The W3C works with developers, software makers and others to come up with standards for the Web, which can then be used by just about anyone to build Web software, free of charge. To date, those standards have either not been based on patented technology, or the holders of patents have chosen to not enforce patents in order that the standards be widely adopted.

But a new proposal may now open a few cracks in that wall, allowing companies to enforce patents based around those technologies and to potentially charge a royalty fee to developers who use them.

"If you think I’m over-hyping the Klipsch Promedias, than there’s a good chance you’ve never had the pleasure of experiencing all that is Promedia. Unlike conventional desktop speakers that typically use el’ cheapo drivers and components, the Promedia line has always used some of the highest quality hardware and engineering we’ve seen to date."

Live Upgrade, which lets an administrator install the new operating system onto an unused portion of a storage system then reboot the server to the new version. If it doesn't work right, the administrator can boot back to the older version.

Detailed control over computing resources. The new Solaris improves how software processes can share CPUs. It also lets administrators monitor or change how resources are being used.

Support for the latest version 5 of the Kerberos authentication system.

The ability to write data or audio CDs.

The ability to install only a minimum set of Solaris features.

Instead of the basic hug, you can now choose from up to four different kinds of hugs depending on your mood. The basic hug is still here of course, but you can increase the passion of the hug by picking the intimate or romantic hug option. Then there's the option to leap into someone's arms. Sean showed us a demo of how this works by getting one character to leap into the arms of another: "If her hygiene is high enough, he'll accept it and both their moods goes up. However let's say her bladder is really low. He's got a new tickle he can do on her [the extreme tickle]. If the bladder's low enough on the other person, they'll wet their pants." Once she jumped back into his arms, he got the scent of it and threw her on the ground. Awesome.

The part of the GHOUL 2 system that allows for 36 separate hit zones on each character and per pixel hit detection offers some unique gameplay elements. Each of these hit zones will cause a different reaction when shot; shoot a person in the foot and they will react to this, get an arm and hurt the opponents ability to use it. On top of this, your hits are shown exactly where they enter so that you will know just how good of a shot you are. No more guessing where in the chest you scored your hit; just look and you will know. These types of gore will be adjustable for those who do not wish to see the virtual carnage and Raven has included parental locks so that they kids can’t turn it back on while you are out.

“We’re pleased to offer gamers a variety of options to experience the world of EverQuest,” states Don Vercelli, Vice President of Sales & Marketing, Sony Online Entertainment. “With over 410,000 subscribers, EverQuest continues to offer the richest content available in the online gaming genre.”

ICO is one of the absolute greatest games you will ever play. With gorgeous graphics, sounds, and environments it's easily one of the most aesthetically pleasing as well. The level and puzzle design is absolutely brilliant as well. After you finish it, you may want to play it again. Even if you never do, ICO is one of those titles that you'll be proud to simply have in your home.

1) We've got a new Uninstall program which will be a very small download and will safely uninstall the game. It will go out to QA tonight and then be put through a battery of tests before we post it.

2) We've got a fix for the Install to any directory bug. Right now we're working on a good way to impliment it.

3) After collecting saves and information from QA on the Save Game crashes, we think we've found two different bugs and we're working on fixes for them.

4) Found a problem with the way the game interacts with DirectX. We think this is what's causing a variety of bugs with certain Video/Sound cards and Multiplay. An enterprising player/programmer has posted a quick fix for this problem (Thanks Ken!), and we'll have a comprehensive fix soon. I'll bump the post.

This is NOT a comprehensive list of what we're fixing, just an update on where we're at right now. More fixes will follow. We have two people dedicated to scanning this Forum and two people dedicated to scanning the Tech Support Forum to collect feedback and information.

Thanks,
Garrett
Producer, Pool of Radiance

Added many new recorders.

DAO mode is now present as default and active in CD Copy dialog and it is not changeable

Added new 'buffer underrun preventing features': Power-Burn, BURN-Free and SafeLink

Added IMAPI lock for Windows XP

Several improvements to comply with Windows XP Logo

Fixed a bug where a connection problem ("Unable to connect to Battle.net")would instead result in a downloading patch dialog that stayed at 0% indefinitely.

- Teams Take turns being Offense or Defense.
- The Goal of the Offensive team is to capture the enemy flag.
- The Goal of the Defensive team is to eliminate the enemy, prevent the enemy from touching your flag, prevent the enemy from capturing your flag.
- Each turn Lasts up to 2.5 minutes.
- Once you die you stay dead until the turn completes.
- At the conclusion of a turn the teams switch offense and defense to complete the round.
- 2 'Turns' make a 'Round'
- You spawn with an assortment of weapons and ammo, all for free!

Click here for the rest of the info/rules.
 

So, the question. Is it worth the upgrade? Windows 2000 users shouldn't feel the need to upgrade, unless the visuals or new features of the OS catch your fancy. In terms of performance and stability, XP and 2000 are very, very similar. For Win9X and ME users, you should seriously consider upgrading to XP, as the added stability of the 32-bit NT kernal is worth the money by itself. If you're in the market for a new PC, don't bother with a PC without XP, it's really that simple.

We are making changes to two-handed weapons to increase their damage output and desirability. As many of you know, two-handed weapons are not doing comparable damage to dual wielded single-handed weapons. This problem really manifests itself in the high end game. Before level 50, two-handed weapons perform fairly well. The following two-handed weapon change applies to characters level 51 and higher-

Two-handed weapons currently receive a damage bonus based on the delay of the weapon. Slower weapons swing less often, but hit harder when they connect. We have increased this damage bonus significantly over what it used to be. This increase in the damage bonus improves the damage potential of all existing two-handed weapons. Up through epic level weapons, the damage bonus alone makes two-handers a very viable choice for melee classes.

From the day we began work on DAoC we have had a few rock solid principles. First among those was that our game's capacity was geared to handle 100K subscribers during its launch phase. We have been very clear about this from day one both with the community and with our distribution partner Vivendi Universal. Based on both of our estimates, the decision was made to have an initial run to match that number. This would allow us to have the correct amount of bandwidth, servers and CS people to have a great launch. Even up to last week nobody at VU (who of course relies on the numbers coming from the retailers) had any reason to think that we would exceed that expectation. I asked them on almost a daily basis how the pre-orders were going and it was always the same. However, then something changed...

Over the last two weeks (especially this past week) pre-orders and reserves in the various retailers have gone through the roof. While I can't reveal actual numbers, the fact is that we are have more pre-sales than any other game in this genre has had to date (at least that is what the retailers are telling us) and since these numbers are so high, the retailers are now very concerned that they will sell out their stock immediately. They are asking VU to manufacture more copies immediately. Now, under normal circumstances the manufacturer would be happy to do that but in this case, there is one big problem and that is that this is a MMORPG and that the infrastructure has to be in place to support it. Thus, a phone call took place on Friday between VU and us...

The new packaging does away with tiny, solder balls that connect the microprocessor core, or die, to the packaging material, the method now used in Pentium 4 chips and chips from other semiconductor manufacturers. These solder balls allow for power to flow to the core and for data to pass among the core and the rest of the computer's motherboard and chipset.

The clock and other desktop icons are no longer randomly flashing during the game.

This patch also includes all the fixes that were in v1.01 of the patch. Those fixes included:

Exit to desktop stability issues addressed: The issues with the game crashing to Windows desktop when loading a new map have been addressed. Game doesn't start with some CD-ROM drives: A newer version of Safedisc copy protection is now in use.

Another great difference between our competition and us is what you have to do to make a level. All these games, whether they’re skill-based games or class-based systems, all have in their heart leveling, and anyone who says otherwise really hasn’t looked at any of these games. It doesn’t matter if you’re bashing bunnies to go up to level 10 or your bashing bunnies to raise your sword skill up to 56 percent. It’s the exact same thing.

What we wanted to do is eliminate as much of the bashing bunnies as possible while still retaining the time it takes. Obviously, if you can go from level one to 50 in a week, that’s a bad thing. What we did was look at the quest system and also put in a task system, which would allow people to get up to 50 percent of their experience at any given level through non-bashing.

Version 1.26 of Operation Flashpoint executable is coming out soon (ETA: Friday Oct 12) and it will be available as public beta. New version will introduce dramatically reworked and improved netcode and over 50 of other bug fixes and improvements. More information coming soon...

Got|Apex? just received the VERY first images of 3DPOWER's new power user product, the Poseidon. Poseidon is the god of the sea, which is perfect because the Poseidon is the first water-cooling unit EVER to be offered by a company as an upgrade. 3DPOWER has given us a quick briefing on the Poseidon, but we are not at liberty to disclose the full details until they launch the product in the near future. According to 3DPOWER, the Poseidon is revolutionary in design in that the water block is a one piece block that will cover both the memory and the GPU.

Creature Isle (the Isle, not the game) features loads of creatures, several villages and no gods at all. Well, except for you that is. This means that you've got a little more breathing room. No longer will you have to compete with rival deities for influence. So what's the point? Well you've got a lot of tasks ahead of you. Apart from watching your creature raise a pet of his own, you've also got to help him hook up with a special lady creature for some breeding. But that's not what we're focusing on today. Instead, we thought we'd outline a few of the new quests in the game and talk a little bit about the creatures.

A fast pc, at least a p2-350

Fast graphics card, at least a tnt2, but GeForce or higher is recommended (party version, untested on non-nvidia cards)

Sound card

128MB or more of RAM

DirectX 8 installed

"After five years of building the EverQuest franchise for Sony Online Entertainment, it's time for me to explore other opportunities in the creative development of massively multiplayer games," said Brad McQuaid. "I wish SOE the greatest success with all future releases and I have the greatest confidence in the ability of the development staff that we've assembled over the past few years to continue expanding the EverQuest experience."

"Brad's contribution to gaming philosophy that evolved into EverQuest has been recognized throughout the gaming world as one of the premier accomplishments of the past decade in the business," states John Smedley, Chief Operating Officer, Sony Online Entertainment. "It's been a pleasure working with Brad for the past few years as a colleague and a friend and I'm certain that he will continue to contribute innovative and exciting game technology in the future."

"Brad's passion for excellence in all things EverQuest has made a material impact in the success of this groundbreaking title," said Kelly Flock, President, Sony Online Entertainment. "I know he will continue to be a force in this emerging market and all of us at Sony Online Entertainment look forward to the possibility of working with him again in the future."

Q: How do you plan to avoid the technical problems that have plagued other massively multi-player games?

A: A lot of the problems boil down to either inadequate bandwidth, not enough servers, buggy software or poor customer service. We've addressed all four. First, we have a deal with our Internet service provider that gets us as much bandwidth as we need at the drop of a hat. Without the bandwidth, you have nothing else. Second is server capacity. We have been running this game in beta for months with 10,000 active users. We have a darn fine idea of what our players will eat up in terms of server capacity. We'll have over 65 servers at launch, with each server capable of handling 1,000 players. The third area is customer service. I've got 46 people working right now in my customer service department. We're set up for full phone, e-mail and in-game support. It's 24/7 for in-game support, and phone support is 2 p.m. to 11 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. All these guys are paid, not volunteers. That sets us apart. Finally, our code base is established. We've used it in other games. It's been tested. Having said that, there's always going to be bugs in a multi-player game.

Deathmatch

Team Deathmatch

Threewave CTF

CaptureStrike

Classic CTF

Tourney 1v1

Classic CTF is my choice of games, with CaptureStrike close behind. CCTF allows the use of the off-hand grapple from the Q1 and Q2 days. You can even customize the model of the grapple to look and sound like the older grapples! You can also change the look of the rail trail. Get more info here.
 

To read their full story click here.
 

Halo, for example, is now one hot potato. It was slated for release on the Mac and the PC, but Microsoft bought Bungie and it may now become an XBox exclusive. It looks like they will be locking up titles to be produced exclusively on the XBox, which means the PC is likely to be left out of some of the best releases out there. I've been dying to see a good fighting game over on the PC for years, but it looks like DOA3 (Dead or Alive 3) will be another XBox exclusive. Given that the XBox is so similar to a PC, why can't they be big about it and port it on over to the PC so we can kick some tail over here? Why lock up Abe so he can only run his Odyssey over there on the XBox when he grew up over here on a trusty 17" monitor? I know the answer, but still, it's sad for the PC.

So how did this veritable disaster slip through testing? "We're kind of looking into that right now," says Graham. "The one thing I can say is that it is not a conspiracy. We didn't deliberately do these things. It just looks really bad but certainly it's not something we did on purpose." Nor was it a case of "the suits" forcing them to ship the game in an unfinished state, he asserts. "Some people are worried that this was upper management pushing this out with known bugs and that's not the case." Just what did happen, however, remains unknown, though Graham admits they have no idea how the install bug slipped through. As for the much more serious uninstall problem, he claims that it's so statistically rare that catching it would have been pure luck. "Twenty out of 40,000 [Ubi Soft estimates that the game has sold at least 40,000 copies to gamers as of 10/10] people, that's not a lot. What ever went wrong with that we probably weren't going to find, because it's so uncommon."

Average Increased Encoding Performance of 20%

New Post-Processing/Deringing Algorithm. Great improvement in video playback quality

3DGamers
Blue's News
FilePlanet
PC Gamer

To the Players of Anarchy Online: Let me state the obvious: Anarchy Online is not a perfect game. Far from it. As the president of Funcom, it is time to share some thoughts and reflections with our community.

Anarchy Online has become a highly controversial title. It is a great game with lots of potential, but it is also the game everyone talks about when they are discussing bad launches and lack of customer service. We have placed ourselves in this situation, and instead of looking back, pointing out all the mistakes we have done, I will explain to you what we intend to do to make Anarchy Online better.

The question simply comes down to whether or not you need and or want the new features that Windows XP offers. If you're a gamer and are satisfied with Windows 98SE, by all means, don't upgrade and risk losing the ability to play some of your favorite games. If you're at the office, you might want to steer clear for a while to let many of the bugs get addressed before making the plunge. Some of us are already experiencing some problems at work getting Windows XP to communicate through the network with older Windows machines. Ask critically and carefully, and then decide, after examining all the features that Windows XP provides and compare them to what you currently have, whether or not to take the XP route.

Below is a list of features that are not supported in the basic printer driver included in Windows XP. Some driver features may or may not be available in the driver on other operating systems.

Manual two-sided printing

Poster printing

Mirror printing

Zoom Smart

Enhancement of lower quality images

Windows XP Auto-Logon

Improved Pop-Up Blocker configuration

Improved Pop-Up detection

Updated Pop-Up Blocker list

Updated Ad-Blocker server list

Fixing some minor problems (startmenu, cache, and modem tweaks)

Changes to several language files

Several code optimizations

The Wizardry 8 demo features the first level of the actual Wizardry game. Players will start with a preset party since the level itself has been modified to be more advanced than the level in the full game. This was to allow players to see a greater sample of monsters and magical spells. Characters will gain levels as they play through the demo giving players the opportunity to see some elements of character development.

“One thing we want to stress about the demo is that it really is just a glimpse of the game.” Said Linda Currie, Project Leader. “Trying to show off the depth of Wizardry 8 in a demo is impossible. Wizardry 8 features an immersive story, many intriguing quests, vibrant characters to interact with, spread across many fantastic locations. The demo shows only a small part of all of this.”

In the demo, players will be able to experiment with the complete flexibility between phased and continuous combat modes, character formations and Wizardry 8’s unique magic system with unique targeting characteristics that make for a combat experience exceeding anything previously seen. Characters will be able to pick locks, disarm traps and experience a small glimpse at some of the initial puzzles.

Unfortunately, I can't give out more information. We're aware of the current problem with cheating and are working to find a solution. We play on-line and are just as frustrated by cheaters as you are. We're working to implement a long-term solution, and coding for that has already begun. This will involve many phases of attack. I'm sure you understand why I can't give out the specific details of our strategy.

However, it WILL NOT be "a year or so" before we start releasing cheat-prevention code. We'll be phasing it in during future updates.

-Eric

In Deus Ex: The Prequel, players take on the role of Paul Denton, brother to the Deus Ex hero. Despot said the mod team managed to enlist the developers, ION Storm Austin, with the creation of the mod's fiction. No released date yet.

Currently in development, RedSun2020 promises new characters, story changes and will be set in Japan. Take a look at those screenshots. I have no idea when we can expect to see this released, but I'm ready to download it now.

Target cursor shown in MP game

Group direction shown in MP game

Clipboard operations enabled in chat line

MP: bug in cargo position transfer. Caused problems when unit from first cargo seat disembarked while someone was still sitting in second. It could also lead to player animation corruption or character duplication when player made double attempt to enter vehicle, thinking first ateempt failed when result was lagged.

MP character animation in cargo (looking through roof).

MP - gunner does not see any unit on the radar

command #reassign 1.28 - New: Laser target designators.