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September 29, 2004
DOOM III 1.1 patch available
A few notable changes:
- Fixed duplicate player names shutting down a server during map changes
- Made Alt-Gr (right alt) bindable separately for European versions. For english versions, right alt and left alt both bind as "alt" so that US users who currently have something bound to right alt don't have their config affected by the update
- Added mouse wheel scrolling to server list
- Fixed issue when switching between flashlight and previous weapon after using the PDA
- Bumped damage up on rocket jumping in multiplayer
- Fixed frags going negative when over 64. Maxfrags now at 100
- Fixed backpack secret exploit on d3dm5 "Lights Out"
NOTE: After upgrading, your single player saves will restart you at the beginning of the map you were playing.
Here's a link to the torrent on Filerush.
Posted by jb at 10:08 AM
September 28, 2004
Your chance to be in The Movies
It's a Lionhead-filled day here at Gamewag. Their upcoming title, The Movies, will let you choose from a number of pre-defined studios to run. Lionhead/Activision have launched a contest, in which they will select 3 fan-submitted studio logos to ship with the game.
"The best entrants, as judged by The Movies team, will be used in the final game, guaranteeing the winner immortality and smugness for all time, but note that even if you fail to be one of the lucky winners, you can still add your logos to the game at home and on your personal Movies homepage. So get creating and when you've got something you like, send it to us!"
The contest deadline is October 20th, so fire up Illustrator and get cracking!
Posted by jb at 10:17 AM
More Rag Doll Kung Fu Info
If you've heard of Rag Doll Kung Fu (the fantastic side project of Mark Healey from Lionhead), you can learn more and track development progress on the Rag Doll Kung Fu homepage.
Mark has made a load of progress in the past few months, with more to come. There have been a few new videos, screens and development updates posted recently. Go take a look.
Posted by jb at 10:04 AM
September 24, 2004
The next version of ATI's Catalyst drivers will know what you're playing
With the release of the Catalyst 4.10 drivers, ATI has added a feature called Catalyst AI. Catalyst AI, among other things, enables application detection and optimization. This means that the drivers will handle games differently to try and optimize performance.
As an example, with the release of DOOM III some clever folks figured out a way to significantly improve performance on ATI cards by tweaking some shader settings. What ATI is saying, is that they will take the initiative to figure out these optimizations and do them automatically.
This raises some interesting questions, as the types of things they are doing could cause problems when a) new game patches are released, b) new mods are created for a game that might conflict with these optimizations, etc. Of course this feature can be disabled, but it does present some interesting questions.
nVidia got into some trouble the last time they tried to do something like this.
Posted by jb at 08:29 AM
Recursive gaming is confusing
With the recent release of The Sims 2, it's now possible for your virtual life to be comsumed with the same addiction your real life is. In The Sims 2, characters can now spend their day playing The Sims 1.
What would really do it for me is if your Sim could play The Sims 2, in which your Sim's Sim could play The Sims 2, in which your Sim's Sim's Sim... Ok, I think that's enough.
Via boingboing.
Posted by jb at 07:59 AM
September 15, 2004
Snoop Dogg to host VGA Awards
Oh God.
Read 
Posted by at 03:35 PM
Fall Game Previews
Via Gamespy, the lineup of the industry's best and brightest for fall have been announced. It's getting cold outside, and you weren't going to do that homework until tomorrow morning anyway, were you?
Half-Life 2 looks as though it will finally visit us. There are also some MMO's I'm interested in seeing. Yeah I said it, I'm interested in MMO's.
Posted by at 03:02 PM
September 09, 2004
MGS III Trailer Released
It's time for another installment of, "Solid Snake: Uber Cool Ninja Seal". Hideo Kojima is a master of his craft - breathing life into the dying genre of the linear, single player FPS. As with MGS II, we've got a film style trailer that serves to make the game intriguing, and also make us feel as though there's a huge backstory that we could understand more about if we played the previous games (this is not the case).
While I love that Snake sounds like Toshiro Mifune, I have the disadvantage that I don't speak Japanese. I don't know if it would make the trailer better or worse.
Posted by at 10:59 AM
September 08, 2004
JVM goodness
The August slowdown led us to take a little break here at gamewag. Well, I decided to put up a little post before heading out on vacation.
Via /. Some crazy folks at Bytonic software have a project called Jake 2, for which they have ported the Quake II engine to Java. Performance appears to be good, although not quite as fast as in Q2's native C.
Posted by jb at 03:10 PM | Comments (0)
