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- June 2000 News:
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- 06-16-00
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- New HALO movie and release
date!!!
- Whoa there, clam down Jake. Ok then, thdisld
sad;lksfhsadf;lsa fsdhsdlksdh... errrr! I'm too excited about
this! I can't type! :p hehe! Alright, Daily Radar has just posted
a new HALO movie that totally kicks ass! It's beyond kick ass!
It totally kicks the ass of the ass kicker! (ok, that kind of
made sense) This new movie shows all new footage from this almost
complete game. The release date is now projected to be this
September! Ahhhh! It's only 3 months away! Oh yeah, one more
thing, can we all say "hybrid release!" That's right
PC users! The most anticipated game of the year is going to be
cross platform from the start! To sum this up - YOU NEED TO DOWNLOAD
THIS MOVIE IF IT'S THE ONLY THING YOU DO TODAY! It's that awesome!
- High res movie (26MB)
- Low res movie (13MB)
- Daily Radar
- Bungie
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- Flat panel on the iMac?
- Recently a customer came into CompUSA (where
I work) and was telling me about his tour of the Elk Grove, CA
Apple plant. During the tour he saw an iMac with a flat panel
display behind a glass case. He asked the tour guide what it
was and she said it was a beta prototype that was still being
worked on. A flat panel display on an iMac? It would definately
be better than a tube monitor. However, it would undoubtedly
up the price of the iMac. Also, an unfortunate side effect of
flat panel displays is that they have to dither pixels to display
at lower resolutions than their standard set of pixels; dithered
pixels always means a fuzzy image which is not good for gaming.
Granted it was a beta prototype meaning that absolutely nothing
is certain as far as actual implementation of this design, but
it makes you wonder...
- Apple
Computer
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- Over 160 members in the
Diablo 2 Clan!
- I'm absolutely stuned at how many people
are joining this clan. This game isn't even released yet! I got
90 new sign ups just yesterday! Now we are around 160-170 members
(I'm too lazy to count)! There's no question anymore! Our M.A.C.
Diablo 2 Clan is not only the ONLY Mac Diablo 2 Clan out there,
we're also the largest and fastest growing Mac Diablo (1 or 2)
clan out there! No more excuses! Come and join up today!
- M.A.C.
Diablo 2 Clan
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- 06-11-00
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- TONS of new clan members!
- I recently sent word to IMG about our Diablo 2 Clan and we ended up
getting 35 new members (so far)! We're up to 42 now and I'm expecting
many more. Once again, our Diablo 2 clan is a Mac only clan.
To recap, we also have a Warcraft 3 clan going. If you plan on
playing lots of either one of these games when they are released
then you may want to join one or both of our clans.
- Diablo
2 Clan
- Warcraft
3 Clan
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- 06-07-00
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- Diablo II goes gold!
- This morning on Blizzard's web site they
announced that Diablo II has gone gold! Of course, there was
no mention on the status of the Mac version. All available info
indicates that it will not be a hybrid release. But if the PC
version has gone gold that means the Mac version is that much
closer! Here's an excerpt from the press release regarding the
Mac version:
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- Diablo II is being developed by the Blizzard
North design team and is expected to release on three CD-ROMs
by the end of June in Windows®95/98/2000/NT format. A Macintosh
version of the game will be available during the third quarter
2000.
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- Once again, if you plan on playing a lot
of Diablo II when it comes out for Mac, you may want to join
our Diablo 2 Clan. It's just like any other Diablo 2 clan except
it's Mac only!
- Blizzard
Entertainment
- Press Release
- Diablo
2 Clan
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- 06-05-00
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- Steve Jobs:
- I recently came accross this video clip of
a younger Steve Jobs giving one of his inspirational speeches.
The movie was posted on the Mac OS Daily site. I don't know about
you, but I think he makes a lot of sense in this video. I know
I certainly feel that way about my Mac. : )
- Steve Jobs Movie (936KB)
- Mac OS Daily
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- Coldstone Game Engine:
- I must say I am very impressed with this
little piece of work. Beenox Inc has recently sent me an update
on their RPG creation software. It's called "Coldstone Game
Engine." I'll spare you my interpretation and just let you
read their summary:
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- We are the developers of the Coldstone Game
Engine, an awesome role-playing
game creation software (currently only) for the Macintosh. This
product
has been perfectly rated everywhere (macgamefiles.com, tucows,
versiontracker,etc.).
Our product will also be MacOSX compliant and I am working for
cross-platform
possibility (a screenshot of a early win32 alpha version of the
editor
is available on the web site). That way, the users will develop
on Macintosh
and be able to compile their game on either or both platforms.
We are also
working on other game projects.
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- The screenshots they sent me were very impressive!
But don't take my word for it, see for yourself. Any Mac people
out there that are interested in developing RPGs for your platform
of choice should definately take a look. The best part is that
you don't even have to know anything about programming!
- Beenox
Inc.
- Screenshot 1
- Screenshot 2
- Screenshot 3
- Screenshot 4
- Screenshot 5
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- New gaming technologies on the horizon:
- I've been reading about some very exciting
new technologies coming to us Mac gamers very soon! I'm talking
about both hardware and software. Let's start with the hardware.
- Hardware: All
the rumor sites have been throwing in bits and pieces of info
on this one, mostly centered around revisions to the G4 line.
At present it looks as though September is a likely release date.
Possibily announced around Seybold beginning in late August?
These are the rumored specs of the revised G4 at present:
- -G4e processor (two Altivec units, and deeper
pipelines resulting in a 2x performance increase over existing
G4s at equal MHz).
- -133MHz system bus (more system bandwidth,
a necessity for pushing those high polygon rates and insane textures
in both current and future 3D games).
- -4x 266MHz AGP graphics (currently the best
graphics bus out there for gaming, lots of data bandwidth).
- -DDR RAM (faster access to RAM storage).
- -UltraDMA 100 storage bus (faster read/write
to the HD).
- -ATI Radeon GPU (ATI's newest graphics card
that boasts some impressive fill rates and new rendering technologies
that greatly increase character skinning realism).
- Software: On
the software side we have the Mac port of what I call the future
of 3D rendering engines. It's called the Lithtech Engine. This
3D engine blows everything else out of the water, and it's being
ported to the Mac in the form of the game Shogo. Lithtech supports
over 15 million polygons per second, detailed textures on everything,
bump-mapped textures, huge outdoor environments, huge indoor
environments, seemless transitions between indoor and outdoor,
time of day lighting effects, world light sourcing, and much
more! It's very capable of making games similar to HALO, except
with much more detail where graphics are concerned. 15 million
polygons per second is insane! I have an MPEG movie that shows
what the Lithtech engine is capable of, but it's over 50MB. I
can't find the site that I got it from so I can't post a link.
I could upload it to my server but it would take up all of my
space. If you are interested in getting this movie then you can
e-mail me and I'll see what I can work out. : )
- Summary: Obviously
you would need a freakin' awesome machine to exercise all the
features of Lithtech. That's where the new G4s come in. The future
of Mac gaming looks very exciting indeed! With better hardware
coming our way, along with gaming technologies like Lithtech,
Macs are going to hold their own in the computer gaming industry
for some time to come!
- Lithtech Screenshot 1
- Lithtech Screenshot 2
- Lithtech Screenshot 3
- Lithtech Screenshot 4