Multiplayer Requirements:

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Inside Mac Games has posted a preview of MacPlay's Freedom Force. The game simultaneously pays homage and pokes fun at the Silver Age of comics, and above all, never takes itself too seriously. Brought to the Mac courtesy of MacPlay, this title is shaping up to look like a welcome surprise that will hopefully be out in time for the holiday season.  

Here's a clip from the preview:

The gameplay in FF is best described as a action game with RPG elements. Players will start with one character and eventually assemble a large team of heroes, though only a maximum of four can be used for any one mission. Control can be done entirely with a mouse, though experienced players will probably use a combination of the mouse and keyboard for quicker gameplay. Warcraft III players should feel right at home.

The game types consist of Campaign, Danger Room, and Multiplayer. The Campaign is basically the story-driven single player version, while the Danger Room generates random scenarios for heroes to tackle. The Multiplayer aspect, which uses GameRanger for matching, allows players to put their heroes against each other in combat.

IMG Preview: Freedom Force

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Freedom Force (add to watch list)

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All you Mac holiday shoppers out there will be happy to know that Macplay is offering some special holiday deals. The first offer is a holiday game entitled Snowball Run that the first 1000 people to place an order at MacPlay's web store will receive for free. In Snowball Run, players take control of a Snowball-riding penguin that they must navigate through various 3D levels.

Here's Macplay's description of Snowball Run:

Help your snowball-riding pal, Pengy, get back to his Arctic home. Guide Pengy up and down ramps, around curves, and over jumps. Don't forget to keep an eye on the ever-present clock, or you'll run out of time. It's an exciting challenge that'll keep you on the edge of your seat.

Key Features:

Unlimited Play!

75 Challenging Levels

5 Fun-tastic 3D Fantasy Worlds

4 Difficulty Stages: Tutorial, Beginner, Intermediate, & Advanced

State-of-the-Art 3D graphics

Upbeat musical score

Collect goldfish along the way for extra lives and bonus points.

Simple, Intuitive Controls

MacPlay's next special is a bundle of the two first person shooters No One Lives Forever and Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix. MacPlay is offering the bundle for $79.99 and it comes with a free Soldier of Fortune II t-shirt.

Finally, Macplay is offering a free value series title and a holiday stocking with the purchase of two value series titles. The free game is randomly picked from among: Sin, Majesty, Earth 2140, Feeble Files, Knights & Merchants, Sacrifice and Birdie Shoot.

For more information, follow the link below.

MacPlay Holiday Specials

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Shortly after posting their Warcraft III demo on Friday, Blizzard Entertainment corrected an error in the archive and re-posted the demo over the weekend.

The first wave of players who downloaded the game on Friday and Saturday were unsuccessful in opening the downloaded file due to an error in the archive. Upon hearing of the bad news, Blizzard staff worked through the weekend correcting the error and re-posted a working demo on Sunday.

While answering some user's pressing questions, Blizzard frontman Rob Barris, dealing with the situation over the weekend, shed some light on the MacNN forums on how his company manages to release both the PC and Mac versions of the game in the same package:

...we have a fat binary application for the demo which actually includes a Windows exe and a Mac application in one file. It's the same technique used on the AMC/Coke demo CD and on the Saliva album. It is not incorrect to notice some Windows-exe data in the file. We could have trimmed this data out however this would have set back the QA and release schedule, all the testing for the CD releases was done on the hybrid executable, so we left it alone.

For those who are technically curious, there is a 'cfrg' resource on the resource fork side of the Installer app, which leads the OS to the native Mac code in the data fork. The native Mac code follows the Windows code in the file, so it's not surprising to see some Windows data near the beginning of the file. The technique works on everything from 9.0 through 10.2.x .

As we do have some reports from users who have successfully downloaded the file and run it, we're still looking for clues as to why some/many of these downloads are coming out bad. I'm checking in with the web staff as soon as I can get hold of them. I do not believe there was any kind of mix up that would have placed a pure Windows demo there as opposed to the hybrid one - certainly the Windows folk would not have MacBinary encoded it.

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MGF: WarCraft III Demo

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On tonight's broadcast of The Gamesome Mac, the weekly Mac gaming radio program, hosts Sean Smith and Omaha Sternberg talk with Joe Williams, president of Delta Tao Software.

Delta Tao has long had a favored place in the hearts of Mac gamers, developing such well-loved games as the massively multiplayer Clan Lord, Eric's Ultimate Solitaire, and Strategic Conquest.

Just this past week, Delta Tao completed the long-awaited, Internet-enabled Spaceward Ho! 5, the latest version of their award-winning, humorous game of galactic conquest.

Sean and Omaha will also offer Mac gaming news, commentary, and reviews, and along with their guest will take questions from listeners and give away some great games in The Gamesome Mac's live chat room.

The Gamesome Mac can be heard on Mondays from 6 to 8 pm Pacific Time, 9 to 11 pm Eastern (Tuesdays at 0200 UTC) on MacRadio.com. You can tune in live at The Gamesome Mac's web page, where you'll also find complete archives of past broadcasts. QuickTime 5 or 6 and a 28 kbps or faster Internet connection are required.

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The most recent update to the Neverwinter Nights Mac page at BioWare has been posted, giving a quick status check on the progress with the port. In the post they note the team is still moving forward with the OS X development of this 3D role-playing game, though since most major systems have all been put into place, it's now a matter of finishing up the last of the bugs. Here's the full post with details:

As with the past couple weeks, progress is being made but there is no big news to report. This is not a bad sign, sometimes development is just not that exciting. We though that something really interesting was fixed the other day, but we were wrong. It was fixed, but it was apparently not actually interesting. Quality Assurance efforts have been stepped up as the client approaches completeness.

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Neverwinter Nights Mac Version Info Page

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iDevGames has posted another postmortem on a finalist in their recent uDevGames 2002 contest, Galder. The arcade puzzle title was declared "Game Play Runner-up" in the competition, and author Ivan Milles describes both positive and negative aspects of the game's development period. Here's a clip which describes Milles' rather unique working conditions while making Galder:

This is all about giving yourself what you need. I had the best conditions for programming this summer. Working as a subway toll booth assistant on weekend nights, I could work quite undisturbed for long hours (there are very few customers that don't have subway passes at those hours). Therefore, if what you need is the company of a penguin, then check the classified ads. I found not having access to the Internet from the subway actually helped. Thus, when I bonked into a problem, I could either do nothing for four hours and then check the Internet upon returning home, or use the four hours to try to solve the problem, or fixing other things in the code. Choosing between programming and staring at an empty ticket hall is an easy one.

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Galder Postmortem

Galder

X-Bit Labs' website has posted an article about a few of ATI's next generation of cards. They have listed the cards that are planned as well as a few specific features for each card, describing the target computer type for each feature set. The article also includes a number of statistics on ATI's card's memory, buses, and more.

The Markham, Ontario-based graphics solutions developer will also concentrate on distributing mobile solutions in future. Nevertheless, it does not mean that the company does not want to address the market of integrated desktop solutions: according to our sources, next year the world will see a bunch of very powerful and feature-rich chipsets from ATI Technologies.

X-Bit Labs' ATI Future Chipsets Article

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X-Bit Labs' Website

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