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Domain: blackcatgames.com

Stories and comments across the archive that link to blackcatgames.com.

Comments · 13

  1. Alien Swarm: Infested by celerityfm · · Score: 1 · on Speaking With the Devs Behind a 7-Year Game Mod Project

    Congrats to The Nameless Mod team, the mod (well, now a full retail game in development) I'm really looking forward to is Alien Swarm: Infested - been in development since 2005 - http://www.blackcatgames.com/swarm/ - I played the UT2004 total conversion mod back in the day and it was AWESOME.

    Bring it on! (also DNF)

  2. Alien Swarm by tjwhaynes · · Score: 1 · on Do Next-Gen Games Have to be 3D?
    As a final thought, you can play GTA3 in "classic" mode, with a top-down view, i wander how fps's might fare with a top-down view, you'd need vertical autoaim and sniping would be troublesome but it's not the giant leap you might think it is.

    For those of you who wonder how a FPS might play in top down, the one that springs immediately to mind is the awesome Alien Swarm mod for UT2k4. This was a team-based top-down FPS shooter, Marines Vs Aliens style. Of course, there is now a chase-cam-style third-person sequel in the works although the News page appears to be a little quiet.

    Cheers,
    Toby Haynes

  3. Alien Swarm by tjwhaynes · · Score: 1 · on Do Next-Gen Games Have to be 3D?
    As a final thought, you can play GTA3 in "classic" mode, with a top-down view, i wander how fps's might fare with a top-down view, you'd need vertical autoaim and sniping would be troublesome but it's not the giant leap you might think it is.

    For those of you who wonder how a FPS might play in top down, the one that springs immediately to mind is the awesome Alien Swarm mod for UT2k4. This was a team-based top-down FPS shooter, Marines Vs Aliens style. Of course, there is now a chase-cam-style third-person sequel in the works although the News page appears to be a little quiet.

    Cheers,
    Toby Haynes

  4. Re:Use the engine on their other franchises by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0 · on The Epic in Unreal Engine 3

    They do use the 3rd dimension.

    http://www.blackcatgames.com/swarm/viewscreen?name =ASInfestedScreenshot3.jpg

  5. Re:Thank you, PC Gamer stereotype #41 by Jackmn · · Score: 1 · on Halo 2 Only on Vista
    20$ on a keyboard/mouse to Xbox adaptor, and using a keyboard and mouse on an Xbox
    The turn speed is limited leading to a completely unnatural feel.

    In an FPS there is nothing more rewarding than seeing an enemy, reflex-snapping your crosshair over his head in an eigth of a second, firing, and scoring a kill before he even notes your presense. Joysticks / limited turn speed mice simply do not allow you to react that fast.

    Games on PCs tend to offer far more in the way of customization. Half-life 2 has well over 100 cvars you can tinker with.

    Unofficial mods of games such as Alien Swarm are only available to PC users.
  6. Re:Showcase for Unreal Engine by Guspaz · · Score: 1 · on Unreal Tournament 2007 Officially Announced

    A good example of such an unexpected thing is AlienSwarm, a top-down squad-control type game:

    http://www.blackcatgames.com/swarm/

    Keep in mind the first few screenshots on the site are from their new Source (HL2) port.

    It's still a game, yes, and I suspect you mean unexpected as in non-gaming, but it is certainly one of the more original mods for UT2004 in that it breaks out of the type of game the engine was designed for.

  7. Re:ATI Drivers by Skevin · · Score: 2, Informative · on Doom 3 for Linux Released
    Even though my general experience is that ATI drivers have traditionally been a little dodgy, I've gone with SuSE because they have their own special fglrx drivers and instructions which don't involve quite as many steps as the normal methods of installation... plus you don't have to recompile the whole thing. My experience with games on ATI is as follows:
    • FLGRX 3.7: Screensavers work fine, but that's about it.
    • FLGRX 3.9: Winex still crashes, UT2004 still crashes, but Neverwinter Nights runs fine, with a few bugs.
    • FLGRX 3.11 (what I use currently with a mobility FireGL T2): NWN runs beautifully with all the bells and whistles (1024x768 at 32 bit). UT2004 runs okay at 1024x768x32 with some high quality textures and dynamic lighting @ ~28 FPS (UT2004 used to crash a lot on my ATI-based setups, but it seemed to stabilize with the UT2004 3323 patch). Winex still barfs on me
    • FLGRX 3.14.1: This is the latest and greatest(?) driver you can get for SuSE. Prelminary testing shows Alien Swarm runs decent now, but Winex still barfs on me. I will try the Doom installer later today, and respond with my own benchmarks on a 2GHz T42 Thinkpad with 2G and a 128MB Mobility FireGL T2.

    • If you just follow SuSE's instructions at the link I provided, you should be fine.

      Solomon Chang
  8. Two things to note: by unclethursday · · Score: 4, Informative · on UT2004 Editor's Choice Edition Released
    1. The 84 MB is a self-extracting zip file. OS X users CAN download the exe, change it to a zip, open with Stuffit Expander (open with>stuffit expander, the default app will not open the file, so Stuffit must be used, this works, I am on OS X and have successfully installed the new updates), and manually move the content to their UT2004 app folders if they wish to do so before MacSoft gets around to releasing a Mac installer. Just don't move the DLL files (no need on Mac OS X) and you don;t have to worry about overwriting your user.ini.

    I'm sure a similar Linux workaround can happen as well before the Linux version is released, but I don;t know exactly how it would work on Linux.

    2. The ECE update does NOT contain any mods that will ship with the retail version; just the maps, models, vehicles and engine tweaks. If you want the mods that are shipping with the retail version you can download them from their respective sites:

    Air Buccaneers
    Alien Swarm
    Chaos UT2
    Clone Bandits
    Deathball
    Domain 2049
    Frag.Ops
    Jailbreak
    Red Orchestra
    UnWheel

    Most of these mods come with installers (.exe), or are UT4 files (UMod), while I know Red Orchestra has a Mac OS X installer and others can be downloaded as zip archives for manual instilation for OS X and Linux users..

  9. Q3A, BF1942, BF:V, UT2004, DOOM 3, & HL2 by antdude · · Score: 4, Insightful · on Make Something Unreal Gets Next Phase Winners

    I bought UT2004 recently on DVD because of Alien Swarm and Red Orchestra mods. I didn't care about its regular UT2004 game. The playable demo didn't impressed me except the pretty graphics. The mods were the big stars for me.

    I bought BF1942 for its game mostly, but I was surprised to see mods coming out like Forgotten Hope, Battlefield Pirates, Desert Combat, Galactic Conquest, etc.

    I hope the same is for DOOM 3 for mod support. I would love to see Aliens-type of game with DOOM 3 engine and with co-operative play. How about System Shock 2 type of game? I loved that game! It was scary.

    I sold Quake 3 Arena a few days ago and uninstalled Half-Life a few months ago because it was time to leave their engines and their mods.

  10. Re:Awesome by mahdi13 · · Score: 1 · on Beyond Castle Wolfenstein Re-Compiled

    Why do SmashTV over the UT2004 engine with an Aliens Skin?
    Alien Swarm

    BTW, it's an excellent TC for UT2004!

  11. Alien Swarm for UT2004 by EvilXenu · · Score: 5, Informative · on Unreal Gets Annihilated, Community Bonus
    Alien Swarm came out for UT2004 on May 28. It's a class-based, overhead view mod that pits players against the Alien Swarm. This is a non-PvP mod -- cooperative play is a must! I gotta say, I can't believe I was able to download this for FREE, that's how good it is.

    Find download links (including Bittorrent) here.

  12. Crossposted to other forums-- by celerityfm · · Score: 1 · on Alien Swarm Add-on for UT2004 Showcased

    I posted this both to Shacknews and the Black Cat Games forums for Alien Swarm-- so here's links to those threads in case the question gets answered there first:

    Shacknews thread
    Black Cat Forums thread

  13. Mod Community Comes Through Again by OmegaBlac · · Score: 2, Interesting · on Alien Swarm Add-on for UT2004 Showcased

    I am absolutely enjoying this mod of UT2K4. Just played through the tutorial and will probably hop online later tonite. The AI for my teammates is average nothing exciting, they did what they were supposed to do. Will see how they handle the SP missions later on. One of those alien species moves very quick so its nice that the teammates are able to track them and kill them before they overwhelm your main player.

    The mod communites that pop around PC games never cease to amaze me. Ever since Wolfenstein 3D & Doom I have been totally awe-struck by the level of innovation and creativity that mod creators contribute to well established games. These are the people that make games like UT and Quake have a prolong lifespan in the lives of gamers like myself. Congrats to Black Cat Games for an excellent mod for UT2K4 and just in time too! I was getting kind of bored with the same old onslaught, CTF, and DM. Now this mod breathes new life into the game!