If an avid RPG gamer who enjoyed Baldur's Gate decides she wants to play more of those games, does she purchase IceWind Dale or Planescape: Torment, or the Tales of Sword Coast? In my opinion, Planescape: Torment blows the others away, even the original Baldurs Gate. But reviewers can't tell you if you'll like a game or not, or if you'll like it better than another game (and this is only made worse by reviewers who sell out to game companies or to generate clicks).


More and more games are going online. As an AI designer I can understand this. Its very difficult to write an AI which gets close to simulating a real opponent without using too much cpu power. Also, online games provide the sense of community and friendly rivalry that is lacking in singleplayer games. But the online world still suffers from the same problems that the singleplayer world suffers from. Funding is not provided to game companies with a radically different idea.

The original NeverWinter Nights was a superb game. It had a large base of absolutely fanatical players. AOL made one of their biggest mistakes by shutting it down. With modern network technology the original NWN could become 10x's what it was limited to on AOL. But no game company now would be willing to do that, because it isn't "safe" for them to do so. The companies see that there aren't enough clones of the original NWN around to make it a surefire sale. Its ironic that NWN, something alot of people who've played it consider pivitol, was only created due to alot of GoldBox clones.. In other words, it takes a saturation of clones in order for a game to become worth of support by a publisher. But its the saturation of clones that confuses gamers and makes them bored of the genre.

More power to the Garage Developers. More power to Forgotten World, Shattered Galaxy, and all design teams that can create thier ideas from scratch.