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GAME.NET Weekly Community Newsletter 12th September 2003
Fully clickable version here - http://play.game.net/newsletters/12thSeptember.htm
GAME.NET News
It's only taken two years but at last support for Half-Life's popular Admin Mod has been introduced on our Bookables & Clan Servers, the de-facto mod for Half-Life server administration giving you enhanced control on your booking / server and making Half-Life playing on our services a much more enjoyable experience for all. We are running AdminMod v2.50.56a and will be introducing a variety of new plug-ins for the mod during the coming weeks, one already up and running is Unstuck Pro MM v1.00 for the popular Half-Life mod Natural Selection, this handy plug-in allowing you to unstick yourself should you suffer that annoying bug which "features" in NS. As if that wasn't enough we've also increase the number of players who can fit on our NS Clan Servers to 24 on our Type D servers. If you need any help with AdminMod you can find the online documentation here, if that doesn't answer your query then feel free to send in a support form.
The other major service news this week is that we have introduced support for the latest BattleField 1942 Expansion Pack - "Secret Weapons of WWII". This fantastic add-on gives you experimental vehicles, such as the Jet-pack and Guided Missiles to play with, eight new battlefields, new hand-held weapons and various objective based missions to occupy your time, it has been added to our Bookables under the BattleField 1942 servers and similarly appears on our Type D Clan Servers with support for 28 players.
If you use our forums at all you will be pleased to hear we have introduced a new Code of Conduct that all forum users have to abide by, this is aimed at ensuring our forums remain a friendly place to idle and express your point of view, the early response has been positive with most regulars welcoming its introduction. On the other hand If you haven't yet signed up for our forums then what are you waiting for? Login to GAME.NET now and select Forums from the account maintenance page!
Service updates this week are as follows, all the necessary downloads are linked below in the Files & Patches section:
RavenShield patched to v1.41.
Enemy Territory patches to v1.02.
Half-Life Natural Selection 2.01d sever-side beta patch installed.
BattleField 1942 mod Galactic Conquest updated to v0.1c.
Jedi Knight 2 server-side mod ForceMod 2 added.
What's On
Sunday 14th September 2003
Operation Flashpoint @ 17:00
Counter-Strike @ 20:00
Monday 15th September 2003
Elite Force II @ 19:00
Half-Life: Team Fortress Classic @ 21:00
Tuesday 16th September 2003
Battlefield 1942 @ 20:30
New Event >>> Vietcong @ 21:00 <<< New Event
Wednesday 17th September 2003
Medal of Honor @ 19:00
Natural Selection @ 19:00
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory @ 20:00
Battlefield 1942: Desert Combat @ 21:00
Thursday 18th September 2003
Half-Life: Day of Defeat @ 20:30
Half Life: Team Fortress Classic (TFC) @ 21:00
Friday 19th September 2003
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory @ 13:00
Files and Patches
Trailers
Ye olden times seem to be the theme for a number of the trailers unveiled this week, including two which focus on the virtuous job of being a Knight. It is however fair to say that the games in question - Knights of the Temple and Knight Shift (also called Once Upon A Knight) - take a very different approach to the genre, the former being a very serious and silky smooth 3rd-person action adventure offering that boast some impressive fighting dynamics if the 34 MB trailer is anything to go by, the other have a more comedic feel, the 14 MB trailer suggesting it is a mix of a variety of genres - RTS, RPG and the oft-neglected cow-abusing one.
If there was such as a thing as a "working-class" hero in the times of old then Conan would have been that man, the films not only having helped to established big ole Arnie as the failed politician he is shortly to become but also being the basis for a forthcoming game. This 3rd-person action adventure isn't that well promoted in the 17 MB trailer, to me it looks like a decent enough game but the camera angles appear to be a bit confusing and reminiscent of some early Tomb-Raider style adventures when the camera hindered you from making jumps or fighting with enemies, judge for yourself by clicking the link. Also looking a bit clunky is the trailer for The Bloody Magic, at 97 MB (get it here) you would expect something special for your bandwidth but instead you get a very cluttered looking RPG that doesn't do much to convince me to part with my money.
Arguably one of the most visually stunning trailers I've seen in recent times belongs to Desert Rats v Afrika Korps, this is an RTS game set in World War 2 and to me looks like a Command & Conquer-ish type deal, only better. You can judge for yourself by downloading the 22 MB trailer by clicking here, another interesting RTS game that will arrive shortly will definitely appeal to those geeks out there amongst you with Captain Scarlet: Retaliation giving you the chance to control a number of Spectrum agents as you battle the nefarious Mysterons. This looks more like a Commandos style game than a C&C one and a small teaser trailer has been released, you can grab it here if you fancy listening to the famous Captain Scarlet intro theme (dun dun dun de dun dun dun). Also worth a look is the 26 MB trailer for Kill Switch, this Splinter-Cell style combat game looks very polished and is one you console owners should certainly be looking to get your hands on, grab the trailer here to take a peek.
Even though the first game in the series has had a mixed reception (I think a review I read gave it less than 30%) a sequel for the TV-series-turned-game Law & Order is in the works. I have to admit to being a fan of the TV series, even though here in the UK we are about 5 years behind the US episodes, however if you haven't heard of the series it can best be summed up as a show which follows fictional cases from the reporting of the crime to the conclusion of the trial. With it being set in New York it has a predictably gritty edge, you can have a look at whether or not Law & Order 2 captures that by downloading either the 15 MB trailer (click here) or the 33 MB Intro sequence (click here).
Another couple of sequels to round-off this section with a typically "ra-ra-America" trailer for Americas Army 2.0 being released, the 25 MB trailer (get it here) featuring in-game footage and a suitable dose of propaganda it gives you a taste of what to expect in the game. A slightly less controversial game is Lords of the Realm III, a small trailer for which has been unveiled and can be downloaded here, it basically shows off some in-game footage from this reasonable-looking RTS title.
Playable Demos
If you thought turn-based RPG games were a thing of the past in this day of 3l33t teknology then think again as the first demo to mention this week is for Devil Whiskey, a party-based game where you control a band of adventurers in a title that will remind those veteran gamers amongst you of classic games like Eye of the Beholder. If this sounds like the sort of thing you would be interested in you can grab the 79 MB demo here, look out for a patch over the weekend to correct a few minor bugs. Moving on to slightly more modern-looking adventures and the multiplayer demo for futuristic FPS game Chaser has been updated to v1.49, equivalent to the latest version of the full game. It's nice to see a developer taking this kind of care and attention a fairly long time after the game was released in the UK, that said from what I have heard about the game it might be a little late to cement its place in the online FPS community.
The bulk of the demos this week happen to be for sequels or franchises, the main one I guess being for Jedi Academy (aka Jedi Knight 3) which was released last Saturday. If you haven't yet had the chance to download the 186 MB demo then I would recommend you do so by clicking here, it offers two single-player missions from the full game and should help you to make up your mind with regards to whether or not you will be purchasing the game on its release next Friday. A week after Jedi Academy hits the stores we have the next expansion pack for Medal of Honor, subtitled Breakthrough a 203 MB 2-level multiplayer demo has been released in an effort to ramp up the publicity that rival game Call of Duty stole last week with its own demo. Personally I'm a big fan of the Medal of Honor series and will probably buy both, I haven't yet tried the demo but I've heard good things and you can see for yourself by downloading it h ere, look out for news next week about GAME.NET server support for it.
Instead of numbers we get dates for the final two demos, the first being for rough and tumble of NHL 2004. The 74 MB file (get it here) gives you the chance to play one game with fixed teams, enough to get an idea if it has been advanced enough from NHL 2003, a game I found quite good fun even though I know next to nothing about Ice Hockey. A more pedestrian demo is for the popular Hoyle's series of games, grouping together various individual games from the titles available in the series the 54 MB Hoyles 2004 demo (get it here) includes Slot Machines, Hearts and Backgammon.
Game Patches
A couple of major game patches this week, the first to mention being for RavenShield which takes the game from v1.4 to v1.41, a few minor bug fixes are included but the real big news is that the anti-cheat software PunkBuster has been introduced with this update. This will be a blessing for RavenShield in the long-run but usually it takes a few weeks for PunkBuster to settle down so those of you looking to play the gaming in the coming weeks might well have a bit of weirdness to put up with.
Enemy Territory has also seen a small update released, taking it to v1.2 the update corrects some weapon issues and also some key server bugs such as the private_password not working on a full passworded server (something that has caused issues for some of you on our bookables), also introducing a new variable which allows you to disable complaints for certain types of kills, probably a feature that will see a lot of use on public servers with regards to things like mines.
New content for Frozen Throne this week, the Warcraft 3 expansion pack seeing an official Bonus map called "Ice Forge" being released, at just 127 KB you can grab it here and it should hopefully help to extend the life of this add-on. Another tiny download is for the America's Army game, the v1.90 client fix correcting a small problem that happened with a certain release of the game.
Mods
The main mod news for this week is the update to the popular BattleField 1942 mod Galactic Conquest, drawing its inspiration from Star Wars the mod has been updated to v0.1c, you'll need to already have v0.1b installed and then download the 26 MB v0.1b to v0.1c update. All our servers supporting this game have been updated already.
A couple of Half-Life mods to mention again this week, the first being Digital Paintball which aims to bring the Paintball experience to the versatile Half-Life engine, the mod allowing you to buy your own kit and then play across various game-modes. To get to the current version you need to download the 50 MB v2.0 and then the very small v2.0 to v2.1 upgrade.
A slightly more derivative mod is Worms Half-Life, as the name suggests it is a mod which tries to imitate the hugely popular Worms series of games in the Half-Life engine, taking a turn-based approach to FPS gaming this looks like an enjoyable diversion and you can see for yourself by grabbing the 50 MB Beta 3.2.
Special Offers
Those nice chaps and chappesses at the GAME.NET online store are offering you the chance to increase your DVD collection on the cheap with a new 3 for £20 range, some quality films on offer too like Blade, Artificial Intelligence, Terminator 2 and the classic Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
I've also been asked to remind you all that you can earn cash from your GAME.NET hosted site (or any other that you might own) by signing up to our partner affiliate scheme, newly enhanced with dynamic charts and a product feed. For more details click here.
Regards,
Dave "BigFoot" Angus
GAME.NET Community Liaison
If you need any help or have any questions, we have a page set up to help you.
Please don't reply to this e-mail - we have all the support you need ready for you elsewhere.
http://www.game.net/
http://www.game.uk.com/
To Unsubscribe from this Community Newsletter simply go to this page, Logon and click the Unsubscribe button.
Fully clickable version here - http://play.game.net/newsletters/12thSeptember.htm
GAME.NET News
It's only taken two years but at last support for Half-Life's popular Admin Mod has been introduced on our Bookables & Clan Servers, the de-facto mod for Half-Life server administration giving you enhanced control on your booking / server and making Half-Life playing on our services a much more enjoyable experience for all. We are running AdminMod v2.50.56a and will be introducing a variety of new plug-ins for the mod during the coming weeks, one already up and running is Unstuck Pro MM v1.00 for the popular Half-Life mod Natural Selection, this handy plug-in allowing you to unstick yourself should you suffer that annoying bug which "features" in NS. As if that wasn't enough we've also increase the number of players who can fit on our NS Clan Servers to 24 on our Type D servers. If you need any help with AdminMod you can find the online documentation here, if that doesn't answer your query then feel free to send in a support form.
The other major service news this week is that we have introduced support for the latest BattleField 1942 Expansion Pack - "Secret Weapons of WWII". This fantastic add-on gives you experimental vehicles, such as the Jet-pack and Guided Missiles to play with, eight new battlefields, new hand-held weapons and various objective based missions to occupy your time, it has been added to our Bookables under the BattleField 1942 servers and similarly appears on our Type D Clan Servers with support for 28 players.
If you use our forums at all you will be pleased to hear we have introduced a new Code of Conduct that all forum users have to abide by, this is aimed at ensuring our forums remain a friendly place to idle and express your point of view, the early response has been positive with most regulars welcoming its introduction. On the other hand If you haven't yet signed up for our forums then what are you waiting for? Login to GAME.NET now and select Forums from the account maintenance page!
Service updates this week are as follows, all the necessary downloads are linked below in the Files & Patches section:
RavenShield patched to v1.41.
Enemy Territory patches to v1.02.
Half-Life Natural Selection 2.01d sever-side beta patch installed.
BattleField 1942 mod Galactic Conquest updated to v0.1c.
Jedi Knight 2 server-side mod ForceMod 2 added.
What's On
Sunday 14th September 2003
Operation Flashpoint @ 17:00
Counter-Strike @ 20:00
Monday 15th September 2003
Elite Force II @ 19:00
Half-Life: Team Fortress Classic @ 21:00
Tuesday 16th September 2003
Battlefield 1942 @ 20:30
New Event >>> Vietcong @ 21:00 <<< New Event
Wednesday 17th September 2003
Medal of Honor @ 19:00
Natural Selection @ 19:00
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory @ 20:00
Battlefield 1942: Desert Combat @ 21:00
Thursday 18th September 2003
Half-Life: Day of Defeat @ 20:30
Half Life: Team Fortress Classic (TFC) @ 21:00
Friday 19th September 2003
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory @ 13:00
Files and Patches
Trailers
Ye olden times seem to be the theme for a number of the trailers unveiled this week, including two which focus on the virtuous job of being a Knight. It is however fair to say that the games in question - Knights of the Temple and Knight Shift (also called Once Upon A Knight) - take a very different approach to the genre, the former being a very serious and silky smooth 3rd-person action adventure offering that boast some impressive fighting dynamics if the 34 MB trailer is anything to go by, the other have a more comedic feel, the 14 MB trailer suggesting it is a mix of a variety of genres - RTS, RPG and the oft-neglected cow-abusing one.
If there was such as a thing as a "working-class" hero in the times of old then Conan would have been that man, the films not only having helped to established big ole Arnie as the failed politician he is shortly to become but also being the basis for a forthcoming game. This 3rd-person action adventure isn't that well promoted in the 17 MB trailer, to me it looks like a decent enough game but the camera angles appear to be a bit confusing and reminiscent of some early Tomb-Raider style adventures when the camera hindered you from making jumps or fighting with enemies, judge for yourself by clicking the link. Also looking a bit clunky is the trailer for The Bloody Magic, at 97 MB (get it here) you would expect something special for your bandwidth but instead you get a very cluttered looking RPG that doesn't do much to convince me to part with my money.
Arguably one of the most visually stunning trailers I've seen in recent times belongs to Desert Rats v Afrika Korps, this is an RTS game set in World War 2 and to me looks like a Command & Conquer-ish type deal, only better. You can judge for yourself by downloading the 22 MB trailer by clicking here, another interesting RTS game that will arrive shortly will definitely appeal to those geeks out there amongst you with Captain Scarlet: Retaliation giving you the chance to control a number of Spectrum agents as you battle the nefarious Mysterons. This looks more like a Commandos style game than a C&C one and a small teaser trailer has been released, you can grab it here if you fancy listening to the famous Captain Scarlet intro theme (dun dun dun de dun dun dun). Also worth a look is the 26 MB trailer for Kill Switch, this Splinter-Cell style combat game looks very polished and is one you console owners should certainly be looking to get your hands on, grab the trailer here to take a peek.
Even though the first game in the series has had a mixed reception (I think a review I read gave it less than 30%) a sequel for the TV-series-turned-game Law & Order is in the works. I have to admit to being a fan of the TV series, even though here in the UK we are about 5 years behind the US episodes, however if you haven't heard of the series it can best be summed up as a show which follows fictional cases from the reporting of the crime to the conclusion of the trial. With it being set in New York it has a predictably gritty edge, you can have a look at whether or not Law & Order 2 captures that by downloading either the 15 MB trailer (click here) or the 33 MB Intro sequence (click here).
Another couple of sequels to round-off this section with a typically "ra-ra-America" trailer for Americas Army 2.0 being released, the 25 MB trailer (get it here) featuring in-game footage and a suitable dose of propaganda it gives you a taste of what to expect in the game. A slightly less controversial game is Lords of the Realm III, a small trailer for which has been unveiled and can be downloaded here, it basically shows off some in-game footage from this reasonable-looking RTS title.
Playable Demos
If you thought turn-based RPG games were a thing of the past in this day of 3l33t teknology then think again as the first demo to mention this week is for Devil Whiskey, a party-based game where you control a band of adventurers in a title that will remind those veteran gamers amongst you of classic games like Eye of the Beholder. If this sounds like the sort of thing you would be interested in you can grab the 79 MB demo here, look out for a patch over the weekend to correct a few minor bugs. Moving on to slightly more modern-looking adventures and the multiplayer demo for futuristic FPS game Chaser has been updated to v1.49, equivalent to the latest version of the full game. It's nice to see a developer taking this kind of care and attention a fairly long time after the game was released in the UK, that said from what I have heard about the game it might be a little late to cement its place in the online FPS community.
The bulk of the demos this week happen to be for sequels or franchises, the main one I guess being for Jedi Academy (aka Jedi Knight 3) which was released last Saturday. If you haven't yet had the chance to download the 186 MB demo then I would recommend you do so by clicking here, it offers two single-player missions from the full game and should help you to make up your mind with regards to whether or not you will be purchasing the game on its release next Friday. A week after Jedi Academy hits the stores we have the next expansion pack for Medal of Honor, subtitled Breakthrough a 203 MB 2-level multiplayer demo has been released in an effort to ramp up the publicity that rival game Call of Duty stole last week with its own demo. Personally I'm a big fan of the Medal of Honor series and will probably buy both, I haven't yet tried the demo but I've heard good things and you can see for yourself by downloading it h ere, look out for news next week about GAME.NET server support for it.
Instead of numbers we get dates for the final two demos, the first being for rough and tumble of NHL 2004. The 74 MB file (get it here) gives you the chance to play one game with fixed teams, enough to get an idea if it has been advanced enough from NHL 2003, a game I found quite good fun even though I know next to nothing about Ice Hockey. A more pedestrian demo is for the popular Hoyle's series of games, grouping together various individual games from the titles available in the series the 54 MB Hoyles 2004 demo (get it here) includes Slot Machines, Hearts and Backgammon.
Game Patches
A couple of major game patches this week, the first to mention being for RavenShield which takes the game from v1.4 to v1.41, a few minor bug fixes are included but the real big news is that the anti-cheat software PunkBuster has been introduced with this update. This will be a blessing for RavenShield in the long-run but usually it takes a few weeks for PunkBuster to settle down so those of you looking to play the gaming in the coming weeks might well have a bit of weirdness to put up with.
Enemy Territory has also seen a small update released, taking it to v1.2 the update corrects some weapon issues and also some key server bugs such as the private_password not working on a full passworded server (something that has caused issues for some of you on our bookables), also introducing a new variable which allows you to disable complaints for certain types of kills, probably a feature that will see a lot of use on public servers with regards to things like mines.
New content for Frozen Throne this week, the Warcraft 3 expansion pack seeing an official Bonus map called "Ice Forge" being released, at just 127 KB you can grab it here and it should hopefully help to extend the life of this add-on. Another tiny download is for the America's Army game, the v1.90 client fix correcting a small problem that happened with a certain release of the game.
Mods
The main mod news for this week is the update to the popular BattleField 1942 mod Galactic Conquest, drawing its inspiration from Star Wars the mod has been updated to v0.1c, you'll need to already have v0.1b installed and then download the 26 MB v0.1b to v0.1c update. All our servers supporting this game have been updated already.
A couple of Half-Life mods to mention again this week, the first being Digital Paintball which aims to bring the Paintball experience to the versatile Half-Life engine, the mod allowing you to buy your own kit and then play across various game-modes. To get to the current version you need to download the 50 MB v2.0 and then the very small v2.0 to v2.1 upgrade.
A slightly more derivative mod is Worms Half-Life, as the name suggests it is a mod which tries to imitate the hugely popular Worms series of games in the Half-Life engine, taking a turn-based approach to FPS gaming this looks like an enjoyable diversion and you can see for yourself by grabbing the 50 MB Beta 3.2.
Special Offers
Those nice chaps and chappesses at the GAME.NET online store are offering you the chance to increase your DVD collection on the cheap with a new 3 for £20 range, some quality films on offer too like Blade, Artificial Intelligence, Terminator 2 and the classic Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
I've also been asked to remind you all that you can earn cash from your GAME.NET hosted site (or any other that you might own) by signing up to our partner affiliate scheme, newly enhanced with dynamic charts and a product feed. For more details click here.
Regards,
Dave "BigFoot" Angus
GAME.NET Community Liaison
If you need any help or have any questions, we have a page set up to help you.
Please don't reply to this e-mail - we have all the support you need ready for you elsewhere.
http://www.game.net/
http://www.game.uk.com/
To Unsubscribe from this Community Newsletter simply go to this page, Logon and click the Unsubscribe button.