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Five outstanding game companies from 1998
This is an absolutely incomplete, entirely subjective listing of five special or unusual companies from 1998:
- Most generous company: Crack dot com. This company was producing the awesome 3D real time strategy game Golgotha, but unfortunately they ran out of money when the game was about 90% finished. The team had to abandon the project and even to give up the entire company :( However, as their last deed, they released all the source code and graphics, making it freely available to everybody. To honor this gesture, a new team has been formed that will now complete the game some time in 1999 and release it as an open source, free game available to everyone for download.
- Company with the worst PR: Blizzard. This started with their infamous "Trojan Horse" Starcraft, which stole private information from your computer when you accidentally entered the wrong CD key number - without warning! It was only a matter of time until a privacy suit was started against Blizzard. In a different story, Blizzard threatened to sue a website that offered Starcraft add-ons (like editors) and made it easier to run Starcraft under Linux (it works now, and is even faster than under Windows). To make their year worse, they had to give up the game "Warcraft: Lord of the Clans", because it has been delayed over and over again until it was too outdated. Unlike Crack.com, they did not release any sources or graphics from the game...
- Company with the best PR: Ensemble Studios. They turned the delay of Age of Empires 2 (now Age of Kings) into a success by releasing the "Rise of Rome" expansion (OK, that was predictable) and making it the most anticipated expansion of the year. By organizing competitions where you could win the expansion set or more (see "Rumble for Rome" stories below), they made sure that they never disappeared in the media. The only sad point is that some people now think that it is Microsoft who made Age of Empires ... and Ensemble's name tends to be forgotten.
- Most cross platform friendly company: ID software. They were the first one to realize that a WinTel platform does not cut it as a server for LAN parties with dozens or hundreds of people connected to a server. They released their server software for Quake II for numerous hard- and software platforms, such as SPARC/Solaris (UNIX), Alpha/AIX (UNIX), x86/Linux, and also Windows. They have even released the source code of the key parts of the game. Dave 'Zoid' Kirsch ported the client software to Linux, and all releases of the Linux and Windows version are now concurrent. This allowed for the astonishing growth of the Linux platform in 1998 (+ 212%, now 17% market share), and many other companies have followed by porting their games to Linux as well. Maybe we will even see Linux only games soon, because DirectX 6 is a nightmare for programmers (the sources are almost 100 MB, more than an entire game).
- Last, but not least...: Most power saving company: ION Storm. Using no light sources in their offices other than the computer monitors, ION Storm has to be the most environment conscious software company - or is it to protect weary bloodshot eyes from too much light? :) Sometimes LAN game sessions replace the way home and sleep, and some poisonous tongues say this is why Daikatana, their latest game, is still not finished. I wish them best luck for their future projects, and hopefully they finish Daikatana soon :)
I wish you a happy 1999 and hope that we will see many surprising new titles next year ...
A year is almost over...
I hope you have all had a nice Christmas. Back in Switzerland, we even had a white Christmas, which is rather rare where I live (because the altitude is as low as 400+ meters).
Tomorrow, I will post a short review of the five most outstanding game companies of 1998; do not worry, it will not be one of the boring 1998 reviews and probably turn out differently than you expect.
There is also a bunch of scenarios currently being reviewed, so I hope I can post new scenarios soon. As I only want the best of the best, only few of them will be taken.
Great campaign
David Bensson made a great campaign: "The force of the Norse". It has nine well made scenarios, of which the geographical map design is unmatched. If you know Europe's geography a bit, you will not need an atlas for knowing where the campaign plays. I can almost see my flat in Glasgow in that map ;) but I am glad that the Vikings could not successfully invade Scotland, otherwise I would have had to learn Swedish before going there ;)
It follows history, where the Vikings became a very powerful force in the first half of the Middle Ages. The picture here is only one map out of many in this great campaign. I have been lagging a bit behind with scenario testing, but thanks to many people who help me, I hope to catch up soon (new campaign testers are still welcome).
Flying home ...
I will fly back home soon, so I may be offline for two or three days. I am looking forward to Christmas vacation, and I am sure, so do you :)
New RoR unit sheets
Mr. Fixit has finished his update for the unit sheets. His unit tables use a different approach for showing all the upgrades etc., and therefore many people may find them easier to handle than the default tables (a good color printer is recommended). Check them out.
Scenario testers wanted
I have received a bunch of new scenarios that need to be tested. So your help is needed. If you want to boldly go where no man has gone before, just send me a mail and tell me which type of scenarios you play (single or multi player or campaigns) and whether you have the Rise of Rome expansion set or not (yet).
Maim_matt goes to Rome
I was busy so I could not post this earlier. Matt Scadding has won the Rumble for Rome tournament. The screenshots give an impression of the huge hype around this tournament - at least on the Internet, it sometimes left the impression of a big commercial. But I guess that quite a few online gaming tournaments are nowadays promoted like this (at least in the USA)
Nevertheless, I wish Matt good luck and much fun on his trip to Rome :)
Rumble for Rome finals coming...
"You are NOT going to want to be without yours this Friday when Rumble for Rome reaches its triumphant climax LIVE and online. Here are some details as to what will transpire during this epic confrontation between some of the best Rise of Rome players on earth.
(...)
The Zone will present up-to-the-minute play-by-play of the games, screenshots and digital photographs of the tournament. Make sure you stop by the URL [here] at 6 PM PST. The actual games will get underway at around 7 PM PST with many VIPs in attendance -- including Rise of Rome designers Bruce Shelly and Sandy Petersen!
Finalists from California, Tennessee, Minnesota and Toronto, Canada will compete for the Grand Emperor title. In addition, more than 200 game industry notables such as Bruce Shelley (developer of Age of Empires and The Rise of Rome), Chris Taylor (of Total Annihilation fame), Dennis Fong (a.k.a. "Thresh"), Richard Garfield (Creator of Magic: The Gathering) and other VIP's will be on hand to take in the tournament action."
Read the full press release for more details. So you know what to do when you are online tomorrow evening and have a fast connection (ISDN or better, cable modem recommended) :)
AoEWavEx updated
Juha Rahko has updated his AoE sound editor (150 KB, .zip). There were "some serious bugs" in the previous version which are now fixed in version 2.2. Everyone who has the program should upgrade, and people who have not should try it :)
Interview with Bruce Shelley
GameCenter Singapore has an interview with Bruce Shelley, who designed AoE together with Rick Goodman.
There is quite a lot of interesting information: The formation feature in AoK forced a major rewrite of the unit AI code. Shelley's dream game is "Age of Exploration" where you explore and colonize new worlds. He also gives us his sight of the future of RTS games:
"The big step will be the conversion of all RTS games to full 3D environments without a big drop-off in graphic quality. I think the real growth area in RTS may be in providing more types of gameplay that appeal to the casual gamers. This would be more peaceful, empire building activities or opportunities for players to cooperate toward a common goal. Right now, the emphasis is on destroying each other as soon as possible. That will play out as an interesting mechanism at some point. Multiplayer will also offer some new opportunities, especially in temrs of cooperative play."
Thanks to Whisky for this great info.
Rumble for Rome tourney finals coming soon
The Rumble for Rome tourney's been an exciting campaign. In a series of
one-on-one single-elimination matches over two weekends, we've narrowed the
field of battle from over three hundred to just four bloodstained gladiators!
Congratulations to our finalists! Maimin_matty, Methos_ST, Seasian, and
The_Sheriff will be flown to Seattle, courtesy of American Airlines, to
participate in the showdown event December 11 at Wizards of the Coast's Game
Center. We'll be holding blow-by-blow live online battle coverage. Come to
the Theater Chat Room at 6 P.M. Pacific Time and see how the Zone's top Agers
play when the heat is really on! There's an expense-paid trip to Rome on the
line, so you can bet that they won't be holding anything back!
In the meantime, check out
the articles on the prefinals in the Age of
Empires Expansion: The Rise of Rome News page. You'll pick up some great
strategy tips and get an idea of what it takes to command your own civ to
national fame!
The latest patch for Kali - from a different source than usual
The few people who use Kali on Solaris - maybe it's only me :) - can now get a patch from here. Together with Jay who wrote Kali, I could weed out a bug that prevented the cursor keys from working properly. Simply apply this patch to the 0.96 sources (to knio.c) and the cursor keys work on Solaris. It's my first patch for Kali - open source is really a good thing :)
329c329,337
< if (key_pressed != 91) {
---
> /* wait for special code...might take a few milliseconds */
> /* there shouldn't be any need to add a timeout since */
> /* there MUST be another character following */
> while (key_pressed == -1) {
> key_pressed = getch();
> usleep(10000); /* don't eat all the CPU!!! */
> }
> while (key_pressed != 91) {
> key_pressed = getch();
Users of Linux and other OSes do not have to care about this. If you do not know what Kali is, check out their page. It is the best service for online games, including AoE, because they have hundreds of servers in the entire world for lag free games.
Win AoE or the expansion - but...
You may have heard from this contest where you can win a free copy of AoE or RoR. However, since the text is in French, no one has read the fine print where it says that only French residents are allowed for the contest. This is common to this sort of contest since the price for shipping to some countries may exceed the value of the prize to be won. So if you happen to live in France, try your luck.
At least all these tedious French classes at school have been good for something ;)
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September '97 - November '98
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