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GAME.NET News
Those of you who know your Half-Life stuff will be aware that Valve, the makers of the game, have been developing their content delivery engine "Steam" over the past year or so. A few days ago Steam went live and shortly the won id system of authenticating clients will be turned off, meaning that to play Half-Life and its various mods online you will need to use the Steam system. Since the official launch of Steam there have been quite a few problems due to the mass of people trying to get on and use it, these issues are being sorted out and things are settling down so we have decided to migrate all our Half-Life servers (with the exception of Natural Selection as it is not supported yet) to the Steam system as of today.
All this means that if you play Half-Life on our servers (Clan, Bookable, Preview, Subbies or any other type) you'll need to be using the Steam system. There are a variety of ways you can install Steam on your computer, either by using the client and letting it download the mods you play, or by downloading the full installs of the mods. Here are a list of the various options open to you:
Steam client - 500 KB - This will then allow you to download the install files from the Steam servers.
Steam client + Counter-Strike only - 379 MB
Steam client + Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, TFC, DMC and Ricochet - 723 MB
Steam client + Day of Defeat only - 396 MB
Steam client + Half-Life base install - 211 MB
Steam client + TFC only - 272 MB
New on the GAME.NET network this week is a revamped TechNation, our dedicated Hardware & Technical site that aims to provide news, reviews, guides and step-by-step projects to satisfy the geek in you. The site has been put together by Jonty, who many of you will know from our Hardware forum and his help with the hosted sites section of GAME.NET, Xavier and Wilier and has many other writers involved, the main feature for this launch week being a report from the Intel Developers Forum that has just finished up over in the USA.
During the past couple of weeks those of you who use the BattleField 1942 servers we run might have been experiencing an unusual number of crashes. We've investigated this issue thoroughly and been in touch with other ISP's and clan server companies, this problem is not unique to us with other ISP's report crashes of up to 7 times a day on BF1942 Clan Servers. What has exacerbated the problem for us though is that our restart scripting is not working after a server crash, meaning its up to you to manually stop and restart your server via the web admin, something we will try to fix in the near future.
One thing that was raised though is there may be a possibility that using BlackBagOps Remote Manager may contribute to server crashes. You can only use v1.4 beta on our servers, and I'd suggest that you try not to use this over the weekend if you are running a server, letting us know if this decreases the number of crashes. We've flagged these issues with DICE and hopefully we'll see a more stable server version soon.
Server updates for this week are as follows, links to downloads where necessary are in the Files & Patches section of this Newsletter:
BattleField 1942 mod DesertCombat updated to v0.40j.
Unreal Tournament 2003 mutator AntiTCC updated to v107.
What's On
Sunday 21st September 2003
Operation Flashpoint @ 17:00
Counter-Strike @ 20:00
Monday 22nd September 2003
Elite Force II @ 19:00
Half-Life: Team Fortress Classic @ 21:00
Tuesday 23rd September 2003
Battlefield 1942 @ 20:30
Vietcong @ 21:00
Wednesday 24th September 2003
Medal of Honor @ 19:00
Natural Selection @ 19:00
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory @ 20:00
Battlefield 1942: Desert Combat @ 21:00
Thursday 25th September 2003
Half-Life: Day of Defeat @ 20:30
Half Life: Team Fortress Classic (TFC) @ 21:00
Friday 26th September 2003
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory @ 13:00
Files and Patches
Trailers
As usual we have plenty of trailer goodness to bring you this week, starting off with a bunch of high-octane action games that should give you RSI in no time at all if you pick up more than one of them in the coming months. The most impressive from this first group I think is probably the trailer for Breed, this futuristic shoot-'em up giving you the chance to play as the grunt on the ground and also roam around the massive game world in land or air vehicles with seamless transition between the three. With a multiplayer aspect thrown in this looks like it has the potential to be a really popular game both online and off, you can download the 19 MB trailer by clicking here to get a better of idea of the massive scope of this game.
Next up for a mention is another trailer for XIII, the cartoon-style FPS game that I've been raving about for months in these Newsletters. The small trailer (available here) advances the storyline a little bit to give you more of an idea about what the game is about, I'm itching to get my hands on the game but unfortunately I'll have to wait until the end of next month to do so. It'll be next year until you are able to play Full Spectrum Warrior, there has been some positive early buzz about this game with it being based around a military training tool that the American Army uses, I'm not sure if the 22 MB trailer shows off much actual in-game footage but it does the usual job of hyping it up in a predictably pro-American way, grab it here if you want to take a look.
Two one-word title games that have seen new trailers released this week are Hollow and Kreed, both being FPS type deals with Hollow perhaps looking the smarter if the 37 MB ECTS-related trailer (available here) is anything to go by, lots of nifty gameplay features (holographic projections, hostage taking, action-replays) in what is described as a mix of "BF1942, Splinter Cell, DooM 3 and Halo". Set in the 1970's it is a stark contrast with the futuristic Kreed, which to me actually looks more like a DooM 3 relation than Hollow, the 41 MB trailer featuring some in-game combat footage which you can view for yourself by clicking here.
Something of a trailer flood happened this week for two upcoming expansion packs, C&C Generals - Zero Hour seeing some more movies released after a whole bunch that came out a few weeks ago, in addition to this there were plenty of mission trailers for Medal of Honor's latest add-on "Breakthrough" ;. It's worth noting that this treatment is given to two expansion packs, perhaps the publishers realise that people need to be convinced these days that expansion packs contain sufficient new content to make them worth the money, especially when there are so many "freebie" add-ons that gaming communities create. Anyhow, my rant over, here's a list for you to browse through at your leisure, all the files are no bigger than 15 MB:
C&C Generals - Zero Hour:
GLA Intro Trailer
GLA General Kassad Movie
GLA General Juhziz Movie
GLA General Thrax Movie
China Intro Trailer
Medal of Honor - Breakthrough:
Mission 1 - Kasserine Pass - Trailer
Mission 2 - Kasserine Pass - Trailer
Mission 3 - Bizerte, Tunisia - Trailer
Whilst not being a sequel as such it is fair to say that Harry Potter Quiddtich draws much of its inspiration from the movies centered around that character and, whilst I hate to admit it, I have to say that this 22 MB trailer actually makes the game look half-decent, a surprise considering the usual standard of movie-to-game releases. I'm not the biggest HP fan in the world (I haven't read any of the books or seen the 2nd movie) but this game actually might be some fun to play and perhaps a good one to keep your kids entertained during the Christmas break (yes it's only 3 months away now!).
One game that certainly isn't going to be suitable for children - even though it sometimes seems like most of the people who play its predecessor online are about 12 years old - is Counter-Strike: Condition Zero. Whilst the game has received very mixed reviews, mainly blaming the dated Half-Life engine it uses, CS:CZ (as all the hip d00ds are calling it) is nevertheless going to find itself in quite a few homes by the time it is released, the 12 MB trailer looking actually not half bad, judge for yourself by clicking here. It is perhaps a shame that CS:CZ has been so long in the making that it will most likely end up being released after Half-Life 2 comes out, the contrast in the engines staggering from the 116 MB Tech Trailer that has been released recently for the newer game, even though it just shows off some lighting effects it is still obviously miles ahead of what you can expect to find in CS:CZ.
The final three trailers to mention all cover a variety of sequels but don't actually give you much real in-game footage to get your teeth into, the first being the intro-sequence from the next installment of the FIFA series. I'm looking forward to getting my hands on FIFA 2004, mainly because it's the only time I'll get a realistic chance to win the Premiership as a Liverpool fan, but there are also some neat gameplay advances promised that should make this the best of the series so far, the intro-sequence definitely an improvement over the last one which looked like it had cost 5p to make. A bit more of a glimpse into the game can be seen in the typically moody and atmospheric Max Payne 2 trailer (get it here), I'm really looking forward to this game when it comes out later this year at around the same time that the bullet-time-fest Matrix 3 hits the cinemas. I'm sure that one day we'll see an EverQuest film given the massive popularity of the online game, the franchise branching out now into other genres with the release of Lords of EverQuest in a couple of months, this RTS game will be seeking to knock Warcraft 3 off its perch as the main competition game of choice in the genre, a small trailer gives you an idea of what to expect but again doesn't give us much in-game footage to salivate over.
Playable Demos
Not too many original demos to bring you this week, the only one I could find being for Dino Crisis 2 which is an old game that has been released online, the 364 MB demo allowing you to play for a fair bit of time and then, if you want, purchase a key online in order for you to continue playing. If you fancy having a look you can download it by clicking here.
Two "updated" demos to bring you next with a 200 MB single player Tron 2.0 demo being released, this includes a previously available Light Cycle arena and also one of the action segments of the game that allows you to try out a variety of weapons, well worth a look if you are still dithering over whether or not to get the game which has been released today. The other game to get the update treatment is Devil Whiskey, the old-skool-style RPG seeing the demo patched, you can choose to either download the v1.0 to v1.1 update (very small) or the full 79 MB v1.1 demo.
If you like freebies then I have some good news for you this week as Quake II engine powered standalone game Code RED: The Martian Chronicles has been released, at just 86 MB the game allows you to play over 20 missions across 3 game episodes and features 10 weapons for you to take out the nasty aliens with. I've had a little play of this one and it looks like they have done a pretty decent job, graphically it does look dated compared to modern-day games but it is still well worth a download in my opinion.
Game Patches
A couple of game patches to bring you this week, the firs being for NASCAR Racing 2003. This fairly old game gets a bit of a facelift in the shape of a 16 MB patch that takes it to v1.2.0.1, meanwhile at the other end of the spectrum you have RPG Lionheart which was released less than a month ago, a tiny patch for this game being released to fix a few bugs that have been causing crashes, the file taking the game to v1.1.
Mods
As seems to be the norm these days the mod news I've got for you this week is based around just two games, the first being BattleField 1942, with an update to two of the better known mods for the game. Starting off with Desert Combat, the million-man played over-sized mod being updated to v0.40j< /a> (note this is 573 MB in size) with even the patch being a ridiculous 223 MB in size with it including new vehicles, maps and other bits and bobs. To download the patch you can click here but I would recommend going for the full version just to be on the safe side. Also updated this week is the Vietnam style mod for the same game, Eve of Destruction's latest version includes loads of new weapons, vehicles, maps, tweaks, fixes and so on, coming in at 270 MB it is well on its way to joining Desert Combat in the ridiculously sized mod category, even so Alpha v0.2 certainly looks to be an improvement on the previous versions and could just turn out to be a rival to the official BattleField Vietnam game that is currently in development.
With the release date of the Vampire vs. Werewolf flick Underworld (aka "the one with the hot click from Pearl Harbor wearing leather") drawing ever closer it is not surprising that a new version of the associated Half-Life mod has been released, v2.0 comes in at 35 MB and includes two new maps and a new weapon, whilst a much smaller v1.0 to v2.0 update is also available. Meanwhile the mod-based-on-a-board-game Rival Species has also been updated, drawing inspiration from the WH40K series the mod is now on v1.0.2.5 and comes in at just under 46 MB for the full install, this latest release fixing many bugs and also adding a few new maps.
Special Offers
As I mentioned last week our affiliate scheme is continuing to evolve, run via TradeDoubler - with access to our dynamic charts and a daily updated product feed - you can find more details here.
Those aspiring Obi-Wans amongst you will be glad to hear that today sees Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy released, news on server support will be in next week's mail
.
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.
GAME.NET News
Those of you who know your Half-Life stuff will be aware that Valve, the makers of the game, have been developing their content delivery engine "Steam" over the past year or so. A few days ago Steam went live and shortly the won id system of authenticating clients will be turned off, meaning that to play Half-Life and its various mods online you will need to use the Steam system. Since the official launch of Steam there have been quite a few problems due to the mass of people trying to get on and use it, these issues are being sorted out and things are settling down so we have decided to migrate all our Half-Life servers (with the exception of Natural Selection as it is not supported yet) to the Steam system as of today.
All this means that if you play Half-Life on our servers (Clan, Bookable, Preview, Subbies or any other type) you'll need to be using the Steam system. There are a variety of ways you can install Steam on your computer, either by using the client and letting it download the mods you play, or by downloading the full installs of the mods. Here are a list of the various options open to you:
Steam client - 500 KB - This will then allow you to download the install files from the Steam servers.
Steam client + Counter-Strike only - 379 MB
Steam client + Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, TFC, DMC and Ricochet - 723 MB
Steam client + Day of Defeat only - 396 MB
Steam client + Half-Life base install - 211 MB
Steam client + TFC only - 272 MB
New on the GAME.NET network this week is a revamped TechNation, our dedicated Hardware & Technical site that aims to provide news, reviews, guides and step-by-step projects to satisfy the geek in you. The site has been put together by Jonty, who many of you will know from our Hardware forum and his help with the hosted sites section of GAME.NET, Xavier and Wilier and has many other writers involved, the main feature for this launch week being a report from the Intel Developers Forum that has just finished up over in the USA.
During the past couple of weeks those of you who use the BattleField 1942 servers we run might have been experiencing an unusual number of crashes. We've investigated this issue thoroughly and been in touch with other ISP's and clan server companies, this problem is not unique to us with other ISP's report crashes of up to 7 times a day on BF1942 Clan Servers. What has exacerbated the problem for us though is that our restart scripting is not working after a server crash, meaning its up to you to manually stop and restart your server via the web admin, something we will try to fix in the near future.
One thing that was raised though is there may be a possibility that using BlackBagOps Remote Manager may contribute to server crashes. You can only use v1.4 beta on our servers, and I'd suggest that you try not to use this over the weekend if you are running a server, letting us know if this decreases the number of crashes. We've flagged these issues with DICE and hopefully we'll see a more stable server version soon.
Server updates for this week are as follows, links to downloads where necessary are in the Files & Patches section of this Newsletter:
BattleField 1942 mod DesertCombat updated to v0.40j.
Unreal Tournament 2003 mutator AntiTCC updated to v107.
What's On
Sunday 21st September 2003
Operation Flashpoint @ 17:00
Counter-Strike @ 20:00
Monday 22nd September 2003
Elite Force II @ 19:00
Half-Life: Team Fortress Classic @ 21:00
Tuesday 23rd September 2003
Battlefield 1942 @ 20:30
Vietcong @ 21:00
Wednesday 24th September 2003
Medal of Honor @ 19:00
Natural Selection @ 19:00
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory @ 20:00
Battlefield 1942: Desert Combat @ 21:00
Thursday 25th September 2003
Half-Life: Day of Defeat @ 20:30
Half Life: Team Fortress Classic (TFC) @ 21:00
Friday 26th September 2003
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory @ 13:00
Files and Patches
Trailers
As usual we have plenty of trailer goodness to bring you this week, starting off with a bunch of high-octane action games that should give you RSI in no time at all if you pick up more than one of them in the coming months. The most impressive from this first group I think is probably the trailer for Breed, this futuristic shoot-'em up giving you the chance to play as the grunt on the ground and also roam around the massive game world in land or air vehicles with seamless transition between the three. With a multiplayer aspect thrown in this looks like it has the potential to be a really popular game both online and off, you can download the 19 MB trailer by clicking here to get a better of idea of the massive scope of this game.
Next up for a mention is another trailer for XIII, the cartoon-style FPS game that I've been raving about for months in these Newsletters. The small trailer (available here) advances the storyline a little bit to give you more of an idea about what the game is about, I'm itching to get my hands on the game but unfortunately I'll have to wait until the end of next month to do so. It'll be next year until you are able to play Full Spectrum Warrior, there has been some positive early buzz about this game with it being based around a military training tool that the American Army uses, I'm not sure if the 22 MB trailer shows off much actual in-game footage but it does the usual job of hyping it up in a predictably pro-American way, grab it here if you want to take a look.
Two one-word title games that have seen new trailers released this week are Hollow and Kreed, both being FPS type deals with Hollow perhaps looking the smarter if the 37 MB ECTS-related trailer (available here) is anything to go by, lots of nifty gameplay features (holographic projections, hostage taking, action-replays) in what is described as a mix of "BF1942, Splinter Cell, DooM 3 and Halo". Set in the 1970's it is a stark contrast with the futuristic Kreed, which to me actually looks more like a DooM 3 relation than Hollow, the 41 MB trailer featuring some in-game combat footage which you can view for yourself by clicking here.
Something of a trailer flood happened this week for two upcoming expansion packs, C&C Generals - Zero Hour seeing some more movies released after a whole bunch that came out a few weeks ago, in addition to this there were plenty of mission trailers for Medal of Honor's latest add-on "Breakthrough" ;. It's worth noting that this treatment is given to two expansion packs, perhaps the publishers realise that people need to be convinced these days that expansion packs contain sufficient new content to make them worth the money, especially when there are so many "freebie" add-ons that gaming communities create. Anyhow, my rant over, here's a list for you to browse through at your leisure, all the files are no bigger than 15 MB:
C&C Generals - Zero Hour:
GLA Intro Trailer
GLA General Kassad Movie
GLA General Juhziz Movie
GLA General Thrax Movie
China Intro Trailer
Medal of Honor - Breakthrough:
Mission 1 - Kasserine Pass - Trailer
Mission 2 - Kasserine Pass - Trailer
Mission 3 - Bizerte, Tunisia - Trailer
Whilst not being a sequel as such it is fair to say that Harry Potter Quiddtich draws much of its inspiration from the movies centered around that character and, whilst I hate to admit it, I have to say that this 22 MB trailer actually makes the game look half-decent, a surprise considering the usual standard of movie-to-game releases. I'm not the biggest HP fan in the world (I haven't read any of the books or seen the 2nd movie) but this game actually might be some fun to play and perhaps a good one to keep your kids entertained during the Christmas break (yes it's only 3 months away now!).
One game that certainly isn't going to be suitable for children - even though it sometimes seems like most of the people who play its predecessor online are about 12 years old - is Counter-Strike: Condition Zero. Whilst the game has received very mixed reviews, mainly blaming the dated Half-Life engine it uses, CS:CZ (as all the hip d00ds are calling it) is nevertheless going to find itself in quite a few homes by the time it is released, the 12 MB trailer looking actually not half bad, judge for yourself by clicking here. It is perhaps a shame that CS:CZ has been so long in the making that it will most likely end up being released after Half-Life 2 comes out, the contrast in the engines staggering from the 116 MB Tech Trailer that has been released recently for the newer game, even though it just shows off some lighting effects it is still obviously miles ahead of what you can expect to find in CS:CZ.
The final three trailers to mention all cover a variety of sequels but don't actually give you much real in-game footage to get your teeth into, the first being the intro-sequence from the next installment of the FIFA series. I'm looking forward to getting my hands on FIFA 2004, mainly because it's the only time I'll get a realistic chance to win the Premiership as a Liverpool fan, but there are also some neat gameplay advances promised that should make this the best of the series so far, the intro-sequence definitely an improvement over the last one which looked like it had cost 5p to make. A bit more of a glimpse into the game can be seen in the typically moody and atmospheric Max Payne 2 trailer (get it here), I'm really looking forward to this game when it comes out later this year at around the same time that the bullet-time-fest Matrix 3 hits the cinemas. I'm sure that one day we'll see an EverQuest film given the massive popularity of the online game, the franchise branching out now into other genres with the release of Lords of EverQuest in a couple of months, this RTS game will be seeking to knock Warcraft 3 off its perch as the main competition game of choice in the genre, a small trailer gives you an idea of what to expect but again doesn't give us much in-game footage to salivate over.
Playable Demos
Not too many original demos to bring you this week, the only one I could find being for Dino Crisis 2 which is an old game that has been released online, the 364 MB demo allowing you to play for a fair bit of time and then, if you want, purchase a key online in order for you to continue playing. If you fancy having a look you can download it by clicking here.
Two "updated" demos to bring you next with a 200 MB single player Tron 2.0 demo being released, this includes a previously available Light Cycle arena and also one of the action segments of the game that allows you to try out a variety of weapons, well worth a look if you are still dithering over whether or not to get the game which has been released today. The other game to get the update treatment is Devil Whiskey, the old-skool-style RPG seeing the demo patched, you can choose to either download the v1.0 to v1.1 update (very small) or the full 79 MB v1.1 demo.
If you like freebies then I have some good news for you this week as Quake II engine powered standalone game Code RED: The Martian Chronicles has been released, at just 86 MB the game allows you to play over 20 missions across 3 game episodes and features 10 weapons for you to take out the nasty aliens with. I've had a little play of this one and it looks like they have done a pretty decent job, graphically it does look dated compared to modern-day games but it is still well worth a download in my opinion.
Game Patches
A couple of game patches to bring you this week, the firs being for NASCAR Racing 2003. This fairly old game gets a bit of a facelift in the shape of a 16 MB patch that takes it to v1.2.0.1, meanwhile at the other end of the spectrum you have RPG Lionheart which was released less than a month ago, a tiny patch for this game being released to fix a few bugs that have been causing crashes, the file taking the game to v1.1.
Mods
As seems to be the norm these days the mod news I've got for you this week is based around just two games, the first being BattleField 1942, with an update to two of the better known mods for the game. Starting off with Desert Combat, the million-man played over-sized mod being updated to v0.40j< /a> (note this is 573 MB in size) with even the patch being a ridiculous 223 MB in size with it including new vehicles, maps and other bits and bobs. To download the patch you can click here but I would recommend going for the full version just to be on the safe side. Also updated this week is the Vietnam style mod for the same game, Eve of Destruction's latest version includes loads of new weapons, vehicles, maps, tweaks, fixes and so on, coming in at 270 MB it is well on its way to joining Desert Combat in the ridiculously sized mod category, even so Alpha v0.2 certainly looks to be an improvement on the previous versions and could just turn out to be a rival to the official BattleField Vietnam game that is currently in development.
With the release date of the Vampire vs. Werewolf flick Underworld (aka "the one with the hot click from Pearl Harbor wearing leather") drawing ever closer it is not surprising that a new version of the associated Half-Life mod has been released, v2.0 comes in at 35 MB and includes two new maps and a new weapon, whilst a much smaller v1.0 to v2.0 update is also available. Meanwhile the mod-based-on-a-board-game Rival Species has also been updated, drawing inspiration from the WH40K series the mod is now on v1.0.2.5 and comes in at just under 46 MB for the full install, this latest release fixing many bugs and also adding a few new maps.
Special Offers
As I mentioned last week our affiliate scheme is continuing to evolve, run via TradeDoubler - with access to our dynamic charts and a daily updated product feed - you can find more details here.
Those aspiring Obi-Wans amongst you will be glad to hear that today sees Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy released, news on server support will be in next week's mail
. 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.