Sunday, July 30, 2000

FAKK Done? -- 8:49 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Ritual's Levelord put down his haunted bong (caution: naughty word alert :) ) long enough to update his .plan which, in a not-so-subtle way, announced that Heavy Metal: FAKK2 is done.

...okay, Mr and Mrs Smartey Pants Weeb Mastors and Whilley Intarneet Reportors, ...quote THIS! ...I'm looking forward to NOT setting my three alarms clocks tonight, ...and tomorrow going to the grocery store, cleaning my still-new-to-me house, renting a shitload of videos, cracking one of my bottles of real Russian (daspidanya, comrades!) vodka, and filling as many bowls as possible. For all you blind bats, ...here's a wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

Even a bonus Monty Python allusion thrown in for good measure. Such a deal!

Graeme Devine Interview -- 4:38 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

id's Graeme Devine was interviewed by The Corporation at MacWorld. You can view part one of the interview here and part two here. Here's a passage I found interesting from part one, regarding a new twist to be introduced in Quake III Team Arena:

You'll be able to define your own clan, your own clan colors. When you play on a map, your base will have your clan colors, your clan icon. All the players on your team will have that icon on them, so that you'll be able to easily recognize who they are, whether you're playing home or away, red or blue. We've made some pretty big changes.

Thanks Blue.

Some screenshots from Anox -- 1:34 pm CST, Update by The Master

Shugashack pulled down the new Anacronox snapshot pack that Eidos put up on their FTP, and it has some awesome new shots in it. Check the shack article to take a peek. That bridge shot is WAY cool.

Saturday, July 29, 2000

RA:UT 1.40 Released -- 4:00 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Believe it or not, a new more stable build of Rocket Arena for Unreal Tournament has been released! Here's a list of changes:

Four new incredible maps for a total of ten maps.

A humongous amount of bug fixes that covers every bug that I know of. Please let me know of any that you find.

The RA:UT menu. It's a nifty new menu called "RA:UT" (of all things :) that appears next to the Mod menu, and appears ONLY when you're playing on a RA:UT server (so as not to bother you at other times)

New options. Instagib servers, bouncier rockets, spectators can be prevented from communicating to players.

Improved botplay. Although they still don't measure up to humans, they are better than they were before. If you think the bots suck and are no challenge to you, even on Godlike, then I suggest you go online and play it like it was originally intended to be played. :)

A new gametype: "Rocket Arena: Regular Maps". This allows you to play any map (only small DM and CTF maps are recommended) with the RocketArena style. Everyone will wait in one line to have a chance to play on the big map. No arenas are available here.

If you're a person that likes making voicepacks, you can make custom voicepacks for the RA:UT announcer voices. Best of all, it's clientside, and the server never needs to know about it.

A ton of stuff that I've forgotten because it's been so long since I implemented it. :)

Here are the links to download the various versions of the mod:

• RocketArena: UT 1.40 Full (14.8 MB)
• RocketArena: UT 1.40 Full, no umod (14.8 MB)
• RocketArena: UT 1.40 Patch from 1.25 (9.0 MB)
• RocketArena: UT 1.40 Patch from 1.25, no umod (9.0 MB)

Sounds like great news to me! I was looking for an excuse to dust off my Unreal Tournament CD. Thanks Blue!

A.T.'s Top Four -- 1:01 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Since it's a slow news day, I thought I'd post my Top Four Games That I'd Buy Right Now If I Had Money (which I don't, so it's kind of moot, but still nice to think about). All of this is based on demos I've downloaded and played:

#4--KISS Psycho Circus: The Nightmare Child

When I first was told about this game, I thought it was the dumbest concept I had ever heard. Now that I've played the demo, I'd like to play the full version. Guess you can't judge a game by its title, eh?

#3--Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force

I'm not a Trekkie, so I figured I'd have no use for this game. The Borg level in the demo convinced me that this is a worthwhile game even if you don't follow the show.

#2--MDK2

This silly but visually impressive game is a nice change of pace from my usual diet of first-person shooters. The humor and the (sometimes wacky) puzzle solving got me hooked.

#1--Soldier of Fortune

Yep, this one's a little older. I liked it so much that I actually put time in trying to figure out why the patch kept crashing my system. It's one of the few demos I've played all the way through several times. The violence can be a bit much for me at times, but that can be adjusted.

Three games whose demos convinced me NOT to get the games are Daikatana, Starlancer, and Deus Ex, but all for different reasons. Daikatana was crossed off my list for obvious reasons that don't need to be repeated. Starlancer seemed like the old Wing Commander "fly to the waypoint, blow everything up, repeat" formula a bit too much. Deus Ex seems like a GREAT game, but my computer is going to need a serious upgrade before I have enough horsepower to run it. My poor TNT cries and begs for mercy every time I try to play it.

The Master comments: What I don't understand is WHY your machine suffers so running Deus Ex. You have about 10% more machine than I do, with the same graphics chipset, and mine runs Deus pretty well. I just wish my keyboard wouldn't die every 10 minutes and force me to unplug/replug it. Oh, and the occasional system freeze while playing kinda sucks too. Otherwise Deus has been WELL WORTH my $40. :-)

A.T. Hun comments: My only guess is that it has something to do with AGP. It may be trying to use AGP on my system and the TNT doesn't do it well. One of these days I'll figure out how to disable AGP and try it again.

Pondering the Imponderable -- 9:41 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Looks like today has the makings of a slow news day. Sooo . . . in non-gaming-related news, I've been trying to learn to play the guitar as I mentioned on Tuesday. I'm pretty impressed with the wealth of information on the Internet for lessons, guitar specs and reviews, etc. I even tried playing my friend's electric through my SoundBlaster Live! Value. It gives pretty decent chorus, reverb, and distortion effects. I can't get the flanger or auto-wah to work very well. All in all, it really isn't a substitute for some good pedals, but it works pretty nicely for us poor folks.

Oh, and I taught myself my first song: Always Look on the Bright Side of Life by Eric Idle from the movie The Life of Brian. :)

Past Two Days' News

The Haus is powered by:

All original information on this website is copyright © TheHaus.Net, 1999-2005. The use of original images, text, and/or code from this website without expressed written consent is prohibited. The authors of this site cannot be held responsible for any damage, real or imagined, which comes from the use of information presented on this site. All trademarks used are the properties of their respective owners. This site is not to be used as a floatation device (but if you try, I want a video tape of it).