kristus

The Dark Mod updated once again with a new release: another demo mission named Tears of St. Lucia. If you liked the first teaser demo Thief's Den, you'll absolutely love Saint Lucia. It's a full-sized mission demonstrating the current state of The Dark Mod's development, packed into jdude's stunning world design. They've also put up a wiki article on how to download and install the mod. Go get it.

1up put up an interview with Tim Willits and Todd H of Id software. The talk is mainly about Rage, but also touch on subjects such as why Doom is made an in house project. But this little snippet caught my eye in particular: TW: We're not talking multiplayer yet. Our goal is to focus more on cooperative [gameplay] than competitive [gameplay]. We've got Doom and Quake, and we have all these other IPs that have competitive multiplayer. But for Rage, we want to focus more on cooperative. That Rage was going to have a Cooperative game mode, was already known. But this suggest that it'll be more than just an afterthought.

The Dark Mod has once again updated with news of their strides forward to making a Thief-like game that people actually will want to play. This time, they're demonstrating some finer details of the world. Candles, to be specific. In a previous update, they also have a video of a skybox ability they added, where clouds coming in over the moon actually make the world darker. To see the videos, check out their website thedarkmod.com.

I just found out on Doom3World that the mod Fragging Free has just been released. The mod is centered around fast and furious game play where it's all about the fragging, and it seems to be stockpiled with different weapons, monsters and features to take the fragging to a new level. Go get it to get your Frag on!

I noticed over at ModDB that the Doom 3 top down view zombie shooter Z-Hunter has had its first release. So what is Z-Hunter really? Well, straight from the horse's mouth: Z-hunter includes 8 maps, 2 unique weapons, unique player animations, over 20 enemies custom designed for this style off play. Combining gfx power with old school top down gameplay. So, what are you waiting for? Go download it.

Shacknews showed off two screenshots of Rage, the first official screenshots to ever come out for the game actually. They are very high resolution and you can find them here. They also put up the extended Rage trailer shown off at the QuakeCon keynote the other day. You can find that here.

In an interview with Shacknews, John Carmack explained the basic plans for Doom 4, currently their second major in-house game project. Carmack is promising a lot of open-ended action, and 3 times the visual fidelity of Rage. Go to Shacknews to read more about it, and witness what appears to be the new Doom logo. More info on the game has been delivered by Tim Willits, saying that the game will not be titled Doom 4, but instead will have a subtitle. Other information about the game can be obtained from shacknews posts here and about the multiplayer aspects here.

During GDC in Paris, Next Gen had a Q&A with Matt Hooper, lead designer at id software. The interview touches on subjects such as the way the gaming industry is evolving, finding the right person for the right job and a few tidbits about id's upcoming title Rage. Next Gen also probe for new info about custom content creation and the new tools and possibilities being created for the industry.

The Hexen Edge Of Chaos team made a thread over at Doom3world.Org about their latest happenings and progress. Also featured in the update is a screenshot of their "interactive lantern" and a monster referred to as a "Hellion, a creature from Chaos." Go visit their current website, or the thread at Doom3world for more information.

The Dark Mod updated a little while ago about some new features such as rats and the AI's amazing ability to understand the finer functionality of elevators. They're also expecting to have a beta released within the next year.

A new TC by the name of Z-Hunter for Doom 3 has been announced. The mod is a top down view experience said to be aimed at combining old-school fast paced game play of yesteryear's age of top down action with Doom 3's cutting edge graphics. For more information and screenshots, go visit the website.

PC Perspective posted an interesting and extensive interview with John Carmack detailing his opinions on what will matter for future 3d engines, as well as a bit of information on what he hopes to achieve in the future. We're working on our RAGE project and the id Tech 5 code base but I've been talking to all the relevant people about what we think might be going on and what our goals are for an id Tech 6 generation. Which may very well involve, I’m certainly hoping it involves, ray tracing in the "sparse voxel octree" because at least I think I can show a real win. There's even a screenshot of Doom in there to boot.

Team Demise updated their website again after a year of laziness with the news of a freshly released special edition of their Dark7: Mission pack as well as some information regarding the state of their upcoming Quake inspired project "Fallen", wich will use the Vavoom source port. Head over to their website for more information.

No "witty" puns in this headline, and I am sorry for that. I will try to do better next time. I really couldn't figure something out in the two seconds of time I spent thinking about it. Either way, The Dark Mod team announced over at Doom3World that they released their "Alpha Tech Demo" of the mod featuring a small map called "The Thief's Den". Thief's Den is just a few rooms but it is a complete, fully playable mission, and includes a good selection of the main Dark Mod features. Keep in mind that The Dark Mod is still a work in progress and this is reflected in the demo. Download url and information can be found in the release thread over at D3W. Also, don't forget to visit their website for assorted goodies such as screenshots and concept art.

The Quake 4 Abuse-like mod that set out to merge all the storylines in virtually all of id's games into one has met its final release. For downloads, more info and the hilarous story, go to the HardQore Planetquake website.

The Dark Mod team made an update over at Doom3World stating that they have uploaded a new gameplay video of their TC/Editing package The Dark Mod. However, coupled with the video is a rather juicy disclaimer. 1. This was an internal video made by Dram, but we decided to package it up and release it publicly. 2. Everything you see is a Work In Progress. Nothing has been completely tweaked or finalized. 3. You will notice plenty of glitches. (particle effect issues, some footstep sound problems) We’re aware of them. 4. The AI are nowhere near finished. Anyway, it's available in two formats, one being low-res Google Video, and the other being a high-res AVI file, which weighs in around 50MB.

As the title says, the Hexen: Edge of Chaos website updated about two weeks ago proclaiming that they're not dead, and that despite their best efforts, they won't be making a release of the mod for the year 2007. However, they expect the release of their new website including a lot of fancy media and an actual release date for the mod to come sometime during this winter.

Gamasutra conducted an interview with Fountainhead Entertainment's director Anna Kang (also John Carmack's wife) about gaming on handhelds, the reason for making Doom RPG, and other things. Check it out.

Not quite what the topic says, but the team behind the Doom 3 TC The Ruiner have finally unveiled their remarkably non-ruined website. I couldn't even find any broken links. Anyway, The Ruiner is the second TC by the same people who brought us the fast-paced Abuse-like Quake 4 mod HardQuore. Ruiner is a dark, nightmarish, fast paced third person action modification for Doom3. the player fights hordes of the damned using unique weapons, abilities and spells. The website features an impressive resource of media demonstrating the TC and as if that wasn't enough, they also talk about a coming demo being released sometime during this winter. Don't just sit there, get over there now.

Team TNT has broken the silence after just over three years. With two news posts in the last two months, they are talking about broken links and the status for their current project Eternal Doom IV: Return from Oblivion. So far we have completed 7 very large maps. We intend to release this set as a "teaser", after which we will work on making it a true megawad. We expect a teaser release in a couple of months, and a wider release a year or more later. Head on over to Team TNT's site for more information.

Shacknews posted an article where they talked to Tim Willits and Todd Hollenshead about id's new IP Rage. The talk is about influences as well as design strategies of past and current id, as well as what you will be able to expect from Rage. Rage's foundation, definitely, is first person shooter, because that's what we do best. But we wanted to change what people expect from an id first person shooter. Read more about it at Shacknews.

The Doom 3 mod previously known as "Quake: Shambler's castle" had a name change and got itself a website. They also declare that the team is significantly larger than before, and the mod will have several new maps and enemies in the next release. Go to their new website for more information as well as a new screenshot from the mod's map "Lava storm".

A "new" Doom 3 TC has been announced over at Doom3world. The leader Revility (HardQore Quake 4 mod leader) says it's the same mod that he last year thought of as dead and released all the monster resources to. Well, he opened it up again, with a small team of two (Revility and Red UK), as well as the band Desecrative Phoneticism for the backing soundtrack. The team is looking to expand though, and are looking for a coder, and some modelers as well as animators. Read more about it here. Also, you can download the monster resource pack released last year here. There's also a teaser website put up here, as well as a forum here.

The Doom 3 Cooperative mod OpenCoop has finally reached its version 2.0 release. Alongside with many improvements over the last version such as more customizable characters, better suited AI, and network enhancements, the mod also features new game modes, as well as its major new feature, support for the Doom 3 mission pack Resurrection of Evil. More than that, they have also released the v2.0 of their map pack for the mod. The map pack consists of a number of more or less (in)famous Doom 3 single player missions that have been remade for Cooperative play. For changelog and downloads, go to their website. See the release thread on D3W here.

The Quake IV mod by the name HardQore recently updated with new screenshots of upcoming levels and one shot of Sarge from Quake 3 holding one bigass minigun. For those of you who doesn't know, HardQore is a platformer of the Abuse style done in Quake IV and features one of the wackiest stories I've ever had the pleasure to read. It incorporates the Doomguy and the Quakeguys into some sort of concoction that lacks both reason and logic. A beta of the mod was released last year and another is scheduled to come soon. If you want to see and read more, I suggest you go over to their website and leach all their media.