news@mac-gamer.com
 
06-17-00
 
Mac 4 x 4 preview site:
4 x 4 Evolution is an off road driving sim coming out for Mac soon. It boasts impressive graphical realizm and nice game play. One of our friends in the internet Mac gaming community has recently uploaded a 4 x 4 Evolution preview site. Here are the details that I received:
 
Yeah, all mac users out there. I've got a 4x4 Evolution
preview page! Come on over and take a look. I've got discussions
going and information on the game coming out for the macintosh.
So, if you want or like 4x4 Evolution, and your a mac user, come by my preview page and take a look. I've got a discussion going on the forum, and I've got screenshots and info on the game.
 
4 x 4 Evolution promises to be an awesome game! Anyone interested in off road driving sims should check out this site for more details.
4 x 4 Evolution
Mac Gaming Freaks
 
06-16-00
 
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
 
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
 
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
 
06-11-00
 
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
 
06-07-00
 
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:
 
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.
 
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
 
06-05-00
 
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
 
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:
 
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.
 
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
 
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