I for one have never been into the whole MMORGP game concept as it seemed to me to be mostly an extention of the pen-and-paper role playing games. You had to really get into character and imagine a personality for yourself to enjoy it while putting up with the seemingly sparse artwork (at least in comparison to most other modern games), the constant technical problems, people being dorks online, etc. It seemed really offputting and I think really detracted from what the experience was supposed to be like. It's easy to see that when people are paying for an experience such as this where the whole suspension of disbelief thing is so important having all of these problems is not really conductive to keeping customers. /rant

But this new Warcraft game seems to have a lot of raw potential. Blizzard has a history of making polished games with easy to use interfaces that make it easy for newcomers to get into the game. The artwork that they've released in tasty-looking screenshots and a movie trailer (btw, you need the divx codec for this one) show off a really lush and believable world with characters that look very detailed and seem true to the series. It'll probably be another couple years before the game is released but already it's looking like if they pull it off right it'll give the other MMORGP games a real run for their money!

Well, the new Black and White expansion pack Creature Isle has just been announced. And get this, the object of the game is to get your creature to have sex with a female creature! (no, this is not yet another Sims expansion pack, although Madcat's attempts to induce lesbion sex in the original Sims game now appears to be setting a tread). Yep, the focus is on good ol' fashioned breeding in this one. Apparently your creature will even get a "tyke" to help him prove that he is a good parent. Go here to find how more about how your creature will be "gettin' it on".

In a bit of a twist, it looks like you can blame violence for all of those video games! Thank Steve over from Shacknews for this one. In other news I'm still working on that World Domination merit badge.

The Croteam website has been updated with word that they're working on a brand new game set in the Serious Sam universe. Admir Elezovic, a 3D artist over at Croteam provides a little bit of info on the new game:

We can announce work on new game from Serious Sam universe. Right after finishing work on Serious Sam: The First Encounter, we started work on new game and upgrades to our Serious Engine. What we can promise in new game is: no more Egypt, new monsters, new weapons, cool effects, Serious playability tweaked to fit more players and still attract our established fan base. Along game we are working on upgrading our Engine and Tools with some new features, bug fixes and more elegant solutions for developers and modders.
On Tools note, one of big thing we are working on is Skeletal animation system for models (SKA). While allowing same numbers of monsters on screen without high impact on performance it will allow more versatile and smoother animations (with even higher polygon count) in game. Our model format will be changed (from expirience we got from our users and mod comunity) to more flexibile and easier to create format. When SKA is ready we will post full feature list with examples, help and tutorials.

Stay tuned for next instalement, when we will show more info and some images from new game.

Have a good weekend,

Admir Elezovic

P.S. there wont be Egypt levels in this game.

Heh, looks like even they are getting sick of the Egypt thing.

Whoa, don't look now but Sega's bringing back the Gamegear games on PDAs! It seems as though they're working on an emulator or some type of software that runs modified Gamegear games on Windows PDAs! Sweeet! Check this out over here.

Speaking of Sega, and as Tycho over at Penny Arcade points out, ever wanted to run NetBSD on your Dreamcast? Now you can!

Shhh..... don't tell Marauder that Duke Nukem Forever has been delayed yet again. After all, you really don't want to see a grown man cry. It's not a pretty sight. FGN Online reports that according to Take Two's conference call the game's been delayed and won't make it out in 2001. But on the bright side supposably Xbox and Gamecube versions of the game are now also in the works.

Speaking of the Xbox they sure have some really nice new game footage. The ones the I'm drooling over in particular are Jet Set Radio Future and Dead or Alive 3. Thanks to IGN for all this lovely eyecandy footage. For yet more amazing footage of upcoming xbox titles check out the 100 Meg (!) movie over on this Japanese site. Sweeeeet!

Is it just me or does the Japanese version of the Xbox controller look nicer than the North American version?

This damn bunny game is driving me nuts! Addictive though...

Dynamix has released new maps for Tribes 2! Now I hear you saying to yourself "wtf! I thought that Dynamix is dead! " and of course you are correct. However, the ex-Tribes 2 dev team has decided out of the goodness of their hearts to release six new maps that they had been working on prior to getting the axe. Thanks Dev team! Amazing maps! Tribes2maps.com has them available over here.

Here's a screenshot of one of the new maps just to get your juices flowing.

Dave Georgeson, former producer of Tribes 2 posted a bit on the Tribalwar forums regarding these new maps. Here's some of what he had to say:

I don't post much, but here's a few items for you to consider when checking out the maps:

a) These weren't supposed to have been released until we had a huge graphics upgrade patch ready around October 15th.

b) They have barely been playtested. They were in a state where we liked them visually and had played them several times. Some maps have had a couple of revisions. They were still very much works-in-progress. Some of them (Trident and Pantheon in particular) were close to finished.

c) We (the Dev Team) really had hoped to make them fantastic in the coming months, but since we won't have that chance, we wanted you to have them anyway. They're unofficial and that's why they're not offered on a Sierra website. Basically, they're yours to play with as you will.

Just wanted you to know. Enjoy them. The team presents them as a free gift with the permission of Sierra.

There were a variety of play styles in the new maps we were designing. The ones we released now were just the ones that were closest to completion. The others were in various still-broken states and couldn't be released.

And you thought that you had a retro lookin' PC! Check out this guy's setup.

Uh oh. Someone in Microsoft's marketing team is gonna be in hot water about this one. Oops...

Sweet sweet anime candy! The makers of Ghost in the Shell have a new movie that's being released today. Blood: The last vampire can be streamed from their site today only, and man.. Nice anime action baby. Check it out here.

Got a review posted for Mechcommander2. Damn. Good game, go take a boo.

Been playing a little Red Faction lately, trying the demo up. It's just plain amazing how big a hole you can dig in the ground with that game. Wall in your way? Hell, just blow through it. Very cool. Nice glass effects as well. Here's few screenies from the demo level that comes with the demo.

The game actually looks and plays alot like Half Life so far. That's not a bad thing, consdering what a killer game Half Life was.. and still is for that matter. Take a special game to have a huge following 3 years after it's released. We'll see shortly if Red Faction can measure up.... 'Cause thems some pretty big boots to fill.

Chisel sent me over a few cool links a coupla days ago. First off is the offical "Lift the Kursk" site. Interesting, and they have a 3D model you can poke around with as well. Check it out. The second is this. Damn. That's just plain gorgeous.

Oh yeah, and WindowsXP, thus far, isn't impressing me. It's slow and ugly.

Hey! Get into the forums. :) Start posting damn you all!

More shortly

Does anyone else remember the BitBoys these days? They were the people that, for the last few years have been making extravagent claims about their upcoming video accelerator hardware, (It's About Bandwidth, Baby!) without ever providing the world with any actual hardware, or anything else to prove their boasting...... Sent them an email a few weeks ago asking them what was going on.. No answer.. And their last news update on the site is from October of 2000.... Hmmmmmmm....

Ever wonder what all those endorsments on game boxes really mean? Wonder no longer. :) Little Gamers has the translations all handled. I'd laugh, but it's all true. All of it.

More computer mods, including a toolbox converted into a computer. I dunno, I don't think any of these guys can touch Zappy.

Running an NT machine? Just found a guide for amouring that biznatch from the ground up. Take a read.

Are you one of those people who likes to get into fights on the internet? Argue 'till you're blue in the keyboard? This is for you. Nol gets credit on this one. Nol also brings us "Tales for the l33t" a very long tho rather entertaining flash movie. Whahah. :) Romeo and Juliet will never be the same.

Rune just sent me this. Oh baby. I do so love being a bastard in Tribes..... And here's even more ways to do just that. :) Thanks man... I.. I...I love you...

Marauder out.

Amd has just kicked things up a notch with the release of their new 1ghz Duron, featuring the new Morgan Core, looks like this thing could do some real damage in the value processor market, heres a little tidbit on the features of the new cpu.

For 1GHz, the processor voltage is 1.75V, max power is 46.1W, and typical power is 41.2W, and max ICC is 26.3A. Transistor count for Morgan is 25.18 M vs. 25 M for Spitfire Die. Morgan's die size is 106 mm^2. The Morgan core now has 3DNow! Professional which includes 52 new instructions (same as with Athlon 4 and Athlon MP). Also included with the Morgan core is data pre-fetch (same as employed with Athlon 4 and Athlon MP).

Nvidia has been a busy bee lately, with the release of the Geforce 3 only a short while ago, they are ready to release the Geforce 3mx on Friday, August 24th and just 3 days after that they will be pumping out the Geforce 3 Pro/Ultra, seems as though they might trying to steal some of the show from the upcoming release of the Radeon 2 from ATI, if Nvidia gets their way this could become a very one sided battle, resulting in a complete Nvidia takeover.

interested in setting up a linux firewall/router but not sure now? I know I have but then I just got really lazy and decided to purchase a hardware firewall, but those of you who are willing to stick it out and give it a try, take a look at this article from vipers lair, I'v just been skimming through and it seems like a fairly simple tutorial to follow through.

Ok case modders, I just found one of the coolest things that you can possible do with a fan, want spinning led's on your case fans? even your cpu fan, check out this home made mod of a guy with a pretty unique and interesting idea.

HAHA, well at first when I saw this page it was pretty damn funny because I haven't done anything like this before but in a sorta way its pretty painful to look at in most cases. Anyways check it out and form your own opinions.

Well we've got some initial pics from the new and upcoming nforce motherboard from Nvidia, with such manufacturer names as ASUS and MSI already on the list. I'v already heard some speculation that this board will probably end up being over $300 CAN so it might be a bit much for your general consumer, but then again Nvidia does seem to be all about high prices the last few years.

well thats it kiddies more news later if I find any, or send some in and we'll get it posted ASAP.

A faction has begun to draw near, A red faction, and its coming straight for you. Actually Riva Station has posted a demo for this new feature packed action packed first person shooter. They've also got a load of new screenshots for your eyes to oogle at. So grab the demo and join the faction.

But thats not all we also get to take at the long overdue demo of AVP2, considering how good the original version was it will be hard for them to top it, go grab the demo and take a gander a few pics to see what you are in store for you.

ATI has released their new TV USB ADAPTER, which by the looks of this reader has seemed to crash and burn and in horrifying accident (well not really but I thought it sounded interesting) other then the fancy bright red ati color it looks like nothing special, actually looks remarkebly like the hauppage win tv usb adapter. Check below for a comparison.

Well I've gone and done it!! No I didn't blow up my computer or wreck any insanely expensive parts, if you remember my post on the glowing keyboard (check left) I finally recieved my glowire and decided to attempt at copying the idea. Take a look below, looks pretty damn spiffy ;) hehe...

More news just a little later on... but before you go check out my quick review/opinion of the Altec Lansing ATP3's here.

Hey everyone sorry for the no show in such a long time, though I have been working a on a few reviews now, one for my Antec SX1030 "Enclosure" as they call it on the antec site. Check out this damn fine creation in all its glory here.

Seems though a trend has caught on, turning video games into movies, Duke Nukem which has been an untalked about topic for such a long time because of the DNF delay's, looks to be the next to hit the big screens, with such names as Ahnold Shwartzaniger (hehe) and Dolf Lundgren who could be playing Duke. Not really sure how this one's gonna turn out, though they did do a good job with Tomb Raider and Final Fantasy.

Been running Windows XP RC2 for the last couple of days, it looks to be a damn good operating system, though Microsoft has abandon Netbeui protocol so your all stuck using Tcp/ip for your networks, which isn't so bad, considering tcp/ip is a faster protocol, though a version of netbeui has been included with the OS it will not be supported. So taking that into matter, I'v had a bugger of a time networking my two pc's together, going to have to purchase a router now because of my ip's are on different subnet's so they don't see each other using tcp/ip. Enough with the ranting on to the news.

A new page in fashion has been opened by this guy, "Wearable Pc's" not sure what accessories will work with these though :) better talk with the girls on some fashion tips.

And here's one just for Marauder seems to be his favorite saying in the last year or so :).

And Rambus will bend over once more and take it up the rear, yes ladies and gentlemen its another law suit against them, how the heck is this company still around? Apparently in short they were caught spreading rumors about sdram and about the fact that they think they own they patents to it, which inadvertantley caused the stock to rise $450, can we all say BREE-X?

Woot!!! in Marauder's words, here is a cool little idea I'll be trying when I recieve my shipment of this cool way to light your computer products, quite expensive though, cost me $60 for 10 feet of this stuff and a 12volt capacitor. You can purchase this stuff here at Glowire.

More to come later kiddies, just gotta finish my review of the Altec Lansing ATP3's.

Remeber everyone. Evil is good. Art of Evil is even better. The official home of the Supreme Overlord on the web is at last up. Long live The Overlord.

Well, looks like Dynamix may be fux0red. Apparently the staff was sent home at lunch, and told to come back on Monday to see what's going to happen. Rune was so mad last night on Roger Wilco he could hardly even speak clearly. Apparently the company that owns Sierra ordered them to downsize. So they downsized Dynamix. Too bad really. ("Dynamix never saw it coming from Sierra!")

As amusing as it is to hear Rune spluttering (Sorry bud, but it is funny. :) I hope that Sierra will continue development on Tribes 2 in their other development houses. Would be interesting to know just who knew about this stuff a few days ago, considering that Qix and a few other guys were posting on the Tribal War forums about upcoming patches and features. And a beta patch was just released (That makes the gameplay a little more Tribes 1 from the sounds of it.)

Ahhh well. It'll be interesting to see how everything turns out. Be a shame to see the end of a long running development house. Almost as sad as seeing Looking Glass die. I remember playing A10 Tank Killer and Red Baron, many moons ago.

Thanks to Nolman (of 5150 fame. :) for the heads up. As he put it "It's the saddest day ever." Read more about the whole sorid tale here and here.

Ever wonder what real life would look like if we were all trapped in the Sims? Wonder no further, check this guy's stuff out. :) Martin Luther Sim! Oh, and go here just for giggles. How about if everyone who made video games used a pencil rather than rendering?

Marauder out.

For all of you techies out there, Steve Gibson of GRC.com explains what exactly the new Code Red II worm does.

Pepsi's shipping off a bunch of free soda to the guys who found the original Code Red virus and named it after their favorite Mountain Dew softdrink.

Digital Extremes, the co-developers of Unreal and UT have have slapped up a bit of an development update to Unreal Championship. While this game is so for being developed exclusively for the x-box it's also using a version of the Unreal Warfare engine, Epic's working title for their next unannounced game. So this gives us a bit of a glimpse of things to come.

Rumour says that Unreal Warfare itself will be something of a Unreal Tournament but on a much greater scale (picture something like Tribes 2 as the closest comparison). What Epic has shown us with the large-scale terrain support would seem to support this rumour.

Source Magazine has posted a preview of the Nvidia Nforce chipset. With technologies such as AMD's Hypertransport, the integrated Geforce 2 MX running at AGP 6x, the crossbar memory controller, and the advanced sound chip (with Dolby Digital encoding and Aureal-like 3D sound) this baby is something that I'm really looking forward to seeing in action.

According to this report over on CBS marketwatch Intel is getting set to drop prices big time! Could this be the start of a chip pricewar? Intel is apparently trying to boost their marketshare and get more people to use their Pentium 4 chips by slashing the prices on them. CNBC is also reporting a similar "price bomb".

It'll be interesting to see how AMD reacts to this. Especially considering that they have the Athlon 4 on the grill and it's due to be released soon.

It's also interesting to note that Intel's Tualatin version of the Pentium 3 is capable of soundly trouncing the Pentium 4 at the same clockspeeds. Too bad that it requires a new motherboard (an i815 chipset with a B stepping) and Intel's marketing it as a server-only solution. Check out the details on it over at Anandtech.

The Carmack (aka John Carmack from id software) recently posted a couple of times on Slashdot discussing how he expects Nvidia's GeForce 3 and ATI's forthcoming new card to perform with the Doom 3 engine. Here's the whole of the first post just to get ya in the mood.

The standard lighting model in DOOM, with all features enabled, but no custom shaders, takes five passes on a GF1/2 or Radeon, either two or three passes on a GF3, and should be possible in a clear + single pass on ATI's new part.

It is still unclear how the total performance picture will look.

Lots of pixels are still rendered with no textures at all (stencil shadows), or only a single texture (blended effects), so the pass advantage will only show up on some subset of all the drawing.

If ATI doesn't do as good of a job with the memory interface, or doesn't get the clock rate up as high as NVidia, they will still lose.

The pixel operations are a step more flexible than Nvidia's current options, but it is still clearly not where things are going to be going soon in terms of generality.

Developers are just going to need to sweat out the diversity or go for a least common denominator for the next couple years.

I fully expect the next generation engine after the current DOOM engine will be targeted at the properly general purpose graphics processors that I have been pushing towards over the last several years.

Hardware vendors are sort of reticent to give up being able to "out feature" the opposition, but the arguments for the final flexibility steps are too strong to ignore.

John Carmack

Check out his follow-up post here.

This just in: The official title for the next Star Wars movie is Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones . While it does suggest that the next Star Wars movie is based upon the Clone Wars that have been hinted about and speculated upon for ages now you'd think that the Lucas Marketing Machine would have come up with something a little more snappy than "Attack of the clones". Despite the fact that it sounds likes a 1950s cheesy Sci-fi movie title I'm sure that it will kick mucho ass, especially if Jar-Jar meets an grisly and untimely end.

For more news, speculation, and gossip be sure to check out the biggest Star Wars fan site around theforce.net.

If you're into beyind-the-scenes stuff check out the funky "Making of Episode II" spots that they have up on the official site. They show a few brief bits of scenes and technology going into the upcoming movie.

Mechcommander2
Operation FP
Boomslang
WWII Online
ACE122C Media PortGlobalwin

UBER LAN Case Mods Part I