Wednesday, May 12, 2004

Half-Life 2 Video -- 4:45 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I snagged a DivX copy of the Half-Life 2 E3 trailer from Tiscali Games. That page is not in English, but you'll be able to figure it out. It looks pretty cool, especially the water effects. I also heard a report on Planet Half-Life that Half-Life 2 multiplayer will in fact be Counter-Strike 2. That'll be cool and probably sell many copies all on its own. Finally, the official Half-Life 2 site has been launched.

When I saw the beginning of the trailer, I thought to myself, "The part of Gordon Freeman will be played by Elvis Costello."

Update! Apparently no one's exactly sure how Counter-Strike will or will not be Half-Life 2 multiplayer. I guess we'll have to wait for official word from Valve.

Casper Lives? And Other E3 News. -- 3:49 pm CST, Update by J.t.Qbe

At E3 this week, Infinium showed a marginally operative model of its new "Phantom" console. It's white (get it--white Phantom? Casper?) and, um, has a swivel keyboard. Unfortunately they couldn't actually show it playing any games because, get this, they said that they couldn't get broadband at E3. Right. They've changed their target audience from "hardcore gamers" to "casual gamers", which apparently means "idiots". Next Great Thing or Scam-O-Rama? You make the call.

Meantime, in the real world Sony and Nintendo both showed WORKING models of their new handhelds, the PSP and DS respectively. I may be interested in the PSP when the price drops to something reasonable.

And continuing the Sony love-fest, Sony announced yesterday that they've dropped the price of the Playstation 2 to $149, both for the standalone console and for the console/network adapter/free game bundle. At that price I'd buy one...if I didn't already have one.

A.T. Hun comments: If I could convince my wife to let me get one without filing for divorce . . . Re: Phantom Would they have us believe that you need a broadband connection to play games at all?!? That hardly sounds casual-gamer-friendly. Anyone else think that thing looks like a George Foreman grill?

Pondering the Imponderable -- 2:52 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

OK, riddle me this, Batman. How can gas prices go from $1.54 in January to $2.00 in May? Somebody's making a truckload of money. And spare me the "in (name of some small swarthy country) gas goes for $179 per thimbleful." It's still too expensive. Maybe this will help eliminate the "tiny little woman with the massive SUV" epidemic that's been sweeping the country.

J.t.Qbe comments: No, I think that the "stupid drivers thinking they're invincible in SUVs" effect will end that epidemic. And good riddance. They should make SUVs drive on different roads.

Anyway, the "official explanation" for gas prices is that refineries shut down for a while to "prepare for the summer driving season", and so prices go up from March to May. I hope that they're right and that prices do go down again soon.

F.E.A.R. Preview -- 12:04 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Gamespy has a preview of F.E.A.R., the new shooter in the works from Monolith--the folks who brought you Shogo but not Shogo 2. I mention this only because everybody knows that F.E.A.R. really stands for the Federal Egg Answering Room, which is in fact a front for F.E.E.B.L.E., the Free world Extra-Earthly Bodies Location and Extermination Center. No word if you do battle with Mr. Neutron or not. For the confused, this will explain what I'm talking about.

Tuesday, May 11, 2004

Pondering the Imponderable -- 8:06 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Thoughts of the Ripper weapon from the original Unreal Tournament (aka UT99) convinced me to reinstall the game. I discovered that the OpenGL renderer supports the S3TC textures on the second CD. All I had to do was copy everything from the Textures directory on the second CD to my Textures directory where I installed the game. Obviously, it doesn't look as nice as UT2K4, but it's a handy upgrade. I also looked into the UTPG project which continues to develop the client and server on all platforms. Now to dig up those bonus packs. I need the Nali War Cow!

By the by, my HOWTO on installing UT in Linux is deprecated (thankfully). The Loki installer works great. It's a good thing too, because the old way was a PITA.

Spammer Wins a Round -- 6:59 pm CST, Update by The Master

According to news.com.net.org.biz Judge ties antispammer's hands, indicating that OptInRealBig, one of the biggest spam senders in the world, has won a round, convincing a judge that his business was being damaged by SpamCop, one of the biggest antispam operators. Now, SpamCop can no longer block his email garbage, or report his spamming activity to his ISPs. Nice work there, Judge. I hope he has your email address. And I hope it gets buried by a million offers of cheap mortgages.

UT2K4 Explosive Ammo Mutator -- 6:42 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

A few kind folks have made a mutator for Unreal Tournament 2004 that causes the ammo to explode if shot. It's a pretty cool effect that fans of the original UT99 bonus pack know and love. Now if someone could make a Ripper for UT2K4, everything would be right with the world.

DOOM3 This Summer -- 12:30 pm CST, Update by The Master

According to this press release posted on Linux Games, Activision has confirmed a summer release for DOOM 3. There will be a Linux and Win32 version of the game (no word on Mac support). The only downside: no coop multiplayer. I remember coop from the original Quake TCP version days. That was a RIOT to play.

A.T. Hun comments: Dare I say . . . w00t!

Past Two Days' News

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