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A vacation in Azerbaijan?? I bet you are there for reasons other then vacation.. perhaps you are a missionary or are volunteering there to provide aid? Though personally I am intrigued by the country myself, mostly from light bit of research I've done on it.

"Local scientists consider the Abseron Yasaqligi (Apsheron Peninsula) (including Baku and Sumqayit) and the Caspian Sea to be the ecologically most devastated area in the world because of severe air, soil, and water pollution; soil pollution results from oil spills, from the use of DDT as a pesticide, and from toxic defoliants used in the production of cotton" (source)

And here's another beauty:

"Towns once located on the coast are now as far as fifty miles away from the shoreline, the salinity of the water is heavily increased, and the fishing industry is destroyed. As if these problems were not enough, the receding sea is beginning to expose a land bridge to an island used by the Soviet Union for chemical and biological agent testing. Although the facility is closed, the remains of lab equipment had been simply buried and could become easily accessible." (source)

I also read somewhere that they fear animals will/are making their way accross that land bridge and becoming infected with the agents in the facility and possibly spreading the agents amongst the local wildlife and people. Can't find that article now though but in any case be on the lookout while you are over there!

Or maybe you are over there looking for the true location of CITY 17? Thats how my fascination with Azerbaijan began anyways.

And yes I knew where Baku was without looking at a map ;) But I blame VALVE for that.

The problem with that is that some people, like myself, live an hour and a half from the next state over. It is a great inconvienience to go to the next state to pick up some stupid game, though the alternative is also inconvienient...

I had Best Buy sell me an opened game (Somehow missing the clear sealing stickers), and when I read reviews about how terrible the game is (Magic the Gathering: Battlegrounds), I attempted to return it. The customer service person told me that it was "illegal" for Best Buy to sell it to me. I left the store, and I avoid the store as much as possible. I will always get some relative that knows that I like tech stuff, and give me a Best Buy Gift Certificate, and I will have to enter that store again, but I'll just blow it on their "Loss Leaders" ;)

Well, they're trying to fix that by incorporating PvP raid elements in to the quests. If you read this interview with the WoW quest designer, he explains how they tweaked the system due to user feedback. They cut down the amount of collection quests, and are trying for the "long haul" approach to questing.

I was in the beta test, and I took my undead mage to level 25.. Awesome game, but I believe the $15/month is too excessive. I understand what you're saying tho, but I think with the Blizzard fan base, and the stylistic approach they use, it's gonna make money no matter what.

Oh, and they fixed the lag, too..

I believe that name is reserved by cartoonist Jon Kovalic

Don't decide what you want to believe, Mr. Metroid, then shape the facts to fit. Not much of what you said had anything to do with my post. The Dreamcast/PS2 battle is most relevent to the DS launching first. Period. Nothing else compares because it was the first time EA did not support a potential major platform in the US and the first time they were truly the 900lb third party publisher. Lack of EA's support can crush a platform, but I merely pointed out that EA will likely support Sony no matter what. So I'll offer up this.

That will end up either benefiting or working against Nintendo, but at least they'll re-write the rules, because if a game is conceived with the DS in mind the ports to the PSP may not be the same experience.

I haven't said much about the tech because its not out there yet. But Ill say this now because its based on public information and screenshots that exist and only backed up by what I have seen on the inside. (Are you watching buffer?) Based on everything I know, I wouldn't expect very many DS-> PSP ports. I would expect plenty of PS2-> PSP ports. And as long as we are following the money, which of those is cheaper and less risk for EA? Developing whole new games for DS or porting a PS2 game? Keep that in mind when weighing your understanding of the situation. What you want to happen and how you see things has little to do with reality.

Don't decide what you want to believe, Mr. Metroid, then shape the facts to fit. Not much of what you said had anything to do with my post. The Dreamcast/PS2 battle is most relevent to the DS launching first. Period. Nothing else compares because it was the first time EA did not support a potential major platform in the US and the first time they were truly the 900lb third party publisher. Lack of EA's support can crush a platform, but I merely pointed out that EA will likely support Sony no matter what. So I'll offer up this.

That will end up either benefiting or working against Nintendo, but at least they'll re-write the rules, because if a game is conceived with the DS in mind the ports to the PSP may not be the same experience.

I haven't said much about the tech because its not out there yet. But Ill say this now because its based on public information and screenshots that exist and only backed up by what I have seen on the inside. (Are you watching buffer?) Based on everything I know, I wouldn't expect very many DS-> PSP ports. I would expect plenty of PS2-> PSP ports. And as long as we are following the money, which of those is cheaper and less risk for EA? Developing whole new games for DS or porting a PS2 game? Keep that in mind when weighing your understanding of the situation. What you want to happen and how you see things has little to do with reality.

Don't decide what you want to believe, Mr. Metroid, then shape the facts to fit. Not much of what you said had anything to do with my post. The Dreamcast/PS2 battle is most relevent to the DS launching first. Period. Nothing else compares because it was the first time EA did not support a potential major platform in the US and the first time they were truly the 900lb third party publisher. Lack of EA's support can crush a platform, but I merely pointed out that EA will likely support Sony no matter what. So I'll offer up this.

That will end up either benefiting or working against Nintendo, but at least they'll re-write the rules, because if a game is conceived with the DS in mind the ports to the PSP may not be the same experience.

I haven't said much about the tech because its not out there yet. But Ill say this now because its based on public information and screenshots that exist and only backed up by what I have seen on the inside. (Are you watching buffer?) Based on everything I know, I wouldn't expect very many DS-> PSP ports. I would expect plenty of PS2-> PSP ports. And as long as we are following the money, which of those is cheaper and less risk for EA? Developing whole new games for DS or porting a PS2 game? Keep that in mind when weighing your understanding of the situation. What you want to happen and how you see things has little to do with reality.

Don't decide what you want to believe, Mr. Metroid, then shape the facts to fit. Not much of what you said had anything to do with my post. The Dreamcast/PS2 battle is most relevent to the DS launching first. Period. Nothing else compares because it was the first time EA did not support a potential major platform in the US and the first time they were truly the 900lb third party publisher. Lack of EA's support can crush a platform, but I merely pointed out that EA will likely support Sony no matter what. So I'll offer up this.

That will end up either benefiting or working against Nintendo, but at least they'll re-write the rules, because if a game is conceived with the DS in mind the ports to the PSP may not be the same experience.

I haven't said much about the tech because its not out there yet. But Ill say this now because its based on public information and screenshots that exist and only backed up by what I have seen on the inside. (Are you watching buffer?) Based on everything I know, I wouldn't expect very many DS-> PSP ports. I would expect plenty of PS2-> PSP ports. And as long as we are following the money, which of those is cheaper and less risk for EA? Developing whole new games for DS or porting a PS2 game? Keep that in mind when weighing your understanding of the situation. What you want to happen and how you see things has little to do with reality.

As any good description should have included, here's some reviews
http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/action/metalgearsolid3 /review.html

http://ps2.ign.com/articles/566/566279p1.html?from int=1

http://ps2.gamespy.com/playstation-2/metal-gear-so lid-3-snake-eater/566899p1.html

Yes it has.

Yeah, until Valve's Steam servers die off on the day of release ebcause everyone will be attempting to connect, and in the semi distant future when Valve disappears and you won't be able to authenticate your copy because everything including single player is locked under the authentication system according to Doug Lombardi from Valve.

Mercenaries is pretty rockin'. It is a freeform game, like GTA. No multiplayer.

Disclosure: I'm working on it.

But - it's a pretty amazing game. Seriously, I urge people to check it out! (of course...)

Here's a good preview.

grib.

It sold, but it was forgotten about.
Gamespys list of multiplayer games

You'll find it way down there at the bottom, below all the demos of games from 1999-2002.

Sad, I really dont mind the 4 player limit (More than enough to duel, and thats what ID games are best at), but something about the game just didnt work. Maybe Q4 will be better, maybe not. we'll see.

Mister Poll.

GameSpy.

Gamespy knows.

While I've never fully trusted these numbers (theres huge variance due to inability to filter bots from players), its still obvious nothing comes close to comparing. Its not just linux users that prefer a slightly slower nvidia purely because ati has always been known for bad drivers.

Guild Wars is holding a mini open beta this weekend...

I expect it to be crowded.

I've seen pictures, sometime a while back, of what FF7 on N64 would look like, but can't find them now. Here's an article about it instead.

Well, I'm not sooo surprised ... more 'what are we (rather, THEY) going to do about it?' (THEIR kinda infamous story screening process)

btw, I've pasted my coverage of the story below - and I'd like to get opinions if I did a to sloppy job, or not. (IMHO, I didn't - but that's me :)).

--start--

Doom Movie Enters Production Phase

No more speculating - it's final; Universal Pictures has announced[A goat needed to be scarified to FLASH-lord, to enter] that it has gone into production. So fellow Doom *Geeks*, mark August 5, 2005 in your calendars as "Call in sick"-day :). Read below for a re-production of the FLASH-(text)-content [for all ye' voices who would have cried out loud].

- - -

TITLE: DOOM
IN THEATERS: August 5, 2004
FILM INFORMATION:

• Genre: Futuristic action-adventure
• 
  Cast:
  Directed By: Enda McCallion
  Writer: Dave Callaham
  Producers: Lorenzo di Bonaventura, John Wells

SYNOPSIS:

• Millions of devoted fans worldwide have been spellbound by the dark invention of its adventures .... have awaited its every incarnation with urgent anticipation ... and have devoted countless hours, days and weeks to conquering its hidden mysterios: Doom.

• When the home-computer game "Doom" was first launched in 1993, no one could have foreseen the legion of fans it would create and the mania surrounding its every new permutation. "Doom" and its successive installments have transfixed gamers worldwide for over a decade and have sold millions of copies (while chalking up an unprecedented tens of millions of downloads as shareware). It is, simply, the most explosive home-computer game franchise phenomenon in history.

  Now, the game that made history is jumping from computer screens to the motion picture screen: get ready for Doom. Set countless yearsin the future and told in the hyper-kinetic, kamikaze style that made its gaming predecessor a global phenomenon, the science fiction action adventure Doom takes the viewer to the far corners of the galaxy with a fully-realized vision of a dark and disturbing future.

  Doom will serve as the feature film directorial debut of Enda McCallion. The film is written by Dave Callaham, based on id Software and Activision videogame "Doom 3," and is produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura (Constantine) and John Wells (Far From Heaven, White Oleander, television's The West Wing, ER).

WEBSITE: Official Website Coming Soon

- - -

PS. Reservation of minor TypeError - and no I didn't have anything else to do an a friday night then re-type the Flash announcement ( *geeks* - do have prioritise too, just not 'the usuals' :-))

PPS. Actors haven't be named yet, but according to imdb it look like The Rock ("The Scorpion King") will play 'Sarge' and Karl Urban ("The Bourne Supremacy", "Chronicles of Riddic" and "LoTR:TRoTK/TTT") will play 'John Grimm' (our Hero). Got to admit he actually looks *kinda a lot* like him

--stop--

I point to quotes like this from Blizzard:

Those questions informed the entire World of Warcraft design process. One of the biggest issues with the current generation of MMOs isn't technological, it's philosophical. An MMO is a game, not a social experiment. Creating a huge arena and expecting the players to generate all your content means you've forgotten why people play games in the first place -- to have experiences, to challenge themselves. MMOs shouldn't be about a designer playing god and seeing what all his little ants do in his digital ant farm. To extend the metaphor, MMOs should be a theme park -- not a playground.

http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/world-of-warcraft/493681p 1.html?fromint=1

Whatever's happened with their staff, they still haven't lost sight of the brass ring as a company.

The requirements are significantly lower than those of the recently released Doom 3.

From http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/half-life-2/542987p1.html ?reload=true :
In late July, he announced the basic computer spex needed to run the game would be a 1.2 GHz processor, 256 MB of RAM and a DirectX 7 enabled graphics card, although to really enjoy the bells and whistles of the game Valve recommends a 2.4 GHz processor, 512 MB of RAM and a DirectX 9 card.

You probably might want to take that foot out of your mouth long enough to read this. Doom 3, on a console, October 23rd - that's this year.

Let's see you fire up Halo 2, or a vast number of other widely popular programs in your PC on launch day. Every system has to wait for something. But mostly the XBox doesn't have to wait long as there is a lot more money to be made in console games than PC games nowadays.

Or haw about the next KOTOR? Going to be on a console first, sorry.

The simple fact is the bulk of the gaming market has moved to the console. The PC is not as vital as it once was for even a hardcore gamer.

I don't even own an XBox (not claiming i'm hardcore either) and I get by just fine with a good array of PS2 games. I got off that PC game upgrade treadmill a few years back, and could not be happier.

There is a good PCGamer interview with Michael Stackpole that covers a lot of it.

The Pulling Report (named after Patricia Pulling, founder of BADD -- "Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons" -- who claimed that playing D&D led her son to commit suicide.

Of course, what comment about the "evils" of D&D would be complete without a link to Dark Dungeons, one of those annoying pamphlets that conservative Christian whackos hand out on the streets.

Jay (=

# 1 Half-Life.......96423 players
#10 UT 2004..........4710 players
#12 Quake 3 Arena....4162 players
#23 Quake 2...........658 players
#37 Doom 3............240 players

Very relevant to this discussion.

No to mention the fact that they've probably been paying for Valve to finish this, and if they don't see some return on it, then thats bad.

They haven't been paying - Half-Life 2 was apparently completely funded by Valve.

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..

Contrast Doom 3 levels with the level designs in Quake 2. I'll never forget the alien scientists doing Mengele-style operations on the Marines, while they cried out "Make it Stop!"... now THAT was FUCKING SCARY.

The dark corridors do their job, this is an incredibly scary game
Sorry, I disagree. Yes, even after setting the Brightness control to a pretty high value, I am still left asking: why the fuck did I shell out the cash for a Radeon9800 Pro, just to see a fucking 90% BLACK SCREEN?

In reply to myself ...

an 18month old article so no saying if it was accurate but it is at least a primer.

William Franklin was also the lead-voice talent in the game Startopia.

GameSpy: Are you going to retire after DOOM 3?
John Carmack: No. I've got at least one more rendering engine to write. The development of rendering engines is driven by two major factors. One of these is, of course, the question, "When you finish a game, is it time to write a new engine?" The answer is based on what is happening in the hardware space...

Thanks, John Carmack, for keeping OpenGL alive!

Bruce Perens once even said it here on Slashdot (can't find the link at the moment) but open source development tends to favor software which can be developed incrementally. This isn't especially true of games.

You mean content-consumption games, which are usually single-player or at best cooperative. There do exist games whose goal isn't to "beat" the game (that is, consume all the game's content). See also tackle football sims, tetramino games, WarioWare multiplayer, fighting games, dance sims, or any game that goes back to the good old days when a game's goal was to beat your old score or to beat the other player.

like this guy.

You don't need to call off, you only have to go to work every other day to not get fired. I always hate when the boss calls to yell during the middle of my nap after a long morning of weight lifting, doesn't he know that's only going to make me skip work the day after tomorrow too?

Seriously, it looks like they did a great job with this game. Don't know if I'll like having my sims age and die on me but we'll see.

Also gamespy has a brand new interview with Will Wright about the game.

Stargate SG-1 just had an episode last Friday ("Avatar") using some in-game footage from an upcoming SG-1 game. It wasn't a particularly effective use of the footage, though - it seemed more like it was wedged in there by marketing than by the writers.

Molyneux and friends are also working on a game called "The Movies" which could ostensibly be used to produce amateur renditions of movies or shows.

And, of course, who can forget the use of the Halo engine in Red vs Blue, the second season of which was just released on a hilarious DVD.

All that latency between your brain and fingers can be eliminated if you overclock your dna

Seriously, there is something about those two scenarios that have a sense of personality. They have a sense of uniqueness, not the typical "patrol-n-kill" missions you see in most space sims/shooters.

While that's true, and it's certainly why those battles are continuously revisited, they've simply been done way too many times. I agree that the typical "patrol-n-kill" missions are boring, and escort missions suck even worse (at least, when the game doesn't give you an adequate chance of your escort surviving, which few games have ever gotten right -- the Freespace series is the best I've seen so far for escort duty). For me, the best space sim series has to be Freespace. It has a great story-driven approach like the first few Wing Commanders (okay, 1 and 2), excellent flight mechanics a la X-Wing, and a completely new and interesting universe. As well, the graphical effects were (and still are!) simply stunning.

I want a good space sim, not another Rebel Assault clone. Maybe one in the post-OT time period, or heck I can live with an X-wing v Tie Fighter remake :)

If you can pull yourself away from the Star Wars universe, and haven't done so already, you should check out Freespace 1 and 2. Simply the best space flight sims available today, and you should be able to find them in your local bargain bin. The source for FS2 has been released as well, though I haven't had a chance to play with any of the community projects spawned from that. I've got a few days off work coming up this week, so perhaps I may have to fix that. Now I wonder where my FS2 discs got off to ...

Chess MMO. Nuff said.

I think we can all now admit that id Software screwed this up. Or almost screwed this up, if you are a fan.

The gameplay in the game is far from perfect, a lot of the hype was unfounded. The game also does not have revolutionary graphics, the art direction and animation are great, but things as basic as walls look worse than in Far Cry or even Painkiller. (Compare these two, for instance: 1, 2).

The xBox version is still incomplete, the PC version took 4 years to develop, much longer than they expected, the id probably had some internal problems (that Carmack refers to as "maturing of the team"). While all that is not as bad as the HL2 or DNF story, it's far from perfect, very far. The fact that Crytek managed to pull off being the first with a next-gen shooter is a strong blow to Valve and id.

Now id talks about licensing the engine and it's great, I am sure they will sell quite a few copies, but if you were shopping for a modern engine today, Unreal 3 looks much better. Doom 3 engine was great in 2001, when it was first shown at MacWorld - I don't see a significant improvement in quality since then. Games on Unreal 3 engine are expected in early 2006 (less than two years from now) and there are many companies doing them, so at least some of them are likely to do it on time. Doom 3 games will come after than (since they haven't started yet) and I don't think a 5-year old engine will have a change next to U3 without major additional improvements.

I wouldn't call Doom 3 a failure for id, but it's not a big success either. It's nice that they finally chose to sell the movie rights, that will make them some good money. But I hope they call really get the team together and do better for their next game, otherwise the IP they are planning to build will not be worth much. And if the team can't build games on John's engines quickly enough, the title of game engine god will soon go to Tim Sweeney (or something like that).

Ahh, so that explains the Hello Kitty flashlight on your desk.

Raven's licensing deal for Quake 4 has been around for quite some time.

This "unidentified developer" is something completely different, but I have a sneaking suspicion we can expect something pretty awesome appearing on the radar in the next five months or so...

GameSpy also covered this game back in July in their It Came From Japan series of articles.

The link is here courtesy of Google: http://www.gamespy.com/articles/533/533067p1.html? fromint=1

If that doesn't work for you it's Volume 23 which I'm sure you can navigate to from http://www.gamespy.com/.

GameSpy also covered this game back in July in their It Came From Japan series of articles.

The link is here courtesy of Google: http://www.gamespy.com/articles/533/533067p1.html? fromint=1

If that doesn't work for you it's Volume 23 which I'm sure you can navigate to from http://www.gamespy.com/.

Don't be misled by the submitter's mention of Doom 3's test_boxstack map, Doom 3's physics were done in-house at id by Jan Paul van Waveren (a.k.a. Mr. Elusive), who was also responsible for bots both official and unofficial in past Quakes. Gamespy interviewed him and Robert Duffy back in 2001, although the interview doesn't go too much into the details of exactly how Doom 3's physics work.

On the other hand, there was a press release back in late March about how Epic Games will be using NovodeX technology in future versions of the Unreal engine.

> You can also have some fun with the .tga and have like 2 flashlights or give it a wide/narrow shape, etc.

Or have a Hello Kitty flashlight. It's the perfect way to illuminate hideous demons!

Bard's Tale is fondly remembered by me. It was, I think, my first RPG I ever played.

It's actually being remade. here's the offical link: http://www.thebardstale.com/

Here's a few reviews:
http://www.gamezone.com/gamesell/p22973.htm
and
http://www.pcgameworld.com/details.php/id/5184/ that one is a link to a mov of the game
here's another:
http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/bards-tale/498130p1.html
and here's the last I grabbed for you:
http://pc.ign.com/articles/512/512557p1.html

They also have the 10 WORST video game box-arts

Gamespy 10 worst boxes

Now would be a great time for me to direct you all towards this illustrated commentary: Google = Money

-JungleBoy

GameSpy has a funny article about this neat mod. It even made fun of the poor chickens that was on the news earlier in the week. :)