Slashdot Mirror

(and Shacknews)

Hey Vivendi...seriously, fuck you.

They didn't pay me anything and I am not affiliated with I Love Bees/etc :P

I was just surprised that this hadn't been posted to /. (another poster pointed out that its has been out for a few days and I acknowledged that with "recently announced") so I threw the story in to the submit queue after seeing it posted on Shacknews.

The bigger news is that this is, to my knowledge, the first time a mass produced DVD has been allowed to be distributed electronically in its entirety. The fact that the creators endorsed Bittorrent is yet another story in and of itself.

Right?

Instead of working on Duke Nu^H^H^H^H-- Good Ol' George B chimed in the yesterday regarding this article and said "There's a lot of truth in there, especially when talking about large scale, corporate game development, which is most of it these days."

Interesting :(

WOW!

Blue's News has links for the awesome introduction cutscene (DivX from World of Warcraft game. Also, FileShack (registration required; free or subscription required) has it. It is about 46.5 MB; AVI; 2 minutes and 49 seconds long).

Apple has this introduction cutscene in QuickTime format (non-saveable) as well.

The introduction was almost like watching The Lords of the Rings movies. Amazing! I can't wait for the free open beta! :)

RTFA: http://www.shacknews.com/finger/?fid=raduffy@idsof tware.com

So 66fps is good enough ;)

This isn't my quote, but it seemed to sum up the game pretty well:

I don't know, Galaxies always seemed like the mmo for people who wanted to play those two guys in the background in mos eisley while obi wan and luke drove through on their speeder. The two shoveling bantha shit.

From the Shacknews forums

In case anyone wonders whether the Gabe Newell post again came from his compromised forum account, Steve Gibson at Shacknews has contacted him to verify validity and it is indeed legit.

The customer reviews for the product at Lik Sang, as well as the review over at ShackNews both talk about scratchy sound quality and low frame-rates. Neither talk about the emulators (since they are reviewing the earlier model, I assume) - but for the price you can't really go wrong can you ? I think this is the actual product homepage, but it isn't much more informative.

According to the .plan of the ID software CEO there will be a Linux version soon:

Mac and Linux: Unfortunately I don't have dates for either of these. However, Linux binaries will be available very soon after the PC game hits store shelves. There are no plans for boxed Linux games. More remains to be done for the OSX version of DOOM 3 and that will take some time. We won't release the OSX version until it's just as polished as the PC version. The date for OSX DOOM 3 remains "when it's done", but I can confirm that it's definitely coming.

Also, there is an Easter Egg in the trailer if you remember the original DOOM series.

From Todd Hollenshed of id's plan file:

"Demo: our priority was finishing the game first and now we are turning our attention to the demo. I don't have any information to share regarding any specific content, but I don't believe that we have ever disappointed in that regard in the past. We will release the demo as soon as it's done, but this probably won't happen until after the game has arrived on U.S. store shelves."

So yes there will be a demo, but unfortunately not until after the games been out for a while.

Mac and Linux: Unfortunately I don't have dates for either of these. However, Linux binaries will be
available very soon after the PC game hits store shelves. There are no plans for boxed Linux games.
More remains to be done for the OSX version of DOOM 3 and that will take some time. We won't release
the OSX version until it's just as polished as the PC version. The date for OSX DOOM 3 remains "when it's
done", but I can confirm that it's definitely coming.

Parent has such an ironic subject line...

From TFA,
"Internationally, the game will take a few more days to make it to the store shelves. The UK will probably get it first, on or about August 6th. Everywhere else will probably be Friday, August 13th (que Twilight Zone Theme) or close to that date, with just a few exceptions (e.g. Russia and Poland). This isn't because we don't have love for you folks outside the U.S., but the localization and manufacturing process takes a bit longer outside the U.S. where we will have JVC run 24/7 to get the units built. I guess the European manufacturers prefer to give their employees nights and weekends off. Go figure! "

Boy, was I wrong eh? Fools. Doom 3 gold

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

It was the only way to be sure...

heh

On a serious note-- is there a way to get the bots in single player to respond to voice commands? You can do it in vanilla UT2K4 single player, but so far I haven't been able to get that working in the Alien Swarm mod/tc.

. . . although it was a foregone conclusion by this point:

• w/ attachment, plays GBA titles; it would make sense for them to make an attachment which would allow it to play DS titles as well--I'd be willing to bet that this will happen
• user reviews seem to favor GC/GBA titles
• $99
• the realistic Zelda is looking good

Info here. (not goatse)

Dreamcast PC This Fall

Amazingly Warren Spector is doing the next Tomb Raider game, according to Shacknews

call of duty.

This is exactly what you are looking for.

The game has amazing graphics and sound, it's fun, and overall i would say the average skill level you will find while playing online is low, when compared to bf1942 or cs.

But you don't have to take my word for it:
rottentomatoes.com 96%
gamerankings.com 92%
gamespy pc game of the year 2003
shacknews pc game of the year 2003
ign best pc action, best sound, best multiplayer game of the year, 2003
etc

Not to mention, killing russians never gets old ;)

I am referring to transform and lighting. And yes, a GeForce 1 will run it. If BF1942 won't run on a GeForce, it's because of other reasons.

The GeForce 1 *does* have hardware T&L, and your link doesn't even say that it doesn't. Stating that the successor has it doesn't mean the original doesn't ;)

Check out this article for Doom3's requirements.

As for BF1942, you'll note that it uses DirectX. I'm not saying that DirectX needs more horsepower, only that the BF1942 renderer is massively different from the D3 renderer.

I don't really like FPSes very much anyway. I'm excited about Doom 3 pretty much for one reason: It's going to mark the first new music by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails in YEARS. And even better, said music is likely going to be-- you know, since it's a video game soundtrack-- ambient, which is something that Reznor is clearly very good at but has not done nearly enough of.

Yeah, okay, I'm a rabid fanboy. Whatever. Everyone's a fanboy for something. :)

And my story about this review of Mario 64 was rejected.

The nerve.

Alright, I'm going to try and break this down... there are actually 3 entirely seperate things people are talking about here: simulation frame rate, rendering frame rate, and monitor refresh rate.

'Hurtz' or 'hz' are a universal term that just means "X whatevers per second", so having 60FPS means your card is rendering at 60hz.

Now, in the post Carmack says nothing about monitor refresh rate, so that really isn't anything to worry about. Your monitor will still refresh at whatever you want it to refresh at, within it's capabilities. The other two things, the simulation rate and the rendering rate are both going to be locked at 60hz/FPS.

Let me try an analogy. Let's say you are in a room, and next door there is a chess match. The frequency at which the chess pieces are moved is the simulation or game rate. Now if you have someone taking a polaroid snapshot at a certain rate, that is the rendering rate, what everyone knows as FPS. If someone else is taking those photographs and bringing them to you, that is like your monitors refresh rate.

This isn't a perfect analogy, but it's good enough to illustrate the point: if the chess pieces only move once per minute, no matter how often someone takes a picture of it, it will always look the same.

60hz is a big leap for the games simulation rate though, if i recall correctly quake 3 ran at around 20 to 25 by default, but you would see inbetween stuff due to a trick called interpolation. The statement in the article seems to imply that doom 3 won't be doing any interpolation, which I think is the most interesting aspect of the comment.

It seems as if valve finally got some news to be happy about. This title should definately sell well and make alot of money for them. The screenshot looks pretty good, considering the engine for the game is quite dated by now (regardless of updates).

Now how about that linux client?

He said they speculate that it was done via a buffer overflow in Outlook's preview pane. .

At least a couple of years old if I remember correctly.

The only reason a person would rewrite code, is if the code lost was part of the networking subsystem(which would cause lotso cheats to be created).


Erhm... according to this article the code stolen was mostly related to the multiplayer aspect. Nice theory though :)

If you had paid attention to the text layout here you would have noticed that it was NOT Gabe who made the comment, but Steve Gibson was the one who made that comment.

Important: Just to be clear, it's ok to talk about the leak and the possible implications, however we'll nuke you and your family if you even make the most slight clever hint of where to download it or even screenshots of it.

companies can't rely on conventional security methods to protect themselves from serious employee theft.

If security is really important, #1 rule is to make sure you trust the people who have the important data. Someone did this intentionally, either someone at Valve, or one of their partners. That person should probably not have been hired in the first place.

Only, in reality it appears this was not done by an employee. Gabe from Valve has commented on the leak/theft here.

Apparently this was illicit in every way.

It seems the real solution here is to develop on UNIX and deploy on Windows, not these "watermark", or "encrypted codebase" sorts of plans. This is a classic 'weakest link' kinda scenario.

Valve might want to take a look at this lawsuit considering their potentially devestaing loss reported earlier today. According to Gabe Newell, from whom the source code of their latest was stolen, a hacker gained access to his machine "via a buffer overflow in Outlook's preview pane." Read his entire message here.

Shacknews

How long ago was "a few weeks"? Reznor has since bailed out from Doom3 in order to work on his own stuff. See this story.

From ShackNews:

A number of gaming sites out there are carrying word of an alleged Half-Life 2 delay according to some folks at Vivendi Universal who are publishing the title retail for Valve Software. However word doesnt seem to have traveled down to Valve according to an email pulled from the Steam forums. (We havent been able to directly confirm or deny with anyone at Valve yet) who might know a thing or two about that. timm of Shacknews comments fame already pointed out this Gabe Newell response:

First time I've heard about this.

See the whole post here.

From ShackNews:

A number of gaming sites out there are carrying word of an alleged Half-Life 2 delay according to some folks at Vivendi Universal who are publishing the title retail for Valve Software. However word doesnt seem to have traveled down to Valve according to an email pulled from the Steam forums. (We havent been able to directly confirm or deny with anyone at Valve yet) who might know a thing or two about that. timm of Shacknews comments fame already pointed out this Gabe Newell response:

First time I've heard about this.

See the whole post here.

I hope the new Terminator-franchise game will be as good as the classic Terminator: Future Shock (which was one of the few games that actually gave me the creeps while playing, btw).
Screenshots look promising. It's a good thing the movie is already out, so there's no pressure on the development team. This may help them accomplish most of what's in the press release, at least...
I guess only time will tell, but I actually set my hopes high on this one.

// fixxxer

A number of company founders have decided to quit Blizzard.

BTW, it's great to beat a game like Frozen Throne before it even hits the store shelves. God bless the internet.

A bunch of the important Blizzard folks are quitting. Unhappy with their corporate environment, or just time for a change?

And, anyone notice that in Warcraft III: Frozen Throne, in one of the arctic levels of the undead, if you kill a penguin you get a Ring of Superiority? Killing linux = superiority!?

It's working for me? The same images are here at Shacknews if anyone else is having trouble.

A 64 bit binary is likely to be slightly slower than a 32 bit binary, because pointers will consumer more memory bandwidth. You only get a speed benefit from 64 bit when you need long integers, or you need to access more than (roughly) 2 gigs of memory.

Also here, the full comment

When I was saying that 64bits is no big deal, you called me a troll. Don't believe the hype.

I'm just glad I downloaded it last night when Maarten announced it. I really like it!

Check it

I just saw this posted on The Shack...

AllOutGames.com has a review out.

They give a 78% to the PC version.

Not all that impressed by the G-Spy site. I think there are plenty of sites out there with content, so what makes the decision for me is the display. I love the slashdot interface, so until lately I've been reading Ain't It Cool GamesM, also... Shacknews, and IGN, and now this site.

G-Spy is terribly organized, reguardless of how many sites it might profile.

a few other good sites include: games.ars, gamegirl advance, games.design.art.culture, got game?, how they got game, ludology, or for regular gaming news, the friendlier ones are bluesnews, gamespy, games are fun and shacknews. where do you go?

here.

One game no director could screw up is Halo...O how sweet a halo movie would be.

Also a metriod movie is in the works...here

Source. Hellchick (I think she works for Activision?):

Some notes...

There is no catch to it being free. The final version of Enemy Territory will also be free and stand alone. Completely free, no strings attached. There's no spyware, there's no collection of email addresses, we do not ask you to do us any "favors" and "get rid of a problem" for us in the future. The multiplayer was a labor of love for Splash Damage, id, and Activision, and it would just be a shame for all of that to go to waste. So you're getting a free game. No one believes us when we tell them this, and I can understand them. But it's true. :)

Second, people seem to be having problems identifying team mates. There are two ways you can do this:

- When you mouse over a team mate, you'll see their rank, name, and their health bar. You won't see anything when you mouse over an enemy.
- The Axis and Allies have very different uniforms. The Allies have American tan utilities, while the Axis are wearing black coats or uniforms with red armbands (on all of them, I think).

Quick tips:

- There's a player guide that came with ET -- check it out for some info.
- The voiceovers will often tell you what objective your team needs to accomplish at that moment.
- The basic idea of the map is this: the Allies have to get the tank through the tunnel doors, then to the base (where it'll destroy the depot doors), then around the side of the base where it'll destroy the corner of the depot (allowing a second route in), and then finally dynamite the fuel dump. The Axis have to prevent this, and they have some command posts they can build and MGs in their base to help defend.
- Engineers can plant land mines. They are very fun. :)
- Covert Ops' can find planted land mines from the other team - use your binocs to scan.

There's a lot more but maybe that will help people.

http://www.shacknews.com/ja.zz?comments=26039

"[...]April 28th, which they say is the day that the Half-Life 2 NDA will be lifted"

Yes, my tongue IS firmly wedged in my cheek.