Multiplayer game aficionados who use Macintosh computers have been hampered by a lack of a VOIP program compatible with the popular TeamSpeak software. No more. The first beta release of TeamSpeex has just been released. Go try it out. Thanks IMG.
According to another story at Inside Mac Games late last week, the Macintosh and PC versions of Stubbs have now reached alpha status, while the Xbox version is in beta, according to the Project Status page at Aspyr, which is publishing the Macintosh and PC versions. The game is due out in November for those platforms and in October for the Xbox.
Blayne writes on the Marathon Scenario News page that a new (admittedly small) desktop picture from the Where Monsters Are In Dreams scenario is up. The project, a prequel to the popular Rubicon scenrio, is still looking for people to help clean it up for release.
For those fans of Halo and Halo 2, or even of the Myth series of RTS games, that aren't familiar with Bungie's version of ancient history, also known as the 1990s, Inside Mac Games has put up a Marathon Primer, and the denizens of the Marathon Story Page are already picking it to pieces looking for small errors and omissions.
Aspyr is now offering a chance to preorder the Macintosh version of Stubbs the Zombie, coming this November, for $40. The Halo engine game is being published by Aspyr and was developed by Wideload Games, the Chicago-area startup created by ex-Bungie founder Alexander Seropian, along with a core staff comprised of many other ex-Bungie employees. The game will be released for Xbox, Mac, and PC platforms. Thanks MacNN.
Gamasutra today has an interview with Wideload Games' Alexander Seropian. He talks about how Wideload's outsourcing model has worked out, the modifications they made to the original Halo engine, and dealing with the challenges of a cross-platform release:
Having an engine that has already shipped on all three of those platforms certainly helped, as did having a partner in Aspyr Media, a company that has lots of experience with Mac and PC development. We also spent a lot of time early on getting our codebase operational on all three platforms.
GameSpy has put up a preview of Stubbs The Zombie. They liked how the ability to create more zombies that you can make follow you made otherwise straightforward killing far more interesting:
These simple dynamics turn the repetitive combat into a shambling, decomposing chess game, since your inability to singly defeat the large crowds couple with the NPC zombies' natural ineptitude necessitates strategic manipulation of each situation to come out of it in your mostly-intact state. Often I would find myself using zombies as walking shields, hanging back until I could slip in behind the enemies and chomp them, or sending a diversionary swarm towards a machine-gun nest while I hid and send my arm off to possess a shotgun-toting redneck who could take care of the situation.
Inside Mac Games put up Part 26 of their One on One with Glenda Adams earlier this week. The Mac port of Stubbs the Zombie garners a mention:
Tuncer: Well, first off, can you give us a status update on some of Aspyr's games? I know lots of people are hungry for news of the Mac version of Stubbs The Zombie.
Wideload's Stubbs the Zombie gets the limelight this week in GameCore, the gaming column by William Vitka at CBS News, pointing out the game's humorous angle and nostalgia-driven soundtrack:
Over in MBO's Asulym forum, there's details from Psyched, including rules and brackets, for Myth Tournament 2005 (which is actually being played with Myth II). Thanks Gholsbane for the heads-up.
With only a few weeks before its expected release, Wideload's first game, Stubbs the Zombie, is making some noise. Of all the non-Quake-engine games shown at QuakeCon 2005, Stubbs the Zombie got the most attention according to GameDaily. There is also another batch of screenshots in our Stubbs gallery for you to peruse. The Stubbs the Zombie soundtrack will be released on October 18.
Psyched has announced that MariusNet and The Myth Jumpers will soon be holding a Myth 2 tournament called MAJORMATT 2005. Read about all the details in Bungie's Underground forum. Thanks MBO.
There's a freely available streaming video interview with Tim of Wideload Games over at GameSpot. (Sorry no last name-- the screen size of the free streaming video is so small I can't accurately transcribe it, so I won't try.) He explains the basic gameplay mechanics, as seen elsewhere-- the unholy flatulence, the gut grenade, the brain-eating, and the hand-- and also the use of Stubbs' head as a kind of deadly gaseous bowling ball.
The Battle Cat at Forerunners.org (and Cortana.org) wrote last week that there's a group that assembles each Saturday night at the hl.forerunners.org Hotline servers to assemble for networked games of Bungie's Marathon series, using the latest builds of Aleph One. If you've only ever played the Halo games or perhaps the Myth series, you owe it to yourself to see what Bungie fans were playing while everyone else was shooting exploding barrels in Doom. It's well worth it.
Bungie's original Halo title, first shown to the public running on a Mac at MacWorld in New York in 1999, subsequently re-targeted for the Xbox and released in 2001, then ported to the PC by Gearbox and then re-ported to the Macintosh again by Westlake Interactive and published by MacSoft Games, has now come full circle: the Macintosh Demo of Halo is now available. You can download it from these locations: