Slashdot Mirror

genrader writes "Voodoo Extreme is reporting that Interplay has had judicial liquidation take place. If you've been reading the gaming news, a lot has been going on with Interplay financially, it seems all this finally caught up to them. Interplay has formerly published very well known games like Icewind Dale, the Baldur's Gate series, and Descent. Farewell, Interplay." Update: 01/06 02:57 GMT by H : This affects just the company in France; sorry for the confusion.

Zonk writes "RPGDot has a story up right now about the closing down of development at Black Isle Studios. The information comes from an unnamed Interplay source, who says 'Any time you see the [Black Isle] logo on a future product, know that no one who was associated with BIS actually worked on it', as well as a post by BIS employee Damien Foletto on the Interplay message boards, and a Blue's News story that adds: 'The non-announced [PC] title that the division was working on, Fallout 3 [aka Van Buren], has been 'shelved', to quote management.' BIS, you will be missed." Black Isle are particularly known for work on the Fallout series, Icewind Dale, and Planescape: Torment.

Anthony Boyd writes "The Baldur's Gate series has seen a lot of official expansions and unofficial mods. The latest one is fairly impressive: in about 750k, the BG1tutu team has delivered a file that completely moves your Baldur's Gate 1 games over to the Baldur's Gate 2 engine. According to the readme, it means you can play BG1 with screen sizes of 1024x768 or larger, you get more auto-pause options, and all spells and creatures have been converted to the updated BG2 rules. Best mod ever!"

Anthony Boyd writes "The Baldur's Gate series has seen a lot of official expansions and unofficial mods. The latest one is fairly impressive: in about 750k, the BG1tutu team has delivered a file that completely moves your Baldur's Gate 1 games over to the Baldur's Gate 2 engine. According to the readme, it means you can play BG1 with screen sizes of 1024x768 or larger, you get more auto-pause options, and all spells and creatures have been converted to the updated BG2 rules. Best mod ever!"

Thanks to C+VG for their interview with Toby Gard, original creator of Lara Croft, as he talks about his horrendously-delayed console action title, Galleon. This title, which was started after his company Confounding Factor was formed in April 1997, and was at one point in development for the Dreamcast, is now due on the Xbox, with GameCube and probably PS2 versions to follow - Gard says of development: "It's just been incredibly difficult. It's taken enormous will power for us to keep going; it's been a huge struggle for a long time. Our biggest problem is that we're too small... There's less than ten people here now, and that's just crazy." He also comments briefly on the latest Tomb Raider title: "I don't know about that - you've played it, haven't you? It crashed after ten minutes when I played it, which is a bit of a shame really."

darkstar2a writes "Back in the dot.com boom years, a bunch of us would crash the empty customer service department for some fun LAN gaming. Nowadays, though, we use our own computers, and have a significant ratio of Mac users - about 55%. This has brought up a huge frustration in finding games that work cross-platform (PC and Mac), and what exactly we need to make them work. We've only been reliably able to get the following working: Unreal Tournament (but the same game can get kind of old after hours of play), 4x4 Evo 2 (which we got cheap and was a great change of pace), Descent 3 (out of print and relatively difficult to locate.) This has to have been covered somewhere, but we've been unable to locate a resource for it. Can Slashdot Games readers help?"

Thanks to several readers for pointing out a Sony press release announcing Champions Of Norrath: Realms Of Everquest for the Playstation 2. This action RPG, being developed by Snowblind Studios, who also made Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, promises "..a deep, single-player campaign, but it also includes a free online multiplayer component, allowing up to four friends to adventure together using their own Internet connections." As this title will clearly be using the engine from the well-received BG:DA, this could be a very useful addition to the console action RPG canon.

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to N-Sider's in-depth coverage of the forthcoming Gamecube FPS, Geist. This title was shown at E3, but the article goes into a lot more detail than most about the game, which is being co-developed by N-Space and Nintendo. Geist is described as "..a hybrid title that combines the fast-paced action and perspective of a traditional first person shooter with stealth-based game play and a unique new mechanic: the ability to 'possess' other characters in the game." Perhaps not unique, since Shiny's Messiah did something similar, but with competitive-looking graphics and multiple ways around problems ("while watching people play the demo, I noticed no one person played it the same"), it's possible that some of the developer's earlier titles may be improved upon.

numbski asks: "We're all geeks here, and I think there is no question how much we love our caffeine. What concerns me is that my fiancee has noticed how much I take in during the morning, and that I even use Diet Pepsi in addition to pain killers as a medication for headaches. So I did my googling about caffeine and addiction. In the minority, you have one report making a scientific claim that there is no such thing as an addiction to caffeine, however many other articles (not to mention marketing propaganda) suggest otherwise. Perhaps not just the sake of having an addiction is what concerns me, but whatever other side effects. I generally take good care of myself, go to the gym, exercise, play hockey, eat right. I hate to have a stroke or heart attack later on in life because of the stuff. I'd be curious to know the thoughts of others who take in large amounts of caffeine, and perhaps what their doctors have said about it. I plan on talking to my own soon, but it seems like this warrants discussion amongst those who consume the most. Would/does this prevent you from grabbing your Bawls and running like hell?"

easychord writes "RPGCodex are reporting that J.E. Sawyer has sneakily or accidentally leaked Fallout 3 concept art onto the Interweb. After the disappointing non RPG spin-offs in the Fallout universe and the confusion around Black Isle's Lionheart having the working title of Fallout Fantasy, is Fallout 3 becoming a vaporware holy grail?"

BrotherhoodOfSteel writes " Accelerate your Mac reports that MacPlay is re-releasing Fallout as part of their value series. This is the original (good) version and the new release will be Mac OS X-compatible. MacGamer has a preview. And since it's news, there must be a press release." Those who have played Fallout and Fallout 2 can vouch for the quality of narrative in this single-player RPG. Now if someone would port Fallout 2, life would be complete for Macintosh users. Update: 06/21 16:24 GMT by J : Here's Omnigroup's page on the Mac OS X port.

corby writes: "Bioware Corp., developer of the highly anticipated multiplayer Dungeons & Dragons game Neverwinter Nights, is escalating the conflict with their troubled publisher Interplay. In September, they filed a lawsuit against the publisher, and now they have terminated their contract with Interplay to distribute Neverwinter Nights. The problem is, these guys need each other. The loss of Neverwinter Nights means that Interplay will lose out on substantial revenue from a surefire hit, but Interplay is apparently the only company with rights to distribute games under the AD&D license."

waromano writes: "I just read over on VoodooExtreme that Baldur's Gate 2 has gone gold, shipping in stores on 9/26/00. " Bioware ... muy bueno. Hopefully I can import my old characters.

Snaller writes: "Partnering up with Game Commander developers Mindmaker, Interplay is promising the world that when their space sim Star Trek: Klingon Academy is released, Trekker happy players will be able to order the crews around simply by speaking to the game - the press release does not specify if it has to be in Klingonese." And if Loki ports it, perhaps they will also come up with a robust, generalized voice recognition system for Linux! :)

Snaller writes: "Partnering up with Game Commander developers Mindmaker, Interplay is promising the world that when their space sim Star Trek: Klingon Academy is released, Trekker happy players will be able to order the crews around simply by speaking to the game - the press release does not specify if it has to be in Klingonese." And if Loki ports it, perhaps they will also come up with a robust, generalized voice recognition system for Linux! :)

CodeRed writes " Here is a poll at Interplay's feedback site asking whether Carmageddon 2 should be ported to Linux. In a previous thread an Interplay employee said he would talk to the coders on a Linux port. I figured why not let the Slashdot effect help their choice? " Obviously you should only respond if you would buy this game.