Monday, April 3, 2000

Xian .plan update -- 11:36 pm CST, Update by The Master

Christian "Xian" Antkow updated his .plan with kudos for the Q3Fortress team. From what I'm hearing around the 'net, Q3Fortress is looking very sweet. Maybe somebody around here will review it. I've still got to download it. This cold is keeping me down, tho.

A.T. Hun comments: I don't want to speak for him, but I believe that J is planning on doing just that. BTW, make sure to check out all of our reviews! (shameless plug)

Michigan State: National Champs -- 10:11 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Congratulations to the Michigan State Spartans men's basketball team for winning the NCAA championship, defeating the University of Florida!

Wraith on Game Exploits -- 4:41 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

As if his review of Force Commander wasn't enough (see below), Wraith also sent along an editorial entitled Waiter, There's a Bug in My Code! This thought-provoking editorial deals with what you should do when you are looking through a game's source and find an easily exploitable bug. This comes from first-hand experience when they found such a bug in the Shogo source code. What could have been a disaster for the Shogo community, turned into his excellent Bloodbath mod. It's a good read for mod-makers and online game players alike.

Judge Rules Against Microsoft -- 4:39 pm CST, Update by J.t.Qbe

Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson today released his conclusions of law that Microsoft violated antitrust law. Specifically, Jackson wrote that "Microsoft maintained its monopoly power by anticompetitive means and attempted to monopolize the Web browser market," which violates the Sherman Antitrust Act. Microsoft also violated the Sherman Act by "unlawfully tying its Web browser to its operating system."

Next comes the remedy phase of the trial, where Jackson decides what to do to Microsoft. Will he only restrict Microsoft, or will he break it up and sell it to Red Hat? (See Saturday's news for more on that). A.T. Hun comments: Note to Carl and the other humor-challenged folks: That's a joke.

Ok, today's news comes as no big surprise. The interesting news will come when Jackson decides what to do to Microsoft. . . and then they appeal. . .

Force Commander Review -- 4:35 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

What should I happen to get in my email box this morning but an message from Wraith (the maker of many mods for Shogo), offering to write a review of LucasArts' new real-time strategy game Force Commander. Quite naturally, I happily accepted. Here's a snip:

One thing that is immediately noticeable, however, is resource management. No more harvesting Crystals or whatever. You get Command points for capturing bunkers, winning battles, and the like. You use those Command points to purchase units. So . . . instead of a mad rush to capture the resources, the focus is on the gameplay. That was one of the major turn-offs for me with RTS games; I got sick of StarCraft fast, simply because I realized that I was spending most of the time farming, not killing. If I wanted a "farming" game, I'd buy something like "HogCraft: In Search Of Farmer Jones".

You can read his excellent review here. You can find this and all our reviews on our brand-spanking new reviews page! Thanks again to Wraith for a very sweet review.

Kenn Hoekstra Interview -- 1:41 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The Mushroom's "Legit" section (check out the rest of their site to find out why they call it that) has an interview with Raven's Kenn Hoekstra. Questions cover Heretic II, Soldier of Fortune, and even a little about Kenn himself. My favorite is this one:

16. If you couldn't work in the game industry, what would you be doing?

I'd be doing what all English majors do... "Do you want fries with that, sir?"

Progress Report on Linux Port of Shogo -- 11:45 am CST, Update by J.t.Qbe

Step right up, read all about it. . . Ok, so there probably isn't much new in it, but Hyperion has issued a progress report on their work. Read it here.

Daikatana Non-News -- 10:25 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Still no news on Daikatana :) Of course, there is this pot shot taken on User Friendly this morning.

Speaking of Daikatana, my man Ryan "Joltox" Greene emailed me with another hypothesis on why Noel Stephens may have had his .plan pulled out from under him.

Regarding Noel's plan, there is a pretty big protest going on against Thailand based on its Government pretty much allowing kiddie sex tours to go on there . . . so a search for Don't! Buy! Thai! (yes, I meant to do that) and you should find out more info if you are interested. Or you can just go to their site, here: http://www.geocities.com/~dbtadmin/

The point? Eidos/Ion may have caught a bit of flak based on Noel saying he wanted to go there. The people who are into the boycott are pretty passionate. Based on his reaction to the people that emailed him (I don't care what is going on there, I'm going anyway, and don't bother me about this in the future) he may have really ticked some folks off. I know his reaction ticked me off.

Dunno if that had anything to do with it or not. I was previously unaware of such problems in Thailand. Although why anyone would pick Thailand as a vacation destination is beyond me.

Sunday, April 2, 2000

Q1DM4 for UT -- 8:54 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Someone has made a conversion of the classic Quake 1 deathmatch map (and a personal favorite of The Master and me), Q1DM4 "The Bad Place," for Unreal Tournament. I downloaded it and checked it out. It is VERY faithful to the original, although the color scheme is now brown instead of blue. Nonetheless, it's top-notch stuff for UT fans who still smile when they think about Q1 deathmatch. You can check out Nali City's review and then download it!

Star Dudes -- 3:40 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

If you are a Star Wars fan, you'll want to see this. It's called Star Dudes on TheForce.Net. You'll need Flash 4 to view it. It's well worth the couple minutes of download time.

New Content on The Haus -- 3:10 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Since it is such a slow news day, let me direct you to some of the most recent new content here on The Haus, in case you missed it the first time around.

• J sent in an excellent review of the Meatpak map pack for Quake III Arena.
• I conducted an interview with Hyperion Software's Thomas Frieden about their forthcoming port of Shogo to Linux
• J.t.Qbe reviewed Freeciv, a free version of Civilization II for Unix.

Happy April Fools Day! -- 3:05 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

For the benefit of our less astute readers (Hi Carl!), all of yesterday's news items were fake, with the exception of the BitBoys and Q3Fortress blurbs. Ya know, I heard they took gullible out of the dictionary too!

Actually, today is so slow for news, I'm about ready to start making up some more headlines!

Past Two Days' News

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