 Have a Chat With Douglas Adams!
World Without Borders.Com, a chat and discussion site, has announced they will be holding a chat with esteemed author (and Macintosh user) Douglas Adams, creator of the Hitchhiker's Guide "trilogy" of novels and the recent adventure game Starship Titanic. The chat is scheduled for 9:00 PM Eastern time on April 8th. There will also be product giveaways and chat moderators from major Mac gaming websites. Make sure you stop by and check out one of the most hilarious—and certainly one of the tallest—Mac advocates of all time. [Eilers]
Carmageddon 2 Release Confirmed!
David Copeland has written to IMG to confirm that he has received his copy of Carmageddon 2 for Mac which he pre-ordered from Interplay about a week ago. If you have pre-ordered, expect to receive your copy soon!
David states that "It runs well on both Rage 128 and 3Dfx....you have to install drivers for a 'Rage Pro' as support for Rage 128 is not *really* there yet..." [ed note: this is very interesting news, as a RAVE version of this game was not announced, only a 3Dfx version]
Carmageddon 2 is the sequel to the popular and bloodthirsty title which changed the way we think about racing games. Completing the race, while slightly satisfying, is just one way to win. The preferred path to victory is splattering every pedestrian you see and/or wasting all of your competitors. For the full story check out IMG's preview of this delightfully violent game. In other news, IMG Editor-in-Chief Tuncer Deniz contacted Interplay in hopes of convincing them to release a demo of this excellent game. Their reply was that they would "try to convince SCI [creators of Carmageddon 2] to create one." We'll let you know immediately if and when one is released. [Simon]
Faster iMacs Blooming This Spring
According to CNET's news.com, Apple will soon be rolling out new, faster iMacs for your gaming pleasure. The "speed bumped" iMacs will supposedly sport a 333 Mhz G3 processor, upping the ante from the previous 266 Mhz machines. They also will contain the same onboard 3D accelerator that the more recent 266's have now, the Rage Pro 4 MB (sorry, no Rage 128 yet!) The best part of the new zippier iMac is the price—that's right folks, the price stays the same, still under $1200.
Try getting an all-in-one gaming machine in the PC realm for that kind of greenbacks! [Kester]
 Imperialism II Authors Declare War on Bugs
Imperialism II was recently released, and while many are thrilled by this excellent and engrossing game, others have noticed a bit of instability that detracted from their gaming experience. However, the programmers at Mindscape Entertainment are hard at work trying to squash those bugs. The following information from the VP of R&D Jan Lindner appeared in a post on the newsgroup comp.sys.mac.games.strategic:
"With the help of a few of you (thanks, Brad & Scott) we managed to isolate a problem Imperialism II seems to have with WorldScript.
"Most likely, you will not have the problem at all as WorldScript is not part of the standard Mac OS install - but if you cannot start a game or even get into the credits screen... you most probably have the WorldScript extension (v. 7.5.5) running.
"We're currently looking into how to fix things - but until there is a fix you will have to disable WorldScript in the Extensions Manager if you want to play Imperialism II.
Again, this should only be a concern for very few of you out there... WorldScript is installed if you do a custom Mac OS install which includes the multi-lingual Internet package (the last custom installer option)."
If you have recently bought Imperialism II make sure you have the update (2 MB); if you are experiencing stability problems with the demo (44 MB), you might want to check your system folder for the extension mentioned above. [Eilers]
Bungie Implements Myth II Rolling Resets
For those who missed it (including yours truly) Bungie has created an interesting new policy on Bungie.Net, the online servers for their award-winning game Myth II. Beginning yesterday, April 5th, Bungie moderators implemented "rolling resets" which will start certain categories over from scratch.
From the Bungie.Net website:
"After the release of Myth: The Fallen Lords, we reset the ranks on bungie.net several times to keep things new and interesting. With Myth II, we're implementing rolling resets—the first Monday of every month, starting at the beginning of April, scores for three game types will be reset. More info on this soon, including the first three game types to be reset."
Yesterday Bungie reset Body Count, Flag Rally, and Scavenger Hunt games; this means that all points scored in those games will be wiped out and start over from zero. While this might seem a major annoyance to someone who just won a bunch of those games and was clearing a space on the virtual mantel for their Comet, the idea is to keep the game fresh by not allowing any one player to dominate for too long, and more importantly forcing diversity among the games being offered so that you won't go online and find only Body Count on If I Had A Trow games, as with Myth I. Bungie.Net also posted a calendar of future resets:
May: Steal The Bacon, Capture The Flag, Assassin
June: King Of The Hill, Balls On Parade, Territories
July: Last Man On The Hill, Stampede, Captures, Hunting
So now Myth II players are forced to diversify, rather than specialize, if they want to climb the ranks at Bungie.Net. Yet another subtle gameplay tweak in this addictive, engrossing game, and the sort of attention to detail we've come to expect from Bungie. [Eilers]
Civilization: Call To Power Released
Activision announced the release of their Civilization sequel, Civilization: Call to Power on Monday.
From the press release:
"What if it was possible for you to take complete control of a civilization from the dawn of time? What if the Roman Empire never fell, or the United States had been a monarchy? Activision, Inc.'s (Nasdaq: ATVI) Civilization: Call to Power confronts gamers with these very questions, and the decisions they make affect an entire civilization."
The latest in a long line of empire-building games, Civ: CTP looks to be an impressive addition to the already bursting arsenal. In the past, having a game published by Activision was a virtual death sentence for Mac gamers—there was no chance of them ever coming to the Mac OS. However, times have changed, and two prominent Activision titles, Quake II and Battlezone, are due on the Mac from Logicware this Summer. No word yet on a Mac version of Civ: CTP, but excellent sales of Quake II might tip the scales in our favor, so to speak... [Eilers]
 glDoom Frame Rate Drops to Zero
According to Blue's News, glDoom for all platforms, including the Mac, has been put in indefinite hold. Bad news for you old-school Doomers out there.
From Blue's News:
"glDoom project on indefinite hold:
"Due to circumstances beyond my control, the glDoom project is on hold indefinitely. The news sites will be informed when and if the project is resumed. No source code is available for download at this time. This includes ALL ports of glDoom; Win32, Mac, Linux and BeOS. Please do not ask for the source code or why the project is on hold more information will be forthcoming.
"The author has asked that no 'What happened?' emails are sent as an explanation will be released soon."
glDoom is a conversion of iD's venerable Doom "3D" engine to run on OpenGL and GLIDE (3Dfx) accelerated systems. IMG will have more on this situation as it develops. [Kester]
Unreal Multiplayer Crash Tip
An Unreal player on the Usenet group comp.sys.mac.games.action posted the following tip for players of the new 2.2.0b3 version of Unreal:
"I know 220b3 was supposed to fix this, but I still experience it [crashing between multiplayer maps] (even on my B&W)... it's crashing after a multiplayer game has ended- the Mac would just freeze on the final "Frag Stats (?)" screen (this was worse with 220b2). What I noticed is that when I saw this, and I knew I wasn't dead (another map is about to load), I'd press the "esc" key (once) and keep that menu open until the next "LOADING" screen is up (where you're in the "holding cell"). Worked pretty well for me, *might* work for you."
Thanks to this poster for the tip. [Eilers]
Article Analyzes Women's Roles in Video Games
An article entitled "Women And Image" that appeared in the Hartford-Courant is an interesting and eye-opening read for those who follow the game industry or are just consumers of it. The article begins:
" So you're a woman or girl who would like to play some action-packed video games?
Would you like to be:
A) a sexy warrior with unnaturally large breasts
B) an evil, cleavage-revealing vixen, or
C) a helpless princess waiting to be saved.
Not the kind of role you were looking for? Too bad. With most video games, you're out of luck..."
While the article gets a bit preachy and predictable in spots, it accurately points out the still-growing disparity between the video game industry's idealized "target audience" and who is actually buying and playing the games. The percentage of women online now nearly equals the percentage of men, something that was almost unimaginable less than five years ago—and yet the video game industry still seems heavily male-dominated and doesn't target women as consumers. Give the article a read and let us know what you think about the topic. [Eilers]
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