Semi-realism mod for Unreal Tournament 2003/2004 OS X

Semi-realism mod for Unreal Tournament OS 9 and OS X

An unparalleled giggle collection, from any semi-realism FPS

(Aug 24): Macologist.org and OSXgamefiles.com are back online, after some server problems yesterday. ScvWebFire, the owner/admin of the servers had to go into the datacenter yesterday for some herculean efforts, and the good news is that both are back up. We've been doing a lot of moving around (their IPs changed recently as the entire parent network was totally moved), but all should be well. The next step is collecting donations to base Macologist & OSXgamefiles on a G5 XServe, via PayPal to sales@osxgamefiles.com, or just click on the paypal icon at the osxgamefiles.com front page. Even a few euros/dollars will go a long way, so if you can'your weekly salary, at least spare t give us one or two euros/dollars (less than a coffee) just to say you support us. Thank you in advance! We really appreciate it! If you're paying in dollars (like me), note that 5 euros are equivalent to about 6 dollars.

(Aug 23): Regarding Close Combat, below, it seems that a mod based on the same (previously RTS) series, Close Combat Marines, is used by the Marine Corps in its Infantry Cognitive Skills Labs. Read more at Department of Defense Game Developers' Community. Although Close Combat will be a retail product from Atomic, there is much emphasis on its development in close scrutiny by real-life active duty Marines, presumably with permission or even under orders to do so from higher brass. This begs the question: is the game intended as a recruiting tool for the US Marine Corps, similar to the freely-distributed (non-retail) Americas Army (AA) for the US Army (e.g. here and here). I think we'll have to wait and see if the game is largely standalone, or evolves with a series of feature-enhancing (and community-building) patches like AA. I really wonder if any funding from the Marines or DoD went into CC game dev-- if anyone knows for sure, please let me know. On that note in the real world, Heckler & Koch is poised to replace the relatively old but standard-issue M16 with the XM8, a convertible weapon that can serve as a rifle, shorter carbine, grenade launcher, or machine gun. H&K is awaiting congressional funding before building a factory in Columbus, Georgia, that could potentially have the weapon in the hands of soldiers as soon as Summer 2005. It's also designed to have an extended barrel life, and will fire standard 5.56mm. Read more here and here. If you play Frag.Ops, you're already familiar with the in-game XM8 model for the "Special Ops" team, as this game is set in 2007, according to head coder SquirrelZero. I haven't heard if AA devs have put the XM8 in-game, but expect to see it soon if they haven't yet, although you won't see it in Close Combat, since apparently the Marine Corps have opted in favor of the M4A1 instead of the XM8.

(Aug 21): Close Combat: First to Fight trailer released: A realism urban-combat FPS, this one created with close supervision and input from Marines who have served in Iraq & Afghanistan. Take a look here (54M).

(Aug 20): nongaming news: Apple's educational ipod bundle: How would you like a new iPod from Apple for $69? Really. As an educational buyer, you may qualify for a laptop-and-iPod bundle: buy any iBook or Powerbook and you'll qualify for a $200 mail-in rebate on any 4th Gen iPod-- with already-reduced educational prices, that's a 20G for $69, and a 40Gigger for $169. Read more about Apple's "Cram and Jam" promotion. NASA hires Hollywood: On Sep 8, the Genesis Project will return a capsule containing space dust, and fittingly will be recovered mid-air by NASA hired Hollywood stuntmen-and-helicopter teams who have previously worked on films including the Star Trek franchise. Read articles by The Observer as well as see helicopter training mission pics at NASA.gov, as well as their main Genesis page for more info. Yes, there will be live-coverage by NASA-TV.

(Aug 17): America's Army 2.2 is coming soon, promoted along with a "Name the Next Software Version Contest.". Aspyr's Glenda Adams is asking for feedback on the Mac version of Battlefield 1942 at IMG forums in this thread. I'll try to post a pointer & invitation for Glenda to come see our huge 200+ post BF1942 mod bug thread at Macologist. IMG also reports on a possible setback for the prospect of Doom 3 for OS X, with news that Activision won't publish the game although it looks like it's still going to happen, if Apple helps with optimization issues, and another publisher is found. Read more here. Macsoft has announced that it is releasing the Neverwinter Nights expansion packs, Shadows of the Undertide, and Hordes of the Underdark for OS X.

(Aug 14): Nongaming: Cloning pets has officially gone commercial: What's going on in Sausalito, California? Genetic Savings & Clone, a pet gene banking & cloning company has been showing their 2nd and 3rd cloned cats, of an exotic part-leapordcat breed known as a Bengal, and an equally exotic cloning technique known as chromatin transfer, that GSC apparently has the rights to as far as pet cloning. Here's a nice BBC article, as well as a humorous timestar article, and even a skeptical article from earlier in the year when the first cat was cloned. Dogs are coming soon, and the cost of cloning either is a cool $50K, although I'm sure you can bank your pet's genes for cheaper. It makes me think-- if they can do cats & dogs, they could in theory easily do people... if they wanted. Airport Extreme Haxx0r: you gotta love a guy who's blog is entitled So Sue Me. Norwegian hacker Jon Lech Johansen, who is infamous for breaking the DeCSS DVD encryption so he could play DVDs on his Linux box (and was sued, and won), has done a hax for AirPort Express, kracking and revealing its public key. The bottom line? You can probably soon use an app other than iTunes to wireless stream your audio. Read more at ZDNet.

(Aug 12): FragOps news: Version 1.39c has been released. It's a minor tweak, tallying in at 6M for the manual patch. Due to it being so small, we may not be creating a separate full dmg for OS X. To install, open your UT2k4 application bundle by right clicking it and selecting "show package contents." Then drop the patch files into the appropriate folders within the folder FragOps, overwriting existing files. Also, FO is set to appear in the UT2k4 "Editor's Choice" edition, according to Squirrelzero's newssite Furball Dynamics, noting that FO's dev company, Pandora Sturdios, has signed a one-time contract with Epic Games. SZ also notes that FO is the most popular mod for UT2k4, citing stats trackers at GameSpy and CSports, in an undisputable riposte to Red Orchestra staffer Ramm-Jaeger in this thread at Beyond Unreal. In general, I wonder about two things: 1) "one-time" contract seems to imply future retail plans by Pandora Studios for FO, and 2) are the folks at Epic that chose FO for the ECE (apparently for commercial considerations) the same as those who seem to be biased against FO in the MSU? [No, I don't have insider knowledge, I just beta test for them occassionally...]

Strange Flavor, the Mac-only games company we mentioned in our July 13 news, has released a new version of their Airburst title, called Airburst Extreme, and there's even a free demo. I was just trying out their Airburst demo yesterday, and was thinking of buying it when I saw the Extreme version was now out! If you don't know about this quirky title, think happy sounds and visuals along the lines of Snood and Crystal Quest (from the Mac SE days), but done in an Aqua-inspired way. If you're into retro mac gaming, you have to check out Macintosh Garden, and even if you're not, you have to check out their in-your-face militantly OS 6-styled website. Yes OS Six, yes, the icons really work, and yes, they have Crystal Quest, the remake Crystal Crazy, and even classics like Infocom's all-text Zork trilogy with Planetfall. In other, more modern news, the mac-game dev community site iDevGames announced on Monday the start of their annual game developing contest, which now sports its own website called uDevGames. They write: "During the public voting period of the contest... all Mac users are encouraged to download the free games and vote to help determine the contest winners. As an added bonus, door prizes ...will be awarded at random to lucky voters." In other random hype, I've seen a lot of buzz about the new 23G blue-laser FW800 optical drive from NitroAV, and the Altec Lansing AHS602 Gaming Heaset, which supposedly reconstructs 3d surround information in 2-channels using a technology called SRS 3-D-- I would guess it does this in a binaural setup (although most implementations of SRS 3D are not headphone), which models the way sound bounces off all the various little ridges in your earlobe (aka 'pinnae') which is the way your brain normally decodes surround (up/down & forward/backward) cues. Finally SIGGRAPH2004 is closing and we've seen some nice authoring tools for Mac devs, in particular Maya Unlimited and Maya 6 PLE for OS X.

(Aug 10): OS X 10.3.5 released: There's a new iSync update and Security update too, so go to your Software Update. On that note, I noticed a few fun OS X easter eggs from MacAddict magazine, and would you know it comes with an emacs Tetris? Load up Terminal, type emacs (return), press Escape, type x (for extended command mode), then type tetris (lower case) then press return. There are more ascii tidbits... start Terminal, then do cd /usr/share/emacs/ Then do: ls to see folders, there should be one with numbers, like "21.2". Change to /etc inside of that: cd 21.2/etc . From here you'll see files such as COOKIES, CENSHORSHIPS, JOKES, MOTIVATION. Use cat to read these: cat COOKIES (remember these are case-sensitive). Also some more stuff in another folder: cat /usr/share/misc/flowers . Finally, for Lord of the Rings (LOTR) calendar events, type this in Terminal: grep "LOTR" /usr/share/calendar/calendar.history . On that note, did you know that the short-lived pre-Panther G5-compatible 32-bit OS X 10.2.7 was code-named Smeagol? I'll end it here, with the reminder that if you missed my July 15 humor note on 1337 LOTR, you really need to educate yourself on this classic.


(Aug 8): Make Something Unreal winners announced: Epic has announced the winners here for Phase 3. Phase 4 closes Aug 20, and the grand finale deadline is Oct 1, probably just in time to be included for production in the Editor's Choice Edition (from Aug 1 news). It's a pretty straightforward total stats site.

Nongaming: I was talking to Neural in the #osx IRC, and it turns out he has the second largest iTunes library on record at the itunesregistry.com. They recently had a big crash and reset some accounts I was told, so even I would make the top 100, so go upload your itunes xml file and see where you fall! However, if you want the ultimate in interaction, register at the other audio geek site, audioscrobbler.com. There, you download an app or plugin for your music player such as iTunes ( or others )... in the case of OS X iTunes, toss the app (it's not a plugin) into your startup items. Now, you'll see it in your top right menu bar, and it tracks all the songs you play, and updates your account at audioscrobbler. Soon you'll be able to compare your profile of played music to others users, in a "6 degrees of separation" way: Think Amazon.com's "other users who bought this item also bought..." but much more detailed, much more interesting. You have got to try it out if you're an iTunes fanatic. And finally, if you want the stats on your iPod itself, or any other Apple hardware from Mac SEs to Xserves to peripherals, see the MacTracker database app. Do you remember what the 8500 death chime, or the 5400 bootup chime sounded like? SEII bootup chime? When now you can reminisce. Don't know the operating temperature range of the ipod? Well, the iPod info is a bit out of date, and if you want to go somewhere really cold beyond the listed temperature, you'll need to check elsewhere for specific tips on batteries and condensation.


(Aug 6): FragOps recruiting: The FO team is recruiting weapon skinners, voice actors, a sound engineer, and beta testers. See the official site's July 27 news for more details and contact info.

(Aug 5): Doom 3 haxx0r? PC Users: don't download the Coop Mod for D3 until further notice! The doom3 IRC topic notes that it is probably a CD Key Stealer, an not a coop mod. Apparently it just loads up a single player map on multiplayer. UPDATE: there's an article at D3-center and FPScentral that also calls it a likely trojan from Russia. However the latest post from that FPSCentral thread indicate that the file may be benign, and the mistake genuine: One of the first people to report the problem states the key-in-use message might be due to the dev's CD Key overwriting the user's (due to sloppy coding), rather than by stealing the user's... this makes more sense because otherwise it means that every stolen key is actively logged-in simultaneously. At any rate, a 'wait and watch' approach is certainly prudent at this point, but this doesn't concern us mac users for now, though it's good to know IMHO. .

Doom 3 Radiant editor: Heorogar reports at Macologist that "GTK Radiant has announced that they will be adding DOOM III supports to their Quake Engine-based map maker utility. GTK also has released information on how to access the DOOM III ingame editor which is a WYSIWYG editor like UnrealED." Read the full article at the link.

World of Warcraft sites & shots: WOW is of course Blizzard's upcoming MMORPG for mac, and their main page recently announced the launch of 3 european sites in German, French, and English, with special custom content for European gamers. Blizzard also released 42 new screenshots. WoW is currently in the process of closed betas in US, Canada, Korea, and Europe.

KOTOR specs: IMG released System Requirements for Knights of the Old Republic. Thank you Glenda. Read the full article for interesting comments from coder Brad Oliver as well.

nongaming news: IDC claims Linux overtakes OS X on desktops, story at InfoWorld. No word at that article about Linux on G5s... IBM promises not to pursue its patents against the Linux core, and encourages other patent holders to do the same, at ecommercetimes. The first PDA virus/trojan spreading in the wild was found, as reported at PCWorld.

nongaming vids: For your entertainment, I ran across an Xtreme unicycling video-- really. For obvious reasons, it reminded me of the mind-blowing one-legged DDR video. Makes me want to look for a 1337 pogo-stick video, but of course Google doesn't have a video search like its image search page. Ahh, but I heard about Google's advanced and undocumented search operators. I tried searching for pogo filetype:mov. Alas, 0 results, because filetype only works with about 5 extensions, and not any video ones. Their link:URL operator is a bit incomplete or buggy, but their cache: operator was neat! Do a Google for cache:www.santaduck.com to see the last-cached version of this page! I Googled the old-fashioned way, and although I didn't find pogo stunts (although the MTV pogo-skateboarding was close), I found stunt stilt videos. Here's one from the Jay Leno show, from Stiltwerks, the manufacturer of velocity stilts, as well as a short video from superdairyboy, and a great but absolutely unoptimized video at a .mac account. Santa bonus: If you want to see me in stilts on Halloween, click here. Yes my headgear is real, and it gave me a blister on the top of my head after 4 hours.

(Aug 4): Doom3 update: Linux-gamers.net seems to be hosting a patch for Doom3. From what I understand, it allows Doom3 to run in Linux under WineX, but don't quote me on that. Gladiac of Linux-gamers writes: Rob Crittenden has submitted a patch for Cedega CVS version on the cedega devloper mailinglist that adds the function GlobalMemoryStatusEx. This is required for Doom 3 to run with Cedega CVS. It just copies data from a call to GlobalMemoryStatus() and seems to work - but don't forget the linux version is under development and will be released "when it's done". And no, this doesn't have anything really to do with us Mac-heads.

nongaming news: Moving songs from your own legally-purchased CDs to your own iPod is apparently illegal in Australia and NZ. Read more here. I was thinking more about the Apple-Real DRM (Digital Rights Management) controversy, and never thought about Linux, which is open source... I never thought about how Linux & the DMCA are really not easy partners, to say the least... this covers issues that we take for granted on Mac & PCs such as DVD players as well. Read more here. Regarding open source, IBM made the monumental step of releasing its Cloudscape database code to the open source community via the Apache Foundation. Regarding both Linux & IBM, apparently the Army is now teaming with IBM to make a Linux-run AMD 64 cluster supercomputer for weapon designs. I wonder how it will compare with the Army's G5-based Mach 5 (as reported in June 25 news), with regard to both megaflops and security against viruses. Speaking of viruses, they caught the kid who wrote the Sasser and other viruses. Apparently the German teen's capture was facilitated by a reward bounty by Microsoft. Read more here. Maybe they'll toss him in the Army. Then again, maybe addiction to the internet will make him unfit, if we believe what we're hearing from our Finnish friends. That wraps it up for this edition of 'stream-of-consciousness' news. =]

(Aug 3): Doom 3 update: The first reviews have started to come out. FPSCentral.com has a nice one with lots of screenies from fpscentral.com. I'm sure we'll be seeing more in the next few day as the game gets distributed. Hmmm 4-person multiplayer, what's up with that... =\ Pretty though. And the console is apparently hard to bring up, perhaps to discourage cheating? As soon as I have news on mapping on a mac, I'll post it here.

(Aug 2): Doom3 Final Trailer released: Today id Software released the final Doom 3 Trailer. Get it here (42M .mov). The PC version is due out almost immediately (reports indicate some stores carrying it already), and from IRC chatter apparently (sigh) has already been leaked to P2P =(. Linux folks are waiting for their binaries, and for those who can't wait Icculus exhorts on his irc topic: "Don't install Windows for doom 3, you fucking wankers." Hopefully the OS X version will see the light of day before the end of this year, although the coding team is apparently working on tweaking a pc demo & dedicated server app first. Here's a screenshot to tide you over...

Make Something Unreal deadlines pushed back: Epic recently announced that the deadlines for Phase 4 and the Grand Finals of the Make Something Unreal Contest have been moved back. The original deadline for Phase 4 and the Educational categories had been August 20, and is now September 10. The Grand Finals had been scheduled for October 1, and is now November 15. This news is probably welcome to all the mod teams, and may be related to the unexpected delays in judging Phase 3, as well as a probable goal for making a quality pre-holiday release of the recently-announced UT2k4 Editor's Choice Edition, which may very well contain the winning mods.

Get Well Soon: Apple & Pixar CEO Steve Jobs sent a company-wide (Apple) email revealing he had surgery this past weekend to remove an early form of pancreatic cancer, the rarer but less dangerous variety called an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor, which means full recovery is likely with no further treatments. He writes that he plans to recuperate through August, during which Tim Cook will be at the helm at Apple. I loved how he ended his missive on an upbeat note: "PS: I'm sending this from my hospital bed using my 17-inch PowerBook and an Airport Express," perhaps knowing that the company email would also serve as his public announcement. I guess he made sure he had a broadband jack in his hospital recovery room. Get well soon, Mr. Jobs.

Nongaming: The Big Mac diet plan-- 6 Feet and 170 lbs? Not a bad figure for someone who has eaten a Big Mac every day... since 1972. Don Gorske entered the Guinness Book of World Records by downing his 20,000th Big Mac last week. I guess he didn't see the film Supersize me. From UPI.

(Aug 1): UT2004 Editors Choice Edition announced: A press release recently announced plans to release an "Editor's Choice" edition for UT2k4 this fall, and will include new ONS maps, vehicles, characters, as well as community mods from the MSU contest. A 2nd DVD will include the 3dBuzz "Video Training Modules". Before you ask, : Beyond Unreal cites Epic's Mark Rein as saying all new content would be released as a free download for current owners of retail UT2k4. Whew. My remaining question are: 1) will it be released (for sale) to OS X? and 2) how many mods will get chosen, because too many full conversion mods won't fit as extras, even on 2 DVDs, and will that invalidate or mesh with plans for MSU winners who decide to license the Unreal engine and go 'retail'?

(July 31): UT2004 3270 BETA: Icculus.org's 0day FTP now lists a UT2004 version 3270 for Linux (it's a beta and 32-bit only). As an update to the question from July 25 news of whether v3264 will be available for OS X: It will not, since it's considered an interim build. However now that 3270 is in beta for linux, we can assume 3270 is not an interim build, which means we can expect it in the near future for Mac OS X as well. I'll keep you posted.

Googlebombing war: George Bush vs. Michael Moore. If you don't already know what "googlebombing" is, go to Google, and search for Miserable Failure or French Military Victories or Weapons of Mass Destruction then click "I'm feeling lucky" to go to the first link. These results are made by websites that make hotlinks of the exact search phrases directly to the targeted websites. For M.F., of course George Bush's Bio famously comes up first. However, interestingly, Jimmy Carter's Bio comes up in 2nd place, but is indented (also being at the whitehouse.gov site). But even more interesting is the recent rise of michaelmoore.com in third place! Apparently, earlier this year in March, Moore came in first place. Looks like there is a googlebombwar afloat. I'd be curious to see if, after the DNC, John Kerry will be the next target of this googlebomb. I wonder if official political entities are responsible for this shifting dynamic, or if it's mainly the work of scattered bloggers. Hmmm.

"That's no moon, that's a space station" - Obi-Wan Kenobi. NASA probe Cassini has returned its latest batch of photos, and someone at NASA does have a sense of humor... The photo of the moon Mimas included the caption: "That's No Space Station." My brain automatically supplies: "almost there..." + "stay on target." Isn't it sad how I can't remember any memorable quotes from E1 or E2 other than lines from Jar Jar Binks? Classic, the new Star Wars films are not =\ . I can even supply E4 quotes for E1 items: Trade federation droids? "These aren't the droids you're looking for." Anyways click on the pic and be happy, because it's really out there!

(July 30): Apple/Real news: Apple has finally issued a statement regarding Real's Harmony (see July 27 news below), and the bottom line? Apple sees it as haxx0r: "We are stunned that RealNetworks has adopted the tactics and ethics of a hacker to break into the iPod and we are investigating the implications of its actions under the DMCA and other laws". More at Macworld UK. However, columnist Eric Hellweg from CNN Money seems to agree with me that it might eventually be a good thing: for Apple, and for consumers. MacCentral has already posted a rebuttal from Real: "Apple has suggested that new laws such as the DMCA are relevant to this dispute. In fact, the DMCA is not designed to prevent the creation of new methods of locking content and explicitly allows the creation of interoperable software." Apple also hints it may consider blocking Harmony in future updates. However, I'm still worried that more trouble is to come if Real licenses its Harmony to other music stores with an "iPod compatible" tagline. Stay "tuned" on this one.

Knights of the Old Republic goes beta: Inside Mac Games reports today that Aspyr's Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (KOTR) ahs gone beta, even scooping Aspyr's own project status page, which still reports an alpha status. In other Aspyr news, Sim City 4 Rush Hour for OS X is now available for pre-order.

Old news update: Sims 2 coming for mac. Saw this thread at Macologist from a few weeks ago, where Maxis General Manager Neil Young mentions in a chat at the Sims2 website that he won't announce a release date, strongly implying that the product is coming for OS X.

OpenAL Audio Update: Forgot to mention the other interesting bit about Ryan's .plan pointed out to me yesterday by reader Turbojugend... he notes that Apple's OS X 10.4 Tiger preview included Apple's implementation of OpenAL(!!!), which means he'll stop OpenAL dev on the mac for now until issues such as fixing VOIP (voice over IP) on Apple's version become more clear. Remember how bad it was in the first version of UT2k3, where the audio code slowed down the entire game? For one, I can't wait to see what touches he puts on this one... For those of you who don't know who Ryan (aka Icculus) is, he's the MacSoft/Epic programmer responsible for many of our fave Mac & Linux gaming titles such as UT2kX, AA, Spiderman, Postal 2, etc. In full, he writes:

"For those that weren't at WWDC, Apple gave out preview discs of MacOS X Tiger. One of the things Tiger installs by default? OpenAL.framework. No kidding. That's basically awesome. It's Apple's version, which is open-sourced and residing in Creative.com's CVS repository. Likely I'll move my implementation over to Linux and stop further Mac development, so that there is a clear technology path on the Mac. I'll devote further Mac development and debugging to the Apple implementation. After all, it was partially a stop-gap solution (remember when ut2003 took 25% of the CPU mixing audio? It was a needed fix, no doubt!), and partially a technology proof-of-concept to show Apple what works well in terms of game development. No doubt it has served me well.

In the short term, I'll have to decide what we ship on the disc with Unreal-based games. For ut2004, my implementation is the only one with ALC_EXT_capture support for VoIP...this could be added to the other implementation, but hasn't been as of yet. My version is apparently a little faster, but it's stereo only (but the subversion repository doesn't crash on M-Audio 5.1 and 7.1 cards anymore), so Apple's tech is probably more attractive for further development by default.

All of the missing functionality in Apple's implementation could be fixed with some elbow grease, which I'm sure will show up one way or another in the near future. Overall, this is a very good step forward, and I applaud Apple for giving game developers something they really need."

iTunes Politicking: MacCentral reports that the iTunes Store is offering free downloads of speeches from the Democratic National Convention. Is Apple playing politics, or will speeches from the other side of the fence also be freely available? As far as that goes, I'm not even really sure what computer software, hardware, and music entities think about the candidates regarding their businesses. If you have a clue, let me know. AFAIK there are still restrictions of exports to countries such as Iraq and even Yugoslavia (now officially Serbia and Montenegro), so Linux distros and even folks such as Adobe (via Acrobat) could improve their situation, and I'll keep an ear to the ground so when iTunes expands its services to Eastern Europe and the Middle East, you'll be the first to know. Indie labels from those regions could not be reached for comment =P.

(July 29): BF1942 mods update: New mods available for download at Macologist include BF Pirates 3.1 Full, Silent Heroes 0.35 Full, Interestate Racing 1.6 MP and 1.62 patch. Also, be sure to come visit us at our new IRC channel, irc.gamesurge.net #macologist. We're getting neuralstatic from #osx to help us with a fun logger bot soon, so come idle. Other BF1942 news: Macologist staff member Mutle is beginning development on BF1942 modding tools in OS X, beginning by porting Moseleys Tools, an open source tool for extracting .rfa files. But he's planninng more tools and seeking input from the community, so if you plan to author content for BF1942 on a mac, be sure to drop him a line either in this Projects thread or this public thread. Here's a screenshot of preliminary work.

Unreal Engine 3 & Ryan Gordon: Ryan's .plan now reads: "Work officially begins. Time to get this building under gcc again. Since we changed up the source tree layout, the Makefiles from UE2 are basically useless. Rather than rewrite them, I'm going to spend some time exploring SCons, which came highly recommended by TTimo, the Doom3/linux guy. First Unreal steals their colored lighting, then their build system! :) Obviously, there's a lot to be done at this point, but best to start now so I'm not scrambling to port a whole engine when UE3 games get closer to shipping. Updates as I have them." Thanks to Turbojugend from Macologist for spotting this item.

Nongaming news: I was l cleaning out my books today and came across a David Brin novel entitled Kiln People-- and what struck me most was the similarity of the cover art with Will Smith's I, Robot. See if you don't agree, and especially note the one sideglancing 'robot' in each... Pokia news: This is the latest cellphone craze to reach us raging from Europe, in this case from London designer Nik Roope. He was sick of how cells were originally designed to look "sci fi" and technological when they first came out, but now as a mature product, they still look like a fashion nightmare (as if they took a cue from Sony)-- and is smaller every year really better, even if it's possible? Well here's the avante-garde solution for the fashionista. I want a Batman-red Pokia phoneset hooked to a cute Nokia, and I'd love to walk downtown with true "hands free" operation (neck + shoulder)-- actually Mark Allen of the NY Times apparently did that already, without drawing any verbal comments. Here's a more recent Reuters article. Above is a pic from Swedish business magazine DI. And to buy one on eBay, search for "pokia" to see clones, but for the real thing, look for auctions by "nikroope".

(July 27): Real Music Store engineers haxx0r Apple Fairplay DRM: Up until today, iPods have only been compatible with the iTunes protection DRM scheme (known as Fairplay). Apparently the Real engineers have discovered how to make the Real Music Store purchases compatible with Fairplay "solely through analysis of publicly-available information," according to this article at MSN News, which also writes, "In the past, Apple has aggressively pursued people who created software to circumvent FairPlay and decrypt its secured music files. A spokeswoman for Apple was not immediately available to comment." I think it sounds like haxx0r to me, don't you? But this is haxx0r to preserve music rights, not circumvent them. What they are circumventing are the rights to the method-- is this beneficial to Apple? I think so, because Apple has had a history of reading the market wrong during their past moments of glory and innovation, so perhaps this forces their hand for the better. I wonder if Steve Jobs was having a high level meeting deciding how to respond instead of watching the DNC? I'm not sure what he is going to do, but silence isn't likely. And what is up with Apple only having spokeswomen, was that just MSN News having some creative PC writing? Anyways, the new software by Real is called Harmony, and will be available today. An article by the NYTimes states that Real Networks CEO Ron Glaser attempted to contact Jobs, with no reply, resulting in what was politely termed "reverse engineering." Harmony will also support Windows Media and PalmOne Devices, in addition to the iPod, as well as the previously-Real-compatible Creative Nomad Jukebox. The download pages for these Real Harmony device installers are here: it results in a 53 byte file named apple_ipod.rnx which contains the update download info for RealPlayer 10. . In the mean time, I wonder if this is in any way related to Apple's announcement today that they've made a deal with Motorola to enable the moving of songs from iTunes to next-gen Motorola handsets? And what is Motorola paying (for itunes-to-phone connectivity) compared to what Real could be paying Apple for (for Real Store-to-iPod connectivity)? Is Real getting something for free that Motorola is paying for? Or is Real simply helping promote the iPod, and any lost iTunes Store sales don't really matter because that was never intended as a money maker for Apple? Hmmmm. But the Times article claims that Real is planning to license Harmony, which means other music vendors can also get their wares into the iPod DRM! I'm getting dizzy, so I'll stop here.

UPDATE: For the Digital Millenium Copy Act's (DMCA) take on reverse engineering, see chillingeffects.org, which reads that reverse engineering is allowed if done with permission, which to me seems to negate the motivation behind reverse engineering in the first place! So maybe I'm reading it wrong, go see for yourself. And to see exactly how jury-rigged the Real Harmony solution actually is, Billboard.com of all places has a great article that explains it in detail: apparently Real places two versions of each song on the user's hard drive! Finally, for a long debate on Real's marketshare motivation, whether Apple is going to throw a lawsuit at Real, or buy the company, whether Real actually adds more artists & labels to the ones at the iTunes Store, and other random rants, see this thread at macrumors.

Latest MyDoom worm variant targets Google-- apparently it mines for email addresses by Googling every domain found in the user's address book, which resulted in scattered shutdowns of Google. For a screenshot of a Google 404 and more details, read more at here. With Google's IPO in such close proximity, I wonder if they too will issue a $250,000 bounty on the writers of the virus, as MS did for MyDoom.B, and SCO did for MyDoom.A (read more about those rewards here). In similar news in the gaming world, Jeff Morris of Epic (aka War Tourist) announced the start of an Unreal Tournament 2004 anti piracy and cheating drive, with an email address to report sites, p2p servers, etc., that promote these activities with regard to UT2k4. No word on a bounty, but he is clearly appealing to the community spirit: "With your help we can better combat these nuisances and ensure a more enjoyable gaming experience for you, our legitimate customers. "

(July 26): Star Wars news: Of course the biggest news is the announcement that the final name for E3 (no, not the one in Las Vegas), by the official pulpit Starwars.com, is Revenge of the Sith, due out May 19 of next year. Some of you may know that this is very similar to the original name of the third film, Return of the Jedi, which was to be Revenge of the Jedi, until changed at the 11th hour by Lucas. I must say, my expectations are plunging lower and lower (despite the lack of a mindnumbing podrace in E2), and what were they smoking when they thought of the name General Grievous? Even DC/Marvel can do better than that. The concept art is always good and the design well-thought, but names, story, acting, and even lines... what quotes are as memorable as the whining "power converters", Alec Guiness' first description of the Force, Harrison Ford's perky one-liners... even C3PO's gimme punchlines were oddly lifeless in E1 and E2, perhaps precisely because his character has been reduced to a series of punchlines on the sidelines, from the oddly sympathetic character in the original: Give Anthony better material! Anyways, if you want some rumors, read The SJ Mercury News about Natalie Portman being called back for more shooting about a year after principal photography wrapped last year. Cute as though she is, I hope it's not another stifling bad speech in the Galactic Senate-- show us more blue-tentacled Orn Free Taa instead! Poor Mr. Rowan had his lines cut in E2; let's hear it for "obese & indulgent"! Back to gaming: I was reading Heorogar's interview at Macologist of Aspyr's Brad Oliver, who among other things worked on the port of the RTS Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds, and there was a tantalizing bit of asking about his SW fandom and the possibility of Aspyr porting Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (KOTR). That interview was back in January, and now check out Aspyr's Project Status Page, where KOTR is now proudly listed for a September 2004 release. Too bad the Mac MMO Everquest didn't make enough money for SOE (Sony), because it looks like the MMO Star Wars Galaxies may never come out for OS X... If you don't know what SWG is all about, and its bumpy ride and evolution, read one of the best gaming articles I've ever read, The Saga of Star Wars Galaxies at Gamespy... Regarding an OS X release, there is yet a ray of hope, because of the SWG FAQ at SOE, which used to read that SWG was "PC-exclusive," now reads: "It is available only for the PC. Other platforms may be considered in the future." If it ever comes out, I hope it's soon, because if it takes any longer, the game will be over and the servers greeting mac users will be empty. I guess that means think mac, buy everquest, and cross your imac or pb when you go to bed each night. And while you're at it, think whirled peas.


(July 25): The International Map Pack (TIMP) released (16.7M rar). This map pack for Unreal Tournament 2004 consists of 11 CTF-1on1 and 1 vCTF-1on1 maps. These maps require v3236 as well as the CBP2 (Community Bonus Pack) to be installed.

Maps include:
23C by Birdofprey, Euphorix by Otto 'Format Life' Rask, eXpire by Duffman, KnightsRuin by Major Lee High, Messiah by Sithnight, Pitfall by Otto 'Format Life' Rask and MsM, RunfortheTop by XDR, ScrapYard by Major Lee High, Space Center by Soulhunter, Yttrium by Birdofprey, Collosal by Duffman, & Arabgoth by MsM.

Read more and see screenshots at the announcement thread. This mappack should tide you over while we still wait on the long-awaited Flag Pack 2004.

UT2004 v3264 patch in testing: BeyondUnreal reports that the new 3264 patch has begun testing. No word from Icculus.org on a whether testing has begun on Mac or Linux. For the changelog, see this thread at beyondunreal. For a screenshot of the new mod author resource, the particle editor, see this thread.

(July 20): FragOps 1.39B Full Mac (.dmg.bz2 384M) released: One day after the 1.39b patch was released, th3dunadan has come through and put together the .dmg for us. This includes the same launcher and installer app as the previous .dmg (v1.38), but he did it right and compressed it after the .dmg wrapper, so that there is no verification delay while mounting the image-- hopefully then, Safari will have no difficulty mounting this image. If you already have 1.39, just grab the 1.39b manual patch zip. The FO team writes: "After release, 1.39 was reported to have framerate loss on some system setups, so we've optimized the new effects (and some old ones) to perform better, and added some new configuration defaults to ensure an even smoother play experience. Some other changes were made to ladder climbing and other various game aspects, so make sure you read the changelog found here."

Postal 1 in betatesting: I'm currently on the Postal 2 betatesting team headed by Icculus, and I've been allowed to reveal that the team is now also currently testing Postal 1 for Mac, as well a providing some screenshots for you. As this project is still in the early stages, details such as pricing or how it will be released (for example as a standalone or as a bundle with Postal 2) have not been determined. It's been real interesting comparing the two games, and how the ideas and humor from the first have been used as an inspiration for the second.

(July 19): Doom 3 for OS X confirmed: Doom III has gone gold for PC release. However, of even more interest, Todd Hollenshead, the CEO of id Software finally confirms that an OS X version is in the works in his .plan:

"Mac and Linux: Unfortunately I don't have dates for either of these. However, Linux binaries will be available very soon after the PC game hits store shelves. There are no plans for boxed Linux games. More remains to be done for the OSX version of DOOM 3 and that will take some time. We won't release the OSX version until it's just as polished as the PC version. The date for OSX DOOM 3 remains 'when it's done', but I can confirm that it's definitely coming." For more information, read the original article at maccentral.

Regarding those 4the Gen iPods: They're here! With a delicious creamy-white facade, the same clickwheel as on the iPod Mini, 12 hour battery life, and an improved set of price points at 20 and 40 Gigs. There are even new features such as speed adjustments for books on "tape". Apple continues to deny the 60G coming soon, but the entire rumor was a lapse on their (or Toshiba's) part anyways; the cat's out of the bag, no use trying to catch it again... what else could they use these devices for, a single-drive-bay mini RAID? And check your software update and get your iPod Updater 2004-07-15.

(July 18): New iPods tomorrow (Monday)? Now we wait with bated breath for the newly designed creamy-white 20 & 40G ipods at their new pricepoints (approximately at the previous 15 & 20 pricepoints: $299 and $399), making way for the eventual release of the 60G in due time (based on their massive purchase of Toshiba mini 1.8" HDs). By the time you read this, you may know already. You know where to go: apple.com . Of course, if you can't wait until Monday, you can always look at the preview photo at Newsweek, which also shows the almost-solipsistic Steve Jobs cover: iPod, therefore I am.

Doom III news: as reported by Heorogar at Macologist: " The Official DOOM III site at DOOM3.com has opened the flash portion of their site. Among the new features of this site is that there is a host of never before released screenshots of the MP action, and the MP Marine models. Now on to the good stuff, DOOM III will ship with the DOOM III variant of the Radiant Editor for PC and a Mac version MAY be released later as for Quake III which is available. The Radiant for the Quake engine supports Call of Duty, both Jedi knight games, SOF and many more. you can download he Radiant here, so if we keep our fingers crossed the DOOM III Radiant will be released for mac sometime when DOOM III is released. Since there is a PC Radiant being released, that means DOOM III is open for mods and offcially supports mods. I am sure modding DOOM III won't be like in the old days with editing .WAD file." Thanks Heorogar!

(July 15): New Battlefield 1942 mods we've converted for OS X at Macologist: Conflict in Somlia 0.31, Interstate Racing 1.62, Next Thread 0.2k, Dead Cities 1.2, BiTurboMod Final Client, The Great War 0 .15, BFPirates alpha23, Stargate BFM MP 0.1b and SP 0.1ba, and of course Desert Combat, DC X, Eve of Destruction, and Galactic Conquest. For these mods, see links on our front page, or click here, here, or go directly to our ftp host at osxgamefiles.com. We're also hosting UT2004 mod Eiko Battle beta 1.

Bittorent: due to the high demand for BF1942 mod downloads recently, our FTP has been deluged, and download slots are often hard to come by. Therefore we've started a bittorrent tracker for our 10 most popular files. Currently these include, Desert Combat (.dmg), Eve of Destruction, BF1942ModLaunchers, Fraghouse Invasion, FragOps 1.38 Full mac .dmg and 1.37 linux loki .run, Red Orchestra, and Galactic Conquest. Click here for torrent URLs if download slots are full. Note: even if 0 seeders are listed on the tracker, the server itself should still be seeding. If you've never used Bittorrent before, you'll need to get a bittorrent client, just search for 'bittorrent' at macupdate, versiontracker, or download.com. Usually clicking on a torrent URL in your web browser will launch your client, but if it doesn't, download the small torrent file (option-click in browser), then drag the file to the bittorrent client.

Humor and Random News: First the humor. This is not utterly new, but if you haven't seen this yet, and you're a gamer, you'll be really rolling on the floor with this one... F3ll0wsh1p of teh R1ng. Trust me, don't miss this! Really. On another note, in a random news article that may be easier to read, but more difficult to understand thatn 'F3ll0wsh1p', NASA has named an "artist in residence," musician-slash-performance-artist Laurie Anderson. See the article here at Newsweek. I've heard of artists and poets in residence at more fine-arts or liberal-arts institutions but NASA? For once, I'm impressed, and very curious what will come of this. I can see others will be worried that NASA is losing its mission but it's a peripheral halo enhancement, nothing compared to politician-driven space agendas (as opposed to science-driven), which is one of the real problems as far as 'direction.' Laurie Anderson? She's fine in my book,especially at NASA. L4u|2i3 r0xx0r |\|4$4!!111

(July 14): Frag Ops 1.39 released Currently for OS X, you'll need to download the zip patch, and install it over 1.38. The Mac .dmg for 1.38 full is available at Macologist via FTP and Bittorrent. If you do a manual installation from scratch, remember to install to UT2004, rather than your application support folder, and get the mac launcher here. There's even a cool new review & guide for FragOps from Filefront. In other news, my Santaduck Toolpak for UT2004 was awarded an "Honorable Mention" in the Tools category in Phase 3 of Epic's Make Something Unreal Contest. This is pretty cool because it's an award for a Mac Tool, as well as the fact that the entire toolkit was developed from the original FragOps Launcher and learning the UT engine as well as Applescript!

Blizzard releases Starcraft installer for OS X. Download here. Also works with the Broodwar expansion set. Oh yeah, and their website is Blizzard.com, a domain which thankfully, Dairy Queen does not own. However, in concession to the lovers of the ice-cream version, you can click here.

Apple News: In Apple's Q3 Conference call (that's third quarter, not Quake III) today, it was confirmed that the next generation iMacs will sport G5s. View the video stream here. Current rumors make for an interesting summer, with an Aug 31debut of iMacs at MacExpo Paris, and an early rollout of the new iPods, sporting a newly designied look with colors, and including the top-of-the-line Toshiba-based 60Gigger... according to ThinkSecret here and here.

(July 13): New mod titles added to Macologist's ftp at osxgamefiles.com: For BF1942: The Great War v0.15, BFPirates v.alpha23, Stargate BFM_Multiplayer v0.1b, and Stargate BFM Singleplayer v0.1ba. For UT2004: Eiko Battle beta 1. Keep your eyes peeled, a Mac OS X .dmg for Conflict in Somalia for BF1942 is coming soon, and it is pretty, since our graphics design superstar Rogue is learning how to use Apple's Packagemaker. In other Macologist news, forum participant Uncommon has placed one finalist and one honorable mention in Make Something Unreal's Phase 3 for Gametypes. You can see the announcement here, and his website: Uncommonplace.

Old News Catchup: I noticed a great interview from June 3 by Tuncer of IMG of the people behind StrangeFlavour and Toysight. Aaron and Adam Fothergill "today announced that they would be quiting their full time jobs working on console games (Argonaut games) and concentrating solely on developing Macintosh only games." Read the full interview here at IMG. Why would anyone in their right mind form a new company for games only for Mac? They take full advantage of the unique Mac hardware and OS X. In short, Toysight is an iSight-based game, you can read reviews at MacAddict and Macteens, and it won "Best of Show" at MacWorld Expo 2004. In related news, other FreeVerse titles include Big Bang Chess, which recently shared the podium with Ryan Gordon and Unreal Tournament 2004 at the awards ceremony at WWDC as "Best Mac OS X Product", and Toysight even won "Most Innovative Mac OS X Product". Read about Big Bang Chess here, it looks amazing, both graphically and due to its complete integration with no less than iChat, iTunes, Address Book, Apple Mail, and Rendezvous, in an engine designed from the ground up in Cocoa for OpenGL. Yup, it works with all of these. Oh yeah, and it's free. Read the brand-new review by IMG.

Other Apple news: Did you hear how they tried to summon Steve Jobs' spirit at MacWorld Expo Boston today, but placing a black turtleneck and jeans onto an empty seat on the stage? Read here. In other news, Apple canceled plans to allow 3rd party devs to be integrated into Software update. Read here. And finally, another university jumps on the bandwagon for a G5-based supercompuoting cluster, the University of Maine's mini-me-too Baby Mach5. I want one. The UM folks were the ones who spearheaded the US Army's recent Mach 5 project. Read here.

(July 8): Latest Tactical Ops Info: Read this thread in Macologist from [rm]dave aka petterf, the mac member of the TOST betatest team. If you have further difficulties, post your report there.

Downloads update: Please be patient. We hare having a sever spike in demand, and are simply running out of bandwidth and download spots. Why? BF1942 was just released, and we were the only ones on the whole internet hosting mods for mac here at Macologist, via osxgamefiles. Mike of xlr8yourmac found that macfpsgames' BF1942 page is hosting desert combat, dcx, and eve of destruction . We are trying to find mirrors, and have started a bittorrent tracker as an alternative, you can see the files we are actively seeding here. If the FTP is full, you can always use bittorrent for the files that we have up. If you don't know about bittorrent, use your web browser to download the torrent file. If this does not launch your bittorrent client, you have to save it as a file, then drag it onto your bittorrent client. For clients, search for "bittorrent" at macupdate, versiontracker, or download.com. I have also heard from the powers that be that mac torrentskickass is also seeding Desert Combat and other mods, but their forums say it requires resetting your hosts file, as well as the fact that they have some other "stuff", and so I'll leave that info at that without a link. If you just want the GUI dedicated launchers for BF1942 mods (Desert Combat, Eve of Destruction, Galactic Conquest, Forgotten Hope), I am hosting it here at Santaduck.com downloads.

(July 6): WWDC awards Unreal Tournament 2004 for MacOS X the Apple Design Award for "Best MacOS X Entertainment Product. Congratulations to Ryan Gordon & MacSoft.

(July 5): UT2004 Santa benchmarker & xlr8yourmac: The benchmark utility included as part of the Santaduck Toolpak is now listed at xlr8yourmac's ut2004 benchmark entry page. Thank you to Mike of xlr8, who've I've been pestering for a while now. He also noticed that our BF1942 mod downloads at Macologist & osxgamefiles were being flooded by download requests as BF1942 for OS X hit store shelves, and we were the only host in town (as in the planet), but he suggested some nice mirrors, so hopefully the congestion may ease by the end of the month and you can all get your hands on your fave BF1942 mods with our launchers. He did mention an alternative BF1942 mod downoad site for mac at macfpsgames' BF1942 page. They currently have DesertCombat, DC X, and Eve of Destruction. Finally, for your Quicktime movie fix, check out Apple's Game Trailers Theatre page. I hope Feral will eventually release a Chessmaster 9000 trailer, but I'm not holding my breath. . .

Nongaming computer news: Folowing up on previous news regarding the difficulties of the .iq top level domain (TLD) for Iraq, here's a great article on Niue's TLD .nu. I learned lots of things, such as a country will get a TLD if listed in ISO 3166-1, even if they lack a population (e.g. The Heard Island and McDonald Islands (.hm), and French S outhern and Antarctic Lands (.tf)), or even if populated those that lack internet (Pitcairn Island (.pn), population 47). Read the article to learn why there are 244 country TLDs, and only 239 in the list. I wonder when the local red light district where I live will attempt to register la-femme.nu. Going back to Iraq's computing difficulties, apparently there's a new Iraq Linux Users Group (LUG), which is having the problem that most distributions of Linux contain crypto that is illegal for export to Iraq. I mean you can't even download Adobe Acrobat to read documentation over there according to this... unless you are listed by the "Office of Foreign Assets Control" as a friendly party, aka "parastatal entity of Iraq". Whew, for more on that, read who has that designation here at the US Treasury site. If you read one article, read this one from Wired, which is fun & entertaining, and talks about the travails of Iraq's fledlging LUG. One interviewee says, "I've found exactly one Iraqi who has heard of Apple, and maybe a few dozen who've heard of Linux. So, just letting people know there is an alternative is a big issue." Another says: that "he also saw a spike in interest (in Linux) after acquaintances started going online and subsequently found themselves needing protection from Windows-specfic viruses." A BBC article even goes so far as to quote one interviewee who thinks that Microsoft might be intentionally 'hooking' locals: "Proprietary software companies are using these illegal copies as a free sample program, and a marketing tool, as they have in other countries." Well I guess you can send Linux books as donations to their LUG, but you have to take out the distro CD, even though the distros can be found there; one forum I saw recommended donating CD duplication hardware, rather than books, to ease distribution bottlenecks.

Non computer news: For the fourth straight year, the July 4 Nathan's hot dog eating contest crown goes to Takeru Kobayaashi of Japan. He's my hero, really, I've done the Coco Curry 1400g challenge in 28 minutes, but that's nothing compared to 53 1/2 hot dogs with buns. He even trains for this. For two other titanic feats, I've been checking up on the latest pictures of Titan from the Cassini probe, as well as ever-extended bloom watch for the Titanum flower (scroll to bottom) at the Univ. of Connecticut, one of the rarest, largest, and stinkiest flowers ever. Refresh that link for a new live webcam image every 12 seconds, or see progressive growth photos from early last month here. It was estimated to bloom July 2, but the thing just keeps swelling: "This thing is either going to flower, or explode." Now how happy is news like that: when is the last time you followed up-to-the-minute news on a flower. Go take a look and smile at the darned thing.

(July 2): Halo tools, BF1942 mods, Tron2: We have the Mac Halo modding toolkits, the BF1942 mods Eve of Destruction, Desert Combat Extended 0.72, and Forgotten Hope, and a beta of the mac manual install of Tron 1.045 maps available at Macologist. Go there to read more details. Later the downloads will be listed on the Downloads page here.

(june 30): Shrek 2 released for OS X Well, I wouldn't normally include this game here, but it is from Aspyr, and Ryan Gordon did this one, so congratulations to both. In unrelated news, if you're curious about the new Nvidia Geforce 6800 Ultra DDL which can drive the new 30" Cinema Displays, see Tom's Hardware Guide review of the equivalent card for PC (with a launch price of only $499)-- as pointed out by a reader, these numbers may not mean much as DirectX results don't necessarily go in parallel with OpenGL.

Macologist BF1942 mod news: The dedicated Desert Combat Launcher (v1.0; 64k) is now finished, and has been tested to work with BF1942 for Mac OS X. The new Desert Combat internet-enabled .dmg (526M) is also now available; and I believe this .dmg it was informally QA'd by Aspyr-- therefore it's a safe bet that you should try that first, before trying the Desert Combat manual zip we posted to MGF yesterday. Also we now have the mod Galactic Conquest 0.3 manual zip (502M) is available for download, if you're into the Star Wars universe; it should also appear at MGF soon... Yes this is a combined set resulting in an all in one full install for 0.3. We even made a dedicated launhcer for GC, which we'll release soon, and the mod Forgotten Hope (logging in at over a gig) is currently being uploaded. Finally, for your modding pleasure, we've made available the Applescript code for a global do-it-yourself dedicated mod launcher for BF1942 here. Just follow othe instructions in the top of the code: Simply replace three variables with the mod you want to use at the top, close your eyes, and save as application in Script Editor. Bingo, you have a launcher, how easy can it get? (Ok, Spyro could make it easier).

In non-gaming technology news, see the webcast for NASA's Saturn Cassini mission. The probe is to arrrive at Saturn today, and to cross Saturn's rings, with the first images returning July 1. Webcasts will will June 29-July 2.

(june 29): UT 2003 2225.3 released for Mac & Linux: Yup, this is a late fix for ut 2003, not 2004, apparently to patch some of the latest vulnerability holes. The linux version catches up with lots of material that had been implemented in the Mac builds. The mac link is our mirror, the linux link goes to Icculus' .plan, I'll try to mirror that too. Since the Linux one is listed as a beta, please make sure to report any bugs to Bugzilla.

BF1942 ships. Actually that was yesterday, but [sidebar on] my mac's boot drive got horribly corrupted about 3 days ago... I mean Disk Utility couldn't even detect the name of the partition (only the ID code of the drive), and it simply wouldn't show in Option-bootup. Techtool pro was trying for >40 hours to no avail. I'd lost 3 days (note the blank spot after june 25), and did not want to reformat and restore a backup I made a month ago. Young and hopeful, I bought Disk Warrior today at my local Apple Store, it had been strongly recommended by Petterf and Aphinity. It reconstructed my files and folders in under 15 minutes! It cost ($99) more than twice as much as I guessed it would, and it was worth every penny. Thank you Disk Warrior! [/sidebar off]

Anyways back to BF1942. I just finished a beta launcher for Desert Combat (BF 1942 mod), based on code scvwebfire & I have been using to launch UT2k4 mods, as well as help from Adam & Cannonfodder, the latter who got some commandline help from Glenda herself at Aspyr. We'll see if it works, and if so, we'll be ready for when BF1942 actually hits store shelves, probably July 2. Although Cannon will release a semiofficial .dmg autoinstaller QA'd by Aspyr for the mod Desert Combat, until that goes live we've also made a manual zip install for Desert Combat. More on the dedicated launcher soon, apparently the net .dmg probably does not come with a dedicated launcher, but I'm not 100% sure of that. UPDATE: The DC launcher is confirmed to work. It'll be up for download within 24 hours.

Random: Found this old article from EGM where they got a bunch of younger folks to play games that the older folks grew up with, from bombs such as ET for Atari 2600, to smash his like Mattel's red LED-based Handheld Football, to early arcade classics Space Invaders and Super Mario Bros. The result? Well... you "old n' sentimental" types probably shouldn't read it. I'm gonna need therapy myself.

Non-gaming: Well, Fahrenheit 9/11 was in the news this weekend-- monetarily it broke records being the first documentary to finish first for a weekend (beating White Chicks), documentary opening in the most theatres (high 800s), and also making the most money at the box office opening day and opening weekend (>$23M). To put this in perspective, Bowling for Columbine pulled in ~$21M during its entire run. Saw a funny quote by him: "Moore said cell phones shouldn't be used until they're actually 'invented,' - which hasn't happened yet." Ok it's not a quote, it's a paraphrase lifted from here. But the movie and the recent handover of the gov't got me thinking about the internet, and I saw a few articles regarding Iraq's .iq top level domain (TLD). Even more than a year ago, there were reported problems about how ICANN gave the authority to distribute .iq domains to one Saud Alani, who still is listed at IANA.org. People related to his organization were arrested by the FBI for allegedly funneling money to Hamas. More recently, CNN.com published a great article four days ago, which reviews the history and the current foot-dragging by ICANN, as well as the efforts of Asaad Alnajjar, who wanted "at the very least, www.iraq.iq be opened, just one page, to show the country's flag and the words "Republic of Iraq...to show that there is a country." I also found a neat, although more technical, article from O'Reilly network. No, this is not O'Reilly of conservative pundit Bill O'Reilly, but rather a blog page from the more familiar O'Reilly publishing powerhouse well-known for texts on Linux & OS X issues. In fact, I'm reading Mac OS X Panther for Unix Geeks (safari read link here), but for my skill level, I really should have gotten Learning Unix for Mac OS X Panther (safari read link here) . Now that's an illustration of what I get for impulse shopping in the mac retail wasteland. Cheer up, maybe by this time next year, we'll see real entries (and not fakes) in Iraq's Setiathome page, and maybe even some .iq-based Desert Combat clanners going for the Euro Cup. Err... maybe that just hits too close to home, better stick with fantasy UT2k4 fragging, or even more escapist MMOrps's like Second Life, or even Postal2 which would make light of another nation's culture of violence, the United States... no, that wasn't [/soapbox], that was [/irony]. . . Santa out (^-^)>*

(june 28): The WWDC keynote from Steve Jobs is complete! The Tiger OS preview looks interesting, including the RSS newsfeed browser for Safari and searchable system prefs, and have to take a look if the Spotlight search function is as fast as promised. We can talk it over in an iChat 5-way video conferencing using the new video compression scheme-- I wonder if the AIM client will be updated too now?

Gaming? Of course the 4+ megapixel 30" Cinema Display at 2560 x 1600 native resolution. Add on the required NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL Ultra graphics upgrade kit , and we'll see what happens. Then use the optional VESA mount and hang it on your wall. Or two of them, this Gfx card can handle them.
Also Maya unlimited is coming to mac... and not yet sure what the impact of Core Image and Core Video and 64 bit pointers will be for gaming.... The WWDC continues through July 2 at the San Francisco Marriot & Moscone Center.


(june 25): 5 more days until WWDC 2004 SF. Apple's Worldwide Developer conference will be held at the San Francisco Marriot from June 28-July 2 Look for updated cinema displays, perhaps in aluminum to match G5s, perhaps in sizes 20", 23", and a whopping 30-incher-- and maybe even a hangable display or tablets... At least, that's what the Think Secret and other rumormill sites say. Previously rumored iMac updates sporting G5s may not happen. I wish the powermac G5 line would be seriously updated, but as the water-cooled dual 2.5's were fairly recent, it's not likely. And if you're still waiting for those dual G5 Cubes... well don't hold your breath =)... Also it looks like Steve Jobs' keynote may not be webcast to the Apple Retail Stores, but hopefully it will be. Coincidentally June 28 is also Aspyr's ship date for the eagerly-awaited Battlefield 1942. In the meantime, read a nice interview from IMG's Tuncer with Aspyr; IMG has lots of nice BF1942 news, just use their search function. Possibly even more eagerly-awaited is the BF1942 mod Desert Combat. Of course, Macologist will be ready with a Manual ZIP download for mac, with a auto-installing .dmg to come later.

NonGaming News: (^-^)>* Setiathome, perhaps the most well-known distributed-computing project, has upgraded to BOINC, a general-purpose platform for distributed computing projects. Read more here. (^-^)>* Mozilla-based web browser Camino is now upgraded to version 0.8, and it rocks. I think I like it much better than the still-buggy 0.9 FireFox that was just released-- it's great in XP, but has some dealbreakers for me in OS X, especially how I can't open a new browser window (neither File-new window, nor apple-N) if I close all windows while I have a download going (with a little DL window), or if I have a tiny search window open. Camino was desisgned for OS X from the beginning. I should've listened to my friend 'snowgurl': you were right. AND: the updater for Firefox for both XP & OS X is buggy, and destroyed my beginner father's entire toolbar bookmarks. Sigh, I wish Camino had Firefox's dock icon, although it's leagues better than the stultifyingly 1336 one for Safari... (^-^)>* U.S. Army contractor Colsa has purchased a 1566-DP G5 Xserve Supercomputer dubbed "Mach 5" from Apple, and is expected to debut about number 3 on the "Top500" list at 15 Teraflops-- Virginia Tech's original System X was only 1100 nodes, at 10.3 Tf, and in comparison, the Japan's monstercomputer, NEC's Earth Simulator, is at 35.8 Tf. Not bad, not bad, but I keep hoping someone will tell me this Army contractor has abandoned its use to model aerodynamics and is instead using this G5 fiber-channel bad-boy (along with XSAN for good measure) for the next MMO version of America's Army. And in final news, (^-^)>* The ubiquitous Hotmail is drastically expanding their email account disk allotments, from 2M to 250M for free accounts (with attachments growing from 1M to 10M), and to 2G (and 20M attachments) for the 19.95/mo. paid accounts. Is that a typo, 2M to 250M for the free accounts? Nope. It's all in response to pressure from Google and Yahoo. Read more here at MSNBC, who somehow had this breaking news from Microsoft...

(june 23): Driv3r humor: These are real quotes. Print out on photo paper, and stick'm all over...One of the most anticipated games, four years in the making, was released June 21, and is now getting absolutely panned by reviews. The sticker contains quotes from here, here, and a confirmation here, and as you read more views, and preview-reviews, it just gets worse. It's sad, I feel for those poor devs, I wonder what happened and what the back story is here...

FragOps 1.38 Full install .dmg for Macintosh (400M) finished & released. Hosted by osxgamefiles.com, and tweaked at Macologist of course. I'll try to have the new 1.36-to-1.38 patch .dmg for Macintoshavailable soon. The new launcher (v4.2) only is also available. The new features are that it looks for the splash graphic fragopslogo.bmp in your ut2k4.app/fragops/Help/ folder, and it logs to fragops.ini instead of ut2004.ini.

If you installed using my previous installer, you'll need to go to your /home/library/application support/ut2k4/fragops/ and move your .ka files to ut2k4.app/fragops/Karmadata/, your fragopslogo.bmp to ut2k4.app/fragops/Help/ , and if you are crashing on map switch try moving your .ucl files to ut2k4.app/fragops/System/ . Of course, to access your ut2k4.app bundle, control-click on Unreal Tournament 2004 and select "Show Package Contents."

CD/DVD Life Accreditation Coming: Do you think your data on your optical media will last forever? Even barring salty air & scratches, they will only last so long, but how long? I've lost data already due to both shelf life as well as mild environmental abuse, and I've taken to buying higher-priced white-colored Memorex "Music" CDs, and burning at lower speeds (2x-16x, depending on my patience and workload) than the maximum (24x) of my La Cie burner. Still no one really knows, and it's all guesswork, and although I've found one brand & product that I now trust, I'm still not entirely comfortable in the long run, I'm wary of other brands, and have no personal history (say, at least 5 years) with DVD media brands! The manufacturers say 100 years, but I don't believe a word of it-- those burnable dyes may not last that long given stresses on the discs including sunlight, temperature, oxidation. and handling.The ultimate answer may come from Fred Byers, an information technology specialist for the US government at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, is investigating the issue as well as possible testing procedures and accreditation standards for use by institutions that make use or optical archives such as the Library of Congress. Some news links if you want to read more: here and here, as well as a related PC-Magazine column by well-known columnist John Dvorak.

Net Security vulnerability in UT engines reported. As spotted on the BugTraq mailing list, Luigi Auriemma reports a buffer-overflow hole in games ranging from UT99, UT2k4, Postal2 , AA, and Tactical Ops, as well as errr... unforgettable classics such as Nerf Arena Blast . Who is Luigi? Luigi is not the one and only brother of Mario (wouldn't that be great)-- rather he is the same Luigi from Thor Larholm's Pivx Solutions who last year reported some Unreal engine holes, and was briefly threatened by Epic, before an apology was tendered by Mark Rein... you can read about that episode here, here, and here. Again, Epic was notified before the public announcement of this latest vulnerability. If you want to search BugTraq, you can do it here. Checking in at #icculus-org, Ryan confirmed it's fixed in UT2004 3236, for all platforms.

(june 22): FO 1.38 Macintoshfull install .dmg is close to being done, just doing final testing. Preview pic.
XIII for Macintosh released by Feral. If you've never heard of a cel-shaded (think comics) Unreal-engine driven game, check it out, there's even a free demo. The engine was apparently heavily modified to render the cel-shade texture borders, which required lower poly-counts, but that didn't hurt the look because it was done to look more 'drawn'. Emitters, bloodspurts, weapon flash, is all done comic-style, and even headshots and other sound effects get drawn wording (think Oooomph), as well as closeup animations of how you fragged someone far away... Demo is in English only, although the retail game is multilingual.

Battlefield 1942 Gold: BF1942 for Mac OS X is ready for duplication and will be shipped June 28, for an ETA on store shelves July 2. Get your Macintosh Zip version of the BF1942 mod Desert Combat today right here at Macologist, and be one of the few Macintosh Deserrt Combat players ready for BF1942 release day!

(june 21):Nongaming news: SpaceShip One flight is today! The flight of the privately-funded (including by Paul Allen) Scaled Composites craft, piloted by test pilot Mike Melvill and designed by Burt Rutan, is scheduled for 9:30 AM EDT (6:30 PST, 13:30 GMT), and 3:30am where I live, so I'll stay up. Now I have to find a webcast... This could pave the way for a different paradigm in spaceflight, not only in the private nature of it, but in terms of an abortable fuel engine, and a badminton-like twirling re-entry. Combine this with scramjet research for planes that take off into space (instead of blasting straight up from the ground, a hideously inefficient method when you can take advantage of aerodynamic lift during the first phase), who knows what flight will look like... and this is not even mentioning the 1337 liquid laughing gas and rubber combination (really). This is so cool, it had to leak over from my blog to the main news! UPDATE: MSNBC video webcast and KLOA audio webcast.

(june 20): Unreal Tournament v3226 patch for Macintosh released (link to MGF): Finally we are back on par with windows and linux release. Thank you Ryan =) There are reports of some sound problems, but so far most mods seem to be fine; I would only expect problems if the mod was heavily dependent on water..

Breaking news: SAS Into the Lions Den for Macintosh UT2k4 released. Scvwebfire also gave me some exclusive SAS screenshots. In related news, the f ull Macintosh .dmg installers for Red Orchestra and Frag Ops 1.38 are coming soon. Stay tuned.

(june 19): Frag.Ops 1.38 released: If the main site is overloaded, try this DL link.

More news catchup: Valve announces HalfLife 2 Arrests: This is the article from Gamespot, it's really well-written. We're talking gaming community sleuths, but also multinational intrigue, the FBI, the author of the PhatBot Trojan, "no comment" quotes, and more. Yikes.

UT2004 mod bug help (FO and RO): Petterf isolated another bug, one that affects several mods, and is easily fixed. Apparently, karma files (*.ka) are not accessible if they are installed anywhere in the user library. Karma includes ragdoll (carcass) physics, so if you see fragged opponents just standing instead of falling, listen up =) If your mod has been installed to your user library (home/library/application support/unreal tournament 2004/mod name/) then copy all .ka files in the /karmdata folder to the /karmadata folder of your .app application bundle (control click Unreal Tournament 2004, and choose "show package contents). (Yes, you can install it to the .app bundle's/modname/karmadata folder too). This is a bug in ut2004, and will likely be fixed in later releases. The Red Orchestra .dmg installer (coming soon from Petter) will take this into acc ount and for now will only install to the .app bundle anyways, so you don't have to worry. My Frag.Ops installer installs to userhome, so I'll have to write a small utility that makes this fix if doing it manually as I describe above sounds too difficult.

Pachinko karma humor: Check out the UT2k4 map DM-Pachinko... the idea is that you frag yourself at the top of the machine, and see where the karma leads your carcass to fall, for various point totals. Revised versions of the map are later in this thread. Excellent.

(june 18): More news catchup: For you Mozilla browser fans, Firefox 0.9 was released a few days ago, and is available for download on all platforms. IMO Firefox 0.8 was more buggy in Macintosh than in XP, but I still loved it more than any other browser, and now it's updated! If you're still using IE (on eithe rmac or PC), you've got to switch to a tabbed browser. I mean I am SURE about this, you just don't know it, on a PC use any Mozilla browser, and on a mac, use Safari or Mozilla-based ones... I have converted many a net-acquaintance who was an IE user-- I just said try it for ONE week, then see if you can go back, and no one has yet-- "KingxChat", my latest convert said "I can just click new tabs on CNN.com, it's so nice." I originally picked Firefox b/c I liked its dock icon the best, but now I'm a convert fo'real. Oh yeah: the nicest feature is that Firefox can warn you if you attempt to close a window with multiple tabs; I've done that so many times by reflex, and now I can rest easy.

Ok that wasn't gaming news.... so here's some really OLD gaming news... Picking up inspiration for a MacAddict article from Sep 2003, Macologist reviews how to run Apple][ games in Panther.

Coming soon: Exclusive Santaduck.com interview with the creator of Snood. We played tuba in college band together, and I haven't talked to him in years. Should be fun. I just have to think of some funny questions to throw him off guard :P

(june 17): Macintosh UT2004 3229 patch becomes official. Read changes here. I have no word yet on if this is exactly the same as the 3229 beta we reported June 9. If so, the community mods and -mod= flag are probably still buggy, as is the openal library bundled with it. I'll try to find out what the status is on why we aren't at 3236, the latest version number for windows and linux.
(june 16): Audio fix for UT2004. From Placebo, read about it here at Macologist.
Mods that work on a mac. Partial list in progress, also at Macologist.

News catchup: 1) BF 1942 coming for mac, read more at Aspyr here. According to Tuncer at IMG, it's currently in beta and is planned for release near the end of this month. And when it is, Macologist will be read with a OS X-compatible .zip download of BF1942 mods such as Desert Combat, read details here. 2) Blizzard releasing Macintosh OS X installers for Diablo II & Starcraft. The one for Diablo II is already availabl